Therefore, dear Sir, love your solitude and try to sing out with the pain it causes you. For those who are near you are far away... and this shows that the space around you is beginning to grow vast.... be happy about your growth, in which of course you can't take anyone with you, and be gentle with those who stay behind; be confident and calm in front of them and don't torment them with your doubts and don't frighten them with your faith or joy, which they wouldn't be able to comprehend. Seek out some simple and true feeling of what you have in common with them, which doesn't necessarily have to alter when you yourself change again and again; when you see them, love life in a form that is not your own and be indulgent toward those who are growing old, who are afraid of the aloneness that you trust.... and don't expect any understanding; but believe in a love that is being stored up for you like an inheritance, and have faith that in this love there is a strength and a blessing so large that you can travel as far as you wish without having to step outside it.
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| The National Memorial for Peace and Justice, Montgomery Alabama |
The air must have been thick with fear and prayer as the slaving ships pulled out of Gorée and other West African ports laden with human cargo. Devotees of Vodun, the river gods, [YHWH], Allah, Oludumare—to name just a few—lay together (tightly or loosely packed) in an involuntary rebirthing cocoon. It was a community of sorts, yet each person lay in their own chrysalis of human waste and anxiety. More often than not, these Africans were strangers to each other by virtue of language, culture, and tribe. Although the names of their deities differed, they shared a common belief in the seen and unseen. The journey was a rite of passage of sorts that stripped captives of their personal control over the situation and forced them to turn to the spirit realm for relief and guidance.. . . The word contemplation must press beyond the constraints of religious expectations to reach the potential for spiritual centering in the midst of danger. Centering moments accessed in safety are an expected luxury in our era. During slavery, however, crisis contemplation became a refuge, a wellspring of discernment in a suddenly disordered life space, and a geo-spiritual anvil for forging a new identity. This definition of contemplation is dynamic and situational. . . .As unlikely as it may seem, the contemplative moment can be found at the very center of such ontological crises . . . during the Middle Passage in the holds of slave ships . . . auction blocks . . . and the . . . hush arbors [where slaves worshipped in secret]. Each event is experienced by individuals stunned into multiple realities by shock, journey, and displacement. . . . In the words of Howard Thurman, “when all hope for release in the world seems unrealistic and groundless, the heart turns to a way of escape beyond the present order.” [1] For captured Africans, there was no safety except in common cause and the development of internal and spiritual fortitude. . . .The only sound that would carry Africans over the bitter waters was the moan. Moans flowed through each wracked body and drew each soul toward the center of contemplation. . . . One imagines the Spirit moaning as it hovered over the deep during the Genesis account of creation [Genesis 1:2]. Here, the moan stitches horror and survival instincts into a creation narrative. . . . On the slave ships, the moan became the language of stolen strangers, the sound of unspeakable fears, the precursor to joy yet unknown. The moan is the birthing sound, the first movement toward a creative response to oppression, the entry into the heart of contemplation through the crucible of crisis.
"It is simply opening yourself to receive. The presence of God is like walking out of a door into the fresh air. You don't concentrate on the fresh air, you breathe it. And you don't concentrate on the sunlight, you just enjoy it. It is all around."- From a lecture by Thomas Merton, to the monks at Gethsemani
“There are people who go through life talking about others, accusing others and never thinking of their own sins. And when I go to make my confession, how do I confess? Like a parrot? ‘Bla, bla, bla… I did this, this…’ But are you touched at heart by what you have done? Many times, no. You go there to put on make-up, to make-yourself up a little bit in order to look beautiful. But it hasn’t entered completely into your heart, because you haven’t left room, because you are not capable of accusing yourself.”
And so that first step is also a grace: the grace of learning to accuse oneself, and not others:
“A sign that a person does not know, that a Christian does not know how to accuse himself is when he is accustomed to accusing others, to talking about others, to being nosy about the lives of others. And that is an ugly sign. Do I do this? It’s a good question to get to the heart [of things]. Today let us ask the Lord for the grace, the grace to find ourselves face to face with Him with this wonder that His presence gives; and the grace to feel that we are sinners, but concretely, and to say with Peter: 'Depart from me, for I am a sinner'.”
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| Francis and the Clowns |
There is false rest and there is true rest.- Pope Francis, homily at Casa Santa Marta, September 5, 2018
Society is thirsty for entertainment and holiday. We think that a "successful" person is one who can afford different kinds of pleasure. But this mentality slips towards the dissatisfaction of an anesthetized existence of entertainment that is not rest, but alienation and escape from reality. Man has never rested as much as today, yet man has never experienced as much emptiness as today.
True rest is a moment of contemplation, of praise.
It is a time to look at reality and say: how beautiful life is. to say to God: thank you for your life, for your mercy, for all your gifts.
Make peace with life because life is precious.
Peace is chosen, it cannot be imposed and cannot be found by chance.
In the end, “all is grace”. For, as the Psalmist assures us, in God alone do our souls find rest.
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| Daily Mass at Casa Santa Marta (Vatican Media) |
"There are two spirits, two ways of thinking, of feeling, of acting: that which leads me to the Spirit of God, and that which leads me to the spirit of the world. And this happens in our life: We all have these two ‘spirits,’ we might say. The Spirit of God, which leads us to good works, to charity, to fraternity, to adore God, to know Jesus, to do many good works of charity, to pray: this one. And [there is] the other spirit, of the world, which leads us to vanity, pride, sufficiency, gossip – a completely different path. Our heart, a saint once said, is like a battlefield, a field of war where these two spirits struggle."- Pope Francis, September 4, 2018
A Zen line in Job: "Is it by your wisdom that the hawk soars?" (39:26)- Merton, Conjectures, p. 285
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Some accuse Pope Francis of being confusing when he does not aggressively defend the righteous and condemn the sinners, imposing rules, defining with papal infallibility the lines we cannot cross, etc. But they do not understand that, in reality, what he is confusing is the evil spirit that motivates them.
In a world where politicians and religious leaders debate and insult each other through tweets, Francis, with his way of resisting aggression through dialogue, “stands firm (Ephesians 6:13) but with the same attitude of Jesus,”[26] and opens around him a different political space, that of the Kingdom of God, in which the Lord is the real champion of the battle, not us.
This “passive resistance of evil” – the same that Bergoglio has always emphasized as the grace which belongs to the people, and upon which they build patiently and wisely their culture[27] – amends, among other things, three attitudes that are typical of a “politics of aggression” and are at the basis of all partisan politics. Bergoglio describes these behaviors as they present themselves in the Passion of our Lord. The first one is the behavior of the people who “persecute those who they believe to be weaker.”[28] The powerful did not dare to oppose Jesus when the people followed him, but they were brave enough to do so when, after having been betrayed by one of his own, they saw him weakened. The second attitude is characterized this way: “At the root of all cruelty there is a need to unload one’s own faults and limits […] the mechanism of the scapegoat is repeated.”[29] The third attitude belongs to those who, like Pilate, in the face of such ferocity decide to wash their hands of it and walk away.[30]From an article in La Civilta Catolica, "The Spirit of Fierceness" by Diego Farrs SJ, September 1, 2018
