Transformation into Beauty

Consecrate them in the truth. Your word is truth.  As you sent me into the world, so I sent them into the world.  And I consecrate myself for them, so that they also may be consecrated in truth. 
- John 17:17-19

Our transformations, however painful yet consoling and joyous, are the means by which we are consecrated (set apart or made holy) for the mission we are all made for; we are called forth from our former selves for that which is ours to do.  For myself personally, be they those moments of greater understanding which fill my heart and soul with an ecstasy that pierces through all earthly sense of my surroundings, revealing only that which is of heaven as I am able to stand before our Father with nothing less than the dignity of being His child.  Or, be they those transformations which purge all superficial, self-centered perceptions of my relationship with God when I seem to be completely empty, bringing me back to the reality of my heavenly exile; when I feel neither hot nor cold, light nor darkness, life nor death.  In all things pleasant or painful, bitter or sweet, we can gain a greater sense of the balance between what God brings us or keeps from us while on this earthly journey.  Divine wisdom, incompressible to a mind of what is here and now, truly holds  in her hands with a maternal love all that which knows only what will keep us one, true, and good: beautiful.

So, an ecstatic joy of the most intimate communion with God is tempered by a painful sense of confused loneliness and the most horrible awareness of wretched indignity is uplifted to enthralling heights never before known by the perfect love of Christ’s forgiving embrace; THANKS BE TO GOD!  Divine wisdom created us good and therefore can know only that which is good for us.  There is no growth to a greater and truer relationship with God by keeping our senses dulled with the intoxication of eternal “spiritual highs” just as nothing good comes from nor is a loving response generated from us by keeping us down in the dumps of perpetual desolation.  The most comforting truth I can possess as a Christian is knowing that between what happens to me or doesn’t happen to me, everything lies in hands which are capable only of manifesting truth, goodness, and beauty…more so than I could ever possibly conjure by my own doing.

Sometimes, that which dilutes our spiritual concoction comes to us from the outside.  I sit in prayerful bliss and happiness while my brother jokingly snickers in my direction while texting on his cell phone.  Do I shoot him with the sharp stare of indignation?  No, no Jamie Ford that would be an expression of cold, self-centered religiosity, and we know of this impulse all too well; there is nothing generous about it.  No, we continue to sit in the joy of knowing that even our most pleasurable moments of prayer might not even be prayer at all.  We need these events which we may see as distractions to bring us out of ourselves and into the God who speaks with us through the beauty of the world which surrounds us.  The rising of the sun, the setting of the sun, the raising of the Son; we are embraced with an everlasting beauty greater than we will ever know. The most perfect response one can give to the highs and lows we experience in our daily lives is that which is Immaculate: fiat, fiat. 

Like the mystery of our faith, beauty can be contradictory to human perceptions.  How beautiful it is to proclaim the Word in a smelly, humid, muddied chapel of a homeless shelter.  How beautiful it is, while in heart-tearing sorrowfulness, to make the sign of the cross before a priest in the confessional.  How beautiful it is to forgive those who have caused us pain.  There is great joy in knowing that despite our senses and emotional response, there is something greater beneath the present moment.  Our reaction to beauty, to goodness and truth, is that which truly brings us closer to God.  Indeed, our spiritual growth can be seen as an evolution of our response to beauty, however contradictory that beauty may seem to be, and the maturation of how we choose to respond can come only from the command Jesus leaves us: love God and love one another.  We have been created to live as artists alongside the Divine Artist, and we are capable of creating such beauty with God by our own moral actions, creating art that is pleasing to God and to one another.  The way to God is truly a two-way street: The beauty made manifest by the bond of the Trinity coming into our lives meeting the beauty created by our prayers, words, and actions going into that perfect, heavenly bond who continues to beckon us home.




Canyon de Chelley
Navajo Reservation, Arizona
(Photo by Author)

 

Spirit of Kateri

It's only fitting that the memorial of soon-to-be-canonized Bl. Kateri Tekakwitha should follow so close to that of St. Benedict's, considering how just weeks after I arrived back in the States from my four months of monastic discernment in Italy, I began living and working with Franciscan friars on the Navajo Reservation in Northeastern Arizona.  The transition from a very traditional, very Latin monastery in the cloistered mountains of Umbira to a mission chapel in the middle of a most desolate, most impoverished desert was indeed some what strange; neither of the two settings were in the least bit of my familiarity.  Yet in the most profound way, the desert proved to encompass a more naturally innate solitude than the monastery ever could: beautiful, hauntingly vast, eerily endless, but beautiful.

And the Spirit of Kateri is very much alive with the Navajo people, both Catholic and non-Catholic alike.  Although she belonged to the Algonquin and Iroquois tribes of 17th century French Canada, this "Lily of the Mohawks" has been accepted by countless Native Americans as a model of virtue, conversion, and purity.  While working as a catechist with children and adults around the different missions which dotted the highland desert, it was amazing how well and eager the Navajo were to make connections between Catholicism and their native spirituality.  Everything from creation stories, tales of love, trickery, and miracles, to legendary figures who withstand time, it is evident that the Holy Spirit has been working with and preparing these people to be evangelized and receive the Truth since their very beginnings.  One of my favorites includes the mystical figure Changing Woman.  This woman, who is present throughout the Navajo oral tradition and takes different forms in each story, has been seen by many to symbolize the Blessed Virgin Mary in the way she has come to us in different apparitions throughout our history since her Assumption.  These, along with other ways of expressing and teaching our faith to native spiritualities, has helped me come to greater grips on the universality of our Church and the mystical outreach of God's grace among all peoples.

Kateri, like all Native Americans, was no foreigner to the consequence of foreign take over.  Stricken by small pox at a very young age (which left her face scarred), Kateri was eventually left orphaned as a result of war and famine by the time the French had occupied the region.  Even before her conversion, at thirteen years of age the young Lily had devoted herself to a life of purity by choosing to remain a virgin and refusing to be wed.  Once the Jesuits had established their missions, she was baptized at the age of twenty and it was then that she was given the name Kateri (Katherine).  This is remarkable considering that the practice of these missionaries at the time was to hold off baptisms until a time when the native is close to death just to be safe that they would not turn back to their old ways.  Baptizing a native at this young age is a testament to how serious and sincere Kateri had become as a follower of Christ.  Despite the great sufferings she had already known, with all the joy she had for her faith and the grace she had been given, Kateri led an austere life of mortification and penance for the mercy and conversion of her kinsmen.  Continuing to live out her faith, she was eventually ostracized by her people and lived among other devout female converts just as herself, forming a sort of religious community under the direction of the Jesuit missionaries.  It was within this mission community that Kateri died at the age of 24, beginning what would be a history of miracles attributed toward her intercession along with a wide-range of peoples who place hope in their devotion toward her prayers and witness.

Bl. Kateri Tekawitha saw her earthly life for what it truly was: temporal and passing, yet a gift from God as the only opportunity we have to come closer to Him through His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, before we pass from this life onto the next.  Surrounded by the reality of life and death from a very young age, Kateri knew how important it was to prepare for the moment she stood before her Father in judgement.  This faith went beyond a concern she had for her own soul, but led her to a life of incessant prayers and penances for the conversion of her people.  How beautiful is this example of agapic love: a love which is lived for another, not for their own sake, but ultimately out of love for God and the gift of love He has given.  The example we have from the Communion of Saints reveals to us the richness of our Church.  Though diverse throughout time, culture, ethnicity, and background, the Saints each stand together as a witness to the unity which is found in our faith: in our love for God and our love for one another. 

In a way the diversity we share on earth, when brought together in the unity of our liturgy, helps us to come to a much deeper understanding of our faith.  Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ will come again: there are many different angles to look at the one mystery (a crucified God now resurrected).  When celebrated in a different language, a different setting, or a different cultural backdrop, we can enter into not only a deeper level of understanding, but a more sincere level of prayer and reverence we had never before known.  Each Mass we attend should not leave us the same but should send us out into the world with new found faith, and this can be accomplished during the sacred liturgy of a traditional Latin Mass, a Spanish Mass, an English Mass, or a Navajo Mass; the list is endless.  Though celebrated differently the message is still same, Go out into the world and proclaim the Gospel with your life.  This is what it is to be a Saint, not separating religion from the secular, but having the faith to live our religion within the secular.  That's our call to be witnesses to Christ and envangelize, to live our faith.

Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.

And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age.  - Matthew 28:19-20