Praise to the God who brings forth beauty from ashes

Today I give praise to the God who brings forth beauty from ashes, life out of death, deliverance out of disaster. Even when something is ruined - utterly ruined without hope of restoration - it is never outside the power of divine love to make it new. God, who cannot lie, promises to reveal His love in our hearts if we show but a mustard seed's size of trust, if we can simply humble ourselves by baring our need and powerlessness before Him, if we will but fix our gaze on the unseen.

This divine love drives out fear and regenerates our spirit. It quenches the thirst that creatures cannot ever satisfy. It relieves the pressure and anxieties of a mind troubled by adversity. It comforts the soul with the comfort of Christ Jesus, the consolation of the easy yoke, the light burden, the shalom of the Lord.

I exult in Christ who raises the dead, who will never refuse a sinner, who is master over all the angelic and material order. In this Christ I place all my hopes for the forgiveness of my sins, the healing of broken heartedness, and the miraculous restoration of that which is ruined.

O Lord be glorified in my desolation. Rise up and show thy might amidst the rubble of my failures. Prove my enemies wrong, and conquer all my fears with thy limitless lovingkindness, thine unfathomable mercies.

To Thee and to thy holy cross be glory and honor and power forever.

+

Originally posted 22 September 2013

Christ came to me

It was on this day 40 years ago that our Lord Jesus Christ spoke to me in an audible voice changing my life forever. It happened on the bank of this pond in Richmond, Virginia.

Awakened by a frightening nightmare in which my future was revealed, I quickly dressed and ran down to this pond about 400 yards behind the house in which I lived at the time. I had to end my life; I had no choice. Evil was in me and had conquered.

Desperate to end this perpetuation of generational evil, I intended to plunge into the cold waters of the pond and die. As I ran, a cloud of noise circled overhead; it was a cacophony of all the wicked music I had loved and played. Voices shouted blistering condemnations at me, informing me it was too late for mercy.

At the shore of the pond a great weight pressed me to the earth, holding me down forcefully. My cheek in the dirt, I uttered words I had never admitted before:

"God, I know I deserve to go to hell -- but please save all the people I've been pushing away from you."

Instantly all the noise stopped. There was perfect silence in the wood. The weight lifted. And then I heard this majestic voice audibly address me:

Johnny, don't kill yourself. While you live for yourself you're already dead. Come and live for Me, and I'll lead you into life.

I looked around to see Who spoke these words but I knew Who it was. 

The voice was the voice of perfect authority. Perfect knowledge. Perfect compassion. The Speaker knew everything about me.

Other men may doubt the existence of God, but I can not. He delivered me from a completely rotten and ruined life on this day in 1985. Oh, my good and loving Lord Jesus Christ! I can never thank you enough if I had 10,000 lifetimes to repent and live for You. And I know I have failed You miserably too many times to count. Please finish the work You began in me and let me not be ashamed. Yours I am, and Yours I wish to be. 

Sister Marlene and the Blessed Virgin Mary

 I have to tell this story and I do not know where else to tell it but here in honor of our Blessed Mother.

It was 1968, and we lived in Oxon Hill, Maryland at the time of the riots in Washington, D.C. after the assassinations of Dr. King and R.F. Kennedy. The capital was on fire and National Guard troops stood watch outside the Montgomery Ward store where my mother worked.

I was a second grader at St. Thomas More Catholic School and I walked to school each day (yes, that's something seven year olds could do in the 1960s). I was often afraid to go to school because of what my father might do to my mother. He was violent, often drunk, and he would beat her like a man would beat another man with his fists.

My teacher was a lovely and very young Ursuline nun named Sister Marlene. 

Sister Marlene was (as I remember her) very pure and beautiful, and this image of our Lady reminds me of her very much. She knew I was having terrible trouble at home and did all she could to make my school hours as pleasant and happy as possible. Each day for lunch as we ate from our desks, she would play Paul Mauriat's "Love is Blue" on the classroom record player. Every time I hear that song I think of my dear Sister Marlene and how she loved me. 

For the school play, "The Wedding of Jack and Jill" she cast me as Jack. For the May Crowning of the Blessed Virgin's statue, I was selected to place the wreath on her head. Sister Marlene showed me much maternal love and sincere concern.

One day I had the privilege to eat lunch alone with her in the school cafeteria. Sister Marlene sat across the table from me and as I remember her, just glowed with innocence and purity. I believe she told me she was only 21 or 22 years old. As a seven-year-old, I knew I loved her, so I did the only thing I could imagine to do, and I asked her to marry me. Sister Marlene chuckled and blushed and said, "Johnny, I'm already married to Jesus" and showed me her ring. While I was very disappointed, I consoled myself with the thought of losing out to Jesus.

Now many decades later I realize how blessed I was to be loved by a religious sister who to this day reminds me of that pure and innocent love of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Sister Marlene, wherever you are, thank you for taking care of me when my little world was falling apart. I love you very much and hope to see you in heaven to thank you for being so good to me.

Our Lord's loneliness during the Passion

Loneliness.

Even our Lord did not want to be alone before His Passion.

"With desire I have desired to eat this pasch with you, before I suffer." (St. Luke 22,15)

He loved His disciples. In this most intimate of all Passovers, He gave them Himself; His Body and Blood, the new and everlasting Covenant.

After the Pasch, He led them to the Garden of Gethsemane where he tells Peter, James, and John, "My soul is sorrowful even unto death: stay you here, and watch with me." (St. Matthew 26, 38)

Who is able to fathom this most bitter of all sorrows, save for the Mother of our Lord? He asks His disciples, "Stay you here, and watch with Me."

No one wants to be alone in their hour of need. 

Yet humanly speaking, we are abandoned all too often by human companions, and left in bitter sorrow alone.

Yet, we are never truly alone.

Jesus Christ the God-Man shares our sorrows, our sufferings, and yes, our loneliness. He of all men knows the sorrow and agony of loneliness.

Lord, forgive us for doubting Your nearness and solicitude for our souls.

Grant that we believe in Your divine caritas; that abandoned by men we may know that we are received by You, Redeemer of men and friend of sinners.

Prayer for the Virtue of Hope

Almighty God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, I thank You for your unfailing faithfulness to me.

I thank you for your nearness and gracious provision for me during my long and tumultuous life in this valley of tears.

I now place all my hopes in You alone; the hope of overcoming the world; the hope of resisting the relentless temptations to yield to my own sinful desires; the hope of being delivered from the assaults of the infernal accuser; and the hope of attaining everlasting life with my Savior Jesus Christ and my Mother in grace, the Blessed Virgin Mary.

You have kept my tears in your bottle, and measured consolations in proportion to each one far exceeding their bitterness. 

You have waited patiently for me when I foray into foolishness and sins, even mortal sins; You have tenderly called me back again and again when my vain desires deceived me. 

How could I ever doubt your Fatherly love and care for my soul?

Forgive me for wavering, my all-good and merciful Lord; forgive me for listening to those voices which poisoned me against childlike trust in Your faithfulness and sweetness. 

Keep my eyes fixed O God on the Innocent Lamb slain for me and the whole human race from before the foundations of the world, that I may never despair of your divine fidelity. Grant to me I beg You, O Good Shepherd the grace of supernatural hope, that my weak and faltering faith may not fail. O blessed fruit of the Holy Ghost! Hope in me, divine Paracletos, that when my own hope dims, You will work in me what I cannot obtain without Your assistance. 

Saint Augustine, pray for us.

Saint Monica, pray for us.

Mother of Divine Grace, pray for us.

A Cry for Mercy Beneath the Cross

O Good Master, I have nothing to offer Thee but my sins and guilt.

My faith is weak and full of imperfections. 

My good works are filthy rags, an embarrassment in light of Thy excessively generous gifts.

Fear of Thy just retribution covers me like a thick, black cloud, obscuring all view of anything but my culpability.

Even to pray, I feel resistance, as though some dark power menaces me.

But Thou O Lord, art love; Thou art to the Greeks agape and to the Hebrews ch'sed. No word in my native tongue approaches these renderings, so we say Thou art perfect charity.

In this do I hope; not in my prayers, not in my poor excuse for faith, not in my religious observance, not in my mediocre fasting or impoverished almsgiving. 

Only in this goodness and mercy of the divine Essence, which the Apostles teach us Thou art.

At the foot of Thy holy cross I tremble, ashamed, afraid.

How unfathomable is my debt to Thee, O Lord!

Only that grace which Thou pourest into my stony, cold heart can save me.

Only these actual graces - gratuitous gifts from your most merciful heart, pierced with the lance of my pride - can deliver me from my craven, unspiritual fear on the one hand and my insufferable arrogance and presumption on the other. 

When Thou judgest me at my death, consider these wounds of charity, Good Master, remember the terrible price you paid to ransom my soul, and not the contemptible vessel who receives the benefit of their merit. 

Grant to me O merciful and loving Jesus to persevere in the grace which You lavish upon sinners, and not to despair of my unworthiness but to remain immovably attached to your Passion on our behalf.

Amen.

The Cruelty of God

Since the Garden of Eden men have grappled with the Problem of Evil.

Why would an all-good, holy, just and benevolent Father-Creator engender billions of souls knowing that a great number - almost all by some Saints' estimation - would be eternally damned?

And how can we love such a God?

Isn't this the epitome of cruelty?

And look at the great servants and saints of God - hated, unjustly punished, persecuted, tortured, maligned, condemned, martyred.

If this is how God allows His friends to be treated, no wonder He has so few!

Lastly, even Christ Who commanded legions of powerful angels set such power aside to be abused at the hands of men and in the spirit of Satanic cruelty.

In our own lives we experience tragedy, abandonment, betrayal, rejection, are ostracized if we take a stand - however minor - for a just cause or for sacrality. 

Even those who are religious are often told their religion is lukewarm, formalist, empty of true supernatural faith, unworthy of any favor or attention from the Most High God. 

Everywhere we look we see this cruelty, this injustice, this chaos and perturbation. Often it follows us into our sleep where we are tormented by nightmares and anxious fears, even safely in our beds.

Why?

Where is the God Who is love?

I don't know the answer.

That is the dark reality of the problem of evil.

It is a mystery, and we are not given to know why God allows evil to prosper, souls to perish, eternity to be engulfed in tormenting flames for an uncountable number of them.

The standard answers are that God allows evil so that good may come from it, and that He made man free so that man could choose the good over the evil without coercion. 

This culminates at Golgotha where the most horrific evil conceivable - Deicide - the malicious torture and murder of God - takes place in the holiest city on earth and at the hands of its priests. 

Theologians, philosophers and mystics have in their own turn explained the great mystery of eternal salvation through the offering of Christ as divine Victim who propitiates the wrath of God - not for Himself, but for us sinners. 

The mangled body on the tree belongs to the Creator.

It is He Who hangs there between heaven and earth, blood surging from His hands and feet, in agony twisting to breathe and endure both the physical torments and the humiliating contempt of His own people. 

There is no other way to overcome evil we are told.

We must appropriate this sacrifice personally, to our own souls by our own free will. 

We must own the God-Man, condemned by the Jews, crucified by the Romans, abandoned by all but a tiny handful after He had spent His brief yet full life doing only good to the helpless. 

I do not understand any of this.

The problem of evil is NOT resolved for me by this mystery.

But there is even for my brute ignorance, something marvelous and all-encompassing about the Galilean impaled during Passover between two capital criminals. 

Why, Lord?

Wasn't there some other way?

Didn't You pray, "Abba Father, please let this cup pass from me?"

Stripes and thorns and nails and a spear thrust through your innocent heart - THIS is the way we must trod to be delivered from the consequences of our very real and personal sins?

I totter on the precipice of despair to weigh this moral equation on my utterly corrupt and inadequate conscience.

How can I follow you, Lord? Follow You here?

Here on Golgotha's bloody summit with the Blessed Virgin Mary?

I freely confess I have no answers.

The problem of evil remains. It is strong, convincing, logical, compelling, relentless, concrete, real, and we are all intimate with it.

This Lent I step out into the darkness of my greatest fear - that of eternal damnation - trembling, weak, scandalized, and unsure. I pray for the grace of hope. Only hope can overcome the Tempter's smooth and efficient logic. I cannot attain to any peace in my intellect, yet I know without the gratuitous gift of supernatural hope, I am and will be lost.

Son of David, we both know I deserve hell. Please don't let the enemy win. 

I need You.