Wholeness and Love

Can we see our brokenness as a gift from God? Enjoy Fr. Richard Rohr’s reflection on wholeness vs. perfection and see if God isn’t calling us to grow through the broken parts of our lives.

Reposted from https://cac.org/category/daily-meditations/

Wholeness and Love

Friday, July 29, 2016

Perfection is not the elimination of imperfection. Divine perfection is the ability to recognize, forgive, and include imperfection--just as God does with all of us. Only in this way can we find the beautiful and hidden wholeness of God underneath the passing human show. I like the way David Benner explains this in CAC's journal Oneing. Benner writes:

Spare me perfection. Give me instead the wholeness that comes from embracing the full reality of who I am, just as I am. Paradoxically, it is this whole self that is most perfect. As it turns out, wholeness, not perfection, is the route to the actualization of our deepest humanity.

Inconsistencies, imperfections, and failures to live up to ideals are all part of what it means to be human. What seems to distinguish those who are most deeply and wholly human is not their perfection, but their courage in accepting their imperfections. Accepting themselves as they are, they then become able to accept others as they are.

The richness of being human lies precisely in our lack of perfection. This is the source of so much of our longing, and out of that longing emerges so much creativity, beauty, and goodness. With appropriate openness and humility, it is the cracks that let in the light. Once those cracks and flaws are embraced and accepted as part of the self, then, and only then, can the light flow out though them, into the lives of others and into the world. This is Henri Nouwen's "wounded healer"--one who mediates healing, not in spite of personal wounds, but precisely because of them. [1] It is our humanity, not our pseudo-perfection, that allows us to both receive and pass on what Christians call grace--the goodness that flows into our lives from beyond.

The harmonic of the universe is wholeness, not perfection; more specifically, it is wholeness that involves differentiation. . . . Living wholeness is participating in the dynamism of love that gathers everything together into greater unity and consciousness. It is to live with an openness of mind and heart, to encounter others, not as strangers, but as parts of one's self. When we enter into the heart of love in this way, we enter the field of relatedness and come to know our truest and deepest belonging and calling.

Wholeness and love are inseparable. Love leads to larger wholes and there is no true wholeness that is not built on love. In the words of Ilia Delio, "Our challenge today is to trust the power of love at the heart of life, to let ourselves be seized by love, to create and invent ways for love to evolve into a global wholeness of unity, compassion, justice, and peacemaking." [2] [3]

Gateway to Silence

When I am weak I am strong.

References:

[1] Henri J. M. Nouwen, The Wounded Healer: Ministry in Contemporary Society (Doubleday: 1972).

[2] Ilia Delio, The Unbearable Wholeness of Being: God, Evolution, and the Power of Love (Orbis Books: 2013), xxv.

[3] David G. Benner, "Perfection and the Harmonics of Wholeness," "Perfection," Oneing, Vol. 4, No. 1 (CAC: 2016), 61-63. This article was adapted from David G. Benner, Human Being and Becoming (Brazos Press: 2016).

Adapted from Richard Rohr, Yes, And . . . Daily Meditations (Franciscan Media: 2013), 374.

...teach youth about Martyrs

Sadly, the continuing acts of terror around the world are being acutely felt at World Youth Day (I remember going to Evening Prayer at the Taize Church in Cologne at WYD 2005, the day the founder of the Taize Community, Br. Roger was killed: even though we were wedged in, on the ground (no pews in a pre-Reformation church!), it felt like the whole place would take off and soar into the air! We forget that we are indeed living in an age of martyrs, and how they can heal us: consider the witness of the niece of an Indian Bishop who was raped - "there are some sufferings that Jesus would not have known"!

https://cruxnow.com/analysis/2016/07/27/memo-wyd-forget-program-teach-youth-martyrs/

St. Kateri Tekakwitha - Thursday, July 14, 2016 Lived(1656-1680) | Feast Day: Thursday, July 14, 2016

While the Church in Canada marks St. Kateri's feast on April 17th (i.e., her death in 1680), our neighbours to the south track a different calendar (much as they celebrate the martyrdom of St. Anthony Daniel & Companions, not St. Jean de Brebeuf as we do), nonetheless their reflection on St. Kateri's ability to find every grace in her different states of life (both single, avowed) is a great inspiration for layperson, priest or religious alike. St. Kateri, Lily of the Mohawks, pray for us!

The following is re-posted from Franciscanmedia - Saint of the Day

http://productions.franciscanmedia.org/sections/sod/

The blood of martyrs is the seed of saints. Nine years after the Jesuits Isaac Jogues and John de Brébeuf (October 19) were tomahawked by Iroquois warriors, a baby girl was born near the place of their martyrdom, Auriesville, New York.
Her mother was a Christian Algonquin, taken captive by the Iroquois and given as wife to the chief of the Mohawk clan, the boldest and fiercest of the Five Nations. When she was four, Kateri lost her parents and little brother in a smallpox epidemic that left her disfigured and half blind. She was adopted by an uncle, who succeeded her father as chief. He hated the coming of the Blackrobes (Jesuit missionaries), but could do nothing to them because a peace treaty with the French required their presence in villages with Christian captives. She was moved by the words of three Blackrobes who lodged with her uncle, but fear of him kept her from seeking instruction. She refused to marry a Mohawk brave and at 19 finally got the courage to take the step of converting. She was baptized with the name Kateri (Catherine) on Easter Sunday.
Now she would be treated as a slave. Because she would not work on Sunday, she received no food that day. Her life in grace grew rapidly. She told a missionary that she often meditated on the great dignity of being baptized. She was powerfully moved by God’s love for human beings and saw the dignity of each of her people.
She was always in danger, for her conversion and holy life created great opposition. On the advice of a priest, she stole away one night and began a 200-mile walking journey to a Christian Indian village at Sault St. Louis, near Montreal.
For three years she grew in holiness under the direction of a priest and an older Iroquois woman, giving herself totally to God in long hours of prayer, in charity and in strenuous penance. At 23 she took a vow of virginity, an unprecedented act for an Indian woman, whose future depended on being married. She found a place in the woods where she could pray an hour a day—and was accused of meeting a man there!
Her dedication to virginity was instinctive: She did not know about religious life for women until she visited Montreal. Inspired by this, she and two friends wanted to start a community, but the local priest dissuaded her. She humbly accepted an “ordinary” life. She practiced extremely severe fasting as penance for the conversion of her nation. She died the afternoon before Holy Thursday. Witnesses said that her emaciated face changed color and became like that of a healthy child. The lines of suffering, even the pockmarks, disappeared and the touch of a smile came upon her lips. She was beatified in 1980 and canonized in 2012..
Comment:
We like to think that our proposed holiness is thwarted by our situation. If only we could have more solitude, less opposition, better health. Kateri repeats the example of the saints: Holiness thrives on the cross, anywhere. Yet she did have what Christians—all people—need: the support of a community. She had a good mother, helpful priests, Christian friends. These were present in what we call primitive conditions, and blossomed in the age-old Christian triad of prayer, fasting and alms: union with God in Jesus and the Spirit, self-discipline and often suffering, and charity for her brothers and sisters.

Quote:
Kateri said: “I am not my own; I have given myself to Jesus. He must be my only love. The state of helpless poverty that may befall me if I do not marry does not frighten me. All I need is a little food and a few pieces of clothing. With the work of my hands I shall always earn what is necessary and what is left over I’ll give to my relatives and to the poor. If I should become sick and unable to work, then I shall be like the Lord on the cross. He will have mercy on me and help me, I am sure.”

Sunday Scripture Reflections re posted from Catholic Theological Union

Catholic Theological Union and Sunday Scripture Reflections

Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

July 10, 2016

Readings:

First Reading: DT 30:10-14

Responsorial Psalm: PS 69:14,17, 30-31, 33-34, 36-37

Second Reading: COL 1:15-20

Gospel: LK 10: 25-37

I used to think today's gospel was a no-brainer: Everyone knew that what we were called to do was to tend to those who are discarded by the side of the road. Maybe not everyone understood the overwhelming generosity of the Samaritan, but everyone knew intuitively that the man had to be tended to in his need.

           

However, having listened to presidential candidates trip over each other in promising ever-crueler treatment of immigrants; having witnessed the tone in Europe change toward refugees, and our own politicians sowing hatred toward those who are escaping the violence of their homelands; having seen our politicians unable to provide funding for those who are infected with the Zika virus; or even provide funding for our own social services here in Illinois, simply because politics is more important than people in need, I have had to re-think what I thought was a given. Now, it seems like the priest and the Levite have gained the ascendency in American society, and that I can no longer take for granted those things which I had previously assumed everyone agreed with.

The words of Pope Francis, addressed to Europe, in accepting the Charlemagne Prize, ring true of America as well: "What has happened to you, the Europe of humanism, the champion of human rights, democracy and freedom? ..... What has happened to you, Europe, the mother of peoples and nations, the mother of great men and women who upheld and even sacrificed their lives for the dignity of their brothers and sisters?" In the Pope's mind, another Europe is emerging; and it seems that another America is emerging as well.

The Scripture readings for today speak of a different way of looking at the world, and of finding our place in the world. In the first reading, Moses speaks to the people of the law of God which "is something very near to you, already in your mouths and in your hearts." He tells his people "you have only to carry it out." It ought to be that simple! What God requires of us is already written on our hearts. We have only to carry it out.

That might appear to be simple, and should give us the answer to the man by the side of the road. But there is a first step that Moses says needs to be taken. And that is to "return to the Lord your God, with all your heart and all your soul." In order to be able to recognize the law of God that is written on our hearts, we must first convert. It's not something that happens automatically; it only happens with conversion. We must first learn to read our hearts, on which is written God's merciful law.

           

And that conversion means recognizing the unity of creation that comes through Jesus, as Paul tells us in the second reading, in whom all the fullness of creation dwells.

           

The first step, then, is seeing creation in a new light. It is not simply "creation as it seems", but creation as it has been redeemed through the resurrection of Jesus. That's what prepares us to read the law of God written on our hearts, and prepares us to "love the Lord your God, with all your heart, with all your being, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself." Seeing the fullness of creation which resides in Jesus allows us to act in a different way toward the world, because we have seen the world in a different way.

           

That is the basis for Jesus turning the scholar's question around. The scholar asks, "Who is my neighbor?" but Jesus answers, "Who are you neighbor to?" When we do not see the unity of creation, we impose our own divisions on it. We make the distinction between who is my neighbor, and who is not; who do I help, and who do I not; who is worthy of what I have, and who is not. I become the arbiter of that, and look at the world from a position of power, and by looking at the world from the outside.

           

When, on the other hand, I have to answer the question, "Who am I a neighbor to?", then I ask the question from inside the world. I do not stand apart from it, or act as the judge over the world and over its peoples.

             

In speaking of this parable in a General Audience of April 27, 2016, Pope Francis notes the reversal of the question, and urges us: "Do not stand by classifying others by sight who is my neighbor and who is not. You can become neighbor to any needy person you meet, and you will know that you have compassion in your heart, that is, whether you have the capacity to suffer with the other." This means, the Pope says, "compromising oneself, taking all the necessary steps so as to approach the other to the point of identifying with him: 'you shall love your neighbor as yourself.' This is the Lord's commandment."

           

This ability to see my neighbor as myself is at the heart of our compassion as followers of Jesus. It allows us to see our oneness with all of creation, which has been brought together in Jesus' name, to the glory of God.

Rev. Msgr. Patrick R. Lagges, Ph.D.

Adjunct Professor

Director, Hesburgh Sabbatical ProgramCatholic Theological Union

Sign up to receive a daily email from Saint of the Day

Click here to go to Franciscan Media.org Saint of the Day.  Then click the link to sign up to receive Saint of the Day in your email.

Saint of the Day (Monday, July 4, 2016)-St. Elizabeth of Portugal

Elizabeth is usually depicted in royal garb with a dove or an olive branch. At her birth in 1271, her father, Pedro III, future king of Aragon, was reconciled with his father, James, the reigning monarch. This proved to be a portent of things to come. Under the healthful influences surrounding her early years, she quickly learned self-discipline and acquired a taste for spirituality. Thus fortunately prepared, she was able to meet the challenge when, at the age of 12, she was given in marriage to Denis, king of Portugal. She was able to establish for herself a pattern of life conducive to growth in God’s love, not merely through her exercises of piety, including daily Mass, but also through her exercise of charity, by which she was able to befriend and help pilgrims, strangers, the sick, the poor—in a word, all those whose need came to her notice. At the same time she remained devoted to her husband, whose infidelity to her was a scandal to the kingdom.
He, too, was the object of many of her peace endeavors. She long sought peace for him with God, and was finally rewarded when he gave up his life of sin. She repeatedly sought and effected peace between the king and their rebellious son, Alfonso, who thought that he was passed over to favor the king’s illegitimate children. She acted as peacemaker in the struggle between Ferdinand, king of Aragon, and his cousin James, who claimed the crown. And finally from Coimbra, where she had retired as a Franciscan tertiary to the monastery of the Poor Clares after the death of her husband, she set out and was able to bring about a lasting peace between her son Alfonso, now king of Portugal, and his son-in-law, the king of Castile.

Comment:
The work of promoting peace is anything but a calm and quiet endeavor. It takes a clear mind, a steady spirit and a brave soul to intervene between people whose emotions are so aroused that they are ready to destroy one another. This is all the more true of a woman in the early 14th century. But Elizabeth had a deep and sincere love and sympathy for humankind, almost a total lack of concern for herself and an abiding confidence in God. These were the tools of her success.

Re-posted from Franciscan Media.org Saint of the Day