Daily Virtue

The Gospel from Luke this Sunday marks the day when Jesus took his inner circle — Peter, John and James — to a mountaintop, where he was transformed before their eyes. His clothes became dazzlingly white. He was accompanied by Moses and Elijah, and they were conversing about the days to come. The apostles were so awestruck they hardly knew what to say. Peter proposed that they build three booths there on the mountain, one for Jesus and the other two for his heavenly companions. At last an unmistakably divine voice proclaimed Jesus to be his Son: “This is my son, my chosen; listen to him!” In the early Church, the message of Jesus’ Transfiguration was seen as the last of the great milestones of our salvation. It brings completion, resolution and closure to the story. On Easter Jesus conquers death. On Pentecost he shares the Spirit. And with his Transfiguration he reveals a lasting and glorious dwelling for his people. These three moments correspond rather exactly to the three great feasts of the Jewish calendar: Passover, Pentecost and Sukkoth. The apostles see that Jesus is the fulfillment of the ancient law and the prophets. On the mountaintop, he is joined by Moses (the lawgiver) and Elijah (the prophet). And the three are speaking about Jesus’ “departure” — literally his exodus. Only much later would the apostles understand Jesus’ dying and rising as a prelude to his glorification, when he ascended to prepare a dwelling for them with his Father. That is the true end of the story, and it is the meaning of the feast, a day too little noticed in the lives of modern Christians. Yet this is our day, and we should celebrate in a big way. Why? Jesus has revealed something great to us. In these days of the Messiah we are invited to live with Jesus — in the company of Moses and Elijah and countless saints — in the everlasting “booth” of the Holy Spirit. It’s not just a long-ago moment we remember. It’s not just a day in the far-off future. It’s today.[1]

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[1] Excerpt from Fr. Ron Rolheiser’s reflection, “Transfiguration: The feast of Jesus’ glory — and ours” August 2015.

Jesus repeatedly enjoined his followers to “be compassionate as God is compassionate. ” Each time God appears in Scripture, the first words are “Do not be afraid.” If something frightens you, you can be sure it’s not from God. Fear of the Lord is healthy since it is more about reverence, and fear is more about that we might hurt God, not that God might hurt us.  Compassion is central to all authentic religions, it’s the penultimate invitation, since it’s the medium that takes us to our last invitation, which is union with God. In todays’ reading from Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus says, “Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect” – an impossibility for human beings in the Greek-rooted sense in which we understand perfection, meaning “without flaws.” But in Hebrew thought, perfection means compassion. Luke’s Gospel reflects this by saying, “Be compassionate as your heavenly Father is compassionate. Quoting Scripture scholar Dr. Walter Brueggemann, “Proper prayer and proper practice were seen as the essence of religion in Old Testament times until the prophets came and said, but God doesn’t care so much about all these rules; God cares about the poor. The quality of your faith will be judged by the quality of your justice; the quality of justice will be judged by the treatment of the three weakest groups – widows, orphans and strangers.” So in the end, there will be only one set of questions: “If you love me, you’ll keep my word; if you don’t keep my word, don’t pretend that you are loving me. Did you feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked, visit the prisoners?” Jesus said “God is in the poor,’” so what you’re doing to the poor, you’re doing to God. Jesus said “Let him who is without sin throw the first stone,” he wrote on the ground with his finger twice. Pope Francis was not the first to say, “Who am I to judge?” In John’s Gospel, Jesus says, “I judge no one.”  That doesn’t mean there isn’t any judgment; God doesn’t have to judge anybody; nobody is in hell because God sent them there. We judge ourselves; and God tells us to be very patient in judging others.[1]

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[1] Excerpt from Fr. Ron Rolheiser’s reflection, “Be Compassionate as God is Compassionate” December 2022.

It’s not easy in any given situation to tell what’s right and what’s wrong, and even more difficult to tell what’s sinful and what’s not. Intending no offense to how our churches and moral thinkers have classically approached moral questions, I believe there’s a better way to approach them that, more healthily, takes into account human freedom, human limitations, and the singular existential situation of every individual. The approach isn’t my own, but one voiced by the Prophet Isaiah who offers us this question from God: What kind of house can you build for me? (Isaiah 66, 1) That question should undergird our overall discipleship and all of our moral choices. Beyond a very elementary level, our moral decision-making should no longer by guided by the question of right or wrong, is this sinful or not?  Rather it should be guided and motivated by a higher question: What kind of house can you build for me? At what level do I want live out my humanity and my discipleship? Do I want to be more self-serving or more generous? Do I want to be petty or noble? Do I want to be self-pitying or big of heart? Do I want to live out my commitments in a fully honest fidelity or am I comfortable betraying others and myself in hidden ways? Do I want to be a saint or am I okay being mediocre? At a mature level of discipleship (and human maturity) the question is no longer, is this right wrong? That’s not love’s question. Love’s question is rather, how can I go deeper? At what level can I live out love, truth, light, and fidelity in my life? Beyond a very elementary level, our moral decision-making should no longer by guided by the question of right or wrong, is this sinful or not?  Rather it should be guided and motivated by a higher question: What kind of house can you build for me? At what level do I want live out my humanity and my discipleship? Do I want to be more self-serving or more generous? Do I want to be petty or noble? Do I want to be self-pitying or big of heart? Do I want to live out my commitments in a fully honest fidelity or am I comfortable betraying others and myself in hidden ways? Do I want to be a saint or am I okay being mediocre? What kind of house can I build for God? At a mature level of discipleship (and human maturity) the question is no longer, is this right wrong? That’s not love’s question. Love’s question is rather, how can I go deeper? At what level can I live out love, truth, light, and fidelity in my life? This, I believe, is the ideal way we should stand before the moral choices in our lives.[1]

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[1] Excerpt from Fr. Ron Rolheiser’s reflection, “What Kind of House Can You Build for Me?” October 2020.

In her autobiography, The Long Loneliness, Dorothy Day tells of a very difficult time in her life. She had just converted to Christianity after a long period of atheism and then given birth to her daughter. During her season of atheism, she had fallen in love with a man who had fathered her child, and she and this man, atheists disillusioned with mainstream society, had made a pact never to marry as a statement against the conventions of society. But her conversion to Christianity had turned that world upside down. The father of her child had given her an ultimatum; if she had their child baptized, he would end their relationship. Dorothy chose to baptize the child but paid a heavy price. She deeply loved this man and suffered greatly at their breakup. Moreover, given that her conversion took her out of all her former circles, it left her with more than a missing soul mate. It left her too without a job, without support for her child, and without her former purpose in life. She felt painfully alone and lost. And this drove her to her knees, literally. One day, she took a train to Washington, D.C., from New York and spent the day praying at the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. And, as she shares in her autobiography, her prayer that day was shamelessly direct, humble, and clear. Essentially, she told God, again and again, that she was lost, that she needed a clear direction for her life, and that she needed that direction now, not in some distant future. And, like Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, she prayed that prayer over and over again. She took a train home that evening and as she walked up to her apartment, a man, Peter Maurin, was sitting on the steps. He invited her to start the Catholic Worker. The rest is history. Our prayers aren’t always answered that swiftly and directly, but they are always answered, as Jesus assures us, because God does not withhold the Holy Spirit from those who ask for it. If we pray for guidance and support, it will be given us.[1]

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[1] Excerpt from Fr. Ron Rolheiser’s reflection, “Prayer as Seeking God’s Guidance,” December 2011.

One of our problems today is that we are trying to understand ourselves and our lives without the benefit of a theology of original sin. We would like to believe that we can be morally whole all by ourselves, that it is morbid to ever refer to oneself as “a wretch,” that a finished symphony can be had in this life (if only we are lucky enough or work hard enough at it), and that our efforts at changing the world need focus only on converting systems and never on purging personal fault. We would like to live our lives as if … as if selfishness and greed are simple learned behaviors; as if somewhere there are functional families, churches, and institutions, and our own are anomalies; and as if, in the end, we could save ourselves without God. This philosophy of life tries to convince us that we can adequately explain human nature and that there is sufficient reason to give ourselves away to the community in altruism without referencing a personal God and a theology of original sin. My parents had a good working theology of original sin. They weren’t so naive as to take the story of Adam and Eve and the apple literally, but they did believe that this story contained a profound, archetypal truth both about history and ourselves. What did they believe? They believed that because Adam and Eve “ate the apple” history and our lives are now marked by certain things. For them, because of this primordial event, whatever it was, individually and collectively, we find ourselves helpless to save ourselves; only grace from outside can help us. Second, because of this initial “fall,” none of us is as morally whole as we would like to think we are in our more inflated moments. Rather, if we are honest, we all know the truth of Paul’s lament in the Epistle to the Romans: “For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.” Finally, too, because of this primordial event, we live outside of the garden of Eden, in a world that is less than perfect, and we can never find in this life a full, consummated symphony but rather are “weeping in a valley of tears.” For my mum and dad, there was an adequate explanation for things: Adam and Eve “ate an apple”, whatever that meant, and since then, we have found ourselves outside of the garden of paradise, in a valley of tears, un-whole, grieving something long lost, deeply in need of both collective and personal healing, but still standing gratefully before a gracious, ultimate power, the saving grace of God. That makes more sense than anything else I’ve read lately.[1]

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[1] Excerpt from Fr. Ron Rolheiser’s reflection, “Needed: A Theology of Original Sin,” August 1999.

At the risk of being simplistic, I want to relate comments from a very old and wise priest I met during my doctoral studies. He says something about prayer in a very simple way. “Prayer isn’t easy because we’re always tired, distracted, busy, bored, and caught up in so many things that it’s hard to find the time and energy to center ourselves on God for some moments. So, this is what I do: No matter what my day is like, no matter what’s on my mind, no matter what my distractions and temptations are, I am faithful to this: Once a day I pray the Our Father as best I can from where I am at that moment. Inside of everything that’s going on inside me and around me that day, I pray the Our Father, asking God to hear me from inside of all the distractions and temptations that are besetting me. It’s the best I can do. Maybe it’s a bare minimum and I should do more and should try to concentrate harder, but at least I do that. And sometimes it’s all I can do, but I do it every day, as best I can. It’s the prayer Jesus told us to pray.” His words might sound simplistic and minimalistic. Indeed, the Catholic Church challenges us to make the Eucharist the center of our prayer lives and to make a daily habit of meditation and private prayer. As well, many classical spiritual writers tell us that we should set aside an hour every day for private prayer, and many contemporary spiritual writers challenge us to daily practice centering prayer or some other form of contemplative prayer. Well, none of this goes against what he so humbly shared. He would be the first to agree that the Eucharist should be the center of our prayer lives, and he would agree as well with both the classical spiritual writers who advise an hour of private prayer a day, and the contemporary authors who challenge us to do some form of contemplative prayer daily, or at least habitually. But he would say this: At one of those times in the day (ideally at the Eucharist or while praying the Office of the Church but at least sometime during your day), when you’re saying the Our Father, pray it with as much sincerity and focus as you can muster at the moment (“as best you can”) and know that, no matter your distractions at the moment, it’s what God is asking from you. And it’s enough.[1]

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[1] Excerpt from Fr. Ron Rolheiser’s reflection, “This is How You Pray When You Are Tired or Busy” May 2024.

In brief, as Christians, we are given a non-negotiable mandate to reach out to the poor with compassion and justice. Moreover, this mandate is just as non-negotiable as keeping the Ten Commandments, as is clear almost everywhere in Scripture. Here is the essence of that mandate:

• The great Jewish prophets coined this mantra: “The quality of your faith will be judged by the quality of justice in the land; and the quality of justice in the land will always be judged by how ‘widows, orphans, and strangers’ (biblical code for the weakest and most vulnerable groups in a society) are doing while you are alive.”
• Jesus not only ratifies this; he deepens it, identifying his very person with the poor.  (“Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me”). He tells us that we will be judged for eternal life on the basis of how we treated the poor.
• Moreover, in both Testaments in the Bible, this is particularly true regarding how we treat foreigners, strangers, and immigrants. How we treat them is how we are in fact treating Jesus.
• Note that Jesus defines his mission with these words: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.” Hence, any teaching, preaching, or government policy that is not good news for the poor may not cloak itself with either Jesus or the Gospel.
• All people are obliged to come to the relief of the poor.
• The condemnation of injustice is a non-negotiable aspect of our discipleship.
• In all situations where there is injustice, unfairness, oppression, grinding poverty, God is not neutral. Rather God wants action against everything and everyone who deals injustice and death.

These principles are so very strong that it is easy to believe that Jesus can’t really be asking this of us. Indeed, if taken seriously, these principles would radically disrupt our lives and the social order. It would no longer be business as usual. Whether or not this upsets our security and comfort, God is always on the underside of history, on the side of the poor.[1]

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[1] Excerpt from Fr. Ron Rolheiser’s reflection, “This is non-negotiable as a Christian: Help the poor, vulnerable” February 2025.

Cosmologists today tell us that the universe has no single center. Its center is everywhere, every place, every planet, every city, every species, and every person. But we already know this. Faith tells us that what ultimately defines us and gives us our identity and energy is the image and likeness of God in us. We are God’s blessed ones, masters of creation, special to God and special within creation. Deep down, whether we admit it or not, we each nurse the secret of being special. In our daily lives that often causes more heartaches than it solves. It is not easy to live out our blessed, special status when, most of the time, everything around us belies that we are special. But, while over-inflated egos do cause their share of heartaches, it is a still an unhealthy temptation to believe that we are not blessed simply because life finds us one-among-six-billion-others, struggling, and seemingly not special in any way. Faith tells the true story: We are, all of us, made in God’s image and likeness, blessed, and our private secret that we are special is in fact the deepest truth. I can be empty, have nothing, and still be God’s blessed one! Being blessed and special is not dependent upon how full or empty my life is at a given moment. I can be a big nobody and still be God’s blessed one. Blessedness doesn’t depend upon fame, on being a household name. Our blessedness is not predicated on having a VIP elevator, or on having any special privileges that set us apart from others. We are God’s blessed ones, even when we find ourselves riding the city buses. And it is good to remember, namely, that we are God’s special, blessed sons and daughters, even when we lives seem empty, anonymous, and devoid of any special privileges because then we won’t forever be putting God and our restless hearts to the test, demanding more than ordinary life can give us.[1]

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[1] Excerpt from Fr. Ron Rolheiser’s reflection, “Our Three Temptations,” July 2007.

I work and move within church circles and find that most of the people I meet there are honest, committed, and for the most part radiate their faith positively. Most church-goers aren’t hypocrites. What I do find disturbing within church circles though is that too many of us can be bitter, angry, mean-spirited, and judgmental, especially in terms of the very values that we hold most dear. It was Henri Nouwen who first highlighted this, commenting with sadness that many of the really angry, bitter, and ideologically-driven people he knew he had met inside of church circles and places of ministry.  Within church circles, it sometimes seems, everyone is angry about something.  Moreover, within church circles, it is all too easy to rationalize our anger in the name of prophecy, as a healthy passion for truth and morals. The logic works this way: Because I am sincerely concerned about an important moral, ecclesial, or justice issue, I can excuse a certain amount of neurosis, anger, elitism, and negative judgment, because I can rationalize that my cause, dogmatic or moral, is so important that it justifies my mean spirit: I need to be this angry and harsh because this is such an important truth! Don’t get me wrong: Truth is not relative, moral issues are important, and right truth and proper morals, like kingdoms under perpetual siege, need to be defended. Not all moral judgments are created equal, neither are all churches. But the truth of that doesn’t trump everything else or give us an excuse to rationalize our anger. We must defend truth, defend those who cannot defend themselves, and be solid in the traditions of our own churches. But right truth and right morals don’t necessarily make us disciples of Jesus. What does? What makes us genuine disciples of Jesus is living inside his Spirit, the Holy Spirit, and this is not something abstract and vague. We live inside of the Holy Spirit when our lives are characterized by charity, joy, peace, patience, goodness, longsuffering, constancy, faith, gentleness, and chastity. If these do not characterize our lives, we should not nurse the illusion that we are inside of God’s Spirit, irrespective of our passion for truth, dogma, or justice. As T.S. Eliot once said: The last temptation that’s the greatest treason is to do the right thing for the wrong reason.[1]

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[1] Excerpt from Fr. Ron Rolheiser’s reflection, “Following Jesus According to the Letter or Spirit?” February 2011.

There are three vital penitential practices associated with the liturgical time of Lent: prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. All three, based in Scripture and early Christian tradition, are interconnected. They offer the opportunity to realign all our relationships in a rightful manner. Prayer directs us to conversion in our relationship to God. Almsgiving expresses itself in compassion towards our neighbor. Fasting focuses us on ourselves. It is essential to rescue fasting from misunderstanding and to rediscover its value for spiritual restoration. Fasting is a powerful penitential practice that holds the same opportunity for transformation as almsgiving and prayer. Distinguishing religious fasting from medical fasting is essential. Fasting for medical reasons is a good in itself: purging ourselves of toxins, readying us for various procedures or treatments, dieting to improve our health or lose weight all have their benefits. Religious fasting holds a different meaning. Charles Murphy, in his book, The Spirituality of Fasting writes that we practice religious fasting for other purposes: “religious fasting is an act of humility before God, a penitential expression of our need for conversion from sin and selfishness. Its aim is nothing less than becoming more loving persons, loving God above all and our neighbor as ourselves. The purpose is the transformation of our total being: mind, body, spirit.” I believe rediscovering the practice of fasting requires two basic spiritual orientations or attitudes. First, it is foreign to biblical anthropology to objectify or instrumentalize the human body. The purpose of religious fasting is not to dominate or break our body into shape by punishing ourselves. It is the act of humbling ourselves before God as we marvel at God’s love for us as we implore: “Oh God, help me to believe the truth about myself, no matter how beautiful it is!” Second, as a spiritual orientation, we want to notice the subtle forms of pride that insinuate themselves into penitential practices such as fasting. It would defeat the purpose of our religious practice to behave as if we can bend God’s will to our own. It gives us the illusion we can control God and the outcomes of the vicissitudes of life. Fasting is not done to manage our bodies, our lives or even God better, but to let go of that control and accept our radical helplessness. It creates the openness, the softening of the ego we need to receive what God wants to share with us; God’s self. During this time of penance and spiritual renewal, let us rediscover the deep meaning and the real purposes of fasting.[1]

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[1] Excerpt from Fr. Daniel Renaud’s reflection, “Rediscovering the Practice of Fasting.”