"The Glorious Duty of Man"

My little children, reflect on these words: the Christian's treasure is not on earth but in heaven. Our thoughts, then, ought to be directed to where our treasure is. This is the glorious duty of man: to pray and to love. If you pray and love, that is where a man's happiness lies.

Prayer is nothing else but union with God. When one has a heart that is pure and united with God, he is given a kind of serenity and sweetness that makes him ecstatic, a light that surrounds him with marvelous brightness. In this intimate union, God and the soul are fused together like two bits of wax that no one can ever pull apart. This union of God with a tiny creature is a lovely thing. It is a happiness beyond understanding.

We had become unworthy to pray, but God in his goodness allowed us to speak with him. Our prayer is incense that gives him the greatest pleasure.

My little children, your hearts are small, but prayer stretches them and makes them capable of loving God. Through prayer we receive a foretaste of heaven and something of paradise comes down upon us. Prayer never leaves us without sweetness. It is honey that flows into the soul and makes all things sweet. When we pray properly, sorrows disappear like snow before the sun.

                                                                           - St. John Vianney (1786-1859)

The Parable of the Lost Starfish

There was once a starfish who lived by herself on the shore, and before long she couldn't remember ever having been elsewhere. This was her home - this was the world she knew. But something was never quite right for the starfish. She felt empty, unfulfilled, out of place, and it filled her with a deep sadness. She watched as birds flew blissfully around the shoreline and the trees swayed to and fro in the gentle breeze. Why were they so happy? Why couldn't she be more like them?

One day, the starfish began to hear the surging voice of the nearby ocean more clearly, more steadily than ever before. Soon she could swear that she heard it speak to her, saying, "Come home! Come home!"

"Come home?" she thought. "What could that possibly mean? I am home, aren't I? This shore is my home - there's no other place for me."

"No it isn't," the Sea replied. "You were never meant to stay out there."

"But I can't go into the sea! It's big and terrifying and mysterious!" said the starfish.

"That might be what things look like from out there, where your life is so small and so rigid," replied the Sea, "but in my midst you will find unending joy, adventure, and family like you cannot imagine. You are alone out there, aren't you?"

Saddened, the starfish admitted her loneliness. But, still fearful of such an unimaginable change, she said, "I'm too afraid! If you really are where I belong, why don't you just grab hold of me and draw me in?"

"Because," said the Sea, "I made you to be free, to choose your destiny. I offer you everything you could ever want out here, away from the rigid land. But you have to desire to come along. Will you come home now, my precious one?"

The starfish, still fearful but filled with a new strength and trust in the loving Sea, stretched and strained with all her might toward the vast frontier. As soon as she did, the waves met and embraced her completely, carrying her joyfully into the depths of the home in which she was always meant to dwell.

A Prayer at the Sea

My Lord, I stand upon the shore in a state of awe. I never gaze into the sea-filled horizon without the same feeling coming over me. This mystery I behold reminds me of You. The sea, like you, is so very immense, so grand, so boundless. It fills me with joy as well as peace and tranquility - a bit like You do. But so do am I touched by a twinge of apprehension, even fear, for before such majesty I sense my own frailty and weakness, not to mention my small stature in the grand scheme of things. What am I next to such grandeur? What am I in the midst of the swelling, surging deep that day and night speaks one word to the rocky shore? Your Word, like the ceaseless waves, laps against the hard hearts of men over and over again until they cannot ignore Your presence any longer. You never give up, no matter how much I fortify the stony wall I've built to hold You back. You never leave me, never draw back or retreat to some far away land. No, Lord. You who contain so much power and might come most often in the soft and gentle caress of a summer tide. I pray You will open my heart to receive You into every corner of my being. Wash over and through me, Father, and may I never again be dry. Amen.

"The Last Things" pt. 2

"Come to me, all who labor and are heavy
laden, and I will give you rest" - Mt. 11:28

As I mentioned last week citing von Balthasar's observations on the matter, Christ himself is the "eschata" - the "last things" of the creature. He comes from the Eternal Father as a man, in time at a particular moment of human history. But he does not emerge from within it as we do. He comes in from the outside. God becomes part of His own creation. How often do any of us believers actually sit back and think about how incredible that is?

This God-Man then transforms everything we experience as human beings by mysteriously incorporating it all into himself: birth, growing up, learning, suffering, friendship, work, eating, sleeping, even death. There is no longer any corner of the human condition with which God, in the Person of Christ, is not intimately familiar. He is everywhere we are and he calls to us with love, encouragement, and grace around every turn.

But God respects our freedom implicitly, far more than we respect it or anyone else's! He, unlike us, will not (cannot) ever force or coerce anyone to choose the good. He is love itself, and real love is never forced. And so, the "final destination" is entirely tied to one's relation to Christ. If I choose him, it is called heaven. If I reject him, that is called hell. If I still have baggage which must be left at his door before going inside, it is called "purgatory", the process of abandoning every last obstacle. And as he gazes deeply into my very being, I cannot hide who I am, who I have made myself to be in life. That is what "judgement" truly is.

These "Four Last Things" are not distinct categories or separate experiences. They are my ultimate encounter with God, who is Reality Himself!

The Sea

"So God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarm, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good."

- Genesis 1:21

"The Last Things"

In traditional Catholic teaching, the "Last Things" refers to the topics of death, judgment, hell, and heaven, the so called "four last things to be ever remembered" as Muriel Spark puts it in her book Memento Mori. The study of these last things constitutes the theological enterprise called "eschatology" from the Greek "eschaton" which, essentially, means finality, end, outcome, uttermost.

These four final realities are held by the Church to be utterly inescapable when it comes to the human experience (though the Church of course affirms that hell is not "inescapable" in so far as Christ's offer of salvation is concerned). At the end of the day, we can avoid these subjects as much as we want, we can fabricate the most creative alternatives to them but, in the end, we all die, we face judgement, and we are ultimately transported to one of two very real states - heaven or hell.

It has grown increasingly popular to label everything I've just written as absolutely, ridiculously absurd - a holdover from the Middle Ages. To actually believe anything I've mentioned so far is nothing more than foolish, arcane, superstitious nonsense. Even many of our brothers and sisters in the Church, some in positions of leadership and influence, would cast all of this out the window at the first chance if they could. But I would simply point out that Jesus Christ never surrendered himself to the prison of popularity. The Christian faith is not, has never been, nor ever will it be a faith defined by how "with the times" it is. The Church utterly transcends time and the often bullying influences Pope Saint John Paul II referred to as "passing fads."

It's true that most of the agitation that seems to crop up whenever one makes mention of death, judgement, hell, or heaven may very well be ascribed to outdated and imperfect traditional ways of describing our ultimate end. One can't help but immediately conjure up images of hell being filled with little red devils with pointy tails poking at a person for all eternity with their pitchforks while flames mercilessly lick the room. Heaven is commonly painted as a vast, endless realm of clouds atop which fat little angels and boring people pluck at harps to no end. Trust me, I get it! I mean if the first one is remotely true, how could a good God bear even one of his supposedly beloved creatures ending up there forever? If the second one is true, why in the world would ANYONE ever want to end up there? That kind of heaven is the sort of thing I would probably try and think of when I'm desperately trying to fall asleep!

The truth revealed by Christ and passed down through his Church is far more incredible, far more profound and meaningful than these often quaint pictures we've come to know. I will be making a couple of posts relating to the Last Things over the next few weeks but for now, I think I'll just let the inimitable Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar lay it out:

God is the “last thing” of the creature. Gained, he is heaven; lost, he is hell; examining, he is judgment; purifying, he is purgatory. He it is to whom finite being dies, and through whom it rises to him, in him. This he is, however, as he presents himself to the world, that is, in his Son, Jesus Christ, who is the revelation of God and, therefore, the whole essence of the last things.