Mary on Holy Saturday

This is the text version of a talk I shall give tomorrow, on Holy Saturday, to the Benedictine College students on their Holy Week Retreat.  Enjoy!  --Fr Jay

Mary, Teach us How to Grieve with Hope

Holy Week Retreat: Holy Saturday

April 19, 2014

We take a moment and pause at this point between Good Friday and Easter Sunday.  We do not often consider Holy Saturday, since there is no Mass on this day.  There is not even a communion service today (the Vigil tonight counts for Easter Sunday).  Things are silent today.  I hope you can feel the silence of Holy Saturday.  We know what is happening: Christ descends to the abode of the dead and starting with Adam and Eve, opens the gates of heaven and leads them through.  This is all part of the spiritual warfare going on behind the scenes of the material universe.  And yet all we get in our material world is silence; we don’t even get shadows of that spiritual dimension. There is much I can say about that; but instead I want to focus on what this quiet day should mean for us.

Let’s go back for a moment to Good Friday.  Several weeks ago, at a men’s retreat from St. Michael’s parish, I reflected upon how we can be counted as the “beloved disciple” standing with Mary at the foot of the Cross.  I spoke of how early on in my spiritual life I imagined myself comforting our Blessed Mother, with my arm around her shoulders.  I reflected upon how she had to surrender her beloved Son to the Father and His will, how her fiat from the Annunciation had to be repeated many times throughout her life, culminating at the foot of the Cross.  She had to learn in little ways how to surrender, from accepting God’s will for her to become the Mother of God; from the Magi that offered myrrh, an ointment for burial, to the baby; from fleeing to Egypt and returning; from losing and finding Jesus in the temple; from her interaction with her Son at the wedding feast of Cana; from seemingly being snubbed so often when she went to see Him during His ministry; and many, many other small ways, all in preparation for that horrible Friday afternoon in a rock quarry just outside the jeering walls of Jerusalem.  And as the beloved disciple took her into his home, she may have taught him how to surrender himself, all the way to being exiled on Patmos and writing a Gospel, letters, and the book of Revelation.  Mary teaches us her lessons on surrender because she spent so much time pondering and reflecting in her pierced heart.  And we must do the same.  So I concluded with the image that I had started with, reversed: Mary’s arm is around my shoulders, comforting me, for every difficult surrender I do is mini-death and a grief, preparing me for that final surrender of my death.  Note the Hail Mary: “pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.”  We need her prayers so that we can surrender to the will of the Father at that moment.”

Now Mary has surrendered, she has held the body of her Son (note the Pieta), she has been taken into the home of the Beloved Disciple.  I believe she also took her Son seriously whenever He said that on the third day He must rise.  She must have heard this through the apostles, if she weren’t told of it directly from the lips of the Savior Himself.  So what was her posture on that Holy Saturday?  What was she feeling?  I think she was feeling something that may sound contradictory: grief and hope.

I think God may be asking us to peer into the heart of grief in the silence of this Holy Saturday. Some of you may not have experienced deep grief yet in your young lives, and that is fortunate. But some of you may have experienced deep grief, and it seems perhaps that we are being asked to relate our grief to the pierced heart of Mary today.  Earlier in these conferences we had been cautioned that something may bubble up within us, something the Lord wants us to face.  Revisiting a place of grief, especially a dark place in your soul in which the Lord desires to enter, may not be something you want to do right now.  In fact, as soon as you heard me relate grief to Holy Saturday, you may have had the thought, “I want to leave the room right now.”  But I ask that you persevere through to the end of this meditation, for it is about grief and hope.  “Put one blistered foot in front of the other,” as Fr. Jeremy related about a pilgrim on the Camino.  Do so with courage!  The Lord will give you His strength today. 

The loss of a loved one is heart wrenching, surreal, unnatural, sorrowful, an agony, confusing, angering, an amputation, ... the list goes on.  It is a tectonic shift in your life.  It is a horrible reality; you walk around numb for a few days or a few weeks, surprised that everyone else’s life is going on while yours just came to a screeching halt.  You want to yell at everyone and say, “My loved one just died! How could you go on?  I can’t!”  It is a strange thing that we all will experience deep grief sometime in our lives, and we human beings are still so tragically poor at handling it!  There are a meager few books written on it, and writings from the Christian faith are few, and from the Catholic faith are even fewer.  We dare to put up crucifixes on our walls and around our necks, blind to the grief that Mary and the disciples experienced just prior to the Resurrection. 

C.S. Lewis wrote an excellent little book titled A Grief Observed after the death of his wife, Joy Davidman, of only four years.  He was extremely grief-stricken, even though he knew when he married her she was dying of cancer.  “Where is God?” he writes.  “Go to him when your need is desperate, when all other help is in vain, and what do you find?  A door slammed in your face” (p. 5-6).  His faith is shaken.  He does not doubt that God exists, but he wonders rather that God is some kind of cosmic sadist, a spiteful imbecile (cf. p. 30).  “So this is what God’s really like. Deceive yourself no longer” (p. 7). (This is the great CS Lewis talking here!  This book was written after all the other books he wrote on the Christian faith!)  He sees his faith as a house of cards that had to be knocked down: “the sooner it was knocked down the better.  And only suffering could do it.  But then the Cosmic Sadist ... becomes an unnecessary hypothesis” (p. 38), because:

[t]he more we believe that God hurts only to heal, the less we can believe that there is any use in begging for tenderness.  A cruel man might be bribed—might grow tired of his vile sport—might have a temporary fit of mercy, as alcoholics have fits of sobriety.  But suppose that what you are up against is a surgeon whose intentions are wholly good.  The kinder and more conscientious he is, the more inexorably he will go on cutting.  If he yielded to your entreaties, if he stopped before the operation was complete, all the pain up to that point would have been useless.  But is it credible that such extremities of torture should be necessary for us?  Well, take your choice.  The tortures occur.  If they are unnecessary, then there is no God or a bad one.  If there is a good God, then these tortures are necessary.  For no even moderately good Being could possibly inflict or permit them if they weren’t.  (p. 43)

Did Mary say similar things on Holy Saturday?  Did she realize that God is a surgeon who needs to do this operation because humanity is sick?  Does surrender have to be this rough?  “Yes, I know, my Son will rise on the third day, but I want Him alive in my arms now!”  Photographs and images of loved ones are great, but they are not the real thing.  I think of this when I look at the photograph of my beloved mother who died two years ago; I well up with tears not so much because I miss her—I do!—but because the photograph just aren’t enough.  One arrives at this bitter point in the spiritual life when pictures of Jesus, stories of Jesus, statues of Jesus, and even the very matter of the Blessed Sacrament itself that we perceive isn’t enough!  Jesus, I want no more impressions of You; I simply want You!  (Lewis makes the same point on p. 65)

But I can’t have You right now.  So other things draw me in the material world.  I get tired of longing for You and not getting You right now.  I distract myself with sin.  But there, I digress.  This talk is about grief and what God does with grief in our soul, and Mary becomes our model for how to handle things when a sword pierces our own souls too.

Throughout the life of Mary we hear a refrain: “Mary kept all these things, pondering them in her heart.”  This occurred at the birth of Jesus when the shepherds came and after the finding of the child Jesus at the Temple.  I assume she continued this throughout her life.  Perhaps she did so after the wedding feast of Cana.  She surrendered the problem of the lack of wine to her Son and simply walked away.  She didn’t worry about the solution.  Perhaps she kept this incident, pondering about it in her heart, along with the mysterious words of Old Simeon and other things her Son had said throughout his life. 

Perhaps Holy Saturday for her was a time of a pondering grief.  Perhaps she reflected upon all the things Jesus said from the Cross.  Perhaps she called to mind his words: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”  And she continued the Twenty-second Psalm, which she knew by heart: “Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning?”  That sounds a lot like C.S. Lewis in his grief.  “O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer; and by night, but find no rest.”  O Mary, did you sleep last night?  I doubt if you did.  I certainly didn’t the night after my mom died.  “Yet you are holy, enthroned on the praises of Israel.  In you our fathers trusted; they trusted, and you delivered them.  In you they cried, and were saved; in you they trusted, and were not disappointed.”  All right, Lord God, I shall persevere in my trust, even if I should not understand what you are up to!

There is a similar movement worth noting in the Liturgy of the Hours for Holy Saturday.  The psalms start to speak of death, but then hint at the resurrection; from mourning, to pleading with God for rescue, to the victory of eternal life over death.  Hope enters the picture, pierces through the darkness of grief, and settles in the soul like a seed, ready to sprout at the proper time.  The ground is watered with our tears, or differently expressed in Psalm 126, as the Liturgy of the Hours relates it: “They go out, they go out, full of tears, carrying seed for the sowing; they come back, they come back, full of song, carrying their sheaves.” 

Hope is a wonderful thing!  And the seed of Hope lies within grief, for grief should not be what it is if hope were not there.  It would become a different animal, more like depression or even its distant cousin, despair.  Hope is not “I hope I have a good meal tonight” or “I hope my favorite team wins the Superbowl or the World Series next time.”  Rather, the theological virtue of Hope involves keeping your eyes fixed firmly at our eternal destination, focusing on the world to come where we shall be with Jesus and—God willing—our loved ones for all eternity, no matter what happens in the world around us right now.  This kind of Hope ends up guiding us in our daily life and gives us the courage to keep pressing forward.

Can grief and hope coexist?  St Paul seems to think so.  He exhorts us that we may “not grieve as others do who have no hope” (1 Thess 4:13).  I take that to mean that it is okay to grieve, but as long as you do so with the theological virtue of Hope. 

I think this is the kind of godly grief that Mary had between Good Friday and Easter Sunday.  She grieved tremendously, no doubt about that.  But as she pondered the mystery of salvation and surrender to the Father’s will, which she had to do when the sword pierced her heart on that Friday afternoon, her grief was imbued with a sudden hope.  One weeps, simply because one misses a loved one, knowing that death is something terrible, something that simply should not be.  Each death of another is also a mini-death of the self.  The word “amputation” seems to fit.  For the tears of grief have been always described as kind of selfish, and rightly so, and it is not a bad thing to be selfish here.  Mary and Jesus were so very close; her Son was ripped out from her life and made to suffer the ugly death on the Cross.  But before we could get to the glory of the Resurrection, she had many tears to shed.  Did it have to take this much?  Did the cost have to be this steep?  Yes, for this God-made-man had to save not only His Blessed Mother but also all of humanity.  Not only did Mary have to weep, but all of creation did too.  How far we had fallen, but how far He had to come to get us back!  How could we not weep over such a prodigal God who did all that to reclaim us?

So how do we find Hope in the midst of a tremendous grief?  We do something we tremble at doing: we give it all to God.  And how do we do something that sounds so cliché?  We pray in the midst of our grief.  Most of us do not like the idea of bringing up negative things in prayer.  Most of us cringe, thinking God will be angry with us, if we bring up negative feelings in prayer, especially feelings of intense anger.  Nothing could be further from the truth!  God desires our brutal honesty, not our silence, when it comes to these “negative emotions.”  We may protest and think that God is offended by the ugliness that we harbor in our souls, yet the One who descended to the abode of the dead could easily descend to the ugliness within our souls and set us free!  I recall praying to the Lord—an honest prayer—that I didn’t want to share with him the ugly things in my soul, and I felt Him respond, “Jay, I descended to the abode of the dead; nothing could be uglier than that!”  So I began to share with Him all the ugly things in my soul, and I felt His peace come over me.  My advice to you is to never hold back in prayer!  He always cherishes and responds to honest prayer.  And especially on this day, during the silence of Holy Saturday, don’t hold back the grief in your own soul!  For when we are able to speak to Him of the ugliness of our grief—and not just speak to Him of the ugliness of our grief but also speak to Him from the ugliness of our grief—He responds with giving us enormous Hope.  He lets Hope flourish in our hearts, for He knows that’s what we need the most right now. 

Exercise: consider Mary on the morning of the Resurrection.  What was she feeling?  What was she going through?  Write or journal about it; perhaps write a prayer, a poem or even a song about it.  Let this meditation renew the theological virtue of Hope in your life.

Reference: Lewis, C.S. A Grief Observed. New York: Harper One, 1996.

A Holy Week Reflection: Standing with Mary at the Foot of the Cross

I know it's been a long time since I've posted.  Sorry about that!  Things are going well!  Recently I gave a talk to a men's retreat here at the Abbey, and I converted my talk into an article.  I would like to share it with you.  It might help in your mediations for Holy Week! I'll try to post more about life here at the Abbey sometime soon!  God bless!

Standing with Mary at the Foot of the Cross

Father Jay Kythe

April 5, 2014

This reflection is based in part from Richard John Neuhaus, Death on a Friday Afternoon.  Scripture quotes are from his citations.

The Third Word from the Cross: When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing near, he said to his mother, “Woman, behold, your Son!” Then he said to the disciple, “Behold, your mother!” And from that hour the disciple took her into his home.

The image of Mary at the foot of the Cross: this is a great opportunity to put ourselves in the sandals of the beloved disciple.  Throughout my life I have had an image of myself at the foot of the Cross, my arm around Mary’s shoulders, me trying to comfort her.  This has nourished me greatly in my spiritual life, as I traced the steps of the Via Dolorosa and applied it to my life.

I often wondered, did she know that this was the way of strange glory by which her Son would conquer sin and death?  We do not know.

Perhaps she remembered old Simeon who was probably dead by that time.  She would certainly remember his words: “Behold, this child is set for the fall and the rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is spoken against, and a sword will pierce your own soul also, that the thoughts out of many hearts may be revealed.”  How often had she wondered about this, pondered these words for all those years, and realizing that this is happening at that moment?  How she had to endure the piercing sword of grief at the foot of the Cross!

We know she did this from the beginning.  When the shepherds came to worship the baby and told her what the angels had said, “Mary kept all these things, pondering them in her heart.”  She would look down at the babe and wonder many things.  From her He received His Jewish humanity: the color of his eyes, the cut of his nose, that odd way of smiling.  She potty trained Him, taught Him His first words, encouraged His first steps, kissed His scuffed knee and made it all better, ... all as she pondered prophecies about piercing swords and wondered about that King from the East who gave myrrh, an ointment for burial, at the event of a birth.  She and Joseph found Him lost in the temple, she was there for His first miracle.  They could not have been closer.

Recall the Dialogue at Cana: “They have no more wine.”  “O woman, what have you to do with me?  My hour has not yet come.”  “Do whatever he tells you.”—the last recorded words of Mary in the New Testament.  How fitting!

She had to learn an important lesson, which perhaps we get a glimpse at Cana,

a lesson all mothers (and fathers, especially with respect to their daughters) need to learn, to let go, to let their sons go on the way they must go.  The love that lets go is never easy.  Such love has to be learned.  It approaches the truest form of love, an ultimate other-directedness, a total lack of selfishness, agape-love that is willing to let go of the other. 

We see perhaps the first lesson of having to let go in the scene of St. Joseph and Mary searching for Jesus in the Temple.  Jesus says, “How is it that you sought me?  Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?”  What a thing for a 12 year old to say!  But we can also note that He returns home, obedient to His earthly parents.  And once again we come upon the line, “And his mother kept all these things in her heart.”  He was back with her, but something was different, something has happened that can never be undone.  Between Jesus and Mary another will came in to separate, an infinitely greater will, the will of the heavenly Father. 

To this will, every other relationship took second place. 

As it should be in the spiritual life of the Christian.

Recall once again the words at Cana: “Woman, what have you to do with me?  My hour has not yet come.”  We do not have evidence that Mary was offended, nor did she question about His hour.  All she did was say to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.” 

The Synoptics tell the story that the crowds were pressing in on Jesus, and Mary and His brethren came in to speak with Him.  Jesus says, “Who are my mother and my brothers?”  Looking around, He said, “Here are my mother and my brothers!  Whoever does the will of God is my brother, and sister, and mother.”  What did Mary think?  Yes, I know, she fits the criterion spoken by Jesus very well, but she is still His mother.  Was she disappointed, perhaps at some level? 

And then there was another day when someone in the crowd cries out, “Blessed is the womb that bore you, and the breasts that you sucked!”  Yet Jesus responds, “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it.”  Also here Mary fits this criterion, but how did she feel about that as well? 

I’d like to think it was like at Cana.  I believe that at Cana she simply accepted the words of Christ without question and walked away, happy that God’s will is being done.  She pointed something out and stepped aside, confident that God will act.  This is the quality of great saints, to surrender and leave things in God’s hands.  If water had not changed into wine, if the wedding couple were left humiliated, Mary would still have trusted that somehow this would work for good in their lives.  This is the mark of heroic virtue in the lives of saints, that the entire world could just as well fall apart and yet I shall remain secure with my Lord, trusting that He will bring a greater good out of a great evil.  This is a lesson we all have to learn.

            And Mary had to learn it too.  We can say: oh Mary, it seems He has no more time for you.  Even when it comes to taking care of Him, to doing the big and little things that a mother wants to do, it seems you are excluded.  In Luke 8 we hear about the holy women who followed Jesus and provided for Him, but your name wasn’t on the list.  Was that okay with you?

Mary learned the hard love of letting go, the love that is forged in surrender to a love greater than our own, the love that grows beyond all possessing.  Paradoxically, in this distancing love is a deeper love and discipleship, for Mary is considered the first of the disciples.  All generations shall indeed call her blessed!

Surrender: the Scriptures calls this kenosis, the surrender of all that we hold most dear, and for Mary, it was the surrender of her dearest.  Long before they looked at one another on Golgotha’s place of strangest glory, they had been prepared by many little surrenders for this surrender by which all was restored.  The way of the Cross is the way of broken hearts.

We live in a life of desiring empowerment, fulfillment, self-esteem, and self-actualization.  Yet the Christian message is the opposite:  “The disciple is not above the master.”  “The first shall be last and the last first.”  “He who would find his life must lose his life.”  “Take up your cross and follow me.”  And Mary adds the words “Do whatever He tells you.”  And in her loss, the loss of her Son and the loss of herself, she discovered “Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.” 

“He who would find his life must lose his life.”  The spiritual life and the Christian moral life are filled with such paradoxes.  And when we try to live this way, we feel like we are going against the grain. 

Or maybe we’re not.  Maybe we’ve been so accustomed to going against the grain of our humanity that we have confused ourselves about which way the grain runs.  Recall the famous words of St Augustine: “You have made us for Yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You.”  Recall also the old Catechism question “Why did God make me?”  “To know and love and serve Him in this life and to enjoy Him forever in the next.”  If we get this question wrong, we get everything else wrong.  Perhaps in following our humanity, we will reach God; but man has gotten used to not following his humanity.  Man has gotten used to following things that are contra naturum, against human nature, the way God intended it.  So if we lose ourselves in God, we end up finding ourselves.  If God made us that way, this should make sense. 

At the foot of the Cross, Mary and Jesus were probably eye-to-eye, almost at eye level, at least looking at each other’s faces.  Much later, beginning in the Middle Ages, artists would depict a very tall cross, with Mary and the others far below at its foot.  But historians think that the Cross was probably about seven feet tall.  She would have seen quite clearly the Holy Face in agony.  She would have heard His words, the seven Last Words.  There was nothing else to do but just to be there. 

And so we return back to the image I started with, standing with Mary at the foot of the Cross. 

We are familiar with the beautiful poem Stabat Mater dolorosa: At the Cross her station keeping.  Perhaps it was written by St Bonaventure, and it was set to music by some of the greatest composers.  Antonin Dvorak composed his Stabat Mater in 1878 after losing three children in three years. 

The image of being at the foot of the Cross appeals to us because we shall all face darkness in our lives, and in the heart of darkness are the hearts of Jesus and Mary, for both descended into that darkness in order to provide hope for those whose hope is slipping away. 

Weeping at the cross, Mary is both the mother of sorrows and the mother of hope. 

Here is our lesson: letting God have His way, even when it brings us to the Cross.  Life is at God’s disposal, kept in readiness for what He may desire.  By saying Yes to the angel and agreeing to be mother of God, she had created a situation beyond her control.  This is about the imitation of Mary: surrendering as she did.  By taking Mary into our home as did the beloved disciple, we can give her the opportunity to teach this lesson to us, and in turn teach this lesson to others. 

The first example is of the beloved disciple who surrendered to God through Mary (and learned from her by imitating her virtue of surrender).  We don’t know much about the life of St. John, but it is said that he was exiled to the island of Patmos.  As he surrendered to this will of Divine Providence, he opened himself to everything the Father wanted to do in his life.  So he wrote the Gospels, which reveal Christ as the Son of God in glory; the letters, which are a fantastic exposition of love; and the book of Revelations, which speak of the glory to come.  It is as if he said—when he spoke in his first letter of “that which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our own eyes, which we have looked upon and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life—the life was made manifest and we saw it, and testify to it, and proclaim to you the eternal life which was with the Father and was made manifest to us ....”—in other words, “Mother Mary and I, we saw it!” “...by this we know love, that he laid down his life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.”  Humanity is capable of great self-transcendence in surrender to the Other.  We are capable of magnanimous love.  It is worth remembering this when we see people doing bad things.  There are probably more good examples than bad, but in our fallenness we get discouraged and remember that one bad thing out of the one hundred good ones.

The Cross is the axis mundi, the place and the moment upon with all reality turns.  It is the Cross that binds John to Mary, and all beloved disciples to Mary and through Mary to one another in a mutual gift of self.  When St Paul declares, “It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me,” Mary ends up having many sons and daughters, her Son living in us.  “Behold, your son!”—meaning, behold your Christ is here too!  Mary, then did not lose her Son on the Cross; she gains sons and daughters beyond number, in all of whom the glory of Christ abides! 

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me,” Christ utters from the Cross.  Mary heard these words and could herself continue the words of that Psalm 22 along with Jesus, words He did not say from the Cross but were there implicitly: “Yet thou art he who took me from the womb; thou didst keep me safe upon my mother’s breasts.  Upon thee was I cast from my birth, and since my mother bore me thou hast been my God.  Be not far from me, for trouble is near and there is none else to help.” 

How close were Jesus and Mary!  Perhaps she thought of those words and thought of the times of caring for him as a babe, whispering the words of the Archangel Gabriel to him in the second person: “You will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give you the throne of your father David, and you will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of your kingdom there will be no end.”  Mary did not know what it all meant, and the babe smiled at the sound of her voice of the mother for whom the word “you” meant her life and her all.

Yet on the Cross, those words of surrender and calling upon the Lord most High may have helped her to do the same.  Little surrenders throughout her life preparing her for this big one.  And beside her stood the beloved disciple, watching it all.  The mother would come to understand that from the beginning, she was held by the One whom she held.  The beloved disciple would understand this too and would express it in different ways in his writings, writings that came out of his contemplative heart. 

How much of this he learned from Mary and how much of this he learned by being open to the Father’s will is unknown.  But in his surrender, he revealed much about the spiritual life that can only be learned in surrender to the Father’s will.  I daresay he couldn’t have contributed what he did to the Catholic faith without first surrendering to Divine Providence!  All in imitation of Mary, whom he brought into his home.

At the beginning I spoke of myself in the place of the Beloved Disciple at the foot of the Cross.  “And he took her into his home.”  This image has changed for me, especially as I considered myself as a beloved disciple and began bringing everything, especially the ugliness of life, to the foot of the Cross.  With each instance of grief, I began noticing something different.  Now the image is of Mary comforting me at the foot of the Cross. 

Human drama should be lived out at the foot of the Cross.  Why not being there with Mary?  Taking everything there, the good, the bad, and the ugly.

In your prayer, I encourage this meditation: you at the foot of the Cross.  What would you like to bring to Jesus?  What is Mary’s posture?  What is your posture?  What is Mary’s posture towards you and you towards Mary, and both towards Jesus?

Reflections

Sorry it has been a while for me to post anything on this blog.  So much has been going on, and I don't have access to my laptop until I enter vows (15 months from now).  I can't write in my spare time without walking down to the computer lab.

I am doing really well here at the Abbey.  There is much time for prayer and work, reading and gardening, visiting with other monks and college students.  I see this as a time of formation, when the Lord is forming me in silence.  I recall hearing about parishes hiring a Lifeteen director and then wonder what he or she is doing the first year, because no one really sees any youth work going on.  They wonder if the parish should have even hired that director!  But then, in the second year, the youth ministry works just explodes!  During the first year, the minister was doing a lot of background work, laying the foundations, for youth ministry.  Likewise, the Lord is laying the foundations in my heart, so that whatever I do when I am in vows will be effective and I will be more perfectly His instrument.

During this formation period, the Lord works in silence.  There have been consolations, even when working outside in the garden.  There have been opportunities to "offer up" in prayer and reparation, such as when my lower back gave out on me two weeks ago (getting better).  There has been much rising to the surface to explore in prayer before the Blessed Sacrament.  There has been a reviewal of life, where I have come from, and a deepening of who I am.  I have grown to love my postulant brothers deeply, and I have gotten to know many of the wonderful elderly monks that are here at the Abbey.  Already there have been two funerals for monks, both of whom touched me in many ways, and I shall miss them.  It felt strange to line up with the monks after the vigils and have people walk down the receiving line, offering their condolences to me!  Then it hit me, I am part of the monastic family.  Of course they would do that!  As the junior of the monks, I light candles for 30 days at supper for the deceased monk where he used to sit.  The monk is remembered by name for 30 days, and then annually on the anniversary of his death (when his life story is recounted). The community never forgets them.

Back home in Minnesota, two things have happened, good news and bad news.  I'll start with the bad and offer some reflections on both topics.

A terrible scandal has shaken the Archdiocese of St Paul-Minneapolis.  It involves a priest involved in child sexual abuse and allegations of mismanagement on the part of the Chancery.  The unfortunate news can be read here: http://minnesota.publicradio.org/features/2013/09/clergy-abuse/  as well as related articles on MPR.

Some dear friends of mine, former parishioners, contacted me, expressing how they felt betrayed and hurt, saying that it is hard to be Catholic right now.  I agreed, asking them to remember that priests feel that way too, when such things happen.  I'm sure many, many people feel that way, wondering how to face this Church at a time of such scandal.

Currently, I am taking an Ecclesiology (Theology of the Church) course at Benedictine College.  I believe very firmly that so many problems in the church have something to do with improper sense of what the Church really is.  Church history is loaded with scandal.  A case can be made that the Reformation wouldn't have happened if in the centuries prior to it revealed a better portrait of popes and the clergy.  The Avignon Papacy and the Western Schism (when there were allegedly three popes) led to a great sense of disillusionment on the part of the faithful.  The repercussions of scandals can be great, leading to a fragmentation of the church and the loss of souls, for decades (centuries?) afterwards.  We must remember that there have been worse scandals than this in the history of the Church.  We must also remember that there shouldn't be any scandals at all.  Period.

As a side note, I have an enormous problem with blaming priests when they fall.  One of the things people often say is that our priests should be held to a higher standard.  Yes, they should.  But shouldn't the same standard be applied to the speaker of the complaint?  If not, then is this not an issue of hypocrisy?  There shouldn't be two different set of standards for clergy and for laypeople.  Sin is sin.  We all need to clean up our moral lives, including priests.  It baffles me that in this sexually permissive world, people who know they need to behave better criticize priests when they fall.  What would things look like if the same people went up to priests and said, "Father, we love you and we want what is best for you. Let us help you, so you can help us."  Priests might just cry for joy, instead of being afraid of their image before other people.

Back to my original point: the Church is bigger than these scandals.  We need to keep an eye on Jesus Christ and what He has done in the Church.  The Church is the kingdom of God on earth.  Her holiness comes from the Head, Jesus Christ, who is holy.  If every member of the Church sin (which they do), the Church is still holy because the Head is holy.  This was St Augustine's point from way back.  We must love the Church for who she is, rather than looking to the fallen members.

My dear friend, Fr. David Blume, wrote this in his bulletin article for his parish, The Church of St Patrick in Oak Grove, MN:

The Sources of Grace

Saint John Bosco lived from 1815–1888. From the time he was nine years old he would have dreams that appeared to be inspired by the Holy Spirit. Some of these dreams came true and others contained a very profound message. Pope Pius IX instructed Fr. Bosco to write down the details of his dreams.

One of his dreams is about a huge ship that is tossed about during a great storm. This ship is the Church and it is commanded by the Pope. There are other smaller ships nearby that want to destroy it and they are doing everything conceivable to sink it. There are also smaller ships defending it. The large ship is maneuvering toward two large columns. On the top of one column, there is the statue of the Immaculate Virgin, from whose feet hangs a large placard with this inscription: "Help of Christians"; on the other column, which is much higher and bigger, stands a host of great size proportionate to the column and beneath is another placard with the words: “Salvation of the Faithful.” There are hooks or anchors on these columns where a ship could tie up. In the midst of a great battle the ship makes its way to these columns and ties to each of them. The storm subsides. The ships fighting against the large ship commanded by the Pope scatter. Those fighting for her come and tie up to the columns.

The actual dream is much more involved, but the message is that when we are rocked by storms, we have to be anchored to the sources of grace, to the Mother of Jesus who is the greatest intercessor we have and to the Eucharist, the source of all graces.

It is a challenging time right now in the Archdiocese with sad reports showing up in the media many days in a row. Let’s keep our sights fixed on the sources of grace and remember to pray for our Archbishop and all who are in leadership at the Chancery. God bless you all for your prayers!

Let us keep our eyes on the great thing God has done in giving us this Church, which gave me such great life at my baptism!  And remember, despair is from the Evil One, who is prowling like a lion.  We are feeling his teeth marks these days.

The second piece of news is really good news: my dear friend, Fr. Andrew Cozzens, has been named Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of Saint Paul-Minneapolis!  I am very, very happy for the Church,  for she has gotten a wonderful man as a bishop.  He is a wise theologian, humble, and kind.  It may be in the plans of Divine Providence that he may help this diocese recover from this scandal and receive the healing she needs.  Now an enormous Cross has been placed on the shoulders of Bishop Elect Cozzens.  Let us pray for him, that he may not be crushed by it but he may be God's instrument of healing and reconciliation in these difficult times.

Please pray for me as I continue my formation and know of my prayers for you!
Fr Jay Kythe

I have arrived!!!

On the evening of August 14, 2013, at the First Vespers of the Feast of the Assumption, Sean Lee, Brad Geist, and I were admitted to the postulancy at St Benedict's Abbey.  Prayers of blessings were said over us at the entrance of the choir and we were led in to the church.  Assigned a place in the choir, we could now sit with the monks, as well as roam freely through the cloistered sections of the Abbey.

There is great joy in my heart over this new life, but there is also the sorrow of leaving an old life behind.  A monk told me recently that this sorrow lessens over time.  I figured as much, since it takes some time to get used to a new way of life.  As I look ahead, I think I will be happy here.  Time will tell, so ask me in a month and 6 months and one year down the line!

This is a brief note to let everyone know of my status.  I am doing well, and settling in nicely here at St Benedict's Abbey!  Please check out photos and videos of my entry into the postulancy on www.kansasmonks.org, which will take you to a link to youtube!  To go directly to the video, click here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WT8Ly16VyhU&feature=c4-overview&list=UUWasD93IGF6HKGjhnqOIfUA.

God bless,

Fr. Jay  

Three more days

Three more days until I leave for the monastery!  On Sunday, August 11, my father will drive me down to St Benedict's Abbey and leave me there!  I'm excited and nervous at the same time.  This has been--and will continue to be--quite a transition!

The first part of it was moving everything to my home that I share with my father.  I spent much of these last three weeks unpacking, sorting, throwing away things, recycling other things, destroying sensitive paperwork, packing again, and so on.  It was a monumental and overwhelming task!  But I must confess that it has gone quite well.  I learned that instead of being overwhelmed from the get-go, if I just do a little bit every day, I will get a lot done over time.  It is like reading a book, even 10 pages per day, or going through a bottle of Metamucil (yes, you do that at my age), that over a period of time, you finish the task.  There is a book and movement based on that very principle, The Slight Edge Principle.  Not that I am an advocate of the marketing of that book and accompanying products, but the basic idea really works.  These last three weeks are proof of it.  I feel good, looking at what I've accomplished, knowing that I can pack everything in the back of a mini-van or SUV and go somewhere.

One of the hardest parts of detachments is not having the willingness to get rid of things but an easy way to get rid of things.  Recycle bins, friends willing to take your discarded items, a good friend willing to burn bags of papers that you should shred, etc.  Having a dumpster to discard items isn't a good idea anymore, since some of the items one may have may be too sensitive and can end up in the hands of identity thieves.  This caused me to reflect on the world we live in, and how harder it is to detach today than even, say, ten years ago.

And the good Lord helps.  My wonderful car got a head gasket problem, a very expensive repair.  So the good people at Car Time in Northfield, MN offered to buy it from me and pay me the difference.  Now there's a quick and easy way to get rid of a car!  Yet parting can be such sweet sorrow, with the emphasis on sorrow!

The second part of such a monumental task of detachment is canceling credit cards, accounts, transferring finances to a family member, etc.  This is a mind-numbing and difficult activity that I would rather procrastinate on.  But I am doing it, bit by bit, following my to-do lists.  The hardest part was canceling my cell phone.  I have had that number for 11 years, and as I mentioned in previous posts (or bulletin articles), I love my iPhone.  So as of Sunday, I won't use it, and as of the 25th of this month, it will be deactivated.  Of course, I must part with a fee, because my two year contract isn't finished yet! Oh well, what do I have use for money anyway?

I will try to post messages on my blog at times and also on my facebook page.  Thanks to all my friends who have lifted me up in so many ways!  Write, email, or call me sometime!

Fr Jay

The Last Sermon

I would like to share my last sermon (this is more of a sermon than a homily, even though it refers back to the Mass readings a bit) that I delivered on June 29-30, 2013 at the Church of Saint Pius X in White Bear Lake, MN.  (If you are going to one of my Masses this weekend, don't read this yet!)  This makes me think that there should be "Last Sermon" series in parishes and churches.  It's longer than my usual homilies, but I think people will be patient with me.  Enjoy!

The Last Sermon

June 29, 2013 Feast of Saints Peter and Paul

and June 30, 2013 for 13^th Sunday in Ordinary Time Cycle C

On September 18, 2007, a computer science professor was dying of pancreatic cancer.  So at Carnegie Mellon University, Randy Pausch delivered what has been called and published The Last Lecture. This is a common title for talks on college campuses, a “Last Lecture Series,” in which top professors are asked to think deeply about what matters to them and give hypothetical final talks.

In a way, this homily today can be considered my “Last Homily or Sermon.”  This isn’t exactly accurate, because I will keep preaching at parishes and I’m not dying yet.  But I am leaving the parish priesthood, and I am dying to self and to the world as I enter a monastery.  As a side thought, it wouldn’t be a bad idea for priests to give a “Last Sermon Series,” considering the question, “What wisdom would we impart to the world if we knew it was our last chance?”

Now this is a strange weekend.  On Saturday, we celebrate the Feasts of Saints Peter and Paul, including at the 5 pm Mass (a solemnity in our archdiocese, one that overrides the Sunday Mass) and on Sunday, we have specific readings for the 13th Sunday in Ordinary Time.  But I’m not going to compose two different homilies!  Yet both days speak profoundly to what I would like to preach on. 

The context of the Sunday readings is all about following the Lord without looking back!  No excuses are to be given to even delay in following the Lord!  We are called to burn bridges and to go forward without regrets!  Is the Lord worth it?  Certainly He is, but it is clearly difficult.  And the Lord doesn’t comfort us in it, for all He says is, “No one who sets a hand to the plow and looks to what was left behind is fit for the kingdom of God.”  What he is making unmistakably clear is that nothing—not even the most sacred values of the world—is more important than doing God’s will and living according to the plan He has for us.    We seem to have forgotten this these days, as we redefine marriage and society according to our plans and not according to God’s. 

And not just society in general but also our brothers and sisters who consider themselves good Catholics but think the Church is behind the times and needs to “get with it.”  As I’ve said before, I think the world is behind the times and needs to “get with it,” to get with the program, the plan that God has for us.  At times I have had the opportunity to challenge such Catholics.  The usual response, unfortunately, is anger.  “Father, how dare you call me a bad Catholic!”  Well, I want to say, if the shoe fits ... in other words, let’s not be hypocrites here.  My challenge to you is to become a better Catholic, better aligned with the will of Christ and the heart and the mind of the Church.  Remember, this is the Church that Christ founded and this is the Church that gave you the Bible.  This is the Church that has been around for 2000 years and gives you the Body and Blood of Christ.  This is the Church in which Jesus appointed St Peter to be the first pope and we’ve had 265 after him to Pope Francis.  The keys of the Kingdom of heaven are given to him and to his successors.  This is the Church in which St. Paul converted, a sinner transformed to become an apostle.  Yes, this Church is filled with weak and sinful people, especially the priests and bishops, but despite them (me) the Holy Spirit still works and works well through this Church. 

So first of all, trust this Church.  Trust what she teaches, especially with respect to marriage and family life.  Blessed John Cardinal Newman wrote:

Trust the Church of God implicitly

even when your natural judgment would take a different course from hers

and would induce you to question her prudence or correctness.

Recollect what a hard task she has;

how she is sure to be criticized and spoken against, whatever she does;

recollect how much she needs your loyal and tender devotion;

recollect, too, how long is the experience gained over so many centuries,

and what a right she has to claim your assent

to principles which have had so extended and triumphant a trial.

Thank her that she has kept the faith safe for so many generations

and do your part in helping her to transmit it to generations after you.

This is the Church that brought this former Hindu pagan to become Catholic, and to become a Catholic priest, and now, possibly, to become a Catholic priest monk!  I love this Church, and I pray you will too. 

Second, the best way to stay close to this Church is to stay close to Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament.  We live in a crazy mixed-up world, as is so abundantly clear.  There is an oft-quoted statement that “those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it.”  It is actually a foolish statement today because we live in times that we have never seen: the loss of a sense of the Divine in society and culture today; the ignorance of God and His ways with respect to a new humanism; science made in our image to conform to our selfish desires rather than seeing the truth of things; a hyperpluralism of thoughts, ideas, and opinions yelled loudly—all these things are new, never before seen in the history of the world.  How do we stay sane during these times?  Stay close to the Eucharist and to the Blessed Virgin Mary.  This is why I moved the tabernacle, because Christ absolutely needs to be at the center of our lives and our Church.  Even a slight deviation to over there (point to the side of the church) is a sign that things are wrong.  Jesus must be our focus, and you will find His Blessed Mother standing alongside us looking at Him.  She can help us by pointing the way to her Son.  It is only because of the sacraments, especially the Eucharist, (and the prayers of monks and nuns) that has kept the Church from going off the deep end these last 2000 years.  And the Eucharist will see us through the next 2000 years, as long as we don’t let Him go in this great and noble sacrament!

Third, a message I have preached for years, to surrender all things to Divine Providence, during the good, the bad, and the ugly times.  I’ve experienced all three, and I know you have too.  When you are most tempted to leave the Lord, don’t.  He loves you and will see you through the dark times.  Today’s second reading: Galatians: “For freedom Christ set us free; so stand firm and do not submit again to the yoke of slavery ... Do not use this freedom as an opportunity for the flesh.”  If you live by the flesh, you are no longer free.  The only true freedom comes in staying close to the Lord in all things, to live in the power of His spirit.  Keep your hand to the plow in prayer.  And don’t look back!

Well, maybe I will, just a little bit, to make sure all of you are doing what I taught you.

The Eucharist as a Strange Notion

The Eucharist as a Strange Notion

Father Jay Kythe

This is the article format of a homily I gave for the Feast of Corpus Christi on the weekend of June 1-2, 2013 at the Church of Saint Pius X, White Bear Lake, MN.  So may people have asked me for it, so I post it here.

Have you ever considered how strange our Catholic faith is?  Take, for instance, the Crucifix.  It is an image of an execution.  If you walked into my office and saw a photograph of someone being electrocuted in an electric chair, beheaded in all its gore, or hung from a noose, you would think there is something seriously wrong with my mental health and perhaps I should not be functioning as a priest.  Yet, no one says anything about a crucifix or makes a judgment about the person who owns the crucifix.  As for myself, I like to collect crucifixes; five of them hang over my bed.  People buy crucifixes, call them beautiful or pretty, with an image of a dead body on it and all, and they ask me to bless it!  Strange!

Our faith is filled with strange notions!

We believe in one God but three persons in this one God.  Strange!  We even go so far as to say that one of these three persons chose to become human, chose to be born of a woman.  And not just any woman, but a virgin, who still remains a virgin before, during, and after this birth of this God!  This God is born, cries, burps, poops, laughs, teaches, heals, does everything that man does—except for sin—and even—now this gets weird—even dies!  Dies on a cross!  And we put crucifixes on display on our walls and around our necks! 

All right, I can accept all that.  I can even accept the claim that this person who died on the Cross rises from the dead.  I mean, He’s God, isn’t He?  Seriously, if He weren’t, there would be no resurrection.  Man can’t rise from the dead on his own power.  But there is something more, something I think is even stranger to accept.  Stranger than all the things I’ve mentioned.  Something we live with every day and don’t give it a second thought.  Or if we do, we end up becoming more fervent in our faith or rejecting this strange notion and the Catholic faith entirely.  Not because it doesn’t make any sense—believe me, it doesn’t—but because if we really, truly believed it, we would have to change our lives!

Here it is: We believe that bread and wine to change into the Body and Blood of Christ!  Now that’s really, really strange.  Bread and wine change into the Body and Blood of Christ but still looks like bread and looks like wine?  Really?  Its stranger than having crucifixes on the walls, stranger than virgins giving birth to God, stranger than, well, anything!

I mean, if you really believed in something this strange, you wouldn’t be yawning at Mass and considering it boring, would you?  You’ll be on your knees and praying fervently at every Mass!  Your faith would be a sure and solid rock in your life.  (Or you may want to be become a monk!  Now that’s pretty strange too!)  Churches would be packed to overflowing, and Father would have to add 20 more Masses per weekend. 

You’d have to trust this Church that teaches this, believe in this teaching and everything else she teaches.  I mean, if she got this wrong, what else could be wrong?  If the Eucharist is not the Body and Blood of Christ but just cardboard tasting bread and sweet wine, then we should throw out the Bible.  For that’s where this strange notion begins, from all the places in three of the Gospels in which Jesus takes bread and says, “Take this and eat it, for this is my body,” and takes wine and says, “Take this and drink of it, for this is the chalice of my blood.”  Then there is that powerful chapter of John 6, in which Jesus repeats several times—lest there be any doubts—that  “unless you eat the flesh of the son of man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you.”  And St. Paul speaks about eating the Body and drinking the Blood in worthy manner.   Seriously, if the Church is wrong about this, we really need to throw the Bible in the trash.

What else should we get rid of?  Perhaps marriage shouldn’t be restricted to just one man and one woman.  Maybe priests should be allowed to marry.  And maybe Communion should be given to anyone who wants it, not just Catholics. 

The doctrine of the Eucharist is at the very center of the Catholic faith, isn’t it?  If it’s not true, then everyone can believe whatever he or she wants and do whatever he or she wants. 

Believing in the Eucharist is not only strange but also dangerous.  For a demand is made in our lives to conform our lives to Christ, to change our lives and get rid of sin. This is the reason why people leave the faith or don’t become fervent Catholics to begin with.  We would actually have to change our lives!  I would actually have to trust Christ and the Church more!  By receiving Holy Communion, I would have to trust the Church and believe in everything she teaches (this is the reason why those who are not in communion with this Church generally should not be receiving Holy Communion in this Church).  I would have to realize that I am actually in communion with all those who share in this Holy Communion, even people I don’t like.  Finally, I would have to trust that when I receive Holy Communion, I am being changed into Christ. 

If you think it a strange notion that bread and wine change into the Body and Blood of Christ, then here’s something equally strange: mere human beings are being changed into the Real Presence of Christ in the world.  As the old saying goes, “You are what you eat.”  God needs people to bring Christ into the world. And as unworthy as I am, He chooses me.  He chooses you.  He chooses us to receive Him in Holy Communion and bring Jesus into the world out there by transforming us into—as I told the First Communion students this year—“little Jesuses!”

So am I willing to believe?  If I am, then am I willing to change my life so it doesn’t contradict with this belief?  It is not good to be a hypocrite.  It is better to be hot or cold, a fervent Catholic or one who doesn’t go to Church; God doesn’t like lukewarm people.  Either all of this is true or its not.  There’s no middle ground. 

What will you choose?  What impact will you allow it to happen on your life?