Month: December 2021

Dcn D. McManaman

And Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart.

            This is a very revealing line of the gospel, and it tells us something of Mary’s inner life. She treasured all these things, all that the Shepherds said regarding the message told to them by the angel who appeared, and she pondered them, treasured them. Jesus said in the gospel of Matthew: “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also”. Where is Mary’s treasure? It’s in the gospel message of her son, and her heart was, from the very beginning and to the very end of her life, entirely focused on her son, Jesus.

        Mary is Theotokos, which means “God-bearer”. She carried Christ in her womb for nine months, and after that, she carried him in her heart, by pondering the mystery that he is. And Mary was “full of grace”. That was the title used by Gabriel to address Mary. The angel did not address her by name; but rather: “Hail, full of grace”. That is the only place in the entire Scriptures where an angel addresses anyone by a title. She was full of grace right from the beginning, in the womb, because if a container is full vertically, it is also full horizontally. If Mary was full of grace as a young teenager, worthy to be addressed by a title, then she was full of grace extensively as well, right from the womb of her mother, St. Anne. And, of course, this has been the faith of the Church since the beginning: the Immaculate Conception.

        If Mary was full of grace, then she was completely empty of all inordinate love of self. And thus, her prayer life was perfect, completely focused on her son, the eternal Son of God, the savior of the world. That is our purpose in this life: to become a Theotokos, a God-bearer, and John the Baptist expresses in words just what that means: “He must increase; I must decrease” (Jn 3, 30). Mary does not use that expression, because she is perfectly decreased. She said it herself in her Magnificat: “The Lord has looked with favor upon the nothingness of his handmaiden.” She saw her creaturely nothingness, embraced it totally, and so there was complete room in her soul for the fullness of divine grace to be poured into it. The rest of us, on the other hand, have to struggle to actually see and embrace our nothingness, to decrease, so that he, Christ, may increase within us. But that is something that we will never finally achieve in this life. 

        I remember reading from the writings of the early Greek Desert Fathers, from the 4th, 5th, and 6th centuries, and I have to be honest, I’ve never encountered such profound instruction on the inner life, on prayer and the need for constant watchfulness. As I was reading this one day, the thought occurred to me; I said to myself: “I don’t think I pray very well.” I’ve been at this for many years now, totally focused on theology and spirituality, and I turned 60 this year, and I can say at this point that “I don’t think I pray well.”

        And then I remembered something. My good friend, Monsignor Tom Wells of the Archdiocese of Washington D. C, about 24 years ago, told me the very same thing. He said: “I’m beginning to realize that I don’t pray well”. He was in his mid-50s at the time, and I didn’t understand what he was talking about back then. It didn’t make sense to me; he was a very dedicated priest, did a holy hour every day, was loved by countless people, is a martyr of the Church, there is a large golf tournament in his name every year in Washington, there are about 20 priests in the Archdiocese of Washington whose vocations were inspired by this great priest, and he’s telling me that he is beginning to realize that he doesn’t pray very well.

        I recall another very holy and influential priest, in his 70s, asking me to pray for him, because, he said: “the Lord is revealing to me things about myself that I’m finding very difficult to face, my superficiality, my pride, etc.…so pray for me, please, as I leave the country to see my spiritual director”. I was astounded at this; 70 years old, and this man is so far ahead of me on the spiritual life. In short, when it comes to the spiritual life, we never arrive; we are always en route.

        But we must keep moving, because although we might think we’re far advanced along the way, if we have the courage to ask God to let us know just how far along we are or what is it we need to become aware of in ourselves, He will slowly, gradually, piecemeal, reveal it. It has to be piecemeal, because we couldn’t take the full truth about ourselves, we’d probably despair. But it seems to me, from listening to these two great priests and the wisdom of the Desert Fathers, we’re always very far from our goal, so far that we just might despair if it were fully revealed to us.

        The good news is that there is work to do, and our life can only become more joyful, because the more we decrease, the more He increases, and as He increases in us, our lives become more joyful, and our souls become more beautiful.

        Years ago, I remember being in the sacristy of a Church in the U.S, and I heard this small choir of a few young university students singing for a Mass. These were not professional singers, just amateurs. But the thought came to me as I heard them: “God must be really good to be sung to like that”. Their voices immediately directed my attention to God’s goodness. Again, they were not professional singers, just students on summer break and who were part of the regular choir during the year. And it wasn’t the type of music they were singing either; they were singing standard contemporary Church choir music. But there was something about their voices that turned my attention to God’s goodness.

        Let me contrast this with a Christmas special I saw years ago, featuring Andre Bocelli, singing traditional Catholic hymns. And of course, his voice is powerful, and he’s very handsome, but I found that he was not all that inspiring. The reason is that I was too focused on the power and distinct quality of his voice, unlike those university students. But after the commercial break, a bunch of monks were on stage–not real monks, I’m guessing–, and they were dressed in what looked like traditional Benedictine monastic habits, with the hoods up. And they sounded very good. I immediately turned up the volume and thought, wonderful, I’m beginning to feel the inspiration. And then the monks started moving around in a circle, and this one monk comes to the center. And I thought: “Oh, no, please, don’t let it be”. He pulls off the hood, and it’s Andre Bocelli, and he starts belting it out.

        Well, I have to be honest, the inspiration was gone. You see, now the focus was entirely upon him, and yet these hymns were written to praise and glorify God, and the hoods of the monastic habits had the effect of eclipsing the self, of decreasing, so that He may increase. Even the voice of the monk is not to be distinctive and outstanding. But Bocelli pulls off his hood. Why? Well, because it’s really about him, not God. And I think that’s an example of how beauty works; it emerges with the decrease of the self, but is eclipsed as the self increases.

        Even in iconography, you are not supposed to sign the icon. As you know, in western art, the artist signs his painting at the bottom right, but the iconographer is not to do that. The writer of the icon is nothing but an insignificant instrument. But iconographers in the west have begun to sign their icons at the back, and it’s something like “written through the humble hands of so and so”. Well, that’s not supposed to be. And if those hands are so humble, then disappear and say nothing. Icons are not supposed to be entirely original either. You learn the trade from a master, and stay within the tradition, but some people have a very hard time observing that self-cancellation, and so they sign their icons.

        We must decrease, He must increase. The more we decrease, the more beautiful we become, because the more room we make in ourselves for Christ, and he is supremely beautiful. It’s really about becoming Theotokos, pondering the mysteries, treasuring the Person of the Son and his words and actions, and keeping watch over our own tendency to distraction during prayer, not allowing any thought that gives rise to disordered passion. It’s about bringing stillness to the heart and focusing on the real treasure that is there waiting for us. The Lord delights when we pay so much attention to him, but our attention is often very short, thanks to a wandering thought that makes its way in. The secret to that splendor, the secret to real joy, is to become more and more like our Blessed Mother, Theotokos, God-bearer, still in the silent night of this life, pondering the miracle of Christ. Amen.

Deacon D. McManaman

Today is the feast of St. John, Apostle and evangelist. He is “the other” disciple mentioned in the gospel:

“Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went toward the tomb. The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first”. 

What is interesting about the gospel reading is that although John runs ahead and gets to the tomb first, he does not enter, but allows Peter to enter first. An Irish philosopher of the 9th century, John Scotus Erigena, has an interesting interpretation of this passage. He interprets the tomb as representing sacred scripture, while Peter represents faith, and John represents contemplative understanding. Thus, according to the narrative, John waits for Peter to arrive at the tomb and allows him to enter first, and then John follows. The meaning is that in order to understand Scripture, faith must come first, and then understanding follows. St. Augustine often made the same point: “Believe in order to understand”. In other words, do not wait to understand before giving your assent of faith, rather, believe first, and understanding will follow in due time. So there is a risk involved, and understanding is the reward given to those who are willing to risk looking like fools by choosing to believe.

What did John find when he followed Peter into the tomb? He saw the linen wrappings. In other words, he saw that Christ had risen. He did not find a dead Christ, but an empty tomb. And those who enter into the mysteries of the Scriptures with faith, will come away with an experience of the risen Christ. They will know that Christ is risen. This knowledge is a genuine knowledge rooted in faith. We know through faith, that is, we have an interior sense, like a sensus divinitatis, that Christ is risen. We have looked for the dead Christ as an object to behold and we have not found him, because he isn’t dead. He is alive and he is behind us, looking at us, and we are aware of this. It’s very much like the experience of someone who says “I feel like someone is watching me”. That is the experience; an awareness that I am known. 

To those without faith, Scripture is a dead letter. It’s just a historical text, but with faith, it is experienced as the word of the One who knows us, who is watching us from behind us, so to speak. And it is that gaze of his that guides our interpretation of Scripture. This is sort of like looking out at the objects before us which we can see because the sun that is behind us provides the light, making it possible to see the objects before us. But we cannot behold the sun directly. Wherever we turn, the sun is behind us, never in front of us as an object of our gaze, very much like the experience of the “I”. At this point, the sun is too bright for us to behold directly anyways, but one day we will be able to stare directly at the sun, so to speak. The more we grow in an awareness of his presence behind us, that interior and spiritual presence, the more we will understand the deeper meanings of Scripture.  

Dcn D. McManaman (Chaplain of the CTG, Toronto)

This year our pastor in Aurora assigned the pastoral team to visit the schools within the parish boundaries, and we’ve each been assigned a specific number of classes to visit, to read a scripture with the kids, and discuss it, and we do that once a month. This year we are reading and discussing one miracle a month. One thing that always impresses me about the students I visit in grade 4, 5, and 6, is the amount of faith they have, as well as the amount of understanding of what it is we have just read. That testifies to two things: the light of faith, which is a light that is rooted in the gift of faith which they received in Baptism, and it also testifies to the good work of the parents–not to mention some teachers.

In the gospel today, the teachers of the Law were astounded at Jesus’ understanding and his wisdom. Where did Jesus get his understanding? Well, there are two sources. First, there’s no doubt from this gospel that he had an understanding of his divine sonship. He said to Mary and Joseph: “Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” Mary didn’t quite understand what he meant, but he did. He had an understanding of his divine sonship, which is why he refers to God as ‘my Father’, which was unique in the history of Israel.

But Jesus is fully human as well. When and in what way did the divine mind of the Son intersect with Jesus’ human mind? We don’t really know the answer to that question. But if he was like us in all things but sin, then it follows that he must have experienced human constraints and limits and to some degree needed the guidance of others, like his parents. And so, the other source of his understanding and wisdom would have come from Mary and Joseph. The primary duty of the father of a Jewish household was to pass down the teachings of the Torah to his children. Jesus also got his learning from his mother, because the mother of a Jewish household has a significant role as teacher, as it says in Proverbs, chapters 1 and 6. 

And what were they doing in Jerusalem? Like a faithful Jewish family, they were there for the feast of Passover, and the gospel tells us that they would go every year. The reason that Jews celebrate feasts is that history exists in the memories of people, and memories fade, unless we work to keep them alive. That is why the Lord commanded Israel to celebrate feasts throughout the year, feasts that commemorate God’s action in history. If they remember God’s action in history, they will remain grateful. If they forget, they will lose gratitude and become an irreligious people–the virtue of religion is always rooted in gratitude. All the requirements of the Torah, the rituals in all their detail, exist for the sake of reminding, keeping history alive in the memories of the Jews. The parents’ primary duty was to pass down the teachings of the Torah to their children. Everything else was secondary. Mary and Joseph fulfilled what was their primary duty, and the reaction of the teachers of the law clearly shows this. 

And, of course, Catholicism comes out of Judaism, and we too have a liturgical year dotted with feasts and solemnities, and it is all geared to remembering and re-living, and entering into the mystery of Christ’s life. It is rich in content. One of the things that Father Arthur Lee began doing for weekday Mass was to provide a brief homily on the life of the particular saint whose feast it is that day. And it is always very inspiring to hear, and others have said that as well. I think the reason it is inspiring is that the saints are our older siblings, and when we hear about them, we are learning about our own family, our own family history. We get a better sense that we really do belong to a larger family that extends all the way back centuries, and we belong to a historical tradition that is much larger than our current situation in the world. 

I remember the weekend I visited my friend Father Don Sanvido–which I would do quite often, to give him a break from preaching. One Saturday morning I woke up early, about 5 a.m, and so I went to his living room and prayed the breviary, and when I was done, I looked up and across the living room at the far end was a bookshelf, and I noticed the four volume set of Butler’s Lives of the saints. So I got up and walked over to it, closed my eyes, reached out and grabbed a volume, opened it up and put my finger on the page, and where my finger landed, I would read the life of that saint. I’d randomly picked a 3rd century saint that I’d never heard of before, and just read the page and a half of her life. And I remember, after reading it, feeling so inspired, built up as if I had just consumed something nutritious. I put the volume back and did it again, closed my eyes and randomly selected a volume and a page, and I got some 5th century unknown saint, and his life was so different from the previous, such a different personality, but I remember again feeling so exhilarated by his life. 

If it is true that we only really know ourselves in community, especially and above all in the first and smaller community of the family, then we really do come to a deeper understanding of ourselves when we come to know the lives of the saints, because we come to a deeper understanding of our own larger family, our own siblings. 

And this brings me to a final point. The students I had over the years were always interested in the diabolical, and they had all sorts of questions about exorcism, possession, the demonic, and in many ways that’s a problem. They bought into the lie of Hollywood, a lie that many in this world have bought into. The lie is that evil is interesting, but goodness is boring. Newspapers function on that lie, which is why they won’t publish stories about a school raising over 50 thousand food items for the poor at Christmas, for example, but they will publish a story about a stabbing that took place in a school. The truth is the complete reverse: goodness is profoundly interesting and inspiring, but evil is ultimately boring. Goodness has depth; evil is nauseatingly empty. But many people typically think otherwise. There’s an exorcist in the US who sometimes gives talks at universities. The lecture halls are always jam packed, not even standing room. Why? Students think evil is intriguing. If someone was there giving a talk on Scripture or the lives of some saints, the lecture hall would be virtually empty. But there’s no depth to evil, and in the end, it disappoints. Only goodness has the capacity to inspire, and when we are in touch with that historical tradition of ours that goes all the way back to the Old Testament, through the New Testament and through the centuries with the lives of the saints, we are enriched, and when we pass that on to our children, they too are enriched. 

Young people love the faith, they love it when the Scriptures are explained to them without draining them of their mystery, and they love the stories of the lives of great saints. And that’s the great dignity of parenting. It’s the most important work. I used to ask students what’s the most important work, and they’d give me all sorts of answers from politician, medical doctor, police officer, court judge, etc., but of course the answer is parenting. That they don’t know that is revealing. But parenting is the most important work. And if you think about it, everything we do in the Church, from daily Mass to baptism prep, confirmation prep, marriage prep, baptisms, Confirmation, first communion, and marriages, funerals, etc., it is all ordered to the service of the family. 

The readings today are joyful. They announce good news.  The gospel today is the magnificat; Mary’s magnification of the Lord.  

After reading the magnificat, one could ask the question: “When did God scatter the proud, and when did he bring down the powerful from their thrones and lift up the lowly? When did he send the rich away empty?”  These are joyful words, for they speak of victory, but when in history did this ever happen? He certainly didn’t do that in the first century. Herod slaughtered the innocents, and the first 300 years of the Church’s existence was trial and persecution by ruthless emperors. The lowly were being killed; the mighty and the powerful remained where they were.

In many ways, this magnificat is like the first story of creation in Genesis. At the end of the creation story, after the creation of the world, God saw all that He had made and it was very good. But what did God see? I think the best interpretation of this text is that God beholds the entire order of creation, including time and history, not simply a portion at the beginning of time. And so we know that history will end in a way that is pleasing to God. He will be victorious over darkness, which entered the picture on the first day of creation, if you recall that account–God said ‘let there be light’… and he separated light from darkness.

In this magnificat of Mary, she rejoices at the coming of the Messiah, the son of David. He is king. He came to establish his kingdom, and his kingdom will have no end. He will be victorious, according to Scripture. This magnificat takes in the entire picture, it sees the completion of the Messianic age. If the Messiah has come, if she carries the Messiah in her womb, then victory is assured. But this victory is to be worked out in history. The kingdom of God has been established, and Christ reigns in the lives of the faithful. But he does not reign in the hearts of everyone. His kingdom grows not by coercion and force, but by the free assent of the individual person to allow Christ to reign, to have dominion over their lives. And we know from the parables that the kingdom of God grows gradually, larger and larger, throughout history. That kingdom is victorious, but the victory unfolds gradually, through time. In the end, God saw that it was very good. The proud of this world who govern according to their own principles will in the end be on the losing side. And so our task is to continue in the knowledge, through faith, that Christ is victorious, and not to despair, but to do our small part, and in doing so we become part of that victory in the end, and Mary’s joy that we discern in this gospel will be a reflection of our own, just as the song of Hannah in the first reading is a mirror of this joyful song of Mary in the gospel. 

https://www.lifeissues.net/writers/mcm/mcm_305immaculateconception.html

(to be published in Shalom Tidings, 2022)

Deacon Doug McManaman

On one of my pastoral visits to a local elementary school, a young grade 5 girl said to me that she was told by an adult in her life that, with respect to this pandemic, “God is taking a vacation”. Although there is something hopeful in the claim–insofar as vacations come to an end and the vacationer returns and takes care of outstanding business–, I certainly wouldn’t frame it like that. It is a rather dangerous claim to make, for God does not leave us alone even for an instant. In fact, we have God’s undivided attention at every instant of our existence, and children above all need to understand that. It is not possible for a limited human being to give undivided attention to more than one person at the same time, but God can give everyone His undivided attention simultaneously, because God is unlimited. 

It is remarkable to consider what it means that we have God’s undivided attention at every instant of our existence; for it means He loves each one of us as if there is only one of us, that is, as if you are the only one for Him to love. It is as if everything in the universe was created ultimately for you alone, that all this exists to sustain and serve you, i.e, the atmosphere of the planet, the law of gravity and all the other laws of physics, the cycles and the order of nature, etc. In fact, if you or I really knew how much God loves us, we would die of joy. And this life is precisely about learning to be loved like that. That means allowing ourselves to be loved like that, for we tend not to allow that for ourselves because we have a very uncompromising and narrow sense of justice for ourselves and thus don’t see ourselves as deserving of that love, so we choose not to open ourselves to it. But His love for us is not a matter of justice; of course, no one deserves to be loved like that; for one cannot earn the right to be brought into being if one does not exist. And so although His love for me is not a matter of justice, it is a matter of pure gift. After all, God’s justice has been revealed, in the Person of Christ, as absolute mercy.

There is a relationship between that divine love and how we understand ourselves. A person only really knows himself to the degree that he knows how much he is loved by God, and so the more we allow ourselves to “be loved like that” (as if there is only one of us), the deeper will be our own self-understanding; for we will begin to see ourselves as He sees us. If we don’t see ourselves through His eyes, that is, as He sees us, then we are left to see ourselves as we are seen by others. The problem with this, however, is that others rarely if ever see us as we really are–especially if those in our lives do not look at us through God’s eyes–, and if they don’t see us as we really are, they do not love us as we ought to be loved. When the world looks at you, it does not see an inexhaustible mystery; rather, it sees an object, something to be valued according to its utility. But there is nothing mysterious about tools. On the other hand, when God sees you, He sees a genuine mystery, because each human person has been created in the image and likeness of God, and God is the unutterable mystery. Hence, each human person is an inexhaustible mystery whose secret lies hidden within the depths of the inexhaustible mystery of God. 

We have two interiors: 1) a physical interior, and a 2) spiritual interior. A surgeon has access to our physical interior, but he does not thereby have access to our spiritual interior. No one has access to that interior except you and God. In fact, God dwells always in the deepest region of that interior. The way to begin to come to an awareness that you are known by God is to enter into that “universe within”. That is what it means to place ourselves in the presence of God. Few words are necessary within that space; it is enough to simply repeat over and over: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner”. The more time we spend within that space, without distraction, the more we will come to sense that we are being watched, that we have someone’s attention. That is a very positive and enlightening experience; for we begin to see ourselves as someone worthy of attention. We begin to see ourselves as persons, rather than mere individuals. But it begins with entering into the “universe within”, and that experience makes all the difference in the world, because most of us for most of our lives have been reduced to objects, but we know ourselves to be “subjects”–persons of intrinsic worth. This “objectification” is in many ways the source of a great deal of personal anger and feelings of alienation, but as we spend more time within that interior where the Lord awaits us, the less alienated we will begin to feel and the more peaceful our life becomes. 

(A talk delivered to Catholic students of McMaster University)

http://www.lifeissues.net/writers/mcm/mcm_256somethoughts.html