Chronicle of a Silence Endured. Guido da Verona
to be expressed – they are not truth in and of themselves. So if one is not careful it can alienate from spirituality, and make paranoid in its sense of obligation to have to explain everything away.
Spirituality, by default, does not and cannot; its hands are free of all that mess and what happens as a result is inevitable – it embraces another mess - the messiness of life, but from a much different perspective. It seeks to join and to be joined. Where religion may try to find redemption in, for example, the counting of rosary beads, spirituality seeks redemption in direct action with the souls of the world. Now, is there anything wrong with praying the rosary? Of course not. But if that practice does not move you to right action, both in and out of your home and church, you are assuredly wasting your time.
Pay attention to how many religious people, to a large degree, like to wear their very expensive religious pendants and medals around their necks, on their fingers, and on their clothes for all to see, admire, recognize and respect. It is as if one is either part of the class, the team, or one is not. Suppose for a moment what would happen if one were to strip these polished metals and stones away. It is not too far to figure that many would not even know what to do with themselves, and the result would be, among other things, pressing malignance and uncontrolled anger. And that is a very serious problem to have – to attach so much of your connection to God through such material things. To worship objects, property, and not what they symbolize, that is exactly what the devil wants.
Spirituality has no such needs, fears or wants. It simply hangs its head low in humble strength and walks barefoot if it must into the dark night of the soul for 40 days to talk with God.
Our hero, he does not yet have the words to expand upon it for himself, but a priest once sat him on his lap and said to him succinctly,
“…listen to me carefully...do not believe in people, not even the pope himself, or the Vatican. True faith will have that you believe in God and God only, who alone is unchangeable.”
And that is why humanity needs so much more than the words of the bible to tackle the problems of today. Humanity requires not just spiritual leadership and renewal in and out of churches, synagogues and cathedrals - it requires scientific thinking too. It requires ethics. It requires compassion in the streets. It requires research and technology.
It requires real-world solutions.
And it requires the instruments engineered to help get us to a place of greater peace and harmony with one another. Otherwise what’s the use? In essence, it requires the Spirit of Truth. And Jesus is the incarnation of that spirit. Jesus’ words and method of teaching varied according to whom He was teaching at that moment. He was and is balanced. He is right minded.
How much our woundedness and blind arrogance is costing us!
In that same year, mom motivated and even pushed her son to become an altar boy, making it as though he did not have a choice or say in the matter. But that pushing did not bother him, because he was excited about being a member of something so meaningful, so spirit-filled, and so positively close to God. She did not need to push that hard. His sisters were to become lectors. And so, after a few weeks of training, our hero was presiding in mass right beside the priest. And it was a source of personal joy, pride and confidence.
The priests and church administrators and Sunday school teachers and assistants and choir members he met during this episode of his life were many. It appeared everyone met our hero and his family with legitimate smiles. Conversations seemed authentic, and actual work around the Church was getting done. A priest coming to the apartment for coffee and discussion was commonplace. Our hero relished these visits, rushing to open the door the moment they knocked, and insisting to make the coffee for them. He would then sit right next to them and feel like a grown-up discussing ‘very important things’.
“Remember now,” the priest who would one day marry him said, “that no matter what anyone tries to do to you in this world they will never be able to take your mind away from you. Your mind is your own possession and you can make it do whatever you want. There is hard work and responsibility in that. So study hard. Be intelligent. And of course, never ever forget there is someone who loves you very much watching over you at all times.”
For our hero, there was an admirable quality about the way priests moved about in the world, in the way they led the mass, in the way they communicated with others. It was a time when our hero saw how well accepted priests were in most societies, how needed by their community, and how well they seemed to handle it all.
But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.
-1 Peter 2:9 NIV
One day after Sunday mass, back inside the rectory and alone, were our hero and the young priest with the trimmed black beard and glasses. They were changing out of their garments. In a quick moment the priest looked down and over. He asked quizzically,
“And you there! What do you want to be when you grow up?”
Our hero answered without the least hesitation,
“I am going to be a priest.”
Laughing to himself with surprise and nodding in approval, the young priest now turned his body completely to face the little enthusiastic boy,
“Oh, is that so?”
“Yes.” Our hero was standing at attention.
“And tell me, what do you know about being a priest?”
“Umm…I know they help people a lot and that they can’t have sex and that makes them pure, and that they are really close to God and that is where I want to be. I want to be really close to God just like you are.”
“Ah, yes indeed! You are right! But only Jesus is pure. All the rest of us have original sin. But did you know that there is a lot more to it than that?”
“Well……I’m sure……there….has to be.”
Our hero was beginning to feel embarrassed about the way he had just answered.
“For starters, you have to go to school for a long time where you learn the bible and many more things about God and our Church, but in a very deep way. For that, you get placed in what is called a seminary. You live and work and study there for years with your brothers and teachers before you can even become a priest. There is a lot of sacrifice involved - more than just sex.” Then the young priest shifted in his stance, as if to start a new conversation, “Do you know what the word sacrifice means, little one?”
Our hero had heard the word so many times before, but he did not move to speak.
“Sacrifice means to offer yourself for Christ. To give yourself completely to the Church the same way He did, to love it with your life until the day you die.”
Dare to be different; save your energy for the really important things like contemplation of the topsy-turvy mystery of faith, where death is life, and darkness is light. The Church exists to be an agency of the reign of God, the disturbing, challenging God of Job and Hebrews. In this upside down world, power is humility, and status takes the form of a servant. This alone is the way of the Lord.
-Alan Le Grys
The Expository Times
Over the course of the next several months, and then years, as our hero grew into his teens, in slow and progressive fashion, something had started to go awry in our hero’s home with his mom and sisters. It was like a slow-moving freight-train; thousands of tons of steel humming forward at a steady pace, yet nothing you put in its way could slow it down, or much less stop it.
It was a partly sunny sky where dark clouds had ominously developed into thick, giant water-filled balls in the