Reading Sinners the Riot Act In the Year of Mercy

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Rembrandt: Moses Breaks the Tablets of the Law

We want to live this Jubilee Year in light of the Lord’s words: Merciful like the Father.     Pope Francis, Misericordiae Vultus, par. 13

Maybe what the Catholic faithful need to hear isn't more platitudes about mercy but rather, a call to repentance, atonement for sin, and obedience? Maybe we need a stern warning to clean up our acts or face the consequences?...They do not need to be reminded how merciful God is - they are already taking him for a fool - an indulgent father who never imposes any consequences.  That's precisely the problem…we need to be read the riot act, not to be patted on the head.

From a reader’s comment on my blog: Why Mercy Makes Us Uncomfortable  

Believe me. I get it. There a few people in my own life to whom I’d like to read the riot act right now. And frankly, had I not tried that trick in the past and watched it go over like a dirty bomb, I might be less inclined to hold myself back.

Besides that, it’s the Year of Mercy. Not the Year of Reprimands. Not the Year of Dressing People Down. Not the Year of Slapping Others Over the Head to Tell Them What Screw-ups They Are. Tempting as those might be, it’s the Year of Mercy.   We are called, as we’ve been hearing at the close of every Mass, to “be merciful as the Father is merciful.”

Which begs the question: What does the Father’s mercy look like?

We get a glimpse of that reality in Pope Benedict XVI’s Deus Caritas Est (God Is Love), as well as in Pope Francis’ Misericordiae Vultus (The Face of Mercy), which seems to contain a very intentional echo of Benedict on the themes of love, justice and mercy. Just take a look. (While I offer a lengthy quote from each document, please treat yourself to reading both in their entirety.)

Pope Benedict XVI, Deus Caritas Est, par. 10, 12:

Israel has committed “adultery” and has broken the covenant; God should judge and repudiate her. It is precisely at this point that God is revealed to be God and not man: “How can I give you up, O Ephraim! How can I hand you over, O Israel!...my heart recoils within me, my compassion grows warm and tender. I will not execute my fierce anger, I will not again destroy Ephraim; for I am God and not man, the Holy One in your midst” (Hos 11:8-9). God’s passionate love for his people—for humanity—is at the same time a forgiving love. It is so great that it turns God against himself, his love against his justice. Here Christians can see a dim prefigurement of the mystery of the Cross: so great is God’s love for man that by becoming man he follows him even into death, and so reconciles justice with love…(Jesus’) death on the Cross is the culmination of God turning against himself in which he gives himself in order to raise man up and save him. This is love in its most radical form.”

Pope Francis, Misericordiae Vultus, par. 21:

The experience of the prophet Hosea can help us see the way in which mercy surpasses justice. The era in which the prophet lived was one of the most dramatic in the history of the Jewish people. The kingdom was tottering on the edge of destruction; the people had not remained faithful to the covenant; they had wandered from God and lost the faith of their forefathers. According to human logic, it seems reasonable for God to think of rejecting an unfaithful people; they had not observed their pact with God and therefore deserved just punishment: in other words, exile. The prophet’s words attest to this: “They shall not return to the land of Egypt, and Assyria shall be their king, because they have refused to return to me” (Hos 11:5). And yet, after this invocation of justice, the prophet radically changes his speech and reveals the true face of God: “How can I give you up, O Ephraim! How can I hand you over, O Israel!...My heart recoils within me, my compassion grows warm and tender. I will not execute my fierce anger, I will not again destroy Ephraim; for I am God and not man, the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come to destroy” (Hos 11:8-9)….God does not deny justice. He rather envelopes it and surpasses it with an even greater event in which we experience love as the foundation of true justice…God’s justice is his mercy given to everyone as a grace that flows from the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Thus the Cross of Christ is God’s judgement on all of us and on the whole world, because through it he offers us the certitude of love and new life.

Do you hear what our popes are saying? God has already exacted his justice upon mankind, and it came in the form of the God-man dying on the Cross out of love for every one of us. The crucifixion of the innocent Lamb of God is God’s verdict against sinful mankind; God himself has already paid the price for sin. God’s infinite mercy is thus offered in love, given as gift and received through faith in Christ. This teaching is called the Good News.

So instead of reading people the riot act, why don’t we follow the lead of our popes and tell them that God loves them passionately and personally, and that he longs for his wild, gratuitous love to fulfill their deepest desires and completely transform their lives. All they need do is surrender. Now that a truth worth rioting—and dying for.

Giving What Is Holy To Dogs

By kallerna; Edited by jjron; via Wikimedia Commons

The Spouse of Christ must pattern her behaviour after the Son of God who went out to everyone without exception.              Pope Francis, Misericordiae Vultus, par. 12

Sitting in our gloriously sunny, tranquil parish adoration chapel, I had just finished underlining a very beautiful section of Deus Caritas Est (God Is Love) by Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI:

Seeing with the eyes of Christ, I can give to others much more than their own outward necessities; I can give them the look of love which they crave. Here we see the necessary interplay between love of God and love of neighbor which the First Letter of John speaks of with such insistence. If I have no contact whatsoever with God in my life, then I cannot see in the other anything more than the other, and I am incapable of seeing in him the image of God…Only my readiness to encounter my neighbor and to show him love makes me sensitive to God as well.

I was reading the Encyclical as a personal penance for my habitual sin of judging others, which I had confessed to a priest only four days earlier.  Before I knew it, my pernicious habit took over and I began thinking about a particular political candidate whom I consider to be perfectly godless. He clearly has no contact with God, I thought, reflecting on the words of the Encyclical. “That’s pretty obvious by the way he assumes that all immigrants are enemies with malicious intentions, instead of seeing them as God’s children who are genuinely in need of mercy. Jesus, teach me to love my neighbor,” I prayed, “and to see you in those in need.”

While I pondered these thoughts a man knocked on the chapel door, indicating that he was not a regular since he didn’t know the code to let himself in. Leaning over in my chair to open the glass door, my eyes met those of a disheveled, tattooed twenty-something looking person with long, dirty hair. He came in and took a seat in the leather chair across the aisle from mine, then began to stare into space looking quite disturbed. My first instinct was to thank God that there was another woman in the chapel with me, because the man was suspicious looking, at best. I then began to wonder if he was a drug addict in need of money, and thanked God that my purse was locked in my car. After about ten minutes of his aimless staring, I started to feel frightened, as I sensed he was up to something sinister. Just then, he stood up to leave.

“Can you open the door for me again when I come back?” the stranger asked. “I forgot something in my car.”

“Sure,” I smiled stiffly, thinking: Oh, dear God, what could he be going to get from his car? My heart began to race as my mind ran off on a tangent, and within 60 seconds of the stranger’s departure I had concluded that he was going to get a gun from his vehicle, and I was facing imminent death as a martyr right in front of the Blessed Sacrament.

“Excuse me,” I impulsively whispered to the woman seated in front of the chapel, who was completely oblivious to the stranger until now. “I think the man who just came in is unstable, and he went to get something from his car. I’m scared of what he’s going to do. Do you think we should call for help?” I asked, motioning to the phone on the wall.

Before she had a chance to answer, the stranger knocked on the door again, and I squinted through the glass to see if he was carrying a weapon. Seeing nothing, I bent over again to let him in, this time quite haltingly.

“I forgot this in my car,” he said as he reached into his pocket. I held my breath. Out came an empty holy water bottle, which he simply wanted to fill. “My dog is dying and I figured I’d try blessing him as a last resort,” he smiled, suddenly looking innocent as a lamb.

I pulled the drawer next to me open to retrieve the holy water bottle, then watched shame-faced as he filled his little container with the blessed sacramental.

“Take the wooden beam out of my eye, Lord,” I prayed after the poor man left, embarrassed over my judgment of both him and the political candidate.

I had definitely gotten the point. And I could almost hear God giggling in the silence.

Note: This article was previously published on Aleteia.

Why Mercy Makes Us Uncomfortable

Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain

In his second Encyclical, Dives in Misericordia…Saint John Paul II highlighted the fact that we had forgotten the theme of mercy in today’s cultural milieu: “The present day mentality, more perhaps than that of people in the past, seems opposed to a God of mercy, and in fact tends to exclude from life and to remove from the human heart the very idea of mercy. The word and the concept of ‘mercy’ seem to cause uneasiness in man, who, thanks to the enormous development of science and technology, never before known in history, has become the master of the earth and has subdued and dominated it.”

Pope Francis, Misericordiae Vultus, para. 11

Something very strange happened on Tuesday. Thousands of people in Louisiana, including my sixteen-year-old son, Benjamin, and myself, were sequestered to closets and bathrooms under the immediate threat of a tornado in our area. Hurricanes we’re used to. Tornadoes no.

I sat on the ground in our small powder room with Benjamin’s lacrosse helmet on my head, clutching my rosary and praying for God’s mercy for all in the storm’s path. Our phone alarms had sounded moments earlier alerting us to an imminent threat in our vicinity, and multiple texts had arrived from family members telling us to take cover as they watched minute-by-minute news coverage of a twister aiming right at us.

From the bathroom floor, I pulled up the news on my laptop so I could see how close the tornado was to us. Suddenly, it occurred to me how unnervingly strange it is that the technology exists to give us a blow-by-blow report on a tornado that might be headed directly for our neighborhood—but that nothing could actually be done to protect us from its wrath. It reminded me that a direct confrontation with the power of nature serves up a sobering wake up call of just how vulnerable we human beings really are, as many of us have learned in recent years in the face of natural disasters.

Interestingly, I had been chewing on Pope Francis’ abovementioned quote by Saint John Paul II all day, trying to figure out why and how mercy makes us uneasy. But the answer didn’t hit me until I was huddled in the bathroom praying for mercy!

Mercy makes us uncomfortable because it necessitates the admission of our powerlessness, and the acknowledgement that we are not, in fact, God. Mercy crashes our illusions that we are masters of the earth because of our technological prowess, calling us to confront the reality that we are not in control. Mercy demands that we have the humility to concede that we are creatures who are utterly dependent on God—creatures that would cease to exist if he turned his omnipotent glance away from us for one millisecond.

To seek the mercy of God is to experience what Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI) referred to as a personal “Copernican revolution,” wherein we come to see that we are not the center of the universe, and that God is. As such, we must begin “to accept quite seriously that we are one of many among God’s creatures, all of which turn around God as their center.” (Joseph Ratzinger, What It Means to Be a Christian, 70-71)

Looking at the world around us, it is apparent that we don’t like to admit our own poverty and frailty, nor do we tolerate well the poverty and frailty of others. Asking for and extending mercy requires that we do both: recognize our human fragility and our profound need for help, while “return(ing) to the basics…to bear the weaknesses and struggles of our brothers and sisters.” (Pope Francis, Misericordiae Vultus, para. 10)

 Frankly, we’d rather not. And it shows in the way we live, the values we embrace and the leaders we elect. Which is precisely why Pope Francis, following the lead of St. John Paul II, unceasingly pushes for what he insists is an “urgent” need for the proclamation and witness of mercy in the world.

Note: This article was previously published on Aleteia.

Being Pro-Life In A Pro-Choice Political Dynasty

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The whole clan (almost) at Grandma's.

We must admit that the practice of mercy is waning in the wider culture. In some cases the word seems to have dropped out of use. However, without a witness to mercy, life becomes fruitless and sterile, as if sequestered to a barren desert. Pope Francis, Misericordiae Vultus, para. 10

The poignant, personal statement by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg about the death of Antonin Scalia, and the ensuing details of their warm friendship, has brought to mind the close relationship I enjoy with my some of my own family members who serve in the political arena—loved ones with whom I have deep differences over the issue of abortion.

My teeth were cut on the campaign trail, as I grew up in a highly political family of Louisiana Democrats, wherein one or more of my immediate relatives have held public office almost continuously since I was born in 1960. Memories of my childhood are replete with door-to-door canvassing, rallies and working long hours alongside my siblings and cousins in various campaign headquarters in New Orleans. There we answered phones, ran endless copies of flyers on Xerox machines and addressed, stamped, and sealed envelopes until our fingers were raw. At rallies, we handed out yard signs and bumper stickers, blew up hundreds of colored balloons with helium and sang homespun songs for our candidates. Politics, and its inherent idealism of making the world a better place, was at the center of our lives.

Our boisterous Catholic clan was extremely family oriented, with two lone brothers spawning nineteen children in less than a dozen years—my parents’ 10 and Uncle Moon and Aunt Verna’s nine. (We won the race because we got a set of twins:)  Sundays included shared lunches at Grandma’s house after church, where we lingered to play jacks, card games and jump rope over the dueling smells of Paw Paw’s sweet pipe and Uncle Moon’s strong cigar. I adore the smell of pipes and cigars to this day, as both instantly transport me back to memories of family gatherings over Grandma’s rump roast and gravy.

Summers brought us all together at the rustic camp that Grandma bought on Lake Pontchartrain in 1963, where swimming, fishing, boating, skiing and crabbing kept us, and many of our friends, entertained from dawn until dark in the scorching Southern heat. The pinnacle of summer was our Fourth of July celebration, when we raised the family flag that rested on Paw Paw’s coffin when he died in 1967, then recited the Pledge of Allegiance and read aloud the Preamble of the U.S. Constitution. Uncle Moon’s short speech about appreciating the gifts of freedom and democracy that we enjoy in our great nation preceded the singing of “America the Beautiful.” We were proud to be Americans and Landrieus.

Sadly, the winds of change crept in during those precious years, bringing with them drugs, rebellion, a confused post-Vatican II church, contraception, radical feminism, and the new law of the land, abortion on demand. I was swept up into much of the Cultural Revolution, but somehow, by God’s grace, I always knew with certainty that abortion was wrong. Whether it was the Natural Law or the sensus fidei at work, no one ever had to tell me that killing an unborn child in its mother’s womb was a grievous offense. Furthermore, no one had to convince me that a pregnant woman was carrying an actual child, given the fact that I had nine siblings and numerous cousins, with almost half of them younger than I.

Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973, the year I became a teenager.   I didn’t think much about the issue of abortion until senior year in high school, when a close friend of mine became pregnant and had an abortion. Suddenly, what had previously been clearly wrong was now a “necessary choice.” Freedom became associated with the ability to choose for oneself, and even the ability to define reality according to one’s own perceptions. Thus began the slippery slope that slid our nation headlong into 60,000,000 aborted babies, with some of my family members ultimately leading the national charge for abortion rights by way of their political power.

I’ve prayed, fasted, and grieved hard about my family’s pro-choice stance over the years—the very issue that eventually pushed me into the Republican Party by default. When possible, I’ve tried to persuade those I love to see the light. Some conversations have gone well, others not so much.

I imagine that Justice Scalia must have felt real grief over what he saw unfold before his eyes during his long tenure on the Supreme Court—not only because he was a jurist who believed that the Constitution nowhere permitted a woman the right to abort her child, but also because he was a devout Catholic who firmly believed in the sanctity of human life. Even so, he worked side by side and apparently enjoyed intimate friendship with people who assumed a completely different stance than he did on abortion (as well as on marriage and other moral issues). I was genuinely surprised to learn this fact about him but am heartened by his example, especially during this Year of Mercy when Pope Francis is challenging us to re-think the way we go about relationships, especially at a time in history where mercilessness and rancor seem to rule the day.

There is a time and a place to stand strong for what we believe, particularly when standing firm for what is right and true affects the direction our future takes, both individually and corporately. But there is also a time and a place to put painful, divisive things aside for the sake of strengthening relationships, for the sake of growing in understanding of one another, for the sake of cultivating friendship.

Humility and charity demand that we don’t have to engage the fight every chance we get, don’t have to win every argument or prove we are right all of the time (or even most of the time for that matter). In fact, sometimes we win more through listening, through kindness, through love. That’s one thing that Nino Scalia’s towering legacy is saying to me, and I am taking note.

This article was previously published on Aleteia.

Pope Francis' Mercifying Madness

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With our eyes fixed on Jesus and his merciful gaze, we experience the love of the Most Holy Trinity. Pope Francis, Miseracordiae Vultus, par. 8

 This pope just won’t stop talking about mercy. He’s even come up with a word I’ve never heard before: mercifying. “What in the world does that mean?” I asked when I saw the word in his new book. For while his namesake, St. Francis, was charged by God to “rebuild my Church,” it seems Pope Francis has been given the mandate of “mercifying” the Church.

In Pope Francis’ first book, The Name of God Is Mercy, he talks at length about mercy with veteran Vatican reporter Andrea Tornielli. Francis clarifies the meaning of the Latin expression he chose for his episcopal motto, miserando atque eligendo, which he explains as meaning “mercifying and choosing.” (Translated elsewhere as “mercying and choosing.”)

According to the pope, mercifying describes the gaze of Jesus, who looks upon us with love, forgives our sins and chooses us. Mercifying happens when we experience ourselves as being seen by Christ, when we sense his penetrating eyes unveiling ours, and when we come to know that we are loved, embraced and chosen, calling us forth to repentance and new life.

Francis’ description of his own experience of being mercified in the confessional at age 17 prompted me to remember my own encounter with God’s transforming mercy at the age of 23, when my soul morphed from the black alienation of separation from God to being bathed in the light of Christ’s love in one split second.

Agnostic at the time in spite of being raised Catholic, I was carrying on like a complete pagan, indulging myself in anything and everything the world had to offer. After several years of vacuous living, I became aware of my own inner emptiness and began to cry out for God to show me if he was real. That small opening — to which Francis refers as conceding to God “the smallest glimmer of space” — was enough for God to move. In short order, God sent someone to my apartment unexpectedly who invited me to go to church with him that Sunday — the unforgettable day that I was mercified by encountering Jesus Christ.

“The medicine is there, the healing is there,” says the pope, “if we only take a small step toward God … or even desire to take that step” (Pope Francis, The Name of God is Mercy, xviii).

What stands out in my mind as I think back on that life-changing experience is how miraculously, in one instant, I suddenly became utterly convinced that Jesus knew me personally, that he loved me and that he wanted to be in a relationship with me. Like the tax collector, Matthew, to whose calling Pope Francis repeatedly refers (Matt. 9:9), “I knew that I was seen, loved, chosen.”

My angst over my own hollow life — which I was not even able to call “sinful” yet — had led me to the point of questioning. But it was the infinite gaze of Christ’s love that turned me on a dime, that changed my mind about what could make me truly happy, that called me to leave a lost, lonely life behind to follow him. As grace moved, I quickly saw my own wretchedness and the need to amend my life. Necessary repentance came, but it was the look of merciful love that first called me forth from sin’s stupor.

This is the dynamic of encounter that Pope Francis refers to as mercifying, wherein we experience Christ seeing our inmost hearts and are touched by his desire to respond to our deepest need for forgiveness, healing and restoration. The world is flat, desperate for mercifying at such a time as this — the very reason Pope Francis speaks incessantly about it.

I believe it is a time for mercy. The Church is showing her maternal side, her motherly face, to a humanity that is wounded. She does not wait for the wounded to knock on her doors, she looks for them on the streets, she gathers them in, she embraces them, she takes care of them, she makes them feel loved. And so, as I said, and I am ever more convinced of it, this is a kairos, our era is a kairos of mercy, an opportune time.

Pope Francis, The Name of God Is Mercy, 6

This article was first published on Aleteia.

How To Find God in A World Full of Chaos

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To repeat continually “for his mercy endures forever,” as the psalm does, seems to break through the dimensions of space and time, inserting everything into the eternal mystery of love. It is as if to say that not only in history, but for all eternity man will always be under the merciful gaze of the Father. Pope Francis, Misericordiae Vultus, para. 7

“Let us remember that we are in the holy presence of God.” That reminder begins every class and every assembly at St. Paul’s School, the Catholic high school that my 16-year-old son, Benjamin, attends.

We are in the holy presence of God. Do we believe it? Do we live as though it’s true?

As the world seemingly spins out of control, we can wonder: Where is God in all of this? Caught in the vortex of the world’s chaos, we can feel our center slipping. How do we find rest?

To begin with, we must be intentional about how we spend our time, living with a lively awareness of whether what we do with our time facilitates internal peace or chaos in our lives. We can develop chaos-free habits of living, the most important of which is spending time with God daily in prayer (which, ironically, is the thing we often avoid most). Indeed, “wasting” precious time with God in prayer is the most vital thing we can “do” on any given day, even if it’s just for a few minutes. Jesus spent lavish time in prayer regularly—he “often withdrew to lonely places and prayed” (Luke 5:16). If the God-man needed to pray, how much more do we pitiful sinners need to?

Prayer awakens us to the presence of God, who is always with us. Prayer calls us to center ourselves on God, who as St. Augustine said, “is closer to us that we are to ourselves.” Prayer intentionally pushes back the unholy pandemonium in our lives by reordering our hearts and minds to God. Because the chaos in our lives is often a reflection of the chaos in our hearts and heads. In fact, when our insides become a place of mayhem, our outsides generally follow suit.

It seems that the more chaotic we feel inside, the more we experience ourselves as being “scattered.” Jesus said: “Whoever does not gather with me scatters” (Luke 11:23). It is interesting to note that the New Testament term for the dark power, ho diabolos, from which we derive the word “devil,” literally means “the scatterer.”* The “scatterer” specializes in chaos, disorder, division and disintegration—in keeping us dispersed in umpteen ways until we are beside ourselves.

The good news is that God’s promise is to gather us in from “every place where we (are) scattered” (Ezekiel 34:12). He continually invites us to intimacy with Him, to peace, order and integrity. He invites us to slow down, settle down and look up, praying with the psalmist: "I set the Lord ever before me; with him at my right hand I shall not be disturbed. Therefore my heart is glad and my soul rejoices, my body, too, abides in confidence." Psalm 15:8-9

A powerful remedy for chaos is to gather with God, and in so doing, allow him to gather us back from all of the places to which we have been scattered. As problems press in from every side, let us remember Christ’s words to anxious Martha that sitting at his feet is the one thing necessary (Luke 10:42)—one concrete act that can lead to peace, both in ourselves and in the world around us.

"The Lord is near. Be anxious for nothing, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving make your requests known to God. Then the peace of God that surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus." Philippians 4:5-7

*Thanks to Bishop Robert Barron for this insight.

This article was originally published on Aleteia.

Abortion and the Logic of Love

On this day of prayer, fasting and penance, we sadly remember the 56,000,000 babies who have died through abortion since the legalization of abortion in America in 1973.  May God have mercy on us and upon our nation. FullSizeRender

In short, the mercy of God is not an abstract ideal, but a concrete reality with which he reveals his love as that of a father or a mother, moved to the very depths out of the love for their child.                Pope Francis, Miseracordiae Vultus, par. 6.

The only desire I had when I boarded the plane was to power down, enjoy some silence, and read Bishop Robert Barron’s Catholicism: A Journey to the Heart of the Faith, newly downloaded to my i-Phone. It had been a very busy weekend of non-stop talking, which included giving two one-hour presentations at a Marian conference.

But when a 20ish-looking blonde woman sat next to me, something told me to put down the phone and tune into her. “Where are you coming from?” she asked.

“I spoke at a Catholic conference in St. Louis,” I replied. “I’m headed home to New Orleans.”

Introducing herself as Paige, she shared that she was getting married in May, and that she and her Jewish fiancé had recently traveled to Israel for a month-long visit to attend a friend’s bar mitzvah. She disclosed her horror over the routine violence that is part and parcel of life there, especially as Muslim extremists increasingly engage in random stabbings of Jewish people.

“A man was stabbed right by our hotel,” she lamented. “And it didn’t even make the news. It’s incredible!”

We both agreed that the world needs much less hatred and violence, and much more love.

Paige shared that her parents had raised her without faith, even though they’d sent her to Catholic schools her whole life.

The conversation somehow turned to abortion. “I know you’re Catholic,” she said unapologetically, “but I’m totally pro-choice. One of my best friends is an ob-gyn who wants to learn how to do late-term abortions. She feels so badly for people who really want to be parents, really want a baby, then find out that their child has some unsurvivable abnormality. They’re totally stuck, you know, because Louisiana law prevents them from having a late-term abortion.”

“Well,” I offered gingerly, making every effort to use my kindest voice. “It would indeed be a horrible suffering to learn that your baby was going to die within hours of its birth. But what would be even worse is being stuck for the rest of your life with the knowledge that you had caused their death.”

Paige’s eyes grew bigger.

“I know of people who have lived through this,” I continued, sharing the story of presidential candidate Rick Santorum and his wife, Karen.   “They were able to welcome their son, Gabriel, into the world, baptize him, hold him in their arms, and shower him with love for at least a few hours. That was a very merciful way of dealing with both themselves and the child.”

By this time, Paige’s big, beautiful blue eyes were locked into mine.

“Here’s the thing,” I went on while I had her attention. “We both agree that we need more love in the world. And that’s precisely why I’m against capital punishment, war, and violence against Jews, women, and babies in the womb. Abortion is a very violent act against both the woman and the baby. We could use so much more love across the board in the world.”

Paige continued to fix her eyes on mine, and I finally laughed a bit nervously and said, “You must think I’m crazy telling you all of this on a plane.”

“No,” she said slowly. “I’m listening…I’m listening to what you’re saying.”

The plane touched down. “It was really nice talking to you,” Paige offered with a smile. “I like Judys. I’m going to buy your book.”

“It was really nice talking to you, too, Paige,” I smiled back. “God bless you.”

With that, an hour plane ride from Dallas to New Orleans had offered the unexpected gift of a mile-high defense of human life. Because while Paige was raised without faith, she was raised with love. And anyone can understand the logic of love, including someone who is “totally pro-choice.”

This article was first published at Aleteia.

To My Brothers With Love

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A Jubilee also entails the granting of indulgences. This practice will acquire an even more important meaning in the Holy Year of Mercy.  Pope Francis, Misericordiae Vultus, par. 22.

No way. I wasn’t going to jump through hoops to try to gain God’s favor—because that’s how I saw indulgences at the time. As a “revert” to Catholicism from evangelical Christianity, the doctrine of indulgences still scandalized me.

An indulgence is a remission before God of the temporal punishment due to sins whose guilt has already been forgiven, which the faithful Christian who is duly disposed gains under certain prescribed conditions.” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, par. 1471).

Gains? Under certain conditions? Nope. Not for me. While I had accepted the doctrine of purgatory and the idea that temporal consequences may need remediation after sin is forgiven, the thought that I could do something to help a deceased soul repair the damage caused by sin still seemed, frankly, like hocus pocus to me.

Until I lost two brothers to suicide—both baptized Catholics—compelling me to ask:  What if indulgences aren’t about jumping through hoops to win God’s favor, but are instead about doing something concrete as an act of love for another person?

What if I could indulge my brothers in the unfathomable, unmerited mercy of God, asking that the lingering consequences of sin—more apparent than ever in the face of suicide—be remedied?

And what if I could assist my brothers in the necessary work of purification; in healing the wounds inflicted by sin?

Why wouldn’t I want to help them if I could?

Thus began my habitual practice of asking the Lord for an indulgence for them, or someone else in my bloodline, every time I go to Confession.* Because fundamentally, indulgences admit that we’re not in this alone, but that we’re members of one Body who help and support each other on this journey to salvation. Indulgences acknowledge that we are, indeed, our brothers’ keeper, and that the voices of our brothers and sisters cry out for lavish mercy. Indulgences draw on the power of “the infinite value, which can never be exhausted, which Christ’s merits have before God” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, par. 1476)—the power that alone can redeem sin and its consequences. We are invited to participate in that power each time we pray, each time we turn to God for mercy and forgiveness, and each time we ask for an indulgence, which applies to ourselves and others of the fruits of Christ’s redemption.

While I can’t presume to know with certainty that my brothers are saved, I believe and trust that "by ways known to (God) alone," they are (Catechism of the Catholic Church, par. 2283).  I do not despair of their salvation, but entrust them to the eternal embrace of God that encompasses all time, all people, all things. I beg God’s mercy for them, availing myself of the graced opportunity to pray for a plenary indulgence for their souls.   That is just what I did on Scott’s birthday, December 30, when I walked through the Jubilee Door of the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C., holding him close to my heart.

God’s forgiveness knows no bounds, Pope Francis wrote in Misericordiae Vultus. Nor does his indulgent love, which can reach into all things, making up—and inviting us to participate—wherever love is lacking.

*For a fuller explanation about indulgences, see the Catechism of the Catholic Church, par. 1471-1479.

This article appeared first on Aleteia.

The Death of Zeus and the Healing of Fatherhood

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How much I desire that the year to come will be steeped in mercy, so that we can go out to every man and woman, bringing the goodness and tenderness of God!   Pope Francis, Misericordiae Vultus, par. 5.

 

Drop by drop; the water fell through the sugar cube into the glass of absinthe perched on the Royal Street bar. Elvis’ “Blue Christmas” blaring from the stage had summoned us in for a dance, just after we’d finished caroling with thousands of others in the shadow of St. Louis Cathedral. My husband, Mark, decided to try the famous New Orleans libation, and as we watched the sugared water slowly sweeten the bitterest of drinks, Leonard approached the bar.

“What are you guys doing in New Orleans?” he opened.

“We’re locals,” we offered. “We were caroling in Jackson Square. The archbishop led the singing.”

“I used to be a good Catholic,” he countered immediately. “But I haven’t been to Church or prayed in years.” (People confess the darndest things in bars!)

One thing led to another and before we knew it, my husband and I were sharing openly about our faith in God, and about the reality of a tender, merciful Father who loves us personally and wants to be in relationship with us. We disclosed that we begin every morning with Eucharistic adoration and Mass, encouraging Leonard to start to set aside time to seek God in prayer.   It was then that he turned to me and asked: “What do you hear in prayer?”

“I hear God say, ‘You are my beloved daughter,'” I replied, grateful that the voice of Love has finally supplanted the voice of condemnation in my head. Leonard’s eyes widened like saucers and welled with visible tears. “Well, I’ve never heard anything remotely like that in prayer!” he exclaimed.

Leonard stayed close by us for the rest of the night, anxious to hear more about the Father who loves him. It was clear from our conversation that his relationship with his own father had been difficult, and that he, like so many other people Mark and I encounter, was suffering from what we’ve come to call “a father wound.”

More than forty years ago, Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI) said in a sermon on God:

It is well known that the Greeks called their Zeus ‘Father’. But this word was not an expression of their trust in him!...When they said ‘Father’, they meant that Zeus was like human fathers—sometimes really nice, when he was in a good mood, but ultimately an egoist, a tyrant, unpredictable, unfathomable, and dangerous. (Joseph Ratzinger, The God of Jesus Christ: Meditations on the Triune God, 32)

How many people have experienced their human fathers this way? And how many people believe this is who God is?

Being in ministries where we hear the personal stories of wounded souls on a daily basis, Mark and I know this number is not negligible. Sadly, there seems to be a consistent theme in too many narratives: physically or emotionally absent fathers, raging fathers, alcoholic fathers, abusive fathers—fathers more like Zeus that the Father whom Jesus Christ came to reveal.

Ratzinger said in the same sermon on God:

The crisis of fatherhood we are experiencing today is a basic aspect of the crisis that threatens mankind as a whole. Where…the father is seen as a tyrant whose yoke must be thrown off, something in the basic structure of human existence has been damaged. (Joseph Ratzinger, The God of Jesus Christ: Meditations on the Triune God, 29)

Perhaps the “tenderness revolution” Pope Francis is launching will not only unleash mercy on the world, but will prompt a healing in fatherhood itself, one that “will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of children to their fathers” (Malachi 3:24, Luke 1:17). Such a turn might convince us that God is not Zeus, but “Abba,” who is mercy, kindness, compassion and love. This is the truth that is revealed in Jesus Christ, and meant to be revealed by Christ in us, as a desperate world cries: “Show us the face of the Father!”

Note: This article was first published on Aleteia as "The Mercy Journal."

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