Author: DV Dan

Sometimes you want a trusted companion who meets you where you are and helps you find your way; a spiritual guide who listens deeply to your life, empowers you to explore a deeper relationship with the Holy, and helps you to be human.

I am noticing some unanswered prayers that need my attention.

In the Gospel of Luke, the archangel Gabriel delivered a stunning message to Zechariah: “For I have come to tell you that your prayer for a child has been answered. Your wife, Elizabeth, will bear you a son and you are to name him John.” Zechariah responded, “How can you expect me to believe this?” A legitimate question—Elizabeth’s barrenness had followed her all of her life and she was now too old to have children, and Zechariah was an old man.

As I read, I noticed a footnote in the Passion Translation I had previously overlooked: “I (the angel Gabriel) have come to tell you your prayer (the prayer you no longer pray anymore) has been answered.” The first time I read that, I gasped.

What prayers have I given up on?

Zechariah went mute for at least nine months because he failed to believe the angel. During that time, the Holy re-shaped Zechariah’s mind and heart by unsettling, disturbing, challenging, and pushing Zechariah’s faith to the malleable edges of who God was, God’s movement and activity in the world, and in Zechariah himself.

Unsettling, disturbing, challenging, pushing, re-tunneling, re-drawing… these are not easy words. There is no “comfortableness” in this process. Yet, this is how the Divine re-shapes the vision of the Godself and who I am as a human. It is uncomfortable, and it is hard.

I asked myself why I abandoned praying “those” prayers? Did I doubt Spirit’s intervention in my life and in the lives of those I love? Did I get lazy? What will it cost me to begin praying those prayers again? The present reality of the Incarnation calls for concrete involvement in real life, here and now.

In his book The Holy Longing, Ronald Rolheiser states that I now bear some responsibility for being the answer to prayers prayed. Because of the reality of the Incarnation, God’s power is now partially dependent upon my actions. I am not sure if I completely believe this but there is something there that rings true. There may be a comfort that is needed to be set down to fully embrace praying the prayers I no longer pray. There could be a need for a value shift or a different perspective.

Zechariah has helped me notice the invitation to begin praying prayers long abandoned and to acknowledge those abandoned prayers God has answered. He has helped me to be brave as God re-tunnels and disrupts my faith. Zechariah is a good companion on my journey of being human and helps me to be courageous as I begin praying prayers I abandoned long ago.[Excerpt from Becky Grisell’s “Unanswered Prayer” November 2021]

For many of us, I suspect, it gets harder each year to capture the mood of Christmas. About the only thing that still warms are hearts are memories, memories of younger, more naïve, days when the lights and carols, Christmas trees and gifts, still excited us.  But we’re adult now and so too, it seems, is our world.

Much of our joy in anticipating Christmas is blunted by many things, not least by the commercialism that today is characterized by excess. By late October we already see Christmas decorations, Santa is around in November, and December greets us with series of Christmas parties which exhaust us long before December 25^th. So how can we rally some spirit for Christmas day?

The incarnate God is called Emmanuel, a name which means God-is-with-us. That fact does not mean immediate festive joy. Our world remains wounded, and wars, strikes, selfishness, and bitterness linger. Our hearts too remain wounded. Pain lingers. For a Christian, just as for everyone else, there will be incompleteness, illness, death, senseless hurt, broken dreams, cold, hungry, lonely days of bitterness and a lifetime of inconsummation. Reality can be harsh and Christmas does not ask us to make make-believe.

The incarnation does not promise heaven on earth. It promises heaven in heaven. Here, on earth, it promises us something else – God’s presence in our lives. This presence redeems because knowing that God is with us is what ultimately empowers us to give up bitterness, to forgive, and to move beyond cynicism and bitterness. When God is with us then pain and happiness are not mutually exclusive and the agonies and riddles of life do not exclude deep meaning and deep joy.

In the words of Avery Dulles: “The incarnation does not provide us with a ladder by which to escape from the ambiguities of life and scale the heights of heaven. Rather, it enables us to burrow deep into the heart of planet earth and find it shimmering with divinity.”  George Orwell prophesied that our world would eventually be taken over by tyranny, torture, double-think, and a broken human spirit. To some extent this is true. We’re a long ways from being whole and happy, still deeply in exile.

But something more important is still available, namely, the sense that God is with us in our lives, in our joys as well as in our shortcomings. The word was made flesh. That’s an incredible thing, something that should be celebrated with tinsel, lights, and songs of joy. If we understand Christmas, the carols will still flow naturally from our lips.[Excerpt from Ron Rolheiser’s “Incarnation – God is with Us” December 2016]

The full story of how Jesus Christ came to be born includes elements that we do not easily imagine when we sing our Christmas hymns. Jesus’ family tree and bloodline were far from perfect, and this, according to the great biblical scholar Raymond Brown, needs to be kept in mind whenever we are tempted to believe in Jesus but want to reject the church because of its imperfections, scandals, and bad history. Jesus may have been immaculately conceived, but there is much in his origins, as the gospels make clear, that’s as un-immaculate as any contemporary church scandal.

For example, in giving us the origins of Jesus, the gospels point to as many sinners, liars, and schemers in his genetic and historical lineage as they do to saints, honest people, and men and women of faith.

We see, for example, in Jesus’ genealogy a number of men who didn’t exactly incarnate the love, justice, and purity of Jesus: Abraham unfairly banished Ishmael and his mother, Hagar, rationalizing that God favours some people over others; Jacob, by scheming and dishonesty, stole his brother Esau’s birthright; and David, to whom Jesus explicitly connects himself, committed adultery and then had the husband of his mistress murdered to cover-up an unwanted pregnancy and in order to marry her.

And the women mentioned in Jesus background aren’t much better. It’s interesting to note, as Raymond Brown does, which women don’t get mentioned in reference to Jesus’ origins. The gospels don’t mention Sarah, Rebekeh, or Rachel, all of whom were regarded as holy women. Whom do they mention?

They mention Tamar, a Canaanite woman, someone outside the Jewish faith, who seduces her father-in-law, Judah, so that she can have a child; Rahab, also a Canaanite woman, and an outsider, who is in fact a prostitute; Ruth, a Moabite woman who is also outside the official religion of the time; and Bathsheba, a Hittite woman, an outsider who commits adultery with David and then schemes to make sure one of her own offspring inherits the throne.

What’s to be learned for all of this? Perhaps Raymond Brown captures it the best. What all this tells us, he says, is that God writes straight with crooked lines, that we shouldn’t accept an overly-idealized Jesus Christ, and that our own lives, even if they are marked by weakness and insignificance, are important too in continuing the story of the incarnation.

Christianity isn’t just for the pure, the talented, the good, the humble, and the honest. The story of Jesus Christ was also written and keeps getting written too by the impure, by sinners, by calculating schemers, by the proud, by the dishonest, and by those without worldly talents. Nobody is so bad, so insignificant, so devoid of talent, or so outside the circle of faith, that he or she is outside the story of Christ.[Excerpt from Ron Rolheiser’s “Jesus’ Dysfunctional Family Tree” December 2004]

There’s an axiom which says: Nothing feels better than virtue. There’s a deep truth here, but it has an underside. When we do good things we feel good about ourselves. Virtue is indeed its own reward, and that’s good. However, feeling righteous can soon enough turn into feeling self-righteous. Nothing feels better than virtue; but self-righteousness feels pretty good too.

We are never free from struggle with sin. As we mature, sin simply takes on ever more subtle modalities inside us. We sometimes nurse the romantic notion that sinners are humble, aware of their need for forgiveness, and open to God.  In fact, as a generalization, this is true for the gospels. As Jesus was preaching, it was the Pharisees that struggled more with his person and message, whereas the sinners, the tax collectors and prostitutes, were more open to him. So this can pose a question: Does sin, more than virtue, make us aware of our need for God?

Yes, when the sin is honest, humble, admitted, and contrite or when our wrong actions are the result of being wounded, taken advantage of, or exploited.  Not all sin is born morally equal: There’s honest sin and dishonest sin. As human beings, we’re weak and lack the moral strength to always act according to what’s best in us. Sometimes we just succumb to temptation, to weakness. Sin needs no explanation beyond this: We’re human! Sometimes too, people are caught in sinful situations which are really not of their own making.

In situations like this, wrong action is a question of survival, not of free choice. As one woman described it to me: “I was simply a dog, biting in order not to be bitten.” In these cases, generally, beneath an understandably hardened, calloused surface lies a still innocent heart that clearly knows its need for God’s mercy. There’s such a thing as honest sin.

But there’s also sin that’s not honest, that’s rationalized, that’s forever buffered by a pride that cannot admit its own sinfulness. The result then, most often, is a hardened, bitter, judgmental soul. Finding ourselves as weak and sinful can soften our hearts, make us humble, and open us to receive God’s mercy. It can also harden our souls and make us bitter and judgmental.

Virtue makes us grateful. Sin makes us humble. That’s true. Sometimes. [Excerpt from Ron Rolheiser’s “Of Virtue and Sin” February 2017]

One of the most famous mystics in history suggests that as we enter into deeper intimacy we concomitantly enter into a “cloud of unknowing”, namely, into a knowing so deep that it can no longer be conceptualized.  What does this mean?

First, imagine a baby in its mother’s womb.  In the womb, the baby is so totally enveloped and surrounded by the mother that, paradoxically, it cannot see the mother and cannot have any concept of the mother. Its inability to see or picture its mother is caused by the mother’s omnipresence, not by her absence. The mother is too present, too all enveloping, to be seen or conceptualized. The baby has to be born to see its mother. So too for us and God. Scripture tells us that we live, and move, and breathe, and have our being in God. We are in God’s womb, enveloped by God, and, like a baby, we must first be born (death as our second birth) to see God face to face. That’s faith’s darkness.

Next, looking at excessive light as being a darkness: If you stare straight into the sun with an unshielded eye, what do you see? Nothing. The very excess of light renders you as blind as if you were in pitch darkness. And that’s also the reason why we have difficulty in seeing God and why, generally, the deeper we journey into intimacy with God, the deeper we are journeying into Light, the more God seems to disappear and become harder and harder to picture or imagine.  We’re being blinded, not by God’s absence, but by a blinding light to the unshielded eye. The darkness of faith is the darkness of excessive light.

Lastly, knowing that deep intimacy is iconoclastic. The deeper our intimacy with anyone the more our pictures and images of that person begin to break down. Imagine this: A friend says to you: “I understand you perfectly: I know your family, your background, your ethnicity, your psychological and emotional temperaments, your strengths, your weakness, and your habits. I understand you.” Would you feel understood? I suspect not. Now imagine a very different scenario: A friend says to you: “You’re a mystery to me! I’ve known you for years, but you’ve a depth that’s somehow beyond me. The longer I know you, the more I know that you are your own mystery.”  In this non-understanding, in being allowed to be the full mystery of your own person in that friend’s understanding, you would, paradoxically, feel much better understood.

Saint John of the Cross submits that the deeper we journey into intimacy, the more we will begin to understand by not understanding than by understanding. Our relationship to God works in the same way. Initially, when our intimacy is not so deep, we feel that we understand things and we have firm feelings and ideas about God. But the deeper we journey, the more those feelings and ideas will begin to feel false and empty because our growing intimacy is opening us to the fuller mystery of God. Paradoxically this feels like God is disappearing and becoming non-existent.

Faith, by definition, implies a paradoxical darkness, the closer we get to God in this life, the more God seems to disappear because His overpowering light can seem like darkness.[Excerpt from Ron Rolheiser’s “The Hiddenness of God and the Darkness of Faith” November 2015]

Thomas Halik, the Czech writer, would suggest that an atheist is someone who cannot be patient enough with God. There is a lot of truth in that. Patience with God is perhaps our greatest faith struggle. God, it would seem, is never in a hurry and because of that we live with an impatience that can test the strongest faith and the stoutest heart.

Life, as we can all attest to, is not without its bitter frustrations and crushing heartaches. We all live with a lot of pain and unresolved tensions…In this life, there’s no such a thing as a clear cut, pure joy; rather everything comes with shadow. We do in fact live inside a certain valley of tears.

When Jesus was dying on the cross, some onlookers were taunting him with the words: If you are the Son of God, let him rescue you! In essence:  God is real and your message is true, prove it right now! And God let Jesus die! The same held true for Jesus himself in the face of the death of Lazarus. In essence, he was being challenged:  If you possess God’s power in this world and you love this man, why don’t you save him from dying? Jesus let Lazarus die! And the first community of disciples, immediately after the Ascension, painfully struggled with the same question:  Jesus is God and he loves us – so why does he let us die?

And so we live with a lot of expressed and unexpressed impatience with God. Atheists, it would seem, at a certain point just give up on playing the game and, in essence, say the words: I’ve seen enough; I’ve waited enough; and it’s not enough! I will no longer wait for God! But if atheism is just another way of saying I will no longer wait for God then the opposite is also true: Faith is just another way of saying: I will wait for God. If atheism is impatience, faith is patience.

Why the need for such great patience?  Does God want to test us? Does God want to see if we indeed have a faith that is worthy of a great reward? No. God has no need to play such a game, and neither do we. It’s not that God wants to test our patience. The need for patience arises out of the rhythms innate within life itself and within love itself. They need to unfold, as do flowers and pregnancies, according to their own innate rhythms and within their own good time. They cannot be rushed, no matter how great our impatience or how great our discomfort.[Excerpt from Ron Rolheiser’s “Patience with God” July 2012]

Many theologians view John the Baptist as fulfilling the role of Elijah—coming in his “spirit and power” (Luke 1:17) to prepare the way for the Messiah—rather than being a literal reincarnation, emphasizing John’s prophetic ministry of calling Israel to repentance and purification, much like Elijah confronted idolatry in his time to ready a remnant for God’s coming. Both figures served as radical, wilderness-dwelling prophets challenging the status quo, clearing the path for the Lord’s presence, though John’s “half-job” of denunciation needed Jesus’s empowerment for true salvation.

John the Baptist was aware of both his strength and his impotency. He could point out what’s wrong and what should be done, but after that, he was helpless, with nothing to offer in terms of the strength needed to correct the wrong.

In essence, that’s what we bring to any situation when we criticize something. We are able, often with brilliance and clarity, to show what’s wrong. That contribution, like John the Baptist’s, is not to be undervalued. The gospels tell us that, next to Jesus, there isn’t anyone more important than John the Baptist. But, like John, criticism too is only a half-job, a half-prophecy: It can denounce a king, by showing what’s wrong, and it can wash the soul in sand, by blasting off layers of accumulated rust and dirt, but ultimately it can’t empower us to correct anything. Something else is needed. What

At one point in the gospels, Jesus tells his disciples that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven. The disciples are stunned and Peter responds by saying: If that is the case than it is impossible! Jesus appreciates that response and adds: It is impossible for humans, but not for God. Anybody who is in recovery from an addiction knows exactly what Jesus means by that. They’ve experienced it: They know that is impossible for them to give up the object of their addiction – and yet they are giving it up, not by their own willpower, but by some higher power, grace.

The gospels speak of this as a baptism and they speak of two kinds of baptisms: the baptism of John and the baptism of Jesus, adding that John’s baptism is only a preparation for Jesus’ baptism. What’s John’s baptism? It’s a baptism of repentance, a realization of what we are doing wrong and a clear resolution to correct our bad behavior. What’s Jesus’ baptism? It’s an entry into grace and community in such a way that it empowers us internally to do what is impossible for us to do by our willpower alone.

Sadly, many of us, who are solid believers, still haven’t grasped the lesson. We’re still trying to live out our lives by John’s baptism alone, that is, by own willpower. That makes us wonderful critics but leaves us mostly powerless to actually change our own lives. What we are looking for, and desperately need, is a deeper immersion into the baptism of Jesus, that is, into community and grace. [Excerpt from Ron Rolheiser’s “Willpower Alone is Not Enough” September 2012]

There’s an axiom that says: Roman Catholics tend to adore Mary while Protestants and Evangelicals tend to ignore Mary. Neither is ideal. Mary is pre-eminently the Mother of the poor. Karl Rahner once pointed out that when you look at all the apparitions of Mary that have been officially approved by the church you will notice that she has always appeared to a poor person – a child, an illiterate peasant, a group of children, someone without social standing. She’s never appeared to a theologian in his study, to a pope, or to a millionaire banker. She’s always been the person to whom the poor look.

We see this, for example, very powerfully in the effect that Our Lady of Guadalupe has had on much of Latin America. In all of the Americas, most of the indigenous peoples are now Christian. However, in North America, while most of the indigenous peoples are Christian, Christianity itself is not seen as a native religion, but rather as a religion brought to the native peoples from elsewhere. In Latin America, in every place where Our Lady of Guadalupe is popular, Christianity is seen to be a native religion.

At the wedding feast of Cana, Mary tells her son (who is always divine in John’s Gospel) that “they have no wine”.  In John’s Gospel, this is not just a conversation between Mary and Jesus; but also a conversation between the Mother of Humanity and God. Secondly, as Eve, as universal mother, and as our mother, she stands in helplessness under human pain and within human pain when she stands under the cross. In this, she shows herself as universal mother but also as an example of how injustice must be handled, namely, by standing within it in a way that does not replicate its hatred and violence so as to give it back in kind. Mary offers us a wonderful example, not to be adored or ignored. [Excerpt from Ron Rolheiser’s “The Mary of Scripture and the Mary of Devotions” June 2018]

Where does God speak in our world? How does God speak?

Whenever you hear a voice that sounds coercive, threatening, overbearing, that is somehow loud and in your face, you can be sure that, no matter how religious and holy it might claim to be, it is not God’s voice. God’s voice in this world is never coercive or overbearing in any way, but is always an invitation and a beckoning that respects you and your freedom in a way that no human institution or person ever does. God’s voice is thoroughly underwhelming, like a baby’s presence.

God’s voice does judge and it does condemn, but it judges and condemns not by coercive force, but in the same way that the innocence of a baby judges false sophistication, in the way that generosity exposes selfishness, in the way that big-heartedness reveals pettiness, in the way that light makes darkness flee, and in the way that the truth shames lies. God’s voice judges us not by overpowering us but by shining love and light into all those places were we find ourselves huddled in fear, shame, bitterness, hostility, and sin.

We need to view God, always, as non-coercive, as an invitation. This has immense implications for everything to do with church and religion, from how we preach, to how we catechize, to how we do liturgy, to how we reach out to those who don’t share our beliefs, to how we approach divisive moral issues, to how loud we turn up the sound system in our churches. God’s voice is not a loud, coercive, overbearing, threatening voice, one that gets into your face whether you like it or not. Rather, God’s voice invites in, beckons, leaves you free, and is as non-threatening as the innocence and powerlessness of a baby – or a saint. [Excerpt from Ron Rolheiser’s “God’s Voice as Invitation” April 2007]

“…inside each of us there’s a deep place, a virginal center, where all that’s tender, sacred, cherished, and precious is held and guarded. …It’s where we unconsciously remember that once, long before consciousness, we were caressed by hands far gentler than our own. It’s where we still sense the primordial kiss of God.” (“Coping with our own Souls”, Father Ron Rolheiser).

Once in a dream I experienced what could have been that beginning of consciousness. I seemed to come from an unbounded existence like God’s energy. Suddenly I  was confined to a moment, a movement. I rebelled. And I knew sin.

Innocence and sin are a human experience. As a child I remember one hot day in a hay slough when two of my brothers and I stripped off our clothes and climbed a fallen tree that leaned slightly above ground. This was like Adam and Eve before the fall, the innocence of Eden. As Christians we can return to that childhood innocence. Jesus redeems our fallen nature as we pray in the Eucharistic prayer, “Unite us to your Son in his sacrifice, that we may be made acceptable through him, being sanctified by the Holy Spirit.”

Jesus wants to walk with us. “Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart, and you will find rest for yourselves. For my yoke is easy, and my burden light.” (Matthew 11:28-30). “Walk with me,” Jesus is saying. Learn from me. Be humble as the God who wants to walk with us. Jesus promises us rest and an easier burden. Even our hardest burdens become bearable with Christ’s shoulders taking some of the weight.

We can live in the presence of the Lord, loving others and sharing God’s grace. That is our mandate every Sunday morning as we go forth from our churches to love and serve the Lord. We can choose to accept Jesus as a companion in life. We can share our burdens and our joys with the one who suffered for us. “Come to me,” he invites.[Exceprt from Ken Rolheiser’s “Walking with Jesus”]