Pentecost Prayer

The feast of Pentecost says one thing, with lots of small details.  The one thing is that we celebrate a God who is a hopeless romantic.  This is a God who is not wise with love, or careful, or cautious.  It is a God who splashes hints to wayward humans, with bounty, with beauty, and I have come to believe, with humor.  It is a God who can see time and time again can see his beloved getting too arrogant or worried or restless, and time and time again, this God comes, makes a dwelling in the deepest crevices of our core, whether we know it or not.

It is a God who gives nothing but hints of a spirit that is with us always, one that pushes and prods us to live with reverence and courage and good council and trust in the force that placed us here.  It is a God who says you can live with none of this, and this stubborn spirit is not going anywhere.

This is a feast of a God who loves too recklessly, who seeks all who want to renew this earthly home.  It is a feast that asks us to keep alive commandments to restore dignity where it has been robbed, to rekindle hope where it has been smothered.

So come, Holy Spirit, renew our visions, so we see this ancient creation not as it must be for us, but in the splendor it has been given to us, and teach us to see again the infinite before us.  Come Holy One, revive our patience, so we see all that lives as a work in progress.

Come, Holy Messenger, infuse us with grateful trust as we move into uncertain futures, that there is no circumstance too fearsome, no challenge too daunting, no set-back too discouraging where your love and grace will not guide us to peace.  Instill within us, sweet Spirit, with wisdom that allows us to listen with attentiveness, with an understanding that fills us courtesy, with a piety that lets us behold the sacraments ever emerging.

Come, Sanctifier of the church, and bathe this Body of Christ with a passion to care for the least.  Let us inhale the comfort of knowing you will tell us everything, so our days are filled with attentiveness, our nights with calm.  Let us exhale a faith that sends us into your world with an invite to seek and defend holiness.

Come, Bold Advocate, remind us to pack our lives with prayer, generosity, and gratitude.  Send us, Fire of God, with burning desires to make this world a greater image of your love.  Let us be ambassadors of a Spirit that that has empathy for all that lives and breathes.  Burn, burn away the ego that can hide the good you have given us.

Come, Reminder of Christ’s word, as Cardinal Newman wrote, “Flood our souls with your spirit and life so completely that our lives may only be a reflection of yours.  Shine through us. Show us how to seek you.
We were made to see you.”


Fr. Pat Malone, SJ

May 19, 2013

lessons still learning

The final lessons learned from falling ill.

Don’t be a jerk.   Pardon the slang language, but I’m stumped on a better way to say it.  There may be loftier ideals to which we could aspire, but this basic goal is tough enough, and deserves its own attention.  When one is in the dumps, it is far too easy (and sometimes understandable) to give in to the temptation to let others know that we’re not at all pleased with life, and on a mission to share that bleakness.   So we can be overly gloomy, or cynical, or dramatic, or just rude, mostly to make a point.  This nasty way of proceeding usually comes out in subtle ways—a quick interruption, a late arrival, a withdrawn manner. 

None of this is that obnoxious, and most people give slack when they know someone is a Grumpy Gus (thank you, o patient and professional nurses.)  Yet it is precisely when we could get away with being a grouch that we could be most transformative for others.  It is the ultimate mark of maturity when the desire to share our empathy crowds out the desire to share our woes.  There is a place to reveal one’s worries and scars, but it is first essential to know that they are part of the ebb and flow of human life.  What is sacred is when we take the experiences of our lives to remind others of their dignity.

Better to flourish than to finish.   For the stubborn, it requires an unwelcomed jolt to our routines and plans to realize that interruptions are God’s way of getting our attention.  The hope is that the future is not forgotten, but we learn to handle surprises with grace, humor, and thanksgiving.    It helps to believe that whatever is thrown our way has invites to be more loving, more responsible, more happy with what is, rather than what is not.  Karl Rahner, SJ, wrote, “In the torment of the insufficiency of everything attainable we eventually learn that here, in this life, all symphonies remain unfinished.”  May we enjoy what God has given us to hear, to take in today.

Don’t wait to win an Academy Award.  How meaningful, memorable, and powerful are the thanks we offer, when such thanks is unexpected.  The impact is all the greater when the words and circumstances require we step out of our comfort zones, simply because we know the words of support will be comforting with whomever we share them.  I believe by nature and faith, we are seeped in gratitude.  We are quite regularly in awe at others’ patience or wisdom or sweetness or bravery.   It is worthy to contemplate on the richness of human examples that point us to something holy.  May a growing awareness of the brevity of our lives give us the push to express our thanks with creativity, abundance, and trust.  If we wait for the perfect moment, we may sound as rushed and jumbled as all those winners at the award ceremonies.

Do not be afraid.  Yes, I plagiarized this phrase from Jesus, but it’s worth repeating—and he’s the forgiving type.   It is not to dismiss the hardship one endures, but to give breadth of the love that always transcends it.  It is the message of Pentecost, and the truth that sets us free.

Fr. Pat       

Fr. Pat       

still learning lessons

Here’s part two of lessons learned from falling ill.  This saga was meant to come in three-parts. 

Receive the cross.  I honestly don’t understand the theology of why Jesus had to suffer so much, but I know the more I contemplate on the cross, the more I find meaning--even peacefulness--in one’s own sorrow and struggle.  It is the place where even Christ is overwhelmed by human agony.  So it becomes a place where we can welcome trust, or we can find plenty of reasons to be bitter.  Crosses do not come when we have mastered the chaos around us.  They don’t crash in when we have finally arrived at the cool, calm state, when regrets and self-absorption have gone away.  In my experience, they barge in while we’re in the middle.  Before falling ill, I thought what God and the Jesuit Provincial set for me to deliver was the usual pastoral goods.  Apparently the two of them had not agreed on this point.   How life unfolded this past year helped me to see what was the real mission:  how can any of us help reveal divine love in our human life?   That has been the Christian idea since the cross.

There is an abiding comfort in knowing that one’s suffering, as lousy and isolating and disturbing as it is, is wrapped up in this man/God’s hunger to make people free.   I don’t know how suffering works into the divine plan, but it is all over the human plan.  And our incarnational faith says that this God wants to be messed up into this human journey.  So when I contemplate the cross, I can get a small glimpse of what wise ones say all the time:  let our weakness makes us strong, do not let our fears strangle us, and let our gratitude grows without specific cause.  And for people who try to follow Jesus, let contemplating the cross deepen our resolve to be kinder, more courageous, more in awe.  This is the message through all the ebbs and flow of our brief lives, but we are more attentive to this grace when struggling with big challenges.

I suppose it can seem too macabre to contemplate this cross (of course for the Irish,

contemplating anything is fair game.)  Yet it remains the best symbol of the finality of this earthy life, so it becomes the heartiest reminder to take in the holy, shining in this day, this encounter, this relationship, this unfolding story, even this struggle.   This awareness of life’s fragility can sound similar to the common phrase, “seize the day.”  Use that memorable mantra if it works, but it is more enjoyable to feeling seized, beheld, and guided by something bigger than anything we could grasp.  

In the early days of my sick leave, when I was one with a bundle of machines and tubes, there was not much I could control or touch, but there was an undeniable sense of being embraced, understood, and cared for with human and heavenly hands.  Even with drugs making me loopy (and someday, that effect may wear off,) I would gaze at the faces going in and out of the ICU room as those who had no idea of how angelic, inspirational, and life-giving they were.  And this was a tiny fraction of what was going on throughout creation.  It was amazing to ponder that this world is forever packed with living, breathing sacraments.  There’s something in contemplating the cross that invites this deeper truth to be more obvious.

Third and last part finishes up on Pentecost.   

Fr Pat

some lessons learned

A year ago I fell ill.  After beating the odds one more time (thanks for working overtime, Guardian Angel,) many supportive parishioners mentioned that God had a plan for me.  One Jesuit friend, who was having enough of these hopeful words, said that it is not that God has a plan for me.  It’s that God doesn’t want me yet.  Whatever point is right, each of the close calls of moving on to (I hope) a better place has brought insights of how to live here, in God’s unpredictable world.  May God’s mercy and infinite wisdom reckon that I have learned enough, so no more of these teasers to our eternal home.  In any case, here are some the lessons learned from this most recent  comeback.  (Next weekend’s Newsletter will have the second half.)

1.  Make peace with humility.  St. Ignatius of Loyola shared this truth long ago, but it takes us more stubborn types an intense experience (or two) to believe in this mission.  The more we can accept the human limits of our lives, the more we can be at home with whatever surprises life tosses at us.  Making peace with humility is not to lower our ambitions; it is to lower our egos.  It makes our relationships more meaningful and our tasks more enjoyable.  And it is the cornerstone to a healthy sense of humor.  It happens when seeking boundless love makes more sense than seeking short-lived importance.  Humility gives birth to a calmness in the midst of a clamoring, hyper-paced, and craving-based world. 

But the most prayerful part of humility is it brings forth awe.  Who are we to encounter this particular love, this vision of natural beauty, this human example of  inspiration?  Such fragments of joy must confirm that we come from a holy origin, and from a Source that wants to cram our lives with glimpses of infinite grace.  Such a life does not guarantee an absence of pain; it offers us a clarity of life’s bounty.   To accept in life’s fragility is the first step in being overwhelmed that we are included in this Great Work.

Because of a hunger to discover greater humility, the phrase of Pope Francis that packed the most punch—among his many—was his call for the church to be less “self-referential” and more focused on those on the margins.   Let us make that our highest teaching, our most quoted proclamation, our most lived-out value, our most taught catechism, our loudest prayer, and our greatest source of peace.

Encourage with integrity. 

After seven weeks of taking it easy in a bed, a nurse wheeled me to the rehab room, where hard-working but damaged individuals were trying to walk again.  A physical therapist approached the wheelchair and said firmly, “you’re going to walk again.”  That sounded absurd.  I couldn’t wiggle a toe, much less stroll around.  He wasn’t going to feed into any of that self-pity.  He said again firmly, “you’re going to walk.”   His words of encouragement were brief but effective.  

We can doubt how powerful our efforts at encouragement can be.  They create miracles when they, as was the case with the physical therapist, are not just to please, but reveal our truth, our hope, our resolve to help.   We encourage best when we don’t offer easy platitudes, but when we travel the hard road with them.  It happens when we want nothing more than others to see their strength, their goodness, their potential to receive healing.  It occurs when we believe that the self-giving nature of Christ is meant to happen again and again, in small but transformative fragments.

Continued next week.    Fr. Pat