Fr. JC Maximilian

"The Raising of Lazarus" by Rembrandt

Holy Week is just a week away.  Just as Fr. Mick, myself, and the deacons are busy preparing for the liturgies of Holy Week, we find Jesus busy preparing His Apostles for the shock of His coming Passion, Death and Resurrection.  In the three Synoptic gospels, that is the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, Jesus prepares His Apostles for Calvary and the Resurrection by His Transfiguration.  There on the mountain, Peter, James and John witnesses the glory of Jesus’ divinity in the Transfiguration.

In St. John’s Gospel, there is no account of the Transfiguration, but we have this beautiful account of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead.  St. John Chrysostom proposes for us that St. John the Evangelist gives us this account to show another way in which Jesus prepared His disciples for Calvary and His Resurrection.  While in the Transfiguration account Jesus manifests His Glory through radiance, in raising Lazarus from the dead Jesus reveals the glory of His divinity through the humbleness of His humanity.  Jesus is perturbed and weeps as He approaches Lazarus’ grave, demonstrating His human nature.  Who of us cannot recall being deeply troubled and weeping at the death of a loved one.  Jesus, in sharing our human nature, shares our grief and sorrows.  At the Transfiguration we hear the voice of the Father saying, “This is my Beloved Son.”  In today’s gospel account we hear Jesus praying to His Father, who always hears His prayers.  Jesus tells the crowd, and us, that while He knows that His Father always hears His prayers, He prays aloud so “that they may believe that you sent me.”  Jesus tells Martha that she will see the Glory of God.  Unlike the Transfiguration, where the climatic focus is on the dazzling cloths of Christ Jesus, in today’s gospel account the climatic focus is on the death rags of Lazarus.  Yet both reveal the Glory of God.  As St. John Chrysostom says, “In condescension to those present, Christ humbled himself and let his human nature be seen in order to gain them as witnesses to the miracle.”

And what of Lazarus?  We hear nothing more about him in the gospels, nor in the Acts of the Apostles or the epistles.  What must his life have been like after being raised from the dead?  I mean he was really dead.  He had been in the tomb for four days, so his body had started to decompose, yet at the words of Jesus, he was made new.

The poet Robert Browning also pondered the silence of Lazarus, and wrote a poem, An Epistle of Karshish.  Karshish is a Persian physician writing back to his master.  He has encountered Lazarus, who tells his remarkable story.  Karshish is skeptical, and like any good scientist, wants to know how this was done.  Lazarus tells him it is not the how that is important, but the who that is important.  Lazarus is portrayed as a very humble man, living simply, yet in his smallness he has become greater.  He does not promote himself, but rather praises God and points all inquirers to Christ Jesus.  Karshish finds the Lazarus’ story of Jesus, “God himself, Creator and sustainer of the world, That came and dwelt in flesh on it awhile!” to be utter folly.  Yet even doubting Karshish sees the implications of the Good News that Lazarus shared with him.  He ends his letter to his master, Abib, with these words:

The very God! Think, Abib, does thou think?
So, the All-Great, were the All-Loving too –
So, through the thunder comes a human voice
Saying, “O heart I made, a heart beats here!
Thou hast no power nor mayst conceive of mine,
But love I gave thee, with myself to love,
And thou must love me who have died for thee!”

In two weeks, our catechumens will die to sin and will be raised to new life in Christ Jesus.  It is a death and resurrection that all of us who have been baptized have experienced.  The miracle of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead should strengthen our belief that enables us to “see the Glory of God” in our lives.  Yet Jesus is glorified on the Cross, so for us to share in Christ’s transfiguration, we must refuse to be put off by the stink of our lives.  We must take away the stones that obstruct us from personal communion with Jesus.  We must untie everything that binds our God-given freedom, so to live as children of God.  Only by uniting ourselves with to the suffering of Jesus on the Cross, will we share in His resurrection.

After tell her that He is the Resurrection and the Life, Jesus asks Martha, “Do you believe this?”  He asks us the same question.  Pray that we can give Him an answer like Martha, who said, “Yes, Lord.  I have come to believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, the one who is coming into the world.”  Come Lord Jesus! Make us new in You.

Is it Possible to Live This Way? Vol. 1 Faith

In my last post, I tried to describe the diagram that appears on page 64 of the book. It represents the movement or dynamic of freedom. Freedom, we will recall, is the satisfaction or perfection of a desire. Freedom is the satisfaction or perfection of our ultimate desire of the heart, which can only be God because only God is infinite. So in a sense, all freedom in this life is imperfect because we are not yet in complete communion with God. It is our relationship with the infinite Mystery, with God, which expresses the dynamic of our freedom.

However, as we noted, often times in life other people and things cross our path. This is not necessarily a bad thing; it depends on our choices when we encounter these other objects and persons. If we see in them signs pointing us to continue to follow the path leading towards our destiny, our union with God, then they are very positive things. However, if we put all of our focus on these objects and persons so that we leave the path to our destiny, then they have become distractions or worse idols. This is where sin enters in; it is literally missing the mark or falling short of the goal. Of course the problem is that there is often greater emotional satisfaction in these objects and persons along our path because they are nearer to us than our ultimate goal.

I have been trying to think of an example from my own life, my own experience, which I could share that would not be embarrassing to someone else involved or myself. OK, I just thought of something, which might not be the best example, but I think it will work. I like technology. While I may not always have the latest gadget, I do like reading about them, and often I do get them down the road. My computer is an important object in my life. I use it nearly everyday, and often for a good part of the day. On it I write my homilies, posts for my blog, as well as other projects for both the parish and myself. And the Internet is often a very valuable tool in some of the work that I do. I can quickly look up Church documents. Since I do not have a School of Community nearby, I have been meeting each week with a couple of priests for a video iChat in which we do School of Community. These uses of my computer and the Internet often assist me as I follow the Lord. However, the computer and the Internet can also become a serious addiction that takes me way from following my path to my destiny. Of course there are the obvious misuses of the Internet (visiting pornographic sites, gambling sites, etc), but there are also the more subtle which might not always seem to be morally objectionable. There are many sites for viewing videos. While I am not much of a YouTube fan, I can find Hulu and Veoh very tempting with some of the old movies and TV shows you can watch (I am a classic Star Trek fan, and Veoh has all the original episodes available to watch for free). There is nothing intrinsically wrong with watching a video on the computer, but when it becomes something that keeps us from doing the work that God has called us to in the best manner we are able, then we are missing the mark, we are falling short. We are giving into the quick and easy satisfaction, and losing sight of that which will bring us ultimate satisfaction/perfection — God. When we lose sight of our destiny we err, we sin.

So how do we resist the stronger, more immediate attractions and keep following God? First we need to keep a clear awareness of our destiny. We need to be reminded of our real desire, our real goal. Second, we need a wrenching force to pull us away from the more immediate attraction and put our energy into moving towards our destiny. The Church calls this wrenching force mortification and penitence. The reason we fast and abstain from meat on the Fridays of Lent is not because meat is bad, but so that we can call to mind how we are often distracted from our destiny and to get back on track. The word “penitence” comes from the Greek word, metanoia, which literally means “change of direction.” So instead of going after the thing or person which we are more immediately attracted to, we make an effort to change our direction to go after our destiny.

The important thing to learn from this section is that if it was just left up to us, we would not be able to stay on the right track. We would easily become distracted by these other attractions. We need companionship to keep us on the way. I learned this lesson during my training as a psychologist. I learned that it is not a question of IF you become attracted to a client, but rather a question of WHEN you become attracted to a client. The important thing is to acknowledge this “countertransference”, as we call it in psychology, to your supervisor. He or she then help you keep on track so that you are working towards the client’s therapeutic goals.

As a priest, I find the same thing happens. People come to us broken, and they share great intimacy with their priest. I can understand how a priest can start to feel an attraction for something more with a person. Sometimes the life of a priest can be lonesome (my married sisters tell me that married life can also be lonesome at time). What I find so helpful in spiritual direction, and now with School of Community, is I can be be challenged about keeping my eyes on my destiny, the road that God has called me to follow. And, when I am trying to change my direction, when needed, the community helps me to stick to it. I guess it is why AA and other 12-Step programs are so successful; the sponsor and the group helps the person see their blind spots, where they are getting off track, and then support them as they start changing their lives. Of course this keeping on the right track is what brings about true freedom; not freedom to do what one wants but the freedom to become the person that God has created us to be, to become united with God the supreme happiness. We are made for community.

Is it Possible to Live This Way? Vol. 1 Faith

Last time we discussed how Msgr. Giussani defines “freedom” as one’s relationship with the Infinite, with the Other.  Like any relationship, there must be movement, a dynamism, in the relationship or it will die.  So how does freedom move?  What is the dynamism in freedom?

We really just need to look in the mirror, and at the people around us, to recognize that if it was left up to us, there would be no movement in the relationship that is freedom.  We too easily fall into the routine, and being that we are very much limited/finite, we cannot make the first step towards the Infinite/God.  All is grace.  In other words, all is a gift from God.  God, the Infinite, reaches for us; He solicits us to enter into a relationship with Him.  God calls and invites us to participate in freedom.

Not many people receive this call in the extraordinary manner that the prophets were called, so how does God stimulate us to move into the relationship of freedom.  We always need to start from our own experiences.  God works through His creatures.  While it certainly can be through the beauty of nature or of music or some other art (all things are a sign of God), the most common way in which God becomes present within our hearts is through other people.  Working through others, who have already entered in a conscious way into the relationship that is freedom, God makes Himself present in our lives, and our hearts thirst for this freedom.

Msgr. Giussani, and now Fr. Julian Carron (the current head of the Fraternity of Communion and Liberation, now that Msgr. Giussani has died), says over and over that it is important to go back to our original encounter which awaked this thirst in us, to recall it, so that the impression becomes deeply impressed in us.  That is why I frequently talk about that encounter I had with Luca and Daniel in the coffee shop in Princeton, when I first encountered the Movement of Communion and Liberation.  It was the joy of life that I experienced in those two men, a joy that I recognized as being greater than just the men in front of me, stirred a desire in me.  I wanted that joy.  I wanted that life.  I recognized in them what my heart was truly yearning for.  Not that they would be what would make me ultimately happy, but rather I recognized that they were on the road to what would bring me to that ultimate happiness/beatitude.  There are different paths, within the Body of the Church, leading to the Infinite, and He calls people to different paths.  Just as I knew that God had called me to be a priest, I knew that God was calling me to be a priest who follows the Movement of Communion and Liberation.  At that time, I still had little to no idea what all this talk of “method” meant (and I only know it a little bit better now), but I knew that I must follow.  The dynamic of my freedom had been engaged.

There is a prerequisite, if you will, for this to happen.  We must be attentive.  We must be free of preconceptions, and face things and feel the pure and original reminder of them.  “I give praise to you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for although you have hidden these things from the wise and the learned you have revealed them to the childlike” (Matt. 11:25).  “The simple are those who call a spade a spade, who tell it like it is” (IPLW-Faith, p. 68).

This has really given me a new perspective, and appreciation, of my first 18 months of priesthood.  Six months after my ordination I was diagnosed with cancer.  While it was a very treatable form of cancer (thyroid), it did wipe me out, physically for close to the next 6 months.  Just as I was getting my stamina back, and my doctors said that all my “numbers” were where they wanted them, my father was diagnosed with terminal cancer.  I got transferred to a parish closer to my parents, so that I could help my mother care for my father, and 11 days after I arrived at my new assignment my father died, right before Christmas.  It was a month after my father’s death that I met Luca and Daniel.  At that time I felt broken, that it had all been too much all at once, and I could not catch my breath emotionally and spiritually.  Now I see that God was helping me to strip away my preconceptions — of what priesthood, especially the first year (I remember saying to myself that I felt “robbed” of my honeymoon period as a new priest), was suppose to be like, of what my life was going to be now that I had given myself to God.  He was preparing the soil of my soul so that when I encountered Luca and Daniel, I would have the simplicity of heart to recognize the Infinite Presence which is the true desire of my heart.

Holding on to preconceptions leads only to falsehood, and falsehood is the opposite of freedom.

Now there is one other aspect of the movement of freedom that Msgr. Giussani discusses in this section.  Since I was not able to reproduce in this blog the figure he has (on p. 64), you will need to be patient with this description.  Imagine a large “V”; at the bottom of the “V” is an “X” — that is us.  At the top of the opening of the “V” is a infinity symbol (∞) which is our destiny, union with God, and there is an arrow from X to ∞ representing our relationship with God, the movement of freedom.  Until we are united with God, our freedom is imperfect because our heart is not totally happy/satisfied.  Now, within the “V” between X and ∞ there are a lot of other letters, representing our experiences with creation in our lives.  Because these other letters are closer to us than ∞, they often have more emotional attractiveness, and they can cause us to veer off our path towards our destiny.  This is the concept of sin.  “In the dynamic of freedom the possibility of sin — which is choosing, in the face of a creature, what is immediately more satisfying, instead of using the creature to extend further towards the destiny we’re made for — is implicit” (IPLW-Faith, p. 69).  Sin, from the Greek, literally means “to come up short, or to miss the mark.”  Sin is coming up short on our journey and taking another road.  St. Paul says, “everything created by God is good” (1 Tim. 4:4), because all created things calls us back to the Creator.  However, the more immediate (though far imperfect and finite) beauty of a created thing might attract us more, but we will never find fulfillment in them, and without that fulfillment there will be no lasting happiness, no freedom.  In exercising our freedom of choice we must choose to follow that which will bring us to our destiny, even if it might not seem to be the most attractive option at the moment.  “Freedom will be complete, full, when it’s in front of the object that totally satisfies it.  Then it will be totally free, total freedom” (IPLW-Faith, pp. 71-72).

Jesus Heals the Blind Man

[First, I know it has been nearly a month since I posted a homily.  That's because it has been a month since I have preached.  First I was sick a weekend, then it was the weekend for our deacons to preach, then the pastor preached at all the Masses to kick off our capital campaign, and last weekend we started our parish mission, so that priest preached at all the Masses.  Second, I know we are in Year B, however I have the Mass this weekend in which we are doing the 2nd Scrutiny, so we use the readings for Year A.  Same thing next weekend.]

“In our sickness we need a savior, in our wanderings a guide, in our blindness someone to show us the light, in our thirst the fountain of living water which quenches for ever the thirst of those who drink from it.  We dead people need life, we sheep need a shepherd, we children need a teacher, the whole world needs Jesus!” (St. Clement of Alexandria, The Teacher 9, 83).

Isn’t that beautiful?  I cannot take credit for it, it is by St. Clement of Alexandria.  I ran across it this week as I was preparing my homily, and I just wanted to share it with you.  “The whole world needs Jesus!”  Isn’t that the truth.  But why do we need Jesus?

We get some indication of why we need Jesus in the discussion between Him and His disciples at the beginning of today’s Gospel reading, when the disciples ask Jesus why the man was born blind.  The disciples, like most of the people of that time, thought that physical disabilities were the results of punishment for sins.  What the disciples could not understand was whose sin caused the man to be born blind; his own, but how could he have sinned before he was born?  Or was it due to his parents’ sin.  Jesus corrects the disciples’ understanding by saying that the man’s blindness is not the punishment for some sin.  Even after all the time they have spent with Jesus, living with Him day in and day out, the disciples still have not allowed it to sink in that our Heavenly Father loves us.  He loves us as His own children.

However, that does not mean that sin has nothing to do with blindness, but it is more of a spiritual blindness that results from our sin, and not a physical blindness as a punishment for our sin.  Sin is the choosing not to follow God’s will in our lives.  In a sense it is a self chosen blindness to God’s presence in our lives, so as to follow our own will.  We think that our vision is better that God’s vision.  Of course we are wrong.  Our vision is dim because our sight is finite.  God’s vision sees all, not just the immediate and surface, because He is infinite.  This is why St. Paul says to the Ephesians in today’s second reading that we “were once darkness….”  We kept looking for happiness in all the wrong places, thinking that we ourselves or other people or material things could bring us happiness, the satisfaction of our deepest desires.  Those are the “fruitless works of darkness” that St. Paul speaks about.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus makes clay and smears it on the eyes of the blind man.  Why?  Surely Jesus could have healed him with just a word.  The clay is meant to remind us of how the Book of Genesis describes God as creating us out of clay and breathing the breath of life in us.  By smearing the clay on the blind man’s eyes, Jesus is pointing out that we need to be re-created.  And how are we re-created?  Jesus tells the blind man to wash in the Pool of Siloam.  This washing is a sign of baptism.  In our baptism we are re-created as the children of God, the stain of sin which blinds us is wiped from us so that we can “live as children of light.”

Today we celebrate with our candidates the Second Scrutiny.  These scrutinies are minor exorcisms, helping our candidates become free from the gripes of evil and darkness as they draw closer to Christ Jesus, the Light of the World.  At the Easter Vigil, they will be re-created through baptism, being made children of the light.  We must pray earnestly for them as they draw near to Easter.

Notice something else in the Gospel reading.  After the blind man washed in the Pool of Siloam, and his sight was restored to him, he still had not seen Jesus.  When people ask him how his sight was restored to him, he says that it was Jesus, but that he does not know where he is.  Then in the midst of trial, the former blind man stands fast in his witness to Jesus being someone sent by God.  For this witness, he is thrown out of the Temple.  It is only then that he sees Jesus.  Jesus comes up to him and asks him if he believes in the Son of Man, that Jesus is the Son of Man, and the man says yes and worships Jesus.  It is one of the rare times in the gospels where Jesus allows Himself to be worshipped.

Baptism is just the beginning of the journey.  All of our lives we are called to recognize the presence of Jesus in our lives.  We are called to reject the temptation to view the hardships in our lives as punishments from God, but rather to see them as being “so that the works of God might be made visible” through us.  As disciples of Christ Jesus we are called to be witnesses of His Love and sovereignty over all of creation.  This witness is likely to lead to rejection and persecution, yet if we persevere to the end, God will reward us with eternal life.  We are called to allow God to lead us.

“We dead people need life, we sheep need a shepherd, we children need a teacher, the whole world needs Jesus!” (St. Clement of Alexandria, The Teacher 9, 83).

Is it Possible to Live This Way? Vol. 1 Faith

Msgr. Giussani mentions that ‘freedom’ is a word that we use all the time, though most people really do not know how to define what freedom is. To most, freedom is just “doing whatever you want,” and as Msgr. Giussani notes, there is some truth to that, yet the way that most people use the term is very superficial. Why? Because they often equate what they “want” with what they “feel.” As I discussed in a previous posting, while emotions are important, and are part of who we are, they are NOT who we are. We are much more than just our emotions. In fact, our emotions are part of what St. Thomas Aquinas would call the sensitive part of our soul, that pertaining to our senses and is common with the animals. However, what makes us unique, distinct from the animals, is that we have the spiritual powers of the Intellect, Memory, and Will.

So, how do we come to understand what freedom is? As with everything, we need to begin with our own experience. What makes us feel free? What makes us not feel free? Simply, we feel free when a desire is satisfied. So freedom is equated with satisfaction, and in philosophy (particularly in the writing of St. Thomas Aquinas), another word for satisfaction is perfection. When something, some desire is perfected/satisfied we are free.

Do we ever experience perfection in our lives, in the sense of being completely satisfied? I would wage to say that we would all say “no”. Our satisfaction, our perfection, is never total. Once one desire is satisfied, we desire something else. We can look first at the most fundamental human needs. I experience hunger, the desire for food, so I eat a sandwich and for a while I am satisfied, but I will feel hungry again. Today I got a satellite radio, not that I thought that I needed it, but I desired it. Has it made me completely, perfectly happy? No! It seems as if our desire is infinite; which can be troublesome for us since we are very finite.

Msgr. Giussani was a great fan of Dante, and he used this quote from Dante’s Purgatorio, “Everyone vaguely pictures in his mind/ A good the heart may rest on, and is driven/ By his desire to seek it and to find” (Dante Alighier, Purgatorio, XVII). What makes most peoples’ idea of freedom superficial is that they have a superficial “good the heart may rest on.” Sex, drugs, money, reputation, a big house, a fast car, etc… on none of these things will the heart truly rest upon. So what is a good that the heart may rest on that will lead us to authentic freedom? St. Augustine gives us the answer in his Confessions, where he says to God, “Our heart is restless until it rests in You.” Only God, who is infinite can satisfy, can perfect, our infinite desire.

On page 64 of the book, Msgr. Giussani provides one of his famous diagrams, to demonstrate his understanding of freedom. It is too much for me to try to re-create in this blog, but the key is that freedom is our relationship with the Infinite Mystery; our relationship with God. We must start with our experience, which is always in the present. That is why God came into human history, when the Word became Flesh and dwelt among us. This is why Christ established the Church as His Mystical Body so that His presence extends through time and space. This is why we have the Eucharist, His Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity. We can always enter into a relationship with the Infinite, the transcendent Mystery; the Other. We exercise our freedom when we follow this Presence in our lives, ever drawing closer to the Mystery, the infinite that can perfect us. Freedom is becoming who we have been created to be.

Is it Possible to Live This Way? Vol. 1 Faith

With this section we begin the second chapter of the book Is is Possible to Live This Way? An Unusual Approach to Christian Experience, Vol. 1: Faith.  This chapter is called “Freedom” and will explore Msgr. Giussani’s understanding of what human freedom is really all about, and how faith — properly understood — is necessary for freedom.  He begins the chapter with a quick review of what he calls the Five Passages of Faith.  Since I have not been the best at making these posts in a timely fashion, as I had hoped, it would probably be best if I reviewed these Passages as well.

First, Faith is a fact, it is a fact that takes the form of an event, and this event has the form of an encounter.  It is an encounter with another person that gives you something of a shock that causes you to discover something new.  Personally, this is the most exciting insight for me.  Being that I spent half my life as a student and academic, I often fell into the trap of thinking that I could reason my way to the truth.  Rather the truth is something that must be discovered in a determined moment.  We are “surprised by truth.”  Why?  Because ultimately Truth is a Person, Jesus Christ, and discovering truth is a gift that we receive from God.  It happens in our encounter with Jesus.

Looking back, I am amazed that I am involved in the Movement of Communion and Liberation.  When I first met Luca and Daniel, the first two people in the Movement I met, while I enjoyed their company and our time together, I really did not “understand” what Communion and Liberation was about.  There was a lot of talk of “method” but I did not understand what they meant by that.  Yet in my encounter with those two people, I recognized that truth was there and I wanted to follow it.

This leads to the second Passage of Faith.  This encounter is exceptional.  In a sense, we have many encounters everyday.  We say hello to many different people.  But those “meetings” with others are usually very ordinary.  The encounter that leads to Faith is exceptional.  What makes something exceptional?  When it corresponds to the deepest longs/desires of our heart.  As I mentioned above, when I first met Luca and Daniel, I did not really understand (with my intellect) what they were talking about, but I knew that I had these very strong desires, the desire for God, and I recognized that they were talking about that, and journeying towards God, and I knew I wanted to go with them.  Go back to the example that Msgr. Giussani refers to over and over again, the encounter that Andrew and John had with Jesus, as described in the first couple of chapters of John’s Gospel.  Andrew and John were devout Jews.  They prayed and reflected deeply on the Scriptures.  They knew and embraced their deep desires for the Divine.  It is what first drew them to the preaching of John the Baptist, and when they heard him say about Jesus, “Behold the Lamb of God,” they knew that they had to follow Jesus.  At the end of that first day with Jesus, when they responded to His invitation to “come and see,” they didn’t really understand what He was talking about.  They did not know that He was God in the Flesh.  However, they recognized that His words spoke to their heart, to their ultimate desires, so they knew they had to follow Him.

This exceptionality of the encounter creates wonder, the third Passage of Faith.  Wonder is an excitation of not just the emotions, or even the intellect, but an excitation of the soul, of our spirit.  This excitation, this wonder leads to the forth Passage of Faith, the secret question.  Who is this man?  Is it possible to live this way?  How can this happen?

The fifth and final Passage of Faith points to us.  It is where it becomes our responsibility to act.  Up to this point it has all been grace, but now we need to decide to act.  Will we bow our heads and follow, or will we turn away?  It requires a fully human act, since the exceptionality of the encounter touches the core of our heart, our being.  This is where our freedom comes in.  Andrew and John did not understand fully with their intellects what Jesus was saying to them, but they recognized the correspondence between what He was saying and the desires of their hearts.  In their freedom they chose to follow Jesus.  In my encounter with Luca and Daniel, I did not understand all that they were talking about, but I recognized the correspondence with what my heart was searching for, and so I literally, after about a month passed, decided that I needed to continue my companionship with them so I called and set up another time to get together with them, which lead to a commitment to do “School of Community” (which I had no idea what that was) together each week.

It might seem that after such an exceptional encounter that we really do not have the freedom not to follow, but we only need to look at the Gospel for evidence to the contrary.  In the 6th chapter of St. John’s Gospel, after Jesus gives the beautiful “Bread of Life discourse” when He says that He will give us His flesh to eat and His blood to drink, it says that many of those who followed Him followed Him no more (John 6:66; incidentally, the only passage in the New Testament where the chapter and verse numbers are 666).  Of course there were also those, who like St. Peter, responded to Jesus’ question of whether they would also leave Him, with “Lord, where would we go?  You alone have the words of eternal life.”  Or after Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, while many were astonished and praised God, others ran off to plot His death.  Clearly, our human freedom is being exercised, and to the full, when we have such an exceptional encounter.

How could people walk away from an exceptional encounter?  It is unreasonable to not follow that which corresponds to the deepest desires of our heart, so how is it that some people in their freedom do just that?  It is because of their preconceptions.  They have become so attached to a particular position, belief, feeling, whatever, that they refuse to see the evidence, and no longer see the truth.  Louis Pasteur faced this when he talked about microbes as the cause of many diseases.  It was his fellow scientists who rejected him and even tried to have him committed to an insane asylum (who could believe in something they could not see?).  For them to accept Dr. Pasteur’s theory would cause them to toss out much of what they believed.  (I can’t help to think that something like this might be happening with Intelligent Design’s challenge to Darwinian evolution.  While clearly there is evidence of an evolutionary process, Darwin’s followers are seeking to make God’s work in creation irrelevant, or just to deny God — a journey that Darwin himself made, from being a believer to becoming an agnostic, to finally rejecting the idea of God completely.  Intelligent Design, while acknowledging the evolutionary process in many things, points to examples of “irreducible complexity” which cannot be explained by random evolutionary processes, and indicating an Intelligence acting.  It is not Creationism.)

Lent is a time to look at what preconceptions we have in our lives that keep us from searching for the Truth.  These are the real scandals in our lives.  By becoming aware of our preconceptions we can in freedom decide to let go of them, and this frees us to pursue the truth.

Is it Possible to Live This Way? Vol. 1 Faith

There is a basic format to gestures of Communion and Liberation. Whether it is the weekly “School of Community” or a retreat of a day or a weekend, there is a basic structure or format. First there is the lesson. In School of Community, like this “virtual School of Community”, the lesson is the reading from the book that is being covered; at a retreat it would be the conference given by who ever is leading the retreat. Then, after a period of quiet time for reflecting on what was said during the lesson, there is the Assembly. This is basically a time to ask questions about the lesson, and to give a witness to how what was said in the lesson helped you make a judgment about your life. Msgr. Guissani had a basic rule about questions during the assembly; “don’t ask question if they don’t refer to things that are felt, if they don’t openly express feelings that are experienced” (IPLW-Faith, p. 42). This helps keep you from becoming abstract about the material; the whole point is that Jesus is present NOW, HERE in our lives. Needless to say, an assembly can cover a wide range of issues. I am not even going to try to summarize all the issues discussed in this assembly, but rather only those that spoke to my heart.

Maybe it is because I am a psychologist by training, who tends to lean towards the more cognitive schools of psychology, but I feel that one of the biggest problems with too many people today is that they are too emotional. They are emotivists, placing their emotions as the most important think in their lives and the standard by which they evaluate everything. In my humble opinion, this leads to irrationality. The emotions are really just another part of our senses. While they are important, as are all the senses, for as St. Thomas says the senses enlightens the intellect, they are also what we have most in common with the animals. What makes us something other than mere beasts of another sort, is our intellect and will. We can make judgments about our senses, including our emotions.

When I first encountered Communion and Liberation one concern I had was there was a lot of talk about emotions; what do you feel? There is a discussion in this Assembly that gave me the best understanding and assurance that Giussani was not prone to devolving into emotivism. He defines emotion as “the psychological reaction in front of something you encounter” (IPLW-Faith, p. 44). Giussani says that in order to experience the exceptionality of an encounter more has to happen, namely the judgment of the mind. A judgment is a comparison between our heart’s criteria and the reality that you happen upon. The heart’s criteria are our existential need/desire for happiness, truth, goodness, beauty.

Msgr. Giussani acknowledges that for many people today, there is an impulsive, quick “yes” to experiences as corresponding to what they think their hearts desire. This leads to addictions. Basically emotions have become the same as a judgment, and as Giussani says, this only leads to our ruin. He affirmed my own belief about emotivism when he says that making emotion the same as judgment is the predominance of the beast, the animal. Emotion is a reaction; it needs to be judged.

I am sure that we have all have had the experience of falling in love. Yes, even as a priest, I have had the experience of falling in love. Falling in love is a very powerful emotion. In and of itself it is not good or bad. What do we do with such a feeling, such an emotion? If I allowed the emotion to become the same as a judgment, I am afraid I would have ruined my priestly vocation sometime ago. When I was in practice as a psychologist, more than once I had clients who made a huge mess of their lives because they fell in love, made that emotion the same as their judgment, and ran off to pursue the object of their love at the cost of a spouse and family. I know a few priests who have made the same mistake. The problem is not in the emotion of falling in love. The problem is in the failure to judge that emotion. We need to ask ourselves, “does this emotion correspond to the destiny that God has given me? Does it correspond to my path for happiness?” This means looking at the commitments I have already made in my life, especially if I have taken a long period of time to evaluate them. I mean, I was in the seminary for five years, a deacon for another year, and now a priest for nearly five years. I have spent a lot of time in prayerful reflection to come to recognize that God has called me to be a priest. If I met someone tomorrow and “fell in love with her” it would be rather foolish for me to just dump my priesthood to pursue a romantic relationship with her. It would be impulsive, and irrational. St. John’s Gospel, in the Prologue, describes Jesus as the Logos, and while that is Greek for “Word”, it also means “reason” (hence we get the word “logic” from it). God is Reason; to act irrationally is not following God.

This leads me to the other thing discussed in this assembly which struck me as very important — the idea of companionship. Elsewhere Giussani describes “friendship” as witnesses that point out the presence of Christ in your life. It is very easy to get carried away by our emotions. That is why it is important to have good Christian friends, who are also doing their best to follow the Lord. This companionship, which is the real beginning of Communion and Liberation, reminds us of the Presence of Christ in our lives. Our friends can help keep us grounded when our emotions want to carry us away, and we want to make emotion the same as judgment. The importance of the weekly School of Community is the formation of such holy, spiritual friendships who are are companions on the road. They can challenge our preconceptions, and affirm our judgments (in CL this is often called verification).

Personally, this has been the most important aspect of CL for me. Even now, when I am at a parish where I have not (yet) established a School of Community, I value my association with CL. A priest friend of mine, also involved in the Movement, we have decided to “meet” each week via video-chat (on Skype) to do School of Community. Of course it would be better if we could get together each week in person, but we are over 2 hours away, and neither of us can afford the travel time that it would entail each week. But the hour each week to pray and do School of Community together is something we have told each other is vital for living our priesthood. It also means that I do my best to make the time to go to the CL retreats and spiritual exercises. I cannot always make it, but the companionship is important. It helps me keep my priesthood, my life, grounded in reality.

All of us need that. We need at least one other person with whom we can be completely honest, and who will be completely honest with us. In 12-Step programs they call it your sponsor. It might be your spiritual director, or regular confessor. It might be that friend or two who you know are on the same journey as you are. It is the “Communion” in CL, and it helps us become truly free, truly liberated to become what God has called us to be.