How Dung Helps Flowers Grow: What God Does With Our "Crapola"

I will heal their defection, says the Lord, I will love them freely; for my wrath is turned away from Israel. I shall be like the dew for Israel: he shall blossom like the lily; he shall strike root like the Lebanon cedar, and put forth his shoots. His splendor shall be like the olive tree and his fragrance like the Lebanon cedar.      Hosea 14: 5-7

It happens every spring. Just as I’m walking around the neighborhood gleefully absorbing the exquisite sights and smells of sweet Louisiana blooms, I get a whiff of something putrid.

Then I remember.

Dung is used as fertilizer in many local gardens, and my garden always does best when I buy the soil advertised as laden with cow manure.

I don’t know about you, but some days I feel plain 'ole crappy about my life. I agonize about mistakes made, opportunities missed, and relationships mired in misunderstanding. I spew apologies, wish for do-overs and rake myself over the coals.

The mercy is, when I finally settle down enough to ground myself in God’s presence, I don’t get mud thrown in my face.  Instead, I hear the Lord’s gentle voice whispering: I will heal your defections…I will love you freely…you shall blossom like the lily.

We can be master builders of our own whipping posts, ready and willing to bind ourselves inexorably to every last lash. We can view our failures to love in endless 3-D projections, seeing only the terrible tearings that teased out death. We can rend ourselves asunder with regret, obsessing over our belief that we were supposed to get things right.

 We can even call this humility, when the sad fact is that all of this rumbled reasoning reeks of an unholy focus on self, not of holy faith in God.

Because faith in God means that we see our defects—redeemed by God’s grace—as glorified gashes in our humanity capable of spawning new life. Faith in God means we trust that when our personal capabilities crash, God’s competence rises up to save us. Faith in God means that we adjust the lens of our reality to magnify God’s magnanimous mercy instead of our many measly mistakes.

What faith basically means is just that this shortfall that we all have in our love is made up by the surplus of Jesus Christ’s love, acting on our behalf. He simply tells us that God himself has poured out among us a superabundance of his love and has thus made good in advance all of our deficiency. Ultimately, faith means nothing other than admitting that we have this kind of shortfall; it means opening our hand and accepting a gift.   Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI), What It Means to Be A Christian

In other words, we can’t. God can. Will we let him?

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe once said: "The best fortune that can fall to a man is that which corrects his defects and makes up for his failings." I’d call that fortune grace.   What sweet relief that our “dung,” infused with God’s grace, becomes fertile territory where fragrant trees grow and flowers bloom.

The Healing of Memories As Part of the Christian Journey

Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed.               The Liturgy of the Eucharist

It seemed like a perfectly reasonable idea at the time. Mark and I would move back downstairs into the master bedroom and give the upstairs bedroom, which I’d moved to after the death of my late husband, Bernie, to our seventeen-year-old son. We spent the entire day hauling furniture up and down the stairs, making each room beautiful as we hung artwork, placed lamps, and lovingly made beds.

Then came the moment of reckoning. As soon as I was flat on my back in bed in my old bedroom, I was slammed by a dizzying array of disorienting dreams, thoughts, and emotions that seemingly came out of nowhere.

Where was I? Who was I with? Had Bernie just died the night before? Or was he still alive? I literally had no idea what was going on.  

 Seized with panic and grief, I intermittently cried and prayed through the long night as I tried to get my bearings. I hadn’t felt that battered since the day Bernie died, and after another night of panic-stricken sleeplessness ensued, I took the matter to prayer.

Seated in the adoration chapel before Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, I closed my eyes and asked the Lord what he wanted to do with all of this. Suddenly I saw him clearly in my mind’s eye entering my bedroom dressed in a long white robe with his right hand raised in the air.

Peace be with you, I heard him say as I watched him make the Sign of the Cross and bless my bedroom. Jesus then walked around the bedroom pronouncing blessing and peace over every inch of the room. He then came and stood beside my bed, where I saw myself in my mind. Placing his hand on my forehead, he spoke the same words: Peace be with you.

 I spontaneously saw a review of each painful trauma that had occurred in that room—jolting news of too many tragedies and too much death; long nights of grief and pain after the sudden deaths of my husband, two brothers and stepson. But this time I could see that I was not alone: Jesus was next to me, tenderly touching me, speaking words of comfort and healing over me. It was clear that I had never been alone, and that I simply needed to consciously, prayerfully welcome Jesus into the past events and emotions that I had stuffed into my subconscious; memories and feelings that had unexpectedly erupted when I unassumingly re-entered a long-deserted space.

I’m sure it was “God-incidental” that I had just begun working through a small book entitled “Walls and Bridges: Healing of the Heart".   In the Foreword, Fr. Richard McAlear, O.M.I., who is renowned for the gift of healing, writes:

We all have inner hurts, carried in our hearts. There are negative feelings and emotions that swirl around in the subconscious and unconscious realms. Touching them with healing grace is essential to a full awareness of God’s loving presence and subsequently to the fullness of life in God…Jesus brings the love, the security and the healing that are needed to make the difference between coping and healing. Jesus’ love alone is adequate and can touch the wounds that human insight and self-knowledge have brought to light.” Walls and Bridges: Healing of the Heart, page 10.

I had coped with my pain, but God wanted it healed.  I was powerfully reminded that healing was, and is, an essential part of Christ’s person, presence and message—a truth we have largely forgotten both in the Church and in a hurting world that offers mostly coping mechanisms instead of authentic healing in and through Jesus Christ.

Author’s Note: Fr. McAlear’s books on healing can be found at http://www.frmac.org.

Our Fiat’s Walls and Bridges: Healing of the Heart can be found at http://ourfiat.com.

This article was previously published at Aleteia.

Why Mardi Gras Means Life--And Death--To Me

Mardi Gras week brings it all back.

Memories of my mother sewing ten matching costumes for her gaggle of children to wear on Mardi Gras day. The pre-dawn fried chicken cooking sprees, where Mama prepared enough of the delectable bird to feed ten hungry children for a long day of parades. The bountiful bags of beads, sweet aroma of fresh swirled cotton candy, and marshmallow-laden hot chocolate on which we always managed to burn our mouths.

For many of us, Mardi Gras is replete with an avalanche of happy memories as we again kill the proverbial fatted calf and remember that as prodigals, it is a last day of feasting before our foreheads assume the black ashes of Lent and death.

Mardi Gras also evokes another remembrance for me: hearing the sound of revelers celebrating loudly in the streets as I stood over the bed of my dying husband, Bernie, eight years ago this week. As I simultaneously stared down death in the I.C.U. and listened to Carnival marching on, the paradox of life and death, celebration and fasting, lavishly living life in preparation for stripping, was all too clear.

For while it seemed a bit offensive that a massive party rolled on as my husband lay dying, there was a welcome infusion of comfort in knowing that Fat Tuesday’s grand party precedes Lent and Good Friday, and that the marking of those times ultimately gives way to the celebration of the God-man’s victory over death. In fact, there is probably no clearer juxtaposition of the themes of life and death in the liturgical calendar (aside from Good Friday and Easter Sunday), than Fat or “Shrove” Tuesday and Ash Wednesday.

Mardi Gras in New Orleans—and all Fat Tuesday celebrations around the world—are about just that: holding the tension in the reality that consuming robustly of the fat of the land is but a preparation for the words spoken over us the next day: Remember, O man, that you are dust, and unto dust you shall return (Genesis 3:19). And those sober words are the precursor to the Easter acclamation: Christ is risen from the dead, Alleluia! Life and death; death and life, all rolled into one reality that reminds us not only of our sinfulness and mortality, but of our exalted call to eternal life with Christ.

Eight years ago, Mardi Gras was for us the beginning of the culmination of a long season of stripping that took Bernie and me through three different hospitals over 87 excruciating days, as we simultaneously fought for life and prepared for death. On February 20, I followed an ambulance through bumper-to-bumper parade traffic at 10:00 o’clock at night to pursue one last ditch effort at a life-saving intervention for him. “No hope,” we were told after a thorough evaluation, and the process of letting go began in earnest. Life support was disconnected as parades rolled by, and our large, extended family began to make their way to the hospital to say goodbye.

All good things on this Earth must come to an end: every celebration, every Mardi Gras, every life. Our faith tells us that that there is a rhythm written into this existence, one that is connected by new beginnings and necessary endings, by rejoicing and grieving, by physical death and eternal life. Both elements are essential, and both must be kept bound together in all of their paradoxical glory for this world to make the least bit of sense. In fact, Mardi Gras without Ash Wednesday denigrates into an outrageous pagan ritual, just as Good Friday without Easter Sunday mutates into a meaningless absurdity.

Mardi Gras means both life and death to me. Lent is fast approaching, and indeed, we shall fast. But for now, we will celebrate the feast.

This post was previously published at Aleteia.

Are We Seeking Miracles or Magic?

Take, Lord, and receive all my liberty, my memory, my understanding and my entire will, all I have and call my own. You have given all to me. To you, Lord, I return it. Everything is yours; do with it what you will. Give me only your love and your grace, that is enough for me.     St. Ignatius of Loyola, Suscipe

If you’d asked me six months ago if I believe in miracles, I would have responded with a resounding “Yes!” Especially since I was praying ardently for a miracle at the time—the healing of someone whom I love that suffers from the dreaded disease of addiction.

I’d prayed for the same “miracle” countless times before—pleading with God for an outcome I desperately wanted and believed I needed for all to be “well.” As months passed and my prayers went seemingly unanswered, I felt more and more desolate, finding myself engaged in old, worn-out mental gymnastics that kept me ruminating constantly in fear and regret about “what ifs” and “woulda, coulda, shouldas.”

Then came the day that changed things: the day I walked into my spiritual director’s office and began weeping before I sat down. At my wits' end, I felt trapped by a gnawing sense of doom and despair from which I could not wrench myself.

“Maybe,” Fr. Robert gently suggested, “you’re hitting your own emotional bottom. Maybe this is active addiction is going to be the ‘new normal’ in your life. And maybe this is an invitation from God for you to learn to how to live in peace, no matter what happens with the circumstances.”

As usual, Fr. Robert had a way of nailing things quite precisely.

Later that day, I felt prompted to begin working on the next step of my Twelve Step Recovery Program, Step 3: “Made a decision to turn my will and my life over to the care of God as I understood him.” Step 3 was accompanied by a question that hit me like thunderbolt of grace: Am I willing to stop asking God for the addict to change?      

 Was I willing to cease and desist with my constant prayer for God to heal my addicted loved one, the first prayer that came to my mind every time I had a rush of anxiety about his wellbeing?   Was I willing to accept that “God’s will” and “my will” might not be exactly the same, given the fact that God alone could grasp the big picture of our life stories? And could it be that placing my loved one radically into God’s hands—earnestly praying only “thy will be done” for him and for his life—is the only “miracle” I really needed?

 As I pondered and prayed over these questions, I began to experience the difference between magic and miracle, between willfulness and willingness, between an interior attitude which insists that “my will be done” vs. a trusting stance of finally being willing to turn everyone and everything over to the will of God. Though I’d learned this lesson before, I’d regressed, and God was inviting me again to let go of how I think things ought to be and shift from a posture of demanding magic to receiving a miracle.

Miracle involves openness to mystery, the welcoming of surprise, the acceptance of those realities over which we have no control. Magic is the attempt to be in control, to manage everything—it is the claim to be, or have a special relationship with, some kind of ‘god.’ (Ernest Kurtz and Katherine Ketcham, The Spirituality of Imperfection, 118)

Though I’ve joked many times that “there is a God and it ain’t me,” there I’d gone, playing god again. I was praying for a miracle, but in reality, I’d been trying to exact magic.

That very day after meeting with my spiritual director, in a space of surrendered grace, I “made a decision to turn my will and my life over the care of God as I understood him” believing he could restore me to sanity.

At last, the miracle arrived. His will. His ways. Peace.

This article was previously published at Aleteia.

Everything Old Is New Again: Why the Women's March Was More of the Same Old Stuff

Dear Friends,  In honor of today's March for Life in Washington, I offer the below reflection, which is not meant to be polemical or to condemn any one person for their participation in the Women's March last week.  It is simply meant to name the spiritual reality that I believe we are dealing with and the spiritual remedy needed.  Let us pray for the healing of the wounds of our nation, and all that drives women to seek abortion as a solution to an unexpected pregnancy.   Our Lady of Guadalupe, patroness of life, pray for us.  

Answer me, Lord! Answer me, that this people may know that you, Lord, are God and that you have brought them back to their senses.           1 Kings 18:37

A quick perusal through the Old Testament story of the Prophet Elijah (1 Kings 16 ff.) and his showdown with the wicked pagan queen, Jezebel, confirms that this week in America, everything old is new again. New again is the sinful human tendency to want absolute power and control, and new again is the willful determination to use aggression, violence and all manner of ungodly means to achieve it.

Case in point: This week’s January 22 anniversary of the infamous Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion in America was preceded on January 21 by the Women’s March on Washington. After watching the coverage all weekend on various new outlets, I could conclude only one thing: the fundamental thing the marchers wanted to protect the state-sanctioned prerogative of killing their children, and they will steamroll anyone who tries to deny them that power. Because, while claiming they were marching for women’s rights, not one protester could actually articulate a right they were marching for which women don’t already possess. What bled through their protest, however, is that they fear losing the right to unrestricted access to abortion on demand under the Trump administration, and that they are willing to engage in a tirade of biblical proportions to make sure that doesn’t happen. Which brings me back to Jezebel.

Jezebel, the wife of Israel’s King Ahab and the power behind his throne, could be called “Eve on crack.” She influenced her husband to both engage in Baal worship and promote it among the Israelites, leading God’s people into apostasy through the practice of deviant sexual rituals, human sacrifice and self-mutilation—all for the purpose of controlling the fertility gods. Sound familiar? Jezebel operated without conscience or scruples to have her way, urging her husband to oppose the worship of the one true God, destroy his altars and kill his prophets, which Ahab promptly did. When Jezebel wanted Naboth’s vineyard, she had Naboth unjustly tried and killed. When Jezebel wanted to silence God’s prophets, she had hundreds of them slaughtered. And when Jezebel’s pagan prophets lost a major power encounter with Elijah on Mount Carmel, she chased Elijah down with all of the vim and vigor of hell to have his throat slit.

Sadly, Jezebel represents the epitome of disordered, fallen femininity: an unapologetically grasping woman who will assert her will and have her way, no matter how much blood is spilled. I couldn’t get her out of my mind as I witnessed the vulgarity and hatred spewing from the mouths, signs and clothing of those at the Women’s March. To my mind, what we witnessed in the Capitol last Saturday was the show of a demonic "spirit" named Jezebel that is the antithesis of spirit of Our Blessed Mother. Such a spirit can only be “tied up” through prayer, fasting and repentance (Mk 3:27, Mt 17:21), all of which we are summoned to by our bishops in response to the stronghold of death in our culture.

The hopeful news is that there’s another march in Washington today, and its protestors will march Mary’s way. They will humbly, prayerfully and respectfully show up in our nation’s capital to make a plea for protection and justice for the unborn. They will sing praise to God, carry banners that are dignified, and meet with legislators politely to plead the case that all human life is sacred and inviolable. They will dress modestly, behave courteously, and demonstrate nobly, seeking to show a confused world that love and humility beget love and humility, and that violence and aggression spawn more of the same.  Marching Mary’s way, the protesters may remain unseen and hidden to the world-at-large as the secular news media, power brokers and pundits ignore them. Nonetheless, hundreds of thousands of March for Life protesters will march mightily under the standard of Almighty God for the cause of truth and life.

Mary’s way is never one of self-assertion, domination or control, but is instead the way of generous, unassuming, self-sacrificing love. Her open and welcoming stance toward both God and human life would never be labeled “powerful” according to the world’s criterions, but the Mother of the God-man is the most powerful woman who ever lived. Paradoxically, her power is manifested not through assertion, but instead through her absolute surrender to God and to love. She has much to teach us today about what it means to be women, but we must choose to follow her way.

Let us beg God to place Mary’s mantle of peace and protection over over each and every one of us, and over our nation. May we also ask, as Elisha asked Elijah, for a double portion of Mary’s spirit to fall upon us and upon the women of our land.

This article was previously published at Aleteia.

Darrien's Story: From Vulgar Rapper to Innocent Child in 30 Seconds Flat

Jesus immediately knew in his mind what they were thinking to themselves, so he said, “Why are you thinking such things in your hearts?”     Mark 2:8

 There he stood on the end of the pier with a fishing pole in one hand and an iPhone in the other, rapping aloud to the lyrics of the vulgar, violent music emanating from his electronic device. The sun was beginning to set and I was craving a moment of quiet, contemplative enjoyment of the multi-hued evening sky. Quickly concluding it wasn’t going to happen, I began to leave, but not without rolling my eyes and engaging in a mental rant about how angry, demeaning and offensive his music was.

Finding my husband Mark on the way back to our condominium, he asked why I wasn’t on the pier enjoying the sunset.

“There’s a young man blaring rap music at the end of the pier and he’s oblivious to the fact that the people around him want to enjoy the sunset in peace,” I huffed.

“Well let’s go ask him if he’ll change his music,” Mark suggested.

“Oh, right!” I said rolling my eyes again. “I’ve got a vision of that!”

A minute later we reached the end of the pier and Mark quickly launched in.

“You catching anything?” he asked as I waited for him to address the issue of the music.

“No, man, I’ve been here for three days and haven’t caught one fish yet,” the young man responded.

“Maybe your music is scaring them away,” I said wryly.

“You been out here the whole time?” Mark continued.

“Well other than yesterday when we drove to Key West,” he answered.

“Oh, how’d you like Key West?” Mark inquired. “We were thinking of driving there tomorrow.”

“It was horrible,” he responded without hesitation. “All day in the car with my Mom and step-dad fighting the entire way. Two hours there and two hours back with him picking on her the whole time,” he began to open up. “And you know what they were arguing about? The way I was dressed! He didn’t like the way I was dressed and he fought with her the whole day over it,” he said with evident hurt and exasperation as the rap music drummed on.

Hearing his angst, I immediately felt sorry for the young man and understood a little more clearly what his music expressed for him. I suddenly wanted to ask him a million and one questions about his life…starting with: “Where is your dad?” Instead, I asked if his name was James, noting that he was wearing red and white a jersey with the name “James” on the back.

“No, my name’s Darrien,” he laughed. “Lebron James is an NBA star,” he continued. “You haven’t heard of him?”

“Oh,” I smiled feeling embarrassed. “I don’t watch much basketball.”

“Well nice to meet you Darrien,” Mark interjected. “I’m Mark and this is my wife, Judy.”

As the conversation continued between the three of us to the beat of the rap music, it quickly became obvious that Darrien was a good kid with a load of frustration about his family situation. He was friendly and thoughtful—and a 16-year-old basketball player at a nearby Florida high school.

“Hey Darrien,” Mark offered as the sky blushed red, orange and pink. “You like Andrea Bocelli?”

Before I knew it we were standing on the end of the pier watching a magical sunset, listening to Andrea Bocelli’s “Dare to Live” and enjoying a nice conversation with our new friend Darrien—who was more than a little eager to share about his life and its frustrations. In fact, it was clear that all the poor child really wanted was to be seen, heard, and blessed for who he is.

“I gotta go,” Darrien said after a few more casts into the Atlantic garnered no bites. “I tried your music,” he smiled pleasantly as he walked off. “Now y’all should try rap.”

Maybe we should, I thought. Maybe we should.

This article was previously published at Aleteia.

The Manger and the Miracle of the Body of Christ

 

At morning Mass, the image of the infant Jesus repeatedly flashes through my mind as I ponder the innocent body of Christ in the manger while simultaneously beholding his broken, glorified Body among the people in church. As I think of his humble baby body—and his beautiful Mystical Body—it is as though I can hear his words ringing through time: “This is my body, given up for you.”

Having heard the stories of many of the daily communicants in church over the years, I can only marvel at the broken splendor of Christ’s Body; this Body on its knees in hunger and thirst, this Body famished for the Bread that alone can satisfy, bring divine comfort, give eternal hope.

I look around the church to see the humiliated woman whose husband left her for another lover, and the praying man whose mother died during his adolescence with a Vodka bottle pursed to her lips. Before me is the mystic father whose young adult daughter is fighting for her life against deadly cancer, and across the aisle, the holy grandmother who buried her husband and two young grandsons after the same devastating accident. And I hear his words:

This is my body, given up for you.

To my left is the devout teenager who recently became Catholic after her father opted out of their family, as well as the woman of God who holds the painful secret of a child given up for adoption while she was only a teenager. There’s the man ever on his knees praying to God for a wife dying of lupus—the wife he couldn’t get along with before the lupus struck—the same wife which he now sees, and every last day spent with her, as immeasurable grace and gift.

There beside the altar is the Christmas manger, but do we even begin to digest its meaning? Jesus, born in Bethlehem, which means “house of bread,” offering his innocent lamb-body as “the bread that came down from heaven”…the bread that he will give as flesh for the life of the world (John 6:51). Not coincidentally, Bethlehem currently bears the modern name of Beit-Lahm, which literally means "house of flesh”. The city of Jesus’ birth now unwittingly proclaims Christ-Bread as flesh indeed: true food, true drink—flesh for the healing of the world.

This is my body, given up for you.

One by one we process forward to “manger”—which means “to eat” in French—the blessed, broken Body of Christ craving the one Body that can make our brokenness blessed. We believe that it is his Body alone that can gather our poverty, mourning, hunger, and persecution into blessedness; the one true panacea that can provide the comfort, satisfaction, peace and belonging that we seek.

To my right is the smiling woman whose grandbaby is racked by an incurable disease, and the wise man whose daughter died of an overdose on Christmas Eve. I thank God for Christ’s Body, given for us as bread, as life, resplendently proclaiming the life, death and resurrection of the Lord until he comes again.

The Bread of Life, already present in all-holy omnipotence in the manger, is what enables us to see God in all things, including our wounded selves and stories. His Body empowers us to trust that we, too, can be taken, blessed, and broken—that we, too, may become hallowed flesh given as gift for other hungry souls.

Author’s Note: I have amalgamated the stories of the people in church to protect their identities and privacy.

This article was previously published at Aleteia.

Healing Our Decembers

Tears flowed freely during the meeting with my spiritual director, Sandy, as I shared with her the pain I was feeling. “December is here,” I said. “I get such a wave of anxiety and grief at this time of year.”

Somehow, I have a hunch I’m not alone in experiencing December this way.

December is the month that “our lives blew apart with more violence than we ever dreamed possible,” I wrote in my book Miracle Man. The month that my late husband, Bernie, suffered a massive heart attack—leaving my children fatherless and me a widow after 87 excruciating days in the ICU. Eight years and a wonderful new marriage later, December still brings it all screeching back.

“Beg the Lord to heal the trauma of all your past Decembers,” Sandy wisely advised. “And ask him to fill you with the joy of his birth.”

For December is also the month when we celebrate our Savior’s presence penetrating Earth’s agonies, defying what human eyes behold as mere babe-flesh, disguising the God-man. This is the month that Hope is born, ushering in the time of fulfillment for the long-awaited healing of our crippled souls and lame lives. December is, indeed, the month of Advent hope.

The hope of Advent lies in experiencing the reality of human frailty—and in believing that Someone, though fragile in appearance, is coming to heal us soon. The hope of Advent consists in a hearty cry for deliverance from the weight of sin and death—and in trusting that God’s glory-weight will pierce right through all of this world’s darkness. For we have all known the sorrow of “Decembers” during life’s winter months, times of shadows and suffering where we cry out for the Light to come.

Every year I’m reminded that December is a fitting backdrop for Advent, as it is the month that throws off the least amount of light in the calendar year. The days grow short and winter begins. The darkness brings with it a certain sense of vulnerability and disorientation, along with the knowledge that we need more Light, so we can see.

Advent hope has everything to do with vision. Advent hope is inexorably connected with eternal perspective. That’s because hope—Christian hope—is so much more than plain old wishful thinking. It is the theological virtue by which we order our lives toward heaven; the virtue that establishes trust in us that there is a heaven, and gives us the conviction that we’ll live there with God some day. Hope reminds us that this earth is not paradise, strengthening and sustaining us as we travel toward the longed-for Promised Land. Hope gives us a new vision for our lives, enabling us to see that what may look like “disaster” to human senses is but a moment of time that God holds in his hands, shaping it for our good, while simultaneously, mysteriously, molding us into good.

“Can you see your Decembers as a time when God reaches into your life to work miracles, instead of as a time of sorrow?” Sandy gently asked. “You saw that once,” she continued. “You wrote a book about it.”

Yes, I saw it clearly then. But somehow I go blind every December.

And maybe that’s as it should be. Since it is December’s darkness that beckons me to encounter my desperate need for a Savior. Along with my need for a divine infusion of hope.

Thankfully, it is Advent. The season of so much blindness healed. The Church’s daily readings ring out promises of what the Messiah will bring, along with rich Gospel accounts of those promises being fulfilled:

On that day the deaf shall hear…and out of gloom and darkness, the eyes of the blind shall see. The lowly will ever find joy in the Lord, and the poor rejoice in the Holy One of Israel.       Isaiah 29:18-19

And then we hear:

Two blind men followed him crying, “Son of David, have pity on us!” …Then he touched their eyes...And their eyes were opened.   Matthew 9:29-31

 Touch our eyes, Lord, and enable us to glimpse reality from heaven’s angle, through the lens of Advent hope. Heal all of our Decembers, and fill us anew with the joy of your birth.

Last week to order our Pre-Christmas Special: Get signed copies of both books, “Miracle Man” and “Mary’s Way,” for a bundle price of $25 right now at www.memorareministries.com. Free “Mary’s Way” Consecration Prayer Card included.

When the Crib Meets the Cross: Our Personal Adoption Story

The minute the judge walked into the courtroom on December 5, I knew I was in trouble. What I had envisioned as a measured ritual of signing papers at the courthouse became an extremely emotional event when the judge, who surprisingly was a family friend, swore us in and asked for personal testimonies. Suddenly, I was weeping openly as my forever baby boy, now seventeen, sat beside me grasping my hand.

“Judy, can you tell the court why you want your husband, Mark, to adopt your son? And can you tell the court why you believe Mark will be a good father to Ben?” the judge asked kindly.

How could I explain to her that I had begged God to send a mentor and father figure into my child’s life, but that I’d never expected that God would answer my prayer with a wonderful husband, too? How would I convey in words the way I’d watched Ben latch onto Mark from the day he walked into our home, and how obvious it was that he’d loved Mark from the start? And how could I possibly articulate Mark’s generous, patient love for my beloved son—love that helped Ben find steady ground again after his Dad died months after he turned the tender age of nine?

After all, how do you put love, suffering and redemption into words?

“I knew your Dad, Ben, and he was a wonderful man,” the judge continued as the tears flowed. “And I know your family has been through a lot.”

Especially during December, I wanted to say.

December will forever be remembered in our family as the month a much-loved husband and father suffered a massive heart attack, never to return home again. In one fell swoop, December had morphed from the month of attending annual Nutcracker Ballets, decorating always enormous Christmas trees, and binge watching Miracle on 34^th Street into the month of spending endless desperate hours beside a loved one labeled by doctors as “the sickest patient in Louisiana.” One seemingly insignificant day had converted December from the month of fresh piney smells, magical white lights and the sound of Christmas carols playing in the living room to the month of nauseating hospital smells, ominous fluorescent lights, and the never-ending clanging of life-saving machines attached to the hallowed body of a husband and father.

Here it was December again and we were standing in court recalling the pain of a crucifixion while beholding the glory of a resurrection, all at once. How could I explain that to the judge?

Because how can you possibly put love, suffering and redemption into words?

Love, suffering and redemption: they encompass the beginning, middle and end of the Christmas story. The story moves from a holy night to a holy Cross, from the wood of the crib at Bethlehem to the wood of the Cross at Calvary. In both places a Mother prays, knowing that only God can make a way for deliverance from the dark threats that surround life, believing that only God can somehow work things out for good.

I’d worried endlessly about Ben after his dad died, wondering who would encourage him, teach him, show him how to be a man? I’d felt the fear of what it could mean to be a fatherless child in a fallen world, begged God to somehow make a way for my son when I could see no path before us.

Mark literally showed up out of nowhere; having spent almost three decades as a missionary in foreign lands—many of those spent rescuing orphans from the streets and serving as a father figure to glue-addicted kids running for their lives from human trafficking. He had clearly heard God say it was time to go home to Louisiana, and though he didn’t understand why, he obeyed. Months later our paths converged in the tiny adoration chapel of our parish church and the rest, while they don’t say it quite this way, is holy history.

The wooden beams of our own crib and cross were transformed before my eyes by the wood of a judge’s gavel, as I heard her declare Ben “adopted” and Mark “father.” Indeed, I heard it as clearly as angels singing on high: love, suffering and redemption put into words—words made flesh during December.

This post appeared previously at Aleteia.

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How Advent Helps US: Seeing Our Limitations as an Opening for God’s Greatness

Those who see only limits feel lost in a senseless universe. They live a despondent life-style. Those who see limits as possibilities to go beyond live a hopeful life-style…True freedom is found in people who maintain what the philosopher Paul Ricoeur calls ‘the passion for the possible.’   Susan Muto, Blessings That Make Us Be, 4-5

As December dawns and propels us toward the celebration of Christ’s birth, we are bidden to be an Advent people, to experience this sacred time with a “passion for the possible.” In short, we are reminded to live in hope.

In the darkest time of year, we light candles to remember the Light who has come into the world. On the shortest of days, we stretch forward in both anticipation and acknowledgement of God with us. As winter begins to dawn and flowers wither and die, we carry fresh, live trees into our homes to be lighted and ornamented with dazzling color, reminding us that we carry hope precisely by affirming what is alive and beautiful in our midst.

To be an Advent people is to make Christ’s coming truly present among us, not as some far-off distant memory, but as a calling forth into the present moment the presence of the One who is real.  To be an Advent people is to choose not to ignore the pain and darkness in this world, but instead to embrace those realities with confidence and trust that Someone has come, is coming, and will come again to liberate us from the long night of sin.

Advent hope breaks right through the misery of sin to remind us of the mercy of God. It clears our vision of earthly concerns by inviting us to see light in the darkness. It blesses the human condition by remembering that a fully human God has redeemed our frail humanity. Advent is the hallowed time during which we gratefully acknowledge that our finite limits have already been met by eternal limitlessness.

Each and every day that we awaken, we are confronted anew with our limitations, be they tiredness from a sleepless night, fresh angst over troubled relationships, or the remembrance of failures and tribulations we must face again that day. But to arise resting assured that we are the fragile, fallible children of an all-powerful, infallible God makes us an Advent people: a people who see “limits as possibilities to go beyond,” who believe that the God-man has already gone beyond every human finitude.

For Bethlehem was indeed a place of finitude. Poverty, deprivation, cold and dark provided the “nursery” for the birth of the Savior—the hallowed space where the Transcendent One broke into, and through, those stark actualities with divine presence. There, in abject humility, God offered starlight to open blinded eyes, babe-flesh to woo hardened hearts, and the silence and solitude of the night to quiet the whole human race unto awakening. There, the waters of a virgin womb ushered in a new creation—bringing not just life, light, and hope, but the remedy for every human constraint, conquerable only through infinite power.

Advent “enables us to hope in (God’s) unpredictable generosity toward humanity,” (Muto, 5). Not just two thousand years ago, but today and every day.

Will we let Advent draw us in? Will we touch and feed upon the divinity that begs our remembrance of God’s unbounded potential to heal our human impotence? Will we awaken afresh to God’s presence, to light breaking through our darkness, and to the reality that every human weakness is an opening for a manifestation of God’s greatness?

Advent is meant to inspire in us a “passion for the possible,” which sees instead of “the darkness of sin, despair, inhumanity and persecution” the “how much more of God’s promise of redemption” (Muto, 5).

It is Advent. Anything is possible.

Author’s note: Thank you to Susan Muto, PhD, for her beautiful insights on the Beatitudes, which I have applied liberally to the theme of Advent.

This article was previously published at Aleteia.

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