Wednesday, April 25, 2012

Ramblings

Sometimes there is just so much to say that you can't even begin to say it.  And it is all so good, or so bad, or so important, or so deep, or so mushed together in your mind that putting it into words seems quite far from possible and not appealing in the least.

But here is goes.  My mushy thoughts spewed out through my fingers.

The Lord loves me so much.  Everything He does is a desperate act through which He hopes to catch my attention.  And He loves you so much.  And He loves that man on the subway I was sitting next to today as I prayed my rosary, and the one singing to the entire train car just to get a couple cents, and the student I had dinner with.  He loves them so much.  He wants to use me to love them, but I don't let Him.  Lord, You want me to talk to this random dude with unkempt hair and a mean-looking New York demeanor?  He'll think I'm a freak.  I'd rather just secretly pray my rosary, thanks.

No.  No!  No no no!  I let it pass.  That opportunity to bring Him into the world.  To be like Mary for just one moment.  To allow Him to love others and to love me.  And why?  WHY?  Why did I let it pass?

Because I am weak.

So, so weak.

Bah.  But this is where we come back to the part about how much He loves me, because even when I fail, He still loves me and offers me a way to share in His life and allows me to enter into His Trinitarian relationship.  He gives me the chance to run to Him, and lean on Him, to unite myself to Him.  All this, still available, even when I FAIL Him.  Wow how little my love is compared to His.  Or rather, how great His love is compared to everything.

Monday, April 9, 2012

Adventure

"Whenever we come together to listen to the Word of God, what we are seeking at bottom is not mental information or moral instruction or even a sentimental influence that will make us "feel" the presence and goodness of God.  What we seek with all our soul, rather, is the possibility of opening ourselves up in prayer to God's transforming action.  Whether we are fully conscious of it or not, in other words, we desire a change of life, a conversion from what we presently are to a more precise embodiment of the likeness of Christ at the center of our being, radiating our from us through all our thoughts, words, and actions.  This is why the life of contemplation is the boldest and most adventuresome of undertakings, for what could be more radical, more truly earth-shattering, than the willingness to be dismantled and created anew, not once or twice in a lifetime, but day after day?  'If any one is in Christ, he is a new creation' (2 Corinthians 5:17)."
 -Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis, The Way of the Disciple, pg 18



HAPPY EASTER!!  He is risen!  Alleluia!

Saturday, April 7, 2012

Stations in the Village

Yesterday was Good Friday.  I spent the day at St. Patrick's Cathedral at a three-hour long reflection on the seven last words of Christ with Father Robert Barron followed by a Good Friday Liturgy with Cardinal Dolan (I love living in New York!).

The coolest part of the day was still to come, though.  The Vocations department for Archdiocese organized a Stations of the Cross through the southern part of Manhattan.  On a Friday night that is nothing special to someone who isn't Christian, it must have been strange to outsiders to see a large group of people led by a guy in a purple cape and a crucifix, singing hymns of praise in Latin, while walking through the streets of one of the most liberal areas of one of the most liberal cities in the world.

But that's exactly what we did.  We made our way from church to church or landmark to landmark, stopping at each to pray and reflect on a different moment in Christ's passion or pray a decade of the rosary.  It took four hours, concluding finally at 1am, and we must have walked about 6-8 miles, but it was awesome.

On a street corner in Greenwich Village, by NYU

Washington Square Park


Some people supported what we were doing, some people didn't, but most just stared for a second and then ignored us.

The hardest moment for me what at the very beginning - our first stop.  When the organizers originally planned the route a few years ago, they made this the first stop, not knowing it was directly in front of Planned Parenthood.  In the past, people have thrown eggs at the group from their windows above, but this year that didn't happen.  Instead, as we were singing, a woman started screaming at us our her window- not profanities, but rather something much sadder, and very true.  "Jesus. forgave. everyone!" she pleaded.  Everyone.  She screamed it over and over and over and over again.  She is so right.  And it pained me so much to hear her anger and sadness geared toward us, and to know how wrong her impression of us was, but not be able to make it right.

Jesus died to forgive everyone.  We were standing there last night to condemn, but rather to ask that He do just that.  That He have mercy on those who have had abortions and to heal them.

My heart broke a little at that moment.  How much misconception there is out there about the Church and what She stands for.  I hope I can do my part now and always to make it right, at least a little.

There are not one hundred people in the United States who hate The Catholic Church, but there are millions who hate what they wrongly perceive the Catholic Church to be.
Archbishop Fulton Sheen