Don’t you love a great party?  I experienced one recently, for my friend’s sixtieth birthday.  It was held at the cozy home of two friends who have been hosting parties for this group of friends for nearly forty years.  Everywhere I looked, I found the warm and beautiful face of someone I love.  Heaven.

We all glided through that room, hating to leave one conversation in order to join another.  Every single encounter was auto-filled with the ease and relief of being in the presence of friends who know us very well, and have chosen to love us anyway.

After dinner we gravitated to the living room, designed years ago to be utterly comfy for the hosts’ large family and even larger circle of friends.  Then, because we all just needed to so badly, we forced the guest of honor to sit and let each of us tell him the many reasons why we love him.  We could have gone on much longer, but teenagers were coming home and their parents didn’t want them to know they’d stayed out longer than they had.

A circle like that takes a lifetime, and it’s not always easy.  Forgiveness, like love, is a fruit in season at all times.  Those friendships are all very much alive because forgiveness has been alive.  I know that I have easily been forgiven seventy times seven.

That’s what today’s solemnity is all about.  Like the Three Persons, eternally in relationship and eternally bringing into unity the Body of Christ, we were created to be for each other, forgiving and radically loving each other until we are forever joined in the heart of God.

How are you helping to create friendships that get each other to heaven?

A PENTECOST SEQUENCE

Send your fire, oh Spirit.
Not the rubbles of Bangladesh,
Ignited by sin and stirred by indifference.
Not the fires of Syria,
Incinerating the cradle of your church
And suffocating the heart of a people.
Not the fires fanned by drought,
Or a tear- gassed theatre, fire-armed.
Send your mighty winds, oh Spirit.
Not the winds of Sandy,
Collapsing and crippling.
Not the winds of Boston,
Pressure-cooked and cruel.
Not the winds of war,
Putrid and fetid.
No, send your FIRE, oh Spirit,
And like a mighty wind
Tear out the roots of our rage,
Kick out the doors of our bondage,
And plant, once and for all,
Peace that does justice,
And justice that brings peace.

In what ways have the events of this year affected you? What response do you make to the question, “Where was God?”

Reflecting Lk 24: 46-53

A few years ago I made an astonishing discovery.  I glanced at the skin on my hands, and for the first time in my life it occurred to me that my skin has traveled with me all my life, ever since I was knit together in my mother’s womb (Ps. 139:13).  Every seven years my ingenious epidermis has replaced the dead skin cells and replaced them with new ones, over and over again, and all these years I never even noticed.  But without this faithful covering I would have succumbed to germs and infections months before I ever passed through the birth canal.

The eyewitnesses of the Ascension, the ones who heard Christ command them not to leave the city but to wait for the descent of the Holy Spirit, were like the earliest skin covering the embryo of the infant church. On Pentecost, like a mighty wind, that Church, heretofore hidden in fear and wonder, was born into a world like ours—dangerous, cynical, yet covered in the glory of God.

Stephen, that embarrassing martyr who actually stood up to the culture instead of assimilating into it (Acts 7: 55-60) was the baby skin of the new church. Through these two millennia, the epidermis of the church has continually rejuvenated itself through the witness of those who love Him.

This is what Christ desires to be the covering of the church until the end of time: love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control (Galatians 5: 22-23). These fruits of the Spirit will remain, and, in God’s time, will get under our skin for good, even to the ends of the earth.

Have you started your Pentecost novena? Pray with millions of Christians every day until next Sunday for the comfort of the Holy Spirit in your life, and the lives of all in your circle of love.

Reflecting on John 13: 31-33a, 34-35

Did you see the recent National Geographic special about identical twins? These are people who will never be mistaken for cousins, or even siblings a year apart.  No, identical twins are unmistakable.  By their looks and mannerisms the world knows they belong to each other.

Those of us who belong to Christ should be just as easily identifiable.  Love one another as I have loved you, says Jesus. By this the world will know you are my own.

By this, then, are those who belong to Christ known: by the thousands of charities and schools and hospitals and orphanages founded by people called by that Name (Mt. 25:35,36).  By the forgiveness extended every day to co-workers, family members, and friends by those who remember Christ’s mandate to forgive seventy times seven (Mt. 18:22).  By the day-to-day honesty in the workplace by those who recall that it is better to be poor and walk in integrity than to be rich, yet crooked in your ways (Proverbs 28:6).

It’s a scandal to find a person who was once taken to the baptismal font and baptized into the name of Jesus, and then lives the opposite of Jesus.  The person who is mean, or violent, or unforgiving, or dishonest, or ungenerous had better not be pretending to be living for Christ, for Christ has told us exactly how to live.  In fact, said Gandhi, All the world would be Christian if you Christians were more like your Christ.

I want to live Christ. It’s for that mission that we were baptized.  It’s that simple.  It’s that impossible.  Come, oh Holy Spirit, and show us how to live.

Is there someone you admire for the way they “live Christ”?

What would YOU like to say about this question, or today’s readings, or any of the columns from the past year? The sacred conversations are setting a Pentecost fire! Register here today and join the conversation.

I have come to light a fire on the earth; how I wish it were already burning (Lk.12:49).

Reflecting on Revelation 7, 9, 14b-17

It’s only during the seven weeks of the Easter season that we read from the book of Revelation, certainly the least understood book in the bible.  The book is not a secret code, to be cracked by those up on their conspiracy theories and watchings of the moon, to tell only the spiritual elite when the end of days will occur.

It is, however, a book written to comfort those who lived in Ephesus at the time Emperor Domitian introduced the cult of imperial Rome.  This was enforced participation in sacrifices and festivals that honored Domitian and his ancestors; yes, the very ones who had destroyed Jerusalem and its temple.  The Christians in Ephesus were horrified that they were expected to celebrate the murderers of their grandparents and parents.  Revelation is written to comfort those who would stand up, even to the point of death, to this imperative.

Vatican reporter John Allen has done much to educate us on the greatest era of brutal religious martyrdom, which is our own.  Every year, one hundred and fifty thousand people are martyred as a direct result of their faith, or the works of charity inspired by their faith.  Eighty percent of these martyrs are Christians. There were well over one million Christian martyrs in the twentieth century, and of course the Nazis murdered six million Jews on the pretext that “Christ killers” were not part of the Master Race.

We don’t hear of these martyrdoms much because we hope that we live in more enlightened times, where religion isn’t used as an excuse to take land and lives.  But the blood of the martyrs of El Salvador and Nigeria and Kenya and Turkey and Iraq and Korea says otherwise.  We must not forget them.

What would YOU like to say about this question, or today’s readings, or any of the columns from the past year? The sacred conversations are setting a Pentecost fire! Register here today and join the conversation.

I have come to light a fire on the earth; how I wish it were already burning (Lk.12:49).

Reflecting on John 21: 1-19

Do you have a place in your life where you and Jesus rendezvous?  Is there a chair in your house, or a park in your neighborhood, or a conversation with a friend, where Jesus always shows up?  It’s interesting that Peter, after the horrors of his denial of Jesus, and the mysteries of that Easter empty tomb, didn’t know what to do next but to go fishing.  I think he just longed for Jesus so much that he set out to find him where he himself was found.  We know from the other gospels that it was while Peter was fishing that Jesus first called him.

Vocation, says St. Francis de Sales, is nothing more than just doing what you were doing when God found entry into your heart.  Were you, at some point in your life, supple and open to God’s voice?  Whatever you were doing then, keep doing that.  That’s vocation.

Peter, burdened with guilt yet filled with hope, set out that day in his boat.  I don’t think he was looking for fish.  He was looking for Jesus.  And oh, how he, exhausted from the night’s fruitless work, leapt into the water to meet him when the Beloved Disciple cried, “It’s the Lord!”  And he found Jesus right there, near the charcoal fire, a fire that perhaps reminded him of that other charcoal fire, the one in Caiaphas’ courtyard, where he  had denied him just days before.

No matter.  He had the grace to go fishing, and Jesus fished him right out of the water.  He was released from the nets of guilt and shame that strangled him, and set free to be the slave of Christ.

Where do you go to meet Jesus?

What would YOU like to say about this question, or today’s readings, or any of the columns from the past year? The sacred conversations are setting a Pentecost fire! Register here today and join the conversation.

I have come to light a fire on the earth; how I wish it were already burning (Lk.12:49).

Reflecting on John 20: 19-31

I love the word mercy. I love its musical sound when spoken, and the heart’s warm release when it is received and lodged there.  I love the feeling of extending mercy, especially because I have had so much mercy extended to me.

This Lent has been an immersion in mercy.  Just like me, that barren fig tree got still another year to shape up and start bearing fruit.  The lost son was welcomed home so ecstatically that I’ll bet the resentful neighbors were scandalized.  The woman caught in adultery found only mercy when she waited for Jesus to acknowledge her.  I think we could all feel his heart break for her as he scribbled in the sand.  I wonder if he was so mortified by the behavior of her accusers that he was embarrassed to look at her.

Mercy just feels good, and I’ll bet that’s God way of getting us to give it more often.  I’ll bet it was even more exciting for Jesus to let Thomas feel his wounds than it was for Thomas to touch them and realize that this was truly his crucified Lord, the one who lives.  Oh, the mercy in that upper room that first Easter night!  Thomas was so transformed by the experience that tradition tells us he traveled all the way to India to tell of that mercy over and over again.

Do you long for a closer connection with Christ this Easter?  Here’s the surefire answer: extend mercy to everyone you meet.  I can hear the Risen One laughing and clapping and sending more and more mercy your way.  That’s Easter.  Thanks be to God, Alleluia!  Alleluia.

What would YOU like to say about this question, or today’s readings, or any of the columns from the past year? The sacred conversations are setting a Pentecost fire! Register here today and join the conversation.

I have come to light a fire on the earth; how I wish it were already burning (Lk.12:49).

We may have received Easter a little early this year when the cardinal who chose the name “Francis” ascended to the Chair of Peter.  The Catholic imagination runs wild.

Here’s a good Easter question: Who is your favorite saint? The answer might open up a life-changing conversation about the power of deaths and risings.

One of the most revealing things I learned early on about my husband Ben is that Francis Xavier is his favorite saint.   Why?  Because he was, in many things, a dismal failure.  True, he was one of the founders of the Jesuits.  He traveled to and lived in Asia all of his religious life.  He even baptized the occasional convert there, but his religion, based in the faith of a crucified God, made most of the native peoples uncomfortable.  He took heart, though, in his upcoming voyage to China.  There, he would make converts.  But he died of a fever while waiting for a boat to take him to the mainland.

Oh, and the initial vow that those first Jesuits made, along with poverty, chastity and obedience?  They would convert the Muslims in the Middle East.  We see how that worked out.

In taking the name “Francis”, then, our new pope invoked the faithfulness-in-the-face-of-failure of Francis Xavier.  Ben loves him because he, too, has struggled against the tide in striving to really live the gospel.  He’s failed many times in his heroic attempts to enlist others in causes he feels are vital.  St. Francis Xavier is his model and friend.  They both “failed up”, which is a beautiful term to describe the grace and gifts that rise from “failure”.

So, in taking the beloved name of Francis the Holy Father has invoked the perseverance of Francis Xavier, as well as the humility and reform imaged by the little man of Assisi.  And don’t forget St. Frances Cabrini’s warm love of the children of the poor, or the gentle, humorous bishop of Geneva, St. Francis de Sales.  Pope Francis has brought each of these beloved saints into our consciousness once again.

We need a little Easter, right this very minute. May the stone of bitterness and betrayal be rolled away, and may Christ our Light illumine a new dawn.  St. Francis, pray for us.

Who do you know whose name is a derivative of Francis?

What would YOU like to say about this question, or today’s readings, or any of the columns from the past year? The sacred conversations are setting a Pentecost fire! Register here today and join the conversation.

I have come to light a fire on the earth; how I wish it were already burning (Lk.12:49).

Reflecting on Luke 22:14-23:56

Peter denies Christ by Rembrandt. Canvas, 1660. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum

Come with me for a moment.  I want to show you something.  Stand here with me in the courtyard of Caiaphas, the high priest.  The temple guards have just arrested Jesus.  Did you hear all that commotion when they marched him up from the Mount of Olives?  Now they’ve got him in the house.  See that man over there, the one with the thick accent?  He was one of the followers of Jesus.  But he keeps denying it.  Let’s ask him for a third time: Surely you were with him, for you too are a Galilean, right?  No, he says, I don’t know what you’re talking about.

Can you hear it?  The rooster crowing?  And now look!  There is Jesus, looking out the window, staring at his friend. What is that message that passes between them?  Jesus has pure love in his eyes.  But his friend’s eyes are starting to turn red, and he runs far away from the fire, far away from Jesus, weeping so loudly we can still hear him.

Listen.  The sound of his crying melts into the sounds of Jesus’ prayers―is that Psalm 88?― as he stands chained in the dungeon in the caves just beneath us.

Two thousand years later, millions of believers still come to this place.  Roosters still crow in the courtyard.  Pilgrims still climb down, down into the pit where Jesus was chained the night before he died.  And the sound of Peter’s weeping meets our own.

Why does the Church remember Peter as her first leader after his terrible betrayal?

What would YOU like to say about this question, or today’s readings, or any of the columns from the past year? The sacred conversations are setting a Pentecost fire! Register here today and join the conversation.

I have come to light a fire on the earth; how I wish it were already burning (Lk.12:49).