Laetare Weekend

Yesterday, with Laetare Sunday (aka the Fourth Sunday of Lent, aka the Sunday of the Man Born Blind), we reached the half-way point between the beginning of the Lenten season on Ash Wednesday, and the conclusion of Lent on Holy Thursday, when the Paschal Triduum begins.
'Laetare', from the first word of Latin text of the Entrance Antiphon for that Sunday, which means 'rejoice'.

Rejoice, O Jerusalem: and all who love her: 

Be joyful, all who were in mourning.  

I'm still missing my Dad (it was two months on Friday since his death).  But within the narrow confines of the New Jerusalem Workshop, while not exactly feeling joyful, I'm ready to rejoice a little. Why? Because this weekend I'm about half-way done with the icon of St. Anne, Mary the Mother of God and Jesus that I began on March 4th.

 Which is to say, I've finished the garments, the gilding, gold assist and the highlighting of the roundel that symbolizes the heavens (and the Virgin's womb which contained the One through whom the cosmos was made.)  Still more wretched faulting of the gold to finish.  But being back in the studio, even feeling as sad as I find myself most days, and getting things done, is such a grace and a blessing.  To God be the glory!

Now on to the faces.




 

Wrenched Out of Our Blindness

"Healing of the Man Born Blind" two-color linocut by Robert Hodgell (1922-2000)

In the Roman rite, this weekend we celebrate the Sunday of the Man Born Blind (aka the Fourth Sunday in Lent, aka Laetare Sunday.)  In the long gospel reading from St. John, Jesus encounters a blind begger, and after declaring "I AM  the Light of the World, spits in the dirt to make a muddy slurry and rubs the mud on the man's eyes.  The beggar regains his sight and it is then that his troubles really begin as the opponents of Jesus demand that he account for himself and his miraculous healing.

Yet for each of us, who, like the beggar healed by Jesus, who have been wrenched out of our blindness, we assume a burden of responsibility for which we must make an accounting.  Although it is certainly possible to close our eyes to the lies, injustice and suffering all around us, there is a price to be paid, in this life and in the next, for blinding ourselves to it.

Blessed Monsenor Oscar Romero

Tomorrow is the anniversary of Blessed Monsenor Oscar Romero, who, in 1977, after the brutal assasination of his friend and brother priest, Fr. Rutilio Grande SJ, began to see the lives of his impoverished and oppressed people with new eyes.  For the next three years he refused to close his eyes to the relentless violence and oppression experienced by the poor in El Salvador at the hands of the military and the security forces.

As the violence intensified he denounced the thousands of killings and disappearances and those who perpetrated them, while trying to find a way to bring peace to a country on the verge of civil war.  In the end, this courageous witness who refused to look away and keep silent was martyred while celebrating Mass on March 24th, 1980.      

Through the intercession of Blessed Oscar Romero, Bishop and Martyr, may Christ heal our blindness to the burdens, sorrows and injustices borne by our brothers and sisters.  May we have the grace and courage to see with the eyes of truth and compassion.  



    

Remember the Marvels the Lord Has Done

Today, March 17th, is Friday of the Second Week of Lent and/or St. Patrick's Day.  It is also the third anniversary of the death of my teacher and friend, Fr.Egon Sendler SJ (aka Pere Igor).  

Reflecting on the daily readings for today, I was struck by the ways in which God's redemptive purpose is able to to be found even in circumstances of  great suffering and injustice.  In the first reading is the familiar story of Joseph, and how his brothers, out of jealousy and hatred, throw him into a cistern to die and then, when the opportunity presents itself, sell him into bondage in Egpt.  In the gospel, Jesus tells the parable of the vineyard, in which the wicked tenants beat and kill the servants of the owner of the vineyard and then in their greed, kill his son.

/But God's redemptive purpose cannot be thwarted, even by the intransigence and violence of sinners.  Joseph forgives his brothers and reconciles with them.  Jesus, from the Cross, forgives those who are putting him to death and even excuses their actions before God, "because they know not what they are doing."

St. Patrick was kidnapped by Irish pirates and enslaved in Ireland.  Yet after his escape from bondage he returned and shared Christ with the people of Ireland.  In a similar way, my friend Pere Igor, conscripted into the war with Russia, was a German prisoner of war in Siberia for three years, where he worked as slave laborer.  He vowed, if he survived his imprisonment, to devote the rest of his life to the service of the Church in Russia and to work for Christian unity.  Which he did, for the rest of his long life.

Like Joseph and like Patrick,  Igor, (the name the Russian inmates gave him in the labor camp) had to chose whether or not to be consumed by hatred and bitterness towards those who mistreated and enslaved him.  It would have been understandable, reasonable even, for each of them to have responded that way to undeserved suffering.  

But grace and a willingness to be open to grace made it possible to chose to live and act in a different way. That they chose to love and not to hate allowed God to use their suffering for his own mysterious but always redemptive purpose.

Memory eternal, Pere Igor!

St. Patrick, Apostle to the Irish, pray for us!     

Come to the Aid of Our Weakness

I've found over the years that I really do pray better when I'm working on an icon.  Or rather, that my ability to be at least minimally raise my heart and mind to God and remain personally present despite indiscipline, laziness and distraction improves when I've got a brush or a pencil in my hand.  I don't really understand why, except to say that perhaps the concentration and attention required in drawing and painting provides a kind of scaffolding for the mysterious work of prayer itself.

Or perhaps it has to do with the movement involved in drawing and painting.  Or perhaps the act of taking up the pencil or stick of conte crayon or paint brush is, after so many years in the studio, a summons to recollection, similar to the act of passing a rosary or prayer rope through one's hands.

On the face of it, it might seem that what both drawing or painting and prayer have in common is that they are mimetic.  A drawing or painting is, in most cases, an attempt to render a natural form or in the case of icons, a canonical pattern.   Spoken prayer, in many cases, is the act of articulating received forms or patterns of prayer, the Lord's Prayer to be sure, but also prayers such as the rosary or the Jesus Prayer and of course, the psalms.

But I wonder too if perhaps drawing or painting and prayer have this in common: both seek to give expression to inchoate thoughts and feelings that we struggle to adequately render or articulate. The words of St. Paul about prayer in his Letter to the Romans, could, at least from my experience, be applied to the work in the studio as well.  "In the same way, the Spirit too comes to the aid of our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit itself intercedes with inexpressible groanings." (Romans8:26)

I'm in the beginning stages of a large icon of St. Anne, Mary the Mother of God, and Jesus, and over the course of the past couple of weeks has slowly come together.    
 

Just like every other time, this icon has required me to shake off the distractions and excuses and to simply begin, knowing that the whole enterprise may end up as a disappointing failure.  I've needed to be patient with the fumbling about, false starts and erasures as I've attempted to put all of the various pieces together in a coherent, pleasing  way.  It has required perseverance, so as not to give up when discouraged by my (inevitably) awkward attempts to place the forms on the panel.   And humility  when the final work (inevitably) falls short of that impossible to articulate but real feeling that originally inspired the work in the first place.  

Yet the discoveries and surprises have more than made up for the sting of not quite ever being able to accomplish in reality what was envisioned in the imagination.  

All of which reminds me of what happens (for me, at least) in prayer, where even a fleeting moment of genuine and authentic communion with God is worth whatever had to be endured to bring me to that point.    

Dreaming of My Father

4

Fortieth Day Dream

On the fortieth day

I dreamed

the  LeConte

was boarding passengers

before dawn.

Standing by the purser’s shack

I watched each dim form

present their ticket

and shuffle across the gangway.  

In that murmuring crowd

I listened for your voice

but it was raining,

(of course),

and I couldn’t hear you.

When at first light the ferry

began to pull away from the pier,

there you were, standing at the railing

waving to me.

a long, slow, steady wave of farewell. 

You smiled,

it was a tender, wistful smile,

as if fondly remembering what

 even the waters of the river Lethe

could not entirely erase.

As the boat picked up speed

I watched you

and waved goodbye

until the ferry rounded Coghlan Island

and disappeared.

The fortieth day since my Dad's death on January 24th was March 4th.      

Deliver me, O Jesus

Deliver me, O Jesus

From the desire of being loved.

From the desire of being extolled.

From the desire of being honored,

From the desire of being praised,

from the desire of being consulted,

from the desire of being approved,

from the desire of being popular,

from the fear of being humiliated,

from the fear of being despised,

from the fear of being rebuked,

from the fear of being calumniated,

from the fear of being wronged,

from the fear of being ridiculed,

from the fear of being suspected.

Amen      -- Mother Teresa of Kolkota

This prayer of Mother Teresa seemed a good way to begin the season of Lent. 

My last post was back at the beginning of January.  I've been away and too occupied with my Dad's final illness and death on January 24th and then with everything involved in commending him to God and burying him.  Since then I've been preoccupied with making sense of life without him to be able to write or post much of everything.  

It will have been 40 days since his death on the 4th of March, so I'm ready (sort of) to enter back into things a bit more.  Although I'm pretty off of Facebook for Lent, I will post on this blog from time to time and post it to Facebook as well.  

Thoughts and comments you wish to share on this blog or Facebook are always most welcome and I will be reading them. 

Deacon Charles