Neediness is the scourge of the postmodern person.  A lack of openness to the transcendent and a reliance on the “self”—whatever that is—leads many of us to awkwardly grasp after people and things in order to feel safe, seen, and secure—yikes!  When we recognize our need for the living God, however, these relationships come into focus.  Our clutching fist, desperate for something to quite literally hold onto, is transformed into the open palm of companionship and communion.  Our spinning brain, obsessing about how we will stay psychologically afloat amidst the adversity and unpredictability of life, becomes a steadfast container for meaning and beauty.  Our neediness, in a word, is replaced by a wonderfully vital and human exigence, and our lives begin to move forward again.  In the week ahead, let’s obey the command of Jesus by releasing the people and things we have unwittingly taken captive (Lk 4:18).  We shall discover that a true need is nothing more than preparation for a gift from the fingertips of the one who is positively and constantly needy for our salvation (Mt 6:32).  Ave Crux, Spes Unica.

If prayer is a gift of the Spirit—as Rom 8:26 suggests—then it should have a container, a time and space that give it dimensions that are relatable to us human creatures.  Jesus says as much: we should make space by shutting the door of our inner room (Mt 6:6) and set aside an adequate amount of time, one hour, to commune with the Lord (Mt 26:20).  The Aramaic word that Jesus would have actually used for prayer, צלותא, or slotha, literally meaning “to set a trap for,” affirms the fact that prayer is not about letting our minds float around in spiritual outer space so that we can have a breather from this world, but instead a matter of human intentionality, using everything in this world, all the way down to the most basic elements of our existence, time and space, to invite the possibility of communion.  Perhaps we literally go to an inner room in our house—wristwatch in hand—to accomplish this purpose.  Perhaps shutting the door to our inner room is a matter of closing our eyelids at a critical moment of stress.  Perhaps we squeeze in a very genuine seventeen minute “hour of prayer” between the noisy upstairs neighbors and our crying newborn.  Whatever the case may be, we must pray; the consequences of not praying, of not having that graced tesseract and window of love available to us, are unacceptable and, in fact, not human.  Ave Crux, Spes Unica. 

The religious novitiate is an intense experience for anybody.  No matter how religiously competent you are, receiving a letter in the mail from someone literally called the “novice master” with a detailed list of expectations for your one year stay at her or his novitiate carries a weight and force that is difficult to deny.  Upon arrival, you receive a religious habit, a divine office book, a room assignment, and an obedience.  Your name goes up on the cooking schedule—even if you’ve never prepared a single meal in your life—and out to local parishes that are eager to plug you into their ministry schedules.  While most of the day is consumed by attending hours-long spiritual conferences and periods of manual labor, the evenings are an absolute delight: a community meal, followed by recreation, night prayer, and the descent into “grand silence.”  This is where the logic of the novitiate becomes evident, as a highly intentional space that facilitates the opening of the inner ear, so that the voice of the Beloved may be heard and savored, especially in the silence of the night.  What happens after the novitiate—vows, career path, vocation, ministry, etc.—matters very little, as one moment with the Beloved is enough meaning to sustain a person for a lifetime.  In the week ahead, let’s make the decision to enter the interior novitiate that has already been prepared for us.  There, we shall enjoy the sweet communion of our salvation in the silence of the night and beyond.  Ave Crux, Spes Unica.

Simone Weil was a philosopher, mystic, and political activist who died at the tender age of thirty-four.  Her entire life was entrenched in the great wars of her day which forced her to face the hard realities of the human experience.  As an intellectual, she attacked important questions of meaning with an uncommon precision and lucidity.  As a Jewish person, she cultivated a deep sensitivity to the movements of grace in the world and a deep respect for the mystery of life.  Though it is unclear whether she was ever actually baptized, she had a profound spiritual experience while visiting Assisi in the spring of 1937.  In an instant, like Francis, the patron of that place, her mind and heart were Christified, that is, broken open to the radical goodness of it all: time became eternity, darkness became light, and suffering became beauty.  After that experience, she started writing the French word for God with a cross through the “i”—Deu—which is to say that, for her, the ground of being and the ultimate reality of our existence is just a concept until it is viewed through the humility, brokenness, vulnerability, and trust of Jesus.  In the week ahead, may we, too, be awakened to the fact that all things are crucified in and with Christ, and, in so doing, become more and more opened to the sweet possibilities of hidden communion in our daily lives.  Ave Crux, Spes Unca.

The mother of Dominic de Guzmán, a 13th century Spanish priest and mystic, had a dream before her baby boy was born: a dog, instead of a child, emerged from her womb and leapt into the world carrying a torch in its mouth, apparently a reference to Jesus’ proclamation that he had come “to set the world on fire” (Lk 12:49).  She was convinced that her son had been consecrated for a divine mission, so she named him, Dominic, meaning “belonging to the Lord.”  In a funny twist of fate, when this boy had become a grown man, some forty-five years later, he founded the Order of Preachers to serve the needs of the Church in a rapidly evolving Europe, but, by popular acclamation, they became known as the Dominicans, which can also mean, “God’s dogs” (Domini canes).  This red-headed, white-habited, rosary-carrying mendicant gathered a group of kindred spirits who travelled the countryside preaching the gospel with him.  They slept on the floor, begged for food, and owned nothing.  In an age that was dominated by papal bulls and crusades, the witness of their fraternity and fidelity impressed many.  Today, there are over twenty-five thousand Dominicans worldwide who carry on this same tradition of sharing the fruits of their contemplation with others.  On this feast of St. Dominic, the self-effacing man of God who truly did set the world spiritually ablaze, let’s, like him, be loyal little puppies and allow our single-hearted service to the one true master inject joy and happiness into our hurting world.  Laudare, Benedicere, Praedicare +

Worship and happiness are inextricably linked realities that are at the heart of the human experience.  However I orient myself spiritually is what my life becomes practically.  There are, of course, us religious folks who worship in explicit ways as we seek to achieve feelings of interior purity, which we claim to be the meaning of happiness.  But, there is also secular worship, such as the liturgy of watching the NFL on Sundays as a way to enter into a heightened emotional state that many men consider to be happiness, or the happy feeling of power and control that many of us experience when we go through our gossipping rituals—even addiction is an act of worship, albeit idolatry, that is so popular because of the happy feelings it produces!  If we are actually serious about happiness, however, the grownup kind that goes beyond endorphins, we should just get to the point and cast our gaze upon the crucified Christ, broken open, radically vulnerable, self-emptying, yet trusting.  Nothing separates this man from the truth; no room for “spiritual feelings” or “righteousness” or “pleasure,” just a person’s life pressing against reality in a way that can only ever bring the peace of being.  Would that my own personal pursuit of happiness demonstrate such clarity and come to such a bold and lasting conclusion.  Ave Crux, Spes Unica.

Rainbows are a fitting symbol for the gay pride movement.  From a biblical point of view, they suggest a trusting relationship between heaven and earth, a covenant which ensures that whatever is being experienced in this life—floods and romantic attraction among other real phenomena—makes sense in the purview of divine providence (Gen 9:8-17).  From a physics point of view, rainbows happen when light lays bare the deeper meaning of a water molecule in the same way that the beauty and texture of human sexuality, through the light of those who care to understand it, is refracted out of something so basic as genitalic complementarity.  From an emotional point of view, whether one is being tossed about by a literal thunderstorm or being swept away by a whirlwind of internal confusion, rainbows bring hope, the hope that some new horizon is destined to emerge.  If only we had the courage to allow Jesus, who is the light of the world (Jn 8:12), to shine through our humanity, two-thirds of which is, in fact, water, we too, with our gay sisters and brothers, would be proud of the richness, variety and goodness of life, as it is.  Ave Crux, Spes Unica. 

It is a biblical fact that Word precedes Spirit.  When the time was right, the Word became flesh in order to retell the story of humanity.  When the time was right again, the Spirit was sent to the disciples to fill that narrative of salvation with feeling and meaning.  It seems that this pattern—of creating a container and filling it, which is itself the pattern of creation where the sky, the seas and the earth were subsequently filled with stars, fish and animals—is simply the way that the Lord chooses to save.  The Word functions as a mental marker that sets the stage for consciousness.  When the Spirit arrives—and hopefully we are awake when it does!—we are in a position to recognize it and choose it and receive it as truth.  Though this art of resonance looks different in different souls, the order of operations is always the same: I need to articulate my professional goals before chasing that dream job, and I need to talk to my crush before letting the passions of love take over.  In this coming week, therefore, let’s not be afraid to strain our inner ear to listen carefully to the words that are being spoken within.  Our spiritual cup is destined to be filled, and, in fact, overflow, as the story of our own goodness abounds.  Ave Crux, Spes Unica.

Most of the world calls it fútbol; some say soccer; but all agree that it is the beautiful game.  The sport not only demands physical fitness and mental acuity, but also a keen intuition that allows one to constantly see the whole field and pick up on the rhythms of the offenses and defenses therein.  Unlike other games that feel fragmented—with their abrupt stops and restarts—soccer just flows.  The ball moves from foot to foot to foot to foot and from team to team to team to team.  It is hard to explain how the play developed yet indisputable that the goal was in fact scored.  From a young age, players are taught about the tension of opposites: in order to go at the goal, you must start by going away from the goal.  They are trained to see invisible realities such as angles and space.  The highlight of the match, however, is when the ball is “crossed” from one side of the field to the other; time feels suspended as fans and players alike hold their breath, praying that someone will meet the ball in midair and, catching the other team off guard, send it into the back of the net for a goal.  During this World Cup season, let’s catch football fever!  We shall be inspired to find our spiritual feet and join in the eternally beautiful game that, through its own angles, spaces and crosses, confers life.  Ave Crux, Spes Unica.

Have you heard the expression “give them some grace”?  It’s all the rage and the latest example of the collapse of religious language into the vast junkyard of postmodern deconstructionism.  We all know what is meant by the phrase—cut them some slack, give them a break, take it easy on them, etc.—and we all certainly appreciate when this sentiment has been extended to us!  Nevertheless, “grace” is a very theologically sophisticated term that actually means the totally free gift of the Lord’s friendship.  As a person who sins, grace is not mine to give.  It must, instead, be received as a free gift from the only one who can, in fact, offer it (hence the word “gratitude,” the appropriate response to such a gift, is derived from “grace”).  Maybe we should instead communicate more accurately by saying something like, “May God’s grace bless and sustain you,” or “I will do the best I can to be flexible with you as God has been flexible with me,” or even something less-charged like, “Let’s give this person the benefit of the doubt.”  The hope is that we can truly be instruments of God’s grace without spoiling it with our own stuff.  May grace, indeed, come and this world pass away (Didache 10:6).  Ave Crux, Spes Unica.