Month: October 2026

Inner Gold and the Fear of Insignificance

(A portion of a retreat talk given to the Deacons of the Diocese of Pembroke, Oct 20, 2026)

Deacon Douglas McManaman

There are some interesting and useful insights we can borrow from Jungian psychology that I believe can help us to understand certain dynamics of parish life and clerical ministry. In Jungian psychology, the shadow refers primarily to the unconscious part of the psyche that contains traits, desires, and impulses that the conscious ego rejects, refuses to acknowledge, and thus represses. This realm holds qualities that trigger shame, guilt, or societal disapproval. The way to spot the shadow is to pay attention to how we attribute our own disowned traits to others, that is, how we project them outside of ourselves. For example, if a person has an intense and irrational dislike for strong women, it will often mean a person’s shadow contains a repressed anima, the feminine aspect of the male psyche. It is rejected as inferior and shameful, and then projected onto women, who are henceforth regarded as inferior. The kind of women such a person prefers are the submissive kind, the sycophants, while strong and independent minded women are particularly despised. The anima is a positive, but in the repressed person it is seen as a negative for any number of cultural reasons. There’s an old expression that points to this phenomenon, namely, “We only see and others what we see in ourselves”; and by extension, we really only hate in others what we hate in ourselves. 

There is, however, such a thing as shadow gold, or the golden shadow. This is not a negative, but contains suppressed positive traits like untapped creativity, or spontaneous joy that might have been discouraged during childhood, or leadership qualities, a good critical mind, etc. Jungian analyst Robert A. Johnson writes: 

Everyone has inner gold. It isn’t created, but it does have to be discovered.… When we awaken to a new possibility in our lives, we often see it first in another person. A part of us that has been hidden is about to emerge, but it doesn’t go in a straight line from our unconscious to becoming conscious. It travels by way of an intermediary, a host. We project our gold onto someone, and suddenly we’re consumed with that person. The first inkling of this is when the other person appears to be so luminous that he (or she) glows in the dark. That’s a sure sign that something is changing in us and we are projecting our gold onto the other person. When we observe the things we attribute to the other person, we see our own depth and meaning. Our gold goes first from us to them. Eventually it will come back to us. Projecting our inner gold offers us the best chance for an advance in consciousness. (Robert A., Johnson. Inner Gold: Understanding Psychological Projection, Asheville, NC: Koa Books. Kindle Edition, pp. 3-4.)

Such projection of our own inner gold is necessary for a time, but we need to take it back eventually, or help others take back their own inner gold, when they are ready. If a person does not get back their inner gold, they will remain in some ways a perpetual child. Johnson continues: 

The exchange of gold is a mysterious process. It is our gold, but it’s too heavy for us, so we need someone else to carry it for a time. That person becomes synonymous with meaning. We follow him with an eagle eye wherever he goes. His smile can raise us to heavenly heights, his frown will hurl us to hellish depths, so great is the power of meaning. Sometimes the exchange of gold takes the form of hero worship.

… You put your own gold onto somebody until you’re able to hold it yourself. … I’ve made my way in this world by a series of carriers of specific gold. With the aid of heroes, I’ve proceeded in the way an alpine climber hammers in his piton, secures his rope, pulls himself up to the piton, and gets hold of it. This is how we grow. Everyone comes to be where he or she is now, to some extent, through the exchange of gold. 

When the exchange of gold proceeds well, we mature and eventually become strong enough to ask for our gold back. It might be awkward at first. We might have to slam the door as we exit, to convince ourselves that we’re leaving. We act in this kind of adolescent way, clumsy at retrieving our gold, because we don’t really understand what’s going on. Carrying someone’s gold is a fine art and a high responsibility. If you are the recipient of someone’s gold, hold it carefully and be prepared to give it back within a microsecond’s notice. Unfortunately, there are people who collect gold and refuse to give it back. It’s a kind of murder. They collect an entourage or followers and exploit them. …

It is only after you get your gold back that you can see the gold of the other person. When the time is right, when you are ready to bear the weight, you must get your gold back. If you can do it with dignity and tact, that’s best. But you must get it back, one way or another. (Ibid., pp. 5-6)

And that’s one of the fundamental problems with clericalism. The cleric becomes the hero. Of course, some priests feel the weight of that gold and don’t want any part of it–some are even crushed by it. Others, however, want it, feed on it, and will hang on to this gold–which really belongs to the person projecting it–and such a cleric will refuse to give it back. It is the source of his identity, a persona (mask), a sense of self they were lacking without it. In short, it gives them a sense of importance. This, of course, is a very unhealthy state of affairs. 

A healthy pastor or spiritual guide will act as a catalyst for individuation, which in Jungian terms  is the lifelong process of psychological development in which a person integrates the conscious and unconscious parts of the psyche to become whole, unique, and authentic. Our job is to hold the golden shadow temporarily, and then gently point the mirror back at the follower, saying, “The holiness and wisdom you see in me is actually your own.” Clericalism is the systemic refusal to say those words.

The other side of this is that some of the laity readily project that inner gold onto clergy and refuse to take back their inner gold. This is where we idealize clergy, that is, put priests/bishops on pedestals. The cleric’s role–one of them at least–is to help the faithful get to the point where they are able to take back their gold they projected in the first place. In theological terms, the role of the clergy is to help them to discover their baptismal priesthood. 

In addition to their natural gifts, their inner gold also includes the gifts of the Holy Spirit, the theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity, and specific charisms that have been given to them for the building up of the body of Christ, etc. The unhealthy pastor, however, keeps them children; he relishes clerical privilege and is simply unable or unwilling to help the faithful tap into that baptismal priesthood and the gifts they’ve been given to serve the Church. At the root of this stifling clerical elitism is the fear of becoming insignificant, and so he represses this into the shadow realm and projects it upon the laity, regarding them as insignificant, or of much lesser significance. The way around this is to become conscious of this fear and embrace that insignificance. 

That is why reflecting on death is so important, and clergy are given that opportunity every time they preside over a funeral and a burial. The fact of the matter is that we are insignificant. Or better yet, we are and we are not. We matter to God, who alone matters, and so we have a significance that is immeasurable, but the world will go on soon after our own funeral is over, and from that angle we have very little significance, a significance the world does not recognize and can only really know when seen from God’s point of view. 

I cannot forget the day of my mother’s funeral–it took place on September 11th. The towers were going down as we were leaving the house to attend her funeral. What is interesting is that I remember feeling angry that the world’s attention is now focused on New York City and not on my mother’s funeral. I remember becoming aware of how absurd this feeling was; for I know the world’s attention was never turned towards my mother. But if I were to put my feelings into words, they would be: “This is my mother’s day. Today is her funeral. Pay attention here. You should be grieving her death, all of you, but now everyone’s attention is turned away from her.” I knew this was irrational, because only a relatively small number knew my mother, but that didn’t seem to change my feelings, for I was angry that this catastrophic event had rendered her more insignificant. 

And yet, to the world, we are insignificant, relatively at least. But this is something we have to embrace. If we embrace that hiddenness and love that insignificance, the result will be that we won’t project it onto others. But we can only really embrace that insignificance when it is safe to do so, and it is safe when we finally experience our own significance in God’s eyes. At that point, nothing else regarding ourselves will matter. Then we will see others as our equals, and we will be delighted to help them take back their inner gold and discover their own specific charisms and ministry, vocation, etc., even when those charisms take the spotlight away from us. Hence, the importance of St. John the Baptist: “He must increase, I must decrease” (Jn 3, 30). For in the end, it is all about Christ, not us. 

 

Empathy and the Heart of Christ

Homily for the 30th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Deacon Douglas McManaman

What stood out to me in these readings for the 30th Sunday in Ordinary Time was a line from the first reading: 

You shall not wrong or oppress a resident alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt (Ex 22, 20).

In order for this commandment to have any weight at all, it was necessary that Israel experience oppression, that is, taste what it is like to suffer as slaves without intrinsic value. Without that experience, the commandment not to oppress a resident alien would have been nothing more than an idea, and ideas are abstract. Israel would be a people without empathy. For the Greeks, knowledge was the product of reasoning on a rather high level of abstraction, and the emotions are to be governed by reason. But for the Jews, knowledge is union, that is, it is a matter of experience. We don’t know something until we are united to it in some way. I don’t know a country until I’ve been there, and the more time I spend there, the more complete is my knowledge; I really don’t know someone until I am united to that person in some sort of friendship that loves the person as another self, as another me–as opposed to merely utilitarian friendships. The Hebrews were aliens once; they tasted alienation, they felt the pain of oppression, so now they really understand why oppressing an alien is reprehensible. Without that experience, they would quickly become an oppressor, particularly in times of prosperity. 

Some people see empathy as a raw emotion that on its own will lead a person or a society to self-destruction, and so they see empathy as dangerous, a passion that needs to be reigned in by logic and reason. But empathy is fundamentally a movement of the heart that follows upon knowledge. In fact, it is a kind of knowledge, the fruit of an experience, a knowing that is a result of union. 

There is so much in our lives that we have no real knowledge of because we simply have not had the experience. That is why as we get older and acquire more experience, we come to understand things we simply did not get when we were younger and without experience–unforunately, there are some who, despite the passing of time, never seem to learn from experience. But typically, when a person becomes a parent of a child, and that child becomes an adolescent, the parent suddenly understands something about his own parents that he just could not understand before. Moreover, when a teacher becomes an administrator, he soon begins to understand something about the administrators that he, in his youth, condemned in his ignorance.

One of my first assignments shortly after ordination was the Queen Street Mental Health Center in Toronto. Not too long after that, I came down with a crippling illness which left me in bed for most of the day in great pain. In fact, the pain was like nothing I ever had to endure before. What made matters worse was that the doctors had no idea what it was–the emergency room doctor thought it might be Polymyalgia Rheumatica, which is a condition that can suddenly come upon men over 50, and there is no known cure. That was frightening, because I knew that I could not return to the classroom should this persist. The worst part of this suffering, however, was the feeling of profound despair. I was surrounded by a dark cloud that felt as if it would never lift. Every night I was on the phone with my spiritual director, who was content simply to listen. At one point I said to him: “I think I’m beginning to understand what my patients have to go through every day”, referring to those who have to live with clinical depression and who have to learn how to live not one week at a time, nor one day at a time, but one moment at a time.

Eventually the illness began to subside and after some time I was weaned off the prednisone, but the experience was very important for me, because it gave me a much greater understanding of the patients I visit, a much deeper empathy. As a result, there are certain things I would never say to a person suffering from clinical depression precisely because I had gone through an experience that was really only a small taste of what they have gone through for most of their lives. People say all sorts of things that they believe are helpful but are in fact hurtful and alienating precisely because they don’t know any better, and they don’t know any better because they haven’t experienced certain aspects of human life. The result is a lack of empathy, at least with respect to certain situations.

For many years now I have maintained that human beings are at their worst in times of prosperity but at their best in times of suffering. We see this on a national level as well as an individual level. When a nation is enjoying great prosperity, the result is not necessarily gratitude and a willingness to share the fruits of that prosperity with others less fortunate, but an increase in greed, a fear of immigrants, and an increase in cruelty, racism, and incidents of racist violence. But when a nation suddenly experiences economic hardship, i.e. the Great Depression, or war, etc., we see an increase of moral heroism. And this is true on an individual level as well. Prosperity does not bring out the best in us, but often the worst, while suffering tends to make us much more humane. 

And that is why God permits suffering in this world. He does not will suffering upon us, but he does allow it. But more to the point, God has joined himself to human suffering in joining a human nature to himself in the Person of the Word, and in his passion and death on the cross. Because of that divine presence in the depths of our humanity, we don’t suffer alone. In fact, we acquire a certain dignity in our suffering, because we keep Christ company in his suffering, and he in ours. 

The life of Christ is a victory over the darkness of suffering and death, and it is only in him, in the Person of Christ, that we are given the strength to be victorious over the darkness of our sufferings and ultimately our death. Without any kind of suffering in our lives, human nature is such that we’d gradually become loveless, self-centered, focused only on our own comfort level. Suffering makes genuine empathy for others who suffer a real possibility. And that was how God described the change that the New Covenant would bring about: “I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh” (Ez 36, 26). 

In other words, he gives us the capacity of love. When our life is united to Christ’s, who was a man of sorrows, a man of suffering, we become like him. Our soul is beautified by that union with him. Without that and with a life of ease and constant pleasures, we can become relatively loveless and unable to empathize with those whose lives are difficult, and the result is we remain indifferent to them. But suffering can bring us a new heart, because in the depth of our suffering, we encounter the heart of Christ. 

 

 

Liturgy, Love, and Hypocrisy

A Short Reflection on the Gospel for Wednesday, the 28th Week in Ordinary Time.
Deacon Douglas McManaman

The Lord said: “Woe to you Pharisees! You pay tithes of mint and of rue and of every garden herb,
but you pay no attention to judgment and to love for God. These you should have done, without overlooking the others. Woe to you Pharisees! You love the seat of honor in synagogues and greetings in marketplaces.  Woe to you! You are like unseen graves over which people unknowingly walk.” Then one of the scholars of the law said to him in reply, “Teacher, by saying this you are insulting us too.” And he said, “Woe also to you scholars of the law! You impose on people burdens hard to carry, but you yourselves do not lift one finger to touch them.”

The good news of the gospel is not a heavy burden, for Christ said it: “Come to me all you who labor and are heavy burdened, and I will give you rest. For my yolk is easy, my burden is light”. We know the gospel has been corrupted when it becomes burdensome. Life itself is filled with burdens, but the gospel is the good news of the kingdom of God, the redemptive presence of God through the power of his reconciling Spirit. Participating in that kingdom (participating in the risen Christ) does not remove life’s burdens, but it does give us the power to carry them with joy and added strength, in order to rise above them.

That kingdom is within you, we are told, (Lk 17, 20-21), and so the joy of participating in that kingdom is to begin today. Joy, however, is very different from pleasure, as Merton so famously pointed out.[1] I spent the first fifteen years of my teaching career making difficult thought easy for my students to grasp. Germain Grisez is one moral philosopher that I spent much time re-formulating, since his work is highly structured, and adolescents need and appreciate structure. One of the more interesting moral principles formulated by Grisez is that “One should not choose on the basis of emotions which bear upon empirical aspects of intelligible goods (or bads) in a way which interferes with a more perfect sharing in the good or avoidance of the bad.” [2] This is not an easy principle to understand, but Grisez explains it thus: “Violating this mode means sacrificing reality to appearance, as is done, typically, by someone more interested in the conscious experience of enjoying a good or avoiding an evil than the reality.” An example of this might be drug use: a person opts for the “feeling” of having his life all together (integration) by getting high, but without the reality of that integration or integrity, which takes time and effort to achieve.

Now, there are certain “empirical aspects” to the liturgy, such as ambiance, lighting, incense, beautiful vestments, colors, the smell of flowers, art, stained glass, choral music, chant, silence, etc. But the intelligible human good pursued and expressed in the liturgy is, or is supposed to be, the good of “religion”, which is, in short, “relationship with God”.  But just as it is possible to be motivated by the “empirical”, that is, the sensual, without a proper interest for the intelligible human good of which the empirical is only an aspect, it is very possible to love the empirical aspects of the liturgy without a corresponding love for all that the liturgy is supposed to represent, namely the love and worship of God and, by extension, the love of neighbour. In other words, it is very possible for a condescending, arrogant, envious, controlling, indifferent, self-centered, narcissistic, misogynistic cleric to “love the liturgy”. 

Pious devotions, orthodoxy (being right), liturgical choreography, the love of vestments, etc., are not the same thing as holiness. The former can and often do amount to sanctimony. But holiness is love, and sacrifice is the language of love, and love bears upon concrete human beings, especially those who struggle, who are burdened by life’s challenges. Love does not separate oneself from the mess of broken human lives, but is a willingness to enter into the sufferings of others for their sake and for Christ’s sake, because love sees beyond the superficial and changeable characteristics of a human person to the very core of the person who may not be able to say “I am a physician”, or “I am a teacher”, or “I am a highly talented musician”, or “I am a writer”, “a renowned actor”, etc., but can say “I am”, along with everyone else. It is in this that a person exists in the image and likeness of God, who revealed Himself to Moses as “I AM”. 

Notes

  1. “Never seek rest in pleasure, for you were not created for pleasure; you were created for joy. And if you do not know the difference between pleasure and joy, you have not yet begun to live”.
  2. The Way of the Lord Jesus: Christian Moral Principles, Vol. 1. Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1983. P. 214.



Living on the Plane of Faith

Homily for the 28th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Deacon Douglas McManaman

The gospel for today, the 28th Sunday in Ordinary Time, compares the kingdom of God to a king who gives a wedding banquet for his son, a feast of rich foods and choice wines. And so we can believe that heaven is going to be one great eternal party. However, the kingdom of God, Christ tells us, is within you (Lk 17, 21). It is here, it has been established in Christ’s death and resurrection, a kingdom that grows and develops throughout history, and so the party is meant to begin now. And we know it is a party that serves wine, because Christ’s first miracle was at the wedding of Cana where they ran out of wine, so Jesus changed gallons of dirty water into the finest wine, which, according to the twenty fifth chapter of Isaiah, is really an announcement that the Messiah has come and is here to achieve a complete victory over death. 

But wine is a symbol of joy; for Psalm 104 tells us that “God created wine to cheer the heart of man”. And so although heaven is going to be an eternal state of unimaginable joy, the very fact that the kingdom of heaven is “within you” means that this life is meant to be the beginnings of that state of supernatural joy. 

Everyone is invited to this feast, the good and the bad alike–not just the good. The invitation, therefore, does not depend on being a person of great moral nobility. The worst of the worst are invited. The problem, of course, is that not everyone accepts the invitation. Some people are just not interested. They make light of it. They have better things to do, matters of business, establishing the economic conditions for a successful and pleasant life, etc. In the first century, the religious leaders, the Pharisees and the Sadducees, represent those who refuse the invitation, while the tax collectors, prostitutes, the rejects, the liturgically unclean, sinners, etc., represent those who were brought in–the latter accepted the invitation to the joyful celebration; the former did not. In other words, the ragamuffins believed Jesus, while the religious elite refused to do so. But this is precisely the will of his Father. Jesus said: “For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in him may have eternal life, and I shall raise him on the last day” (Jn 6, 40).

But the question is this: “What did Jesus do that required faith?” The answer is that he forgave sins–which in many ways is a claim to divinity. If you recall the paralytic who was lowered through the roof on a stretcher. Jesus said to him: “Child, your sins are forgiven”. But the scribes reacted. They said: “He is blaspheming. Who but God alone can forgive sins?” And it is indeed true, only God can forgive sins. But Jesus also forgave the woman caught in adultery, as well as the woman in Simon the Pharisee’s house who anointed Jesus’ feet with expensive ointment. And of course, his death on the cross is a sacrifice for the forgiveness of sins. St. Paul said: “God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us”. What did the woman caught in adultery do to merit forgiveness? Nothing. What did Lazarus or the twelve year old girl do to merit being raised from the dead. Nothing. 

In other words, our redemption, our invitation to the eternal wedding banquet, did not come after we got our act together. No, Christ’s death and resurrection took place while we were still a mess. And the world is still a mess. Our lives are still a mess. But the good news is that “cleaning up our act” is not a condition for our presence at the party. What all this points to is the utter generosity of divine grace. Our debt has been cancelled. Why? Not on account of anything we did. The only requirement on our part is a trusting faith. 

The good news of the gospel brings joy, not sadness. It is not a heavy burden. It is light and easy, as Christ said: “Come to me all you who labor and are heavy burdened, and I will give you rest. For my yoke is easy, my burden is light”. We know the gospel has been corrupted when it becomes heavy and burdensome. Life itself is often heavily burdensome, and although the gospel may not remove such burdens, it does bring light, life and strength to our lives so that we may be victorious over those burdens and difficulties. As a volunteer chaplain in a hospital, I will tell you that there is a profoundly significant difference between those who have faith in Christ and those who do not. When I encounter patients with genuine faith, they are joyful, even in the midst of their suffering. They smile, they are grateful, they don’t complain, they are gracious, kind, and thoughtful, which is already a witness to victory over their sickness. Sickness has not defeated them. But those who lack that faith, a light has gone out, and their eyes do not radiate joy. 

But imagine this: Imagine committing a very serious felony, and you’ve been charged, and you are most certainly going to be convicted and sent to prison for the rest of your life, because you cannot by any means pay the debt that your crime has created. And you’ve been waiting a long time behind bars for your trial date. Then one day you receive a visit from the Prosecutor. All charges have been dropped. The prison bars are now open. You are free to go.  

And somehow, in a way that you cannot yet understand, the harm your crime caused others has been transformed such that your victims come out victorious, fully restored and of radiant beauty. You don’t understand how that’s possible, but you are assured that is the case. Think of the joy that would be yours, after living in deep darkness caused by anxiety and dread. It would very much be comparable to opening a bottle of the best wine and drinking till your hearts content. 

Those who refuse the invitation can be compared to a felon who refuses to believe the charges have been dropped and the prison bars have been opened, and so he stays put, sits right there in the prison cell and doesn’t move. He does not celebrate, because he doesn’t believe he’s been freed. In fact, it is probably more true to say that he doesn’t really believe he’s a prisoner; he doesn’t know how miserable his life is now and much better it could be. He certainly does not believe he’s won the lottery. In his mind the gospel is a fairytale.

But that’s our situation. We have been liberated and an inexhaustible treasure is ours for the taking. To believe that, however, is one of the most difficult things for human beings to believe. Accepting the reality of such a crazy deal is not easy at all. It just seems too good to be true.

Now, it was Jewish custom in the first century for a wealthy host to provide festal garments for the guests invited to the feast. Because the invitation went out to everyone on the streets, good and bad alike, no one was expected to own a royal wedding garment. Therefore, the man in this parable who was without a royal garment did not lack resources. He simply rejected the king’s provided clothing in favor of his own. Now the clue to what this means is in the sixty fourth chapter of Isaiah: “We have all become like something unclean, all our just deeds are like polluted rags”. In other words, the man without a festal garment represents the person who relies on his own works, which are like polluted rags. But as St. Paul says: we are not saved by our works, we are saved by grace through faith: “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not from you; it is the gift of God; it is not from works, so no one may boast” (Eph 2, 8 ff).

However, faith does give rise to genuinely good works. Paul continues: “For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”

There are works that come from grace through faith, and works that don’t come through a living faith, but come from ourselves. This is the person who refuses to wear the garment of grace offered by the king. Instead, he does things his way and for his sake. He relies on his own works to achieve all that he has set out to achieve in his life. This is a life lived not in a spirit of trust in God, but a life that is lived only on the basis of oneself.  

There is a serious difference between a life lived in the spirit of faith and trust that I have been loved and forgiven by God, not spurned and forgotten. When I know through faith that I have been forgiven by God and that Christ died for me, my actions from that point onwards are acts of gratitude and they are rooted in the real desire to love him back. But without that faith, without receiving and wearing the wedding garment of Christ’s supernatural grace, my works are not the expression of gratitude nor are they rooted in a longing to love him back for his generosity to me. The result is that my life is lived completely on a horizontal plane–there is no vertical element in my life. I am not moved to pray, nor do I see the world from God’s point of view.  

But it is a living faith that allows me to believe I am loved by God and freed from the prison bars of death, and that renders you and me able to love Christ; for those who are forgiven much, love much, as Jesus said to Simon the Pharisee. But the one to whom little is forgiven, loves little. And then I begin to see the world differently. I will begin to see Christ in everything, like Irish poet John Donne who could say that “I see his blood upon the rose and his face in every flower, his crown of thorns in every thorn, and his cross is every tree”.* Above all, however, we see the face of Christ in the suffering faces of our neighbor. 

And that’s what evangelization is primarily. We know that unless we love others, pay attention to them, visit them, feed and clothe them, they are not going to know that they are loved and that they have importance, but that is what we want above all when we are genuinely transformed by the love that God has for us personally. That’s how we proclaim the good news of our salvation. 

So our faith is not about having the right answers. It’s not about apologetics, defending the faith, rather, it’s about “I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me, sick and you cared for me, in prison and you visited me.” What these verses reveal is that the hungry, the poor, the sick, and imprisoned–hence, even the guilty–have someone joined to them, such that when I relate to them I relate to that someone, and of course that someone is God the Son. In his Incarnation, he has joined himself to every human person, good and bad alike. 

Proclaiming the good news, or evangelization, is really about making the world aware of that mysterious and hidden presence in each one, and we do that only if we can first see and then respond to that hidden presence in each person. 

 

*I See His Blood Upon the Rose
by Joseph Mary Plunkett

 

I see his blood upon the rose

And in the stars the glory of his eyes,

His body gleams amid eternal snows,

His tears fall from the skies.

I see his face in every flower;

The thunder and the singing of the birds

Are but his voice—and carven by his power

Rocks are his written words.

All pathways by his feet are worn,

His strong heart stirs the ever-beating sea,

His crown of thorns is twined with every thorn,

His cross is every tree.