IN EXILE
By Father Ron Rolheiser, OMI
For more than a thousand years, Christians have not experienced the joy of being one family in Christ. Although there were already tensions within the earliest Christian communities, it was not until the year 1054 that there was a formal split, in effect, to establish two formal Christian communities, the Orthodox Church in the East and the Catholic Church in the West. Then, with the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century, there was another split within the Western Church and Christianity fragmented still further. Today there are hundreds of Christian denominations, many of whom, sadly, are not on friendly terms with each other.

Division and misunderstanding are understandable, inevitable, the price of being human. There are no communities without tension and so it is no great scandal that Christians sometimes cannot get along with each other. The scandal rather is that we have become comfortable, even smug, with the fact that we do not get along with each other, no longer hunger for wholeness, and no longer miss each other inside our separate churches.
In almost all our churches today there is little anxiety about those with whom we are not worshiping. For example, teaching Roman Catholic seminarians today, I sense a certain indifference to the issue of ecumenism. For many seminarians today this is not an issue of particular concern. Not to single out Catholic seminarians, this holds true for most of us in all denominations.

But this kind of indifference is inherently unchristian. Oneness was close to the heart of Jesus. He wants all his followers at the same table, as we see in this parable.

A woman has ten coins and loses one. She becomes anxious and agitated and begins to search frantically and relentlessly for the lost coin, lighting lamps, looking under tables, sweeping all the floors in her house. Eventually she finds the coin, is delirious with joy, calls together her neighbors, and throws a party whose cost no doubt far exceeded the value of the coin she had lost. (Luke 15:8-10)

Why such anxiety and joy over losing and finding a coin whose value was probably that of a dime? Well, what’s at issue is not the value of the coin; it’s something else. In her culture, nine was not considered a whole number; ten was. Both the woman’s anxiety about losing the coin and her joy in finding it had to do with the importance of wholeness. A wholeness in her life that had been fractured, and a precious set of relationships was no longer complete.

Indeed, the parable might be recast this way: A woman has ten children. With nine of them, she has a good relationship, but one of her daughters is alienated. Her nine other children come home regularly to the family table, but her alienated daughter does not. The woman cannot rest in that situation, cannot be at peace. She needs her alienated daughter to rejoin them. She tries every means to reconcile with her daughter and then one day, miracle of miracles, it works. Her daughter comes back to the family. Her family is whole again, everyone is back at the table. The woman is overjoyed, withdraws her modest savings, and throws a lavish party to celebrate that reunion.

Christian faith demands that, like that woman, we need to be anxious, dis-eased, figuratively lighting lamps, and searching for ways to make the church whole again. Nine is not a whole number. Neither is the number of those who are normally inside our respective churches. Roman Catholicism isn’t a whole number. Protestantism isn’t a whole number. The Evangelical Churches aren’t a whole number. The Orthodox Churches aren’t a whole number. No one Christian denomination is a whole number. Together we make up a whole Christian number – and that is still not a whole faith number.

And so, we are meant to be anxious around these questions: Who no longer goes to church with us? Who is uncomfortable worshiping with us? How can we be comfortable when so many people are no longer at table with us?

Sadly, today, many of us are comfortable in churches that are far, far from whole. Sometimes, in our less reflective moments, we even rejoice in it: “Those others aren’t real Christians in any case! We’re better off without them, a purer, more faithful church in their absence! We’re the one true remnant!”

But this lack of solicitude for wholeness compromises our following of Jesus as well as our basic human maturity. We are mature, loving people and true followers of Jesus, only when, like Jesus, we are in tears over those “other sheep that are not of this fold.” When, like the woman who lost one of her coins, we cannot sleep until every corner of the house has been turned upside down in a frantic search for what’s been lost.

We too need to solicitously search for a lost wholeness – and may not be at peace until it is found.

(Oblate Father Ron Rolheiser is a theologian, teacher and award-winning author. He can be contacted through his website www.ronrolheiser.com.)

IN EXILE
By Father Ron Rolheiser, OMI
There is nothing as psychologically and morally dangerous as lying, as denying the truth. Jesus warns us that we can commit a sin that is unforgivable which (in his words) is a blaspheme against the Holy Spirit.
What is this sin? Why is it unforgivable? And how is it linked to not telling the truth?

This is the context where Jesus gives us this warning. He had just cast out a demon and some of the people who had witnessed this believed, as a hard religious doctrine, that only someone who came from God could cast out a demon. But they hated Jesus, so seeing him cast out a demon was a very inconvenient truth, so inconvenient in fact that they chose to deny what they had just seen with their own eyes. And so, against everything they knew to be true, they affirmed instead that Jesus had cast out the demon by Beelzebub, the prince of demons. They knew better. They knew that they were denying the truth.

Jesus’ first response was to try to make them see their lie. He appeals to logic, arguing that if Beelzebub, the prince of demons, is casting out demons, then Satan’s house is divided against itself and will eventually fall. But they persist in their lie. It’s then, in that specific context, that Jesus utters his warning about the danger of committing a sin that cannot be forgiven because it blasphemes the Holy Spirit.
In essence, what’s in this warning?

The people whom Jesus addressed had denied a reality that they had just seen with their own eyes because it was too difficult for them to accept its truth. So, they denied its truth, fully aware that they were lying.

Well, the first lie we tell is not so dangerous because we still know we are lying. The danger is that if we persist in that lie and continue to deny (and lie) we can reach a point where we believe the lie, see it as truth, and see truth as falsehood. Perversion is then seen as virtue, and the sin becomes unforgivable, not because forgiveness is withheld, but because we no longer believe we need forgiveness, nor in fact do we want it or remain open to receive it.

Whenever we lie or in any way deny the truth, we begin to warp our conscience and if we persist in this, eventually we will (and this is not too strong a phrase) pervert our soul so that for us falsehood looks like truth, darkness looks like light, and hell looks like heaven.

Hell is never a nasty surprise waiting for a basically honest, happy person. Hell can only be the full flowering of a long, sustained dishonesty where we have denied reality for so long that we now see dishonesty as truth. There isn’t anyone in hell who is repentant and wishing he or she had another chance to live and die in grace. If there is anyone in hell, that person, no matter his or her private misery, is feeling smug and looking with a certain disdain on the naivete of those who are honest, those in heaven.
And how is that a “blaspheme against the Holy Spirit”?

In his letter to the Galatians, St. Paul lays out two fundamental ways we can live our lives. We can live outside of God’s spirit. We do that whenever we are living in infidelity, idolatry, hatred, factionalism and dishonesty. And lying is what takes us there. Conversely, we live inside God’s spirit, the Holy Spirit, whenever we are living in charity, joy, peace, patience, goodness, longsuffering, fidelity, gentleness and chastity. And we live inside these whenever we are honest. Thus, whenever we lie, whenever we deny reality, whenever we deny truth, we are (in effect and in reality) stepping outside of God’s spirit, blaspheming that spirit by disdaining it.

Satan is the prince of lies. That’s why the biggest danger in our world is the amount of lies, disinformation, misinformation and flat-out denial of reality that’s present most everywhere today – whenever, it seems, we don’t find the truth to our liking. There is nothing more destructive and dangerous to the health of our souls, the possibility of creating community among ourselves, the future of our planet, and our own sanity, than the flat-out denial of the truth of something that has happened.

When reality is denied: when a fact of history is rewritten to expunge a painful truth; when you are told that something you witnessed with your own eyes didn’t happen; when someone says, the holocaust didn’t happen; when someone says there never was slavery in this country; or when someone says no kids died at Sandy Hook, that doesn’t just dishonor millions of people, it plays on the sanity of a whole culture.
When something has happened and is subsequently denied, that doesn’t just make a mockery of truth, it plays havoc with our sanity, not least with the one who is telling the lie.

(Oblate Father Ron Rolheiser is a theologian, teacher and award-winning author. He can be contacted through his website www.ronrolheiser.com.)

IN EXILE
By Father Ron Rolheiser, OMI
We crave few things as deeply as self-expression and recognition. We have an irrepressible need to express ourselves, be known, recognized, understood and seen by others as unique, gifted and significant. A heart that is unknown, unappreciated in its depth, lacking in meaningful self-expression and recognition, is prone to restlessness, frustration and bitterness. And, truth be told, self-expression is difficult and full self-expression is impossible.

In the end, for most of us, our lives are always smaller than our needs and our dreams, no matter where we live or what we accomplish. In our daydreams each of us would like to be famous, the renowned writer, the graceful ballerina, the admired athlete, the movie star, the cover girl, the renowned scholar, the Nobel Prize winner, the household name; but in the end, most of us remain just another unknown, living among other unknowns, collecting an occasional autograph.

And so, our lives can seem too small for us. We feel ourselves as extraordinary, forever trapped inside the mundane, even as there is something inside us that still seeks expression, that still seeks recognition, and that feels that something precious inside us is living and dying in futility. In truth, seen only from the perspective of this world, much of what is precious, unique and rich, seemingly is living and dying in futility. Only a rare few achieve satisfying self-expression and recognition.

There’s a certain martyrdom in this. Iris Murdoch once said: “Art has its martyrs, not the least of which are those who have preserved their silence.” Lack of self-expression, whether chosen or imposed by circumstances, is a real death; but like all deaths it can be understood and appropriated in very different ways.

If it is accepted unhappily as tragic, it leads to bitterness and a broken spirit. If, however, it is understood and appropriated in faith as an invitation to be a hidden cell inside the Body of Christ and the human family, to anonymously provide sustenance and health to the overall body, it can lead to restfulness, gratitude and sense of significance that lays the axe to the roots of our frustration, disappointment, depression and bitterness.

I say this because much of what gives us life and sustains us in our lives has not been provided by the rich and famous, the high achievers and those to whom history gives credit. As George Eliot points out, we don’t need to do great things that leave a big mark in human history because “the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life and rest in unvisited tombs.”

Well said. History bears this out. I think, for instance, of Therese of Lisieux who lived out her life in obscurity in a little convent tucked away in rural France, who when she died at age 24, was probably known by fewer than 100 people. In terms of how we assess things in this world she accomplished very little, nothing in terms of outstanding achievement or visible contribution. She entered the convent at age fifteen and spent the years until her early death doing menial things in the laundry, kitchen and garden inside her obscure convent. The only tangible possession she left behind was a diary, a personal journal with bad spelling, which told the story of her family, her upbringing and what she experienced during her last months in palliative care as she faced death.

But what she did leave behind is something that has made her a figure who is now renowned around the world, both inside and outside of faith circles. Her little private journal, The Story of a Soul, has touched millions of lives, despite its bad spelling (which had to be corrected by her sisters after her death).

What gives her little journal its unique power to touch hearts is that it chronicles what was happening inside the privacy of her own soul during all those years when she was hidden away and unknown, as child and as a nun. What she records in the story of her soul is that she, fully aware of her own uniqueness and preciousness, could unbegrudgingly give that all over in faith because she trusted that her gifts and talents were working silently (and powerfully) inside a mystical (though real, organic) body, the Body of Christ and of humanity. She understood herself as a cell inside a living body, giving over what was precious and unique inside her for the good of the world.

Anonymity offers us this invitation. There is no greater work of art that one can give to the world.
Jesus said as much. He told us to do our good deeds in secret and not let our left hand (and our neighbors and the world) know what our right hand is doing.

(Oblate Father Ron Rolheiser is a theologian, teacher and award-winning author. He can be contacted through his website www.ronrolheiser.com.)

IN EXILE
By Father Ron Rolheiser, OMI
Daniel Berrigan once said: Before you get serious about Jesus, think carefully about how good you are going to look on wood!

That’s a needed caution because Jesus warned us that if we follow him, pain will flow into our lives and we will join him on the cross.

What exactly does that mean? Is pain laid on a disciple as some kind of test? Does Jesus need his followers to feel the pains he experienced? Does God want the followers of Jesus to undergo pain to help pay the price of sin? Why does accepting to carry the cross with Jesus bring pain into our lives?

It’s interesting to note that the great mystic John of the Cross uses this, the inflow of pain into our lives, as a major criterion for discerning whether or not we are authentically following Jesus. For John, you know you are following Jesus when pain begins to flow into your life. Why? Does God lay special pain on those who take Christ seriously?

No. God doesn’t apportion special pain on those who take Christ seriously. The pain that flows into our lives if we take Christ seriously doesn’t come from God. It flows into us because of a deeper openness, a deeper sensitivity, and a new depth on our part. The algebra works this way: By authentically opening ourselves up to Christ we cease being overly self-protective, become more vulnerable and more sensitive, so that life, all of it, can flow into us more freely and more deeply.

And part of what now flows into us is pain: the pain of others, the pain of mother earth, the pain of our own inadequacy and lack of altruism, and the pain caused by the effect of sin everywhere. This pain will now enter us more deeply and we will feel it in a way we never did before because previously we protected ourselves against it through insensitivity and self-focus.

Happily, this has a flip side: Just as pain will now flow into our lives more freely and more deeply, so too will meaning and happiness. Once we stop protecting ourselves through self-absorption, both pain and happiness can now flow more freely and more deeply into our hearts and we can begin to breathe out of a deeper part of ourselves.

Freud once commented that sometimes things can be best understood by examining their opposites. That’s partially the case here. The opposite of someone who opens herself to pain, who opens herself to the pain of the cross, is a person who is callous and insensitive (in slang, someone “who is thick as a plank.”) Such a person won’t feel a lot of pain – but won’t feel much of anything else either.

A number of implications flow from this.

First, God doesn’t lay pain on us when we become followers of Jesus and immerse ourselves more deeply in the mystery of Christ and the cross. The pain that ensues is intrinsic to the cross and is felt simply because we have now ceased protecting ourselves and are letting life, all of it, flow into us more freely and more deeply. Happily, the pain is more than offset by the new meaning and happiness that are now also felt.

Second, experiencing the pain that flows intrinsically from discipleship and the cross is, as John of the Cross wisely puts it, one of the major criteria that separates the real Gospel from the Prosperity Gospel. When the pain of the cross flows into our lives, we know that we are not feather-bedding our own self-interest in the name of the Gospel.

Third, it’s worth it to be sensitive! Freud once said that neurosis (unhealthy anxiety) is the disease of the normal person. What he didn’t say, but might have, is that the antithesis of anxiety (healthy and unhealthy) is brute insensitivity, to be thick as a plank and thus protected from pain – but also protected from deeper meaning, love, intimacy and community.

If you are a sensitive person (perhaps even an over-sensitive one, prone to depression and anxiety of all sorts) take consolation in that your very struggle indicates that you are not a calloused insensitive person, not a moral boor.

Finally, one of the implications of this is that heaven isn’t the same for everyone. Just as pain can be shallow or deep, so too can meaning and happiness. To the degree that we open our hearts to depth, to that same degree deep meaning and happiness can flow into us. A closed heart makes for shallow meaning. A heart partially open makes for some deep meaning, but not full meaning. Whereas the heart that is fully open makes for the deepest meaning.

There are different depths to meaning and happiness here on earth and, I suspect, that will be true too in the next life. So, the invitation from Jesus is to accept the pain that comes from the wood of the cross rather than being thick as a plank!

(Oblate Father Ron Rolheiser is a theologian, teacher and award-winning author. He can be contacted through his website www.ronrolheiser.com.)

IN EXILE
By Father Ron Rolheiser, OMI
The opening pages of the Bible offer us a series of stories set at the beginning of history which are meant to explain why the world today is as it is. The Adam and Eve story about original sin is one of those stories. There are others. These stories, because they use imagery that might make them sound like fairy tales, can seem total fantasy to us, but they are stories that are truer than true. They happened. They happened to the first man and woman on this planet, and they continue to happen today in a way that affects every man and woman throughout history. They are stories of the heart, not meant to be taken literally, but carrying lessons for the heart.

One of these “in the beginning,” foundational, archetypal, stories is the story of the Tower of Babel. In street language, it goes like this: In the beginning (before time was like it is now) there was a town called Babel which decided it would make a name for itself by building a tower so impressive that all the other towns would have to admire it. They began building the tower, but something strange happened. As they were building it, they suddenly all began to speak different languages, were no longer able to understand each other, and scattered around the world, each now speaking in a language incomprehensible to everyone else.

What’s the lesson? Is this meant to explain the origin of the different languages of the world? No, rather it is meant to explain the deep, seemingly irreconcilable misunderstandings among us. Why do we forever misunderstand each other? What’s at the origin of this?

There are multiple ways this story can be used to shed light on the divisions in our world today. Here’s one: Writing in The Atlantic last year, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt suggested that there is perhaps no better metaphor to explain the divisions among us today than the tower of Babel. His argument runs this way: Social media, the very thing that was meant to connect us not only to our friends and families but to people from around the globe, has in fact led to a radical fragmentation of our society and to the shattering of all that had seemed solid, the scattering of people who had been a community. Take America, for example; while we might still be speaking the same language, social media and cable news echo chambers have supplied us with different sets of facts, values and visions that make actual conversation increasingly impossible.

As the recent tensions around the U.S. presidential elections made evident, as a society we no longer speak the same language in that we can no longer understand each other on virtually every key issue – global warming, immigration, poverty, gender, health, abortion, the place of religion in the public sphere, whose side truth is on, and, most important of all, what truth is. We no longer share any common truths. Rather, we all have our own truth, our own individual language. As the popular saying goes, I have done my own research! I don’t trust science. I don’t trust any mainstream truths. I have my own sources.

And those sources are many, too many to count! Hundreds of television channels, countless podcasts and millions of persons feeding us their idiosyncratic version of things on social media so that now there is skepticism about any fact or truth. This is dividing us at every level: family, neighborhood, church, country and world. We are all now speaking different languages and, like the original inhabitants of Babel, are being scattered around the world.

In the light of this, it is noteworthy how the original Pentecost is described in scripture. The Acts of the Apostles describes Pentecost, the coming of the Holy Spirit, as an event which reverses what happened at the tower of Babel. At the tower of Babel, the languages (the “tongues”) of the earth divided and scattered. At Pentecost, the Holy Spirit descends on each person as a “tongue of fire” so that, to everyone’s great surprise, everyone now understands everyone one else in his or her own language.

Again, what is being described here is not about literal human languages – where at Pentecost everyone suddenly understood Greek or Latin. Rather everyone now understood everyone else in his or her own language. All languages became one language.

What is that common language? It’s neither Greek nor Latin nor English nor French nor Spanish nor Yiddish nor Chinese nor Arabic, nor any other of the world’s spoken languages. Neither is it the less-than-fully-compassionate language of the conservatives or the liberals. It is, as Jesus and our scriptures make clear, the language of charity, joy, peace, patience, goodness, long-suffering, fidelity, gentleness, faith and chastity.

This is the only language which can bridge the misunderstandings and differences among us – and when we are speaking it, we will not be trying to build a tower to impress anyone.

(Oblate Father Ron Rolheiser is a theologian, teacher and award-winning author. He can be contacted through his website www.ronrolheiser.com.)

IN EXILE
By Father Ron Rolheiser, OMI
On borders everywhere in the world today we find refugees, millions of them. They’re easily demonized, seen as a nuisance, a threat, as invaders, as criminals fleeing justice in their homelands. But mostly they are decent, honest people fleeing poverty, hunger, victimization and violence. And these reasons for fleeing their homelands strongly suggest that most of them are not criminals.

Irrespective of the fact that most of them are good people, they are still seen most everywhere as a problem. We need to keep them out! They are a threat! Indeed, politicians frequently use the verb invasion to describe their presence on our borders.

What’s to be said about this? Do we just let everyone in? Do we select judiciously among them, letting some in and keeping others out? Do we put up walls and barbed wire to block their entry? What’s to be our response?

These questions need to be examined from two perspectives: pragmatically and biblically.

Pragmatically this is a huge issue. We cannot simply open all borders and let millions of people flood into our countries. That’s unrealistic. On the other hand, we may not justify our reluctance to let refugees into our countries by appealing to the Bible, or to Jesus, or to the naïve rationalization that “our” countries are ours and we have a right to be here while others don’t unless we grant them entrance. Why not?

For Christians, there are a number of non-negotiable biblical principles at play here.

First, God made the world for everybody. We are stewards of a property not our own. We don’t own anything, God does, and God made the world for everybody. That’s a principle we too easily ignore when we speak of barring others from entering “our” country. We happen to be stewards here, in a country that belongs to the whole world.

Second, the Bible everywhere, in both testaments of scripture, is clear (and strong) in challenging us to welcome the stranger and the immigrant. This is everywhere present in the Jewish scriptures and is a strong motif at the very heart of Jesus’ message. Indeed, Jesus begins his ministry by telling us that he has come to bring good news to the poor. Hence, any teaching, preaching, pastoral practice, political policy or action that is not good news for the poor is not the Gospel of Jesus Christ, whatever its political or ecclesial expediency. And, if it is not good news for the poor, it may not cloak itself with the Gospel or with Jesus. Hence, any decisions we make vis-à-vis refugees and immigrants should not be antithetical to the fact that the Gospels are about bringing good news to the poor.

Moreover, Jesus makes this even clearer when he identifies the poor with his own person (Whatsoever you do to the least of my people, you do to me) and tells us that at the end of the day we will be judged by how we treat the immigrants and refugees. (Depart from me because I was a stranger and you didn’t welcome me.) There are few texts in scripture as raw and challenging as this one (Matthew 25:35-40)

Finally, we also find this challenge in scripture: God challenges us to welcome foreigners (immigrants) and share our love, food and clothing with them because we ourselves were once immigrants. (Deuteronomy 10:18-19) And this isn’t just some abstract biblical axiom, especially for us who live in North America. Except for the Indigenous nations (whom we forcefully displaced) we are all immigrants here and are challenged by our faith never to forget this, not least when dealing with hungry people on our borders. Of course, those of us who have been here for a number of generations can make the moral case that we have been here a long time and are no longer immigrants. But perhaps a more compelling moral case can be made suggesting it can be rather self-serving to close the borders after we ourselves are in.

These are biblical challenges. However, after they are affirmed, we are still left with the practical question; what realistically do we (and many countries around the world) do with the millions and millions of men, women and children arriving at our border? How do we honor the fact that the land we live in belongs to everyone? How do we honor that fact that, as Christians, we have to think first about the poor? How will we face Jesus in judgment when he asks us why we didn’t welcome him when he was in the guise of a refugee? And how do we honor the fact that almost every one of us is an immigrant, living in a country we forcibly took from someone else?

There are no easy answers to those questions, even while at the end of the day we still need to make some practical political decisions.

However, in our pragmatism, in sorting this out, we should never be confused about which side Jesus and the Bible are on.

(Oblate Father Ron Rolheiser is a theologian, teacher and award-winning author. He can be contacted through his website www.ronrolheiser.com.)

IN EXILE
By Father Ron Rolheiser, OMI

Creeds ground us. Within a short formula they summarize the main tenets of our faith and keep us mindful of the truths that anchor us.

As a Christian, I pray two creeds, The Apostles’ Creed and The Nicene Creed. But I also pray another creed which grounds me in some deep truths which are not always sufficiently recognized as inherent in our Christian creeds. This creed, given in the Epistle to the Ephesians, is stunningly brief and simply reads: There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God who is Father of us all.

That’s a lot in a few words! This creed, while Christian, takes in all denominations, all faiths, and all sincere persons everywhere. Everyone on the planet can pray this creed because ultimately there is only one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and one God who created and loves us all.

This has far-reaching consequences for how we understand God, other Christian denominations, other faiths, sincere non-believers, and ourselves. There is only one God, no matter our denomination, particular faith, or no explicit faith at all. The one same God is the loving creator and parent of everyone. And that one God has no favorites, doesn’t dislike certain persons, denominations, or faiths, and never disdains goodness or sincerity, no matter their particular religious or secular cloak.

And these are some of the consequences: First, Jesus assures us that God is the author of all that is good. In addition, as Christians we believe that God has certain transcendental attributes, namely, God is one, true, good, and beautiful. If that is true (and how could it be otherwise?), then everything we see in our world that is integral, true, good, or beautiful, whatever its outward label (Roman Catholic, Protestant, Evangelical, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, New Age, Neo-Pagan, or purely Secular), comes from God and must be honored.

John Muir once challenged Christianity with this question: Why are Christians so reluctant to let animals into their stingy heaven? The creed in the Epistle to the Ephesians asks something similar: Why are Christians so reluctant to let other denominations, other faiths, and good sincere people without explicit faith into our stingy concept of God, Christ, faith, and the church? Why are we afraid of faith fellowship with Christians of other denominations? Why are we afraid of faith fellowship with sincere Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and New Age religious? Why are we afraid of paganism? Why are we afraid of natural sacraments?

There can be good reasons. First, we do need to safeguard precisely the truths expressed in our creeds and not slide into an amorphous syncretism in which everything is relative, where all truths and all religions are equal, and the only dogmatic requirement is that we be nice to each other. Although there is, in fact, something (religious) to be said about being nice to each other, the more important point is that embracing each other in faith fellowship is not saying that all faiths are equal and that one’s particular denomination or faith tradition is unimportant. Rather it is acknowledging (importantly) that, at the end of the day, we are all one family, under one God, and that we need to embrace each other as brothers and sisters. Despite our differences, we all have the same radical creed.

Then too, as Christians, we believe that Christ is the unique mediator between God and ourselves. As Jesus puts it, no one goes to the Father, except through me. If that is true, and as Christians we hold that as dogma, then where does that leave Hindus, Buddhists, Taoists, Jews, Muslims, New Agers, Neo-Pagans, and sincere non-believers? How do they share the kingdom with us Christians since they do not believe in Christ?

As Christians, we have always had answers to that question. The Catholic catechisms of my youth spoke of a “baptism of desire” as a way of entry into the mystery of Christ. Karl Rahner spoke of sincere persons being “anonymous Christians.” Frank de Graeve spoke of a reality he called “Christ-ianity”, as a mystery wider than historical “Christianity”; and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin spoke of Christ as being the final anthropological and cosmological structure within the evolutionary process itself. What all of these are saying is that the mystery of Christ cannot be identified simplistically with the historical Christian churches. The mystery of Christ works through the historical Christian churches but also works, and works widely, outside of our churches and outside the circles of explicit faith.

Christ is God and therefore is found wherever anyone is in the presence of oneness, truth, goodness, and beauty. Kenneth Cragg, after many years as a missionary with the Muslims, suggested that it is going to take all the religions of the world to give full expression to the full Christ.

There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God who is Father of us all – and so we should not be so reluctant to let others, not of our own kind, into our stingy heaven.

(Oblate Father Ron Rolheiser is a theologian, teacher and award-winning author. He can be contacted through his website www.ronrolheiser.com.)

IN EXILE
By Father Ron Rolheiser, OMI

As a Lutheran priest, Dietrich Bonhoeffer would frequently offer this advice to a couple when he presided at their wedding: Today you are in love and believe your love will sustain your marriage, but it can’t. Let your marriage sustain your love.

Wise words, but what exactly do they mean? Why can’t love sustain a marriage?

What Bonhoeffer is highlighting is that it is naïve to think that feelings will sustain us in love and commitment over the long haul. They can’t, and they wouldn’t. But ritual can. How? By creating a ritual container that can keep us steady inside the roller coaster of emotions and feelings that will beset us in any long-term relationship.

Simply put, we will never sustain a long-term relationship with another person, with God, with prayer, or in selfless service on the basis of good feelings and positive emotions. This side of eternity, our feelings and emotions mostly come and go according to their own dictates and are not given to consistency.

We know the inconsistency of our emotions. One day we feel affectionate toward someone and the next day we feel irritated. The same is true for prayer. One day we feel warm and focused and the next day we feel bored and distracted.

And so, Bonhoeffer suggests we need to sustain ourselves in love and prayer by ritual, that is, by habitual practices that keep us steady and committed within the flux of feelings and emotions.

For example, take a couple in a marriage. They fall in love and commit themselves to love each other and stay with each other for the rest of their lives, and at root they fully intend that. They respect each other, are good to each other, and would die for each other. However, that’s not always true of their emotions. Some days their emotions seemingly belie their love. They are irritated and angry with each other. Yet, their actions toward each other continue to express love and commitment and not their negative feelings. They ritually kiss each other as they leave the house in the morning with the words, “I love you!” Are those words a lie? Are they simply going through the motions? Or is this real love?

The same holds true for love and commitment inside a family. Imagine a mother and a father with two teenage children, a boy of sixteen and a girl of fourteen. As a family they have a rule that they will sit together at dinner for forty minutes every evening, without their cellphones or other such devices. Many evenings when the son or daughter or one of the parents comes to the table (without their cellphone) out of dram duty, bored, dreading the time together, wanting to be somewhere else. But they come because they have made that commitment. Are they simply going through the motions or showing real love?

If Bonhoeffer is right, and I submit he is, they are not just going through the motions, they are expressing mature love. It’s easy to express love and be committed when our feelings are taking us there and holding us there. But those good feelings will not sustain our love and commitment in the long-term. Only fidelity to a commitment and ritual actions that undergird that commitment will keep us from walking away when the good feelings go away.

In our culture today, at most every level, this is not understood. From the person caught up in a culture addicted to feelings, to a good number of therapists, ministers of religion, prayer leaders, spiritual directors, and friends of Job, we hear the line: If you aren’t feeling it, it’s not real; you’re just going through the motions! That’s empty ritual!

Indeed, it can be an empty ritual. As scripture says, we can honor with our lips even as our hearts are far away. However, more often than not it is a mature expression of love because it is now a love that is no longer fueled by self-interest and good feelings. It’s now a love that’s wise and mature enough to account for the human condition in all its inadequacy and complexity and how these color and complicate everything – including the one we love, our own selves, and the reality of human love itself.

The book we need on love will not be written by passionate lovers on their honeymoon, just as the book we need on prayer will not be written by a religious neophyte caught up in the first fervor of prayer (nor by most enthusiastic leaders of prayer). The book we need on love will be written by a married couple who, through ritual, have sustained a commitment through the ups and downs of many years. Just as the book we need on prayer will be written by someone who has sustained a life of prayer and church going through seasons and Sundays when sometimes the last thing he or she wanted to do was to pray or go to church.

(Oblate Father Ron Rolheiser is a theologian, teacher and award-winning author. He can be contacted through his website www.ronrolheiser.com.)

IN EXILE
By Father Ron Rolheiser, OMI
Several years ago, at a time when the national news was much fixated on a high-profile case of sexual harassment, I asked three women colleagues: “what constitutes sexual harassment? What’s the line here that may not be crossed? What’s innocent behavior and what’s harassment?” They answered to this effect. It’s not so much a question of a clear line, a certain remark or behavior that goes too far. Rather, we know what is innocent and what is not. We can read the energy beneath the behavior. We know when it’s harassment and when it’s not.

I have no doubt that in most instances this is true. All of us have very perceptive inner radar screens. We naturally feel and read the energy in a room – tension, ease, jealousy, affirmation, innocence, aggression. You see this already in very young children, even babies, who can sense ease or tension in a room.

It is interesting that the great Carmelite mystic John of the Cross, draws on this notion when he writes on discernment in spiritual direction. How, he asks, do you discern if a person is in a genuine dark night of the soul (a healthy thing) or whether he is sad and down because of an emotional depression or because of bad moral behavior? John elaborates a number of criteria for discerning this, but ultimately they all come down to reading the energy that the person is radiating. Are they bringing oxygen into the room or are they sucking the oxygen out of the room? Are they depressing you as you listen to them? If yes, then their issue is not spiritual nor healthy. People who are in an authentic dark night of the soul, irrespective of their personal interior struggle, bring positive energy into a room and leave you inspired rather than depressed.

My purpose in sharing is not for us to become more critical and start judging others by trying to consciously read the energy they are radiating. (We are already unconsciously doing that.) What I want to highlight rather, as a challenge, is for each of us to more consciously examine ourselves vis-à-vis what energy we are bringing into a room and leaving behind.

Each of us needs to courageously ask: what energy do I bring into a room? What energy do I bring to the family table? To a community gathering? To those with whom I discuss politics and religion? To my colleagues and fellow workers? To the social circles within which I move? And more deeply, as a parent or as an elder, what energy am I habitually bringing to my children and to the young? As someone teaching or doing ministry, what energy am I radiating as I try to lead others?

That’s a critical question. What energy am I habitually bringing into a room and leaving behind? Frustration? Anger? Chaos? Jealousy? Paranoia? Bitterness? Depression? Instability? Or am I bringing and leaving behind some stability, some sanity, some joy of heart, some energy that blesses rather than curses others? Ultimately, what am I leaving behind?

When Jesus is giving his farewell speech in John’s Gospel, he tells us that it is better for us that he is going away because otherwise we will not be able to receive his spirit; and that his spirit, his final gift to us, is the gift of peace. Two things should be noted here: first, that the disciples couldn’t fully receive what Jesus was giving them until he had gone away; and second, that ultimately his real gift to them, his real legacy, was the peace he left behind with them.

What may seem strange at first glance is that his followers could only fully inhale his energy after he had gone away and left them his spirit. That is also true for each of us. It is only after we leave a room that the energy we left behind is most clear. Thus, it is after we die that the energy we have left behind will constitute our real legacy. If we live in anger and bitterness, in jealousy and unwillingness to affirm others, and if our lives sow chaos and instability, that will be what we ultimately leave behind and will always be part of our legacy. Conversely, if we are trustworthy and live unselfishly, morally, at peace with others, bringing sanity and affirmation into a room, then, like Jesus, we will leave behind a gift of peace. That will be our legacy, the oxygen we leave on the planet after we are gone.

And this is not a question of who can best light up a room with humor and banter, good as these can be. It is rather a question of who has enough personal integrity so as to bring trust and stability into a room?
Given all this, it’s good to ask oneself: when I enter a room am I bringing some oxygen into that room or am I sucking some oxygen out of that room?

(Oblate Father Ron Rolheiser is a theologian, teacher and award-winning author. He can be contacted through his website www.ronrolheiser.com.)