Daily Virtue Post

Fr. Ron Rolheiser teaches us that Jesus’s death and resurrection was not merely a rescue mission for sin, but as the restoration of God’s original, intended design for humanity—an “Edenic” state of eternal life and communion with God that existed before the chaos of sin. The resurrection was a “second creation” or “new light” that transcended the original, overcoming the darkness of sin and death by rearranging the very atoms of the cosmos. 

In the resurrection, God creates light a second time, which unlike the physical light of Genesis 1, can never be extinguished. This new light and life represent a return to the original, eternal design of creation intended in Eden. The resurrection was not just a spiritual or metaphorical event, but a “real, cosmic, and corporeal” one. It rearranges the “atoms of this universe” to reflect a new, higher form of existence where death no longer has the last word.

When Jesus dies, the world goes back to its original “formless void” (or chaos). The resurrection functions as the new, permanent ordering of that chaos into a creation that is “perfectly transparent to [God’s] design.” Jesus was the redeemer who transformed the nature of death rather than simply sparing people from it. He “splitt[s] the moral atom” through his perfect obedience, releasing a creative power that reverses the effects of sin.

His “descent into hell” was the taking of his humanity into the deepest, darkest, and most broken parts of the human experience (the “void” created by sin) and, by staying in that love, “thaw[ing] out our frozen souls” The resurrection proves goodness and life are stronger than evil and death. The “stone that entombs them always eventually rolls back,” releasing life from every grave. 

The “New Life” Jesus brought was the transition of life to death to the new process of birth, where “we need to be born again from the earth’s womb” into a more permanent, eternal life. Because of the resurrection, the “ending of our story… is a happy ending.” All of human history will be vindicated in the end, as love and truth will ultimately triumph over the chaos and pain of our fallen state. The goal is a return to a state where, as in the Garden of Eden, we are in direct, unhindered communion with God, who “is a gracious and loving presence, even when we are sweating blood.” 

Jesus’s resurrection is the definitive, irreversible restoration of the original, divine intention for humanity—a state of life, joy, and love that is more vibrant and enduring than the life known before the resurrection. 

Jesus showed anger not as personal rage but as a powerful, holy reaction against evil, hypocrisy, and the commercialization of faith, exemplified by flipping tables in the temple; his anger was a catalyst for transformation, taking in negativity (like hatred, bitterness) and giving back love, forgiveness, and a call to a higher, purer way, like a water purifier turning poison into pure water, which Christians are called to imitate by transforming tension rather than transmitting it. 

Ways in which Jesus dealt with anger:

• His anger was never personal, it was prophetic: Jesus’ anger wasn’t selfish or directed at individuals for personal reasons but was a righteous indignation against injustice and sin.
• He sought to cleanse the Temple: He physically drove out money changers and merchants, overturning tables (a powerful act of protest) to cleanse the sacred space, a sign of his anger at turning God’s house into a marketplace.
• He called out hypocrisy: Jesus denounced religious leaders (Pharisees) who preached but didn’t practice their faith, showing anger at their spiritual blindness.
• The core of Jesus teaching was one of transformation, not retaliation: Jesus’ was a “water purifier” for the world; he absorbed hatred, jealousy, and resentment and transformed them into love, forgiveness, and compassion, rather than giving back hate for hate. 

What are the lessons we can take from this knowledge?

• Righteous Anger: We are called to have a “holy hatred for sin” that motivates us to act justly, driven by God’s love for others, not personal hurt.
• Metanoia (Higher Mind): Instead of reacting defensively (paranoia), we should engage our “higher mind” (metanoia) to absorb tension and transform it, like Mary pondering at the cross.
• Imitation: We should strive to take in negativity (anger, bitterness) from the world, hold it, and transmute it into positive virtues like love, graciousness, and compassion, thereby helping to “take away the sin of the world”. 

In essence, Jesus’ anger was a holy, transformative force, a model for how followers can confront evil and create positive change by purifying, rather than perpetuating, negative energies. 

We have a commandment from God: Remember to keep the Sabbath day holy. I think we can all agree that this commandment has fallen on hard times today. It is not just that fewer and fewer people are going to their churches on Sunday, or that more and more shops and businesses are open on Sunday, or that sporting events now take up much of the Sabbath space once reserved for religion. The deeper issue is that more and more of us can no longer slow down our lives, shut down the communication machines, get away from the stress and preoccupations in our lives, and simply stop and rest.

We are living where we can always be reached and have for the most part lost the notion of Sabbath in our lives. We are now treating a commandment to keep the Sabbath day holy as an idealized lifestyle suggestion: Helpful, if you can find the time to do it. With this in mind, I offer Ten Councils for practicing Sabbath today.

• Practice Sabbath with the discipline demanded of a commandment, even as you practice the discipline of life and duty.
• Have at least one “Sabbath” moment every day. Give yourself something to look forward to every day. Sabbath doesn’t have to be a day; it can be special hour, a special moment, where you step off the treadmill and treat yourself to something you enjoy.
• Go somewhere every week where you can’t be reached and have a “cyber-Sabbath”. Once a week turn off all your electronic communication for six hours or, better yet, for twelve hours. Go to a place where, save for an emergency, you are unavailable. You might find this the hardest discipline of all – and perhaps the most important one.
• Honor the “wisdom of dormancy”. Do something regularly that is non-pragmatic. Farmers know that you can’t seed a field continuously and still get a good yield. Fields require regular seasons where they lie fallow so that they can (in that seeming condition of dormancy) soak in the nutrients and other elements they need to produce. The human body and psyche are the same. We need, regularly, periods of dormancy where our energies lie fallow to the pragmatic world.
• Pray and meditate regularly in some way. There is only one rule and counsel for this: Do it! Show up regularly, and whatever happens, happens. This is a major way that we step off the treadmill and have some Sabbath in our lives.
• Be attentive to little children, old people, and the weather. Sabbath is meant to restore wonder to our lives, and today wonder has left the building. So, as the poet John Shea says, borrow wonder from the children. It is one of the few places we can still find it.As well, time spent with elderly people can help give us a healthier perspective on life. Also, when have we last noticed the weather as a source of wonder?
• Live by axiom: “If not now, when? If not here, where? If not with these people, with whom? If not for God, why? We spend ninety-eight percent of our lives waiting for something else to happen to us. Have some moments where you realize that what you are waiting for is already here.
• Let your body also know that it is Sabbath. Sabbath is meant not just for the soul but also for the body. Give your body a Sabbath treat, at least once a week.
• Make family and relationships the priority. At the end of the day, life is about family, friendships, and relationships, a truth easily eclipsed and lost in the pressures of our fast-paced lives. Sabbath is meant to reground us in that truth at least once a week.
• Don’t nurse grudges and obsessions. Our deepest tiredness isn’t the result of overwork, but of the wounds, grudges, and obsessions we nurse. The invitation to rest for a day includes, especially, the invitation to let go of our hurts. Indeed, the notion of the statute of limitations is based on Judeo-Christian concept of the Sabbath. For every grudge we are nursing there is a statute of limitations.

God gave us Sabbath, for our health and our enjoyment. [Excerpt from Ron Rolheiser’s “Keeping the Sabbath” July 2024]

We live too frustrated by our own mediocrity. The problem lies not in our unwillingness to convert, but in our inability to convert. We keep trying, by the way of good resolutions, to wage war against the bad habits of our hearts and minds. But we fail, grow discouraged, and generally live with a non-expressed despair, which lets us believe that for us, things cannot really change.

What’s at issue? I suspect the issue is more about our unwillingness to move toward the radicalism and upheaval that genuine conversion implies. Perhaps the best analogy available to us for understanding the real meaning of the word conversion is that of revolution. Conversion is an interior revolution. Anything less radical simply misses most of the meaning of that word. As Scripture puts it: “You cannot put new wine into old wineskins!”

When we look at the phenomenon of a political-social revolution, we see that a successful revolution brings about a new consciousness and a new system, a “new guard.” This replaces an “old guard,” a previously established consciousness and way of doing things.

Revolution is dramatic, not gradual. It is an upheaval, a radical overturning. It arises precisely when people have despaired of gradual change. When simple evolution and ordinary everyday changes provide the necessary growth, then revolution is not necessary. Revolution becomes necessary only when the old order is hopelessly stagnant, when there is no longer any hope that peaceful, non-violent, gradual change can bring about improvements of any significance.

Once the new consciousness and order have been established, they must – and very quickly, too – purge themselves of all elements which are not single-mindedly and unequivocally supportive of the new ideals and the new system. Aristotle said: “Habits become one’s second nature.” He is correct. Bad habits do become our second natures. This is a realty that tells us that too many things have been happening for too many years. Evolution is no longer possible for us. Revolution and a certain violence are necessary. We must radically shake up our lives.

Year after year, we try to change ourselves through good resolutions, through means that will not be too dramatic, painful or disruptive. That is why we fail and stay ever the same: mediocre, frustrated, and unable to break out of bad habits that have dominated our lives. It is our fear of dramatic upheaval, painful uprooting and new patterns of life that are hostile to established habits that, precisely, allow our bad habits and mediocrity to keep the upper hand.

Genuine conversion and real change will come when we have the nerve to risk dramatic upheaval. [Excerpt from Ron Rolheiser’s “Conversion Is Revolution!” February 1987]

Scripture, our creeds, and our Christian tradition have a certain language. Among other things, we say: “He paid the price for our sins. We are saved by his blood. He paid the debt of sin. We are washed clean in his blood, the blood of the lamb. He is the Lamb of God who takes away our sins. He restored us to life, after our death in Adam’s sin. He conquered death, once and for all. By his stripes we were healed. He offered an eternal sacrifice to God. He is our victim. He opened the gates of heaven. He stripped the principalities and Satan of their power. He descended into hell.”

Accepting the truth of this language is one thing, explaining in within the categories and language of ordinary life is something else. About Jesus’ death, we have a language but we don’t have a vocabulary. We know its meaning, but we can never adequately explain it.

What exactly do we mean by these statements? How does Jesus’ death save me from being accountable for my sins? How does his death vicariously substitute for human shortcoming, including our own, through the centuries? Why does God need someone to suffer that agonizingly in order to forgive me? How does Jesus’ death open the gates of heaven? Why had they been closed? What does it mean that, in his death, Jesus descended into hell?

Literal explanations come up short here. The words are more like an icon, an artifact that highlights form to bring out essence. The language of scripture, the creeds, and our dogmas put us in touch with something that we can know but struggle to conceptualize and explain. It is meant to be grasped at levels beyond the just the intellect. It is a language to be contemplated and knelt-before more than a language to be understood literally.

Some years ago, Time magazine did a cover story on the death of Jesus. Among other things, they interviewed various people and asked them how they understood the blood of Jesus as washing them clean. One of those interviewed was JoAnne Terrell, the author of Power in the Blood? The Cross in the African American Experience. For her, the question of how Jesus’ blood saves us triggered a deep personal search. Sitting in a seminary classroom and studying the death of Jesus, she began having flashbacks: As a young girl she had seen her mother murdered by a boyfriend. She vividly recalled the blood-soaked mattress and her mother’s bloody fingerprints on the wall. And so her search was very much a search “to find the connection between my mom’s story and my story and Jesus’ story.”

For her, the language around the death of Jesus, its blood and heartbreak, became an icon to be contemplated for meaning. She began to look at it from various angles and to see how it spoke to her in her life-situation, to the blood in her own history. The language of redemptive blood gave meaning and dignity to her mother’s blood.

We cheat ourselves of meaning whenever we treat scripture, the creeds, and the dogmas of our faith as simple statements of history, newspaper accounts in literal language. They have a historicity and they are true, but the language surrounding them is not the language of the daily newspaper. They are anchored in history and we risk our very lives on their truth, but they speak to us more as does an icon than as does yesterday’s newspaper. Their language is meant to be contemplated, knelt-before, and absorbed in the heart as we experience more and more of life’s mysteries. [Excerpt from Ron Rolheiser’s “Religious Language as Icon” August 2009]

Some years ago, a young man came to me for confession. It was a difficult confession for him. He had been having an affair with a girl and she had become pregnant. He recognized that he had sinned. He also recognized that he had helped create a situation that was irrevocable, a certain ease and innocence had been destroyed, some things would never be quite the same again. He ended his confession on a note of sadness and hopelessness: “There is no way I’ll ever live normally again, beyond this. Even God can’t unscramble an egg!” What this young man was saying was that, for him, there would always be a skeleton in the closet. Ordinary life would, in its own way, limp along, but he would remain forever marked by this mistake.

Today we live in a world and a church in which this kind of brokenness and attitude are becoming more the rule than the exception. For more and more people, there is a major something to live beyond, some skeleton in the closet. What we need today, in the church, perhaps more than anything else, is a theology of brokenness that relates failure and sin seriously enough to redemption.

If the Catholicism that I was raised in had a fault, and it did, it was precisely that it did not allow for mistakes. It demanded that you get it right the first time. There was supposed to be no need for a second chance. If you made a mistake, you lived with it and, like the rich young man, you were doomed to be sad, at least for the rest of your life. A serious mistake was a permanent stigmatization, a mark that you wore like Cain.

We need a theology which teaches us that even though God cannot unscramble an egg, God’s grace lets us live happily and with renewed innocence far beyond any egg we might have scrambled. We need a theology that teaches us that God does not just give us one chance, but that every time we close a door, God opens another one for us. We need a theology that challenges us not to make mistakes, that takes sin seriously, but which tells us that when we do sin, when we do make mistakes, we are given the chance to take our place among the broken, among those whose lives are not perfect, the loved sinners, those for whom Christ came.

We need a theology which tells us that a second, third, fourth, and fifth chance are just as valid as the first one. We need a theology that tells us that mistakes are not forever, that they are not even for a lifetime, that time and grace wash clean, that nothing is irrevocable. Finally, we need a theology which teaches us that God loves us as sinners and that the task of Christianity is not to teach us how to live, but to teach us how to live again, and again, and again. [Excerpt from Ron Rolheiser’s “God Overcomes Scrambled Eggs” June 2016]

The poet, Rumi, submits that we live with a deep secret that sometimes we know, and then not.

That can be very helpful in understanding our faith. One of the reasons why we struggle with faith is that God’s presence inside us and in our world is rarely dramatic, overwhelming, sensational, something impossible to ignore. God doesn’t work like that. Rather God’s presence, much to our frustration and loss of patience sometimes, is something that lies quiet and seemingly helpless inside us. It rarely makes a huge splash.

Because we are not sufficiently aware of this, we tend to misunderstand the dynamics of faith and find ourselves habitually trying to ground our faith on precisely something that is loud and dramatic. We are forever looking for something beyond what God gives us. But we should know from the very way God was born into our world, that faith needs to ground itself on something that is quiet and undramatic. Jesus, as we know, was born into our world with no fanfare and no power, a baby lying helpless in the straw, another child among millions. Nothing spectacular to human eyes surrounded his birth. Then, during his ministry, he never performed miracles to prove his divinity; but only as acts of compassion or to reveal something about God. Jesus never used divine power in an attempt to prove that God exists, beyond doubt. His ministry, like his birth, wasn’t an attempt to prove God’s existence. It was intended rather to teach us what God is like and that God loves us unconditionally.

Moreover, Jesus’ teaching about God’s presence in our lives also makes clear that this presence is mostly quiet and hidden, a plant growing silently as we sleep, yeast leavening dough in a manner hidden from our eyes, summer slowly turning a barren tree green, an insignificant mustard plant eventually surprising us with its growth, a man or woman forgiving an enemy. God, it seems, works in ways that are quiet and hidden from our eyes. The God that Jesus incarnates is neither dramatic nor splashy.

And there’s an important faith-lesson in this. Simply put, God lies inside us, deep inside, but in a way that’s almost non-existent, almost unfelt, largely unnoticed, and easily ignored. However, while that presence is never overpowering, it has within it a gentle, unremitting imperative, a compulsion towards something higher, which invites us to draw upon it. And, if we do draw upon it, it gushes up in us in an infinite stream that instructs us, nurtures us, and fills us with endless energy.

This is important for understanding faith. God lies inside us as an invitation that fully respects our freedom, never overpowers us; but also never goes away. It lies there precisely like a baby lying helpless in the straw, gently beckoning us, but helpless in itself to make us pick it up. [Excerpt from Ron Rolheiser’s “How God works in our lives quietly, just below the surface” November 2025]

Like Adam and Eve we take, as if it is ours by right, what can only be received gratefully as gift. This goes against the very contours of love. It is the original sin. The leper’s ask of Jesus that is noted in the reflection verse today is a realization that everything is God’s and it is through the thankfulness and gratitude of his grace and mercy that we must approach life’s difficulties.

To be a saint is to be motivated by gratitude, nothing more and nothing less. Scripture, everywhere and always, makes this point. For example, the sin of Adam and Eve was, first and foremost, a failure in receptivity and gratitude. God gives them life, each other and the garden and asks them only to receive it properly, in gratitude—receive and give thanks. Only after doing this, do we go on to “break and share” Before all else, we first give thanks.

To receive in gratitude, to be properly grateful, is the most primary of all religious attitudes. Proper gratitude is ultimate virtue. It defines sanctity. Saints, holy persons, are people who are grateful, people who see and receive everything as gift. The converse is also true. Anyone who takes life and love for granted should not ever be confused with a saint. Let me try to illustrate this:

As a young seminarian, I once spent a week in a hospital, on a public ward, with a knee injury. One night a patient was brought on to our ward from the emergency room. His pain was so severe that his groans kept us awake. The doctors had just worked on him and it was then left to a single nurse to attend to him.

Several times that night, she entered the room to administer to him—changing bandages, giving medication, and so on. Each time, as she walked away from his bed he would, despite his extreme pain, thank her.

Finally, after this had happened a number of times, she said to him: “Sir, you don’t need to thank me. This is my job!” “Ma’am!” he replied, “it’s nobody’s job to take care of me! Nobody owes me that. I want to thank you!

I was struck by that, how, even in his great pain, this man remained conscious of the fact that life, love, care, and everything else come to us as a gift, not as owed. He genuinely appreciated what this nurse was doing for him and he was right— it isn’t anybody’s job to take care of us!

It’s our propensity to forget this that gets us into trouble. The failure to be properly grateful, to take as owed what’s offered as gift, lies at the root of many of our deepest resentments towards others—and their resentments towards us.

Invariably when we are angry at someone, especially at those closest to us, it is precisely because we are not being appreciated (that is, thanked) properly. Conversely, I suspect, more than a few people harbor resentments towards us because we, consciously or unconsciously, think that it is their job to take care of us. [Excerpt from Ron Rolheiser’s “Gratitude the Basic Virtue” May 1992]

“Not permitting any word of God to be without effect” is a biblical concept emphasizing God’s powerful, unfailing word word that isn’t forceful. It is a gentle, respectful invitation, often quiet and easily missed, yet it’s meant to be deeply received and allowed to work within us, transforming our hearts and actions, even if it’s not immediately apparent.

We must learn to ponder and bear things, allowing God’s patient guidance to transform pain into growth, rather than forcing outcomes, trusting that God uses even difficult circumstances to bring about lasting change and ultimate flourishing, never giving up on leading us home. 

Here are some inportant aspects of God’s word we should understand:

• Gentle & Respectful: God’s voice is never coercive; it respects our freedom, like a quiet nudge or a baby’s presence, not an overwhelming force.
• Invitation, Not Demand: It’s an invitation to deeper relationship and truth, asking us to open ourselves to its reality.
• Pondering & Bearing: When we can’t control situations or feel helpless, we’re called to ponder, bear the unbearable tension, and allow God’s grace to transmute suffering, creating space for deeper understanding.
• Patience & Recalculation: Like a GPS, God patiently recalculates, giving new instructions until we reach our destination, never giving up on us.
• Transformative, Not Immediate: God’s word works through our circumstances, even hard ones, to change us over time, waiting for the right moment to bring about deep spiritual transformation, not just external change.
• The “Unnoticed” Word: God’s presence is often unfelt and unnoticed until we deliberately open ourselves to it, revealing itself as the deepest reality within. 

We need to lstop trying to control everything and instead, listen for that quiet, insistent voice, even in silence and struggle, trusting that God’s persistent, gentle love will work its transformative effect, leading us to wholeness, even when things seem unbearable or unclear. 

Recently, inside church circles, a debate took place as to whether Therese of Lisieux should be named a “doctor” of the church. Her proponents pointed to her influence within the faith and argued that few theologians or writers, at least not within the last century, have touched as many lives as Therese. Another constituency argued against it: She died at 24, not exactly the age of wisdom. Moreover her writings consist of just three short manuscripts which, while moving and aesthetically exceptional, are hardly in the same theological league with Augustine, Aquinas, Rahner, Barth, or Tillich. Nor do her writings, in terms of academics, measure up to the standards demanded even of graduate- level students in our theological institutions. So why declare her a “doctor”?

We know who won this argument. Therese is today a “doctor” of the church. A wise choice. Why? Because doctors heal people and her writings have healed persons in a way that many other writings that are academically and theologically superior have not. That’s not to say that the writings of the academy of theology don’t have their place, but it is to say that the power to heal depends upon things beyond brilliance, learning, professional standards, and authority or position.

We’re told there that Jesus “spoke with authority, unlike the scribes and the pharisees” (many of whom were, no doubt, brilliant, learned, and sincere). What set Jesus’ teaching apart? Its effect. He cured people and changed their lives in a way none of the other preachers and teachers of his time could. The word of God coming from his mouth simply affected things in a way that this same word coming from other mouths didn’t. His words made sick people healthy, made sinners change their lives, and even brought some dead people back to life. As a teacher or preacher, I can only envy that!

What I don’t sense is that I speak “with authority”, even when people do positively affirm me in words. Why do I say that? Because the longer I teach, preach, and write, the more sceptical I become about the effect of my efforts. It’s one thing to be told you’re wonderful, it’s quite another to have someone actually change his or her life on the basis of your preaching.

That isn’t true for everybody. Mother Theresa used to go out on a stage, face a thousand people, say “God loves you!”, and everyone’s eyes would fill with tears and they would know that this, the deepest of all realities, was true. She spoke with authority. I envy her too. When I speak or write I still need an infinitely more complex message to have any effect.

There’s a lesson here, but its shouldn’t be misread. People will recognize us as speaking with authority only when they sense that, like Jesus, we are under divine authority ourselves, that our message is not our own, that our actual lives stand behind the message, that our words are meant to reveal God and not ourselves, that we love others enough to give up protecting ourselves, that our real concern is God’s kingdom and not how we impress others, that we consider the community bigger than ourselves, and that we are willing to sweat blood rather than get bitter or walk away. [Excerpt from Ron Rolheiser’s “Ministering with Authority” January 2003]