Daily Virtue

Jesus once said something that might be paraphrased this way: What does it profit you if you gain the whole world and are forever too much in a hurry and too pressured to enjoy it. 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. You can be someone who is very good, dedicated, moral, and kind. But if you struggle to be a soulful person, to be more inside the richness of your 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.” You 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. For many, this cycle of businesses can be broken through conscripted discipline of quiet prayer, regular walks, retreats, and several weeks of vacation each year. Thomas Merton, the Trappist monk, was often too busy and pressured to find solitude. In search of that, he spent the last few years of his life in a hermitage, away from the main monastery except for Eucharist and the Office of the Church each day. Then, when he found solitude, he was surprised at how different it was from the way he had imagined it. “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.” When we are rich, busy, pressured, and preoccupied, it’s hard to taste one’s own coffee. Take time to breathe in the richness of God and his creation.[1]

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[1] Excerpt from Fr. Ron Rolheiser’s reflection, “Being Rich and in a Hurry,” October 2024.

We begin the season of lent with ashes on our foreheads. What is symbolized by this smudging? Perhaps the heart understands better than the head because more people go to church on Ash Wednesday than on any other day of the year, including Christmas. The queues to receive the ashes in many churches are endless. Why? Why are the ashes so popular? Their popularity, I suspect, comes from the fact that, as a symbol, they are blunt, primal, archetypal, and speak the language of the soul. Something inside each of us knows exactly why we take the ashes: “Dust thou art and into dust thou shalt return!” No doctor of metaphysics need explain this. Ashes are dust and dust is soil, humus; humanity and humility come from there. There is something innate to the human soul that knows that, every so often, one must make a journey of descent, be smudged, lose one’s luster, and wait while the ashes do their work. the story of Cinderella. There is a centuries-old, wisdom-tale that speaks about the value of ashes, and it comes from the story of Cinderella. Her name literally means: “The young girl who sits in the cinders, the ashes.” Moreover, as the tale makes plain, before the glass slipper is placed on her foot, before the beautiful gown, ball, dance, and marriage, there must first be a period of sitting in the cinders, of being smudged, of being humbled, and of waiting while a proper joy and consummation are being prepared. In the story of Cinderella there is a theology of lent. In ancient times they saw this act of siting in the ashes as perfectly normal, something everyone was called upon to do at one time or another. They simply let the person sit there, in the ashes, until one day he or she got up, washed the ashes off, and began again to live a regular life. The belief was that the ashes, that period of silent sitting, had done some important, unseen work inside of the person. You sat in the ashes for healing. The church taps into this deep well of wisdom when it puts ashes on our foreheads at the beginning of lent. Lent is a season for each of us to sit in the ashes, to spend our time, like Cinderella, working and sitting among the cinders of the fire – grieving what we’ve done wrong, renouncing the dance, refraining from the banquet, refusing to do business as usual, waiting while some silent growth takes place within us, and simply being still so that the ashes can do their work in us.[1]

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[1] Excerpt from Fr. Ron Rolheiser’s reflection, “The Ashes of Lent” March 2000.

The Gospels tell us that God’s mercy is unlimited and unconditional, has no favorites, is equally solicitous for everyone’s happiness and salvation, and does not ration his gift of the Spirit. If that is true, then we need to ask ourselves why we so frequently tend to withhold God’s Spirit from others in our judgments – particularly in our religious judgments. For example, how prone are we to think this way? For my religion to be true, it’s important to me that other religions are not true! For my Christian denomination to be faithful to Christ, it’s important that all the other denominations be considered less faithful. For the Eucharist in my denomination to be valid, it’s important that the Eucharist in other denominations be invalid or less valid. And, since I’m living a certain sustained fidelity in my faith and moral life, it’s important to me that everyone else who isn’t living as faithfully does not get to heaven or is assigned to a secondary place in heaven. One of the core values held by a certain group of Quakers is something they call generous orthodoxy. I like the combination of those two words. Generosity speaks of openness, hospitality, empathy, wide tolerance, and of sacrificing some of ourselves for others. Orthodoxy speaks of certain non-negotiable truths, of keeping proper boundaries, of staying true to what you believe, and of not compromising truth for the sake of being nice. These two are often pitted against each other as opposites, but they are meant to be together. Holding ground on our truth, keeping proper boundaries, and refusing to compromise even at the risk of not being nice is one side of the equation. Still, the full equation requires us to be also fully respectful and gracious regarding other people’s truth, cherished beliefs, and boundaries. Hence, you can be a Christian, convinced that Christianity is the truest expression of religion in the world, without judging that other religions are false. You can be a Roman Catholic, convinced that Roman Catholicism is the truest and fullest expression of Christianity, and your Eucharist is the real presence of Jesus, without making the judgment that other Christian denominations are not valid expressions of Christ and do not have a valid Eucharist. There’s no contradiction there.  You can be right without that being contingent on everyone else being wrong.[1]

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[1] Excerpt from Fr. Ron Rolheiser’s reflection, “Generous Orthodoxy,” April 2023.

If someone didn’t believe in God and had no faith or religion, what would give meaning to their life? Where can we go if we no longer have an explicit faith in God? A lot of places, it seems. There’s a stoicism which offers its own kind of salvation by drawing life and meaning simply from fighting chaos and disease for no other reason than that that these cause suffering and are an affront to life, just as there is an Epicureanism that meaningfully grounds life in elemental pleasure. There are, it would seem, different kinds of saints. There are also different kinds of immortality. For some, meaning outside of an explicit faith, is found in leaving a lasting legacy on this earth, having children, achieving something monumental, or becoming a household name. We’re all familiar with the axiom: Plant a tree; write a book; have a child! Poets, writers, artists, and artisans often have their own place to find meaning outside of explicit faith. For them, creativity and beauty can be ends in themselves. Art for art’s sake. Creativity itself can seem enough. And there are still others for whom deep meaning is found simply in being good for its own sake and in being honest for its own sake. There’s also virtue for virtue’s sake and virtue is indeed its own reward. Simply living an honest and generous life can provide sufficient meaning with which to walk through life. So, it appears that there are places to go outside of explicit faith where one can find deep meaning. But is this really so? Don’t we believe that true meaning can only be found in God? What about St. Augustine’s classic line? You have made us for yourself, Lord, and our hearts are restless until the rest in you. Can anything other than faith and God really quiet the restless fires within us? Christian theology tells us that God is One, True, Good, and Beautiful. And so, when an artist gives herself over to creating beauty, when a couple has a child, when scientists work to find cures for various diseases, when artisans make an artifact, when builders build, when teachers teach, when parents parent, when athletes play a game, when manual laborers labor, when administrators administrate, and, yes, even when hedonists drink deeply of earthily pleasure, they are, all of them, whether they have explicit faith or not, acting in some faith because they are putting their trust in either the Oneness, Truth, Goodness, or Beauty of God. As we can see, by simply looking at the amount of positive energy, love, creativity, generosity, and honesty that still fill our world, those places where people are seeking God outside of explicit faith still has them meeting God.[1]

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[1] Excerpt from Fr. Ron Rolheiser’s reflection, “To Whom Can We Go?,” June 2017.

God has put a sense of past and future into our hearts. Perhaps that captures it best regarding how we generally experience this in our lives. We know from experience how difficult it is to be at peace inside the present moment because the past and the future won’t leave us alone. They are forever coloring the present that is colored by obsessions, heartaches, headaches, and anxieties that have little to do with the people we are sitting with at table. Philosophers and poets have given various names to this. Plato called it “a madness that comes from the gods”; Hindu poets have called it “a nostalgia for the infinite”; Shakespeare speaks of “immortal longings,” and Augustine, in perhaps the most famous naming of them all, called it an incurable restlessness that God has put into the human heart to keep it from finding a home in something less than the infinite and eternal – “You have made us for yourself, Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.” And so, it’s rare to be peacefully present to our own lives, restful inside of our own skins. Henri Nouwen, in a remarkable passage both names the struggle and its purpose: “Our life is a short time in expectation, a time in which sadness and joy kiss each other at every moment. There is a quality of sadness that pervades all the moments of our life. It seems that there is no such thing as a clear-cut pure joy, but that even in the happiest moments of our existence, we sense a tinge of sadness. In every satisfaction, there is an awareness of limitations. In every success, there is the fear of jealousy. Behind every smile, there is a tear. In every embrace, there is loneliness and, In every friendship, distance. And in all forms of light, there is the knowledge of surrounding darkness. But this intimate experience in which every bit of life is touched by a bit of death can point us beyond the limits of our existence. It can do so by making us look forward in expectation to that day when our hearts will be filled with perfect joy, a joy that no one shall take away from us.” Our restless hearts keep us from falling asleep to the divine fire inside us.[1]

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[1] Excerpt from Fr. Ron Rolheiser’s reflection, “Our Restless Selves,” February 2025.

Christ himself is vitally bound up with nature, and his reasons for coming to Earth also include the intention of redeeming the physical universe. What’s implied here? The scientist-theologian-jesuit-priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, in conversation with a Vatican official who was confused by his writings and doctrinally suspicious of them, told him that all he is saying is that Christ didn’t just come to save people; he came for that yes, but he also came to save the planet, of which people are only one part. In saying that, Teilhard has solid scriptural backing. Looking at the scriptures, we find that they affirm that Christ didn’t just come to save people; he came to save the world. For example, the Epistle to the Colossians (1:15-20) records an ancient Christian hymn that affirms both that Christ was already a vital force inside the original creation (“that all things were made through him”) and that Christ is also the endpoint to of all history, human and cosmic. The Epistle to the Ephesians, also recording an ancient Christian hymn (1:3-10), makes the same point. At the same time, the Epistle to the Romans (8:19-22) is even more explicit in affirming that physical creation, Mother Earth, and our physical universe are “groaning” as they, too, wait for redemption by Christ. Among other things, these texts affirm that the physical world is part of God’s plan for eventual heavenly life. Nature, not just humanity, is being redeemed by Christ. Christ also came to redeem the earth, not just those of us who are living on it. Physical creation, too, will enter the final synthesis of history, that is, heaven. This means that nature has intrinsic rights, not just the rights we find convenient to accord it. What this means is that defacing or abusing nature is not just a legal and environmental issue; it’s a moral issue. Finally, not least, what is implied in understanding the cosmic dimension of Christ and what that means in terms of our relationship to Mother Earth and the universe is the non-negotiable fact that the quest for community and consummation within God is a quest that calls us not just to a proper relationship with God and with each other, but also to a proper relationship with physical creation. We are humans with bodies living on the earth, not disembodied angels living in heaven, and Christ came to save our bodies along with our souls. He came, as well, to save the physical ground upon which we walk since he was the very pattern upon which and through which the physical world was created.[1]

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[1] Excerpt from Fr. Ron Rolheiser’s reflection, “Christ and Nature,” February 2015.

More and more friends pass through our lives so that at a point the question necessarily arises: how does one remain faithful to one’s family, to old friends, former neighbors, former classmates, former students, former colleagues, and to old acquaintances? What does fidelity to them ask for? Occasional visits? Occasional emails, texts, calls? Remembering birthdays and anniversaries? Class reunions? Attending weddings and funerals? Obviously doing these would be good, though that would also constitute a full-time occupation. Something else must be being asked of us here, namely, a fidelity that’s not contingent on emails, texts, calls, and occasional visits. But what can lie deeper than tangible human contact? What can be more real than that? The answer is fidelity, fidelity as the gift of a shared moral soul, fidelity as the gift of trust, and fidelity as remaining true to who you were when you were in tangible human community and contact with those people who are no longer part of your daily life. That’s what it means to be faithful. At the end of the day, fidelity is not about now often you physically connect with someone but about living within a shared spirit. To the best of my abilities, I try to stay in contact with the family, old friends, former neighbors, former classmates, former students, former colleagues, and old acquaintances. Mostly it’s a bit beyond me. So, I put my trust in moral fidelity which has characterized and defined me as I met all those wonderful people along the way.[1]

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[1] Excerpt from Fr. Ron Rolheiser’s reflection, “Faithful Friendship,” May 2020

1) Be grateful…never look a gift universe in the mouth! Resist pessimism and false guilt. To be a saint is to be warmed by gratitude, nothing less. The highest compliment you can give a gift-giver is to thoroughly enjoy the gift. You owe it to your Creator to appreciate things, to be as happy as you can. Life is meant to be more than a test. Add this to your daily prayer: Give us today our daily bread, and help us to enjoy it without guilt.

2) Don’t be naive about God… God will settle for not less than everything! God doesn’t want part of your life; God wants it all. Distrust all talk about the consolation of religion. Faith puts a rope around you and takes you to where you’d rather not go. Accept that virtue will give you a constant reminder of what you’ve missed out on. Take this Daniel Berrigan counsel to the bank: “Before you get serious about Jesus, consider carefully how good you’re going to look on wood!”

3) Walk forward when possible…or at least try to get one foot in front of the next! See what you see, it’s enough to walk by. Expect long periods of confusion. Let ordinary life be enough for you. It doesn’t have to be interesting all the time. Take consolation in the fact that Jesus cried, saints sinned, Peter betrayed. Be as morally stubborn as a mule; the only thing that shatters dreams is compromise. Start over often. Nobody is old in God’s eyes; nothing is too late in terms of conversion. Know that there are two kinds of darkness you can enter: the fearful darkness of paranoia, which brings sadness, and the fetal darkness of conversion, which brings life.

4) Pray…that God will hang on to you! Distrust popularity polls. Trust prayer. Prayer grounds you in something deeper. Be willing to die a little to be with God since God died to be with you. Let your heart become the place where the tears of God and the tears of God’s children merge into the tears of hope.

5) Love…if a life is large enough for love, it’s large enough! Create a space for love in your life. Consciously cultivate it. Know that nothing can be loved too much. Things can only be loved in the wrong way. Say to those you love: “You, at least, shall not die!” Know there are only two potential tragedies in life: Not to love and not to tell those you love that you love them.

6) Accept what you are…and fear not, you are inadequate! Accept the human condition. Only God is whole. If you’re weak, alone, without confidence, and without answers, say so; then listen. Accept the torture of a life of inadequate self-expression. There are many kinds of martyrdom. Recognize your own brand. If you die for a good reason, it’s something you can live with!

7) Don’t mummify…let go, so as not to be pushed! Accept daily deaths. Don’t seize life as a possession. Possessiveness kills enjoyment, kills relationships, and eventually kills you. Let go gracefully. Name your deaths, claim your births, mourn your losses, let the old ascend, and receive the spirit for the life you’re actually living. Banish restless daydreams; they torture you. Keep in mind that it’s difficult to distinguish a moment of dying from a moment of birth.

8) Refuse to take things seriously…call yourself a fool regularly! God’s laughter fills the emptiness of our tombs. Keep in mind that it’s easy to be heavy, hard to be light. Laughter is a direct insult to the realism, dignity, and austerity of hell. Don’t confuse sneering with laughter. Laugh with people, not at them. Laugh and give yourself over to silliness; craziness helps too, as does a good night’s sleep.

9) Stay within the family … you’re on a group outing! Don’t journey alone. Resist the temptation to be spiritual, but not religious. Be “born again”, regularly into community. Accept that there are strings attached. The journey includes family, church, country, and the whole human race. Don’t be seduced by the lure of absolute freedom. Freedom and meaning lie in obedience to the community: community humbles, deflates the ego, puts you into purgatory, and eventually into heaven.

10) Don’t be afraid to go soft…redemption lies in tears! All of Jesus’ teachings can be put into one word: Surrender.  If you will not have a softening of the heart you will eventually have a softening of the brain. Hardness pulls downward. Softness rises.  A bird can soar because a bird is soft. A stone sinks because it’s hard. Fragility is force. Sensitivity defines soul. Tenderness defines love. Tears are salt water, the water of our origins.

– Fr. Ron Rolheiser, “Guidelines for the Long Haul,” April 2013. 

What you say and do matters. It affects other people. The longer you walk life’s path as a professed Christian, the more you should be overwhelmed by the radical nature of Jesus’s openness, inclusivity, and hospitality. Every time one thinks they have made their circle of life wide enough, inclusive enough, and caring enough, Jesus says, “No, make it wider.”  “Whoever is not against us is for us.”  What a fantastic declaration.  Whoever doesn’t oppose the beautiful and salvific works of God, mercy, love, kindness, justice, liberation, peacemaking, healing, and nurturing is on Jesus’s side, and our job is to welcome, host, include, and love them. How mind-blowing is that?” Yet, do we understand what an opportunity this is? What if we cleared paths for each other? Removed obstacles for each other? Helped each other towards success?” This might get to the heart of what Jesus is saying.  Life is not a competition; we’re in this together, and this thing is called life. We’re on the path together. How much better off would we be if we could be path clearers, stumbling block removers? Jesus isn’t condemning us; he’s reminding us of truths we intuitively know. The way of the cross is hard. It can hurt. There is a place called hell that we create for ourselves and others when we cling to our sins and stumbling blocks instead of allowing Jesus, in his mercy, to remove them. “It has been said that we might do well to see sin, like addiction, as a destructive disease instead of something for which we’re culpable or punishable and that ‘makes God unhappy.’ If sin indeed makes God ‘unhappy,’ it is because God loves us, desires nothing more than our happiness, and wills the healing of the disease of sin” [Fr. Richard Rohr]. What would it be like to cut away the disease for our own sakes and for the sakes of our fellow travelers?  What would it be like if the children of God helped each other to succeed?  Imagine the charismatic Christian removing stumbling blocks for the liturgical one. The liberal clearing paths for the conservative.  The insider befriending the outsider.  What would happen if we expanded the circle, lengthened the table, and decided to feast together?  We’d become The Company of the Blessedly Wounded. We wouldn’t look as shiny and unassailable as we did before.  But we would be path clearers. We’d be stumbling block removers.  We’d be healers.  Best of all, no little one would ever lose their way again because of us.

Our world and ourselves are sinking into some unhealthy forms of tribalism where we are concerned primarily with taking care of our own. We see this everywhere today. We tend to think that this lives only in circles of extremism, but it is being advocated with an ever-intensifying moral fervor in virtually every place in the world.  It sounds like this:  America first! England first! My country first! My state first! My church first! My family first! Me first! More and more, we are making ourselves the priority and defining ourselves in ways that are not just against the Gospel but are also making us meaner in spirit and more miserly of heart. If the Gospels are clear on anything, they are clear that all persons in this world are equal in the sight of God, that all persons in this world are our brothers and sisters, and that we are asked to share the goods of this world fairly with everyone, especially the poor, and, most importantly, that we are not to put ourselves first, but are always to consider the needs of others before our own. The very definition of being big-hearted is predicated on precisely rising above self-interest and being willing to sacrifice our own interests for the good of others and the good of the larger community. The same is true for being big-minded. We are big-minded exactly to the extent that we are sensitive to the wider picture and can integrate into our thinking the needs, wounds, and ideologies of everyone, not just those of their own kind. That’s what it means to understand rather than simply be intelligent. When we are petty, we cannot understand beyond our own needs, our own wounds, and our own ideologies. There can be no peace, no world community, no real brother and sisterhood, and no real church community as long as we do not define ourselves as, first, citizens of the world and only second, as members of our own tribe. Admittedly, we need to take care of our own families, countries, and selves. Justice asks that we also treat ourselves fairly. But, ultimately, the tension here is a false one, that is, the needs of others and our own needs are not in competition. Only by being good citizens of the world are we good citizens in our own countries. Jesus tells us that, in the end, the first will be last.[1]

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[1] Excerpt from Fr. Ron Rolheiser’s reflection, “Us First!” June 2016.