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Read more about the article Baptism in the Jordan

Baptism in the Jordan

When we think of John the Baptist, we tend to picture a “fire and brimstone” preacher telling people to repent.  But the Baptism in the Jordan leads us in a better direction to reveal who John the Baptist was.  John was present when the Blessed Virgin Mary visited his mother Elizabeth.  He recognized his savior and leapt for joy in his mother’s womb.  From this moment we know that John was special. Luke 1:15 says “he will be filled with the Holy Spirit in his mother’s womb.”  The Holy Spirit filled John with sanctifying grace and he responded to this grace throughout his life.

John spent years fasting and praying.  Fasting magnifies our spiritual life and deepens our relationship with God far beyond what prayer alone can do.  Fasting allows us to see the things of God more clearly and be more open to the direction of the Holy Spirit.  So when John preached to the people, there was no doubt he was responding to the Holy Spirit.  And how does a preacher convince people to repent?  By being a force so full of love that people respond to him and his message.  He speaks in truth, yes, but also in love and mercy, drawing people in and inviting them into a deeper relationship with God.  In order to do this, John radiated peace, love, and joy.  He also radiated humility, “I am not worthy to untie the strap of his shoe.”  The people came to him in droves and confessed their sins.  As Catholics, we often choose to go to priests who connect with us, respond with love and understanding, and give us spiritual guidance. The people of John’s time were the same.  They came in droves because he did not condemn, but offered them love, hope, and mercy. 

St. John the Baptist was able to offer these gifts because he was a man of humility, the most misunderstood of the virtues. Humility is not putting ourselves down or wallowing in feelings of worthlessness.  On the contrary, humility is the grace to understand who God is as Creator, to know who we are as His creatures, and to see our neighbors as beloved souls created in the image and likeness of God.  In true humility we grow to love God more and seek a deeper relationship with Him.  Just as fasting magnifies our prayers, it also enables us to grow in humility, and as a result, experience the fruits of the Holy Spirit.  Because of John’s great humility, the Holy Spirit revealed the Messiah to him and he proclaimed for our benefit: “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world” (Jn 1:29).  He knew what most of Israel did not; he knew the Messiah would restore the people to the intimate relationship with God they had lost through Adam’s sin.

John’s call was a call to love, a call to willingly transform their hearts so that God could make His home there. The words of John still speak to us today, inviting us to transform our hearts through prayer and fasting.  Our Lord loves us so much that He offers us the same grace that He gave John — to come before Him face to face and experience the love that surpasses all others.  He humbles Himself in the form of bread and waits for us to approach in Eucharistic Adoration so that He may speak to us in the quiet of our hearts. And if we invite Him, He will make His home here.

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Read more about the article Forgive Us Our Sins

Forgive Us Our Sins

As we forgive those who sin against us.  When we pray the Our Father (also known as The Lord’s Prayer), we always mean the first part, but do we really mean the second part?  If we are honest with ourselves, we all squirm a little on this one.   We all want to be forgiven, but extending that forgiveness to those who have hurt us or our family members is much more difficult.  So, is this “forgive us as we forgive others” a lofty ideal to which we aspire, or is absolutely essential that we do it?  Can we do it?

The Church is full of examples of heroic virtue, including modern saints like Mother Teresa (now St. Teresa of Calcutta) and Pope St. John Paul II. These saints often seem so high above us that we often think “Oh, I’ll never make it that far,” even though they were people just like us who simply chose to love God.  So today I am writing about an ordinary person that inspired me: Betsie TenBoom. I learned about Betsie in high school when I read The Hiding Place by Corrie TenBoom.  Corrie recounts how she and her sister Betsie, devout in their Dutch Reformed faith, chose to hide Jews from the Nazis after the invasion of Holland.  When the Nazis stormed the TenBoom home, they didn’t find the hidden Jews but they did find the extra ration cards which were illegal to possess.  Betsie and Corrie were sent to Ravensbruck, a concentration camp. Miraculously, they smuggled in their Bible and shared their faith with many who had lost hope. Betsie maintained a disposition of gratitude, even thanking God for the fleas because it kept the guards out of their dormitory so they could read the Bible to their fellow inmates undisturbed. Betsie always told Corrie “no hate” and continually prayed for the souls of the guards even though she was  frequently beaten by them.  Even Corrie was amazed at Betsie’s forgiving heart and steadfast focus on God.  As she lay dying in the infirmary, she told Corrie, “When you leave here you must tell people that there is no pit so deep that God’s love is not deeper still.  They will believe you because you have been here.”  These words have remained with me my whole life.

Forgiveness is possible, but why is it so necessary that Jesus devoted several parables to it?  Forgiveness is more about us than it is about those who have wronged us.  When we choose not to forgive, we hold onto anger for so long that it turns into either rage or depression.  We then harm not the transgressor, but those around us as well as ourselves.  Forgiveness does not  mean letting the transgressor “get away with it,” it means letting ourselves get away from it.

Forgiveness is an act of the will.  We will ourselves to forgive.  By choosing to put down this burden we carry, we free ourselves to open our arms wide to receive the embrace of Jesus.  When we allow ourselves to be embraced by Him, He can then heal our wounds and give us His peace. “There is no pit so deep that God is not deeper still.”

Forgiveness is like throwing a stone into a still pond and seeing the ripples reach the shore.  Just as evil, even evil done in secret, affects the entire world, so too does every good act we do, especially when we do it for love of Jesus. When we extend the mercy we have received from Our Lord to others, it multiplies beyond what we can see. Forgiveness therefore brings many graces of mercy, not only upon ourselves, but upon our world. 

We know that Christ died once for all sin, but He still suffers when we sin today.  This is part of the mystery of the mystical body of Christ.  We suffer from sin, but as the head of our mystical body, He suffers too.  When we embrace mercy to the point of praying for those who have harmed us, our prayers assist in their conversion and their conversion ameliorates the suffering of Jesus.  So even if we struggle to love our neighbor, we can pray for our neighbor because we love Jesus and want to ease His suffering.  This love for Him which compels us to pray for others transforms our own hearts and creates a home in which Jesus can dwell.  This is the essence of “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.”  We can experience Heaven on earth, knowing the peace of God, when we allow God’s mercy to dwell in our hearts. This is the mercy and peace that Betsie experienced, even in a concentration camp. “There is no pit so deep that God is not deeper still.”

Reference: Boom, Corrie Ten, et al. The Hiding Place. Hendrickson Publishers, 2015.

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Read more about the article Gethsemane

Gethsemane

We all know the events that took place in the garden of Gethsemane: Jesus prayed, the apostles slept, Judas betrayed Him, and He was arrested.  But we really don’t know what happened in the garden.  Our understanding must begin with reflecting on what sin does to our souls.  Sin darkens the intellect, separates us from the love, truth, and beauty that is God, and strangles the breath from our souls.  The sorrow is that the longer we remain in sin, the more we become accustomed to the darkness and the lack of breath.  We can even go so far as being impressed with our own “wisdom,” lying to ourselves that we have our own light.  The deeper we go into sin, the more our souls gasp for air and the more we search in all the wrong places for relief and for light.

It was into this darkness that Our Lord descended when He took on the sins of the whole world — and this suffering truly goes beyond human understanding.  Eternally perfect, descending from Heaven into a body free from all stain of sin, living in perfect love and communion with the Father with every breath of His life, to suddenly have all of our sins heaped upon Him caused so much physical agony that He sweat blood.  Pause for a moment with that thought.  He sweat blood.  No other human being has ever suffered this much.

But even this was not the worst.  He actually felt everything we feel after we sin: guilt, shame, unjust anger when our sins are pointed out to us, sorrow, abject misery, desolation, and the worst of all – the emptiness that is felt by those who are so immersed in the deepest pits of sin they can no longer feel anything.  These are the ones so engulfed in evil that at the moment of death they look at the face of God with such hatred that they leap willingly into the fires of hell.  Yes, Jesus felt all these things – the pain beyond bearing and the reason why the angel rushed to His side.

Jesus loves us so much that He willingly endured all of this. Jesus’s depth of compassion for us poor sinners has no bounds.  He understands everything we are suffering and desires to free us from the personal hells we create for ourselves when we sin.  He delights in forgiving us, especially those in most need of His Mercy.

When we humble ourselves to ask for forgiveness, Jesus looks beyond the filth and stench we have heaped upon our souls.  He looks with compassion and mercy on souls writhing in agony.  He sees the heavy chains that have weighed us down for so long that we have long since stopped trying to move.  He sets us free.  As He promised, He never rejects a contrite heart.  He rejoices in forgiving us, setting us free from our chains, seeing our souls breathing freely and reflecting God’s light as the moon reflects the light of the sun.

This is the Jesus we encounter in the Sacrament of Reconciliation.  Like the prodigal son approaching the forgiving father, Jesus opens His arms wide to receive us.  Do you desire to hear the words, “. . .through the ministry of the Church, may God grant you pardon and peace and I absolve you of your sins in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit” ?  Jesus’s desire to give us His mercy is even greater than our desire to receive it.  Let’s not keep Him waiting.

Jesus, Son of the Living God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

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Read more about the article Sunsets

Sunsets

Each of us has a love language, a way that our beloved communicates with us so that we feel loved.  For some it may be the words “I love you,” for others it may be little gifts or thoughtful gestures that say “I was thinking of you,” and for others it may be big, warm hugs.  For me, God communicates with me through nature, most especially through sunsets.  Every time I see a beautiful sunset, I know that He is saying “I love you” to me.

I spoke with my husband a few days ago about the ongoing shelter in place and the fact that I hadn’t seen a sunset in a long time because we have been inside so much.  The very next evening I glanced out the window and saw the most beautiful pink sky.  I raced outside and saw God’s “I love you” in all its breathtaking glory.  The air around me was pleasantly warm  — the heat that remains after a scorching day but has tempered to a balmy warmth.  It felt like God’s warmth was wrapping around me and hugging me.

So I composed this little prayer for Him as a thanksgiving for the sunset.

                            Son of God, I praise you, I bless you, I adore you

                            Until You come again

                            Near to You I will remain.  Keep me in the center of Your

                            Sacred Heart,

                            Embracing me with Your love.  Jesus, I

                            Trust in You.

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