Tag: Resurrection

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Forgiveness and the Holy Spirit

“I just can’t forgive and forget.” How many times as a priest have I heard that line!

When I respond with “Of course you can’t!” or “You don’t have to!” it’s not uncommon to see a stunned expression of disbelief. Isn’t that what our faith teaches us we have to do?

No, it’s not.  In fact, the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches exactly the opposite! Paragraph 2843 tells us that it is not in our power to stop feeling an offense, nor to forget about it.

If we find ourselves battling with unforgiveness, we can be assured that it is not our feeling that is the problem, nor our remembering. They need healing and care, yes, but our emotions and our memory are marvelous, God-created human faculties that are actually standing witness to the reality and the gravity of the harm that happened. I have written before on how feeling anger is actually part of the path of forgiveness.

There is an untying or unbinding that needs to happen if we desire to forgive from the depth of our heart, as Jesus invites us (Matthew 18:35). This unbinding can only happen if we yield and surrender. But it is a divine work, made possible by the victory of Jesus in his dying, rising, and ascending. Slowly but surely – sometimes in cathartic moments, other times in painful and vigilant waiting – his victory becomes our victory. We truly become like Christ – which means we share in the anointing of the Holy Spirit. Remember that “Christ” means “anointed one,” and “Christian” refers to one who shares in that anointing.  It is the Holy Spirit who transforms our hearts as we walk the path of forgiveness.

The Catechism describes it this way:

It is there, in fact, “in the depths of the heart,” that everything is bound and loosed. It is not in our power not to feel or to forget an offense; but the heart that offers itself to the Holy Spirit turns injury into compassion and purifies the memory in transforming the hurt into intercession (CCC 2843).

Every offense wounds both the perpetrator and the victim. Unhealed wounds fester in both. It is within our wounds that the evil one tends to find his playground. Ignatius of Loyola describes the devil as “the enemy of our human nature.” In his hatred and envy, he is eager to torment us. Human scenes or harm or neglect (whether emotional, physical, sexual, or spiritual) offer the devil fertile soil to sow his lies – lies about who God is and lies about who we are as God’s beloved children.

If and when we find the courage to face our deeper wounds, we can welcome the anointing of the Holy Spirit. He is the Paraclete – the one who comforts, consoles, counsels, encourages, and soothes.

Think of a little girl with a wound. Does she want mom or dad to put ointment on it? Not normally! She probably needs a good deal of reassurance that it’s going to be okay. Is it going to hurt? Actually, yes. But it will also soothe and help it get better. She may need to breathe and calm down first before she is okay with them tending to the wound.

We are invited to approach our heavenly Father as little children, and to welcome the anointing of the Holy Spirit – especially when we find ourselves feeling the wounds of past harm.

When I do this personally, I find it incredibly helpful to have visible reminders of who God is and who he has been for me. I also believe strongly that Jesus, dying on the Cross, was also speaking to me when he said “Behold, your mother!” Mary has very much been a mother to me on my own healing journey, giving me the emotional and spiritual safety to receive the anointing of the Holy Spirit with confidence.

It still hurts – sometimes a lot. There’s a reason why people avoid going to doctors – even really good ones. There’s a reason why people don’t always follow through on healthy rehab. Even when we know there is new and better life on the other side, we are afraid of the suffering and surrender that precede.

But the anointing of the Holy Spirit also comforts and consoles. If we allow him to touch us where we are wounded, healing will always happen – sometimes with a cathartic release or a dramatic unbinding, but more commonly with slow and steady doses of his healing balm. That is why healthy Christian community is so important. We often need others to point out and celebrate the progress we are making. We can count on the devil to discourage whenever he sees an opportunity. The Holy Spirit works through our companions, our mentors, our spiritual guides, and our therapists to spur us on us with encouragement by celebrating every step of progress. Like little children who are learning and growing, we need a cloud of witnesses cheering us on.

Notice in the Catechism quote that healing of past harm is not a matter of erasing, but of transforming. As the Holy Spirit anoints us, we become truly Christ-like. Jesus’ wounds are not erased – he actually shows them to the apostles after his Resurrection. But those wounds are transformed, as is he. He is now seated at the right hand of the Father, interceding for us. The more we receive true healing in the depths of our heart, the more we become like Christ. Injury is changed into empathy and compassion. Our wounds become (like Christ’s) sources of healing and transformation for others. Like him, we become powerful intercessors.

I offer a caution here! With the word “intercession” comes a risk shortcutting the process. Becoming Christ-like means willingly suffering, dying, rising, and ascending with him. We don’t like the whole powerless part, so we have a human tendency to grab onto something that gives us the illusion of control. If I can be an intercessor (praying for those who have hurt me) then I can feel in control – and I can conveniently keep all attention away from my unhealed wounds. And little or no transformation will happen. Only when I willingly and freely walk the path of Jesus, the healing path of the Paschal Mystery, can I truly experience the transformation of forgiveness.

True intercession comes from a place of already-won victory. It is the risen and ascended Jesus who is our intercessor at the right hand of the Father. As we come to share more and more in his victory, our healed wounds become a powerful place of intercession on behalf of those who have harmed us. To the extent that we resist and refuse to go into the depths of our heart – where the wounds are –we will remain bound up in unforgiveness and resentment. We can “intercede” feverishly in that case – and we will only be making an idol out of the one who has harmed us, orienting ourselves around him or her rather than worshiping the living God.

As the Letter to the Hebrews teaches us, Jesus is our great high priest who truly became one flesh and one blood with us and has now brought our human flesh and blood into the heavenly sanctuary, where he reigns victoriously with the Father. Their Holy Spirit allows all that is Christ’s to be ours. That means willingly entering into the depths of suffering and dying with him – knowing that he has gone there first. All the while we will likely find ourselves recoiling with a fear of betrayal, resisting any experience of powerlessness, and both wanting and not wanting such intense love. The Holy Spirit will comfort and encourage us. We will discover the newness of the Resurrection and power of the Ascension, and come to share more and more in the great triumph of his Mercy.

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Fixing vs. Facing

What is your reaction when confronted with human heartache?

Do you feel the urge to fix it? To prescribe the right book, the right prayers, the right slogan, or the right regimen? Or maybe you crack a joke to lighten the mood; maybe you put things in perspective with a comparison: “Well, at least you’re not like ____________________.”

Fixing feels good at the time. We tell ourselves that we are “helping” the other person – but we are probably helping ourselves. We don’t like that feeling of heartache, and we definitely don’t like feeling powerless – so we back away from the abyss by trying to fix it.

When Job’s friends arrived, they found him sitting on a pile of dung, scraping at his scabs with a shard of pottery. They sat with him for a time, but couldn’t abide his heartache for very long. They shifted to analyzing and fixing, and thereby abandoned him in his pain. Indeed, they blamed him for it!

Giving advice is easy – and not nearly so helpful as we like to think. In some cases, it is our way of backing away from solidarity with the suffering person. In others, it is an arrogant way of saying, “If only you were more like me, your problems would go away.”

I have noticed that subtle message in myself and others – both at the individual and the collective level. I think of Casa Hogar Juan Pablo II – an orphanage in Peru founded by Fr. Joe Walijewski, a saintly priest from our diocese. I have been there five times, usually with a group of young people. The thought process at home is almost always the same – Isn’t it great that we are sending down some of our youth to go and help those poor people? We assume that our affluent (and white) American ways are so much better than theirs. We assume that we have the power, wisdom, and resources to solve their problems. If only they were more like us…

Fr. Walijewski actually saw it the other way around, dreaming of a “mission in reverse.” The mission is not our people going down to Peru. Rather, we go to Peru so that the children there can teach us what it means to be human!

And they have taught us – every time. Amidst material poverty, amidst government corruption, amidst heart-wrenching stories of loss or betrayal, we have encountered stunning beauty and joy. It exposes our own deeper poverty – what Mother Teresa called “the poverty of affluence.” Every single trip I have witnessed the shocked realization in our youths’ faces and tears: How can children possessing so little, children who have suffered so much, be so joyful? How can they love so tenderly and so vulnerably? How can we who possess so much be so joyless?

Jesus invites us to be with each other in communion – both in the agonizing sorrows of life and in the intense joys. As Paul puts it, “Rejoice with those who rejoice; weep with those who weep” (Romans 12:15). That means that the human heart of a saint is never far from tears and never far from laughter. Those who are the most open to tears are also the most capable of joy. That is because, in the Paschal Mystery, Jesus has redeemed human heartache by investing meaning into it. He invites us, not to bypass suffering and the Cross, but to follow him through it to new and abundant life – to follow where the brave shepherd has gone before.

It is only when we face the fuller depths of our humanity – in all its beauty and brokenness – that we can die with Christ and rise with him.  It is in such human encounters that the newness of the Resurrection breaks in. Those who learn to abide in the midst of heartache, staying vulnerable and receptive to God and others, will experience the surprise of the Resurrection and the joy of the Gospel. Jesus assures us that his Father blesses those who are poor, those who grieve and mourn, those who are willing to be vulnerable, those who hunger and thirst. Facing heartache allows us to receive the Father’s blessing. “Fixing” it closes us off and diminishes our receptivity.

Let’s face it – facing heartache is hard! As the great poet T.S. Eliot put it, “Human kind cannot bear very much reality.”

I think that is why, when Jesus died on Good Friday, he said “Behold – your mother!” – not just to John, but to every beloved disciple. Mary was often in situations in which she intuitively understood that God was doing amazing things. She did not at all know how it was going to be okay. I am thinking of the Annunciation, Jesus’ birth in a stable, the flight into Egypt, the cryptic words of Simeon in the Temple, the losing and finding of 12-year-old Jesus in Jerusalem, his torture and execution, and the awful watching and waiting on Holy Saturday. Again and again, mother Mary faced heartache. Again and again she waited with expectant hope and was surprised by the marvels of the Kingdom of God.

The last time the Bible tells us about Mary is in Acts 1. Following Jesus’ Ascension into heaven, yet again she abides in uncertainty and messiness. She prays with the apostles every day in the cenacle – nine days in all. It took those apostles many years and many failed attempts, but they learned to abide and receive. The Jewish feast of Pentecost arrives – the day to bring first fruits of the harvest to God. In a stunning and joy-filled reversal, God gives the first fruits to his Church in the person of the Holy Spirit. Mary recedes, and the early Church comes to birth, set on fire with the Holy Spirit.

The Church is intended by God to be a community that faces heartache vulnerably, open to the Father in holy receptivity and open to each other in true communal fellowship. Rather than trying to fix or advise others so that their story can fit into the preconceived mold of our own story, we expect the Holy Spirit to show up. We expect the Father’s blessing. We expect that the new life of Resurrection will surprise us. Fixing is too constrictive to allow space for God to do his work.

Do we have the courage to face our humanity together, and to abide together in Hope?

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Gnosticism Resurrected

It seems like every Easter some journalist takes a swipe at Christianity by stirring up some “new” controversy about Jesus and the Church: Did you know that there are “other” gospels the Church doesn’t want you to know about? Did you know that there were early Christian sects who believed in very different ideas – until they were suppressed by Church authorities?

As French author Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Kerr said in 1849, plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose: “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”

As my longtime friends know, if you really want to see me fired up, just start talking about Gnosticism! Maybe it’s because I was ordained a priest on June 28, the feast day of Irenaeus of Lyons. His Against Heresies (written in A.D. 185) offer an in-depth refutation of the Gnostic sects of his day. Maybe it’s because – like Irenaeus – I truly and passionately believe in the dying and rising of Jesus. And I look to that Paschal Mystery for the answers to all our ultimate human questions.

For Gnostics, the answers are found, not in a relationship with Jesus Christ, but in esoteric insight. “Gnostic” comes from gnosis, the Greek word for “knowledge.” We find ourselves stuck in this corrupted cosmos, unable to escape. Jesus is the logos – “the Word” – but in a different sense. He comes from heavenly realms to bring secret passwords, with which we can escape this dimension and enter the pleroma – the spiritual fullness from which we are cut off.

For the Gnostics, Jesus was a spiritual being who only pretended to be human. He didn’t really take on human flesh; he didn’t really die; and he didn’t really rise. So much for Christmas and Easter! There is a reason why the early Church rejected Gnosticism so strongly, and rejected Gnostic gospels as not of God. Gnostic beliefs strike at the very heart of Christian faith: the dying and rising of Jesus as a real historical event that really transforms and restores us.

Gnosticism also distorts the original goodness of God’s creation, including our human bodies. For Gnostics, fleshly existence is a burden, a prison, or an illusion to be escaped. Such views were common in some of the other philosophies or religions of the ancient world. They are common today. Most people I know look on their own bodies with some level of shame and contempt.

By contrast, in the Book of Genesis, Jews and Christians believe that God created us humans as bodily beings, male and female in his own image. He looks with delight upon what he has created and declares our bodies to be “very good.”

We are spiritual bodies (or embodied spirits – take your pick). To be non-bodily is to be less than human. God’s plan is to divinize our bodies – not just to cancel our sins, but to cause us to share in his eternal glory, in our very flesh.

For early Gnostics, one way or another, human flesh was “less than” or corrupt. They could take that one of two ways. Some sects pursued extreme asceticism, shunning all fleshly pleasures (including sexuality and procreation) as a trap. Others were highly permissive of hedonistic indulgence because – after all – what you do with your body doesn’t matter; you are a spiritual being at your core and will one day be rid of your body.

Can you see how these early heresies are finding new life today?

Then and now there is a tendency to look upon our bodies and our sexuality with shame and contempt. Then and now there is a tendency to avoid accountability about what we do with our bodies. Genuine accountability is radically different from shaming (which plenty of Christian families and churches are good at!). Accountability means I am willing to look honestly and truthfully about how kind my choices are toward myself and others. It means I care about my relationships and am willing to repent and repair if I see that I have caused harm. It means claiming the inherent goodness of my body as a temple of the Holy Spirit. It means (like Romans 7 and 8 describe) hoping for redemption and resurrection even when bodily existence in this fallen world feels futile.

Gnosticism shows up at funerals: in the obituaries, in the eulogies, in the burial practices, and on the tombstones. A walk through a cemetery can be quite telling. Where once you found crosses and Scriptures reminding you of God’s promise of resurrection, you now find fishing poles and Green Bay Packers Helmets. Where once Christian prayer ritually remembered the story of the dying and rising of Jesus (and connected it to the baptismal faith of the deceased), there is now only a backward looking celebration of life.

Mind you, it is a blessing to celebrate with gratitude the earthly life of our loved ones. AND we Christians believe in the resurrection of the body and life everlasting. Or we used to. I find that few people actually, truly believe those two truths anymore.

The resurrected body of Jesus was the same body, yet new and different. So will it be with us. This very body – or what is left of it – will be raised from the grave (John 5:29). We will see God as he is and become like Jesus – he who is ascended and glorified in human flesh.

Gnosticism is so tempting because it avoids the pain of Hope. It is easier, in the end, to find a solution that gives up on the redemption of our bodies, and gives up on truly being transformed to be all-holy in Christ. It is easier to answer our deepest religious questions in a way that doesn’t have to enter into a relationship with the living God – and therefore doesn’t risk him disappointing us. It is easier to condemn our bodies in shame.

Disciples like Paul refuse to bypass Hope. If you read Romans 7, you see that he is a sinner like you and me – the good that he desires he doesn’t do; instead he does the evil that he hates. Then in Romans 8, Paul expresses the agony of Hope, using words like futility, labor pains, and groaning. Living a bodily existence this side of paradise often feels that way! But Paul refuses to give up on seeking his answers in the promises of Jesus Christ. Jesus will resurrect this lowly body of ours; he will redeem and restore us, causing us to be fully at peace in his Father’s presence. Where he has gone, we surely will follow – if we dare to Hope.

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Paschal Triduum

We will soon celebrate the Paschal Triduum. We will enter the holiest three days of the year. We will remember the dramatic story in which Jesus redeemed and renewed us.

“Paschal” is another word for Passover. That connection is lost when we use the common English word “Easter.” On Resurrection Sunday, my Spanish-speaking parishioners will say to me, “¡Feliz Pascua!” which literally means “Happy Passover!”

For us Christians, the Passover observance has been forever changed by Jesus. No longer do we spread the blood of a slaughtered lamb on the doorposts and lintels of our homes. Jesus offers himself as the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. He willingly becomes the lamb, once slain, who now lives, never to die again. His dying and rising are one single offering to the Father. They are now, for us, one single celebration.

In terms of calendar time, the Triduum spans three days, beginning the evening of Holy Thursday and concluding the evening of Resurrection Sunday. However, it remains one single event, a seamless moment in time.

Scripture scholars distinguish chronos and kairos, two Greek words for “time.” Chronological time marches along with steady precision, and with utter disregard for our lived human experience. Sometimes time can’t move quickly enough, as on a Friday afternoon when students and employees stare at the sluggish clock. At other times the hours, weeks, or even years seem to be racing past us. By contrast, there are kairos moments within the passage of time. Whether such a moment lasts a few hours or a few months, we remember it as one significant event or era. The Sacred Triduum is THE kairos event of human history.

For many of the disciples, it was largely a trauma event. They abruptly lost their Lord, and found themselves falling away from him. Within moments, they experienced dread, doubt, confusion, betrayal, loss, guilt, and shame. Trauma has its own sense of timelessness. When we feel powerless, it seems like the anguish will never end.

Jesus transforms our human experience. He willingly enters the depths of human drama and human trauma, conquering every single moment with perfect love.

For some of you, “Triduum” is a new word and a new concept. Others among you have been observing it liturgically for decades. Either way, I invite you to gaze and ponder afresh what transpired during those three days. This three-day event is willed by God to become the very heart of every human story.

DAY ONE

Remember that in Jewish tradition, the new day begins at sunset. Therefore, Day One of the Triduum includes Jesus’ suffering, dying and burial. He initiates this new Passover event by sharing a meal with his disciples. They spend much of the meal debating who among them is the greatest. He declares the bread and wine to be his own flesh and blood and commands them to commemorate this offering. He prays to his Father in the garden. He watches his friends abandon him as he faces arrest, trial, torture, mocking, and crucifixion. His physical torment alone is enough to move human hearts to repentance. But his emotional and spiritual suffering were so much more intense. He willingly takes on our own infirmities, freely entering every traumatizing human experience: abandonment, rejection, the violation of his body, shaming comments, and a felt powerlessness. His cry to his Father gives voice to every human heart that ever has or ever will endure such experiences: “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” But unlike each of us, Jesus remains faithful and true. He surrenders in trust; he holds out hope; he loves to the end. Day One concludes with his burial and the sealing of the tomb, just in time for the Sabbath.

DAY TWO

Day Two is so easily forgotten by Christians. Jesus’ body remains in the tomb on a Sabbath Day like no other.

Imagine what Holy Saturday was like for the various followers of Jesus. Many had abandoned him or denied him. Imagine the shame they felt! The gospels don’t specify what Peter and the others were up to on this day, but we know that by Sunday most of them were on voluntary lockdown, cowering in the cenacle.

Most of them had their messianic hopes crushed. Despite Jesus’ miracles, parables, and constant proclamation of the Kingdom of God, each follower continued to clutch a more tangible kind of salvation – deliverance from the Romans or restoring the Kingdom of Israel.

Others, like Mary Magdalene, were actively seeking him, like the beloved in the Song of Songs, going out into the night and earnestly searching after the one her heart loves. Desiring and not possessing is an agony like no other – the agony of Hope.

There is also the Hope of Mary, Jesus’ own mother, who had spent thirty years with him, had stood with him at the foot of the Cross, and had always pondered his words and events in her heart. She knew his promises better than anyone.  As at the Annunciation, as at Bethlehem, as during the flight into Egypt, as when seeking and finding Jesus in the Temple, Mary believed that God was ushering in a new and greater human experience. But she couldn’t imagine what it was going to be like. She persevered in Hope. Scripture doesn’t tell us about what it was like when Mary encountered the Risen Jesus, following the agonizing Hope of Day Two. But we can imagine the surprise and the joy.

In Catholic life, each Saturday is a day of devotional remembrance of Mary. We forget that it is her day because Holy Saturday is the day on which she persevered in Hope.

DAY THREE

Jesus rises on the Third Day, during the night preceding the dawn of Resurrection Sunday. No other human being directly witnesses his Resurrection, but the encounters explode, like kernels of corn beginning to pop – at first one by one, and then rapid fire. In every encounter, the Risen Jesus catches them by surprise, and fills their hearts with unimaginable joy. Their narrow and preconceived ideas about the messiah are shattered against the event of his dying and rising. He helps them to understand how everything in the Law and Prophets – indeed everything about our human story – points to this new Passover. This event of his dying and rising (and the agonizing wait in between) is what gives meaning and purpose to your story and mine.

Even still, you and I have a tendency to bypass the Paschal Mystery. Resurrection sounds nice, but what about fully entering with Jesus into suffering, dying, and an agonizing wait at the tomb? Like the characters in the Bible, we prefer perfectionistic rule-following, secular political solutions, or to the old standbys of pleasure, prestige, and power.

This Holy Week, may we allow our minds and hearts to be reawakened to the Faith, Hope, and Love that the Sacred Triduum offers us.

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Learning from St. Benedict

This three-month period of Sabbath renewal has been a blessing to me – including my monastic companions here at a Benedictine monastery. Their Rule and way of life offer so many lessons, and I will be glad to share some of them in the weeks ahead.

I had the joy, last month, of traveling to Oregon to join in the celebration at Mount Angel Abbey as five monks made their solemn profession of vows. I wept as I watched the monks freely and wholeheartedly giving themselves over in vows of obedience, stability, and ongoing repentance in their faithfulness to the Benedictine way of life.

The vow ceremony includes stunning rituals that invite the monks into a dying and rising with Jesus. I felt deeply stirred with desire and longing, as Jesus continues inviting me to open my own heart to both sorrow and joy as I learn to abide in love and truth. Over the past four years of my life, I have learned again and again that I cannot experience the intensity of joy without also welcoming the depths of sorrow; I cannot exalt in the surprise of the resurrection without a willingness to enter the heartache of Good Friday and Holy Saturday. The Lord keeps gently inviting me to open my heart freely and fully, assuring me that those who embrace poverty and mourning will be truly blessed by the Father. The vow ceremony gave me so much encouragement and assurance of God’s covenant faithfulness to his promises, and was truly a taste of the feasting we will all share in the Kingdom.

The abbot presided over the vow ceremony – he who will be a longstanding spiritual father to these men in their years ahead. He beckoned them forward lovingly and then asked them what they were seeking. Their response: “I desire to share in the sufferings of Christ in this monastery until death, that I may also share in his glory.”

He spoke to them of the seriousness of the covenant they were about to enter: “I set before you a way of life, which images that of the Lord himself.” It is a renunciation and a dying, but also a claiming of the victory of the Cross. They freely responded “I do” to their vows, and then, one by one, read and displayed to the congregation their signed covenantal letter. The abbot tenderly took each one by the hand and led them to the altar, where they put pen to paper and sign their statement.

Then came the Suscipe prayer, which moved me so deeply that I am still returning to it in my prayer a month later. The five solemnly professed monks processed up the aisle and three times paused to extend their arms out horizontally and cry out to the Father: “Accept me, O Lord, as you have promised. Accept me, and I shall live. Do not disappoint me in my hope!”(Psalm 119, verse 116). I was struck by their posture in making this prayer. It evokes Jesus’ dying on the Cross, but they are also presenting themselves like little children begging daddy to pick them up and embrace them. They are choosing to be totally vulnerable, to risk all, to open themselves up in hope – and surrendering themselves into the Father’s hands. How often have I resisted abiding in hope – it definitely hurts to desire but not yet fully possess. It feels so much easier to distract myself from the longing than to stay in it! Over the years, my heart has both longed for and resisted being taken up into the Father’s hands. This attitude makes sense – given that I have often felt betrayal and powerlessness. The ritual stirred a fire in my heart that melted much of my ambivalence.

My mask was only beginning to be drenched with my tears as they proceeded with the ancient burial ceremony. In front of me this whole time had been one of five black cloths draped over the pew. The five newly professed monks prostrated themselves on the floor as the mentor who had guided them on their journey draped one of these burial cloths over each of them. Meanwhile we somberly chanted words that echo Colossians 3:3 “I have died, and my life is hidden with Christ in God. I shall not die but live, and proclaim the works of the Lord!”

The abbot proceeded with the offertory of the Mass – offering to God not only gifts of bread and wine, but these five newly professed monks. All was to be transformed by Jesus, taken up into the mystery of his dying and rising. The abbot incensed not only the gifts on the altar, but the five prostrate (and “buried”) monks. As all of us priests gathered around the altar for the Eucharistic prayer, the five monks remained in front of us, beneath the veil of death.

Following the Great “Amen,” as the congregation rose to pray the Our Father together, the schola joyfully chanted, “All you who sleep, awake, awake! Rise from the dead! Christ has enlightened you!” And the monks rose to new life with Christ. My heart soared with joy as I watched each of them re-emerge into the light.

The life of a monk is an already-but-not-yet. Even now they claim a foretaste of both the dying and rising of Jesus. Even now they gain a glimpse of his glory. I certainly enjoyed a taste of the goodness of God’s Kingdom that Saturday morning on the Mount of Angels in Oregon, as I shared the experience with them. Such joy never lingers forever, but reminds us of the good things to come!

You can view livestream footage for the entire vow ceremony here.

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Learning from Lamentations

We are living in days of painful loss and disorienting change. Our grief is great, but we don’t like to enter into it. Jesus teaches us that we will be blessed if we allow ourselves to be poor in spirit, and that we will be comforted if we allow ourselves to grieve and mourn. But we resist.

We live in a culture that has forgotten how to grieve well. We could really learn from Lamentations, that astounding book of the Bible that tells the tale of the woes that God’s people are experiencing in exile.

The Book of Lamentations is a series of intense and heartfelt cries to God, pouring out pain in poetry that is stunningly beautiful. At the time of writing, there is no certainty at all that God will even answer the cries – it feels very possible that the loss of his favor is forever. Yet the poet cries out all the same. He tells his sad story to God, and holds out Hope.

There is one verse that seems especially pertinent to us who are experiencing agony amidst a pandemic, a general election, a cultural collapse, violent divisiveness, and whatever personal problems are unique to me or you:

“Come, all you who pass by the way, look and see whether there is any sorrow like my sorrow” (Lamentations 1:12).

We tend to minimize our own pain. “I have nothing to complain about – other people have it much worse.” That is a very quantitative way of looking at my suffering. Of course there are always going to be other people who are suffering “more.” That doesn’t negate how authentic my own suffering is!

In truth there is no sad story like my own story, nor like your own story. Each of us is fearfully and wonderfully made, in God’s own image. My story and yours are utterly unique. God deeply desires that our whole story be told – including the sad and painful parts.

Think of a three-year old with intense nausea or a terrible toothache. What mom or dad would scold him, “Stop complaining – there are other people who have it so much worse!” True, the suffering of a toothache or nausea is not nearly as bad as a terrorist bombing or rape or genocide. But all suffering matters! Every hair on our head is numbered, and no problem is too big or too small for the living God.

Lament is a lost art. It is the telling of our sad story in a way that reaches out for comfort and care, and freely invites genuine human connection.

Lament is not to be confused with counterfeits such as self-pity or manipulation. I can think of many moments in my past, and even some in recent days, in which I have not behaved well when overwhelmed with shame or anxiety or fear. I sometimes react with childish outbursts that draw attention to how hard things are for me. In those moments of self-pity, I am not telling the truth about my story. I am grasping or taking, using or manipulating, or perhaps desperately trying to shift the shame I am feeling away from myself and onto someone else. Instead of describing truthfully what is happening inside of me, instead of vulnerably stating a need and freely asking others for kindness, I am playing on their emotions to try to take what I need. It doesn’t work, and it ruptures relationships. It tends to push others further away – which in turn easily feeds the lie in my heart that others will leave me all alone when life gets hard.

In some ways, we can’t help these less-than-kind behaviors. If we do not allow ourselves to grieve and lament, our heart will keep trying. It will come out sideways – in self-pity or manipulation, in blame or resentment, in outbursts of anger, in passive aggression, in depression, or even in bodily ailments. Our story deserves to be told, and our hearts, made in God’s own image, will keep fighting to bring our story to the light of day, even when we resist.

Lament tells our true story. It speaks the truth deeply, not so much about the factual events, but about what the experience was like. It paints a picture with the five senses, engaging the emotions and the imagination. This process takes enormous courage, because it activates our memory and draws us down into the depths. We easily fear we will never find our way out again. Those fears certainly didn’t stop Jeremiah (or whoever it was who poured out his grief in Lamentations).

Lament speaks the truth about the sad parts of our story, about the pain we are carrying. It refuses to lie or minimize. It fights the urge to shift the attention elsewhere. Far from masochism, lament is essential to authentic Hope. Instead of stashing our pain away, instead of living a compartmentalized and fragmented existence, our lamentation reaches out to the faithfulness of God for ultimate rescue and resolution. It complains to God and reminds him of his promises. It freely and meekly invites other human beings to stand with us as willing witnesses to our story, even at the risk of their saying no or bailing out. United in communion with other members of Christ, we willingly suffer and die with him, and watch and wait for the surprise of resurrection to come. As in the Book of Lamentations, we do not know when or how the rescue will come; we sense that some things are gone forever.  But for all that, we hold out Hope. We open ourselves to the possibilities promised by God, which are very well put in the words of the poet T.S. Eliot and the mystic Julian of Norwich: “All will be well, and all manner of thing will be well.”

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