Inspired by Scholastica

In recent days, I've been thinking about all the ways God blesses us with forgiveness. I write to a man in prison who was part of a murder when he was young and is serving a life sentence. His letters always begin with giving thanks for this God-given day. Although he could be bitter for that mistake that cost him his freedom, he focuses on gratitude to God for each new day. When I read of Archbishop Rembert Weakland’s death, I remembered how much I admired him for his contributions to the Catholic Church, especially how he implemented Vatican II back in the 70s and 80s. Later, when it was revealed that he was part of the cover-up of child abuse by priests in his diocese, I was shocked. I had put him on a pedestal and he had fallen. Then I began thinking about the fact that we are all flawed, we all have some things in our past that we are not proud of, perhaps ashamed of. Good people make mistakes, but this does not define them. Humans struggle with their choices and have regrets,

"I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing." (John 10:27) This is not what firefighters want to see. Forest fires and other devastating fires have done more than enough destruction in our world. But, that's not the kind of fire Jesus is talking about in this passage from John's Gospel. Instead, he wants us to be fire-bearers, to carry the flame that Jesus ignited on earth and to keep it burning. It is his Spirit that started the fire, and we preserve it by uniting with a community of disciples to keep it ablaze.  We have to have "fire in our bellies" to fan the flames into burning brilliance. That means to lift our flagging spirits and numbed bodies and spread the light of Christ to our world. One flame is bright, but thousands of flames make a formidable fire. Communities on fire can transform our darkened world into a brightness not quenched by hate, war, vengeance, or lies. By sharing our love, service, and kindness with

God stoops down to embrace our humanness, our fragile, ungainly bulges and sinews, limping, stumbling along, holding our aches and pains that cry out for relief, yearnings imbedded deep within our hearts, even the sins festering in our souls. He bends low to scoop us up into his arms like a mother cherishing her infant babe, feeding us with the milk of mercy, cuddling us with tenderness and unconditional love. God breathes new life into us when we falter never abandons us in our weakness. God takes on our flesh, becomes one with us in all the sweat and tears of life, the loneliness, weariness, rejection, doubts, failures, and humiliations. Was there ever a god as humble as our God?

Not to look back with regret, nursing the slights, pondering what ifs, wallowing in the failures, nor to look forward with dread, projecting the worst to happen.  Just to be present to the now with all its undefined borders, its humdrum activities, its ordinary scraps of conversation that make up most of our lives. It is enough to be aware of the tidbits that fill our days, an insight, a song, a quote, a kindness, a smile, a sinking sun – precious things we take for granted yet worth the trouble to notice, to delight in, to be grateful for.