Pure Desire
Pure Urge
Pure Virginity
Pure Potency
Purist Purity
Untouchable Touch
Death
O Sweet Victory
Sweetest Liberty
Touchable Touch
Ernest Wise Keyser, “Meditation”, Limestone, 1932, Brookgreen Gardens, Murrells Inlet, South Carolina
—Howard Hain
(April/2018)
For this week’s homily, please play the video below:
Palm Tree
Crescent Moon
Come, Lord Jesus, Come
Magnify My Life
Carolina Marsh
Chameleon Changes Color
Can I Enter The Garden
Can I Walk Around
I Know I’m Not Clean Enough
Not Pure Enough
Not Holier Enough
But Your Grace Is So Strong
So Overwhelming
So Inviting
May I Enter
Please
Cuckoo Birds Fly Diagonal
Palm Moons
Crescent Trees
Absolutely No Wind
We Speak No Sound
Eyes
Looks
Slight Nods
A Slow Walk
Feet Don’t Move
Locations Change
A Little Hut
White With A Window
Father
Holy Father
Can I Stay
—Howard Hain
(April/2018)
“The Decent into Limbo”, Circle of Andrea Mantegna, mid-15th Century, The Met
I have been practicing a new offense. For I am often ambushed at night, by ugly dreams and even uglier and terrifying thoughts. I awake. I arise. I calmly identify the area the sniper is attempting to exploit, the area the spy is trying to infiltrate—for by attacking he terribly weakens himself—for he reveals his position. The horizon is spanned. And with the prudent and wise counsel of the Holy Spirit the weakling is located and isolated, dispelling the smoke screen that once concealed his actual tininess. I peacefully choose my weapon: the virtue that most purifies and converts the “ugly” and “fearful” thought that has been thrown aimlessly at my fortification built on and of rock. I then rally all of God’s holy angels, saints, virtues, gifts, and glory around this single point of…
View original post 99 more words
Sunsets and sunrises.
Oceans and seas.
Horizons and boundaries.
Limit and expansion.
Life. Birth. Conception.
The act. The fit. The coming unity.
Expansion and limit.
Liquid flesh.
Swims life.
Rise and set.
Salt and fresh.
Horizon.
As far as pain sets free.
—Howard Hain
(April/2018)
A run-of-the-mill bakery.
A hand truck full of eggs.
A handful of women from Latin America.
Neither load is fragile.
A woman’s strength may appear as a delicate shell, and if poorly handled she too may break.
But strength is not a matter of not breaking.
It’s a matter of showing up, chipped, broken, sometimes even shattered.
It’s a matter of overcoming.
Of producing.
Of providing.
Of letting go.
One buttered roll at a time.
Preparing the day “café con leche” by “café con leche”.
The eggs slowly disappear.
The ladies change names.
Mary, the Mother of God, remains.
———
“Holy Mother, pierce me through, in my heart each wound renew, of my Savior crucified.”
———
It’s a matter of believing. Of dreaming. Of seeing what can’t be seen. Of loving who can’t be loved.
It’s a matter of hope that never ends, of hope that…
View original post 165 more words
Vincent van Gogh, “The Stone Bench in the Garden of Saint-Paul Hospital” (1889)
There is so much “excitement” in the world.
Politics. Sports. Entertainment.
Even in the simple act of kids going back to school there is so much hoopla.
We can’t just do things simply. Everything has to be planned, announced, delved into, broadcast into something “grand”, “life-changing”, “utterly profound.”
But the more we need to insist that something is the case, the less in reality it usually is. For excitement, like authority, is something that by its very nature announces itself—and it decreases in direct proportion to the need to have it proclaimed.
In other words, just because we make “a big deal” about everything doesn’t mean it is. In fact, it is normally quite the opposite.
———
I remember when a child’s birthday party was composed of eight or ten kids sitting around a kitchen table, wearing…
View original post 496 more words
By Orlando Hernández
The above is the title of a homily by Fr. Richard Scheiner,C.P. . This Good Friday I stood before his grave on the grounds of the Passionist Monastery in Jamaica, Queens, N.Y.. I have learned so much from him. He was my spiritual director, and, towards the end, I considered him my friend. He wrote:
“Jesus loved to go to banquets. At least that is what Luke would have us believe as he describes Jesus accepting invitations to meals from his friends as well as from Pharisees, and even from tax collectors and notorious sinners….. The fact that Jesus ate with just about anyone who offered him a meal–he excluded no one–holds a great lesson for us today. Jesus seemed to especially enjoy eating with the despised and sinners. Sinners, remember, in Jesus’ time weren’t just people who had broken God’s commandments and led an immoral life. Sinners were those who were dubbed as sinners by the Pharisees, and it was easy to be a sinner in the Pharisees’ eyes; all you had to do was engage in an occupation they didn’t approve of. If you weren’t sure you qualified as a sinner, you could always check the Pharisees’ list of disreputable activities. The list was long.”
In this Thursday’s Gospel (Lk 24:35-48) the Resurrected Lord appears in the very midst of His disciples and gives them all a good scare (although I tend to believe that the disciples form Emmaus, Mary Magdalene, and His Blessed Mother were immediately delighted!). The words of the Word of God are powerful indeed. So when He told them “Peace be with you”, I believe the mood in that fearful, guilt-filled “upper room” changed immediately. Then our Glorified Lord told them:
“ ‘Why are you troubled? And why do questions arise in your hearts? Look at my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Touch me and see, because a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you can see I have.’ And as He said this, He showed them His hands and His feet. While they were still incredulous for joy and were amazed, He asked them, ‘Have you anything here to eat?’ “ (Lk 24: 38-41)
Of course! The Jesus who loved banquets! I am again reminded of the lovely verse from Revelation 3:2: “Behold, I stand at your door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, then I will enter his house and dine with him, and he with me.” Except that, on this blessed Sunday, the Lord did not bother to knock. He just showed up. This luminous scene is fertile ground for prayer, to let our imaginations fly with the Beloved in a kind of Ignatian meditation:
My beautiful Lord, did the disciples join You for dinner? Does this qualify as a banquet, in this dark hiding place, probably having only enough for a simple, humble meal? I feel You were the Light that illuminated this room. Your Presence Itself was the main course. Suddenly the incredulous joy turns into pure, amazing happiness. You “opened their minds” by gently blowing Your Holy Spirit on them. I can only imagine such a glorious moment. Was it solemn and quiet, like the Liturgy of the Mass, no one daring to say anything, except You, the High Priest? Or was it also like so many Easter celebrations by so many families on Easter Sunday, noisy and full of laughter, tears, and memories? Lord, would I have been invited to such a feast with You? Do those terrible scars on Your glorified hands and on Your face give me the right to approach Your table?
I spent the Easter Tridiium at the Passionist Spiritual Center in Jamaica, Queens, with wonderful servants of God as our hosts, and with 45 other retreatants. Our mealtimes were truly filled with joyful conversations ( except during the Silence of Good Friday). There was such love in the air because You were there with us. And yet I was hurt and disturbed by one retreatant, a warrior of God, an “us against them Catholic”. We need such brothers and sisters fighting for the traditional values of our Church, but she told some of us (I believe she did it out of concern and love) that our souls were damned by mortal sin because of the choices we had made on the 2016 elections . We needed to kneel before God and beg for forgiveness.
Beloved Jesus, I do kneel before You and ask You for Your mercy. Lead me in the right path so that You may never leave the Upper Room of my soul. And I beg You, unite all Your followers, whether “conservatives” or “liberals”. Teach us tolerance and understanding toward each other. Make us one in Your Body.
Fr. Richard finished his homily like this: “I think the fact that Jesus excluded no one form eating with Him demonstrates the all encompassing love Jesus displayed for all of us. It is this kind of love that He expects us to practice if we are to be His disciples. Jesus excluded no one from the kingdom of God; he proclaimed the good news of the Kingdom to everyone. Jesus was free, free of the desire to be endorsed and approved by the powerful of His time. Jesus did what He knew was right; He knew what was right because He was grounded in God. Come, and have dinner with Jesus.”
Dear Fr. Richard, pray for us!
At the Masses I celebrated on Easter Sunday following the homily I cast holy water on the congregation after we renewed our baptismal promises. We renounced Satan and said we believe in God, the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, his son, and in the Holy Spirit, the giver of life. Yes, we believe in God’s church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body and life everlasting.
Then, I went through the congregation sprinkling them with water, the sign of life, the sign poured out on us at our baptism. I tried not to leave anyone out.
Of course the church was more full on Easter. Some I knew smiled when I sprinkled them generously with the water. Many I didn’t recognize, and I wondered what they thought of it all. The kids squinted when the water hit their faces. Some devoutly made the sign of the cross, some seemed a little uncomfortable.
Easter’s more than hearing something; it’s believing what we hear. Does the water fall on rock and hard ground as well as on good soil I wondered? God promises to “pour out water” on his people, the scriptures say. It’s a generous gesture God makes. Water, too, makes its way we know. It’s everywhere in God’s creation. We hardly realize how present it is in us; it’s there in every tissue of our bodies. God is there in us all, seen and unseen.
So the rite of the church says: Sprinkle them all with water, and this I did.
St. Procopius of Gaza (yes, that Gaza, a thriving Christian center when that saint wrote) says that Christ has “as his dwelling-place, the whole world in which he lives by his activity.” It’s not one place, or one time where he dwells, but the whole world and all time. He dwells in Gaza too.
We are all made in his image “which is partly seen and partly hidden from our eyes.” We’re called to grow in Christ’s image, the saint says, by the gifts we have been given through his Spirit. No place should be without human flourishing.
Its not a spiritual growth alone we’re called to achieve, but our growth comes from discovering God’s will as it is “revealed in the laws by which the entire creation is governed.”
So, St. Procopius, intercede for your land of Gaza today, so bereft of basic things like food, shelter, schools, access to the world beyond. Help your people, made in God’s image, to grow according to God’s will. Help them have what’s due to them according to their human rights.
The Victor's Place 