Holy Joseph, Husband of Mary

About nine minutes into this broadcast, following the scriptural readings for today, the Solemnity of Saint Joseph, Husband of Mary, begins a beautiful homily on Joseph that I could not resist sharing out of love for the saint, because I could not speak better of him than Father Landry does here:

Faith, Or Learning To Ride A Bike

The Transfiguration of the Lord occurred, according to Scripture, following Jesus’ teachings “that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.” (Mark 8:31) According to Mark, “He said all this quite openly.” (8:32)

“Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them…” (Mark 9:2)

Saint Leo the Great explains in today’s Office of Readings: “The great reason for this transfiguration was to remove the scandal of the cross from the hearts of his disciples, and to prevent the humiliation of his voluntary suffering from disturbing the faith of those who had witnessed the surpassing glory that lay concealed.” (LH 2:149)

But indeed, that faith was disturbed. We know that in the time of trial when the Master was undergoing great suffering, and fear overtook the sheep as the Shepherd was struck, that the disciples seem to have disregarded the “glory that lay concealed,” even though they had seen it with their own eyes six days before.

It is much the same for us when we are confronted with something that brings us to a state of anxiety or distress. Everything that was right and good yesterday flies out the window today. We immediately respond in the flesh, so to speak. We feel the trouble, whatever it might be, pierce our hearts, contract our stomachs, and fill our nerves with prickly needles. We physically react to the situation, and presuming we are operating in a state of sound mental health, our response is appropriate on that level.  

What is called for by faith, however, is an interior move away from what is seen and felt toward a willing embrace of what we know to be true, in spite of what we see and feel. To have faith goes against our flesh for sure, and it is in part an act of the will. Therefore, it involves our thinking.

Where we can go awry there, is by applying reason. I know it sounds absurd that reason could lead us astray, but even reason can betray us in such a case because of its collusion with the human ego. When we mix reason with ego, faith is not going to happen.

From teenytinypieces.com

So we are bid by God to have faith in opposition to the feelings of our flesh and in opposition to human reason informed by egotism. God Himself has given us faith as part of the Baptism package, so we do have it. Tricycle faith was instilled in us when we were baptized.

Then something happened in our lives that called us to step up to the bike-with-training-wheels-level of faith and maybe that didn’t work out. Maybe we went back to the tricycle. Or maybe we stepped right up, faith-wise, and eventually graduated to the bike without training wheels.

I, myself, could not accept the two-wheeler for a long time. As a kid, I debated with everyone and wanted to hear a scientific explanation of how it was possible that a person could balance on those two skinny wheels without tipping over. Even though I had seen with my own eyes, many times, other people riding two-wheelers, no one was going to get me to do it. That’s reason with ego at work.

At last I agreed to it with my best friend’s mother holding onto the back of the seat and the handle bar as I mounted and began to pedal. She let go of the handle bar and began running next to me, holding the back of the seat. Assuring me she was still there she fell behind and eventually let go. When I realized I was riding the bike, it was like a whole new level of human existence opened up for me. The world became larger because I could travel farther. I became more autonomous and independent. I ventured out and encountered new people and places with my bike and grew more mature, riding that bike.

Over the years there were lots of different bikes, each one moving me through new levels of maturity until I became seasoned enough for a car. That, I imagine, called more so upon my parents to have faith! But, you see where I’m going with this.

The exercise of faith can bring us from a place where we are frightened or doubtful or being barred from movement in some way, to a place of freedom. When we choose faith in response to our circumstances, taking into account and not dismissing feelings and reason, we become more fully human. For we follow in the way of the Master, whose life among us teaches us how to be human in the way we were created to live our humanity.

As we respond in faith to the difficulties and hardships we encounter in life, we grow more and more mature, becoming the version of Christ we are uniquely meant to become, and we move toward a sort of “transfiguration” of our own—in our case called conversion—in His image.

Blessed Lent

Sainte Chapelle

Excavating the past to help me remember who I was before illness and setting my findings in the light of who I have become through being so gravely ill has been an amazingly inspiring exercise. I know it is tempting for us with Lyme disease to grow discouraged or bitter because of all that we now cannot do and all that we have lost. Yet my experience of recalling the life I have lived has made me even more grateful for it having gained some distance from it, and I have found that with the growth, emotional and spiritual, which has occurred through bearing illness, I am able to appreciate it in ways I never could before. Even the quality and value of past events and relationships have been changed for the better, in light of the changes in me that have been wrought in the crucible of illness.

In the midst of my recollections, I have been brought back to Paris where some of God’s deepest works in me were to be initiated and are still, even now, unfolding. In honor of His great beauty and love, I’d like to share a little something of Paris with you, and encourage you to make a similar journey, wherever you currently stand in relation to your illness.

Burning Brain Syndrome

For about three months now I’ve been experimenting with a supplemental enzyme I discovered in Bryan Rosner’s book entitled The Top 10 Lyme Disease Treatments, a book I recommend to anyone suffering with Lyme disease. Segueing from the use of antibiotics to using my immune system alone for combat this past summer and fall, (see the October 9 addition to the “My Lyme” tab of this blog), I experienced a rather unpleasant symptom in the midst of battle which I have come to call, Burning Brain Syndrome. Perhaps you know it?

There are a few versions of it that I have encountered, one being the feeling that the muscles in the head are turning into tightly clenched fists and there is a sort of mild form of burning that occurs in this, another being the feeling of full cranial inflammation, and then a third I have experienced especially upon waking, when my head has been resting in the same position for several hours, there would be a concentrated burning beneath my skull where neurotoxin, bacterial debris and immune system proteins had pooled and my brain would be stewing in these juices, or I should say, gasping for oxygen and fresh blood.

While regular exercise is good for the circulation and transporting the necessary oxygen, I have found that exercise alone does not eradicate this particular symptom of burning, though it helps to remove debris over time. However, I have found this enzyme to be very effective with pretty swift results, though I would imagine results would vary from person to person, and I advise consulting your doctor before beginning any type of alternative treatment. 

Now, I’m going to sound like a commercial: I have been taking Wobenzym N twice daily since November and not only has my burning been morphed into a dull headache when there is a flare up and the duration of pain greatly reduced, but the indiscriminant involuntary muscle twitching that I thought would never go away, has been diminished to the odd pinch when I am in the midst of a herxheimer reaction. If you’re interested in trying the enzyme, I’ve added a tab where you can find out where I buy it and also get a coupon code for a $5.00 discount. For an introduction to the science behind what’s going on with this enzyme, check out Chapter 6 of Rosner’s book.

On a spiritual note, I’d like to close with the last lines of yesterday’s Office of Readings psalm: “You, O Lord, are my lamp, my God who lightens my darkness. With you I can break through any barrier, with my God I can scale any wall.” (18:28-29)  

The Birth of Our Savior

Years ago I sat with a Buddhist priest who asked me, “What do you want?” At the time I was preparing to continue graduate studies in psychology that I had postponed after the completion of my Master’s degree a few years earlier, so I said, “I want to be a psychologist,” to keep it simple. He said, “That will make you crazy.”

A few years later, I found myself in pain. I was suffering the effects of a bulging disc in my cervical spine which was impinging a nerve that ran from one thumb through the neck to the other. I tried physical therapy, but the results were negligible as I had gone for over a year with the pinched nerve before making my way there, having had no medical insurance. Living near an ashram, I dropped by to check out what yoga could do. Since this was really an ashram, and not a westernized yoga/pilates studio, I was taught a little something more than asanas. Essentially, the yoga I was taught was meant to liberate me from all suffering. This was its goal.  

Before going any further, it is important that I tell you I did these things prior to my Christianity. I do not now visit with Buddhist priests or continue the practice of yoga. But I am mentioning these things to illustrate the tendency of both to direct people away from suffering.

This is radically different from Christianity, and in radical opposition to the Person of Christ Himself, who entered the flesh and the world precisely in order to live, suffer, and die. Today is the eve of His birth into suffering. And we celebrate His coming, why? Because He came to suffer and die so as to free us, ultimately, from suffering and the bondage of death. We celebrate as well because our maker came to teach us that the way out of suffering and death is through it.

For, Christ, who is the Word made flesh, the first word and the last, the alpha and the omega, changed the character and meaning of suffering and death by taking them upon Himself. Through His taking our suffering upon Himself unto death, and His conquering of death by rising again to new life, He has not only claimed for us this possibility should we so choose it, but God has demonstrated for us the way to transcend our suffering, and it is not by way of fleeing from it. It is in taking up the cross and following Him who did not turn away from human suffering, but entered into the flesh and the world in order to go through it.

So, as we celebrate this great mystery of love in the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ, let us remember that it is His embrace of our suffering for which we are glad, and for which we follow Him in kind, bearing our crosses with trust and hope in joy and in peace.   

In honor and memory of His birth, I wish you Merry Christmas!

The Ever Virgin Holy Mary of Guadalupe

"Do not let your heart be troubled, and let nothing upset you.

Is it not I, your Mother, who is here?

Are you not under my protection?

Are you not, fortunately, under my care?"

Rites of Passage

When I was 16, there came a knock at my door one school night from a girl who was a year older or maybe two, a former friend from whom I’d been separated on the cusp of childhood and adolescence by the jagged break between elementary school and junior high. After that, we lost touch, even though she lived just around the corner from me.

She had been working in the stables of the farm at the edge of our neighborhood because she loved animals and wanted to become a vet. On this night, one of the horses was giving birth, and she came on foot to bring me to see. It was one of those beautiful moments in life that occurs wholly by a response to grace. We had not spoken in five years, yet she thought of coming to get me.

We walked briskly through the night air, over the darkened streets and across the main road, through the fence and up the dirt path to the barn in which this horse was in labor. For hours we stood at the edge of her stall as the foal emerged from the womb of its mother, legs first. And then, we watched as those legs labored to stand, each one giving out in its turn at the effort, the foal crumbling to the hay again and again. 

I am reminded this cold autumn night of that foal’s struggle to be born and to stand on those frail tenuous legs, bearing resemblance to my own passage to new life, this moment that is unfolding over the course of days and weeks in which I attempt to stand again and again… pushing a bit harder and further, each time undertaking something more, mindfully watching for my knees to give way, my legs to buckle, yet remaining steadfast in pressing onward.  

Photo: Courtesy of Shahim Al Nakeeb

All Saints

For All Saints Day, I offer you, in the words of Dom Marmion, “the teaching that our Lord Himself gave to St. Mechtilde” on suffering.

“One day whilst she was thinking that her illness made her useless and that her sufferings were unavailing, the Lord said to her: “Place all your pains in My Heart and I will give them the most absolute perfection that suffering can possess. As My divinity drew to itself the sufferings of My humanity and made them its own, so will I transport your pains into My divinity, I will unite them to My Passion and make you share in that glory which God the Father has bestowed on My sacred humanity in return for all its sufferings. Confide, therefore, each of your pains to Love in saying: ‘O Love, I give them to You with the same intention that You had when You did bring them to me from the Heart of God, and I beseech You to offer them to Him again, made perfect by intensest gratitude…’” “My Passion,” added Christ Jesus, “bore infinite fruit in heaven and upon earth; thus your pains, your tribulations offered to Me and united to My Passion will be so fruitful that they will procure more glory for the elect, new merit for the just, forgiveness for sinners, and an alleviation of their pains for the souls in purgatory. What is there indeed that My Heart cannot change for the better, since it is from the goodness of My Heart that all good flows both in heaven and on earth?” (From Suffering with Christ: An Anthology of the Writings of Dom Columba Marmion, OSB)

As I found myself last week in a very cold place that even sweaters and woolens could do little to help, Dom Marmion emerged from the rows of books in the library of the monastery where I was staying. He is an old friend from before my illness, with whom I sat for a while as my limbs stiffened with chill, and finding this passage in the anthology, sipping apple cinnamon tea, I thought of you.

It is good to remember that as we suffer our sufferings of illness, there are nuns and monks living in voluntary poverty for the sake of penance, freezing in monasteries all over the world! No matter where we are, or what we choose for ourselves, what is chosen for us by God is that we enter into His Passion in some way or other, accepting whatever His way for us might be with trust and gratitude, in order that we may reap the abundant fruit such communion bears.