How the Apostolate Began, Part II

I understood that to be an effective street evangelist, my appearance would need to signal to people why I was out on the streets as well as offer an attractive presence.  The Mormons announced themselves by their wholesome yet corny uniform, and the fundamentalists used a sign.  I decided that a sign was awkward and immobile and so I would need a uniform of some kind.  But what kind?  Maybe a t-shirt or sweatshirt with a cross and large lettering: "ASK ME WHY I'M CATHOLIC" or "DO YOU KNOW CHRIST?"  No, that wouldn't do.  I wanted something more timeless--more Catholic--as well as something that even passing cars could recognize and consider.  Then I remembered a strange experience, a supernatural fragment from two years ago.

The monks of Papastronsay had sent me a book in the form of a magazine about Blessed Charles de Foucauld.  It was the old biography by Rene Bazin supplemented by dozens of vintage photographs.  I had never heard of this saint, but I was impressed by his photo on the cover.  I thumbed through the magazine and then forgot the book amidst the pile on my desk.  After all, what would a monk and evangelist to the muslims have to do with me?  Then a year later, about the time of his feast day (December 1st), Blessed Charles stepped into my life through an interior vision.  He stood slightly bent with his hands clasped before him.  He was a small humble presence who seemed to be housed in my soul.  He said nothing, but merely looked at me for a few moments from within me.  And then he was gone.

I didn't know what to do with this experience, and so I dug the magazine out from the pile on my desk and read it.  I presented the magazine to my spiritual director, and said with embarrassment, "He appeared to me from inside of me."  I was surprised when my director looked pleased, and announced that he was very fond of Blessed Charles.  We concluded that Blessed Charles must be one of my heavenly patrons, and that God was reminding me--through Blessed Charles--that humility is the central lever for spiritual growth.

But two years later I now saw the experience in a deeper light.  Blessed Charles's prayerful witness and example of Christian brotherhood to non-believers was the ideal recipe for evangelization in the post-Christian West. Moreover, Blessed Charles's religious habit with the Holy Cross emerging from Christ's Sacred Heart was the perfect starting point for constructing a uniform.  The heart and cross offer the perfect message of love and sacrifice as well as soothing the fears of those I might encounter.  I could make a short tunic that was modeled after Blessed Charles habit, though it would need to avoid the particular marks of religious dress.  Then I recalled that in past centuries, some lay people would wear distinctive dress that identified them as a member of one of the  Third Orders (Dominican, Benedictine, etc).  Emboldened by this precedent, I asked Blessed Charles for his patronage and began sketching out a tunic.   I decided that a wool tunic with a prominent Jesus Caritas heart/cross would be unusual enough to be unmistakable to passers-by on foot and car.  There would be no mistaking what I was up to.  Moreover, wool is remarkably versatile and could be worn throughout the change in seasons.

To be continued...

How the Apostolate Began, Part I

After All Saints' Day Mass of last year I took our daughter to visit the art gallery where my wife works.    We saw the new exhibit for November, played on the stairs, and then headed out the front door for home.  As I left the gallery I noticed a husband and wife with their twenty-something son and daughter waiting for a table at a restaurant.  As soon as I saw them, I also understood something much deeper than their generally pleasing appearance.  By a divine grace I could read the general state of their souls, and the whole family lived in the friendship of Christ.  I stared at them and they were gracious enough to smile at me.  I thought, "They must be devout Christians."  Then a young man briskly passed in front of me reading something on his iphone.  My thoughts were interrupted.  There was a shadow over this young man, as well as a hardness and determination.  He had turned his back on God, and was not receptive to grace.  I watched him as he continued down the sidewalk.  I thought, "That used to be me."  Then I noticed a brunette woman in her mid-30s who wore a scarlet and gray skirt suit.  She was crossing the sidewalk in the usual way, but I understood she was in turmoil.  Whatever had gratified her in the past had fallen away, and she was now bare, confused and ripe for grace.  All she needed was the right person to introduce her to Jesus.  I knew I wasn't the right person to do that--at least, not yet.

When I got back to the car I mechanically fastened my daughter into her car seat and wondered what God was up to. Why did God show me those people and the state of their relationship with him?  Was he showing me a need, and inviting me to do something about it?   That must be it!  But what?  I don't even know them, or the millions of others like them.  How could I be of use to them unless I took the faith to the streets?  I pondered the possibilities on the drive home and was grateful when my daughter fell asleep.  That would give me more time to think and reflect on what had happened.  As I reached 50th and Powell I noticed a young Mormon missionary that I had spoken to a few months back. He was gesturing enthusiastically to a shabbily dressed man while his fellow missionary looked on.  I was surprised that their mission territory extended this far out.  Then it hit me.  This might be a sign.  I asked, "God, do you want me to be a street missionary like the Mormons?  That must be it!"  Then I drove another twenty blocks and was astonished to see a young black preacher camped out on the corner only two blocks from my house. He had never been there before.  A young white man stood next to him holding a large ugly sign--the kind of street sign that mattress stores use when "everything must go".  I read the sign: "Repent or perish...Now's the time..." followed by some scripture.  The preacher looked angry and the young man looked defiant.

This is not a winning strategy

They wouldn't win any converts with that approach, but at least they were trying to witness.  After all, where were the Catholics--those graced with the faith that Jesus passed down to his disciples?  My heart sank for our dear Lord.  His only representatives were a pair of fundamentalists and some eager but confused Mormons.  It couldn't be a coincidence that I had seen these street missionaries on this afternoon.  God has a perfect plan, and every piece moves in harmonious purpose with every other piece.  God had arranged for me to be in the exact place and time to see three different states of soul, and two different examples of street ministry, and in just twenty-five minutes!

When I got home I grabbed a fresh yellow legal pad and sat down.  Words and ideas streamed from my mind with remarkable clarity and conviction.  It was effortless.  I thought, "This must be the Holy Spirit..."  Then I remembered Blessed Charles de Foucauld and something that had happened two years before.

To be continued...

Through A Glass Darkly

"For now we see through a glass darkly; but then face to face.  Now I know in part, but then shall I know even as I am known." 1 Corinthians 13:12

One of the most famous passages in modern thought is from the great sociologist Max Weber.  He laments that a de-enchantment of the world--a virtual "iron cage"-- has followed the progress of science, industry and the technocratic efficiency of the modern world.  In many ways what Weber was describing was the historical eclipse of a deeply Catholic culture that united the bonds of the past, the wonder of the natural world and the ever-present sense of the supernatural.

Max Weber's "iron cage"

While Weber was undoubtedly describing something tangible about the "feel" of life in the modern world, we must never lose sight that we stand with St. Paul, and can still peer "through a glass darkly".  As St. Paul would urge us: the world is still enchanted, and all of our actions reverberate into the future and even into eternity.  We are only dimly aware of the true value and meaning of our words and actions, but there are breath-taking things going on around us.  This is most apparent in the case of the powers entrusted to the Church and her sacred ministers.  Jesus Christ really does come down onto our altars at the mere words of consecration during Holy Mass, and He is always attended at the altar by angels who join us in proclaiming the thrice-holy God, "Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus".  These are every day miracles, and yet we don't see them.  Every day men and women are freed from the grasping clutch of demons, as a good confession absolves sin and the power that the sin had given demons against the poor sinner.  The demons were once attached to the sinner, even intimate, and now they stand far off.

Now there are some wonders that only come around once a year.  Did you know that on Good Friday the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is halted and there is a great hush between heaven and earth?  The unimaginable graces that flow from the re-presentation of Calvary at Holy Mass are paused as the Church and the heavenly host commemorate the death of our Lord.  For a brief time the great Jacob's Ladder between heaven and earth is seldom travelled.  How humble is our God to honor the great feasts of the Church calendar even in Heaven!

The Great Ladder between Heaven and Earth

If we could only see in our own lives how our choices are pregnant with meaning.  If we could only see as the heavenly host do, we would see that every thing is magnified beyond our dim apprehension.  When we see a mother on the street with her baby, we may feel gratified to see her motherhood, but imagine the delight that our Lord takes when she loves as a mother should.  When we go hiking in the woods we may sing the Ave Maria or Gloria, and feel comfort even if it's poorly sung, but you would be shocked if you knew how delighted our blessed forbears are in observing such simple acts by their progeny. Finally, a man just beginning this ministry may feel that his time has been in vain if he doesn't have any meaningful encounters with passers-by, but what is the view of Heaven?  Is he a fool for walking the streets like that?  Are his prayers and sacrifices wasted?  No, he's a faithful son who should trust in divine providence, and know that the gentle gaze of Heaven follows his very step.

Mary, Angels and Human Sin, Part Two

In the last post I considered some painful truths of our faith, but it is better to grapple with them and internalize them now rather than wait till death and finally see our sins as God sees them.  Despite our obstinacy and self-conceit, God has an unimaginable love for us, and a wish to pour his mercy upon us.  In fact, his mercy is super-abundant precisely because he knows our weakness and that the deck is stacked against us.  If we didn't have an uphill climb due to the weakening effects of original sin, the manipulations of demons and the lures of a disordered world then God's mercy would not be so great.  Just ask the demons, who did not have the refuge of God's mercy once their powerful angelic nature preferred rebellion and evil.

God's love and mercy is our source of hope, but there is yet another reason for joy.  God's providence so governs the world that He brings about his kingdom even in the midst of our weakness.  Two years ago I was walking through my hard-scrabble neighborhood, and I apologized to my guardian angels for having to accompany me day-by-day as I give in to sloth, gluttony and a spirit of judgment.  I've often repeated that refrain in the past, but this time the angels answered! In a tone of gentle correction, they said, "Oh no!  There's nowhere we'd rather be!"  Then I felt their deep delight and joyful zeal in serving as my guide.  I was floored.  It was a wonder: how could they have such delight in accompanying me, and in this neighborhood?!?  There's a lesson there.  Weakness and evil do not have the last word.  While it is a mark of the blessed to have sorrow for sin, there are also greater things at work.  The angels see the workings of grace that are all around us while we only see scattered fragments.  Angels haven't seen the whole story of the future, but they have seen God's perfect plan unfold in countless eras and across countless cultures.  They see how God has his hands on all things, and if we could only see it we would marvel at God's wisdom and perfection.  Blessed be the Lord!

Mary, Angels and Human Sin, Part One

When I first began the ministry I would come home to my wife and share my sorrow over the state of the streets.  A street looks different close-up, especially when in the attitude of prayer.  There are the condom wrappers, drug paraphernalia, endless cigarette butts and graffiti, and then the advertisements that offer an easy paradise if you just buy the right product.  As I'd pass the strip clubs and sex shops I'd pray with greater fervor, and when I'd pass bars and pubs I'd marvel that they had so many customers when many of our masses and adoration chapels are poorly attended.  I would even recoil sometimes at the shabby smell or clothes or red sores of some of the people I would meet, but I soon found those things endearing since Christ yearned to dress them and bind up their wounds.  Nevertheless, I wasn't surprised when I read that it was difficult for the Blessed Virgin Mary to visit Massabielle in Lourdes.

St. Bernadette Soubirous

According to St. Bernadette Soubirous, it was a sacrifice for the Blessed Virgin to visit amidst the throng of crowds, and she would always look with sorrow and distress when she would look over little Bernadette's shoulder into the crowds. Presumably she saw their poor spiritual state, and the muddied state of their soul was a dismal contrast with the glory and perfection of heaven.  The ugliness of our sins is not a fashionable thing to reflect upon, but it only takes a moment to confirm the truth.  One need only take a close look at the crucifix: it is our sin in the bruises and gashes that cover our Lord.  Or one could read the mystics on purgatory, and consider the soul's painful journey after death to reflect the pure love of our Lord.

A few years ago our Lord twice poured his love into me, and I rejected it, "vomited it" back up after a brief moment.  The point was to show me how little room I had in my heart for divine love.  We are often very shallow vessels. Once while exiting the church after confession at The Grotto (the Shrine of or Lady of Sorrows in Portland), God gave me an interior vision of the state of my soul prior to confession.  Needless to say, it was a shock.  My soul appeared like a ship that had become unrecognizable because it had been out to sea for too long.  It had become an oblong mass that was discolored with rust and brine and covered with barnacles.  I was too long from the harbor, and after that I dedicated myself to daily mass and frequent confession.

So what is one to make of the sorry state of our own sins, how little divine love we can bear in our hearts?  Or even the sins of our communities or Holy Mother Church?  Do we give in to despair, doubt our divine inheritance or forsake the "narrow way" as unrealistic?  By no means!  To be continued in the next post...

Two Kinds of Love Built Two Cities

"For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance of life to life." Corinthians 2:2

This scripture verse was recently featured in the Office of Readings for the Liturgy of the Hours (the daily prayer of the Church), and reminded me of a remarkable aspect of this ministry.  There is something about this street ministry that prompts a reaction--whether for good or evil--from passerbys.  Perhaps the "fragrance" of Christ comes forth in the public witness to the faith, or in the image of a heart with a crucifix emerging from it or even in a peaceful, prayerful presence. In any event, "all hearts are revealed", or some anyway, and what is revealed can be a pleasant or sorrowful surprise.

There have been many small acts of kindness, the "fragrance of life" that bring us to Christ, the source of life itself.  On both very cold and very hot days, I've had tired mothers stop to kindly urge me to wear a coat or a lighter tunic as they wrangle their children at the bus stop.  A simple thing for sure, but their eyes said more than their words.  On another occasion a tavern-goer at Pappy's on 82nd harmlessly teased me asking, "Which of the twelve apostles are you?"  But his ex-convict friend couldn't bear the teasing, and intervened, "You can't say that!  Shhh, what are you saying?!"  The gruff, tattooed ex-con had zeal for the Lord's house, and wouldn't brook even the smallest slight.  Nowadays the tavern-goer sings gospels tunes as I pass and we have a good laugh.  On another evening a young man in a souped-up Honda Civic with an over-sized muffler waited at a stop-light alongside of me.  He fidgeted with his smart phone and rocked back and forth to the pounding beat of his stereo.  Then he noticed me praying next to him and turned off the stereo.  When the light changed to green he sped off and turned the music back up again once he crossed the intersection.  I was surprised and touched by his little gesture of respect.  Now there have also been many little acts of malice, and often from unexpected quarters, but they are not worth dwelling upon.

So what does it all add up to?  Everything we do either builds up the kingdom of God or the kingdom of Satan.  Or as St. Augustine wrote of it, there are two cities that were built by two loves: the love of self even to the contempt of God, and the love of God and neighbor that loves even to the contempt of self.  Our small acts often reveal what city we belong to.  Often times we seem to pass from one city to the other as we struggle to "run the race".  Some seem to be squarely in the wrong city, as I once was.  But even if we set many bricks building the wrong city, Christ loves and seeks after the poor sinner--though ultimately the choice is ours.  As Christ once asked me several years ago, "How much do you love me?"  We answer that question with our lives, and it can either be a glorious affirmation or a sorrowful indictment.

The Tower of Babel, a city built by self-love

Suicide, Spiritual Combat & Grace

Over the years I've known about a dozen people who have struggled with thoughts of suicide.  Perhaps I have unusual friends, or more likely, I live as an open book and so others then reciprocate with an openness of their own.  Two teenagers I grew up with and admired for different reasons, Shad D. and Kristi G., each took their own life almost twenty five years ago.  They are not forgotten.  I keep them in my prayers and I ask you to take a moment and commend them to our Lord.

There is always an element of spiritual warfare when a person is haunted by thoughts of suicide, and that warfare is especially fierce when a person is living outside of the friendship of God.  When I was in the midst of a black depression ten years ago, I always found it strange that I would get a sudden urge to crash my car into a highway overpass.  It was as though my mind would see the broad concrete pillar like a lovely bullseye, and then there would be a suggestion to just do it.  It was strange because I had no desire or intention of killing myself.  This went on for many months as I drove between Detroit and Ann Arbor.  Then after my conversion--about two years after my depression ended--I finally understood.

One night I tucked my friend Stacey into her bed at about 8pm, and headed downstairs to pray the rosary for her.  Stacey always went to bed early since she began drinking glass after glass of La Crema chardonnay starting around 4pm.  Aside from her alcoholism, Stacey had begun to despair of life.  Her husband had committed suicide two years before, her ex-husband now had custody of their children, and she was now losing her fashionable Bloomfield Hills home to foreclosure.  She was still stunning and fit, but she wasn't the local TV celebrity that she had been ten years before.  I settled on a couch in her living room and took out my beads to say a long, slow rosary.  The living room was situated on the ground floor, but was carved out of both floors of the house, and so the ceiling concluded with magnificent wooden rafters.  As I began the rosary my eyes naturally drifted up to the ceiling beams as they were reminiscent of an old church.  Then I saw in the rafters the form of large black vultures with angular heads and humanoid bodies.  Sixty demons had taken on this deathly form and were comfortably roosted in the poor woman's house as she slept.  They waited patiently, confident in their kill.  Occasionally they would shuffle back and forth, and once in a while one would leave or another would arrive, but they had made the place their home and there was nothing to drive them from it.  Stacey had neither faith nor icons or crucifixes mixed about the home, and my prayers were as weak as my will towards beautiful women.  It was then that I understood the true nature of demons.  They have no mercy and give no quarter.  They are simply predators who watch poor sinners as a vulture watches a horse stumbling through the desert.  When the horse falls the claws come out and they revel in the carnage.

That was seven years ago.  All of these memories have come back to me as I spend time with another friend who is struggling with suicide.  Like Stacey, he has struggled with alcohol and sought comfort in a steady tide of sexual relationships.  He thought that the suicidal thoughts would end once he sobered up, but he has been dry for over a year and the thoughts have returned with a vengeance.  He often thinks about using his .357 magnum around 2 am.  He no longer has any answers.  In a strained, halting voice I told him about demons, and without using the word, I talked about hell, and the terrible thought of spending eternity with them.  I think he believed me.  I told him to come over to my house at any time or hour if he needed to talk.  I gave him a Bible and marked the Gospel of John with a St. John Paul II rosary.  He's proud of his Polish heritage, but like a lot of Polish Catholics from Chicago, he lost the faith somewhere in the 70s and 80s.  I also gave him a copy of my conversion story, and much to my dismay, he read my story before he turned to the Gospels.  A few days later I stumbled out of bed and went directly over to his house where he was working outside.  He said that something strange and inexplicable had happened at work.  He then told me the story and how for the first time in his life he recognized God's hand on him and in the world.  He began crying.  I was reminded again that our Lord will run eagerly to meet poor sinners if only they would glance in His direction.  Blessed be the Lord, for His mercy endures forever.  My friend has a long and bumpy road ahead of him.  Please keep him and all of those tempted to suicide in your prayers.