Living Mercy

“I was scandalized by the story of the prodigal son,” Fr. Maximo shared as he stood on the altar before hundreds of us who came together to celebrate Communita Cenacolo’s Festival of Life—all united because we have experienced first hand the ravages of addiction in our families. “I was the elder brother, I had done everything right, and I was outraged that the Father would show that kind of mercy to the son who squandered everything. It was a scandal to me.”

My husband, Mark, and I looked at each other knowingly, shaking our heads in acknowledgement. We’d been discussing this very topic for weeks; as we sadly observed the division, accusations, nail biting and downright panic increasingly explode in the Church over Pope Francis’ fervent call to mercy. As the Extraordinary Jubilee Year of Mercy approaches on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception (December 8), Pope Francis has reminded us that “the Church’s first duty is not to hand down condemnations or anathemas, but to proclaim God’s mercy, to call to conversion, and to lead all men and women to salvation in the Lord”* (cf. Jn. 12:44-50).

What is this mercy of which Pope Francis constantly speaks? And why does it scandalize so many of us? As Pope St. John Paul II explained it in his encyclical Dives in Misericordia (“Rich In Mercy”), God’s mercy “showed itself…as love that gives, love more powerful than betrayal, grace stronger than sin.”*

The families of Communita Cenacolo experience the mercy of God concretely when we show up at the Community’s doors, our lives in shambles from addiction and its beastly effects. Most of us are exceedingly happy to find such a place to bring our desperate children, hoping against hope that the Community will “fix” them and set their lives aright. We quickly learn that the focus of the Community is not to “fix” our children. It is instead to introduce them to a loving, merciful God, who like the prodigal son’s father, runs to meet them with open arms and a heartfelt kiss. It is to convey to them the inestimable gift of their very existence, and to communicate to them the truth that God loves them personally and passionately, no matter what they have done. The Community invites our children to open themselves to God’s mercy—the place where His infinite love meets their most wretched sins. And it extends the same invitation to us.

Many parents show up at the Community as elder brothers, shouldering a long list of grievances of what our addicted children have “done to us”—the ways they wronged us, betrayed us, squandered the family inheritance. We are soon challenged to acknowledge the reality that we have all sinned, all been prodigals, all fallen short of the love and glory of God. We are asked to honestly examine our own part in our family drama of addiction, and to admit our faults, failures and sins both to ourselves and to a loving God who takes pity on us and who yearns to greet us, also, in the embrace of His forgiveness and love.

Mercy is not a cheap pass for our wrongdoing. It is, instead, the very intersection where our transgressions meet Love; the place where a personal encounter with Love Himself impels us to change our minds, hearts and lives. This is what conversion is all about.

True conversion of heart—admitting that we are poor and weak, and surrendering completely to the love and mercy of God—eludes those who are convinced they’ve “got it right,” have “done it right,” and therefore “deserve” the feast. It eludes those, as well, who refuse to return to the Father’s house because they are convinced they are too tattered, torn, and tainted to be forgiven. Real heart conversion finds those who awaken to the glance of the Father—a tender, loving Father who has never ceased to long for us, look for us, and await our return.

The more the human conscience succumbs to secularization, loses its sense of the very meaning of the word "mercy," moves away from God and distances itself from the mystery of mercy, the more the Church has the right and the duty to appeal to the God of mercy "with loud cries.” These "loud cries" should be the mark of the Church of our times, cries uttered to God to implore His mercy, the certain manifestation of which she professes and proclaims as having already come in Jesus crucified and risen, that is, in the Paschal Mystery. It is this mystery which bears within itself the most complete revelation of mercy, that is, of that love which is more powerful than death, more powerful than sin and every evil, the love which lifts man up when he falls into the abyss and frees him from the greatest threats.

Pope St. John Paul II, Dives in Misericordia, paragraph 15

*From Pope Francis closing remarks to the Synod of Bishops on the Family, October 24, 2015.

*Pope St. John Paul II, Dives in Misericordia, footnote 52.

To Ponder: Has Pope Francis' call to mercy prompted me to reflect more deeply upon this attribute of God?

To Pray: Father in Heaven, may I receive the gift of your merciful heart with which to embrace myself and everyone you send into my life. Jesus, meek and humble of heart, make my heart like unto Thine. Amen.

Sowing Seeds of Faith

My good friend, Pat, was the first person I knew who returned to the Catholic Church. We struck up a deep friendship at a little evangelical church in New Orleans, and five years later the Blessed Mother brought us both back to the faith of our childhood. Pat who now lives in Asheville, N.C., recently launched a new ministry called “Theotokos Prayer.” The ministry evangelizes others and encourages them to pray through the vehicle of beautiful, handcrafted prayer strands. Each strand features personalized medals, crosses and colors which hold a special meaning for the recipient. My prayer strand, which Pat gave me as a wedding gift, has a medal of my patron, St. Jude, as well as a cross with the four major basilicas of Rome on it. I had it blessed by Pope Francis during our honeymoon in Rome and I absolutely love it!

It is my delight and honor to introduce to you “Theotokos Prayer” by sharing with you Pat’s first blog from their website. I encourage you to visit www.theotokosprayer.com to order a personalized prayer strand for yourself or someone you love.  I promise, you will not be disappointed! Blessings and grace! Judy

How Theotokos Began

“That man has learned to live well who has learned to pray well.”     St. Augustine

Theotokos began with a handmade gift of a St. Joseph’s chaplet. My dear friend, Betsy, had begun making chaplets and wanted to share this ministry with me. We then started to give them to the homeless, First Communion classes, family and friends. We discovered along the way that people of all denominations and walks of life were drawn to this form of prayer—using prayer strands on which to pray. Customizing the strands (which have the number of beads of a decade of the Rosary) by choosing specific beads and patron saints made the strands even more meaningful for the recipient.  I would write letters to the recipients affirming God’s love for them and their family often during times of great struggle, as in the loss of a loved one, or deep joy, such as the birth of a child.

As this journey unfolded, friends and family encouraged me to develop a way to reach more people. Thus, Theotokos was born. The purpose of Theotokos, which means “God bearer” or “Mother of God” in Greek, is threefold. Foremost is to have people draw closer to God and each other through prayer. Secondly, to reach people who would not ordinarily be drawn to the Rosary, Our Blessed Mother and the Saints.  Thirdly, to have the strands blessed, thereby fulfilling the request of the Blessed Mother for people to have blessed objects in their homes and on their person.

The Pope has called for creative ways to evangelize our culture and this endeavor seeks to do just that. There are moments in everyone’s life that are opportunities to reach out to our family and friends. These prayer strands are one simple way of reintroducing faith to the people in our circle of influence.

Currently there are five strands for specific occasions or needs: the Child Strand for the birth of a child, Baptism, or First Communion; the Family Strand to aid families in praying for one another; the Healing Strand for those suffering in all the forms our suffering may take; the Wedding Strand, and finally the New Orleans Saints strand (they need a lot of prayer). People are drawn to beauty and each of these strands is carefully crafted to be as beautiful and appealing as possible. I also have images enclosed with each prayer strand that evoke beauty, such as a picture of Mother Teresa or a bride with her new spouse. The one closest to my heart is of our eldest daughter, who died in 2001. This image of Ashley embracing her then two-year-old daughter so lovingly depicts the treasure of children.

Prayer is a gift that is meant to be shared with and for others.  I am humbled at being able to bring this endeavor to fruition with the aid of the Holy Spirit and the inestimable help of dear friends accompanying me along the way. Thank you!

“Have no anxiety at all, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, make your requests known to God. Then the peace of God that surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.”     Philippians 4:6-7

The Secret to Scaling the Summit

Today's blog is dedicated to my precious daughter, Alexandra, with love and thanksgiving for your tender beauty, grace and strength.  Happy birthday, DeeDee Bop A Loula!  I love you!!!!

The summer my late husband Bernie died, I figured that the best way to survive what I knew would be a long, hot, lonely summer at home was to get out of town for a while. My daughter, Alex, who was twenty-one at the time, agreed to accompany her nine-year-old brother, Benjamin, and me as we set out on our first “vacation” after Bernie’s death—an event which any widow can tell you is emotionally daunting. Providentially, we visited three beautiful mountain towns that summer: Jackson Hole, WY, Crested Butte, CO and Caesar’s Head, SC. And as God is wont to do, He used both the sweet company of my daughter and the stunning mountain landscapes not only to provide consolation, but to remind my still fragile heart of some of life’s most precious secrets.

When we arrived in Jackson Hole, I told Alex that I wanted to take a hike. I had in mind a nice, leisurely walk beside a clear, running stream. She took me instead for trek straight up a mountain trail, a trudge that is more than a bit challenging for someone like me, given that I’m not athletic, am scared of heights and am unaccustomed to high altitudes.

Alex, who a year later would run a half-marathon on those very same mountains, insisted that we push our way up the peaks anyway. She knew from experience that the reward of climbing the mountain—the breathtaking, invigorating vistas—could only be seen from on high.

“Come on, Mom, you can do it. Drink lots of water,” she said repeatedly as I panted for breath. Because as any experienced climber can tell you, the number one trick for making it up the mountain is drinking plenty of water.

As I stopped repeatedly to quench my thirst and catch my breath, I thought about how important water is to both our natural and spiritual lives—especially in times of drought. Living water, water that will never run dry, comes to us through a relationship Jesus, who is the fountain of life (John 4:14). He slakes our thirst continually as we give ourselves over to Him and drench ourselves in His love. His love sustains us in times of sorrow and suffering, especially if we have let it soak deep into our souls over time.

My mountain trek also reminded me of how indispensable food is for the journey. “Stop and eat a snack,” Alex insisted after an arduous period of climbing when I was feeling weak and disoriented, convinced that I couldn’t go on. I remember the long, painful days in the ICU, when the only thing that kept me going was the Holy Eucharist—the superabundant Bread of Life—mercifully delivered to the hospital by a Eucharistic minister. I do not believe I’d have survived the suffering we endured that year without the Eucharist. Just as I know that I would have been unable to continue climbing upward with Alex without natural sustenance.

With Alex by my side, I also learned that if you’re going to climb a mountain, don’t try to do it alone. If you get injured, lost or can’t go forward, you need someone there to help. In fact, you may even need someone who loves you to carry you to safety.

One day in Crested Butte, we hiked a mile up a mountain to see an exquisite waterfall at the top. Young Benjamin started out with a bang, running ahead of us for the first half-mile. Twenty minutes later, his little legs collapsed and he couldn’t go any further. Though he weighed sixty some-odd pounds at the time, he simply needed to be carried. Strong, loving Alex carried him on her back most of the way to the top, reminding me of how she had demonstrated the same strength for her dad and me as Bernie’s life came to a close. She bravely sat beside us, holding our hands. Her faithful presence was a tremendous gift as we scaled a painful, frightening summit, and she stood steady with us to the very end.

God and the mountains teach their lessons, and so do those whom we love. It’s not necessarily what they say out loud that communicates who and what they are, but their strong, abiding presence that tells us everything.

God's Love Is The Best Beauty Treatment

“Do you think it’s wrong to have a facelift?” a girlfriend asked as we sat on the beach house sofa in our pajamas, sipping coffee and looking out the window at the boats in the harbor. We were on retreat with a wonderful band of women, and as it frequently happens with women, the subject turned to beauty.

“I had the same conversation with my sister just last week,” I replied. “I’ll tell you what I told her. I don’t think it’s ‘wrong’ to have a facelift, but my desire is to be so full of God’s love that it shines through my face so I don’t NEED a facelift,” I continued.

Our culture’s preoccupation with physical beauty is but one sign that we’re living from the outside in, instead of from the inside out. But as Christians, we’re meant to live from the inside out, letting the love of Christ inhabit us so fully that it radiates within us and shows up on our faces as “glory.”

Think about Blessed Teresa of Calcutta. She was not “beautiful” by the world’s standards. But she was one of the most beautiful women who ever lived. Why? She was overflowing with the love of God and it showed on her face.   Such beauty is not exclusive to women.

I often think of Moses, who enjoyed such personal intimacy with God that he spoke with God “face to face” (Ex. 33:11). Moses’ face became so radiant when he conversed with the Lord that he had to veil his face to come into the presence of the Israelites. That manifestation of glory foreshadowed the glory of Christ, who is the very “imprint” of God’s being, and who reveals to us in flesh and blood the face of God (Hebrews 1:3-4). If we want to see God, we are to look at Christ. And if we want to look like God, we are to become like Christ. How? St. Augustine gave us the secret: we become what we contemplate.

We contemplate Christ by spending time with Him in prayer, and by meditating on His Word and His presence. We contemplate Christ by making Him our best friend and top priority in life, and by learning all we can about who He is. We contemplate Christ by serving others, as Blessed Teresa of Calcutta demonstrated so wonderfully through her life’s work, wherein she saw the face of Christ in the “poorest of the poor.”

When we contemplate Christ, we become Christ-like, and we take on His beautiful countenance. Nowhere have I seen this truth manifested more evidently than on the faces of the recovering drug addicts of Communita Cenacolo, a lay Catholic Community that ministers to those in bondage to addiction. The residents of the Community usually arrive there looking beat up, strung out, and exhausted. And indeed they are. Their faces bear witness to the hell they’ve lived in the grip of drugs, which has become their main preoccupation.

I have pictures of my own son the day he arrived at Cenacolo, wearing black circles under his eyes and an almost palpable shadow of darkness on his face. His face looked markedly different when I saw him months later, not because he was being “rehabbed,” but because he was being “restored.” He was returning to the truth that he is a beloved child of God—a child in whom God delights—in large part by spending hours a day before Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. He was becoming what he meditated upon, and his face told the tale. Over the years, I’ve heard many parents echo the same amazement when they see their children’s faces for the first time after they enter the Community, because the change in their faces is nothing short of remarkable.

Do you want to be beautiful? Unveil your face and gaze upon the face of the Lord, that He may transform you from glory to glory (2 Cor. 3:13). His love is a beauty treatment that’s not only free—it has lasting benefits.

Look to Him that you may be radiant with joy, and your faces may not blush with shame.   Psalm 34:6

Poverty Is My Greatest Gift

As we continue to rejoice in Christmas, I am delighted to offer this beautiful guest post by my Christmas Eve-born daughter, Kara.  She has some wonderful insights into the gift of poverty.  May the Lord bless you and yours this Christmas and coming year, and may your New Year be holy and filled with the love and awe of God.

Last Christmas Eve, on my 28^th birthday, in a little chapel in New Orleans, Louisiana, I sat before Jesus in the Eucharist and wept. Having been on a journey with the Lord for so many years I felt exceedingly frustrated that I still struggled with so many of the same issues, poverties, faults, and that I wasn’t where I wanted to be in my life.

I wanted to be strong and have it all together. I wanted to be valiant, virtuous, beautiful and saintly. And there I was, weak, dependent, fragile and in a nutshell, poor.

Crying out to the Lord, I asked Him bitterly, “Why did you make me like this? Why did you make so frail and needy, with so much brokenness? Why did you make me so dependent on you for every breath that I breathe? Why didn’t you make me strong and capable and beautiful in the ways I want to be? Why?”

Immediately with such tenderness and love I heard the voice of God the Father say to me in reply:

“Kara, I made you a Christmas child, and the gift of Christmas is poverty. And poverty is your greatest gift.”

Jesus was born into a dark, cold, empty cave. Into the barren blackness of the night. A King born for the poor, of the poor, as the poor. And how easy it is for we followers of Christ to hate poverty.

By poverty I don’t just mean the hungry in the soup kitchens, the homeless in the shelters, or the beggar on the street—I mean the beggar within our very own families, and most of all, the beggar within ourselves. We want to escape our emptiness, deny our addictions, shun our weaknesses and mask our faults. But as my mother always told me, “Kara, if you were perfect, why would you need a Savior?”

I think St. Therese was made a Doctor of the Church specifically in this time of history because in a society where we truly believe it is our job to be perfect, independent, need no one, and save ourselves, she reminds us that the way to the Lord is not a growing up but a growing down; that the way to freedom is not a figuring out but a letting go.

“What pleases God is to see me love my littleness and my poverty. It is the blind hope I have in His mercy. There is my only treasure,” she tells us.

All of our weakness and frailty, all of our poverty—yes, even our sin if we lay it at the foot of the manger—become that empty cave into which the Christ child may be born. To ransom the captive chained within our souls. To free us from the bondage of ourselves. To die and rise for us, and make us truly rich, that we might rejoice! All because we are poor.

Hope Answered: The Way of the Child

Unless you turn and become like little children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.                                  Matthew 18:3 

“God the Father is so pleased with you,” the old priest said with a broad smile on his face after praying over my husband, Bernie, just hours before his death. “Well done, Bernie. Well done!”

“It’s hard to miss the echo of God the Father’s thundering voice at Jesus’ Transfiguration saying: ‘This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased,’” I wrote about the experience in my book, Miracle Man. “It suddenly dawns on me that this is what Bernie Klein has been waiting for to die, and that this is precisely the gift that Our Heavenly Father wanted to give him so he can finally rest in peace,” I concluded.

The assurance of being God’s beloved son. A child of the Father. Isn’t that the identity that all human beings are called to discover?

Jesus enters this world as a little child precisely to teach us to say “Father,” says Joseph Ratzinger, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, in his book of collected sermons entitled The God of Jesus Christ. His vulnerability as an infant and a child make it clear that humans are not meant to be self-sufficient, but that we are by our very nature relational, in need of others and in need of God.

He became a child. What does it mean to be a child? To begin with it means dependence, needing support and help from others...Being a child…means learning to say “Father.”*

Sounds simple enough. But human experience tells us that it is often very difficult to say “Father” from our hearts. It can be painfully hard to perceive God as a loving, merciful Father, as Abba, Papa, Daddy. We suffer from what could be called a collective father-wound in our culture, and the wound bleeds openly, even in the Church. We are facing a crisis in fatherhood itself, where the meaning and importance of fatherhood are called into question, and where more than half of the children in our country are growing up in homes that are absent a father’s presence.

Each Advent, we are invited to reconsider the infancy of Jesus, which points us to the truth that we, like Jesus, are God’s little children. And like Jesus, we are called to address God personally, intimately, familiarly—as our Father. The profundity of creatures assuming such a stance before Almighty God can hardly be overstated.

I recently noted with interest that the Church’s Advent readings contain a recurring theme. The Old Testament ends with a prophecy of the Messiah’s forerunner, John the Baptist, who will “turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers.” (Malachi 3:24)

The Gospel of Luke begins Christ’s Infancy Narrative with a repetition of the same promise. There, the angel Gabriel declares to John the Baptist’s father that his son will go before the Savior to “turn the hearts of the fathers toward their children…to prepare a people fit for the Lord.” (Luke 1:17)

It seems that a major theme of Advent is the turning of heavenly and earthly hearts one to the other, anticipating the spiritual healing that God desires for each of us: becoming a child, becoming His child, becoming like the Christ-child. Healing of this sort makes us fit for a relationship with the Father, and retrofitted for membership in His family.

The babe in the manger is completely vulnerable and dependent, much the way the sick, the elderly and the dying are at the end of their lives. Just the way that my husband Bernie was when his earthly life came to a close. Such vulnerability is good and necessary if we are to shed our world-acquired illusions of autonomy and enter God’s kingdom—which admits of only one path—the way of the child.

*Joseph Ratzinger, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, The God of Jesus Christ, Meditations on the Triune God

Finding Advent Hope: The Pathway Through the Heart

God cut a highway right through Bernie Klein’s heart, an artery that could give him life. Not surprisingly, that’s where Love seeped in.

“I died and I clearly remember it,” Bernie told me after waking up from a six-week coma brought on by a massive heart attack and subsequent multiple organ failure. “I could see myself floating in the air, looking down at my body, and I could see my damaged heart.”

That vision was the start of a near-death experience six years ago that took my late husband Bernie to heaven and back, where he met God and encountered with great clarity both the profound love of God and the spiritual condition of his own heart. I share the entire true story in detail in my book, Miracle Man.

“It looked like my heart was torn in half, and half of my heart was a vivid color of blue that looked like ugly debris. I knew that represented all of things I had done in my life that were not pleasing to God,” Bernie shared soberly. “The other side was beautiful gold, and I knew it represented all of the things I’d done in my life that were pleasing to God.” Bernie was “sent back” by God to undergo what he called his “purification,” about which he emphatically stated: “And I NEED it.”

Bernie’s experience calls to mind a series of Advent sermons delivered by Joseph Ratzinger, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, in 1964. Ratzinger called our lives “an enduring Advent” and said:

the borderline between "before Christ"and "after Christ"…runs through our own hearts.*

“Insofar as we are living on the basis of selfishness, of egoism, then even today we are ‘before Christ,’” said the man who would become Pope almost fifty years later. He explained that our vocation as Christians is “live with Christ and in Christ,” an ongoing event in our hearts that makes every day of every year Advent for us—for the rest of our lives.

To live with Christ and in Christ is the hope of Advent, and for Christ to live with us and in us is our hope for glory (Colossians 1:27). In Advent, we invite the God-man to be birthed anew in our hearts, asking Him to blur the dividing line in us of all that is “before Christ.” In Advent, we welcome the Lord and ask Him to occupy our hearts, much as He did the manger in Bethlehem. In doing so, all that is “before Christ” within us increasingly decreases.

“Judy, you have no idea how much God loves you,” Bernie said as he finished telling me his near-death account. “I will spend the rest of my life spreading the message of God’s love to others,” he concluded. “Nothing else matters.”

God’s incredible love. Nothing else matters. Bernie saw that clearly after meeting God.

Paralyzed from the neck down and completely dependent on life support, Bernie’s mantra for the last six weeks of his life became: “You have no idea how much God loves you.” He spent those last days enjoying what he called “fellowship with God,” allowing God to run a road from his once-divided heart straight to heaven, this time, to stay forever.

This Advent let us take the occasion to ask: Where is the line drawn in my own heart? How much of my heart does not yet belong to Christ? May His Divine Presence displace everything in us that is not of Him, and may His light dispel any darkness in our hearts.

*All quotes from Joseph Ratzinger, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, are from the book of Advent sermons entitled: What It Means To Be A Christian.

Cultivating Advent Hope: Healing Our Decembers

Tears flowed freely during the meeting with my spiritual director, Sandy, as I shared with her the pain I was feeling. “December is here,” I said. “I get such a wave of anxiety and grief at this time of year.” Somehow, I have a hunch I’m not alone in experiencing December this way.

December is the month that “our lives blew apart with more violence than we ever dreamed possible,” I wrote in my book Miracle Man. The month that my late husband, Bernie, suffered a massive heart attack—leaving my children fatherless and me a widow after 87 excruciating days in the ICU. Six years and a wonderful new marriage later, December still brings it all screeching back.

“Beg the Lord to heal the trauma of all your past Decembers,” Sandy wisely advised. “And ask him to fill you with the joy of his birth.”

For December is also the month when we celebrate our Savior’s presence penetrating Earth’s agonies, defying what human eyes behold as mere babe-flesh, disguising the God-man. This is the month that Hope is born, ushering in the time of fulfillment for the long-awaited healing of our crippled souls and lame lives. December is, indeed, the month of Advent hope.

6439494505_e600b288a4_b

The hope of Advent lies in experiencing the reality of human frailty—and in believing that Someone, though fragile in appearance, is coming to heal us soon. The hope of Advent consists in a hearty cry for deliverance from the weight of sin and death—and in trusting that God’s glory-weight will pierce right through all of this world’s darkness. For we have all known the sorrow of “Decembers” during life’s winter months, times of shadows and suffering where we cry out for the Light to come.

Every year I’m reminded that December is a fitting backdrop for Advent, as it is the month that throws off the least amount of light in the calendar year. The days grow short and winter begins. The darkness brings with it a certain sense of vulnerability and disorientation, along with the knowledge that we need more Light, so we can see.

Advent hope has everything to do with vision. Advent hope is inexorably connected with eternal perspective. That’s because hope—Christian hope—is so much more than plain old wishful thinking. It is the theological virtue by which we order our lives toward heaven; the virtue that establishes trust in us that there is a heaven, and gives us the conviction that we’ll live there with God some day. Hope reminds us that this earth is not paradise, and it strengthens and sustains us as we travel toward the longed-for Promised Land. Hope gives us a new vision for our lives, enabling us to see that what may look like “disaster” to human senses is but a moment of time that God holds in his hands, shaping it for our good, while simultaneously, mysteriously molding us into good.

“Can you see your Decembers as a time when God reaches into your life to work miracles, instead of as a time of sorrow?” Sandy gently asked. “You saw that once,” she continued. “You wrote a book about it.”

Yes, I saw it clearly then. But somehow I go blind every December.

And maybe that’s as it should be. Since it is December’s darkness that beckons me to encounter my desperate need for a Savior. Along with my need for a divine infusion of Hope.

Thankfully, it is Advent. The season of so much blindness healed. The Church’s daily readings ring out promises of what the Messiah will bring, along with rich Gospel accounts of those promises being fulfilled:

On that day the deaf shall hear…and out of gloom and darkness, the eyes of the blind shall see. The lowly will ever find joy in the Lord, and the poor rejoice in the Holy One of Israel.               (Isaiah 29:18-19)

 And then we hear:

Two blind men followed him crying, “Son of David, have pity on us!” …Then he touched their eyes...And their eyes were opened. (Mt. 9:29-31)

Touch our eyes, Lord, and enable us to glimpse reality from heaven’s angle, through the lens of Advent hope. Heal all of our Decembers, and fill us anew with the joy of your birth.

Thelma and Louise With Jesus

On the road again…

“Can you please help me bring my son to Communita Cenacolo?” I asked my friend, Mary Lou McCall, in desperation four and a half years ago. That request—and her unhesitating “yes”—took us on a road trip 600 miles away to St. Augustine, Florida, where we delivered my then-nineteen-year-old son, Christian, to a Catholic community founded to heal those in the grips of addiction.

That was the beginning of an amazing journey, wherein Mary Lou and I have driven thousands of miles together to over a dozen Community retreats, jokingly naming our selves “Thelma and Louise With Jesus” somewhere along the way. We hit the road one more time this past weekend to head to St. Augustine for the Cenacolo Fall Festival, where once again, we saw life, hope and profound transformation on the faces of formerly hopeless addicts and their families who, by God’s grace and love, have taken hold of their identities as beloved children of God.

With “Thelma and Louise” on my mind these past few years, I decided to watch the movie again recently. I was struck by the darkness of the story, and by the depth of injustice and despair that plagues the movie’s two heroines until the very end. Faced with the absurdity of their situation, Thelma and Louise opt to kill themselves, driving their Ford Thunderbird convertible off a cliff into the Grand Canyon.

Thanks be to God, that’s not the way our story went. Though Mary Lou and I both encountered darkness and even despair in our circumstances, we never considered going anywhere but in the direction of Jesus. After all, where else could we go? We believe and are convinced that He is the Holy One, and that He alone has the words of eternal life.

God, in His extreme mercy, met our belief with miracles. He has outdone Himself in generosity by granting us many incredible answers to prayer, starting with the way that Mary Lou and I reconnected in 2008 after losing contact for several years.

That reconnection happened during a dim time in my life, when I begged God to send me a friend. I didn’t just ask God for any friend, but specifically prayed for a friend who understood the devastation of addiction. Within twenty-four hours of that plea, Mary Lou McCall had left me both a voicemail and e-mail. She informed me that her son, Mackie, had recently met Christian at a rehab center, and that both of her oldest sons were struggling with addictions. She also shared that she, too, was in recovery. “Here’s my phone number,” she wrote. “I’m here if you need anything.” Blown away by the immediate answer to prayer, I called her that day. We’ve been joined at the heart ever since on this journey with our sons, as well as in the unfolding of own personal healings along the way.

It is difficult to articulate what God has done for us, but I pondered that reality with deep gratitude this weekend during the family retreat. Mary Lou and I sat together through talks, liturgies, praise and worship, dances, testimonials and plays, witnessing the transfiguration of not only poor, addicted souls, but their extended families as well. We heard story after story of people who showed up at Community just like we did—with their families torn asunder and their hope destroyed by the bondage of sin and addiction. And we saw in living color the power of the Resurrection, especially on the faces of the young men and women who have found not only deliverance from death, but true joy in discovering the love of God and the friendship of their brothers and sisters in Community.

Mary Lou’s eldest son Johnny entered Cenacolo in June of 2009 at “Our Lady of Hope” in Florida, one of sixty-five Community houses around the world. Exactly one year later in June 2010, Christian entered the same house. It was there that he and Johnny met for the first time, and there that they forged a deep bond of friendship. Though Johnny was transferred to a house in Italy five months after Christian’s arrival in Florida, Christian moved to Italy shortly thereafter. As God would have it, the two young men landed in the same house again, then slept side by side in adjacent beds for the next year. That experience made them closest of brothers.

The whole crew in Italy with Mother Elvira, Founder of Communita Cenacolo

Mary Lou and I just smiled and shook our heads. “Who but God could have possibly worked out our stories with such personal attention to detail?” we asked. Meanwhile, we kept driving twice a year to the retreats.

One year ago, Johnnie became a missionary in Liberia, where he lives in a Community-run orphanage that cares for twenty abandoned children. Neither the difficulty of the work nor the Ebola crisis has sent him packing, because he has learned the importance of sacrifice and keeping his commitments, no matter what the cost. Christian exited Community two months ago, moving to Wyoming to work on a youth ranch for troubled, addicted teenagers. “I know the work will be hard and they can’t pay much,” Christian said before he left. “But I want to give back for what I received in Community.” And off he went.

Our sons don’t want to be considered heroes and they don’t want any medals. They are struggling young men who found new life, and who want to give back to others what they have received gratuitously from God: faith, hope and love. Those are virtues that Thelma and Louise never quite got. Yet they are precisely the inherent qualities that give life meaning and call us to live with a purpose that is beyond ourselves—a purpose that drives us toward life, not head on into the valley of death.

As for Mary Lou and me, instead of letting the men in our lives drive us over the edge like the movie's protagonists, we presented our sons to "the man," Jesus.  He is the true man, the God-man, who has conquered sin and death and who alone can make all things new.

Held

Overcome with emotion as I watched my dear friend, Melanie, walk through the front door of the tiny chapel last Friday evening, the tears were flowing freely.   Tears of happiness that my fellow widow was getting married again, mixed with tears of remembrance of all of the times we had wept together after our husbands died.

Those were some raw, painful days. But this was a new day. We were celebrating a resurrection.

Mel glowed radiantly as she walked up the aisle of the rustic 18^th Century Baton Rouge church, where her fiancé, Bob, and her two sons—both Protestant pastors—waited in front to celebrate nuptial vows. The moment could not have been more beautiful, with eight little ivory clad granddaughters preceding the bride, and a harpist throwing ethereal sounds through open windows that welcomed the encroaching dusk. Quite the contrast to the many evenings Mel and I had spent at my home sharing stories of shattered dreams and weeping together, even as we reminded each other that we were still safe in the embrace of God, maybe being held closer than ever before.

Her story included the agonizing disappointment of failed marriage, followed by the all too brief elation of meeting and marrying a best friend, a devout Christian man with whom she was happily prepared to spend the rest of her life. They'd been married just twenty eight months when Don was struck dead late one September afternoon, hit head-on by a crystal meth-crazed driver as he toured a country road on the motorcycle he loved. The wreckage was immense on every level. I met Mel shortly thereafter, and I watched her scrape herself out of bed day after day to tend to the needs of her eleven-year-old son and meet with clients in her counseling practice. I marveled that she was able to get out of bed at all, to put one foot in front of the other and continue to walk forward—and that she trusted that God had not abandoned her. Natalie Grant’s song “Held” became her anthem, and she played it all day long to remember that God was holding her, even in the midst of her pain and darkness:

This is what it means to be held, how it feels, when the sacred is torn from your life

And you survive. This is what it is to be loved, and to know that the promise was that when everything fell, we'd be held.

We huddled together and held on, and we were held. And now, on another September day, a new holding was taking place. I pondered the mystery of life’s seasons as we beheld this resurrection:

Do you take this woman… to have and to hold, from this day forward…until death do you part?

Melanie was getting married, and God and Bob would hold her now.

God-incidentally, Mel’s wedding happened to be the same weekend that I was celebrating the second anniversary of marriage to my precious husband, Mark. Mark and I met two years after my late husband, Bernie, died of a massive heart attack. Having just returned from working abroad for twenty-seven years as a Catholic missionary, Mark was spending several hours a day praying in the Adoration Chapel, discerning what God had in store for him next. It was there that we met.

We struck up a friendship, centered on our faith in God and on our mutual love of Catholic theology. Walks on the lakefront discussing theology and philosophy turned into discussions about our life journeys. The reality of jarring and unexpected changes, the death of lifelong dreams and the prospect of futures uncertain all became fodder for conversation. Mark and I became closest friends over the months, and a year after we met we were engaged.

On September 29, 2012, the Feast of the Archangels, we pronounced our wedding vows at Sacred Heart Catholic Church amidst the pouring rain. Many nights since then Mark has held me close, catching tears of gratitude for my new life with him, as well as tears of still fresh grief from life’s unanticipated wounds.

All of that came rushing in as I watched a dear friend with whom I’ve shared so much walk up the aisle, her feet and face light with happiness. It would have been enough for us to be held by God, and that’s all we were hoping for, really. But to be held again in the arms of marital love was an unexpected rebirth for both of us. I give heartfelt thanks to God for the gift of new embrace, for Melanie and for me.