Monday, March 30, 2020

“He Has Not Left Me Alone” by Melanie Rigney



“He Has Not Left Me Alone” by Melanie Rigney


Moses accordingly made a bronze serpent and mounted it on a pole, and whenever anyone who had been bitten by the serpent looked at the bronze serpent, he lived. (Numbers 21:9)

O Lord, hear my prayer, and let my cry come to you. (Psalm 102:2)

“When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will realize that I AM, and that I do nothing on my own, but I say only what the Father taught me. The one who sent me is with me. He has not left me alone, because I always do what is pleasing to him.” (John 8:28-29)

Piety
Father, never leave me. Help me to please You, and to believe You still love me when I don’t.

Study
They couldn’t hurt Jesus, not really. Oh sure, they could plot against Him, denigrate Him, even kill His physical body. But they couldn’t hurt Him, because He was doing the Father’s work, and that spiritual armor would protect Him from anything.

That’s a gift God gives us too. We may feel starved spiritually, not receiving the sacraments regularly. We may be beset by worry about our physical or economic future or that of our loved ones, our country, or the world at all. These are valid concerns; we’re living in a very uncertain time without a playbook—other than Scripture and Sacred Tradition.

But those are powerful playbooks. Even more powerful is the knowledge in that quiet place in our souls that we have not been left alone. And with that, no virus or quarantine or shortage can hurt us, unless we let it.

Action
Do something that is pleasing to the Father. Be creative.


Walk in the Dark Valley


Walk in the Dark Valley


As soon as the maids had left, the two old men got up and hurried to her. “Look,” they said, “the garden doors are shut, and no one can see us; give in to our desire and lie with us. If you refuse, we will testify against you that you dismissed your maids because a young man was here with you.” “I am completely trapped,” Susanna groaned. “If I yield, it will be my death; if I refuse, I cannot escape your power. Yet it is better for me to fall into your power without guilt than to sin before the Lord.” Daniel 13:19-23

Even though I walk in the dark valley, I fear no evil; for you are at my side. Psalm 23:4

But when they continued asking him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” John 8:7

Piety
“Lady,” The Misfit said, looking beyond her far into the woods, “there never was a body that give the undertaker a tip.” (From A Good Man is Hard to Find, by Flannery O’Connor).[i]

Study
A good man is indeed hard to find in today’s readings. First, we encounter the two elders of Babylon and their wicked plot on Susannah. Then, we meet a whole consort of men ready to stone a woman accused (not convicted) of adultery to death.

The first reading leads us to the intervention of Daniel to save Susannah. In the Good News, none other than Jesus of Nazareth comes to the rescue.

In the Flannery O’Connor short story quoted above, The Grandmother was not so lucky. Grace may save her in eternity, but she was not going to escape the fore-shadowy death that awaited her fate in the 1963 story “A Good Man is Hard to Find.”

As she set out with her family on the Tennessee-to-Florida drive, she was first to the car after carefully dressing up in her Sunday best, complete with hat and gloves: “in case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once that she was a lady.”

(If this were an Alfred Hitchcock film, the piano music would ominously crescendo here in a minor key.)

During a rest stop at The Tower, a roadside gas station-barbeque restaurant, she got into a pessimistic conversation with the owner Red Sammy and his wife. Sammy was ripped off after giving two men credit for gas the prior week.

“It isn’t a soul in this green world of God’s that you can trust,” she said. “And I don’t count nobody out of that, not nobody,” she repeated, looking at Red Sammy.  Susannah and the accused woman would likely agree with that assessment.

“A good man is hard to find,” Red Sammy said. “Everything is getting terrible. I remember the day you could go off and leave your screen door unlatched. Not no more.”

A short while later, just outside “Toomsboro” (more piano music), her son reluctantly agrees to try to go back in time in a hunt for an old plantation house.  Bailey was so right when he said: “…[T]his is the only time we're going to stop for anything like this.”

All at once, they would be on a hill, looking down over the blue tops of trees for miles around, then the next minute, they would be in a red depression with the dust-coated trees looking down on them.  (O’Connor need not hit us over the head with Psalm 23 references like “They descended into the valley of the shadow of death below.”)  

However, while searching along a dirt road, cat caused Bailey to wreck the car, only to be saved (in the spoiler-altered short-term, not in the John 3:16 long-term) by “The Misfit,” a recent escapee from prison.

The “good man” theme arises ironically. The henchmen are slowly walking family members to their pistol-point execution in the woods. Meanwhile, The Grandmother – in an attempt to win over The Misfit and spare her life – attempts to compliment him, saying, “I know you’re a good man. You don’t look a bit like you have common blood. I know you must come from nice people!”

Unlike the two elders in the story from the Tanakh, The Misfit knows he is a lost cause.

Nome, I ain’t a good man,” The Misfit said after a second as if he had considered her statement carefully, “but I ain’t the worst in the world neither. My daddy said I was a different breed of dog from my brothers and sisters. ‘You know,’ Daddy said, ‘it’s some that can live their whole life out without asking about it and it’s others has to know why it is, and this boy is one of the latters. He’s going to be into everything!’” He put on his black hat and looked up suddenly and then away deep into the woods as if he were embarrassed again.

Not ready to give up yet, The Grandmother asked: “Do you ever pray?”  The dialogue continues as the screams from the family members getting shot roll out of the trees in the valley of death.

Maybe The Misfit has a better picture of heaven and hell than does this pious Church Lady.

There was [another] piercing scream from the woods, followed closely by a pistol report. “Does it seem right to you, lady, that one is punished a heap and another ain’t punished at all?

The Grandmother has built her self-imposed moral code on the characteristics that she believes make people “good.” She places great stock in being a lady, for example, but emphasizes surface appearance over deeper substance. Despite her professed love for Christian piety, she is unable to pray when she finds herself in a crisis and even begins to question the power and divinity of Jesus.

Action
The Misfit sees that the punishment is always disproportionate to the crime and that the crime, in the end, doesn’t even really matter. He also harbors genuine bafflement about religion. Whereas The Grandmother accepts faith unquestioningly and weakly, the Misfit challenges religious beliefs and thinks deeply about how he should follow them or not follow them. He has chosen to live under the assumption that religion is pointless and adheres to his own kind of faith: “No pleasure but meanness.” His moral code is violent and never wavers, and in the end, he is the one who seems to triumph on earth.

The Grandmother’s careless application of the label “good man” reveals that “good” doesn’t imply “moral” or “kind.” For her, a man is a “good man” if his values align with hers. Red Sammy was “good” because he trusted people blindly and waxed nostalgic about more innocent times—both with which The Grandmother identifies. The Misfit is “good” because she reasons, he won’t shoot a lady—a refusal that would be in keeping with her moral code. Her assumption, of course, proves to be false. The only thing “good” about the Misfit is his consistency in living out his moral code of “no pleasure but meanness.”

Which one – The Grandmother or The Misfit – reminds you of the elders who raped Susannah and the pious men in the courtyard with stones in their hands, ready to unfurl them at the woman caught in adultery?

These days we may feel like we are walking in the dark valley surrounded by unknown virus-sized “Misfits” about to attack us.  Faith in God – true piety – is the moral code that will save us in the John 3:16 fashion.  Nothing more.  Nothing less.

PS:  The family might have gotten to Florida is they just kept their social distance.



[i] Look here for a free copy until your local public library re-opens: https://www.boyd.k12.ky.us/userfiles/447/Classes/28660/A%20Good%20Man%20Is%20Hard%20To%20Find.pdf

Sunday, March 29, 2020

“Imagine Ourselves” by Jim Bayne



“Imagine Ourselves” by Jim Bayne


“Thus, says the Lord God: I am going to open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people; and I will bring you back to the land of Israel. And you shall know that I am the Lord when I open your graves and bring you up from your graves, O, my people.” (Ezekiel 37:12)

If the Spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, the one who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you. (Romans 8:11)

When Jesus saw her weeping and the Jews who had come with her weeping, he became perturbed and deeply troubled, and said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Sir, come and see.” And Jesus wept. So, the Jews said, “See how he loved him.” (John 11:33-36)

Piety
Slow down, it’s COVID Time
This is the time to be slow,
Lie low to the wall
Until the bitter weather passes.
Try, as best you can, not to let
The wire brush of doubt
Scrape from your heart
All sense of yourself
And your hesitant light.
If you remain generous,
Time will come good;
And you will find your feet
Again, on fresh pastures of promise,
Where the air will be kind
And blushed with beginning.
-- John O’Donohue (Irish poet, author, priest, and Hegelian philosopher)

A Prayer in Time of Corona-Virus
Almighty and All–loving God,
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,
we pray to you through Christ the Healer
for those who suffer from the
Coronavirus COVID–19
in Ireland and across the world.

We pray, too, for all who reach out to those who mourn the loss of each and every person who has died as a result of contracting the disease.

Give wisdom to policymakers, skill to healthcare professionals and researchers, comfort to everyone in distress, and a sense of calm to us all in these days of uncertainty and distress.

This we ask in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord, who showed compassion to the outcast, acceptance to the rejected, and love to those to whom no love was shown. Amen.
Archbishop Michael Jackson (Archbishop of Dublin and Bishop of Glendalough)

Study
In his Spiritual Exercises, Ignatius of Loyola suggests that for each Gospel story, we should try to put ourselves in the place of each character in turn and imagine how we would feel in those circumstances.  Amid this pandemic, with people dying all around the world in increasing numbers, it should not be too hard to imagine ourselves as one of those on a ventilator or perhaps even one of those already in the morgue. “Social distancing” in our homes will eventually feel like we are in the tomb. Use this time to imagine.

Action
Church of the Nativity in Timonium, Maryland, is taking this time of crisis to interrupt their normal Lenten program and replace it with one that addresses our current situation. They are calling the program “Never Waste A Crisis.”  Fr. Michael White, the pastor, introduced this new program during his homily last Sunday. He suggested three steps we might take to avoid wasting this crisis:

Make a schedule for yourself. Write out your schedule for an ideal week.
Stay connected. Join a small group Personal prayer. Turn to God in prayer consistently and regularly

To watch Fr. White’s complete introduction, click on the link above. The parish has a cornucopia of material available on their web site.  Last Sunday, more than ten thousand people from all around the world tuned in to their Sunday Mass streamed over their web site.

The Nativity parish example is just one of countless opportunities available to as we wait in our “tombs” for the Resurrection of our country and our world.

During my Saturday morning Zoom group, I heard of many ways our members are doing their “Apostolic Action” during this time. One member was going through his Christmas card list and randomly calling people he thought could probably use a lift. Another was using Zoom to reconnect with family members scattered across the country. He described the excitement of a group of about eight family members seeing a new grandchild for the first time.  I visited with our daughter and her daughters using Google Duo. We hadn’t seen them since Thanksgiving.  Another member had a Zoom conference scheduled for right after our group with another of his now electronically connected groups. The second group has members in Europe, Australia, and the U.S. all meeting together via Zoom.

What ways have you found to “Never Waste A Crisis?”  Try some of the techniques described above if you haven’t already discovered ways of staying alive and active while in the tomb. How can you help our Lord, “open your graves, and bring you up from your graves?”