Nine years...

   Today, November 19, 2013 is the ninth anniversary of my diaconal ordination along with three other classmates at the hands of Bishop Lucas at our Cathedral in Springfield.  Nine years.  Wow.  I look back, and it feels as if it were already a lifetime ago.  The joys and the sufferings that come with the grace of orders are unspeakably precious, complex, and humbling, to the point where it would really be an injustice to even try to explain them here.  In the face of it all, I can only give thanks, and repeat the prayer that has stuck with me all this time, "Lord I give you all that I have; I beg you to please make up the difference".

   In particular, those who have been following me know that this last year has been unbearably painful.  I am better now; indeed, in many ways I am at the absolute top of my game with respect to living into the life of praying and preaching the scriptures and contemplating the great mysteries of God in the great writings of the Church.  The sisters I am serving are a joy to be with, and an inspiration to confidence that all is right at the heart of the Church where these sisters are in their prayer, apostolic life, and struggles to live into their vocations more faithfully.  There is abundant fruit which this whole process is about to bear, I pray, which I would not have had otherwise to share, but I want to save that all for a gradual unveiling over the next few months as I finish my STL thesis.  In short, while I had originally planned to write about the apostolic constellation of Hans Urs von Balthasar (a project, which while interesting, never quite captured my imagination and zeal in the midst of the daily battles of parish ministry enough to get done), I am now working on integrating and preparing to present to the Church a thorough study of shame and sorrow--two of the modern 'anti-virtues' which modern psychology is all to ready to dismiss as irredeemably destructive to the human soul, but which the Christan Tradition understands rightly, and in the right context, as a beacon to conversion.  There's not a lot out there in literature about this subject except in a general and usually in an unhelpful light framed by contemporary categories.  Pastoral practice is not as sensitive as it probably should be with respect to how deep the pain of shame wounds so many of the faithful we look out and see from the ambo every Sunday in our churches.

   Why is it that people fear going to confession?  Why is it that it is easier to receive ashes on Ash Wednesday and eat fish sandwiches on Fridays during Lent than enter into a thoroughgoing program of penance?  Why do poor people begging for alms make us uncomfortable?  Why is it that there is possibly (according to some reports) a 10 times as many Catholics content to live in 'irregular' marriages than those who seek the assistance of our marriage tribunals?  Why is it that the priesthood scandal happened and was handled so badly?  I think at the root of these problems is one of the devil's favorite tools to oppress us: shame.  St. Thomas Aquinas has a radiant study of shame as an elementary component of sorrow and fear in the Summa.  Pope John Paul II has volumes to speak in his Theology of the Body catecheses about how shame diminishes the human person, alienating us from our very selves.  The scripture has dozens-no, hundreds-of references to shame in its pages.  The old joke is that 'Catholic guilt' is alive and well in so many of the faithful.  What can we learn from all of this?  Well, the narrative of my own story of descent into the depths of self-inflicted shame and then the collateral marginalization and betrayal heaped on afterwards is not that interesting, actually... and that's not the focus of this project.  I'm not intending to go into the business of personal 'testimony', except to preemptively affirm the grace and mercy of God in all things.  But what is important and what I have learned and am preparing to offer the Church through the lessons of the last year is a way of looking at shame and sorrow in a thoroughly Christian way that molds and tempers us to be the people Christ has called us to be--that calling out of darkness into his own wonderful light.  This is the living out of the Paschal Mystery every day of our lives as we battle sin and our own 'blind spots' of unrealized virtue (and vice).  This is where we struggle against our baser desires, both consciously and unconsciously, to die to self and live in Christ.  This is what we strive to overcome when we take an accounting of even the sins perpetrated against us.  Christians do battle with sorrow and shame every day of their lives until in the fulfillment of the kingdom in God's grace and mercy.  A healthier understanding of Christian shame may be the most important barrier to overcome in order to achieve the New Evangelization that seeks to renew the Church from within... not to mention, to help the Church be more credible and powerful in the realm of public discourse... against abortion, same sex marriage, contraception, divorce, war, slavery, poverty, indifference, even school bullying, not to mention so much more that darkens our world.  Overcoming shame is not about ignoring it, barreling through it without duly mourning our losses, or casting aside the sorrow associated with it as unhelpful and belligerent to the endless pursuit of happiness.  The 'perfection' of shame allows the moments of sorrow to be transformative in the Paschal Mystery of death to self and life in Christ.

   As easy and perhaps as logical as it might have been to simply walked away from it all and not made it to the completion of this year nine, I embrace this cross and the promises of Orders more completely and more lovingly for the glory God is trying to work through my imperfections.  Trust me, the temptation of simply disappearing has been keenly before me--and it would be an eminently logical choice to make for so many reasons.  And who knows, there are probably people out there who still wish that I'd keep walking into that darkness... that would be one of the Devil's greatest desires--to completely destroy a minister of the Church.  But today, nine years hence and all the more, I am all the more certain that this call is not about me and my desires and ambitions and comfort.  For some reason, I am still standing... but it is not through my own strength, that's for sure.  It is all about announcing the Gospel in the good times and the bad... announcing the Gospel, whose herald I am through my unworthy sharing of Orders.  I am going to continue to give it all I have, with the hope and confidence that God will make up the difference.

   Greetings and blessings to my ordination classmates and my diaconal brothers out there.  This is a celebration I share with so many of my brothers in the permanent diaconate, both in my own diocese, as well as those who have been so formative to my ministry elsewhere.  May God continue to enfold all of us in his strength and in his mercy as we continue about the work he has set before us.