Author: DVO

Some years ago, at a workshop, a woman came up to me during the break and articulated this in these words: “God loves me unconditionally. I know that’s true, but I how can I make myself believe it? I simply can’t!” She could have been speaking for half of the human race. We know we are loved by God, we can say the words, but how do we make ourselves believe that? Why? Why is that so difficult to believe? For many reasons, though mostly because we rarely, if ever, experience unconditional love. Mostly, we experience love with conditions, even from those closest to us: Our parents love us better when we do not mess up. Our teachers love us better when we behave and perform well. Our churches love us better when we do not sin. Friends love us better when we are successful and not needy. The world loves us better when we are attractive. Our spouses love us better when we do not disappoint them. Mostly, in this world, we have to measure up in some way to be loved. Beyond even this, all of us have been cursed and shamed in our enthusiasm by the countless times someone, either through words or through a hateful or judgmental glace, in effect said to us: Who do you think you are? We wither under that and become the walking wounded, unable to believe that we are loved and loveable. So, even when we know that God loves us, how can we make ourselves believe it? There are no easy answers. For a wounded soul, like for a wounded body, there are no magic wands for quick easy healings. The image that we must connect to is our true self-image, the deep truth that we are unconditionally loved by God. In great mythical literature, we see that, usually, before the great wedding where the young prince and the young princess are to be married so as to live happily ever after, there first has to be an execution: the wicked older brothers and the wicked stepsisters have to be killed off. Why? Because they would eventually come and spoil the wedding. Who are those wicked older brothers and wicked stepsisters? They are the inner voices from our past that can, at any given moment, ruin our wedding or our self-image by dragging in our past humiliations. To actually believe that we are unconditionally loved, we first have to kill a few of the false images we hold onto in life.[1]

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[1] Excerpt from Fr. Ron Rolheiser’s reflection, “Our Struggle in Faith – Between Knowing It Is True and Believing it!,” March 2009.

We all have a gut feeling that our actions, good and bad, have consequences that come back to either bless or haunt us. It’s an innate aspect of our humanity. “The air you breathe into the universe is the air that it will breathe back, and if your energy is right, it will renew itself even as you give it away” Mary Jo Leddy. Jesus, for instance, puts it this way: Jesus says: “The measure you measure out is the measure you will be given.” Put another way, “The air you breathe out is the air you will re-inhale.” If that’s true, and it is, it explains a lot of things. Why are we inhaling so much bitter air? Perhaps it has to do with the air we’re breathing out. What are we breathing out? Of course, we would like to think that we’re breathing out the air of gratitude, generosity, forgiveness, honesty, blessing, self-effacement, joy, and delight. We’d also like to believe that we are breathing out the air of concern for the poor, the suffering, the unattractive, the bothersome. And, we’d like to believe too that we’re big-hearted people, breathing out understanding and reconciliation. It would be so lovely if it were so. We are blind to what’s really going on inside us and are unconsciously breathing out the air of arrogance, self-interest, pettiness, jealousy, competition, fear, paranoia, dishonesty, interest in others only when it’s convenient, and are emitting signals that others are a threat to us as we seek attention and popularity, and jostle with them for sexual, financial, and professional position. The real air we’re breathing out is fraught with self-interest, jealousy, competitiveness, pettiness, fear, and less-than-full honesty. In subtle and not-so-subtle ways, we’re saying to each other: “I’m brighter and more successful than you.” “I’m better looking than you.” “I’ve had more life experience than you.” “I’m sophisticated beyond your naivete.” “I hate you for your good looks and good luck, none of which you deserve.” “I really don’t like you, but I’ll be nice to you until I find a way to free myself of this relationship that circumstance has dictated.” We would never admit that we feel these things, but too often, that’s the air we’re breathing out. The measure we’re measuring out is the measure that we’re receiving. So our solution is to be the big of heart, who breathes out what’s large and honest and full of blessing. The world will return a hundredfold in kind, honesty and blessing that swells the heart even more. But the converse is the miserly of a heart and dishonesty of spirit, that the world will give back too in kind: pettiness and lies that shrink the heart still further. That’s the deep mystery at the center of the universe: The air we breathe out into the world is the air we will re-inhale.[1]

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[1] Excerpt from Fr. Ron Rolheiser’s reflection, “The Law of Karma,” February 2004.

We can learn a lesson from how Jesus dealt with those who betrayed him. Peter was an honest man with a childlike sincerity and a deep faith, and he, more than most others, grasped the deeper meaning of who Jesus was and what his teaching meant. Indeed, it was he who in response to Jesus’ question (Who do you say I am?) replied, “You are the Christ, the son of the Living God.” Yet minutes after that confession Jesus had to correct Peter’s false conception of what that meant and then rebuke him for trying to deflect him from his very mission. More seriously, it was Peter who, within hours of an arrogant boast that though all others would betray Jesus, he alone would remain faithful, betrayed Jesus three times, and this in Jesus’ most needy hour. What does Jesus do with Peter? He doesn’t ask for an explanation, doesn’t ask for an apology, doesn’t tell Peter that it is okay, doesn’t offer excuses for Peter, and doesn’t even tell Peter that he loves him. Instead, he asks Peter: “Do you love me?” Peter answers yes – and everything moves forward from there. Everything can move forward following a confession of love, not least an honest confession of love in the wake of a betrayal. What love asks of us when we are weak is an honest, non-rationalized, admission of our weakness along with a statement from the heart: “I love you!” Things can move forward from there. The past and our betrayal are not expunged nor excused, but in love, we can live beyond them. To expunge, excuse, or rationalize is to not live in the truth; it is unfair to the one betrayed since he or she bears the consequences and scars. Only love can move us beyond weakness and betrayal. We don’t move forward in a relationship by telling either God or someone we have hurt: “You have to understand! In that situation, what else was I to do too? I didn’t mean to hurt you, I was just too weak to resist!” That’s neither helpful nor called for. Things move forward when we, without excuses, admit weakness and apologize for betrayal. Like Peter, when asked three times by Jesus: “Do you love me?” from our hearts, we need to say: “You know everything, you know that I love you.”[1]

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[1] Excerpt from Fr. Ron Rolheiser’s reflection, “Moving Beyond Mistakes and Weaknesses,” September 2020.

When Jesus talks about gaining the whole world and suffering the loss of your own soul, he isn’t first of all referring to having a bad moral life, dying in sin, and going to hell. That’s the more radical warning in his message. We can lose our soul in other ways, even while we are good, dedicated, moral people. The man whose story I just shared is indeed a very good, dedicated, moral, and kind man. But he is, by his own humble admission, struggling to be a soulful person, to be more inside the richness of his own life because when you live under constant pressure and are perennially forced to hurry, it isn’t easy to get up in the morning and say: “This is the day that the Lord has made, let us be glad and rejoice in it.” We are more likely to say: “Lord, just get me through this day!” As well, when Jesus tells us that it’s difficult for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, he isn’t just referring to material riches, money, and affluence, though these are contained in the warning. The problem can also be a rich agenda, a job, or a passion that so consumes us that we rarely take the time (or even think of taking the time) to enjoy the beauty of a sunset or the fact that we are healthy and have the privilege of having a rich agenda. During all my years in ministry, I have always been blessed with a rich agenda, important work, work that I love. But, when I’m honest, I need to admit that during these years, I have been too hurried and over-pressured to watch many sunsets. Today I am in solitude because at this moment it is enough to be, in an ordinary human mode, with one’s hunger and sleep, one’s cold and warmth, rising and going to bed. Putting on blankets and taking them off, making coffee, and then drinking it. Defrosting the refrigerator, reading, meditating, working, praying. I live as my ancestors lived on this earth until eventually I die. Amen. There is no need to make an assertion about my life, especially so about it as mine…I must learn to live so as to forget program and artifice. And to check out the sunset from my balcony! When we are rich, busy, pressured, and preoccupied, it’s hard to taste one’s own coffee. Just slow down and breathe – take time to soak in the divinity surrounding us all.[1]

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[1] Excerpt from Fr. Ron Rolheiser’s refection, “Being Rich, But In A Hurry,” September 2024.

Have you ever had to wait in line to get into a building, have your bags checked, or hope that the car lane that was closed in front of you would open back up? We all have had an experience like this, and what I find interesting is its relation to our reflection verse, which is the nature of generosity and how we use it versus how God uses it. Suppose after waiting for a substantial period of time, and just as you are getting closer to the opening that will allow you to finally proceed, someone comes along and opens another lane, but for people who have just arrived. You still got your turn, but something inside of you feels slighted and a little angry as you internally say to yourself: “That wasn’t fair! I’ve been waiting for forty minutes, and they got through this mess at the same time as I did!” You had been patiently waiting, but those who arrived later didn’t have to wait at all. While you intellectually know that you hadn’t been treated unfairly, you still were bothered that someone had been more fortunate than you had been. Fr. Ron Rolheiser, writing about a similar experience, noted that these types of encounters in life teach us something beyond the fact that our hearts aren’t always huge and generous. He went on to say, “It helped me understand something about Jesus’ parable concerning the workers who came at the 11th hour and received the same wages as those who’d worked all day and what is meant by the challenge that is given to those who grumbled about the unfairness of this. ‘Are you envious because I’m generous? Are we jealous because God is generous? Does it bother us when others are given unmerited gifts and forgiveness?’ You bet! Ultimately, that sense of injustice, of envy that someone else caught a break is a huge stumbling block to our happiness. Why? Because something in us reacts negatively when it seems that life is not making others pay the same dues as we are paying. The desire for strict justice blocks our capacity for forgiveness and thereby prevents us from entering heaven, where God, like the Father of the Prodigal Son, embraces and forgives without demanding a pound of flesh for a pound of sin. We know we need God’s mercy, but if grace is true for us, it has to be true for everyone; if forgiveness is given to us, it must be given to everybody; and if God does not avenge our misdeeds, God must not avenge the misdeeds of others either. Such is the logic of grace, and such is the love of the God to whom we must attune ourselves. Happiness is not about vengeance, but about forgiveness; not about vindication, but about unmerited embrace; and not about capital punishment, but about living beyond even murder.” God leaves us free. So whenever someone gets something we don’t think they deserve, we must accept that we’re still a long way from understanding and accepting the kingdom of God.

In the Gospels, we see Jesus perform several healings. He heals lame people, deaf people, mute people, people with leprosy, and two women who for different reasons are unable to become pregnant. What’s important to see in these various miracles is that, almost always, there’s more at issue than mere physical healing. Jesus is healing people in a deeper way, that is, he is healing the lame so that they can walk in freedom and in service of God. He is healing the deaf so that they can hear the Good News. He is healing the mute so that they can open their mouths in praise. He is healing those who are hemorrhaging internally so that they can bring new life to birth. We see this most clearly at those times when Jesus heals people who are blind.  He’s giving them more than just physical sight; he’s opening their eyes so that they can see more deeply. But that’s only an image. How might it be unpackaged? How can the grace and teachings of Jesus help us to see in a deeper way? G.K. Chesterton once affirmed that familiarity is the greatest of all illusions and that the secret to life is to learn to look at things familiar until they look unfamiliar again. We open our eyes to depth when we open ourselves to wonder. By shifting our eyes from seeing through paranoia and self-protection to seeing through metanoia and nurture. By shifting our eyes from seeing through jealousy to seeing through admiration. By shifting our eyes from seeing through bitterness to seeing through eyes purified and softened by grief. By shifting our eyes from seeing through relevance to seeing through contemplation. By shifting our eyes from seeing through anger to seeing through forgiveness. By shifting our eyes from seeing through longing and hunger to seeing through gratitude. Longing and hunger distort our vision. Gratitude restores it. It enables insight. The most grateful person you know has the best eyesight of all the people you know.[1]

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[1] Excerpt from Fr. Ron Rolheiser’s reflection “Seeing in a Deeper Way,” March 2015.

The movie Noah is best interpreted, I think, as a modern cinematic midrash on the Biblical tale.  The midrashim—extremely popular in ancient Israel—were imaginative elaborations of the often-spare Scriptural narratives.  They typically explored the psychological motivations of the major players in the stories and added creative plot lines, new characters, etc.  In the midrashic manner, Darren Aronofsky’s film presents any number of extra-Biblical elements, including a conversation between Noah and his grandfather Methuselah, an army of angry men eager to force their way onto the ark, a kind of incense that lulls the animals to sleep on the ship, and most famously (or infamously), a race of fallen angels who have become incarnate as stone monsters.  These latter characters are not really as fantastic or arbitrary as they might seem at first blush.  Genesis tells us that the Noah story unfolds during the time of the Nephilim, a term that literally means “the fallen” and that is usually rendered as “giants.”  Moreover, in the extra-Biblical book of Enoch, the Nephilimare called “the watchers,” a usage reflected in the great hymn “Ye Watchers and Ye Holy Ones.”  In Aronofsky’s “Noah,” the stone giants are referred to by the same name.
What is most important is that this contemporary midrash successfully articulates the characteristically Biblical logic of the story of Noah.  First, it speaks unambiguously of God:  every major character refers to “the Creator.”  Secondly, this Creator God is not presented as a distant force, nor is he blandly identified with Nature.  Rather, he is personal, active, provident, and intimately involved in the affairs of the world that he has made.  Thirdly, human beings are portrayed as fallen with their sin producing much of the suffering in the world.  Genesis itself remains pretty down on the way human beings operate—read the stories of Cain and Abel and the Tower of Babel for the details.  And “Noah’s” portrayal of the rape of nature caused by industrialization is nowhere near as vivid as Tolkien’s portrayal of the same theme in “The Lord of the Rings.”  Fourthly, the hero of the film consistently eschews his own comfort and personal inclination and seeks to know and follow the will of God.  At the emotional climax of the movie, Noah moves to kill his own granddaughters, convinced that it is God’s will that the human race be obliterated, but he relents when it becomes clear to him that God, in fact, wills for humanity to be renewed.  What is significant is that Noah remains utterly focused throughout, not on his own freedom, but on the desire and purpose of God.  God, creation, providence, sin, obedience, salvation.
There is a minor scene in the film that depicts some members of Noah’s family administering sleep-inducing smoke to the animals.  They look, for all the world, like priests swinging thuribles of incense around a cathedral.  I’m quite sure that this was far from the mind of the filmmakers, but it suggested to me the strong patristic theme that Noah’s Ark is symbolic of the Church.  During a time of moral and spiritual chaos, when the primal watery chaos out of which God created the world returned with a vengeance, the Creator sent a rescue operation, a great boat on which a microcosm of God’s good order would be preserved.  For the Church Fathers, this is precisely the purpose and meaning of the Church:  to be a safe haven where, in the midst of a sinful world, God’s word is proclaimed, where God is properly worshipped, and where a rightly ordered humanity lives in justice and non-violence.  Just as Noah’s Ark carried the seeds of a new creation, so the Church is meant to let out the life that it preserves for the renewal of the world.[1]

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[1] Bishop Robert Barron review of the film “Noah,” April 2024.

Spiritual writers have always told us that we are either growing or regressing, never neutral. This means that we are either praising someone or demanding we be praised, offering gratitude or muttering in bitterness, blessing or cursing, turning attention away from ourselves or demanding it be focused on us, expressing admiration or demanding it, praying a doxology or doing violence. We are always doing one or the other and it’s only by deflecting attention away from ourselves, which is what we do in essence when we give glory to God, that we save ourselves from egoism, jealousy, bitterness, greed, and violence. It’s no accident that when good art depicts someone as being martyred, it always depicts the victim’s eyes as turned upwards, towards heaven, while the eyes of those who are doing the killing or watching it are turned in other directions, never upward. A good artist knows that if we don’t have our eyes turned heavenward we are involved somehow in violence. The main reason our faith asks us to constantly render glory to God is that the more we praise the less we slander, gossip, or pass judgement. Offering praise to God, and others, is what saves us from bitterness and violence. When St. Paul begins his Epistles, he usually does so in a rapture of praise: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ from whose great mercy we all drink!” That isn’t a throwaway opening, it’s a key part of the main lesson: Only by praising something beyond ourselves do we save ourselves from bitterness. All the great spiritual writers do the same: They won’t write for long, no matter how bitter or difficult the topic, before they insert some kind of doxology: “Glory be to the Father, the Son, and Holy Spirit”. They know a deep secret: Only praise saves us from bitterness and only by blessing others do we save ourselves from cursing them.[1]

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[1] Excerpt from Fr. Ron Rolheiser’s reflection, “The Value of Praying A Doxology” October 2003.

Luke’s Sermon on the Plain emphasizes a strong focus on social justice and caring for the marginalized, with Jesus directly addressing the poor and hungry, declaring their “blessedness” and highlighting the need to actively love and serve those on the fringes of society, rather than just focusing on personal spiritual practices alone; essentially, it’s a call to action for tangible change in the world, not just inward reflection. Fr. Ron Rolheiser writes that in the past, because we knew less, it was possible to be good and saintly and less involved in social justice, despite the fact that scripture and Christ’s explicit teaching make the call to justice just as non-negotiable as the call to prayer and private morality. Today we know more, not just because modern communications daily shows us the victims of injustice on our television screens and in our newspapers, but also, and especially, because we are less sociologically naive. Put positively, this lack of naivete means that we understand better how social systems affect us, both for good and for bad … and social justice is really about how systems affect us, especially adversely. It is very important that this be understood. Although they interpenetrate each other and depend upon each other, social justice and social morality are distinct from private charity and private morality. Private morality is something that, precisely, I do on my own. Other persons might guide me or inspire me, but, in the end, I am moral and charitable at this level on the basis of my own personal goodness and personal actions. Social justice, on the other hand, has to do with the social systems I am part of and participate in. I can be a good person in my private life, churchgoing, prayerful, kind, honest, gentle, and generous in my dealings with others, and still, at the same time, be part of a social, economic, political, and even ecclesial system that is unfair in that it works for the benefit of some at the cost of victimizing others. Issues such as war, poverty, violation of the ecology, feminism, native rights, abortion, and racism (to name just a few) are caused not just, nor indeed any longer primarily, by individual persons acting in bad conscience and doing bad things, but by huge impersonal systems which are inherently unfair and are, to an extent, beyond the control of the individuals who participate in them.

Jesus, for most of his ministry, used words. Through words, he tried to bring us God’s consolation, challenge, and strength. His words, like all words, had a certain power. Indeed, his words stirred hearts, healed people, and affected conversions. But at a time, powerful though they were, they too became inadequate. Something more was needed. So, on the night before he death, having exhausted what he could do with words, Jesus went beyond them. He gave us the Eucharist, his physical embrace, his kiss, a ritual within which he holds us to his heart. That is the best understanding of the Eucharist. I took long courses on the Eucharist during my undergraduate and graduate theological training. In the end, these didn’t explain the Eucharist to me, not because they weren’t good, but because the Eucharist, like a kiss, needs no explanation and has no explanation. If anyone were to write a four-hundred-page book entitled “The Metaphysics of a Kiss,” it would not deserve a readership. Kisses work. Their inner dynamics need no metaphysical elaboration. The Eucharist is God’s kiss. In a remarkable little essay entitled, In Praise of Skin, Brenda Peterson describes how she once was inflicted by a skin rash that no medicine could effectively soothe. She tried every kind of doctor and medicine to no avail. Finally, she turned to her grandmother, remembering how, as a little girl, her grandmother used to massage her skin whenever she had rashes, bruises, or was otherwise ill. The ancient remedy worked again. Her grandmother massaged her skin, over and over again, and the rash that seemingly couldn’t be eradicated disappeared. Skin needs to be touched. This is what happens in the Eucharist and that is why the Eucharist, and every other Christian sacrament, always has some very tangible physical element to it – a laying on of hands, a consuming of bread and wine, an immersion into water, an anointing with oil. An embrace needs to be physical, not only something imagined. When words aren’t enough. God has to pick us up, like a mother her child. Physical embrace is what’s needed. Skin needs to be touched. God knows that. It’s why Jesus gave us the Eucharist.[1]

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[1] Excerpt from Ron Rolheiser’s reflection, “The Eucharist as God’s Physical Embrace”, May 2006.