The Fifth Commandment

The Fifth Commandment: Honor your father and your mother, that you may have a long life in the land the LORD your God is giving you.

The Ten Commandments have set forth instructions on how to behave. We are taught while each commandment does not bear equal weight with the others, we should try live in accordance with the moral compass they provide us.

Jesus, however, taught to us to approach our moral compass differently in the Sermon on the Mount. Each of the beatitudes revealed to us in the sermon should motivate us to behave as though we are called to not just avoid what is wrong but seek to do what is right.

So why is the 5^th Commandment on my mind? It is because of a posting my cousin Rusty placed on the blog he and his wife maintain about their own going life in Christ and their ministry. The posting, which can be reached by this link, http://jonathanministry.wordpress.com/author/jonathanministry/is beautifully, poignantly, and precisely crafted. He tells the story of what has happened to my aunt, his mother, since the day before New Year’s Eve Day last year when she went out to get her mail and went down with a stroke by the mailbox at the street curb. What he said was not a surprise to me because we spent several months caring for her until it became clear she needed to relocate to Reno where Rusty and his family could assume care for her. He described the changes in far more detail with greater compassion and eloquence than I could muster and I thank him for taking the time to put down in writing what we all observed so starkly over the course of the year.

Rusty and his family have defined for me the commandment to honor your father and mother. There is, however, a difference between observing a commandment as proscribed than living it as an opportunity return God’s love by sharing it.

This leads me to my comments about the beatitudes. The 10 Commandments are stark, jolting and sterile. There is no inspiration to suggest they arise or result in loving behavior. They are simply instructions. The beatitudes go beyond this and as I scan Matthew 5 in the context of Rusty’s posting, I see many of the beatitudes differently.

Blessed are they who mourn, for they will be comforted. Rusty paints a picture of what has happened to my aunt with great sadness but without anger or regret. What has happened has happened and while we would never say what has happened to her is God’s will, it is part of His plan. He is mourning the changes in her we longed to see diminish but have only become more predictable and defined. We who know and love Joann mourn with him. Because we are sharing our mourning with our world without despair and hopelessness but with faith and hope, God will comfort us. Mary gave us example of how to mourn as she witnessed the suffering and death of her son and we continue to look toward her for inspiration. We share burdens of sadness and grief because in the sharing the burdens are halved. That is the nature of God’s comfort. He has taught us how to mourn. We are comforted. I am comforted.

Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied. I am not talking about righteousness that is rigid, condescending and judgmental. I am talking about seeking to live in accordance with God’s will. Perhaps it would be easier to say we called to live rightly. Rusty and has family have reordered their priorities to become caretakers for the one person who has cared for all of them for so many years. I include myself in the group she cared for with such great love and now she is so far away. They are doing the right things for the right reasons and I am grateful. Despite the sadness in the letter, I also hear the strength of his faith coming through. God is providing the strength they need and Rusty and his family can be assured they can enjoy satisfaction.  They are living rightly.

Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. This is really the meat of what I am trying to say. To be merciful means we have to reach out, to touch, to console, to comfort … to love. We can’t just avoid wrong acts; we are called to embrace the right ones. We are to seize opportunities to be merciful gladly and not just because we are obligated to be merciful. Motivation and intent count for as much in God’s eyes as outcomes for only he can control how things turn out. We are challenged to bring our best selves to the service of mercy. God will take care of the rest. That is how he shows us mercy.

There is another element to this blessing. Not only are we called to live in accordance with God’s will but we are called to live it joyfully. Even though my aunt is a prisoner of her rebellious body and mind, she is seeking to do things that have brought her joy and allowed her to share her joy all her life. Christmas is a time of joy and the things we do are meant to be done with joy, for joy and to share joy. A Beatitude is a blessing and to be blessed is to be happy. Read this beatitude again but this time say “Happy are the merciful for they will be shown mercy.”

God, I think, organized us to live in families to give us the opportunity to learn out to love and be loved in accordance with his desire for us to love one another as we love ourselves. We can’t do this perfectly or even consistently but we keep trying even as we know are bound to never be able love perfectly on this side of eternity. Sometimes, though, we get it right. Even we get it right we don’t make bad things right, we can’t always overcome the inevitabilities of age and illness but we make things better. Things are better. God has blessed our family.

Thank you Rusty.

Reflection on Romans 12 and John 5

Before my 4^th day group meetings each week, I try to make a habit to study the daily Mass readings. It is pretty safe to say lectionary readings were not laid out by happenstance and there is a common theme or thread between the 1^st reading, the responsorial psalm and the gospel. Some days the message is pretty easy for me to recognize. Other days the connection is much vague.

I am pretty sure there was no intended connection between Kathy’s chosen scripture theme from Romans 12 and Skeeter’s scripture theme from John. I firmly believe that while Kathy and Skeeter acted freely and independently in making their choices, there was no randomness in the results.

Despite my near certain understanding there had to be a connection, I struggled to connect the dots.

Finally, one of those aha moments happened to me yesterday afternoon. My brother Greg Hanchett and I were drawn into the day chapel at St. Cyril’s. Our work in the kitchen was over. It was time to turn things over to the clean up and closing committees. After rehashing the weekend for a while, we each fell silent, contemplating the tabernacle before us. As we sat together in the presence of the Lord, I began to see images that were two integrated parts of a whole.

In the Gospel we hear the disciples say, “This saying is hard, who can accept it?” It IS a hard saying. Catholics believe in the real presence in the Eucharist. In the time of Christ just think about how alien the idea would be to people. People would just not have a frame of reference to understand what was being discussed.

Peter responded to the Master’s question about the disciples desire to leave. You just have to love Peter. He just kept trying to get it. His response was startlingly simple and absolutely clear. “Master, to whom else would we go?”

Let’s look now at Romans 12.

We read, “Rejoice in hope, endure in affliction, persevere in prayer.”

This passage comes from a longer paragraph that is called “Mutual Love.” Throughout the paragraph St. Paul offers us a prescription for living despite knowing how hard the words of eternal are to embrace. Isn’t often true that the hardest things to accept are truest?

The words rejoice, hope, endure and persevere offer us guidance of how to live in this life in order to enjoy eternal life. Perhaps it would be easier to say that Peter describes the destination. Paul offers a road map of how to travel to that destination.

The time came for Greg and I to leave the chapel and rejoin the community. I found myself blessed with an understanding of what this year’s Cursillos were all about that works for me.

Let’s all stay with Jesus and join to together to eat his flesh and drink his blood in the Eucharist. Let’s live our lives by rejoicing with hope, enduring affliction and persevering in prayer. If we do all these things we will know eternal life.

Lone Moutain and a Pair of Psalms

I am privileged to live in Montana and I am further privileged that my job allows me to attend a conference at the Big Sky Resort which is located literally at the foot of Lone Mountain. This evening as darkness fell, I left the party inside the Lodge as the noise of the party rose higher and higher and quality conversation became harder to find. The sun had already set directly behind the mountain and twilight was hard upon the country. While day and night last for hours the distance between them can be breathtakingly short.

I found a quiet place with a view of the mountain to read Evening Prayer. In the short 15 minutes between the invitatory and the final blessing, the western sky shifted from daylight blue to white to red to orange and back to blue but, this time, the darkening blue of night. A new crescent moon was hung to the left of the peak as if it were dangling from the remains of the day clouds that were now rose pink against the ancient night sky.

When prayer ended, I found myself reflecting not on anything I had read in Morning Prayer yesterday from Psalm 139:

Lord, what is man that you care for him,
mortal man, that you keep him in mind;
man, who is merely a breath
whose life fades like a passing shadow?

Looking from my vantage point up to the top of the dog tooth shaped peak and from there left up the Gallatin Range and back to the right and up at Indian Peaks, I felt very small against the primeval immenseness of the mountains.

Who am I that, God should care for me, a mere speck in the spread of the universe and the span of time. My life is merely a breath and for a few minutes, as the blueness of the sky faded to black, I truly felt insignificant.

In twinkling, literally, I saw the first stars poke through the blanket of the night darkened sky, and one of the Psalms from this evening’s prayer slipped across my consciousness. From Psalm 144:

O Lord, you search me and you know me,
you know my resting and my rising,
you discern my purpose from afar.

Later on:

O where can I go from your spirit,
or where can I flee from your face?
If I climb the heavens, you are there.
If I lie in the grave, you are there.

And later still:

For it was you who created my being,
knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I thank you for the wonder of my being,
for the wonders of all your creation.

Finally:

For it was you who created my being,
knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I thank you for the wonder of my being,
for the wonders of all your creation.

Understanding finally filled the empty spaces and what small moment was before suddenly grew tenfold. The hugeness of the mountains and vastness of the wilderness was not meant to make feel small. They are there because God is big. I should wonder at creation and in my wonder continue my trip toward salvage. Worshiping God because he created my very being and gifted me with the ability to see the glory of His creation that I might wonder at it defines me. Tonight God revealed more of Himself to me through His words handed down to me through the generations and through His creation.

Lord, I thank you for the wonder of my being and for the wonders of all your creation. 

 



Words

The late poet priest John O’Donohue once wrote that a blank sheet of paper represents silence. To put pen to paper is to cover up the silence by words. The white space that surrounds words frames the words and gives them perspective. Just as there a two sides to a coin, there are two sides to words – what is written and what is not. The words draw us in but the white space gives us rest and room to absorb what is said.

Looking at a blank sheet of paper with a pen in hand, searching for  the first word is to look deep into a vast wildness that is both compelling and repelling us in the same breath. To look at empty page of white space on a computer screen with the cursor blinking remorselessly and relentlessly is less poetic, however. Poetry can be captured on a napkin, in notebook, on blackboard or even a matchbook cover. The computer screen, however, seems sterile but within the sterility there lies the hope of fertility. The mind is where words capture images that are both visible and invisible to the eye and given the images form that can be shared.

That first keystroke, like the first pen stroke, shatters the silence and page becomes a place of both sound and silence. We struggle to balance those extremes in our limited understanding of that place we live that is life but is moving toward death and a new life. More keystrokes fall and letters appear on screen, seeming random at first, but then words appears and the words create sentences that become something we can grasp.

The words we create – do they mean anything? What do they sound like? What do they feel like? What do we do with them? Word’s make us feel the softness of a baby’s breath against our neck as we cuddle our child close to us. Words help us hear the hard scratch of the lilac branches against the brick outside our house animated by a hard night wind. Words can help us sense the love our pets have for us as our dog looks upon us with an unbroken gaze that is both soft but also direct.

Words allow me to describe a giant yellow moon peering over the brown and tan distant mountains that are fading toward blue and black as daylight fails to hold its grasp on the sun.

Words save me when I find them in time to make a connection that needs to be made. Words fail me when I wait too long and they no longer have the power to make a connection. Words define me. Words define us. Words connect us with God. We call those words prayer. 

Luke 6:20-29

 Iam a visual person. Whenever I read this gospel passage, I try to create a mental image of the scene when Jesus spoke these words. I try to imagine what the crowd looked like and what they did as He spoke. Where was he looking when he raised his eyes to disciples. Did the disciples return His gaze? Did Jesus’ body language imply that he was receiving the words he was sharing from above or was He speaking to them matter of factfully like we would talk with each other?

In the end this flight of imagination is largely pointless. His message is timeless and it is directed to us, right now today. We are the poor, the hungry, and the saddened but if we are not any of those we are hated.

Father Jack Peterson share on the Beatitudes:

Look at first beatitude which is the door to the others. It is the logical place to begin our efforts to dive deeply into the Gospel way of life. It describes an attitude that needs to govern the heart of the Christian believer. It shapes the whole way in which one approaches life. The first beatitude is, “Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

The poor are those who are fully aware of their profound need for God in every dimension of their lives. They have come to peace with the reality that God is God, and they are not. They are convinced that everything good in life is completely free and flows from the generous hand of God. They trust, like a child, in the goodness of the Father and His desire to take care of His children.

The poor do not rely upon things or people for ultimate meaning or purpose in life, but rather rely upon the love and grace of Almighty God. They are quick to thank God and attribute their blessings and successes to Him. They are also quick to turn to Him when suffering and adversity come, knowing that He will provide strength and show the way through the darkness into the light. They think more about God and neighbor than about themselves, even in times of trial.

This radical reliance upon God that governs the heart of the Christian makes a person truly wise, strong and capable of great acts of love. To be poor is to be Christ-like.

Once God’s grace begins to penetrate our hearts and our lives and we start to become poor, then we will find it easier to understand and desire to live the other beatitudes as well. This realization creates a profound internal struggle.

Yesterday was the 11th year of remembrance of 9/11. How do we respond to the hate that resulted in the destruction of the Towers? How do we react to the renewed sense of rage that might overwhelm as we replay the vivid images of the Trade Center Towers shattering and collapsing?  We also have to measure our individual and personal actions in the years since against the call of the gospel to remember that we are blessed when we are hated for being Christian.

The Gospel says:

"Rejoice and leap for joy on that day!
Behold, your reward will be great in heaven…”

The message for me is that I am called to remember that I am, and we are, among the many called to live today with profound and persevering faith that God will recognize when we have tried to live as though we are poor and tried to remember the example of Jesus in how to respond to hatred.

To Sing A New Song

O sing a new song to the Lord,
sing to the Lord all the earth.
O sing to the Lord, bless his name.

Psalm 96

It has been exactly one year since I have uploaded anything to this blog. I have thought and prayed often the past year in an effort to find a reason why I was so suddenly struck silent after commenting on the 10 year anniversary of the tragedy of 9/11/2001. It was as if I had simply lost my voice. When I sat down to write the next entry, I could not type the first letter of the first word which is all I had ever needed to do in the past to get the words fluid. Instead I just sat impassively staring at the blinking cursor at the top of an otherwise blank page until I finally gave up and closed the document.

The silence could not just be the result of one thing. I had managed to overcome many barriers in the days and weeks prior to 9/11/2011 to get something down but suddenly there seemed to be so many things that got in my way.

It is not as though I was completely silent. I continued to write reflection and research papers for PFLM throughout the fall and winter. My weekly contribution to the prayer group continued on after I stopped writing the blog. In fact I began to study the scriptures we discussed each week so that I could offer more insight into the discussion rather than just showing up and offering up whatever came to mind. My attention to Liturgy of the Hours has continued without a break and I have continued to reflect and live in manner worthy of my vows as a Benedictine Oblate.

During the past year I have studied everything from Celtic Catholic Spirituality to Thomas Aquinas and my knowledge of our Catholic faith, history, doctrine and theology has leapt forward as if propelled by a rocket but my desire and ability to just sit and a reflect on something small simply faded away.

I will likely never know why silence fell upon me. It could have been rawness of emotion that I was immersed in as my family lived through a seeming endless tragic storyline that stilled my voice and stifled my ability to engage in simple introspection. Perhaps I simply needed a sabbatical, some quiet time to let the lessons piled on by the progression of days settle down so I could make some sense of them. May be in time I will be granted insight that I might be able to offer up but for now it is time to sing a new song to the Lord.

Today I sing a new song to him, a song of praise and thanks that through peaks and valleys of the past year His love for me has remained steadfast even if my faith and ability to sing out has not.

Let the heavens rejoice and earth be glad, let the sea and all within it thunder praise,
let the land and all it bears rejoice, all the trees of the wood shout for joy at the presence of the Lord for he comes, he comes to rule the earth.

In remembrance of 9/11

I find myself thinking more and more about 9/11 and the impact it had on our lives and our society as we move closer and closer to the ten year anniversary of the event. I believe that it has changed us in ways that would have never anticipated. For example, I would have never dreamed that as we watched the towers burn and fall there would be a momentous shift in the insurance and financial markets that would eventually close the niche our little business operated in here in the backwoods of Montana and we would have to sell out to a larger competitor.

I never would have dreamed that we would still be engaged in what amounts to war operations in the Middle East even after 10 years. If only the world would have taken a step back and reflected on the words of John Paul II who challenged us to find a way to make peace instead of perpetuating more violence.

We pray for those whose lives were shattered on that terrible morning. Help us to take the steps back toward finding a way to mend a torn world without more violence and destruction. Send forth your spirit to renew the face of the earth that we may know peace for our children to enjoy.