Stealing From The Poor

Dorothy Day once said, "If you have two coats, you have stolen one from the poor."

The Gospel reading for the third Sunday of Advent this year reveals where she likely got this idea. John the Baptist says, more or less, the same thing when asked what should be done to prepare for the coming Messiah: "Whoever has two cloaks should share with the person who has none. And whoever has food should do likewise."

We're used to hearing some of what we should do to "prepare the way of the Lord." We're told to prepare our hearts, our minds, and our souls. I remember last Advent, local parishes came together in an agreement to hear confessions one extra day a week in order to offer more people the chance to come back into the Church before Christmas. We are encouraged to pray. We're offered daily devotionals. And if you've never been to daily Mass, I encourage you to go during Advent -- it is an enormously peaceful time wherein one can nearly taste the anticipation of Israel as she awaits the Savior.

These are all very good and just and, as far as preparing our hearts for the Lord, necessary. But as we enter the Year of Mercy, we would do well to recall the works of mercy, which consist both of spiritual and corporal works. In preparing our hearts for Advent, we ought not neglect to prepare our homes, our families, our lives, and our communities

John the Baptist, echoed emphatically by Dorothy Day, teaches us that we should be doing far more than preparing on a solely spiritual level; we should be preparing the way of the Lord on a very practical level in the physical reality we live in.

This particular reading is challenging to me, because I wonder if I realize the implications. We are not called to be thoughtful with our belongings -- we are called to be generous with them. This is especially difficult for me as someone who is lucky if I manage to get by each month, let alone have a little extra. But John doesn't only refer to money. He refers to material possessions and to food. Do I do all I can with my own resources to see that those in my community who lack clothes and food don't go without for my sake? Following the sentiment of Dorothy Day, what have I stolen from the poor?

This is something I'll be taking to the more dusty and darkened reaches of my prayer closet, the oft-unused corner where I actually ask God what he wants me to do with the many gifts I've been given. I wholly expect this to become painful, in light of Mother Teresa's pattern of life: that love gives until it hurts and then gives more. I simply need to remember how much more it might hurt to be living outside this winter with no coat and no food.

Please join me in praying about this if you're able. And if you're not, please pray for me to discern and do God's will in my life right now.

The Innkeeper

I wish I could slow down.

I wish life as it is allowed me what I so fervently desire: a peaceful, prayerful Advent. I am naturally restless. I am inclined towards deliberate busyness, because I thrive when I am distracted from my anxious thoughts. I overwhelm myself with things I can control to keep from being overwhelmed by things I can't. Every morning I wake up early enough to do a thousand things, and find myself resetting my alarm so I can sleep a little longer, because I am truly exhausted. Every evening I find myself desperate for my bed, and once I'm in it, I don't get up for anything. My bed is the only place in the world where I am not rushing, not plotting, and not doing. My bed is where I go at the end of my endlessly busy days to take solace from the world I've created for myself. My bed is where I let myself relax, because by night time I have no further will to fight the urge to slow down.

There's a song I heard a couple of years ago which resonates with me on a deep level. It's called "Rest," and it's by Jason Gray. It is a reflection offered from the perspective of the Innkeeper, whose life is hectic and fruitless. It recalls the night he met at his door a young couple and had no room for them, except his own bed, which was his. It recounts the yearning for peace and solitude, interrupted by the distant sound of a baby crying. It gives me chills.

It is my life.

A reading of the Gospels may leave us with the impression that we are given little to no information about the Innkeeper in Bethlehem, but I am of the opinion that each of us actually knows the Innkeeper rather intimately and personally. His habits are our habits and his ways are our ways -- because he's us.

Think about it. The God of ages, the God of Israel, the Messiah promised of old, has come to the earth in the flesh! And he is turned away. We have no place for him, in our societies nor in our lives. The best we can offer is a barn in a cave, and we actually think this is an acceptable substitute for room and board. OurDivine  Spouse comes to meet us, and we can't even let him into our beds, let alone our homes. Instead, he finds his repose in the manger where we feed our animals.

Our Savior comes to us in the ultimate gift of generosity, and finds himself wrapped in rags in a barn on a cold, bitter night, while we sleep as soundly as our fears will allow in a world we still surrender to the reign of our anxieties.

I wish I could slow down, but would I? Will I? I have time for Jesus. I just don't use it for Jesus. I have a place for him to stay. I just don't let him stay there.

The Church offers Mass everyday, sometimes multiple times a day depending on the parish. I have access to the sacraments whenever I'm willing to make an appointment. I have several Rosaries. I have prayer cards. I have a Bible.

It's as if the Church comes to my door, ready to give birth to all I've ever wanted and needed, and I turn her away because I don't have room in my schedule.

I wish I could slow down. But the only one between me and my wish is me.

Waiting

This is my first Christmas "by myself," by which I mean that it is my first Christmas that I won't be living with my parents. I live in the basement of a home I share with two other people, and I've strung lights across the ceiling, hung stockings above the heater, and smothered a tiny little Christmas tree with what one might consider "too many" or "not enough" ornaments, depending on if they agree with me or if they're wrong (you can never have too many ornaments).

For the first time ever, I got to put together my own Advent wreath. It's simple, the way I like things to be. Next to it sits a small statue of the Holy Family, and next to them, a wooden plaque which reads "Simplify Christmas, Celebrate Christ" sits atop a 200-year-old Bible I was gifted by a friend.

Since I put the Advent wreath together myself for the first time this year, it uses five new candles. I've been rotating which purple ones get lit to conserve them, but as of yet the pink and white candles have never been lit.

Today as I was lighting two purple candles for the Second Sunday of Advent, I felt an urge to light all the candles to see what it will look like. That urge was quickly smothered, though, by the desire to wait. Anticipation is what Advent is about, and I'll let my anticipation for seeing my wreath in its simple glory remind me of that.

In the moments during which I stood and thought about this as I watched the two tiny fires burn, I recalled that my mere weeks of waiting to light a few candles are hardly even a shadow next to the thousands of years during which mankind awaited the Messiah. I read recently that each Advent candle represents a one thousand year period in the story of the chosen people in the Old Testament -- from Adam and Eve to Abraham and to David and beyond. If you need something to give you pause next time you light an Advent candles, think about that!

This anticipation for them was not so simple as mine, as I stood waiting for weeks to pass to light a candle or two. These centuries for the people of YHWH were inundated with strife and suffering: cast out from Eden, enslaved in Egypt, exiled in Babylon. These years were wrought with murder, adultery, rape, slavery, war, and jealousy. They faced natural disasters, famines, culturally accepted violence, and racism. We must never take for granted the "darkness" referred to in the prophetic hope of Isaiah towards the Christmas we now celebrate: "The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light."

Though the Scriptures tell the tales of Israel's repeated infidelity, the people of God in the Old Testament staked their identity on their covenant with God, and placed their hope in his promises. These were a people hopeful for the future of their children and their children's children, whose hope was inherited from their ancestors who took it from their ancestors. This was not a person waiting to light a candle; this was a collective people spanning thousands of years waiting for light to come into their world.

I think back on these people and wonder what their lives looked like, what they prayed for, how they prayed. The stories we hear in the Bible are often extraordinary, but sometimes they are ordinary. These were people who awoke every morning and endeavored to provide for their families and drank water and had dirty feet and sweaty faces. People with babies and children and grandchildren and grandparents and cousins and friends and neighbors. For all the times their stories were penetrated by the fire of God, their lives remained ordinary. For thousands of years. Just like ours do.

And we're waiting, too, aren't we? The centuries since Christ's Ascension are wrought with murder, adultery, rape, slavery, war, and jealousy. We face natural disasters, famines, culturally accepted violence, and racism. Advent is for us, too. Just as the people of God in ancient times forgot their covenant and replaced it with other gods and other worldly things and pagan rituals, we, too, forget our covenant with God and replace him with new gods and new things and distracting habits.

For all the times our world has been penetrated by the fire of God, our lives remain abundantly ordinary. We are tired, we're stressed, and we're ready for a Savior.

May Advent renew our hope that he is coming.

"A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices."

Bethlehem

"O, little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie. Above thy deep and dreamless sleep, the silent stars go by. Yet in thy dark streets shineth the Everlasting Light; the hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight."

Bethlehem was small. In spite of being both the birth place of King David and the place he was crowned king, its status among the surrounding clans of Judah was apparently rather insignificant. The prophet Micah foretold to Bethlehem, however, that in spite of its littleness, it would be the place from which an everlasting king for God would come.

Bethlehem as a city still exists today. But when I think of Bethlehem, likely because I am influenced by the Bible stories I've read and the songs I've heard, I think of a quiet, simple, dusty town -- jaded, yearning, and restless. I think of figures such as the innkeeper and David's family, who lived there -- simple people belonging to a simple time and a simple town.

But, whatever we think about Bethlehem -- whatever we project onto it from our interpretations of Scripture and Christmas carols -- whether we think it was truly dreamless, quiet, darkened, still -- we know of one thing for certain:

Bethlehem hadn't the slightest idea about what was going on inside its own walls.

And so, when I think of Bethlehem, I think of myself. Occupied and busy with the mundane things of life which suck my soul dry and leave me stubborn and selfish and starved. I hear the Christmas carol that tells the story of Bethlehem and its deep and dreamless sleep and I hear the story of my life, with the exception that I am hardly ever still and have trouble sleeping. I have strange and vivid dreams at night, but when I'm awake I don't think much about the future because it stresses me out. I have no idea what I want to do with my life. I have no dreams, and what dreams I do have, I keep to myself for fear of exposing them to the hostile world around me.

And yet, even in the monotony of daily living, when I'm distracted by myself or my work, when I'm not paying attention, and when I've shut the world out from my eyes closed tight, Jesus comes to me here. Even if at first I don't recognize him and tell him I don't have a place for him, Jesus comes to me here. Even if all I have to offer him is scraps and straw and the bitter cold of a winter night, Jesus comes to meet me here. All my hopes and all my fears are met in this tiny, fragile baby -- and especially, in a tiny, fragile host. "Bethlehem" means "house of bread," and the Eucharist which first took his place in a tabernacle of hay and rags now takes his place in my life by the kiss of the Holy Mass.

And even when I miss him, even when I'm not paying attention, even when I reject him, Jesus is working for me in my life. He is quiet and slow and patient, not wanting to disturb me or what I consider more important than him in a given moment. But even while he is not waking me from my distraction or shaking me from my selfishness, the impact of his simple presence in my life is dramatically reshaping my entire destiny -- just as he changed the whole world that first Christmas in Bethlehem.

This God who went from riches to rags by a deliberate act of the will condescends to find a bed made for him in a feed trough by his impoverished mother and her betrothed; she wraps him in rags and holds him tight against her own shivering humanity. He is greeted by shepherds straight from the field, with dirty hands and faces, with their animals in tow. He is guarded by a carpenter, a man who only days before packed up the family God commanded him to take for himself and traveled to this Bethlehem, where he found no place to house his family besides a stable in a cave.

Surrounded by all this -- by animals and their feces and dust and straw and wood and rock and rags and the cold and the stench and the strangers -- this baby changes the world. He emerges from the womb and for the first time God is naked and cold and vulnerable. He opens his eyes and for the first time God's gaze is met by the gaze of a human. He cries and for the first time God's voice pierces the ears of those unprepared to hear. His mother feeds him and for the first time we see God dependent on a human being for sustenance. The Unmoved Mover squirms. The Uncaused Cause is born.

This Christ, this anointed of God, is greeted by angels' songs in a town that doesn't notice. In this sleeping town, God takes hold of the world in order to conquer it, with ten little fingers and ten little toes. Years will pass before this baby becomes a man strong enough to carry the cross, and with it the weight of the world's sin. In the meantime, the uncreated Son of God rests in the arms of his mother. And for the first time, God is rocked to sleep.

"How silently, how silently, the wondrous gift is given as God imparts to human hearts the blessings of all his heavens. No ear can hears his coming, but in this world of sin, where meek souls will receive him still, the dear Christ enters in."

The Hope of the Cross

The only thing that has ever helped me make sense of suffering and tragedy is the image of Christ crucified.

There is something in the idea that stops the proverbial bleeding in my heart when I consider that God condescended to wear our suffering and death so close to his heart that his heart burst. And it is from his open heart that blood and water gushed -- the life of God poured out on the dirt and sin and agony of all the world.

From the cross, Jesus drank bitterness. From the cross, Jesus' sweat and blood soaked his nearly shredded flesh. From the cross, Jesus felt within his being the agony of being apart from God, so deeply that it brought him to cry out in yearning and questioning.

"My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?" I've said it so many times in my life. I've said it about myself and about others whose suffering I can't myself process.

But there is an odd comfort in knowing that Jesus himself said it for me. What he felt from the cross was the weight of my death, and what he cried from the cross was the cry of my heart.

It is almost an unspoken intercourse between the Creator and his creation. God saw the depths of our sorrow and desperation, and elected that he would not see us suffer for no reason, even though the death and sadness which entered the world were through sin and not through his decision. He determined that he would bring us, as he intended from our creation, to the heights of his glory, his joy, his goodness, and his beauty.

But he knew that in order for us to share in his majesty, he would himself have to share in our agony.

The cross is where our misery collides with God's mercy. The cross is the mark on our infinite plains of suffering where God has set himself as a sign of hope and resurrection.

We can try to process our suffering apart from it, to move forward away from it, but if that were possible -- truly possible -- God would not have had to die.

My hope is founded in Christ alone, because of his cross. And because of his resurrection, I can know that even death and suffering will not have the final say.

Collision

It is difficult to explain the experience of a High Mass prayed in an old church with ceilings stretching toward heaven and walls lined with reminders of the beauty and richness of our faith. It is especially difficult to explain it as a relatively new experience -- as one I'm not yet quite familiar with, having only been twice to a High Mass, one of those times being an especially confusing Palm Sunday service.

For starters, I don't know any Latin. Well, I know a little. By which I mean that I know enough to chant myself through the Tantum Ergo and remember vaguely what each line means. But as far as Latin Masses go, I'm lost, even with the aid of the booklets provided. Additionally, I'm unfamiliar with this form of the Mass; I can attend a Novus Ordo in any language and know what's going on, but at a Latin High Mass, my guess is as good as the guess of a random passerby on the sidewalk outside.

But nonetheless, the experience is one of a deep and reverent pause. Time taken away from the ways of the world and given to something greater than myself; something perhaps confusing, even frustrating, but invigorating all the same.

The exact details of the High Mass are all but foreign to me, but the feelings of uncertainty and frustration in prayer are two things I am fluent in. Just as the high ceilings stretched toward heaven can't help but retain and send back the chants and prayers as echoes against the great stone walls, the heights of my stone heart -- and thus, my prayers -- can only reach so far. My existence is a cracked, old, dusty piece of human desperation; every act of praise and lamentation extends only so far as the steeple of my mind, caught up and trapped in the great hollow ceiling of my thoughts. The walls of my body are covered with scars reminiscent of the Way of the Cross, and the Saints who assist me on my journey take their stationary places inside my world where they keep idle watch over my soul.

I sit and hunger and listen and yearn and close my eyes and try to focus on the things I can't interpret anyway.

And He sings over me. (Zephaniah 3:17)

Just as the priest offers prayers for my soul before the tabernacle in a language I don't know, in a quiet voice which I can't quite hear, God in heaven sings a song especially for love of me. Where my praises are trapped and my heart is stoic and my life and faith a mystery to those outside my walls, God's song for me finds flesh in a tiny wafer of bread; what I try to complicate, God has made simple.

The Catechism says that "Through all the words of Sacred Scripture, God speaks only one single Word, his one Utterance in whom he expresses himself completely." (CCC 102) How true this is, also, of the Mass. This one Word, this singular Utterance of the Father -- Jesus Christ, the Word Incarnate -- is himself a language I have yet to understand, but the effectiveness of his grace does not depend on any of my capacities. It depends only on him and his being sung, taking his place in the heart of my heart and resounding through the echo chambers of my failing human condition.

My silent shouts are met here with the eternal whisper which shaped the cosmos. I am made whole without knowing it; new without feeling it. God takes his repose in the uncertain chaos of my being.

And here he remains, singing his inaudible song, echoing silently against the limits I place and the walls I build, proclaiming peace to a heart which only speaks unrest.

The Little Saint of Great Mercy

Yesterday, I had the privilege of traveling to Belleville, IL where the remains of St. Maria Goretti were available for veneration at the Cathedral of St. Peter.

I took with me several rosaries I had collected from friends and family members who wanted them touched against Maria's casket, along with a rosary of my own. While in the very long line, my friend Dani bought me a copy of a photograph titled "The Mother and the Murderer" of Maria's mother and Allessandro Serenelli, who killed Maria. I touched the image to her casket as well.

Here's some background for you:

St. Maria Goretti was murdered at the age of 11 after resisting the attempt to rape her by her neighbor, 19-year-old Allessandro Serenelli.

Initially told, with a blade to her throat, that she would die if she resisted, upon refusing she was stabbed nine times and left to die, unconscious, on the kitchen floor of her parents' home. When she woke up, she managed to crawl across the floor to the door, which she opened to begin crying to the outside world for help. Unfortunately, Allessandro was the only person who heard her pleas, and he returned to stab her again an additional five times before returning to his own home.

When she was found, still alive, she was taken to the hospital where she underwent surgery in hope of saving her life, without any anesthetic. She offered the pain she experienced for the conversion of sinners, and when she was told she couldn't have any water because it would only leak out through her horrible deep wounds, she offered her thirst for sinners as well -- in remembrance of Jesus on the cross, who also was not permitted any water.

Her last words were, "I forgive Allessandro Serenelli, and I want him to be with me forever in heaven."

Serenelli was sentenced to 30 years in prison, where he spent many of his days, true to the patterns of many sex offenders, blaming Maria for everything that had happened, insisting that if she had only done as he told her, she'd be alive and he'd be free. While in prison, however, Serenelli experienced a profound and massive conversion to Christianity, which he entirely attributed, through his whole life, to a vision he had of Maria coming to him to give him a white lily for each time she was stabbed, eventually telling him she forgives him.

Allessandro was eventually released from prison, and returned to Maria's home to apologize and beg forgiveness from her mother. Maria's mother is said to have told him, "God forgives you, Maria forgave you, how can I not forgive you?" following which she embraced him and considered him like her own son.

The story of St. Maria Goretti is one which has touched millions. Though she is often painted as the poster-child of the struggle for purity, her veneration and Sainthood are due to her extraordinary act of forgiveness, the model of which inspired her mother and even her murderer for the rest of their lives. And if you ask me, it is entirely inappropriate to consider an 11 year old victim of attempted rape a model of purity, simply for the fact that had she given in, she would not have been guilty of impurity -- she would not have been guilty of anything, she would have been an 11 year old girl who had been the victim of the obscene and horrific crime of rape.

With all that said, I, too, find myself moved by Maria's story. I can't hide, however, that I find myself equally troubled by it. Though not a victim myself, several of my close friends are rape survivors, one of them when she was only nine years old. Some of them have forgiven their attackers, and some of them have not been able to. It is a situation which ought to evoke a deep and compassionate sympathy from everyone, as it is an assault which deeply wounds a person in a great number of ways and marks a certain change in the pattern of their lives, thoughts, self-image, and relationships.

And Maria's story is disturbing. She was, I can't say it enough, a child, attacked in her mother's kitchen with a blade to her throat and told if she didn't give in she would die. There is no doubt that it took extraordinary bravery to still refuse Serenelli's advances in the face of certain death, but even if she hadn't refused, she would not have been any less pure, any less a child, and would only be "less innocent" in the sense that her quiet childhood innocence would have been horribly violated in an irreparable fashion.

While I am surely touched by the story, I am also fascinated by it -- captivated by the forgiveness of her mother, who in my mind had to have been crazy; shocked at the piety and devotedness with which a murderer and sex offender could live out his life after prison, a man who in my mind is difficult to see as anything short of insane.

But perhaps that is why, in the midst of all this chaos, I am so touched by the example of this little girl, whose childlike grace afforded her the capacity to find it in her struggling heart to not only forgive her attacker but hope to spend an eternity with him in heaven.

I am taken aback by this marvel of compassion in the same way I am taken aback by the image of Christ beaten and bloody on the rocky ground, stripped naked, stretched across a cross, and crying out: "Father, forgive them, they know not what they do."

Mercy in the face of sin is a comfort to me, and brings joy to my faith. But mercy in the face of tragedy is perplexing to me, challenging to me. It puts my faith through the fire and asks an uncomfortable question: does God command me to love and forgive even in instances such as these?

Intellectually, we all know the answer is a resounding yes. But in practice, in our heart of hearts, in our flesh and in our spirits, it is an undeniably difficult matter, and an unavoidably difficult question.

St. Maria Goretti, pray for us, especially that we may be even more deeply inspired by your model of forgiveness, which the Church sees fit to venerate for the inspiration and compassion it will evoke, if we allow our inner selves to struggle against the invisible God and eventually find that he, and his ways, are grace.