Lent: A Season for Yearning

Lent is indeed a spiritual season for all Christians, and carries a unique meaning for each member of the community. For many, the focus of our Lenten observance is found on Ash Wednesday-the recognition of our mortality, our human foibles and weaknesses, our essential need for the presence of God. For others, Lent is a time of abstinence and fasting, a season to 'give up things' for God as a sign of our total dependence upon divine generosity for  sustenance and nourishment. For others, the 40 days are an essential period of inner searching and reflection, a quest for attentiveness to the wonder of our spiritual life as companions of Jesus. For all, each of these realities plays a part in shaping community prayer and ritual, our identity as people of both the Passion and the Resurrection.

As we journey through the days and weeks of Lent, we can feel a certain tugging of the soul, that underlies our meatless meals, our times of reconciliation, our masses, stations of the cross, and Rice-Bowl offerings. Our prayers and practices are a rich resource for nurturing our attention to God and our fellow-travelers along the Lenten path. However, there is a deeper hunger than that brought on by our refraining from hamburgers or chocolate. There is an abiding current of longing that is constant, even if unexpressed. This yearning is a fruitful well for self-discovery in our approach to Easter. Learning that we are more than the sum of our forgiven sins, more than the sum of our unrealized spiritual ambitions, more than the sum of our images of God-we feel urged to immerse ourselves in a mystery we cannot name. We come to recognize that Lent is not a daunting march through death to hoped-for new life. Rather, it is a miraculous walk to the still-point, the center, of our search for God and for the godly in us. If we are attentive, we begin to sense our growing connection to the divine gift that filled the life and ministry of Jesus, and that calls to us in the midst of our preoccupations, distractions, and premonitions of failure.

Lent points to the victory of life, our life, and our life in the endless divine promise we can so often overlook. This is why we feel the yearning for more prayer, for times of spiritual retreat, for a surrendering of heart that says to God what God says to us in this season-I am yours; live in me.

Written by: Fr. David C. Robinson S.J., LIS Associate Director

Reflections on Fifty Years as a Jesuit

Fifty years ago, when I entered the Society of Jesus, I knew that I would pray.  It came with the territory. I had heard about Jesuits spending an hour each day "in prayer," but I had no idea what it meant.  Unlike most Jesuits, I didn't begin my Jesuit life as a novice.  Until about thirty years ago, all brothers began their Jesuit lives as postulants.  A postulant was simply a candidate to the Society of Jesus.  He wasn't technically a Jesuit nor did he wear the distinctive garb of that time, the black cassock.  During the six months that I was a postulant, I read the New Testament and lives of the saints, but I wasn't introduced to prayer.  But I remember listening to novices talking about what they did as novices and, among other things, they talked about prayer.  Although they used a lot of words I didn't understand, I understood enough to realize that prayer was something I wanted to be a part of.  If they did it, I said to myself, well, so too would I.  And so I discovered - somewhat on my own - prayer.

I can't speak about other Jesuits.  Perhaps for them prayer has always been an effort, a struggle they daily contend with.  For me, however, prayer was something I took to like a fish takes to water, something I have loved from the very first day.  Yet prayer was never anything that I did or any skill that I had.  Rather it was what God did in me. It is awkward to speak about falling in love with God, yet that is what happened.  No, it didn't happen overnight.  It unfolded over time, but it happened.  And in my Jesuit life, that has made all the difference.

There's a beautiful scene toward the end of Robert Bolt's play, A Man for All Seasons.  Thomas More has been imprisoned in the Tower of London by King Henry VIII, and events seem to be turning against him.  His beloved daughter, Margaret, has come to visit him.  She's trying to find some way for him to swear to the Act of Succession, but he refuses all her entreaties.  Finally, she just explodes in frustration, "But in reason!  Haven't you done as much as God can reasonably want?"  More pauses for a moment, as if looking for words: "Well ... finally it isn't a matter of reason; finally it's a matter of love."

On a wonderful October afternoon in 1957, God surprised a high school sophomore with the desire to be a Jesuit.  And over the years he has continued to surprise and delight and invite that boy-become-a-man as he has grown in his Jesuit life.  The God who had once grasped him has never let go.  As Thomas More said "finally it's a matter of love."

Written by: Br. Charles Jackson, S.J., LIS Associate Director

Jesus' Baptism: Some Thoughts

"Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized in the Jordan by John.  And as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit, like a dove, descending on him.  And a voice came from heaven, 'You are my Son, my Beloved; my favor rests on you' " (Mark 1:9-11).

We are not told how Jesus came to hear about John.  We are, however, told that Jesus came to John, listened to him and was baptized by him in the Jordan.  But why?  Why was it that Jesus, the Sinless One, chose to identify himself with sinners and be baptized?  Was it that he desired to express solidarity with all those who had come to John, solidarity with those who recognized their sinfulness and sought forgiveness in a baptism of repentance?  In effect, this is what he had done, but was this really what had motivated him?  Could it have been out of a sense of his own humanness, his own need for God?  Later tradition held that Jesus was without sin, butthis is not to deny that he was subject to all the moods, feelings, emotions and inner struggles that are part of being human.  When all is said and done, we have to wonder if Jesus at this time of his life really knew who he was.  Did he know that he was God's Son, and did he understand all that that implied?  To the people of Nazareth, with whom he had lived for almost thirty years, he was ordinary in every way.  When he later returned there and preached in the synagogue, the people were astonished. "Where did he get all this?" they asked.  "What is this wisdom he has, and these wonders that are worked through him? ... Isn't this the carpenter, the son of Mary?" (Mk. 6:1-3).  It is not unreasonable to imagine that Jesus thought of himself in these same terms - as an ordinary citizen of Nazareth.

Mark tells us only that Jesus "was baptized by John in the Jordan."  It is difficult, however, to piece together exactly what happened.  The imagery of the heavens being torn apart, a dove descending, and a voice being heard projects a profound experience of God, yet it leaves much unsaid.  At first glance, it seems to describe what was nothing more than a dramatic statement of God's affirming love for Jesus.  Yet it is important to recognize that within weeks of his baptism at the Jordan the unassuming carpenter from Nazareth was speaking with authority and acting with great power - and we must ask ourselves: What truly happened at the Jordan?  What was at the root of Jesus' experience that so transformed his life?

It is not impossible to imagine that in choosing to be baptized by John, Jesus had made a dramatic self-offering to God and, in response, God 'embraced' him as a father would a son.  For Jesus, the result was a profound experience of being loved by God and what may have been a new awareness of himself: as God's 'Beloved' and of God as his Father.  His experience of this love was of "the heavens being torn apart and the Spirit, like a dove, descending on him."  The Holy Spirit, God's abiding presence, entered into him, empowering him.  For Jesus, his experience at the Jordan was more than simply a call; it was an overwhelming sense of being grasped by God for his service.  He had been brought to understand that God had chosen to make his decisive intervention in history at this very moment and that he, Jesus, was to be the means of bringing this about.  It would not be unreasonable to say that Jesus was overwhelmed.  Mark's words only hint at what must have been his confusion and inner turmoil - "and at once the Spirit drove him into the desert."

 Written by Br. Charles Jackson, S.J., LIS Associate Director

The Faces and Places of Advent

The month of December can seem like a battle of attrition between the invitation of Advent to a time of reflective stillness and anticipation, and the speed of an ever-accelerating race to Christmas, that is marked by purchasing, preparations, and pressure-packed celebrations (if such can truly be called celebratory!).  In a world of seemingly endless tweets, texts, voicemails, and emails, we are submerged amid tsunamis of ads and invitations. Where is the space for inner silence, the quiet place of rest as we look for the coming of the nativity promise?

In the past few weeks, helping to facilitate retreats in English and Spanish, focused on the growth of personal and communal spirituality, I have been made more aware than ever of the deep longing people of faith have for inner connection to the God who calls them beyond the mundane and trivial to a rich encounter with an endless horizon of divine presence and surprise. Life in and as Church can become enmeshed in yet another round of activities, of movement, focused on external results before inner or shared awakening to God. To make such an observation is not to promote individual or communal passivity, a ‘me-first’ sort of preoccupation with how I/we can be enriched as part of a religious family. Rather, it is an invitation to be more attentive to the working of the Spirit before, during, and after our active engagement with duties and projects that grow out of our faith commitments.

The human brain is an intriguing and complex organ, but it has certain redundant processes that track our way through life. An act of shopping bears many cognitive parallels to an act of feeding the poor or decorating the church sanctuary for Christmas. If all that we do gets reduced to unreflective ’action,’ we do not ‘learn’ or ‘grow’ in the spiritual dimensions of our being-in-the-world. Time for reflective prayer or contemplative focus on the mystery of divine love in the most elemental aspects of our daily walk helps us to ground or locate what we are and do in something more profound than the completion of a to-do list! The result is that activity is held differently in our perceptions and in our memories. The God-stuff of our lives becomes clearer and more integral to our sense of purpose and meaning. We are not believers-who-do, but students of spiritual wisdom who grow to understand the richness and inner gift of all life, not just the select moments that our schedules set aside to ‘pay attention.’

Advent reflection is not a sudden turn to monasticism, or a wholesale separation from our engagement with the day-to-day. Rather, it is an inner choice, a decision for spiritual self-care, that allows us to nurture our capacity for divine connection, whatever the place or circumstance. This is not necessarily a matter of radical change that separates us from our current life (though some modification would probably prove quite useful!).  It is a willingness to pay attention on a more consistent basis (once today, twice tomorrow—the discipline can become infectious) to the way in which our interior focus on the God who is present can help us to redirect our energies from the completion of tasks to the re-visioning of why we are tasked in the first place. Advent is a common space in which we are called to cherish our own daily experience as part of our inheritance among those who can discover the ever-new miracle of the Messiah, the birth of Jesus as our companion and guide to life with God.

 Written by Fr. David C. Robinson, S.J., LIS Associate Director

Burdened with Much Serving

"He entered a village where a woman whose name was Martha welcomed him.  She had a sister named Mary who sat beside the Lord at his feet listening to him speak.  Martha, burdened with much serving, came to him and said, 'Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me by myself to do the serving? Tell her to help me.'  The Lord said to her in reply, 'Martha, Martha, you are anxious and worried about many things.  There is need of only one thing.  Mary has chosen the better part and it will not be taken from her.'"(Luke 10:38-42)

In the mid-1960s I was assigned to our novitiate in Santa Barbara, which had opened just a few years earlier.  At that time, our community - 4 priests, 3 brothers, and 23 novices - lived in a sprawling ranch-style house, while a larger novitiate complex was being constructed on another part of the property.  The house in which we lived was large, but our community of 30 stretched it beyond all imagining: we were packed in like sardines, but we were a wonderfully happy community.  I was there only three months, however, when our lay cook was incapacitated by a serious stroke.  So for the next year and a half another brother and I did all the cooking - three-meals-a day, seven days-a week - for the community.  It was demanding and tiring work, but I loved it, mostly because I loved doing it for people I loved.

During that time we often spoke with happy anticipation of the new and larger novitiate that was being built, commenting about how much more comfortable - and happier - we would be.  In January 1968 the new novitiate was completed and we moved.  It was indeed larger and more comfortable, but it was also, unlike the house we had just vacated, terribly institutional.  It seemed that the magic was gone.  On occasion I still did some cooking, but it was no longer with the same joy that I had experienced in the old house.  For me, cooking had become a burden.

Something similar seems to have happened in the story of Martha and Mary.  Martha and Mary seem to have been close friends with Jesus and probably entertained him on more than a few occasions - though this is the only occasion that is described in the gospels.  On this occasion, we are told that after Martha welcomed Jesus, her sister Mary plopped down at Jesus' feet to listen to him, while she busied herself in the kitchen.  Both sisters were expressing their love, though the manner in which they did so differed.  I suspect that both initially delighted in their self-appointed tasks: Mary listening to Jesus and Martha preparing a meal for Jesus - but then something happened.  Gradually Martha became caught up in all her work, and the delight that she had initially felt in it began to wane.  Her focus was no longer on Jesus, but rather on her busyness "with much serving."  Her labor of love had become for her a burden.

I suspect that our everyday lives are spent doing tasks that can often seem small and insignificant in the eyes of those who don't know what we are about.  But it is important that we never forget the enormous value of the often inconspicuous things we do for others.  Mother Teresa seems to capture the sense of all this when she reminds us that it is not what we do that ultimately matters, but rather the love we put into doing it.

Written by    Br. Charlie Jackson, S.J., LIS Associate Director

Culture and Community: The Spirit of Aloha

During the month of September, I was blessed with an opportunity to spend some time visiting and working at the Newman Center on the University of Hawaii Manoa Campus, in Honolulu. Needless to say, there were no complaints about workplace location! The community manifests so much of the grace that is part of the Hawaiian understanding of ohana-a family that is based on more than bloodlines, and includes all who are friends and members of an intentional group. Indeed, one is immediately immersed in the Spirit of Aloha, which is the hallmark of the Islands. Aloha is commonly known to most as a warm and familiar sign of greeting and parting. However, in Hawaiian culture, the word encompasses as well a sense of living in the sacredness of the present moment, of being united in a loving spirit of kindness and humility. This is not a matter of belief or civility, but of a deep connectedness of all people to one another and to creation.

The Newman Center family is in the midst of significant transition, discerning its future staffing, mission, and programming. Often, these moments are ones of anxiety, uncertainty, and even anger, that can lead to community division or paralysis. Certainly there are feelings of sadness and frustration that change has come to the doorway of the community. Nonetheless, my abiding sense of these days is one of true aloha, a time in which the sacred connections of faith and family provide a stable, hopeful climate for addressing the future with vision and creativity. This is an ohana, not a happenstance collection of individuals who gather for mass or projects. Their familial spirit is a glowing example of the ways in which the influences of indigenous cultures can help us to shape a healthier model for life and work, individually and communally.

I was also graced with the opportunity to spend nearly four days on the Big Island (Hawaii). There, in the midst of the Hilo Coast botanical marvels, the smoldering caldera of Kilauea (a currently active volcano), and the underwater magic of multi-colored fish and sea turtles, I was reminded of (and inspirited by) the reality of the aloha that links everyone here to the land, the water, the spellbinding variety of living creatures, and to their human companions. So often on the mainland, we have too much space and too much speed for our own good balance of mind and soul. There is much we can learn from the reality of ohana in the Newman Center community, the union of heart in a family of faith, as we live out together the possibilities of our own spirit of aloha.

Aloha nui loa!

Written by    Fr. David C. Robinson, S.J., LIS Associate Director

From Glory to Glory--Charles Jackson, S.J.

When I was growing up during the 1950s, it wasn't unusual for a young man pondering his future to imagine himself taking a job, and continuing to work in that job, until he retired many years later. Life in those years was perceived - at least by me - as stable, secure and very predictable.  When I entered the Society of Jesus fifty years ago, I imagined my own life in essentially those same terms - stable, secure and very predictable.  Well, I suspect that it goes without saying that the lived experience of my life has been quite different from my expectations - and I also suspect that this has been true for you as well.  Our lives may have begun with hopes and dreams, but they have invariably included more than a few twists and turns, false starts and dead-ends, surprises and even disappointments.  Yet throughout it all, God has been very much with us.  Ignatius Loyola loved to say that God is actively "at work" in us. 

One of the great graces in the life of Ignatius Loyola was in his being brought to understand that God's creative action did not end in the distant past.  Rather, God is actively engaged in the world and in the life of each and every person, laboring in all things to bring all people into the fullness of life for which he created them.  God is actively engaged in your life and in mine so that we achieve the fullness of life for which God created us.

Several weeks ago, I spoke with a happily married woman in her mid-40s.  For some years now, she and her husband have been actively involved in the faith formation of their parish. She told me that during her high school years she became involved in youth ministry and was introduced to a particular youth retreat model that captivated her.  This retreat model seemed to embody both the 'what' and the 'how' of everything she hoped to do.  She said that she imagined herself eventually getting married and having a family, but continuing to work with this retreat model for the rest of her life.  She said that as events unfolded, however, she worked with this retreat for just two or three more years before God moved her in a new direction.  She then paused for a moment, apparently savoring all this, before she added with a smile, "and so God brings us from glory to glory."  She didn't explain what she meant by her concluding words, yet she seemed to be speaking not only of something that was true for her, but of something that was also wonderful and of something that truly animated her life.  It seemed that she understood God's continued action in her life as truly a labor of love: bringing her from something that was wonderful to something that was even more wonderful - bringing her, as it were, "from glory to glory." 

But all of this is true for each of us as well.  God's continued action in our lives is truly a labor of love.  It is important, however, that we not only understand this, but also that we reflect on it, savor it, relish it and appreciate it.  As the woman with whom I spoke discovered, God's action in our lives, if we have the eyes to see it, brings us from something that is wonderful to something that is even more wonderful.  It brings us, as it were, "from glory to glory."

Written by    Br. Charles Jackson, S.J., LIS Associate Director