VLAD SINGS THE BLUES

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Letters of hope and consolation # 23

Between us and God there is always what I like to call an “unfair exchange.” On even your best days you simply cannot give God even half of what he continually gives you.

On the day of your baptism what did you bring to God? You arrived at the baptismal font with a frail and scattered humanity, while in return God welcomed you into his family as an adopted child and from that day until now he has dwelt in the depths of your soul. Every time when you approach him in the sacrament of confession what do you bring to God? You come with your sinfulness, your brokenness and all the things you most likely do not want other people to know. In return for those things God gives you love, mercy and forgiveness. Every time you approach him in the Eucharist you are there with such a variety of experiences; joy, fear, hope, sadness, heartache, etc and yet God always gives you his body, blood, soul and divinity. No exceptions!

Does the fact that there is little you can do for God overwhelm you? On the contrary this knowledge should fill you with joy and leave you marveling at the generosity and love of God who always pours himself out abundantly for you. Don’t try to figure it out, don’t try and convince yourself that you do or do not deserve it, simply receive it into the depths of your being and take great delight in the strange yet beautiful ways that God chooses to work in your life.

God bless you,
Fr. Jeremiah Myriam Shryock, CFR
Sacred Heart of Jesus Friary
Fort Worth, TX
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Lessons in Evangelization

If the sun were to rise shooting his rays only directly upward like a spot light, it would profit us nothing save a few stars we would surely not be alive to see. Instead the sun is good and reasonable to radiate his light like an iron stove does its heat casting itself on all things on all sides at all times. And why should we, in the radiation of our light, be so stingy?

Yet note how even the sun may not directly illumine the backside of a mountain, the crevice of a ravine or the depths of the cave. And see also how with patience he radiates himself constantly until the earth's spinning makes the mountain's opposing face and the ravine's sinking fissure ready to receive his steadfast light. Even the cave who will never know day will always have day at its doorstep as a constant witness to its warmth and light in an otherwise dark and cold reality. 

Evangelization is not the assertion of one's will over another's, nor is it the triumph of skillful argumentation or sarcastic banter. Evangelization is the uncompromising presence of the evident and attractive source of eternal life. That is all; nothing more. And may it never be anything less.

+ Br. Joseph Michael Fino, CFR
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From My Modern-Day Idols” (part 3 of 3)

Here are more thoughts of ‘good habits’ I might consider to begin cultivating:

Service: doing someone else’s chores (service starts at home!), silence (you bet! ;-), visiting someone who is sick, elderly or in prison; serving the poor at a soup kitchen, going on a mission trip, talking to a homeless person, helping a neighbor.

‘Humanity’: going for a walk or bike-ride, taking a well-deserved NAP, reading, exercising, taking a hot bath, gardening, taking a drive to somewhere beautiful, watching a sunset, doing absolutely nothing for awhile & just ‘being’ w/o ‘doing’.

Sacrifices: doing some activities you don’t like, getting up early to pray, holding your tongue, repenting/Confession, accepting your cross, rejoicing in adversity, fasting from foods or activities you like/are attached to, offering up extra prayers or sufferings for the pope, president, or those near death; praying for the Holy Souls.

Try to get to know yourself, Jesus & others better, since knowledge naturally leads to greater love for God & others: the ‘goal’ of Lent!

+Br. Philip Maria Allen, CFR

P.S. If ‘not drinking coffee’ or ‘getting too little sleep’ makes you terribly irritable to others, maybe you should be creative & try giving up something else for Lent! ;-). Whatever doesn’t lead to a deeper love/gratitude for God & others is not helpful, since fasting, prayer, almsgiving & sacrifices, etc., are simply a means to this end. It might be better to a pick a few things you can manage so you’ll stick to them!

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Resurrection Musings: Jesus and the Apostles

And what of Jesus?  What was his experience of the Resurrection?  Okay, it’s a question someone should wade into with more than just the theological floaties I wear. But let’s take a simple angle.  What we can affirm is this: he loved it.   In the Resurrection he is no phantom nor is he the man who lived before.  He can hold substance but he cannot be held bound by it.  He is the same; he is radically different.  He is living a new kind of existence.  A new way of being the world had never known.

By the sea they breakfasted and they laughed.  They marveled that he could laugh, and he was glad they did, for it was all very marvelous.  “Can you imagine,” he said to them, “can you just try to imagine what joy is mine in the resurrection?  Can you begin to comprehend how delighted I am to begin our new way of living?  I’ve come back for you—I said I would—because I wanted to be with you forever. Do you now understand? Are you yet believing?  I have come that you may have life; you have yet to truly know the life I give you.”

The Lord laughed.  He stood up on his feet, the sand pushing boastfully through their wounds.  His laughter rolled gladly from his gut.  Peter was hunched over, one hand held high shielding the rising sun, watching the silhouette of the Lord’s heaving torso and the mist of his breath meeting forcefully the salty air.  John, propelled by the pushing and stammering of his little heart, sprung up amid his own laughter clinging to Jesus and he felt like flying.  James, his brother, remained seated beside Peter at the charcoal fire chewing the meat of the fish and staring at the two men.  The meat was easy, and he used the bones to pluck it out from between his molars while he studied the man’s hands through which sunbeams passed as if they held the morning star.  He looked at Peter who was tearful and smiling, and to John, bouncing around with the One who rose from the dead, and he looked behind them both where the seagulls perched about his old fishing boat with its nets packed and taut, wedged into the  beach where he left it.  James put his hands to his knees and pushed himself up from his seat.  He stretched his back and flicked his toothpick to the wind.  “This is going to be very interesting,” he said and he said it again even softer as the seagulls circled out to sea around them.  And it was.  That is the one thing it would always be, fascinating.

+ Br. Joseph Michael Fino, CFR

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Letters of hope and consolation #22

Scripture gives us many interesting images of what union with God looks like. “Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose hope is the Lord. He is like a tree planted beside the water that stretches out its roots to the stream” (Jeremiah 17:7-8, emphasis added). In a very similar fashion the Psalmist writes that blessed are those for whom “the law of the Lord is their joy; God’s law they study day and night. They are like a tree planted near streams of water that yields its fruit in season” (Psalm 1:2-3, emphasis added). 

In both passages the biblical authors use water as an image that surrounds the soul that is united to God. Water is the source of life, wherever there is water there is life. What leads a soul to water is trust in the Lord and pondering his word. You can apply this to your spiritual life as well by saying that whenever you are trusting in the Lord and pondering his word you are surrounded by water, i.e. a place where life, in particular your life, can flourish and grow. Unfortunately the opposite is true. Wherever there is a lack of trust in God and an inordinate trust in oneself or other people and wherever there is a lack of reflection of God’s word a soul moves into a dry and barren desert. It is a land filled with doubt, insecurity and most importantly, no water. Hence, the command of the Lord is clear, stay near the water! Trust in God and ponder his word daily and your soul will never be thirsty.

God bless you,
Fr. Jeremiah Myriam Shryock, CFR

Sacred Heart of Jesus Friary
Fort Worth, TX
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Easter

What does it mean to say that “Jesus is risen?” A translation, perhaps adapted especially for non-believers could be, “hope exists.” 

Jesus, I Trust in You

If we look deeply beneath all of our disordered desires, our brokenness and our selfish concerns what we discover ultimately is the hope that there exists unconditional love. Not only that unconditional love exists but that it is eternal and does not end after this life. The Easter proclamation that “Jesus Christ is risen” fulfills this hope deep within us. 

In many of the Resurrection accounts in the New Testament those to whom Jesus appears to are often found afraid (Mt 28:5), amazed (Mk16:5), seized with trembling and bewilderment (Mk 16:8), terrified (Lk:24:5), downcast (Lk 24:17), near despair (Lk 24:21), weeping (Jn 20:15) and lacking in faith (20:25). After their encounter with the Risen Lord they are all transformed from within because the ultimate hope of their souls is confirmed. Unconditional love exists and has blasted through space and time and is available to us for all eternity. How can one not be overwhelmed with joy at such good news?

God bless you,
Fr. Jeremiah Myriam Shryock, CFR

Sacred Heart Friary
Ft. Worth, TX
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Resurrection Musings: Christ’s Return

It’s a unique experience to live with Jesus. As friars our friaries (yes, that’s really what they’re called) all carry a chapel, and our chapels, of course, all house a tabernacle: this is where Jesus is present in the Eucharist always. In a real and mysterious way—a really mysterious way at that—we live under the same roof as the Lord. After having that experience for days and weeks and months and years, I’ve found that if I’m away for some time, I do miss Him very much. In fact, I’ve come to say that “home is where the tabernacle is” because Jesus is home. 

Yet, there comes a dreadful time every year when Jesus leaves. We are left alone in a friary with an empty chapel—with no Jesus. After Mass on Holy Thursday through Good Friday all the way until the evening of Holy Saturday, the chapel is stark, empty and easily avoided. Of course, it’s not without reason that we do this, and not just us but all Catholic Churches around the world; we enter into that severe, barren time in the history of the world when Jesus died. And this is the fruit: love—clinging-to-his-flesh and kissing-his-wounds kind of love of the resurrection! One year I was so overcome by joy and gratitude that I could hardly sit still in the chapel and I kept penning little reflections conveying this moment, a moment that history felt once and continues to feel like the happy waking from a recurring nightmare whenever one enters into the reality that death is more a beginning than an end. 

This is one such musing: 

To see you again, Jesus! I was without compass in your absence—no bearings, no hopes—restless and lonely. But you’re here now, and heaven is in reach; like an orphaned child, I am reaching. Lord, having you back in the tabernacle gives me reason to smile again. My heart quickens and I can laugh again. 

O mighty Resurrection, descend into my little heart that I may be transformed; a new creation, a new man alive with new life in a new way—living and new! 

Everything is different today, and I will never be the same again.

+ Br. Joseph Michael Fino, CFR
Most Blessed Sacrament Friary
Newark, NJ
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Holy Saturday

Your blood has finally dried upon your tired and mangled body. There is nothing left for you to give, you have been poured out to the point of death. It is finished. 

Pietà by Michelangelo, c. 1498

The beauty of your eyes has faded. The gentleness of your hands has been forgotten. The serenity of your smile has been extinguished. Could you still be our God? 

Who could have ever predicted it would end like this? Your passion has stolen all of our words. In you was all our joy, all our hope for life, and the answer to the question of our life. What you have revealed no man could ever fathom, you the eternal paradise, the place of infinite rapture . Now we wait like madmen, not knowing who we are, not knowing what will happen to us. Each second is an agonizing mystery and we die a thousand deaths reliving yesterdays nightmare. My God awake, come back and save us! Do not leave us in this wretched state of despair.

God bless you,
Fr. Jeremiah Myriam Shryock, CFR

Sacred Heart Friary
Ft. Worth, TX
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Good Friday

How can one adequately understand this day? It transcends our ability to comprehend. The absence of candles, holy water and the Eucharist in church sends a shock to our senses. He who is the “way, the truth and the life,” is gone. He has been betrayed, scourged, crowned with thorns and executed as if He was a criminal guilty of the most heinous crimes.

Tauberbischofsheimer Altar by Matthias Grünewald, c. 1523

Behold the love of God! A bruised and naked body, bloodied and gasping for air. He is an embarrassment to the crowds, a blasphemer to the Jews, a criminal to the Romans, yet to His mother and a few others He remains the savior of the world. 

Who then is this God? 

He is not the God we expect Him to be. He is quiet, docile, obedient and subject to human authority. We expect a God who is more like a warrior; instead we have a God who is a servant. We expect a God who would annihilate his enemies, yet He does not even fight back or say a word against them. It is only faith that can penetrate these depths. Our human intelligence stands before the Passion of Christ and humbly bows down in confusion.

God bless you,
Fr. Jeremiah Myriam Shryock, CFR

Sacred Heart Friary
Ft. Worth, TX
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