PHOTO: Mary van Balen from Volume 4 Saint John’s Bible: Psalms (Originally published in the Catholic Times, May 13, 2012 © 2012 Mary van Balen)

“How do you manage Liturgy of the Hours?” I asked a friend who is an oblate of a Benedictine abbey.

“I don’t get to it everyday. I do it when I can. Often, I just read through the Psalter.”

That conversation came to mind when I was discouraged by my inability to fit more of the Hours into my daily life. So, I pulled a Psalter from shelves in my study. A gift from a Trappist friend, the old book had been rebound in the monastery with a plain burnt sienna fabric and blue end papers. Father Maurice’s name is written across the top with pencil in his beautiful calligraphic scrip along with a small cross and the year: 1965.

The Grail translation, new at the time, like the translation of psalms found in the Jerusalem Bible, is made from the Hebrew. As I held the book and read from the yellowed pages, I imagined Fr. Maurice sitting in the chapel at the Abbey of Gethsemane in Kentucky, chanting these ancient hymns day after day, year after year. I thought, too of my friends at Saint John’s Abbey in Collegeville, and the time I spent with them praying the psalms throughout the day.

Sometimes, reading the more violent ones, I have wondered why they remain in liturgical collections. I have heard others voice that concern and remember a story shared by a monk at St. John’s. At one time, they were considering the collection of psalms used in their prayer. Someone suggested removing the more violent ones. Why pray war songs, songs that include dashing children against the rocks or slaughtering one’s enemies?

A monk of great stature in the community objected. Violence is part of Old Testament history. Indeed they are part of our history. “Remove those,” he said, “ and the Psalter just collapses.”

Our world today is not so different from the ancient Hebrew one. Using drones to kill our enemies makes their deaths and those civilians who lose their lives, euphemistically called “collateral damage,” invisible but no less gruesome.We may desire revenge or exact punishment from those who wrong us. Sometimes the violence visited upon the poor and marginal peoples in our world results as much from inaction as from what we do. We are no strangers to violence. Perhaps that is why praying such psalms makes us uncomfortable. Such darkness makes us avert our eyes.

As I prayed the Psalter I thought of St. Athanasius (2295-373CE) whose feast was May 2. He is known for his fight against the heresy of Arianism that claimed Jesus was in no way equal to God the Father, having been created, but what I most remember about Athanasius is his wonderful letter to Marcellinus that spoke eloquently of the interpretation of the Psalms. While other books of the Bible are filled with words that inspire or instruct, yet remain the words of the author, words of the psalms are like “one’s own words that one read; and anyone who hears them is moved at heart, as though they voiced for him his deepest thoughts.”

Athanasius goes on to illustrate which psalms reflect which human situation or emotion: repentance, Psalm 51; bearing one’s afflictions, Psalm 3. The list goes on. “Just as in a mirror,” he writes, “the movements of our own souls are reflected in them and the words are indeed our very own, given us to serve both as a reminder of our changes of condition and as a pattern and model for the amendment of our lives.”

That is why the psalms have survived as part of our prayer for millennia. That is why monks and the rest of us gather to chant or sing or read them every day. They remind us of who we are and of who God is. They reflect the light in our hearts as well as the darkness. The history of the psalms is our history and it is our present. The involvement of God in the lives of the Hebrews remind us that the Holy One remains involved in our lives.

When I hold the old Psalter in my hands and pray the words printed there, I am connected not only with my monk friends, but also with my ancestors. I am in touch with my heart, and my journey and the God who embraces us all.

Click on this link if you would like to read Athanasius’ letter to Marcellinus.

PHOTO: Mary van Balen
(Originally published in the Catholic Times, April 5, 2012 © 2012 Mary van Balen)

“Are you going to make some this year?” my sister asked as she looked at hot cross buns sitting off to the right in the restaurant’s generous display of pastries and muffins. She was referring to my annual baking of dozens of the Easter treats and giving them away to family, friends, and neighbors. I didn’t bake any last year. We were beginning to clean out our parents’ home, readying it for sale. I didn’t have the heart.

“I hope so,” I replied, not able to make the commitment. Dad died in September. A contract on the house is pending and I am keeping my first Lent in a new flat. I do hope so. Baking and sharing hot cross buns is as good for my spirit as I hope receiving them is for others. Besides, the world is hungry for more than bread, and the small raisin-filled rolls sealed with a white icing cross dripping over their shiny domes carry more than sweetness and calories. They are packed with promise and the baker’s humble efforts to participate in the Easter Mystery. To be bread.

In her book, “Still: Notes on a Mid-Faith Crisis,” Lauren Winner tells of a similar experience. After coming home from church on Sunday afternoons, she baked muffins and loaves of bread, and wanting to feed others as she had been fed at Mass, she left them on doorsteps around town.

It is a priest’s heart. It is God’s heart. It is the heart of Jesus living in each one of us that sees hunger and wants to feed it. That sees need and wants to meet it. That sees suffering and wants to stop it.
Jesus showed us that heart when he bent down and washed the feet of his followers as the gathered for their last meal together. I guess it took such unexpected action to jolt them into recognition of just what being one of Jesus’ disciples meant. Just incase they missed the point, Jesus untied the apron around his waist and explained: “Do you realize what I have done for you?…I have given you a model to follow, so that as I have done for you, you should also do.”

We can all be a bit thick headed, so at supper, Jesus repeated his instructions: “This is my body that is for you…” Jesus giving himself away again, to feed hungry souls that didn’t even know for sure what they were craving.

News these past couple of weeks has given us some idea of what our world craves, whether it knows it or not. Our country needs to recognize the racism that still rots its soul. Listening to a black mother admonishing her son not to run with anything in his hand, to always say “Yes sir” and “Yes Ma’m” when confronted by authority, wrenched my heart. White mothers may say similar things, but they don’t do it because they fear for their son’s lives. An admiral in “civies” recounts being stopped and frisked for “…walking while black” as he described it. Our country craves justice and compassion.

Innocents slaughtered in Syria perplex world leaders and sicken our stomachs. Nuclear weapons, let out of the box during World War II, continue their nefarious spread. Refusal to engage in genuine dialog sabotages meaningful elections. Exclusion of women’s voices and experiences from public debate skews conclusions.

We are hungry for the Holy One. Nothing else is enough. When Jesus walked the earth, his day just as warmongering and wounded as our own, he showed us what we needed.

He showed us how to be bread for the hungry, how to be justice for the persecuted, how to be peace in the face of violence. Patiently, he told those who gathered with him around the table, men and women (I can’t imagine a big dinner being prepared by fishermen and tax collectors. Women and children helping to stir pots and carry plates had to be there.) It was as simple as baking hot cross buns or loaves of bread and leaving them around town. And as difficult.

Do for others as I have done for you. It is as simple as washing each other’s feet. And as difficult. It leads to the cross. It leads to resurrection.

PHOTO: Mary van Balen (Originally published in the Catholic Times, March 11, 2012 © 2012 Mary van Balen)

The gospel reading about the rich man and Lazarus is familiar to most of us. Lazarus is a poor man who lies at the door of the rich man, hoping in vain for a scrap from his table. After a life of leisure and abundance, the rich man dies and finds himself tormented in the netherworld. Lazarus also dies, but he is taken to heaven and cradled in the bosom of Abraham. I often think of this reading as a reminder of the importance of caring for the needy among us, not only those struggling to survive materially, but also those impoverished of spirit. Today, however, I am struck by another message.

Once resigned to his fate, the rich man asks that someone be sent to his brothers who still live, that they might be warned and change their ways. Abraham says that cannot be done. He reminds the rich man that his brothers have Moses and the prophets to warn them. The rich man persists, saying that if Lazarus could go to his brothers, they would surely listen to someone come back from the dead. Again, Abraham says no. Even if someone were to rise from the dead, they would not listen.

I pondered this section of the gospel and thought about where the rich man’s brothers looked for wisdom. Or did they?Did they assume they knew what was best? Was immediate reward what drove them? What about me? Where do I look for wisdom? Where do people in the modern world find it? We are bombarded with information, analysis, and advice from TV pundits to celebrities, from Internet to radio.

Recently, I watched motherly wisdom handed down from one generation to the next. A young woman, overwhelmed with the demands of her newborn child and unsure how to meet them, turned to her mother who had done a good job with three. Sometimes wisdom is obtained from those we trust and love.

Where we look and whom we ask depends on what kind of wisdom we are searching for. The rich man’s brothers probably thought they had a good handle on how to live life. Their goals may have been simply wealth and comfort. Turns out they were as short sighted as the brother who had died first. Where we look for wisdom depends on our goals.

Lent is a time that reminds us to consider our goal. Whatever discipline or practices we are using to observe this season are meant to help us focus on what is most important in our lives: our relationship with the Holy One. That is not something apart from the “rest” of our lives, but rather integral to everything we do. How we interact with people at our workplace, what we do to recreate body and spirit, how we respond to needs of others, how we live with our families and friends.

The rich man and his brothers likely did not read Moses or the Prophets to find out how to pursue their goals. We have the advantage of many sources of wisdom to help us in our search for deepening our relationship with God and the changes that makes in how we live our lives. We have Moses and the Prophets. We have the New Testament and examples of holy women and men who have gone before us and who live in the world today. Most importantly, we have Jesus Christ who did rise from the dead and who sent the Spirit to live within each of us.

The Wisdom we seek dwells within, a gift of the Incarnation. These weeks are good times to reflect on using Scripture and other writing that feeds our spirits. It is a time to reflect on how our relationship with God influences our interaction with the world.

PHOTO: Mary van Balen (First appeared in The Catholic Times, February 19, 2012 ©2012 Mary van Balen)

Last week I received a call from my brother informing me that my Uncle Adrian had passed away. He was my father’s youngest brother and had been the last surviving of six siblings. Uncle Adrian was easy to be with and always a lot of fun. When I was in grade school, my parents drove me to his home where I spent a week of summer vacation with him, my aunt, and four cousins.

His two sons and I hiked along creeks and picking among stones along its bed, found “magic” ones that we used to write and draw on flat pieces of slate we had found. I remember sitting with Uncle Adrian on the porch one evening, just watching the sky and talking about a variety of topics. That is when I learned that the neighbor’s dog had had a litter and was looking for homes for the puppies.

I was ecstatic. I had wanted a pet for what seemed to me like forever, and here was a puppy, a free puppy, just for the asking. I fell in love with a light colored puppy with nappy fur and dark ears, and by the time my parents came to pick me up, I was sure this puppy was meant for us.

They did not share my conviction, however, and no amount of pleading could change their minds. The ride back to Ohio was quiet and I imagine I was sullen in the back seat. Still, I had had a great time, and that week remains a fond memory fifty years later.

My brothers, sisters, and most of our cousins came to the funeral home to remember Adrian and share our stories. Afterward, we gathered at a local park shelter house to share food, laughter, and more stories. Death provided an opportunity for us to reconnect and to celebrate not only Adrian’s life, but also the lives of family and friends that were intertwined with his.

My sister and brother-in-law and I spent the night at the home of their daughter, her husband, and their three-week-old daughter. How good to feel the warmth of a tiny baby snuggled up against my shoulder as I walked her around and around the house, talking quietly about our family, the bird’s nest outside on the trellis, and hopes for future visits.

Death and new life seem to be the opposite ends of each person’s journey. Certainly if life is viewed in a linear way, such a view makes sense: One is born, one lives, one dies. But life can be understood in other ways. It can be a circle that continues forever. On a purely physical level, the death and decomposition of a living being allows its matter to become part of new living beings. Joni Mitchell sang “We are stardust,” and she was right.

On a spiritual level, death also brings new life. We experience many deaths throughout our lives: deaths of relationships, dreams, or jobs. We must let go of some emotions or desires that keep us from being who God made us to be. Life is an unending string of deaths that lead to new life.

Liturgically, we are approaching Lent, when we celebrate the Paschal Mystery of Christ’s birth, death, and resurrection. This is the ultimate understanding of death leading to new life. Jesus was born lived his life, and in the end, was murdered by humanity that could not accept the challenge of love and compassion he proclaimed.

The lives and deaths of our family and friends are reminders of this greater mystery. From the explosion of stars to the birth and death of every person, to the final coming together in an unimaginable new life, we are part of the cycle that is echoed in the earth’s seasons and the church’s liturgies. Death is not the end. It is the entrance into a new way of being.