Tenison Woods and MacKillop Centre News: Saved by grace

Because it is by grace that you have been saved, through faith;

not by anything of your own, but by a gift from God;

not by anything that you have done,

so that nobody can claim the credit.

We are God’s work of art,

created in Christ Jesus to live the good life

as from the beginning he had meant us to live it.

Ephesians 2:8 – 10

Some are born with great genes. They don’t get fat or overweight and can eat whatever they want. Me, on the other hand, I am well on to the second half of a century and need to exercise several times a week, and that’s just to maintain my weight and fitness. In my aged state I eat low-fat yoghurt (but real butter), wholemeal bread and lean meat. The truth is, exercise is terribly unexciting. But if I want to live a long and healthy life, I have to take control of my own life and do what has to be done. And yes. I cheat sometimes.

Yet I know there are some who need do little to maintain their health and fitness. They are the fortunate ones.

There has always been a tension between what we are gifted with and what we have to work at. And that tension is no less evident in the gift of salvation (Ephesians 2) by the grace of God, and the need to express our faith through good works (James 2:24). Scholars have long since reconciled the two by a deeper exploration of James’ text, nevertheless the play between the two highlights the struggles we live with each day.

It is easy to be critical of those who present themselves at Sunday Mass as being ‘holy Joes’ inasmuch as we can be dismissive of those constant ‘do-gooders’ who visit, cook, transport, raise funds, extend our awareness, save whales and forests. If we are mindless and unreflective as church-goers or social activists you would have to question both the motivation and purpose.

As James concludes – faith without good works is empty; and equally that good works without faith do not necessarily lead to salvation in Christ.

If we want long and faith-filled lives we must find a balance between the two. Doubtlessly there are times in our lives when we will lean more heavily towards one rather than the other, but the call to self-examination and self-renewal is constant. We cannot continue on mindlessly. If nothing else this Lent, give yourself time to review and reconcile the tensions in your life whether it be in your diet, your exercise, your TV viewing, your family quality time, your prayer time, your relationships, attending church or your charity work. Then act. And no cheating.

Peter Douglas

HEAD OF SCHOOL SERVICES, NORTH

PRAYER FOR THE ABOLITION OF THE DEATH PENALTY

by Helen Prejean CSJ

God of Compassion,

You let your rain fall on the just and the unjust.

Expand and deepen our hearts so that we may love as You love,

even those among us who have caused the greatest pain by taking life.

For there is in our land a great cry for vengeance

as we fill up death rows and kill the killers in the name of justice, in the name of peace.

Jesus, our brother, You suffered execution at the hands of the state

but you did not let hatred overcome you.

Help us to reach out to victims of violence

so that our enduring love may help them heal.

Holy Spirit of God, You strengthen us in the struggle for justice.

Help us to work tirelessly for the abolition of stat-sanctioned death

and to renew our society in its very heart so that violence will be no more.

Amen.

SUN, STORMS, WILDERNESS, DESERTS, AND SPIRITUALITY

by Richard Rohr OFM

A number of years ago, accompanied by an excellent Jesuit director, I did a 30-day retreat using the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius. In the third week of that retreat there’s a meditation on Jesus’ agony in the garden. I did the meditation to the best of my abilities and met with my director to discuss the result. He wasn’t satisfied and asked me to repeat the exercise. I did, reported back to him, and found him again dissatisfied. I was at a loss to grasp exactly what he wanted me to achieve through that meditation, though obviously I was missing something. He kept trying to explain to me that Ignatius had a concept wherein one was supposed to take the material of a meditation and “apply it to the senses” and I was somehow not getting that part.

Eventually he asked me this question: “When doing this meditation, have you been sitting comfortably inside an air-conditioned chapel?” My answer was yes. “Well,” this wise Jesuit replied, “no wonder you aren’t able to properly apply this to your senses. How can you really feel what Jesus felt in his agony in garden when you are sitting warm, snug, secure, and comfortable in an air-conditioned room?” His advice was that I redo the exercise, but do it late in the evening, outside, in the dark, cold, subject to nature’s elements, and perhaps even a little afraid of what I might meet physically out there.

He made a good point, not just for my struggle with this particular spiritual exercise but about one of the major deficiencies within contemporary spirituality. Simply put: Our prayer and spiritual quests are not enough connected to nature. For all of our good intentions and hard work, we are too-platonic, too much trying to have our souls transformed while our bodies sit warm, safe, and uninvolved. The physical elements of nature and our own bodies play too small a role in our efforts to grow spiritually.

This is the major critique that Bill Plotkin, an important new voice in spirituality, makes of what he sees happening in much of Christian spirituality today. From our church programs, to what happens in our retreat centers, to the spiritual quests people more deliberately pursue, Plotkin sees too little connection to nature, to the sun, to storms, to the wilderness, and to the desert that Jesus himself sought out.

Plotkin, who doesn’t work out of an explicitly Christian perspective but is sympathetic to it, runs a wilderness center out of which he directs people who are searching spiritually. One of the things that his center offers is a wilderness quest. People are offered the option of going out into the wilderness for some days alone, taking very little to protect themselves from what they might meet there. While sensible precautions are taken and prudence isn’t irresponsibly bracketed, the people doing these quests nonetheless often find themselves pretty vulnerable to the elements and battling a good amount of fear.

And the quests are effective mainly because of that. Real transformation often happens and it is very much attributed to the battle that the one doing the quest had to wage in the face of fear and the physical elements. Plotkin’s book, Soulcraft, contains a number of powerful testimonies of people who share how what they experienced in the wilderness – real exposure and real fear – led to real transformation in their lives. For something to be real it has to be real!

Jesus knew that and went on his own “wilderness quest”, 40 days alone in the desert where, as the Gospels tell us, he did his own battle with “the wild beasts”. We read accounts in the Gospels too of how he spent whole nights outside, alone, praying. It’s no accident that his struggle to give his life over takes place in a garden and not in an air-conditioned church. Beautiful church buildings have power to transform but so too do the sun, storms, the wilderness, and the desert. It’s good to seek out both places, and lately Christian spirituality has been too negligent of the latter.

And it not just the things in nature that batter us and cause us fear to which we need to expose ourselves. Nature also waters the earth. There are few things in life that can induce the joy we can experience by drinking in nature. As the Canticle of Daniel (3:57-88) so wonderfully celebrates it, many things in nature nurture the soul and fill it with life: the sun, the moon, the stars, winds, fire and heat, cold and chill, dew and rain, ice and snow, light and darkness, lightning and clouds, mountains and hills, seas and rivers, plants and animals. Each of these can trigger special memories and special joys, if we stay awake to them.

We need to let nature touch more of our bodies and our souls, both for our spiritual health and for our health in general. For something to be real it has to be real!

NETWORK MEETING AT SACRED HEART, ULVERSTONE