Perfect Strangers



St. Joseph Abbey Church
St. Benedict, Louisiana

 Let me begin with these beautifully personal words of St. Augustine which, though written in the 3^rd century, speak to each one of us as humans who share in the common experience of longing for God, something much larger than what we merely see around us: I implore you to live with me and, by believing, to run with me; let us long for our heavenly country, let us sigh for our heavenly home, let us truly feel that here we are strangers.  It is fitting that as another liturgical year comes to a close, we together as strangers celebrated the Solemnity of Christ the King during the last Sunday of Ordinary Time, recalling our very beginning and ultimate end in the Kingdom of God.  It is truly remarkable that while we are strangers, we are strangers together who, though in earthly exile, sigh for our heavenly home with one another.  In this respect, we are never strangers in the sense that we may not know one another personally, but we are strangers in that we are all unfamiliar with the physical realm we currently inhabit as we are not made for this earth.  By this common trait of ours, though we all may differ in regards to color, creed, or culture, the fact that we are on this earthly pilgrimage together means that we are all intimately bound to each other as one.

           

Christ tells us, The kingdom of God, does not come for all to see; nor shall they say: Behold, here it is, or behold, there it is, but the kingdom of God is within us, for the word of God is very near, in our mouth and in our heart.  It is very clear that by Jesus’ own teaching and followed by the living tradition of the Church, since we are all created in the image and likeness of God, the dignity we possess as creatures in the hands of our loving Creator is the same dignity bestowed on us as bearers of God, his dwelling place.  St. Teresa of Avila explains to her fellow consecrated sisters that the soul of the just person is nothing else but a paradise where the Lord says he finds his delight.  St. Teresa goes on to illustrate the interior dwelling of God within each of us as an immense castle where our soul progresses from room to room until it finds its rest in the royal chamber of our Lord and King, Jesus Christ.  This journey of our soul is indeed a way toward greater and greater perfection as the more perfect we are interiorly (i.e. the more our desires are rightly-ordered), the more inviting we become for the Spirit of God to find his rest within us.  Christ, speaking with the Father, wonderfully describes the blessedness of the faithful person with a well-ordered soul: We shall come to him and make our home with him.

But what is it to be well-ordered and prefect?  What supernatural, angelic being must we become in order to possess the entire immensity of the omnipotent Trinity within us, God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit?  No.  No, perfection is much simpler and within our reach than that, so simple in fact it must come from God himself; any complication in the matter is a mere pesky habit of human origin.  Let us understand, as St. Teresa tells us that true perfection consists in love of God and neighbor; the more perfectly we keep these two commandments, the more perfect we will be.  The simplicity of what it means to be perfect leads us to the simplicity of being perfect, which is quite simply love of God and neighbor.  By the very fact that we are not strangers with one another, in virtue of our heavenly origin, but rather brothers and sisters who journey together as strangers in a strange land, to be perfect is deeply rooted in the instinct we possess and the command we are given to love each other with the same love we have for God.

The endeavor to reach this perfection begins, as with any endeavor we undertake, with prayer.  Of all that has been written about prayer throughout the centuries, one thing remains constant: prayer is the conformity of our will with the will of God.  When writing his Rule for monks, St. Benedict instructs his brothers that every time you begin a good work, you must pray to him most earnestly to bring it to perfection. In whatever form our prayer may take, whether a group praying the rosary, a person meditating under an oak tree, a community praying together at mass, or a poor soul contemplating God while stuck in traffic, our prayer should come from and lead us toward the surrendering of our will, with all its desires, passions, wants, fears, anxieties, dreams, concerns, joys, etc., etc., into the trusting care of the God who made us, just as we pray in the prayer Jesus himself taught us: thy Kingdom come, thy Will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.  Again, St. Teresa illumines this point with words more authoritative than mine: Don’t think that in what concerns perfection there is some mystery or things unknown or still to be understood, for in perfect conformity to God’s will lies all our good.

As another season of Advent draws near, let us prepare ourselves to receive the birth of our Lord, Jesus Christ interiorly, who is truly God with us.  Although we as humans are citizens of a heavenly kingdom, continuing our journey home by each passing day we are blessed with, let us make use of the time we have on earth to welcome the Kingdom of God within us, a place where God may make his dwelling.  Let us never forget our task as strangers to prepare ourselves and one other for welcoming our King who humbly comes down from his heavenly throne to walk with us, to encourage us, and to be our strength.  This is the dignity in which we are created, and so it is through this same dignity that we live, treat one another as bearers of God, and pray with all the humility Christ shows us by his birth, his life, and his death.  Be perfect with the loving simplicity of your lives brothers and sisters, and the Kingdom of God will reign within you.

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