Author: cfaradmin

Robert Ellsberg’s new book, A Living Gospel – Reading God’s Story in Holy Lives continues his work as someone who writes up the lives of various saints so that they may serve as inspirations for the rest of us. It seems appropriate on All Saints Day to reflect on this new work.

When I was young, the lives of the saints were one of the major ways within which spirituality was taught. We each had a patron saint, every city had a patron saint, every parish had a patron saint, we all read the lives of the saints and were inspired to higher ideals by the likes of saints such as Tarcisius, stoned to death for protecting the Blessed Sacrament; Marie Goretti, willing to die rather than sacrifice her personal integrity; St. George, who by the power of faith could slay dragons; and St. Christopher, whose providential eye could you keep you safe while traveling.

Of course, looking back, one can see now where those who wrote up these stories often took liberties with historical fact to highlight essence. Indeed, both St. George and St. Christopher are now relegated more to the realm of fable than fact.  No matter, their stories, like those of the other saints we read, lifted our eyes a little higher, put a bit more courage in our hearts, gave us real life examples of Christian discipleship, and helped fix our eyes on what’s more noble.

Today we have a different version of the lives of the saints. The rich, famous, and successful have effectively replaced the saints of old. Butler’s Lives of the Saints has been replaced by People Magazine, biographies, television programs, and websites that picture and detail for us the lives of the rich and the famous. And these lives, notwithstanding the goodness you often see there, don’t exactly focus our eyes and hearts in the same direction as do the lives of Tarcisius, Marie Goretti, St. George, or St. Christopher.  In a culture which deifies celebrity, we need some different celebrities to envy. Robert Ellsberg is pointing them out.

In this book, among other things, Ellsberg chronicles the lives of four contemporary “saints”, Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton, Henri Nouwen, and Charles de Foucault (none of whom are yet canonized or might ever be.)  But, their lives, he believes, can help us define what following Jesus might mean inside the complexities of our own generation.

And this is true too for the Church as a whole. Commenting on the life of Charles de Foucauld, Ellsberg writes: “In an age when Christianity is no longer synonymous with the outreach of Western civilization and colonial power, the witness of Foucauld – poor, unarmed, stripped of everything, relying on no greater authority than the power of love – may well represent the future of the church, a church rooted in the memory of its origins and of its poor founder.” The saints have something for everyone! [Excerpt from Ron Rolheiser’s “An Important New Book” July 2019]

Sam Keen holds both a master’s degree in divinity and a doctorate in the philosophy of religion. He calls himself a “trustful agnostic,” a “recovering Presbyterian” and wears a question mark rather than a cross around his neck. He sees himself as a searcher on a spiritual quest. He writes that in the spiritual quest you never, in this life, really arrive. For him, once a person settles into the practice of a religion, he or she can no longer claim to be on a spiritual quest. Spirituality has been traded in for religion.

In saying this, Keen speaks for our age. Spirituality is in, religion is out. Typical today is the person who wants faith but not the church, the questions but not the answers, the religious but not the ecclesial, truth but not obedience.

The churches are dying right in the middle of a spiritual renaissance. More and more typical too is the person who understands himself or herself as a “recovering Christian,” as someone whose quest for God has taken them out of the church. Why are so many people who are sincerely searching for God not turning to the churches? Why is there so much disillusionment with organized religion?

It is futile to argue that the world should perceive us, the churches, more kindly. You can’t argue with a perception! Better to admit our shortcomings. We are, right now, far from being the community we should be: We are intellectually slovenly, we don’t live adequately enough what we preach, we close off questions prematurely, and we radiate too little of the charity, forgiveness and joy of God.

Bluntly put, I don’t see a lot of people with question marks around their necks being crucified. There is too much glamor and too little commitment in it. Moreover there is also some intellectual dishonesty in it. The pure quest that does not want a hard answer is ultimately trying to avoid something, actual commitment. As C.S. Lewis puts it: “Thirst is made for water; inquiry for truth.” Sometimes what we “call the free play of inquiry has neither more or less to do with the ends for which intelligence was given than masturbation has to do with marriage.” The spiritual quest is about questions—and it is also about answers. [Excerpt from Ron Rolheiser’s “Questions Without Answers” September 1994]

The phrase “O God, be merciful to me a sinner” is a famous Christian prayer that appears in the biblical parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector in the Gospel of Luke. Jesus highlights this prayer as one that God considered more righteous than the Pharisee’s self-congratulatory prayer.

The prayers power lies in its honest acknowledgment of human weakness and sinfulness. It is a recognition that we cannot achieve salvation through our own willpower but must rely on God’s mercy.

The prayer is a plea for mercy which is undeserved, by definition. It’s a surrender to God’s love, which is offered to us regardless of our imperfections. Admitting our sinfulness is not a path to despair, but rather the first step to receiving God’s grace, making us more humble, softer-hearted, and open to God’s love.

This prayer is a foundational plea within Christianity, seen as a way to pray “without ceasing” and as an antidote to despair. It’s also a core element of the sacrament of reconciliation (confession) and a prayer for stated in the Eucharistic celebration as a remembrance of Jesus Christ’s sacrifice, a symbol of union with him, and an act of worship for baptized followers of Jesus.

“If you want peace, work for justice” Pope Paul VI

We must prioritize love and mercy over rigid adherence to law, especially when the law is interpreted in a way that causes injustice. Fr. Ron Rolheiser suggests that, like Jesus, we should focus on mercy, as true righteousness is found in recognizing our sinfulness and seeking God’s grace, not in strict adherence to rules. God’s quiet, hidden presence is within us, and is discovered through a silent, internal spirituality, similar to how the kingdom of God works subtly like yeast in dough. 

Mercy over rigid law: While statutes and law are important, they must always be interpreted through the lens of love and mercy, not used as a tool for judgment. Many historical actions of the Church have been driven by a pursuit of “correct doctrine” that, in practice, has led to horror and injustice. 

Humility and sinfulness: We are all sinners who fall short, and there is more joy in heaven over a repentant sinner than over those who believe they are already righteous. The emphasis is on acknowledging our sinfulness and accepting God’s grace, rather than on proving our own righteousness through adherence to the law. 

Quiet, internal presence: God’s presence is a subtle, hidden force within us, rather than a loud, dramatic one. It is like the way the kingdom of God grows, like a seed or yeast, and we need to look for it within our own spiritual lives. 

Social justice:  God is not neutral in the face of injustice and poverty. Instead, God wants action against everything and everyone who perpetuates injustice and oppression. This is the call to social justice.

We are not to be anxious about many things. Jesus keeps telling us not to worry – about what we will eat, about what we will wear, and about tomorrow and the problems it will bring. We are in good hands, all the time. A gracious, all-powerful, loving God is solidly in charge and nothing will happen in the world and nothing will happen to us that this Lord is indifferent to.

Our faith, at its core, invites trust, and not just abstract trust, belief that good is stronger than evil. No. To say the creed, to say that I believe in God – and originally the Christian creed was only one line, Jesus is Lord – is to have a very particularized, concrete trust, a trust that God has not forgotten about me and my problems and that, despite whatever indications there are to the contrary, God is still in charge and is very concerned with my life and its concrete troubles.

When we anxiously worry, in essence, we are denying the Christian creed because we are, in effect, saying that God has either forgotten about us or that God does not have the power to do anything about what is troubling us. When it looks like God is asleep at the switch, God is still in charge, is still Lord of this universe, is still noticing everything, and is still fully in power and worthy of trust.

Our problem is that we project our limited, selective care onto this God. We feel that God is inadequate because often we are, that God falls asleep at the switch because we occasionally do, and that God forgets about us in our problems because we have a habit of letting certain persons and things slip off of our radar screens.

And so we fear that God sometimes forgets and does not notice us, that God, like us, is an inadequate Lord of the universe. That is why we get anxious and fret, because, like one without faith, we can feel that we are in an unfeeling universe. [Excerpt from Ron Rolheiser’s “The Way of Trust” September 1997]

A GPS is limitless in its patience. It keeps ‘recalculating’, and keeps giving us a new instruction until we get to our destination. It never gives up on us. God is the same.

We have an intended destination and God gives us constant instructions along the way.  Religion and the church are an excellent GPS. However, they can be ignored and frequently are. But, God’s response is never one of anger nor of a final impatience. Like a trusted GPS, God is forever saying ‘recalculating’ and giving us new instructions predicated on our failure to accept the previous instruction. Eventually, no matter our number of wrong turns and dead ends, God will get us home.

One last thing. Ultimately, God is the only game in town, in that no matter how many false roads we take and how many good roads we ignore, we all end up on the one, same, last, final road. All of us: atheists, agnostics, nones, dones, searchers, procrastinators, those who don’t believe in institutionalized religion, the indifferent, the belligerent, the angry, the bitter, and the wounded, end up on the same road heading towards the same destination – death. However, the good news is that this last road, for all of us, the pious and the impious alike, leads to God. [Excerpt from Ron Rolheiser’s “One God, One Guidance System, and One Road for Us All” August 2022]

We need to give away some of our own possessions in order to be healthy. Wealth that is hoarded always corrupts those who possess it. Any gift that is not shared turns sour. If we are not generous with our gifts, we will be bitterly envied and will eventually turn bitter and envious ourselves. These are all axioms with the same warning; we can only be healthy if we are giving away some of our riches to others.

Among other things, this should remind us that we need to give to the poor, not simply because they need it, though they do, but because unless we give to the poor, we cannot be healthy ourselves. In the Gospel of Matthew, when Jesus reveals what will be great test for the final judgment, his single set of criteria have entirely to do with how we gave to the poor: Did you feed the hungry? Give drink to the thirsty? Cloth the naked?

Catholic social doctrine tells us too that the earth was given by God for everyone and that truth too limits how we define what is really ours as a possession. Properly speaking, we are stewards of our possessions rather than owners of them. Implicit in all of this, of course, is the implication that we can be moral and healthy only when we view private ownership in a larger picture that includes the poor.

We need, always, to be giving some of our possessions away in order to be healthy. The poor do need us, but we also need them. They are, as Jesus puts it so clearly when he tells us we will be judged by how we gave to the poor, our passports to heaven. And they are also our passports to health. Our health depends upon sharing our riches. [Excerpt from Ron Rolheiser’s “Our Need to Share Our Riches with the Poor” March 2014]

The question above, taken from the Gospel of Luke is not necessarily a pessimistic prophecy but a sobering challenge to persist in faithfulness. Fr. Ron Rolheiser defines faithfulness as acting with respect and staying committed to your beliefs and relationships, even when emotional fervor is absent. It is a choice to persevere through difficulties, “staying with” people and principles rather than betraying them. For Rolheiser, faithfulness is less about consistent emotional passion and more about the steadfast practice of remaining morally aligned with your commitments, which he considers a profound gift to others. 

Faith and love are too easily identified with emotional feelings, passion, fervor, affectivity, and romantic fire. And those feelings are part of love’s mystery, a part we are meant to embrace and enjoy. But, wonderful as these feelings can be, they are, as experience shows, fragile and ephemeral. Our world can change in fifteen seconds because we can fall in or out of love in that time. Passionate and romantic feelings are part of love and faith, though not the deepest part, and not a part over which we have much emotional control.

Some of us might have to settle for a faith that says to God, to others, and to ourselves: I can’t guarantee how I will feel on any given day. I can’t promise I will always have emotional passion about my faith, but I can promise I’ll always be faithful, I’ll always act with respect, and I will always do everything in my power, as far as my human weakness allows, to help others and God.

Love and faith are shown more in fidelity than in feelings. We can’t guarantee how we will always feel, but we can live in the firm resolve to never betray what we believe in! [Excerpt from Ron Rolheiser’s “Love and Faith as Fidelity” February 2025]

Why do we no longer get along with each other? Why is there such bitter polarization inside of our countries, our neighborhoods, our churches, and even in our families? In the Hebrew scriptures, the prophet Malachi offers us this insight on the origins of polarization, division, and hatred. Echoing the voice of God, he writes: “Therefore, I have made you contemptible and base before all the people, since you do not keep my ways, but show partiality in your decisions. Have we not all the one Father? Has not the one God created us? Why do we break faith with one another?” 

Isn’t this particularly apropos for us today, given all the polarization and hatred in our houses of government, our churches, our communities, and our families, where for the most part we no longer respect each other and struggle even to be civil with each other? We have broken faith with each other. Civility has left the building.

Someone once said, not everything can be fixed or cured, but it should be named properly. That’s the case here. We need to name this. We need to say out loud, this is wrong. We need to say out loud that none of this can be done in the name of love. And we need to say out loud that we may never rationalize hatred and disrespect in the name of God, the Bible, truth, moral cause, freedom, enlightenment, or anything else.

We are pathologically complex as human persons, and the quest for sincerity is the quest of a lifetime. The biblical prophet Malachi names one of them: “Do not show partiality in your decisions and do not break faith with each other”. When we parse that out, what is it saying? Among other things, this: You have a right to struggle, to disagree with others, to be passionate for truth, to be angry sometimes, and (yes) even to feel hateful occasionally (since hate is not the opposite of love, indifference is).

But you may never preach hatred and division or advocate for them in the name of goodness; instead, in that place inside you where sincerity resides, you need to nurse a congenital distrust of anyone who does proactively advocate for hatred and division. [Excerpt from Ron Rolheiser’s “Civility Has Left the Building” April 2024]

We are forever searching for God, though mostly without knowing it. What do we naturally search for in life? By nature, we search for meaning, love, a soulmate, friendship, emotional connection, sexual fulfillment, significance, recognition, knowledge, creativity, play, humor, and pleasure. However, we tend not to see these pursuits as searching for God. 

In pursuing these things, we rarely, if ever, see them in any conscious way as our way of searching for God. In our minds, we are simply looking for happiness, meaning, fulfillment, and pleasure, and our search for God is something we need to do in another way, more consciously through some explicit religious practices.

St. Augustine struggled with exactly this, until one day he realized something. Augustine spent the first thirty-four years of his life pursuing the things of this world: learning, meaning, love, sex, and a prestigious career. Before his conversion, there was a desire in him for God and the spiritual. However, like us, he saw that as a separate desire from what he was yearning for in the world. Only after his conversion did he realize something. Here is how he famously expressed it:

“Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new, late have I loved you! You were within me, but I was outside, and it was there that I searched for you. In my unloveliness I plunged into the lovely things which you created. You were with me, but I was not with you. … You called, you shouted, and you broke through my deafness. You flashed, you shone, and you dispelled my blindness.”

Reading his confession we tend to focus on the first part of it, namely, on his realization that God was inside of him all the while, but that he was not inside of himself. This is a perennial struggle for us too. Less obvious in this confession and something that is also a perennial struggle for us, is his recognition that for all those years while he was searching for life in the world, a search he generally understood as having nothing to do with God, he was actually searching for God. What he was looking for in all those worldly things and pleasures was in fact the person of God. [Excerpt from Ron Rolheiser’s “Our Unconscious Search for God” February 2021]