Deacon Dan Wright

Much Contradiction, Much Doubt, Much Faith

"There is so much contradiction in my soul. Such deep longing for God -- so deep that it is painful -- a suffering continual -- and yet not wanted by God -- repulsed -- empty -- no faith -- no love -- no zeal. Souls hold no attraction. Heaven means nothing -- to me it looks like an empty place."

I wanted to write earlier in the week, but there was much holding me back.  The new school year began Monday here in Texas.  As always things were hectic, and really the entirety of last week had been equally fast-paced, and equally demanding.  Much was expected of me.  So much, in fact, that I scarcely had time to reflect--or so it seemed.  Yet somehow my mode of reflecting also seemed to be working overtime.  It was just that my focus was aimed almost entirely at the students whom I serve in my work as a special educator.  Nevertheless, I have many thoughts and opinions on the recent news of Blessed Teresa's doubt.  I have many feelings stirring deeply within on the matter.

It is not that doubt is wrong or somehow sinful, or even that it is an admission of weakness or of ultimate untruth.  Doubt is a human characteristic.  Each of us in our honesty have experienced doubt--if we say we have not we make ourselves liars, and perhaps take company with the Pharisees whose prayer was "I thank you that I am not a sinner."

I have written on doubt in the past, and I have also written on Blessed Teresa and how she, for me, has become the icon of faith in times of great doubt.  To learn of her doubt has only served to strengthen my resolve and my determination.  Now, I may place trust in her prayers when I experience difficulty in matters of faith.  I may turn my prayers to her prayers--it's the way that the Communion of Saints works--holy people sharing holy things, not, of course, to make a claim to holiness myself.  I am merely a servant, a waiter of tables if you will allow.

Christopher Hitchens's rant in Newsweek did catch my attention, and while I found nothing clever I did find the expected lapses in logic that one habitually finds in the faith of an atheist--one who believes there is no God criticizing the purported lack of faith in another...Hitchens also claims, "I tend to believe that the absence of evidence is the evidence of absence."  Really, we shouldn't be swayed at all by spurious argumentation that has more to do with opinion than sound reasoning.  Absence of evidence is not evidence of anything.  Any quick-minded freshman knows that we cannot argue from what we do not know.  Hutchins's position ultimately is a matter of what he believes; it reflects his faith as an atheist only.  As an atheist, his faith appears as the mirror image of faith in God: it cannot admit to doubt.  Yet I have to wonder if Hitchens has ever had his doubts, such would be much more a crushing blow than the doubts of one of the faithful immersed in the steam of sorrows.

It is true that the experience of the absence of God can be the sign of greatness in faith.  I don't say this simply from the examples of many great saints and their dark nights, but from my understanding that if faith is to be measured it is often proportional to absence of certainty.  Recall that the writer of Hebrews teaches us that faith is evidence of things not seen.  When we believe in spite of everything in the world that challenges us and cries out for cosmic justice, we then might say that we truly have great faith.

I look to Blessed Teresa with great love and admiration.  She serves as an example who lifted me up out of my own time of doubt.  Great and efficacious are her prayers in heaven.  If I find myself in this life, or in what lies beyond, chastised only a little, then I also count it a great blessing that God gave me the knowledge to realize that my doubts and sufferings are signs of love, for he desires that I enter heaven purified.

Blessed Teresa is the icon, even the miracle, in my life.  It was she who years ago pointed the way of selfless service to those who are in need of mercy.  She demanded of my soul that I serve those who need God's mercy most.  Indeed I found a spiritual connection to her.  Now, years later, I find great joy in a work different but similar to hers.  In every suffering human that I encounter or touch as a part of my daily work, or even in each child or young person who expresses joy in being educated, I realize and see that God has given me the opportunity to gaze upon my Lord in their eyes.  Each and every hard or demanding day I receive as a gift from God. 

Every moment that I sense my own personal hardship I have the opportunity to join it to the suffering of Christ, both for my own sake and the sake of the whole world.  I often have doubts, really more often than you might think. Doubt is part of the Cross: it is the cry "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me."  To doubt but to move forward in a passionate manner and serve Christ in others is indeed the sign of sainthood, yet for me I take my doubt, as well as my daily hardships, as penitential--seeing as how I am yet far from being saintly--and even in penance it is a great spiritual gift.

Doubt yes, but, Mr. Hitchens, we do have evidence.  It is not the evidence that you would accept, it will never be found in the certainty and objectivity that you would like, and it is evidence that will always be denied to the eyes of the enemy.  But still someday you might see it too--there is always that chance.  It is the evidence that gives itself to us in places that you would not count as evidence. We find it in our determination to love and serve others in spite of our greatest doubts.  It is the evidence of unknowing; the mirror image of not-faith.  Perhaps Blessed Teresa will be named a saint not in spite of her doubts, but because of them.

Glorious Things Are Said of You...

The angel spoke to me, saying,
“Come here.
I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb.”
He took me in spirit to a great, high mountain
and showed me the holy city Jerusalem
coming down out of heaven from God.
It gleamed with the splendor of God.
Its radiance was like that of a precious stone...

Glorious things are indeed said of you, O City of God.  The passage above, from today's lectionary readings, speaks to us of the Bride of Christ, both from a time of fulfilled final glory, and from the real potential that lies within us awaiting its awakening.  Indeed our prayer should be "Rouse in me O Lord all that you would have me be."

Late Thursday evening, after a long day of meetings and preparation for what promises to be the most challenging yet exciting year thus far in my career as a special education teacher, I find the inspiration to reflect upon potential--not just potential in itself alone, but potential in Christ.  Indeed I believe that such is the stuff of which hope is made.

Although it is the eternal life with Christ for which we wait, long for, and ever look toward, this life too holds in it the promise that sometimes seems to be most clearly connected with the end.  Yet the potential is with us in the here and now.  We should--as a matter of course--expect to see it come to pass.  We must therefore find the means to see the realization of our hope fully.

Many years ago as a college student I studied the immanent formism of Aristotle in which there is the idea that the complete and perfect form of what a thing is to become lies within it; for example, that the complete form of of an oak tree lies within the acorn.  Certainly much can be said about how we grow and develop as humans, and how our faith matures also, which is true to the analogy of the acorn and the oak.  However, there is also that which lies within us that is perfect now.  Our task is to bring that to fore.

It is a good and practical philosophy of life to believe that I can be the best and that I can bring out the best in others, even that I can bring out the oak tree in myself and in others.  As an educator this is an extremely important position to have and I'm going to be rather stubborn about holding on to it.

There is also a spiritual aspect that goes far beyond the practicalities just mentioned.  Today's scripture points out what we are already, yet mysteriously and often hidden but not less real.  The form of being the Bride of Christ is in us, both as nascency or potentiality and as fully realized, yet awaiting being brought into plain sight.

It isn't a bad idea to connect the practicalities of hard work with what lies within spiritually to begin seeing spiritual fruit.  Once someone told me to be a success I should work hard and study hard.  Really that never goes away as a recipe for success.  I'd add to it pray hard--and then wait and see what grows.

It is always a good idea to have a forward looking frame of mind.  Too often we let what holds us back dominate what could be a rather sweet future, be it a lack of confidence arising from inexperience, or perhaps a sour experience from the past .  Even more, the present itself is permeated with the sweet odor of rising prayer and the presence of God's own hand in our lives.  Never should we allow the enemy to deprive us of what God has made to be a lived-experience, a reality both genuine and authentic.

As the week draws to a close and we take this Friday moment to remember what was accomplished for us by our Lord, we might also set our goals on what will be.  We do penance today--we pray, we give alms, and we fast in some way. 

In our prayer we seek what we might be, what lies within.  We seek it with the intent to work, to prepare, to pray, and to do whatever is called for to perfect who and what God has called us to be.  We do it realizing the potential and energy that lies within and from the reality that desires to come forth.  We do it both for ourselves and for all those whom we serve. 

Our prayer is come Lord Jesus, make your presence felt in our lives and in our world.  Come and shake the foundations of what we believe is possible.  Show us Lord all that you would have us be.  Make us Lord into that perfect bride, that glorious city made of precious stones.  Through it all O Lord may you be ever glorified.

On the Memorial of St. Bernard: Love for the Sake of Itself

Love is sufficient of itself... It is its own merit, its own reward. Love looks for no cause outside itself, no effect beyond itself. Its profit lies in its practice. I love because I love, I love that I may love. Love is a great thing so long as it continually returns to its fountainhead, flows back to its source, always drawing from there the water which constantly replenishes it. Of all the movements, sensations and feelings of the soul, love is the only one in which the creature can respond to the Creator and make some sort of similar return however unequal though it be. For when God loves, all he desires is to be loved in return; the sole purpose of his love is to be loved, in the knowledge that those who love him are made happy by their love of him. St. Bernard

The excerpt above, from a sermon by St. Bernard, and included in today's office of readings, speaks of that which is both the joy of the life in Christ, and the fulfillment of the commandments.  It is therefore both descriptive and instructive.  It speaks of that which is the both the object of longing and passion and its reward. 

Through the many seasons of my life, and especially during that part of my life when I recall being most mindful of the search for God, that which stands out most clearly is love.  It is though from the very beginning of my calling upon God I have doubtlessly been aware that love is the fulfillment of that toward which I reach.

"Love is sufficient in itself" say St. Bernard.  It is that which both fulfills every longing, and it is that which motivates us to serve God in a perfect and pleasing way.  Love is for the sake of itself.  For when it is perfect, love reflects the beauty of the Creator and it is he who is the source of the longing of the heart.  The heart was made for God and can be satisfied by no other.

Recently I was questioned about why I chose to become Catholic.  Of course there were many reasons and I felt somewhat like whatever I answered would be insufficient; however, on further reflection it was clear to me that my choice was born out of love, one born as a matter of the heart.  Becoming Catholic was easy due to the fact that it is a religion born of love, and that it is one where love is made present to us constantly in the Eucharist.

My journey to Catholicism involved many friends who helped me to see and to experience the fact that the object of my longing was not too far away at all.  Without any doubt at all I realize that the journey to Catholicism has been a journey to Christ and a journey toward perfect love.  It began long before I considered the Church as my home specifically.  Nevertheless my heart was being prepared by an openness to the art and music of the Church and especially, in a mysterious way, to the Mother of Our Lord.

When we reflect honestly I believe that we all can find a place in our lives where we intensely desired love.  It may be that the object of our longing was at the time a special person or friend in our lives.  We must learn to see that God was the real object and the source of the longing in our hearts.  For years I searched unsuccessfully for the fulfillment of desire for love.  Such longing can take us many places and we can be come sidetracked or mired in the cares of this life easily.  Ultimately we must learn that only God can satisfy our deepest longings.  Also, what a great joy it is to discover love sacramentally, especially in the Eucharist but also in marriage, service, forgiveness, and healing--each providing the love that leads to eternal life.

Every heart was made for love, yet the secret is to learn that the real object of our desire is transcendent, and that although we can experience God through the people in our lives and through creation we must ultimately look to that which alone can survive into eternity.  Still in a paradoxical way everything, every person, that we encounter in this life can become for us a lighted pathway to God.

Assuming Heaven

My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord;
my spirit rejoices in God my Savior
for he has looked with favor on his lowly servant.
From this day all generations will call me blessed:
the Almighty has done great things for me
and holy is his Name.

We look to her; often we call upon her for assistance in times when our prayer alone doesn't seem to be enough.  We reflect upon that greeting so long ago that in time has proven true--all generations indeed have called her blessed.  She shows us the meaning of blessing, and in our prayer through her we share in her blessedness.

Her presence seems near in those moments when we can't quite find the needed strength.  I doubt that it is a weakness or a fault to which we as the children of Adam cannot relate.  However, we find the way beyond it in our asking for help.  We look to one who knelt at the cross.  Indeed, the connection of the cross is never too far away. We say and we believe that Our Lady is the perfect pray-er.  No prayers could match the intensity of those prayers at the foot of the cross. None were as perfectly born of need as those of she who bore the one who suffered that we might live.

She proclaims his greatness, while at the same time she acknowledges her lowliness.  It is a lowliness that she models for us, for it comes forth from the humility that the Master taught us, and that we must acquire in order to inherit the kingdom of God. 

She leads the way and inherits the kingdom perfectly in her actions of humility and her prayerful submission.  Yes, in all she is and does she awaits the kingdom of God that calls her forth and draws her unto itself.  And, we look to her humility as a perfect model.  For we too desire that same liberation from this fleeting moment that often seems to pull us back to the clay from which our bodies were formed.  Still, we look toward heaven and we believe.

She sings of his holiness and his might and in doing so she loses herself in him.  Her identity and his merge as one.  Her soul sings and even in the singing she begins her rising heavenward.  We desire to go along, needing help along the way.

Her help is present for us; she is the icon of that help that comes from God alone. 

We see help in her, perpetually, yet in her is the God in whom she loses herself. It is God then who provides our help; she is the window through which it flows.

I find myself devoted to her completely.  She is my mother--given to me as mother, and I behold her blessedness.  Hers is the blessedness of one who bears all mystery within.  By that which she alone bears, she is ever assumed into heaven.

The beauty I find in it is the promise that it contains.  I look to her assumption in hope of what awaits.  I look ever hoping, ever desiring, desiring God, and knowing my need for help along the way.

I pause in this summertime moment.  Another season of life comes and goes.  Looking upward as the hosts of heaven pass overhead leaving occasionally a burning streamer behind.  It is humanity's desire to be assumed, losing ourselves in God forever.

A Wedding Homily

I don't ordinarily post wedding homilies, but weddings are something that I do regularly as a deacon.  It seems like a right fit since typically the clerical role of the deacon is includes being married.  Actually, much of the ministry that I do at my parish involves marriage in some aspect.

This last Saturday evening I had yet another opportunity to witness a marriage.  Rather than going straight to my regular wedding homily--yes, I have a wedding homily that tends to get its workout--I felt the Spirit moving me to use something different, something that speaks of God's purposes over ours, and something that speaks of the sacred nature of marriage as a sacrament of salvation.  So, I wrote something new for last Saturday's wedding, and I'll share it with you here.

Your choice for the gospel reading today, the Sermon on the Mount, is one that serves to encapsulate the essence of the life that leads to the kingdom of heaven.   It equally serves to impart to us the essence the Christian married relationship.

What stands out is that the values professed in the Sermon are different from those of the world in which we live.  Jesus lifts up the poor, the mourning, the meek, the merciful, the peacemakers. 

His message is one that asks for great humility.  Clearly, these are not at all the values that our world asks us to take upon ourselves in order to gain success.  Yet the values of the sermon are precisely about success.

Certainly in the sacramental marriage, in one that is by virtue of baptism a channel for grace, such values have a place.  They are the values that make for a successful marriage.

You learn to share, to empathize, to let the other be right, to forbear and to forgive, and more than living in peace, you learn to make peace.  In marriage you learn the value of right relationship.

The sacramental marriage is one that differs sharply from the common standard and meaning of marriage.  Rather than looking to love as the sustaining factor in your marriage, you look to your marriage as the sustaining factor in your love.

Learn to say to one another, “I will never leave you.”  Learn to say it because you believe that your marriage, by its sacramental grace, is a participation in Christ’s salvation--for one another and for the whole world.  Learn in your marriage to be participants and partners in something that goes beyond anything you might have thus far imagined to be possible.

As you go forth this evening as husband and wife, you will take with you the blessing of God’s Church.  In that blessing is sacred blessedness that leads to heaven.  You also will take with you the lasting gift of yourselves to each other. With great joy this evening it is your gift to one another, and God’s gift to us all, that we celebrate.

Where Have I Been?

Actually, I haven't been too far away--just some last minute vacation obligations.  Since both my wife and I have family living in Oklahoma City, we decided to make it a vacation this year.  I'm posting a photo of my daughter having fun at a fountain in the Bricktown area of OKC.

I did visit St. Joseph's Old Cathedral in downtown OKC, which is no longer the cathedral church for the Archdiocese, but the photos were too dark due to the lighting in the church.  I only learned about The Cathedral of Our Lady of Perpetual Help later.

The fountain in OKC gave us the idea of going to Schlitterbahn when we returned to central Texas. Schlitterbahn is the state's largest water park--it may be the biggest of its kind anywhere (it's that Texas thing, what can I say?).  I didn't take photos while there, but during the day my daughter somehow managed to get separated from us.  It turned into a five hour search.  She had found a same-aged friend to hang with and in the end all was well.  Near the water park there is a small parish church named Our Lady of Perpetual Help.  During the search for our missing girl I called on Our Lady to help me.  Deep down I knew that the help I needed was with me, after all I was asking for help from someone who could relate.  Anyone with this kind of experience knows how Mary and Joseph felt when Jesus went out exploring the town.

I treated us all to a delicious dinner at a taqueria after the ordeal.  I'm still recovering from the dinner.  My father-in-law always said never to eat at a place that called itself a "ristorante."  I thought surely that I'd be safe with a taqueria.  I doubt that I'll stay away from either taquerias or ristorantes--that's just the way I am--my father-in-law warned my wife about me.

I'll be back with regular reflections beginning this weekend--vacations are over, and it's time to get busy with other things.

Midnight Musing

It's late at night, and I've stopped over in some small Oklahoma town where I recall that my great aunt told me she lived as a child many long years ago in the early parts of the last century.

It's been a long day and as I sit here in my motel room I muse over the events of the day.  Even in the middle of rural America it's more than evident that the price of motel rooms, Chinese buffets, and convenience store goodies for the kids have followed the price of gasoline and become almost unaffordable.  Therefore, I really didn't feel so bad about giving a panhandler some change earlier today.  After all, it was only pocket change but for him I got the impression that it was significantly more.

Everything is a gift anyhow.  God gives to us out of his goodness--we can always count on it.  It's what in seminary they called providence.  For me it's simply God's goodness toward us.  It's something that we can count on, but the challenge is to think in terms other than the material categories that we're accustomed to.

As I begin to look at this weekend's readings--I have to be back in Austin Sunday for my homily, so I'm putting my thoughts together on the road--what stands out to me is Jesus' telling the disciples that "one's life does not consist of possessions."  Truly life must be more than those nice things we like to surround ourselves with (even my panhandler today had a relatively nice bike).

We must aim at possessing something more meaningful than the things that perish.  I've noticed almost daily that time is a tyrant, especially as I drive through places I haven't been in years.  Whatever we think we have, it's sure to vanish at some point.

However, God gives us something more certain--he gives us a possession from heaven that lasts into eternity.  This is what we are to aim for.

Everything we have is a gift from God.  We are not necessarily helpless dependents--though there is spirituality that depends on surrender and even helplessness, such as recovery spirituality for example--rather God invites us to be active partners, perhaps more correctly participants, in the giftedness that he shares with us and that we in return share with others.

I'll be back soon with more, provided that I find a good hot spot sometime in the next 24 hours.

Interpreting the Council

Since June of last year, when I first began the blog, I have included a link to dotCommonweal.  Honestly, I've frequently wondered whether their writers actually read what they're commenting on (as is the case in a recent Commonweal article on the Motu Proprio, Summorum Pontificum).

Personally, I'm interested in a balance of opinion, so I link to both progressive and traditional sites--as well as those in between, or even better I like those that defy categorization.  Nevertheless, the above referenced article almost convinced me to remove my link to dotCommonweal.  However, just as I was about to click "delete" I found an interesting, and surprising, discussion on Benedict XVI and Vatican II, so I'll keep Commonweal's link until I'm convinced to do otherwise.

I thought it might be worthwhile to devote a separate theme to Pope Benedict and the interpretation of Vatican II. I had not read until this afternoon the remarks the Pope made to the group of priests who had asked his opinion about the Council. From what had been described in other posts I I expected to find it giving aid and comfort to anti-conciliarists and restorationists and to promote continuity over discontinuity in the interpretation of the Council. Instead, I find that this dichotomy between continuity and discontinuity is absent from his remarks and that he distinguishes two extremes that he thinks once predominated with reference to the Council: a progressive mentality that thought everything can and ought to change in the Church and an absolute anti-conciliarism, between which, he says, a third and more valid interpretation had difficulty making its way.

The idea that Pope Benedict wants to return us to "those thrilling days of yesteryear", that is, before the Council, should be discredited, I think, by two quotes, one at the beginning and one near the end. The first is the one to which Bob Imbelli drew attention: "We had such great hopes, but in reality things proved to be more difficult. Nonetheless, it is still true that the great legacy of the Council, which opened a new road, is a "magna carta" of the Church’s path, very essential and fundamental." The other quote describes all the good the Council has brought:

"It seems very important to me that we can now see with open eyes how much that was positive also grew following the Council: in the renewal of the liturgy, in the synods – Roman synods, universal synods, diocesan synods – in the parish structures, in collaboration, in the new responsibility of laypeople, in intercultural and intercontinental shared responsibility, in a new experience of the Church’s catholicity, of the unanimity that grows in humility, and nonetheless is the true hope of the world.

"And thus it seems to me that we must rediscover the great heritage of the Council, which is not a "spirit" reconstructed behind the texts, but the great conciliar texts themselves, reread today with the experiences that we have had and that have born fruit in so many movements, in so many new religious communities."

And then the Pope recommends a re-reading, a re-reception of the conciliar texts in the light of what has happened in the Church and in the world since the Council.

I do not know what could possibly be considered restorationist about these remarks.

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