suffering

A Reflection on Beauty in Time

Deacon Douglas McManaman

Ever since I retired, I’ve had more time to reflect upon my years as a teacher, and my years of friendship with some of my colleagues, and my good friends. Sometimes I have to drive to a nearby town for an eye appointment, and I’ll have to drive right past the school at which I taught for the past 20 years, and when I do so, I experience a certain euphoria, all as a result of an influx of various memories. 

So much has been forgotten, so many students that have passed through my classroom, the details of so many days, etc., and although I do remember many things, I do think I’ve forgotten more than I remember. But there is a joy there that I experience when I am brought back to that place, among other places.

My good friend is a retired priest, but I often think of my last 30 years with him, visiting him when he was stationed at this or that parish, and then after I was ordained in 2008 I could give him a break from preaching. A teaching colleague started to join me on these weekend visits; he’d cook, I’d preach, and our friend would smoke cigarettes and relax. Those were great memories. And they’re gone.  

I am acutely aware that there was something beautiful in those moments, something I miss, and something I long to recover, to experience again. And I believe this is the root of tradition, which is an attempt to make the past present once again. We believe that doing something the same way, repeating an action, making it ritual, like singing happy birthday and blowing out candles, or opening presents on Christmas morning and having turkey in the evening, allows us to experience once again what we experienced in the past, which now, in the present, we long for. We long to connect to that past, to the people who perhaps are no longer with us. 

But it begins with seeing something in the past that we didn’t quite see back then, or were not explicitly aware of at the time. It seems that time strips away some of the dross of our experiences and leaves us with a memory that is purified, and something now radiates. 

I became more and more aware of this the older I got. I began to realize that this beauty that I saw when looking back, was there at the time, when it was not past, but present, but something prevented me from seeing it at the time, or appreciating it. It was buried underneath a host of baggage–perhaps stress, anxiety, preoccupation with what needs to be done at the moment, marking tests or creating exams, etc. What this means is that today, in the present moment, that element, that nugget of beauty that I will appreciate and see clearly 10 or so years from now (looking back and recalling this present moment), is here now, at this moment. 

So, the question is: Is there a way for me to become aware of it now, so that I can delight in it now, rather than 20 years from now? And so a few years ago I began to really look for it in the present, to look for this element, this beauty, that I know I will see in retrospect.

So I know that one day I’m going to look back and remember teaching Confirmation to these kids, in the church basement either at St Lawrence the Martyr, or Blessed Trinity, or Sacred Heart in Uxbridge, taking their questions, questioning them, and I’m going to miss those moments, so, now, when I am teaching these classes, I am becoming more aware of that hidden element in the here and now. Same with preaching. One day I won’t be preaching anymore, but I’ll recall those times when I was preaching at this Church or that Church, and I’ll see something, something very memorable. I visit the hospitals often, at least once a week. Someday I might be a patient at Southlake hospital, and I’ll recall the years when I’d walk the halls and visit the patients, and I know I will long for those moments again, and I am aware of that now when I am in the hospital visiting patients, walking the halls and stairwells, making my way to their rooms. It’s hard to be attuned to this when we are young, because the young mind is just not focused on the present moment, but on the future. 

And yet, the moments keep on drifting into the past. I am aware that when I discern that element in the present moment, I will often try to grasp on to it and keep it, but I can’t do it. It still drifts into the past. And it is always sad to see it drift away like that. 

And yet, for God, nothing is past. God is the eternal present. So, does that mean when we die and enter into his rest, that all those moments will be recovered in some way? That we will experience the accumulated joy of each one of those moments, in the eternal present? 

I think so. I am quite convinced that this is part of the joy of heaven. We are not to experience the fullness of that joy here, it will always escape our attempts to capture it, but it will be returned to us one hundredfold later on, in eternity. 

Existence in time is a constant dying, drifting into the non-existent past. But Christ conquered death; he rose from the dead, so existence in time is a constant dying, each moment of which will rise again, in glory. Tradition seeks to recover the past, to make it present again, like the Mass, which actually does make present the sacrifice of Calvary. But in heaven, what tradition aims to achieve will be achieved. The joy of heaven will include the joys of each present moment of our existence, and so the deaths of each moment are not permanent; we can look at each moment and instead of saying “good-bye”, we can say: “see you again soon”. 

Now, the gospel reading for the 2nd Sunday of Lent, was the Transfiguration. You know it well, so I’m not going to read it, but I have always been struck by what Peter says there: 

Rabbi, it is good that we are here!
Let us make three tents:
one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.

And every time I read that, I think of Father Frank Kelly, a homily that he gave way back in the early 90s, and I think it was when we came home from a retreat in New Jersey, we took a bunch of students, and we had Mass on our return. And the translation at that time was: “It is wonderful for us to be here”. That’s a better translation than what we have now.

The Greek word here is not “good” as in “It is good to be here”. The Greek word is kalon. It is kalon for us to be here. 

Aristotle used that word kalon in his Nicomachean Ethics. The word kalon is derived from kaleo, which means attractive, and it is a word used in the context of aesthetics, the study of art and the beautiful. The kalon in Aristotle is best translated as the morally beautiful. 

The gospel really should read: “It is beautiful for us to be here”, or “morally beautiful to be here”. The beauty is the moral atmosphere. This is an experience of beauty, the divine beauty. And it is an aesthetic experience that Peter, James, and John want to perpetuate. They want to keep it from drifting into the past.

Moses and Elijah, they are from the past, but they are present, in the present moment of the Transfiguration, contributing to its beauty; they represent salvation history before Christ. What is past is made present, in the here and now, through Christ. 

God the Son joined a human nature to himself. The eternal, who is Beauty Itself, has entered into time and joined himself to the matter of the universe. Now, Pope John Paul II said often, in joining a human nature, God the Son joined himself as it were to every human being. He is present to every human person. Those who have the theological virtue of faith, those who have allowed Christ the king to reign in their lives, are given the light of grace, the light of faith. They have become aware of that deep and hidden presence, the presence of God the Son within the interior of the soul. That’s the kalon that exists at every moment, within every moment, in the lives of the faithful. That element of beauty that we see when looking back at things that have past is the kalon of the divine presence, stripped of the dross that acted as a distraction at the time. Our life is transfigured in Christ, right now, but there is so much that eclipses the radiance that the present moment contains. Later on, our memories of these events unveil the kalon so that we have a minor transfiguration experience.

To find that experience in the present, underneath the current dross that clouds it, we need to learn to be present. To be present is to be in the present. And to be present is a skill. It is interesting how the two words are akin: present and presence. To be present to another is to be in the presence of another, to be aware of their presence–not just their position in space. To be in the here and now, focused on the person before us. It is easy to be focused on a great person, but being present to the lowest of the low, that’s a skill. It requires an ability to see something in that person that is well disguised. Mother Teresa always spoke of the poor as Jesus’ disguise. 

Now, the Greeks distinguish two kinds of time: chronos time and kairos time. Kairos is used over 80 times in the New Testament, and it refers to a season, such as harvest time. Chronos time is measured time, quantified into an hour, or a minute. Chronos time moves outside of us. The clock is ticking. The present moment, the now, is here instantaneously and then quickly drifts into the past, always escaping us. 

However, we can be “within time”, that is, in time. We can move in it. If we move in it, then it is always now. As an analogy: think of a spacecraft. If we are outside the spacecraft, it zooms by us. If we are inside the spacecraft, we move along with it. Kairos time is time that we are in, and so it is always present. 

But, chronos time is real, and it makes demands on us. We have an appointment and so we have to move on. Peter, James, and John got a taste of the kairos time that is in heaven, but chronos time made demands on them. The experience of the transfiguration came to an end and they had to come down from the mountain. 

Chronos time and kairos time are simultaneous. Chronos time says I have an appointment at 10 o’clock, so I have to take leave of my friends and make my way there. But when I get to the doctor’s office, I have to be present to the doctor, pay attention to him, be a presence to him and allow him to be a presence to me. But, even the trip to the doctors, the drive, or the bus ride, is not meant to be pure chronos. I must be present to the beauty of the present moment. The view outside the window, or to the people on the subway, the walk to the doctor’s office, or whatever. 

God is outside of time, not subject to the passing of time, but time exists, and God is intimately present within all that exists, as the First Cause of all that exists. God, who is Beauty Itself, is present in each moment of time.

And my students feel it. The first assignment that I give to my Niagara University students in January is to have them write out a short essay on how it is they got to where they are now, that is, how they got to teachers college. Reading their personal stories of how they got to this point is really an exhilarating experience. Their stories are so unique and so rich in content, and there is often some hero in their lives, either their parents, who came to Canada under adverse circumstances but struggled and overcame these obstacles through faith, trust in God, and hard work, or a great and unknown teacher in their lives who had a profound influence on the student as a result of the way that teacher related to her students, with great patience and perseverance, or some priest in their lives. etc. Many of them have very positive memories of their school years. Each story from each student is so different, but each one is usually so uplifting and exhilarating. And it is so easy to see the hand of divine providence in their lives, leading them to where they are now. 

Now, it is amazing how many of these prospective teachers drifted from the faith, but returned, and it was the result of memories that were gradually uncovered, a feeling like something was lost, a world, and they rediscovered it. 

The transfiguration was really a gift given to Peter, James, and John, to strengthen them for the impending trauma of Christ’s passion, and the memories we create for our students, for young people in the parish, are ordered to the same end, to strengthen them for the impending sufferings and difficulties and traumas that await them.  

It is a ministry ordered to the creation of memories. I was going over these ideas with a patient of mine at the hospital, a young lady who suffers from clinical depression. I’ve been visiting her for many years now. Certain months of the year are very difficult for her. But I was telling her about the themes of this retreat.

I did ask her if she has any memories that bring her a sense of peace, and she said she had very few if any. And of course, she suffers from depression. When I spoke of this, she was reminded of Erik Erickson, the final stage of psychosocial development, the stage of integrity vs despair. Now, it is not quite the same in her case, because the stage of despair results from the fact that one sees the choices that one has made, and the despair is the result of those bad choices. Clinical depression is not something that results from bad moral choices. It is a brain disease. But I did give her something to think about. This is what I said:

We believe that God the Son joined a human nature and entered into human suffering. In joining himself to every man, he is especially present in the depths of our suffering and darkness. We don’t suffer alone, although it may often feel that we do. But we don’t. And this lady has a special cross to bear, as do all those who suffer from clinical depression. 

And they must feel like they’ve been ripped off terribly. Others have their health, both mental and physical, they are privileged, brought up in a family that is well off, they travel and they’ve gone to university, they’re working. Life is tremendous. And here she is, this girl, in and out of mental health wards all her life. Life seems very unfair. But of course, our God is a God of justice. He balances the scales, and the divine justice has been revealed as the divine mercy. I told her that when you stand before God at the end of your life, and you see and grasp the meaning of your entire life from God’s point of view, that is, when you see your life in the light of Christ and the paschal mystery, and you reflect on the prospect of doing it all again, you will not want to change anything. She reacted to that and said she just cannot imagine that and doubts very much that she would not want anything changed. Nevertheless, that is the case, because she will see that Christ was present all along in the depths of that suffering, that her depression was a special sharing in the mental anguish of Christ that he endured throughout his life, especially on Holy Thursday night. She will see how her suffering has imprinted on her the image of the suffering Christ, and friendships are based on common qualities, and she’ll see how much her life has in common with Christ’s life, unlike the life of prosperity and privilege. She can’t see that now, but she will in eternity. But, she can begin to look now, to reflect upon her life in that light and perhaps begin to see it, begin to discover the suffering Christ in the midst of that darkness.

But the suffering involved in clinical depression is deep, but the Lord is there nonetheless. The specific cross given to such a person may involve being unable to detect the peace of his presence at any level, but he is there nevertheless, and one day this person will see it and delight in it, and see what it has done for her, how that suffering has configured her to the beautiful image of Christ crucified. And so the scales will be balanced in her favor.

Fear and Primitive Reasoning

Deacon Douglas McManaman

Be strong, do not fear! Here is your God (Is 35, 4)

So much of what goes wrong in the world has its roots in fear. And there is so much about this world today that gives rise to fear; but this life is really about learning to depend upon God, that is, learning to fear less (fearless), and the way to do that is first to become increasingly aware that independence is relative and ultimately an illusion, and that we depend on God ultimately, and second to actually begin to rely on God. We certainly depend on one another, but ultimately everyone depends on God. And the more we surrender our lives to God, the more we learn through our own experience that God really is intimately involved in everything that happens to us and that nothing happens outside of his providential control. However, although human beings really do make a mess out of their lives when they take matters into their own hands instead of relying on God, they are still wrapped up and surrounded by God’s providence.  

My spiritual director would always say to me: “Fear is useless, what is needed is trust”. And fear is useless, at least fear without trust, because we all experience our radical limitations, but without trust we are tempted to cross those limits, that is, moral limits, and then we do things that we know to be wrong, like lying under oath, or stealing, or undermining the reputation of another, plotting to bring others down, etc. We make every effort to create an environment that is safe for ourselves, and this soon becomes a machination process in which we are willing to sideline those who get in our way. That injustice generates resentment in others, and such wounds can stay with a person all throughout his or her life. And soon everybody is carrying around a soul riddled with bullet holes, and the result is that we only think of ourselves, sort of like having a toothache–you can’t think of anything other than your own pain. 

But God does allow suffering into our lives. He does not impose it on us, but He does allow it; for suffering is the opportunity God gives us to depend on Him, to trust Him more fully, to place ourselves in His hands. When we do, we can be assured that he will act, but God does tend to “take his time”, not our time. And so, we have to be patient. That’s the problem with living in a fast-paced society–we are disposed to want things done quickly, and that just does not happen with God. The reason is that love is patient, and God is love, and he calls us to be patient: “Be patient, therefore, brothers, until the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient with it until it receives the early and the late rains” (Jm 5, 7).  Suffering and moments of darkness are symbolized here by the image of early and late rains–there is no “precious fruit of the earth” without that suffering. 

In my experience, most people, even religious people, believe that suffering, hardship, and struggles are anomalies. Religious people in particular often assume that if we have a relationship with God, all will be smooth and relatively easy, so that if suffering enters our life, that must mean that our relationship with God has somehow been broken by something we did, some sin that we committed. This is how Israel interpreted her own suffering and hardship on a national level; on an individual level, it was assumed that those who were poor, lame, deaf or blind, etc., were forsaken by God by virtue of some ancestral or personal sin. This is a primitive way of trying to make sense out of suffering. Jesus, however, challenged this in the gospel of John: “As he passed by he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’ Jesus answered, ‘Neither he nor his parents sinned; it is so that the works of God might be made visible through him’” (Jn 9, 1-3).

Unfortunately, many people still tend to think this way, because they want to make sense out of suffering, and if I can convince myself that a person is suffering because of something sinful he has done, well then I don’t feel so bad–on some level I convince myself that he deserves it. If we carefully read the book of Job, we see that Job’s friends were reasoning precisely along these lines, which is why in the end God rebuked them for this (See Jb 42, 7-9).  

We have to be very careful with this kind of reasoning, which is still rather prevalent. Some people take many sections of the Old Testament literally and believe that God does in fact destroy otherwise innocent people (i.e., Amalekite children, David’s infant son, etc.) as a punishment for the sins committed by others. We have to keep in mind that Israel, in her infancy, thought as a child does, namely, egocentrically: if something bad is happening to a child, for example, if the child is being abused by a parent, or the child’s parents are going through a separation and divorce, that child believes this is all happening because “I am bad”. It takes years for a person to escape from this mythology–and he or she may need help (a trained therapist) to overcome such harmful and subconscious beliefs, otherwise they may carry that conviction into their adult lives, feeling and believing on some level that they are deeply flawed, and without knowing why. Such people typically carry around a great deal of anger. We see precisely this kind of thinking on a national level in the Hebrew Scriptures, but Israel is a nation in history, a nation that through time grew in her understanding of God as a result of that historical relationship. The way Israel thinks about herself and God later in her history is very different from the way she thought earlier.

However, God reveals his true face in the Incarnation of the Son, that is, in the Person of Christ. God’s response to human sin was pure grace. He does not impose suffering but enters into human suffering, for he joined a human nature to himself and entered into our darkness, so that when we suffer, we may find him in the midst of that suffering. He came to sanctify our suffering and death, to inject it with his life. That is why the Old Testament must always be read in the light of the New, that is, in the light of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection. 

Finally, John the Baptist, the greatest of those born of women, is suffering in the darkness of a prison cell, awaiting his execution. He does not suffer by virtue of some sin; rather, he is suffering because of his heroic virtue, that is, his decision to speak out against Herod, who after visiting his brother in Rome, seduced his wife and married her after dismissing his own wife. John rebuked Herod for this, and Herod responded by throwing him into the dungeons of the fortress of Machaerus, near the Dead Sea. In that darkness, John was tempted to doubt. Initially, he pointed out rather definitively that Jesus was the lamb of God, but in this dark and final period in prison, he sent his disciples to ask Jesus: “Are you the One who is to come, or, must we go on expecting another?” Jesus sent John’s disciples back with the evidence: the blind are given their sight, the lame are walking, lepers are being cleansed, the deaf are hearing, and the dead are being raised and the poor are receiving the good news. What Isaiah prophesied in the first reading is being fulfilled in the Person of Christ himself. And if the lame, the poor, the sick, the deaf, etc., were thought to be forsaken, abandoned, and rejected by God, then what is happening here can only be interpreted as a vindication of the poor, that the kingdom of God has come upon them in the Person of Christ. He overthrows the kingdom of darkness, and the true face of God is being revealed not a God who punishes retributively,[1] but a God who forgives and loves, who loves us so much that he will take on our sufferings, join us in our deepest darkness so that we may not suffer alone. He enters into the worst possible darkness that a person can experience: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me”. He tastes the furthest extremity of God forsakenness, the depths of hell, in order to fill it with his light and love. That is the good news of our salvation. 

1. When the New Testament speaks of divine punishment, the Greek word employed is kolasis, which is best translated as “chastisement”. Timoria is the Greek word for retribution or retributive punishment, but we do not find this word in the New Testament associated with divine punishment. Kolasis, on the contrary, is a horticultural term that refers to pruning, as in pruning a plant. One prunes a plant for the good of the plant. In other words, divine punishment is ordered to the good of the “chastised” and is consistent with the divine love.

    The Unique Charism of the Chaplain

    (Talk given to High School Chaplains, St. Bonaventure Church, Toronto, November 13, 2025)
    Deacon Doug McManaman

    It’s a real honor to be given this opportunity to speak to all of you this afternoon. And it’s been delightful to have spent these past few weeks thinking back over my 32 and a half years as a high school religion teacher and reflecting on the high school chaplains that have been a real support in my life. There is no doubt in my mind that the special charism of the high school chaplain is the ability to listen to people. And there is so much more to this charism than we tend to think. Most people think of listening as sitting back and not doing anything per se, something purely passive, but listening is really activity of the highest order, but most importantly, it is an activity that requires a host of conditions that only certain kinds of experience can put in place. Since we are given the charisms we need to live out the vocation that is ours, it is obvious to me that the Lord did not call me to chaplaincy in my years as a teacher, especially my early years; I didn’t have the gifts and the specific charism that are so essential for a chaplain. That charism developed slowly and came later as I was called to the diaconate, and this process of acquiring the necessary conditions in order to hear is still ongoing in my life, and will be until the very end.  

    My first teaching assignment was in the Jane and Finch area of Toronto, Regina Pacis Secondary School, which was founded by Father Gerald Fitzgerald CSSp. He envisioned a school in Jane and Finch that would serve those students who could not get accepted at the nearest Catholic high school, and I came on board in 1987. Father Fitz retired shortly thereafter, which was when they hired a Salesian priest as our school chaplain, Father Dave Sajdak SDB, and so it was at this time that I was introduced to the spirituality of St. John Bosco. When students would ask Father Dave what he actually does at the school, his answer was always: “I just hang out. That’s it. I walk around, and I talk to students, teachers, and administrators”. And of course he was a very significant presence in the school, and he was a very good listener, much better than I was at the time. When he left, Patty Ann Dennis, was hired to take his place, and she too was a great presence in the school, a very humble woman who easily recognized the students’ gifts and tapped into them, bringing out the best in them. 

    But there was one year early on after she left for another school board when I was asked to take on one period of chaplaincy. And so I did. During that year, with a period of chaplaincy, I recall spending a lot of time with a Vice Principal whose father had just died, and who was also having a very difficult time with a small group of staff who became rather bitter and cynical–because it was a very difficult school to teach in. In the heart of Jane and Finch, one needed a great deal more patience than one would need in almost any other school, and after a while, some teachers just got burned out and wanted to change that school into a school for the advanced level–but that’s not what the original mission of the school was, and so they became very cynical, cantankerous, and bitter. This Vice Principal, however, was a very good man, but with the death of his father and having to deal with a small group of cynics, he was becoming increasingly disillusioned, frustrated, and perhaps cynical himself, which is why I did spend a great deal of time in his office that year, just listening to him. But one day I said to him: “I’ve been coming down here all week, and I’ve seen this student sitting there for a couple of days now, and that student the other day. These are good kids. What’s going on?” I cannot recall the details, but let’s just say he made it clear to me that a good number of students were being sent down for the silliest reasons. And so I decided to challenge this Vice Principal, who I really liked. I said to him: “Why do you put up with this nonsense? Why don’t you challenge us at staff meetings? Why don’t you say something? You guys say nothing, you go on as if everything is okay, and you keep all this crap to yourselves”, or words to that effect. As a young and inexperienced teacher, I always wanted to challenge my administrators, and here I had the chance, because he was a friend of mine, and I could talk to him in a way that I wouldn’t talk to any other administrator–I knew there would be no repercussions. And, he could talk to me in a way that he would not speak to any other teacher, that is, he didn’t have to fear a grievance letter, of which he had plenty. 

    He told me in no uncertain terms that my neat and tidy solutions were the product of inexperience, they were not solutions at all, but imprudence rooted in a lack of data that would only result in a heap of difficulties. He helped me to see that there are many more levels for an administrator to consider, far more than a teacher has to consider: i.e., senior administration at the board level, the union, parents, police, the law, teachers, etc. When one becomes an administrator, one acquires a purview that is very different, far more complex and much larger than that of a teacher. I realized that the four walls of my classroom shielded me from appreciating the complexity of this work. I became a more grateful teacher, but it was an eye opener for me, and I became a better listener to those in administration than I had been previously and was able to offer much greater support to all my administrators in the following years. 

    I had an interesting dream that year as well. Over the years, I had dreams that were in many ways visions, as it were. Sometimes we are too busy to hear what the Lord is saying to us, but when we sleep, we just can’t interfere, so we are more disposed to listen to what God is trying to tell us. And I know when a dream is more than a dream, because I remember the details, I usually wake up in a spirit of joy, and it feels as if I just had a holiday and I have renewed strength to continue. But this was a very simple dream. I was in a huge barn, and I went to the barn door, the upper part of which was open, and I looked out onto this huge pasture, covered in manure, everywhere. I look to my left and see this beautiful stallion, and there’s a woman grabbing the hoof of this beautiful horse, like a farrier would, and cleaning the shit off of it, and she looks over at me and yells out my name and tells me to get out there and help her. So I did. 

    Now, I knew immediately upon waking that the stallion symbolizes my Vice Principal friend, and the woman, I knew, was Mary, the blessed mother. It’s a great image of Mary. She spoke to me with such familiarity, like an older sister, and she was shoveling shit with her hands. Very important. That’s how I knew my time with this Vice Principal was important. Just listen, help clean off the crap that is thrown at him every day, help him not to get discouraged.

    The following year I was back in the classroom, which is where I wanted to be, but the experience of teacher cynicism, which was a very difficult ordeal for me, took me a bit further in terms of my ability to listen to a certain sector of the school, namely administration. And that’s why I never became an administrator. Many of my friends became administrators and so I knew what they had to go through, because they would tell me. I also knew I didn’t have those gifts, and administration is a charism that St. Paul lists among the various charisms he speaks about in 1 Corinthians and Romans. 

    Another painful but significant experience I had that helped me in terms of my ability to listen to and genuinely hear a certain group of people took place in 2011. I was ordained a deacon three years by then, and as a deacon my ministry was to those who suffer from mental illness. Every week I would visit CAMH, the old Queen Street Mental Health Center downtown. I was still a teacher, however, and we had been preparing to introduce the IB program in our school and I was set to teach the Theory of Knowledge course. Well, one day while visiting the philosophy classes at St. Theresa of Lisieux Secondary School in Richmond Hill, Friday, Dec 23rd, the last day before the Christmas holidays, I began to sweat, and I was getting the shivers. I stuck it out and left immediately at the end of the day, and just got into bed. The next day it was worse. I had terrible pain in my head and neck and shoulders, and the chills were bad, so I told my wife and daughter to go on ahead to Kitchener, Ontario, and I would drive up on Christmas day. Well, that wasn’t going to happen. The pain got worse, it moved from my head to my legs and arms, and I was taking Motrin, but you can only do that for so long before it burns a hole in your stomach. On Christmas day, all I had was a can of tuna. On Boxing Day, I went to the Emergency, and the doctor thought I might have Polymyalgia Rheumatica, for which there is no known cure. I was put on prednisone and given some oxycodone for the pain. The oxycodone was too powerful for me; it felt great, but it was playing tricks with my mind so I stopped it. But I was in a deep state of despair. I was on the phone with my spiritual director every night. I didn’t think I’d be able to return to the classroom ever again. I thought it was over. I could not imagine returning; for I was experiencing a general, all around flu like condition x 10 with lots of pain in my arms and legs, like nothing I’ve ever experienced before. But the worst part was the despair.  

    However, at one point in our conversation I said to him: “I think I understand now what my patients have to go through every day, the ones who battle depression.” I was genuinely frightened, because I didn’t know how I’d be able to manage this for the rest of my life–there is no known cure. I realized I had to stop thinking long term and think “one moment at a time”, not one week at a time nor even one day at a time. But I clearly remember saying to Father Kelly: “I think I have a glimpse, a much better appreciation, of what my patients have to go through every day”. And then Father Kelly said to me: “Just keep saying the following prayer: ‘Into your hands, Lord, I commend my spirit. Into your hands, Lord, I commend my spirit’.

    Now, I knew that prayer, because it is part of the Night Prayer in the Breviary that we promised to pray on our day of ordination. The problem is when you say a prayer for years on end, it can become just words after a while. So I decided I would pray this prayer and mean it: “Into your hands, Lord I commend my spirit. If you do not want me to go back to teaching, your will be done”. 

    That night I had the best sleep. It felt as if a cool breeze had passed through my body. In the morning, the pain was still there, but the darkness was not. And eventually after a few days, the pain was beginning to subside, and I began to see a light at the end of the tunnel, and soon I was slowly weaned off the prednisone. But I had a much deeper appreciation for my patients who suffer from clinical depression. What I was experiencing was not clinical depression, they have it much worse, to be sure, but it was enough to give me a glimpse into what they have to battle every day for years on end. I was a much better chaplain to the mentally ill after that experience. “Blessed are the Poor in Spirit, the kingdom of heaven is theirs”, and it is mental sufferers who in my experience are the truly poor in spirit, who recognize their utter need for God. 

    But the Lord was not through with me yet. I’m reminded of Father Don MacLean saying to me in the sacristy one day when I was studying to be a Deacon; he said: “You never arrive. Remember that. You never arrive. Don’t ever think you’ve arrived”. As a Deacon for 17 years, I’ve seen things that I would probably not have seen without ordination, and not all of it was pretty; some of it was very ugly. I’ve known and worked with a number of very good priests over the years. When I first came back to the Church in my late teens, the priests who were the greatest influence were of course great priests, the most significant of which was Monsignor Tom Wells of the Archdiocese of Washington DC, who stopped the car and picked me up when I was hitchhiking to Nashville, TN, back in 1979. However, I have had my share of misogynistic priests, overly controlling micromanagers, insecure, arrogant, condescending, and envious priests; gossipy, petty, vindictive, male chauvinists who think women are good for little more than emptying the dishwasher, setting up tables and making coffee, setting down cookies and snacks, and other menial tasks, but not for giving talks for a parish mission or giving spiritual direction, much less preaching. Consistent with this clerical elitism–in some cases, a deep seated narcissism–, such priests, who are almost entirely indifferent to social outreach, will have a great love of liturgy and sanctuary decor, vestments, etc. These are the genuine poster boys for the clericalism that Pope Francis spoke out against so often during his papacy. I’ve had to taste that, experience that, and still do, it hasn’t disappeared, and that has been very difficult.

    But I will say this: it has also been a great blessing in many ways; a painful blessing, but a blessing nonetheless. I say this because I didn’t always understand those who had been hurt by the Church. My mother was hurt by the Church; many of the patients I visit in hospital who haven’t seen the inside of a Church in decades have been hurt by the Church. I wasn’t able to identify with them completely; I didn’t really know what they were talking about. But now I do. I know exactly where they are coming from. And I am able to hear them in a way that was not possible earlier on. And so I am in some ways thankful for these condescending exemplars of clerical elitism who really believe the Church is about them and that the focal point of the life of the parish and the liturgy is them. 

    If we read the Document for the Continental Stage of the Synod on Synodality that Pope Francis initiated, we will see that this kind of clericalism is not a local problem, but a worldwide problem. Francis is one Pope that understood the importance of listening, but it is remarkable how few clergy see its importance and still regard the parish as their own little fiefdom, to change and mold as they please. At one time in our history, not too long ago, a large percentage of priests were like that. Hence, the number of people who will simply not set foot inside a Catholic Church, except for the occasional wedding or baptism. 

    In the gospel of Luke, Simeon is described as righteous and devout, awaiting the Messiah. It was revealed to him that he would not see death before laying eyes on the Messiah. He recognized, through the Holy Spirit, that the child Mary was holding was that Messiah and that he would be a sign of contradiction. He turns to Mary and tells her that a sword will pierce your soul also. Mary and Joseph both marvelled at what was being said by Simeon. Furthermore, Simeon blesses both Mary and Joseph. And so Mary, the greatest saint, full of grace, and Joseph, the greatest saint next to her, are amazed, impressed, they marvel at what was said about the child, and both are willing to receive Simeon’s blessing. Also, Anna, a prophetess, married and widowed, a woman of prayer and fasting, came forward too and spoke about the child. And one other irony: Mary and Joseph, the richest creatures ever created by God, are poor; for they offer the offering of the poor, two turtle doves instead of a lamb, and yet they hold in their arms the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. And Luke, throughout his gospel, depicts Mary as one who “ponders these things in her heart”. She listens. In other words, it’s not as if she knows everything. She learns, and marvels at what she learns through others like Simeon and Anna, the prophetess, and ponders what she hears. Mary and Joseph seem to have no idea of their status before God. Both of them allow themselves to be taught, and to be amazed; although the old law is fulfilled in her womb, Mary does not see herself as superior to the old law, nor as superior to Simeon or Anna, even though she is higher than the angels.

    This says a great deal about what true holiness is. Holiness is listening, and listening is an activity, not a passivity, and it is rooted in charity. The truly holy allow themselves to learn from everyone, and they are able to be impressed with others. The proud and envious, on the contrary, are rarely impressed with anyone or anything, unless it is related to them and glorifies them in some way. 

    Pope Francis, early in his papacy, derided the notion of a self-referential Church, focused on itself. Many in the Church were distressed by the suggestion, but his successor, Pope Leo XIV, continues to call the Church to turn outward, towards the world, to become a more listening Church. In fact, two or three weeks ago, he said: 

    We must dream of and build a more humble Church; a Church that does not stand upright like the Pharisee, triumphant and inflated with pride, but bends down to wash the feet of humanity; a Church that does not judge as the Pharisee does the tax collector, but becomes a welcoming place for all; a Church that does not close in on itself, but remains attentive to God so that it can similarly listen to everyone. Let us commit ourselves to building a Church that is entirely synodal, ministerial and attracted to Christ and therefore committed to serving the world.

    Listening is utterly central to the nature of the Church, which is a living organism that, in order to grow, must appropriate so much that is good from the environment that is outside the organism and integrate it. That is why synodal listening is so important, listening not just to clergy, but to the lay faithful, recognizing their gifts, talents, and expertise. However, not every diocese has been on board with this. There has been a great deal of indifference, in large part because very few clergy have been taught to listen and see themselves instead as the “anointed” with all the answers to life’s difficulties and peoples’ questions. But the world is vast and inconceivably complex, with a myriad of pockets of knowledge, each one a universe unto itself. The conceptual framework of one individual person and even a small bureaucracy made up of relatively like minded clerics unconvinced of the power of openness and listening to the lay faithful–not to mention those who have been hurt by the Church in many and varied ways–is far too limited to exercise any kind of effective and credible leadership today. 

    Francis thus envisions a more Marian Church, a Church that, like Mary, listens and marvels at the extraordinary gifts, talents, insights and abilities of unknown men and women who are unique and genuinely under the influence of the Holy Spirit, like Simeon and Anna in Luke. 

    Recently I asked Sue LaRosa, who was the longest serving director of the YCDSB, to do a video for my students at Niagara University. We are looking at magisterial pronouncements on the right to association, so I asked her to speak about her vision of the relationship between senior administration and the union. She says [emphasis mine]: 

    When I became Director of Education , I inherited a teacher’s strike followed by a provincial strike. Trust between the board and the union was shattered. I indicated to the Board of Trustees that “this is no way to live”. I committed to rebuilding trust and changing the culture. They didn’t discourage me, but they didn’t believe it could be done. I wasn’t totally convinced I could develop the trust level that would allow for a path  to stop the “blame game”. So, I reflected on my beliefs. I believe we are all born with unique talents and a desire to contribute to the common good. No one thrives in conflict mode. The first step was one of reassurance and deep listening –not defensiveness if this broken relationship was going to be mended. The turning point was the introduction of interest-based bargaining. Many of you may never be involved in  bargaining , but the concept of interest-based bargaining was the catalyst that restored trust. The name alone gives hope: interest based. The method is built on collaboration and mutual understanding . The board team and the teacher team trained  together. The key word here is “together”. We moved cautiously , learning together . It wasn’t a rapid shift. In this approach, everyone had equal status—whether you were the Director or a teacher. That leveled the playing field.  We were disciplined in following  the proven strategies. It wasn’t always easy . Actually, there were moments I questioned the path.  The result was  evident; we successfully negotiated five collective agreements without ever hearing the word strike again. We went from forty annual  grievances to three.

    That was, of course, a small portion of her talk, but what struck me about this is that she understood the fundamental principles of synodality and ecumenical dialogue more than 13 years before the Papacy of Pope Francis. 

    There have been three priests in my life who I can characterize as having been widely beloved. A few years ago I began to reflect specifically upon why they are so loved by so many people. As I pondered this, I came to the conclusion that the reason they are so loved is that they are genuinely interested in ordinary people. They pay attention to people. They approach you and want to know your name, what you do, where you are from, what you love, the names of your children, etc. I was talking to one of these three priests the other day. He was out of town at a funeral reception a couple of weeks ago and he went around to everyone and shook their hands, asked about them, their names, the names of their children, what they do, and so on. But when he got up to leave, a number of them asked where he was stationed, that is, where he says Mass. He’s retired, so he is not stationed anywhere. But he was struck by their desire to maintain contact with him.

    Now, I wasn’t surprised. That’s why he’s so widely loved. He’s genuinely interested in people, which is why he’s still very busy as a retired priest. My wife was reading Chesterton the other day and came across some lines that reminded her of my retired priest friend. He writes: 

    How much larger your life would be if yourself could become smaller in it; if you could really look at other men with common curiosity and pleasure; if you could see them walking as they are in their sunny selfishness and their virile indifference, you would begin to be interested in them, because they were not interested in you. You would break out of this tiny and tawdry theatre in which your own little plot is always being played and you would find yourself under a free sky in a street full of splendid strangers.

    That’s why these three priest friends of mine are so interested in other people, because they are so small in their own eyes, and so they always walk under a free sky in streets full of splendid strangers. 

    I believe this is a small scale example of how ecumenical unity works. It’s not about having a great debate. These people were moved by the fact that this priest was interested in them as persons. They encountered Christ in him. ‘Someone loves me enough to pay attention to me’. In their minds, that has to be Christ. ‘Where do you live so we can make the effort to see you again’. That’s the key to ecumenical unity.

    The more I was interested in my students’ religions, whether Islam or Sikhism, Hinduism, etc., the more they became interested in what I profess to believe. If they have Christ at some level, and if I love Christ, then I will have the eyes to discern Christ within their tradition, their literature, their great teachers. These students know from within that their religion is good, that God is among them (Emmanuel), and if they see that I am able to discern that, they know that I too must have something good that enables me to see this, and they want to know what that is, and they want to share in that. Ecumenical unity is not going to be the result of a series of Q & A sessions or a campaign of apologetics. It’s going to be a matter of mutual enrichment. ‘I see that you have something to offer me, that you can help me see the world in a way that I currently do not, that you can even help me to discover things about Christ that I would otherwise have overlooked, and vice versa.’  It’s not going to work if we insist that we have the “fullness of truth” while you others have only splinters and fragments here and there–so we don’t really need you, but you need us. No, at the heart of ecumenical dialogue is Christ. As St. Paul says: it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me, and if he lives in me, then I have his eyes, and I will recognize him outside of my tribe. Hence, the importance of listening, hearing, seeing. Unfortunately, tribal Catholicism is on the rise, even among young Catholics who typically confuse evangelization with apologetics. Evangelization is the proclamation of the good news, and the good news is that Christ is risen, he has conquered death, that death no longer has the final word over my life and your life, and that in joining a human nature to himself, God the Son joined himself to every man, as it were. 

    Chaplains are called to be the good news. That’s how we proclaim it: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me”. In our schools, there is great diversity. Almost 40% of my students in Markham were Muslim. We had Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists and more. We are not called to proselytize, but to witness to the risen life of Christ, to the joy of Easter. If it is no longer you who live, but Christ who lives in you, then it follows that those Muslim, Hindu, and Sikh students who love you and love what they see in you in fact love Christ without them necessarily knowing it. The good news of the risen Christ is proclaimed to them in you. That’s what is most important at this point, not that they leave their religion and join the local Catholic parish. 

    Although none of you here are clergy, you are all priests, members of the Royal Priesthood of the Faithful. Each one of us, when baptized, were anointed, with sacred chrism, priest, prophet and king, Christ’s threefold identity, and as a high school chaplain, you are rightfully exercising that priesthood. Catholics of the Latin rite are not used to hearing this, again, due in large part to the clericalism of the past centuries that sees the Church as primarily clerics: deacons, priests, bishops, cardinals and pope, with the laity at the base of the pyramid. And many have forgotten the efforts made at the Second Vatican Council to define the Church primarily as the laos, from which is derived the word laity: the people, which includes clergy. The Church is the fellowship of believers, the people of God. The hierarchy is only a small part of that larger Church, but the whole Church is a priestly people. The ministerial priesthood exists to serve the common priesthood of the faithful. It was Pius X’s mother who commented on his papal ring that people were kissing and she said to him: “You wouldn’t be wearing that ring if it wasn’t for this ring here”, pointing to her wedding ring. Marriage is a genuine priesthood. A priest is one who offers sacrifice, and the life of a married couple is a genuine self-offering. It is difficult, it is sacrificial, and life in our schools today, whether you are a chaplain, teacher or administrator, is holy work. It is difficult work, but it is holy, sacred. When we walk into a classroom, we are walking on holy ground. And chaplains are called to minister to the entire school, not just the students, but administrators and support staff.

    Finally, let me end with this. I was talking to a consecrated virgin in our parish recently; she is a wonderful woman and gives talks to seminarians at St. Peter’s in London–but not here, for a prophet is not welcome in her own town, especially if she’s a woman–, and she is on fire about synodality, and rather frustrated with the lack of it at the parish level. But I asked her what she thinks I should say to you. She said a host of things to me at that moment, but I asked her to write it down. She writes: 

    We don’t need to wait for some program about synodality to come into our parishes–like the Alpha program or a Bible study–for synodality to become a reality for us. We can start now in becoming synodal people, that is, people who intentionally encounter other parishioners, listen to them prayerfully in light of the Holy Spirit, come to appreciate their gifts, go out to the margins to encounter those who feel uncomfortable or excluded by church structures, etc. There is so much we can do now, as individuals or as informal groups of parishioners, to begin to live synodally, to be living signs of what synodality looks like. As Pope Francis said repeatedly, synodality is not just another program; it is a way of being church.

    Yes, it will be great when initiatives taken by the Archdiocese begin to filter down to our parishes in structural reforms that will facilitate shared decision-making and accountability in our parish life. But we do not need to wait for those structural changes to come down from on high. We can begin now with grassroots, relational, attitudinal changes. What we can do now is about preparing the ground, so that when the structural changes do come, we will be ready to embrace them. Let us trust that the Holy Spirit will lead us in this, because it is so much a movement of the Spirit for our time – necessary and prophetic.

    Of course, what she implies is that we should just start to do that in the school and not wait for the diocese, because you’ll probably be retired and in a long term care facility before we see anything like that. I was driving through Markham recently and saw, in big bold letters on the side of a barn, Be The Change. I laughed, because the line is such a cliche and very 70s, and yet it is true. Be that synodal Church. And that’s the unique gift brought by the chaplains that I’ve been blessed to have had in my life, the gift of synodal listening. 

    The Evolution of the Temple

    Homily for the Feast of the Dedication of the Lateran Basilica in Rome
    Deacon Douglas McManaman

    In the first reading, Ezekiel has a vision of the temple of Jerusalem, where water was flowing from below the threshold toward the east, from the right side. The water gives life to whatever it touches. But we know from the gospel reading that the temple of Jerusalem foreshadows the true temple, which is the temple of Jesus’ body, from whose right side water flowed as a result of the open wound caused by the centurion’s lance. And that water from his side symbolizes baptism, which brings to life all who are immersed therein.  

    And so we’ve gone from the temple made of stone to the living temple of Christ’s body. But the second reading from Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians takes this even further. He says: “Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?” (3, 16). You and I are temples of the Holy Spirit because we have put on Christ, as Paul says in Galatians: “For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ, have put on Christ” (3, 27).  

    And so we’ve gone from the temple of Jerusalem, made of stone, which will eventually be destroyed, to the temple of Christ’s body, which was destroyed but restored in his resurrection, to the faithful, each one of whom is the temple of the Holy Spirit. But, it does not stop there. Jesus not only houses himself in the baptized, he houses himself in all those who suffer, as we read in the Parable of the Last Judgment: I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, thirsty and you gave me something to drink, lonely and in prison and you visited me. When did we see you this way? As long as you did this to the least of my brethren, you did it to me (Mt 25, 31-46).

    As Mother Teresa never tired of saying, Jesus disguises himself in the poor and suffering. They house Christ without their knowing it necessarily, and they are all around us. And not everyone who belongs to Christ is explicitly aware of the fact, and not everyone who explicitly belongs to the visible Church actually does so, for Christ said it himself: “Did we not prophecy in your name, cast out demons in your name? …go away from me, I never knew you; I do not know where you come from” (See Mt 7, 21-23; Lk 13, 27).

    Desecration of the temple incensed Jesus because desecration was rooted in a failure to discern the sacred, and that spiritual blindness was caused by the greed of the money changers. And what angers Jesus today is the same failure to see and discern the sacred (himself) in the suffering, the struggling, ordinary human persons who have lost their social standing. We don’t have to take “poor”, “thirsty”, and “in prison” literally. These terms include the sick who are poor in health, and all those oppressed at work by an emotionally abusive boss or a toxic workplace environment, or those oppressed by a mental illness, or a lonely elderly person virtually abandoned by his or her family, or a teenager who feels alienated and estranged from parents going through a divorce, or alienated by an alcoholic father or mother, and so on. Christ is housed by the suffering of this world because he identifies with them, and that’s what love does. And if this is true, it follows that a hospital room, for example, is holy ground. I know of one priest who was so convinced of this that he would take off his shoes when visiting the sick in hospital. A classroom of young students is holy ground as well; a prison cell is holy ground, and so too a street shelter. Wherever we encounter suffering human beings, we have found Christ. A Carmelite biblical scholar recently mentioned to me that when he was in the city, he gave some money to a person living on the street, who responded by calling out to him: “God bless you”. This priest is emphatic that this man’s blessing has greater significance than if it were a blessing from the Pope himself. 

    Speaking of which, Pope Leo XIV, in a recent homily, said that “we must dream of and build a more humble Church; a Church that does not stand upright like the Pharisee, triumphant and inflated with pride, but bends down to wash the feet of humanity; a Church that does not judge as the Pharisee does the tax collector, but becomes a welcoming place for all; a Church that does not close in on itself, but remains attentive to God so that it can similarly listen to everyone. Let us commit ourselves to building a Church that is entirely synodal, ministerial and attracted to Christ and therefore committed to serving the world” (30th Sunday in Ordinary Time, 26 October, 2025). Amen.

    The Widow’s Joy

    Deacon Douglas McManaman

    In this gospel (Lk 7, 11-17), Jesus does what he does best and what he enjoys doing most, which is to raise the dead to life. Some people like playing golf; some people like going fishing, some like camping, but Jesus, he likes raising the dead to life. He raised a 12 year old girl (the daughter of Jairus), he raised Lazarus from the dead, and in this gospel today he raised the only son of the widow of Nain. And he raises us from the dead as well: “But God, who is rich in mercy, because of the great love he had for us, even when we were dead in our sins, brought us to life with Christ (by grace you have been saved), raised us up with him,…” (Eph 2, 4-5). 

    Consider too that if a person is dead, he or she cannot do anything to earn that resurrection or help in the process; for he’s dead. So, if we are raised (justified), we who were dead in our sins, it was not as a result of anything we might have done. It was all his doing. That’s the God we worship, and that’s the good news. Everything is sheer gift. We don’t have to earn anything. We can’t earn anything. We just have to receive it, which can be difficult. It is difficult to open ourselves up to God’s generosity; we don’t feel we deserve it, and of course we don’t, but that’s besides the point. It’s not about us, but about his love for us. In the letter to the Colossians, we read: “And even when you were dead in transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, he brought you to life along with him, having forgiven us all our transgressions; obliterating the bond against us, with its legal claims,…he removed it from our midst, nailing it to the cross” (2, 13-15).

    This is important because we have a tendency to slip back into the legalism that forgiveness is conditional upon what we do. But we are not saved by our works; we are saved by Christ’s generosity, his initiative, his incarnation and death on the cross. All our transgressions have been obliterated. The prison doors have been unlocked–we are free to go. No charges are hovering over and against us. If we could only believe that good news, our lives would change radically; we’d be living in the joy of Easter. Confession is not the sacrament in which we suddenly receive the forgiveness that was previously not there; rather, we are given the grace to open ourselves up to the forgiveness that has always been there. It is not God who has a hard time forgiving us; we have a very hard time believing that we’ve been forgiven, and the reason is our awareness that if we were in God’s place, we’d likely forgive very few people, until they earned it in some way. Our limited love keeps us from receiving God’s forgiveness of ourselves. Incidentally, that is why some people would like me or whoever is preaching to preach hard, for they would like the preacher to be a conduit of their anger at the world. That is the kind of Pope some Catholics today would like to see as well.  

    But this is a clue to the difference between the saint and the non-saint. It’s not that the one is so holy and the other is not. No, the saints have a profound awareness of their own sinfulness, like the tax collector we heard about last week (Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner), and they admit it–the saint would not think for a second that he or she is a cut above anyone. The difference is that the saint believes the good news and receives it, allows himself or herself to be touched by it. 

    There won’t be any sense that we deserve heaven nor any sense that we will be given our rightful due. That wouldn’t be heaven; it is much better than that. Heaven is unimaginable gratitude and joy, and a pale image of that joy might be the joy that the widow received in getting back her only son from the dead. Just consider the pain of losing your only child, and then your child is restored to you. That’s a small taste of the joy of heaven. Think of the sadness we felt after losing someone we were close to: a sibling, a parent, grandparent, a son, daughter, or close friend. We are all going to experience such a loss if we haven’t already, but the good news is that all that we lost will be restored to us. Their happiness, the happiness of those who have died but whom we will see again, will be our own happiness. And our love for God will be made perfect, and so God’s happiness will be our own as well, and if our love for God is perfected, our love for all who belong to him (everyone) will be perfected, and then their happiness will also become our own. It is just not possible to get our heads around the joy that awaits us. This life is precisely about preparing for the joy of heaven, but we prepare for this joy by expanding our capacity to be loved and our capacity to love.

    The first reading from Wisdom (3, 1-9) mentions the furnace and the dross. That’s kind of what suffering does to us in our lives, similar to the furnace burning off the dross so that in the end, we are left with pure gold. Human beings seem to be at their worst in times of prosperity, but we are at our best in times of suffering, which is why God allows suffering to enter our lives, that is, in order to shape us, like a blacksmith shapes the iron, by heating and pounding it into a beautiful sword, or whatever is he is making. So when we find ourselves engulfed in darkness and despair, like the widow of Nain would have experienced at the death of her only son, we need to keep in mind that sunrise always follows the darkness and a joy we cannot conceive will soon be ours. 

    Creative and Destructive Conflict

    Deacon Douglas McManaman
    Also published at https://www.lifeissues.net/writers/mcm/mcm_422creativedestructiveconflict.html

    The kiln tests the potter’s vessels; so the test of the just person is in tribulation.

    A kiln is a furnace that dries out the potter’s clay and actually transforms it into a beautiful ceramic piece. We can’t use a clay bowl or cup that has not been in the kiln; it would fall apart, for it would be too soft. And of course, we are the clay, as we read in Isaiah, “Yet, Lord, you are our father; we are the clay and you our potter: we are all the work of your hand” (Is 64, 8). And so it follows that trials, sufferings, difficulties, are part and parcel of the spiritual life.

    I have found over the years that the vast majority of people mistakenly believe that religious life, life in the Church, life in Christ, the devout life, is supposed to be a life of peace and tranquility, like the quiet of a cemetery, where everything works out smoothly and without a glitch. And so when things go awry, we tend to see this as an anomaly, that something is wrong, that if we are right with God, life should proceed without a struggle. But this is a serious misconception. Life is essentially conflict, because it is movement, and all motion is at some level a struggle. Anyone who has studied evolutionary biology knows this. There is no such thing as life without conflict and struggle.

    There are, however, two kinds of conflict: destructive conflict and creative conflict. Sports (play) is essentially conflict and struggle, but it is an enjoyable one because it is essentially creative. Art is a matter of creative conflict, a battle between the sculptor and the resistance of the marble that he is about to carve into a beautiful figure. A life without creative conflict becomes intolerably dull and meaningless. In fact, heaven will be an eternity of creative conflict. Hadewijch of Antwerp writes:

    God will grace you to love God with that limitless Love God loves himself with, the Love through which God satisfies himself eternally and forever. With this Love, the heavenly spirits strive to satisfy God: this is their task that can never be accomplished and the lack of this fruition is their supreme fruition” (Love is Everything: A Year with Hadewijch of Antwerp, trans. Andrew Harvey, May 1st). 

    “Peace” and “rest” are not opposites of conflict, that is, heaven is not a life without obstacles and things to achieve. 

    It is destructive conflict that is the problem. However, God joined a human nature, he joined himself to our humanity, and in doing so he entered into the destructive conflict that human sin has brought about in the world. The victory of that destructive conflict is death, which without Christ has the final word over our lives. But Christ came to die, to enter into our death, to inject it with his divine life, to destroy the power of death, to rise from the dead. He was victorious over death, and so he overcame the struggle of human existence, the battle against destructive conflict. 

    Christ transformed the destructive conflict of death and sin in all its various instances into a matter of creative conflict, a matter of play, as it were: “When he set for the sea its limit, so that the waters should not transgress his command; When he fixed the foundations of earth, then was I beside him as artisan; I was his delight day by day, playing before him all the while, playing over the whole of his earth, having my delight with human beings” (Prov 8, 29-31). We can now share in his victory over both sin and death. He offers us his own humanity so that we might overcome our own life struggles with his strength: “I can do all things in him who strengthens me” (Phil 4, 13). The kiln that dries out all our moisture (disordered love of self) and in time transforms us into something beautiful is the particular difficulties and struggles that we have to contend with in our lives. And some people have greater struggles than others; the heat of the kiln is much hotter in their lives, and perhaps they have been in it for much longer than the rest of us. But the result is a more beautiful product from the hand of the potter. It is not the case that God wills that certain people suffer illness or tragedy; rather, God the Son joined himself to a human nature in order to draw very close to us in our suffering and trials, to give us his divine life that we might overcome the world and its conflicts with him and through him, that we might share in the joy of his victory. The greater the struggle, the greater the victory, and the greater will be the joy in that victory.

    This, I believe, is the key to unlocking today’s gospel: “Can a blind person guide a blind person?…Why do you see the speck in your neighbour’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye?…first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbour’s eye”. The spiritual life is a long and difficult road, a slow process of gradual enlightenment. I don’t know about you, but I do not like looking back at my life and being reminded of what I was back then, because I see my blindness. And of course, the blind cannot lead the blind. But the blind are leading the blind all the time. Even great saints had their blind spots. Study the history of the Church without triumphalist blinders: stupidity, arrogance, sin, oppression, envy, violence, lust for power, control, avarice, etc, is everywhere in our history. We have had great popes who did great things as well as some outrageous things; made great decisions as well as terrible decisions that were very destructive and whose repercussions are still with us today in many ways. It is a real mixture. But that’s life in the Church, as well as the life of the individual person in a state of grace. The spiritual life is conflict, a struggle, a struggle against our own blindness and propensity to sin and self seeking as well as the blindness of others and its repercussions. 

    But before we can take it upon ourselves to correct others, we have to spend years in the kiln, in the furnace, allowing the fire of the divine love to change us so that we may remove the plank from our eye. Recently I asked my Confirmation class about the graces they are going to receive from God upon their Confirmation, specifically the grace of mission. 

    “You are going to be sent on a mission; but to do what?” I asked them. 

    One good candidate put up his hand and said: 

    “To proclaim the gospel”. And of course, that’s a great answer. 

    “But how are you going to do that?” 

    “Preach”, he said. 

    Well, the problem is you’ll lose friends quickly. If you want to be friendless, start preaching to them. If parents want to drive their kids from the church, start preaching. The way to proclaim the gospel is by the very life you lead. The gospel is the good news of Christ’s victory over death, his resurrection. We don’t need to use words. We just need to be a person who lives in the joy of Easter, a person who has the hope of eternal life, a person who is not overcome by life’s tragedies, because we believe that Christ has overcome the world and conquered death. Others will see that in us, by how we react to life’s difficulties and struggles, even life’s tragedies–that we have risen above them in the joy of the risen Christ. 

    Joining Humanity and Divinity

    https://www.lifeissues.net/writers/mcm/mcm_419homily12.29.2024epiphany.html

    Homily for the Epiphany of the Lord
    Deacon Douglas McManaman

    It is fitting that we exchange gifts at Christmas, because our life in Christ is a gift exchange. He came among us precisely to exchange gifts. Jesus is God the Son, the Second Person of the Trinity, who joined his divinity to a human nature. In joining a human nature, he joined divinity to humanity. Vatican II pointed out that in joining a human nature, God the Son is intimately present to every man (joined himself to every man, as it were). But he does not force himself upon anyone. His Incarnation is an offer of exchange, and the exchange is: If you give me your humanity, I will give you my divinity.  

    Jesus is both human and divine, and he offers us the opportunity to become both human and divine; for it was St. Athanasius who said: “God became man so that man might become god”.

    Parents who have their children baptized carry out this exchange; parents offer their children on their behalf. They give to Christ the humanity of their child, and in return, Christ gives that child his divinity. The result is that the child leaves the Church a different creature than when he or she arrived. That child has been deified, divinized, filled with divine grace (theosis). That child is human, but at the same time more than human. That child shares in the divine nature, and so he or she is more than human without ceasing to be human, and as a result that child has capacities that he or she would not have without divine grace, such as the power to believe what Christ has revealed about himself (faith), the capacity to hope for eternal life, and the power to love God intimately, as an intimate friend between whom secrets are shared. None of this is possible without divine grace. And of course, the child receives the 7 personal gifts of the Holy Spirit, as seeds that will unfold as the child continues to grow in faith. And there’s no doubt in my mind that parents for the most part have no idea the good they are doing for their children and for the world in offering their children for baptism. They have a sense that this is a good thing, because they arrange for baptism, even when they are not fully practicing the faith themselves. But they don’t fully realize how much good they are doing for their children and for the world in doing so.

    That is the exchange that Christ offers us. I will give you my divinity if you give me your humanity, and it is a giving that we have to renew for the rest of our lives, because we tend to drift away from him over the course of the years. We tend to get caught up in things that ultimately don’t matter; we get distracted by fear and the lures of pleasure, power, and money, and sin blinds the mind to a certain degree, which allows us to veer away even further. And if we are reflective enough, we become aware of an increasing emptiness–these things don’t fulfill us, and the reason is that we became a “son of God”, deified, divinized, sharers in the divine nature. That’s our deepest identity. In 1920, army chaplain and poet G. Studdert Kennedy wrote: 

    If I am the son of God, nothing but God will satisfy my soul; no amount of comfort, no amount of ease, no amount of pleasure, will give me peace or rest. If I had the full cup of all the world’s joys held up to me, and could drain it to the dregs, I should still remain thirsty if I had not God. If the feast of all the good things of life, pleasures and powers that have been and that are, could be laid out before me and I could eat it all at one meal, I should still be hungry if I had not God. Nor would it satisfy my soul, if I could be assured of an infinite extension of this present life at its best, apart from God. If the feast of this life’s goods could last forever, yet would I start up from the table satiated but still unsatisfied, because I had not God. There is not enough in ten material worlds to satisfy a fully-developed human soul–I must have communion with God. Whatever tends to break that communion is an enemy of mine, however much it may pretend to be a friend. However stubbornly I may stick to the delusion that I can live without Him, however closely I may cling to the idol that I put up in His place, sooner or later, in this world or in the next, the idols and delusions will have to go.

    There is another side to this exchange. In joining his divinity to our humanity, Christ joined the divine joy to the suffering of our humanity, and this is something we can experience as well. If I am a son of God, if Christ’s divinity is joined to my own humanity as a result of my own willing acceptance of that divinity, and if I have made some progress in the spiritual life, then I can sense the joy of that divinity in the midst of suffering, especially physical suffering. Although the suffering is horrible, whether it is a kidney stone, a painful illness, or the pain of dying of old age, at the very core of one’s being, there is joy. Not exhilaration, not exuberance, but a tiny and subtle flame of joy suffering cannot touch or extinguish, only illuminate. In my experience with dying patients, it is always those with real faith who, although they are experiencing some agony, have not lost charity, but are still full of gratitude, still thoughtful, still good natured. This is rarely the case with people who are dying. There is a clear difference between dying patients who have lived a life of faith, hope, and charity throughout their lives, and those who seemed to have refused the divine exchange.

    And so there is really nothing to fear when it comes to pain and suffering, if we have given our humanity to him. At the deepest center of our nature, we will detect the divine light, which illuminates and brings a degree of warmth in the midst of that suffering, so that the suffering does not overwhelm us with fear and despair.