Mother Teresa's Secret to Joy: Lent Day 4

Lent Day 4 - Mother Teresa's Secret to Joy

When she was still a Loreto nun, Mother Teresa made her way by train to Darjeeling for a retreat. And on that train she heard a voice inviting her to carry the light of Christ to the darkest places. When she returned to Calcutta, she began the process that led to the founding of the Missionaries of Charity, an order whose purpose would be to respond to that summons. That work is carried on today by her sisters in more than 500 establishments around the globe. A couple year ago I personally experienced this extraordinary work. While producing the ten-part CATHOLICISM series, our team filmed in a small hospital in Calcutta, India where the Missionaries of Charity care for children with mental and physical disabilities. When we arrived, the electricity had just gone out, and the room was stiflingly hot. Everywhere, the sisters and a large team of volunteers milled about, providing medical assistance, speaking to the kids, teaching some of them to sing simple songs, or just holding them. There was one sister who was carrying in her arms a small girl of perhaps a year and half or 2 years old. The child was blind. I asked sister how they had come to care for this girl, and she told me that she had simply been abandoned on the street. "She is my special baby," the sister said,. And then she flashed this absolutely radiant smile, which told me that she had found a deep joy precisely in this hot, crowded hospital, in the midst of one of the most squalid cities in the world. All of us human beings want joy. Everything we do and say, all of our actions and endeavors, are meant to produce contentment, peace, happiness. Even the most morally corrupt person, ultimately, wants joy. But how do we find it? The most elemental mistake--made consistently across the centuries to the present day--is to seek joy by filling up in ourselves something that we perceive to be missing. We tell ourselves that we'd be happy if we just had enough pleasure, enough power, enough security, enough esteem. But this does not work. It is the supreme paradox of the Christian spiritual tradition that we become filled with joy precisely in the measure that we contrive a way to make of ourselves a gift. By emptying out the self in love for the other, we become filled to the brim with the divine life. The smile of that Missionary of Charity, which was the same smile Mother Teresa bore, signaled the presence of a joy that no wealth, no security, no pleasure, no honor could possibly provide, and that can emerge even in the most miserable context. The secret to joy is self-giving love. Mother Teresa imparted that to her sisters, and she offers the same lesson to us. Fr. Robert Barron

Day 3, Lent!

Lent Day 3 - Polishing the Diamonds

There is a regrettable interpretation of the cross that has, unfortunately, infected the minds of many Christians. This is the view that the bloody sacrifice of the Son on the cross was "satisfying" to the Father, and appeasement of a God infinitely angry at sinful humanity. In this reading, the crucified Jesus is like a child hurled into the fiery mouth of a pagan divinity in order to assuage its wrath. But what ultimately refutes this twisted theology is the well-known passage from John's Gospel: "God so loved the world, that he sent his only Son, that all who believe in him might have eternal life." John reveals that it is not out of anger or vengeance or in a desire for retribution that the Father sends the Son, but precisely out of love. God the Father is not some pathetic divinity whose bruised personal honor needs to be restored; rather God is a parent who burns with compassion for his children who have wandered into danger. Does the Father hate sinners? No, but he hates sin. Does God harbor indignation at the unjust? No, but God despises injustice. Thus God sends his Son, not gleefully to see him suffer, but compassionately to set things right. St. Anselm, the great medieval theologian, who is often unfairly blamed for the cruel theology of satisfaction, was eminently clear on this score. We sinners are like diamonds that have fallen into the muck. Made in the image of God, we have soiled ourselves through violence and hatred. God, claimed Anselm, could have simply pronounced a word of forgiveness from heaven, but this would not have solved the problem. It would not have restored the diamonds to their original brilliance. Instead, in his passion to reestablish the beauty of creation, God came down into the muck of sin and death, brought the diamonds up, and then polished them off. In so doing of course, God had to get dirty. This sinking into the dirt-this divine solidarity with the lost--is the "sacrifice" which the Son makes to the infinite pleasure of the Father. It is the sacrifice expressive, not of anger or vengeance, but of compassion. Jesus said that any disciple of his must be willing to take up his cross and follow the master. If God is self-forgetting love even to the point of death, then we must be such love. If God is willing to break open his own heart, then we must be willing to break open our hearts from others. The cross, in short, must become the very structure of the Christian life.

 Fr. Robert Barron

Lent - Day 2

Lent Day 2 - No Way Up But Down

Something I have noticed over the years is that the holiest people in our tradition are those who are most aware of their sinfulness. Whether it is Paul, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Teresa of Avila, Thérèse of Lisieux, or Mother Teresa, the saints are those who are convinced of their inadequacy.  When Isaiah encounters the Lord he says, "I am a man of unclean lips!" When Peter is in the presence of the Messiah he says, "Lord, leave me, for I am a sinful man." G.K. Chesterton once said, "A saint is someone who knows he's a sinner." The holy person has no illusions about himself. It is an extraordinary and surprising phenomenon that the saints seem to be those who are most conscious of their sinfulness. At times we are tempted to think that this is a form of attention-getting, a sort of false humility. But then we realize that it is proximity to the light that reveals the smudges and imperfections that otherwise go undetected. A windshield that appears perfectly clean and transparent in the early morning can become opaque when the sun shines directly on it. Standing close to the luminosity of God, the holy person is more intensely exposed, his beauty and his ugliness more thoroughly unveiled. There's no way up but down; no real holiness without awareness. At least part of being a saint is knowing you're a sinner. Fr. Robert Barron

Lent Day 1 - Judged According to Love

The Spanish mystic Saint John of the Cross said that in the evening of life we shall be judged according to our love. In Matthew 25 the nature of love is specified. It is not primarily a feeling, an attitude, or a conviction, but rather a concrete act on behalf of those in need--the hungry, the homeless, the lonely, the imprisoned, the forgotten. It is the bearing of another's burden. Here's a challenge: Over the next forty-seven days, resolve to perform a particular and sustained act of love. Make several visits to your relative in the nursing home. Converse regularly with a lonely person on your block. Tutor and befriend a kid who might be in danger of losing his way. Repair a broken friendship. Bring together bickering factions at your place of work. Make a number of financial contributions to a worthy organization that needs help. Numerous spiritual masters have witnessed to something odd: Belief in God is confirmed and strengthened not so much from intellectual effort as from moral action. When a man once asked the English Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins what he must do in order to believe, Hopkins replied, "Give alms." As you love through tangible acts, you will come to believe more deeply and to enter more fully into friendship with God.

by Fr. Robert Barron

Valentine's Day!

Who was St. Valentine, and how did his feast day of February 14 come to be regarded as a day for romance?

Answer

Two Valentines are listed in the Roman Martyrology for February 14. The first was a Roman priest who reportedly was martyred on the Flaminian Way during the reign of the Emperor Claudius. The other Valentine was a third-century bishop of Terni who was martyred in Rome but whose relics were sent back to his home see. Some claim that there has been a confusion and that the two Valentines are really one.

The reason the feast day has come to be associated with romance has nothing to do with the two saints, neither of whom had a clear connection to lovers or courtship. The association has to do with a belief, dating at least from the time of Chaucer, that birds pair up on February 14. This belief about biology became associated with the feast of the day, and eventually the thought of courtship and romance came to dominate. In any event, the Church certainly does not teach that Valentine’s Day should be celebrated in connection with romance.