Author: Lindsay Tsohantaridis

Easter Monday

Not Over Yet

A quiet melancholy usually settles over me on Easter Monday. And I blame the Church; She is brilliant in her liturgical theatrics: She sweeps us into the solemnity of the Last Supper on Holy Thursday, descends with us into the sorrow and profundity of Christ’s Passion and Death, then suspends us over Holy Saturday, until sundown. But that sense of suspension doesn’t completely vanish at dawn on Easter. There is a sense of relief, yes, but it is coupled with anticipation.

The same melancholy settles after Christmas day: the anticipation of Christ’s advent isn’t fully satisfied. And the readings of Advent prepare the Church for that reality. Though Christ came to earth incarnate, He will come again. We repeat this promise at each Mass: As we await the coming of our Savior, Jesus Christ.

It’s not just melancholy; there’s joy, too. But it’s a quiet joy, a joy of awe and wonder, a joy of things to come. It’s Mary Magdalen at the tomb, desperate to touch the risen Christ, but restrained, and instructed to, “Go!” Go, tell the disciples; go, share the Good News; go, make disciples of all nations. Celebrating Easter is a reminder that someday we will rest with Christ; we will touch Him, unhindered. The Triduum liturgies create that hunger for Christ’s triumph, for eternal rest and eternal communion.

Holy Saturday

Hands to Work, Hearts to God

There’s always an eery stillness to Holy Saturday, that day between Christ’s death and resurrection. It reminds me of the shock of grief after someone dies, when you’re aware that someone is suddenly absent, but it’s too new and fresh to be fully real. Their absence follows you like a shadow and time becomes theoretical instead of actual. Tasks of daily life become the track beneath your feet, carrying you from one task to the next, sometimes mindlessly.

On Holy Saturday there’s so much preparation that goes into an Easter celebration and feast that I have to make myself a list of what to do, otherwise I find myself feeling listless and unaware of time, like a pseudo-grief. This Holy Saturday, I find myself thinking of the myrrh-bearers, the women who, in their shock and grief, gathered oils and ointments to bring to the tomb. It must have been strangely comforting to clean his wounds and wrap his body in fragrant linen.

Just this past year, a dear friend of mine passed away quite suddenly. It was traumatic for her husband and children, and though they were with her in those last moments, there wasn’t much of a goodbye, not much opportunity for closure. The days that followed were beautiful: they prepared a pine coffin by writing notes along the inside and lined it with fabric and herbs. They prepared her body themselves and laid her to rest. They wept as they knelt in the dirt and planted flowers to adorn the final place of their mother’s body. They comforted her with song, drank in her death with their senses, then mourned with their tears and sweat.

As I learn more about trauma, I am more and more amazed at how God made us, how our body, mind, and spirit are intimately connected and affect one another, both for good and for ill. With strong emotions, especially grief and terror—which the disciples and women assuredly felt astutely on Holy Saturday—putting our hands to work and hearts to God is a way to actively pray and process.

In some small way, preparing food and filling Easter baskets so my family can enter into the joy and rest of Easter Sunday is prayerful and contemplative. There have been and will be greater moments when acts of service are less delightful and more important. The adult children of my friend who passed away had also, countless times before, completed acts of service with their mother in both joyful and difficult times. In the discipline of putting their hands to work and hearts to God, they were able to do what needed to be done with devotion and love when tragedy shocked them. Just so, the women who rose up and put their grieving hands to work in their darkest moment had done it thousands of times before in little ways when there was less at stake, and so were prepared to do something as difficult and powerful as prepare God for the grave.

Good Friday

by His wounds

I didn’t pick a word of the year for 2023. I can’t really call it a tradition yet, just something I did two years in a row at the behest of a friend. And while I scoffed at the idea originally, it was meaningful in the end. So I really did try to think of one for this year, but nothing stuck. Yet as Lent draws to a close, I think I’ve found it, the word of the year: wounds.

One of the reasons I was opposed to the idea of a word-of-the-year is that it seemed like a goal-setting mechanism, and that’s really not my style. Goals are anxiety-inducing, just threats of failure looming in the distance. I tend to do better with a day-by-day go of things, so I can go to sleep taking note of little victories and examining little failures. But the word-of-the-year is more like a sacramental, a mode through which Christ speaks to me. The year my seventh baby was born, the word was healing, and that year would reveal a path of healing I couldn’t have anticipated. The next year it was receptivity, and soon I was listening to the heartbreaks of my children, which set us on a road of discernment to relocating, something I couldn’t have imagined. And this year wounds have been the mode through which I’m learning to know myself, and this Lent, a mode through which Christ is revealing Himself.

Listening to Him through wounds has been very challenging. For a while, all I could hear was self-loathing, neglect, and despair. It cast a shadow over everything in my life. At times I thought I could retreat again, push it all back into the shadows and manage like I have for the past many years, but once a leviathan like that has been unleashed, it’s out. It will have its reckoning. All I could do was surrender to the time it would take to process and heal. In the meantime, facing the ugly and walking around with open wounds has been exhausting.

My reckoning with God has taken time, but has left me with significant moments of revelation. It was during the 33 days of consecration to Jesus through Mary that I first realized how distorted my view of Father-God was. It was at the confession-of-my-life where the priest opened that pandora’s box for good and allowed me room to express anger at God. He explained suffering to me in a way that I could understand, and inserted Christ as a light of hope into my darker memories. On my way to daily Mass a year ago, I suddenly was given an image of the Trinity with the words, “Everything I [Christ] am, God is. He has given me everything”. And just in the short time I’ve been in counseling, I feel like I’ve been able to organize feelings into right places, redirecting the anger I had towards God.

What has become increasingly clear over Lent is how well God knows me. That probably sounds silly– of course He does as my Creator. But I think there’s always been a self-protective front between myself and Him. There were parts I hid from Him, not completely on purpose. But He always knew what was there in the deep and waited for the right moment in my life to face those dark depths with me. And He hasn’t left my side.

At times Mass has been difficult, sometimes impossible to sit through. But a source of strength is the wounded, crucified, naked Christ on the cross lifted up for all to see. He leads the way in vulnerability, exposure, and suffering. This is what turned the heart of the thief on the cross. The thief shows us how to approach Good Friday: “He sees a Cross and adores a Throne; he sees a condemned Man, and invokes a King”*. Sometimes we want to turn this around and believe that Christ’s divinity made suffering beautiful, and Christ’s salvific work made the cross easy and light. But suffering is still terrible, the cross is still the way of death. But we’re no longer alone; our pain is seen and experienced by the Creator of the cosmos. We are on a cross beside Him, tempted to curse the day we were born, but strengthened by His fortitude in suffering and the look of love in His eyes as He suffers alongside us.

If I can know myself better through my wounds, and I can know Christ better through His wounds, then I have to believe that the only way to understand others better is through their wounds. It’s hard to watch others suffer, and I think sometimes out of our discomfort we try to fix it, fill the void with platitudes, and sometimes pretend it doesn’t exist. But here lies one of the beautiful mysteries about not just Good Friday, but Christ’s entire mission on earth: he dresses the wounds of others—both physical and spiritual—and is wounded Himself for all to see. There is no hurt unknown to Him, no wound too terrible to mend, no cry of the heart that escapes Him. It’s not simple, nor is it easy. It’s tiring and exhausting, requires a heroic amount of courage and patience. But He is all of that on the cross for us, showing us the way, ever before us.

*From The Seven Last Words, Fulton J. Sheen

Holy Thursday

navigating the priesthood post-2002

It’s Holy Thursday, the day we remember the last meal Jesus shared with His disciples. We remember that it was on this night that Jesus instituted the Eucharist, our shared meal of His Body and Blood.

It’s Holy Thursday, the day we remember that it was at the Last Supper when Jesus instituted the priesthood, by modeling a self-sacrificial life of service as He washed the disciples’ feet.

It’s Holy Thursday, and years of sexual abuse by clergy in the dioceses of Baltimore has been exposed. It’s all over the news. And God be praised it’s out. The only way to expel evil is to bring it to the light.

I wanted to write about the priesthood today, specifically how fortunate I have been to know priests striving to model Christ, struggling to be holier, humble in their office. I was going to write about scandals, Church wounds, and healing. And this news from Baltimore doesn’t change that, but makes it all the more necessary.

I came into the Church in the Archdiocese of Portland, Oregon in 2001, and the very next year in 2002, years of clerical sexual abuse and cover-ups were exposed. Bankruptcy soon followed. On the opposite coast in Boston, the same thing was happening, though on a much larger scale. We would move there in 2011 and see for ourselves the fallout: closed parishes, abandoned churches, diocese reorganization. The diocese of Seattle where we lived for a time had also gone through its own slew of scandals.

In all three of these archdioceses post-scandals, there were extensive steps required to volunteer, including background checks and training. When my husband worked as a youth coordinator at our parish, the background checks were actually useful in determining who could volunteer and who could not, and in one case just the mention of a background check scared away a probable offender. All these precautions are no guarantee, and how can we laypeople trust that necessary reform is happening in the seminaries? Sadly, there will still be predatory laypeople, monastics, and clergy, just as there are predatory coaches, teachers, and ministers (though predatory clergy is especially heinous). But I do believe the precautions have slimmed down chances, and hopefully prepared laypeople to watch for signs and suspicious behavior.

However. Oh, damn that however.

I am still shocked to see a lack of outrage and urgency in areas of the Church, both among laypeople and clergy. I am, right now, living in an area near a Catholic institution that refuses honesty and transparency about accusations against its beloved priests and brothers. I feel like I’ve stepped back in time, as though 2002 never happened, as though the Dallas Charter* was never created, as though scandal after scandal hasn’t rocked the Catholic Church.

As though they are untouchable.

It’s strange to have just moved from the Archdiocese of Portland, where reform is in active motion. When people hear “Portland” they think of the news from Covid lockdowns of rioting in the streets, the out-of-control homeless population, and liberal politics. Portland is so much more than that, and one of its treasures is the clergy. They aren’t all perfect (several years ago a Portland priest fled the country before he could be charged with criminal activity), and I’m sure there’s much I don’t know, but the priests I have known are joyful, struggling pilgrims. They’re openly struggling with holiness, openly asking for prayers, and preaching with humility. I think one of the reasons these priests are so obviously hungry for holiness is their shepherd, Archbishop Alexander Sample. One priest said to me once that as a priest, it’s easier to want to be a better priest when you have a bishop like Sample leading the way.

Not long before we moved away, some of my priest-friends had mentioned that during the Covid shut-downs of public spaces, including churches, Sample had been worry-laden. He had a conversion of sorts, realized wounds in his own spirit, and after seeking counsel and healing, his eyes were opened to the probable wounds of his priests, the men under his care. How could they offer Christ’s healing to the people of Portland when they themselves were so deeply wounded?

In a conversation I had with Bishop Sample before we moved away, he told me about how St. Therese had given him a sign that she was watching over his priests. He renewed his devotion to her, and entrusted his priests to her care. Then he began to do the work, making himself more available to his priests and having them attend retreats and seek counseling if needed. Wounds and healing became a part of the priests’ vocabulary in Confession.

It was an exciting time in the Portland archdiocese, and I was sad to move away from it, and even more sad to move to a place that lacks transparency, honesty, and humility when it comes to the abuse that has already been reported and actively suppressed. Take a clue from Portland. Confess. Repent. Heal.

It’s Holy Thursday, the day we spend our last moments with Christ before he is abandoned, condemned, and crucified. I will be thinking about the latest reports of abuse in Maryland; I pray the victims, and those affected by association, and the archdiocese can begin to heal. We all take the wounds of this crisis on ourselves, the Body of Christ, battered and bloody. Let it be crucified. And I hope the Archdiocese of Baltimore will rise with Christ and offer healing to its wounded members, as is happening elsewhere in the Church at this moment.

*The Dallas Charter is a comprehensive set of procedures originally established by the USCCB in June 2002 for addressing allegations of sexual abuse of minors by Catholic clergy. Read more about it HERE.

Want to pray for priests? Try This prayer by St. Therese of Lisieux.

Want to listen to a fascinating, heart-breaking, enlightening podcast about the abuse crisis in the Church? Check out some fine research, analylsis, and hope moving forward with the Crisis podcast.

Want to hear the story of a survivor? Check out Faith Hakesley.

Palm Sunday; a.k.a., sweaty-palms Sunday

Well, we did it. We parents survived a mammoth Lenten sacrifice: the Palm Sunday liturgy. Which, in the eyes of children, is tiresomely long and full of disappointment as they are told continuously that no, the palm branches are not for sword fighting your brother or tickling the person in front of us. And let’s face it, twisting a palm branch into a cross is one of the great Catholic mysteries.

It has gotten much easier over the years. Most of my children aren’t children anymore, and this year our toddler fell asleep during the penitential rite and didn’t wake up until communion, praise be Jesus. But hearing the musical cries and screams of children throughout the sanctuary reminded me of those sweaty Triduum liturgies when you have to trust that grace is real and somehow the prayers are passing through your ear canals and sticking somewhere in your consciousness.

If I could go back and give the younger-mom-me advice about wrangling children in Mass, I would say, “Girl, chill the eff out.” At the time, I thought I was teaching my children manners by insisting they sit still, kneel and stand when appropriate, remain mostly quiet. But looking back, I think it was 10% an attempt at parenting, but 90% a worry about being judged by others. It took several years to relax. Gradually, my husband and I both got used to spending time in the foyer or on the steps of the church, sometimes for most of the Mass. And even more gradually than that, we got used to not being angry the whole time we were in the foyer or on the steps of the church. We tried a rewards system, bribing, lecturing—and none of it worked. If anything, it made our kids loathe Mass. Eventually, we concluded that we would rather our kids wiggle and squirm, and come away with a give-or-take opinion about Mass, than hate it because they were constantly in trouble for just being a child.

Things settle. They figure out how to sit through Mass. And the younger ones learn from the older ones.

It was beautiful to hear the musical cries and screams of children in Mass today. I just kept thinking, “I feel ya kiddo. This is a long and strenuous Gospel to sit through.” It was also a rare year where I could close my eyes and—imagine this—pray and meditate along with the Passion. I’ve learned to treasure and appreciate those Masses, as they are few and far between.

As my children keep growing older (they do that), I am realizing that Mass will become contemplative for me once again. That time is coming. And while I’m looking forward to that, a part of me will mourn those crazy, sweaty Triduum liturgies with over-tired, hungry, half-crazed toddlers. I promise now, that when that day comes, I will look at a pair of young, frustrated parents and smile. I might even envy them. A little bit.

the church phalanx

Where I attend Mass, there is a foyer separating the sanctuary with stain-glass windows. When I am back there with my toddler– which is often– I can still see the church within, but it’s muddled and distorted through the geometric multi-colored glass. It’s a familiar sight line. It reminds me of my life before baptism when I was intrigued by the Catholic church but peering in as an outsider. I could make out some details, but much was unclear to me, almost incomprehensible. But it also reminds me of how I have felt at times as a Catholic, even of late. Sometimes I want to run, but where else can I go, Lord– you have the words of eternal life. Sometimes, I feel like a weary beggar reaching out along the road. Another hit of that spit and mud poultice, please Jesus– my vision is clouding.

But the good thing about being in that place spiritually is that it brings to mind the many who must feel like that all the time. There are so many Catholics who feel like outsiders. Whether neuro-divergent, or trauma survivors, or mentally ill, they don’t feel like they fit whatever mold a church community is selling. Our human desire for community sometimes means that we get so excited to find like-minded people, that we close in too tightly around one another and move through life like a phalanx. We think we’re keeping out the spears and arrows of our enemies, but who do we lose along the way? Or whom do we fail to see as we close in on ourselves?

Christ in the Gospels is a Healer. We should be a healing Church. We can’t even hide our wounds; one scandal after another proves that. And thank God we can’t hide from the rot. I think the secret sauce to rebuilding our Church is through healing. And that means seeking out the lost, the wounded, and beaten-down even within our own parishes. The outsiders who are looking in through muddled glass need to feel like it’s okay to be wrong, to not fit the mold, to be a bit messy when they step inside the sacred space. They don’t have to be bombarded with the mold and all its rightness. Love them. Be the truth, live the moral high ground instead of preaching it, extend compassion and mercy, and God will do His work. How long will they wait, peering in and wondering if their mess will be welcome? How long before they turn their backs and seek a warm, welcoming people with only half-truths to offer them?

Break the phalanx formation and look around. Attend to the wounded.

3 Rules of Improv for the Home

As a parent, there are lots of things that come out of your mouth which you never thought you’d have to say, like, “Do not chase the cat with a stick”, and “Yes, you have to change your underwear EVERY DAY”, or “Who took a bite out of the cheese brick in the middle of the night?” But the saying that takes the cake, which tops them all with its ridiculousness and frequency of replays is:

You are not in control of each other’s imagination!

I can’t believe how many times my husband and I have had to say this, usually with one child shedding tears of frustration and another fuming in rage. Here is an actual, real-life example: one daughter wanted her “magic” to be the color blue and wanted her brother’s “magic” to be the color red, but he didn’t want it to be red, he wanted it to be blue. It took us a while to figure out exactly what the conflict was, and I’ll never forget my husband’s face as he said, “Wait, wait, this ‘magic’ you’re talking about… is it an object you’re playing with, or is it pretend, as in imaginary, as in invisible?” It was, in fact, the latter, to which he replied in a low, firm voice, “You are not in control of each other’s imaginations. His ‘magic’ can be whichever color he wants it to be, and you’re just going to have to be okay with it.” He and I then debriefed, and laughed, and marveled at how often we had been called to intervene in imaginary games which made no sense to us but meant everything to our children.

And then it hit me: the rules of improvisational theater applied perfectly in this situation. Now, it’s not often that I realize what I spent a concentrated part of my life studying (and for which I am still paying for monthly) actually becomes useful. I was plum-giddy. I set out to teach my children some rules of improv. And… it worked.

Rules for Imaginative Play

#1 Comedy Comes in 3’s

How many times have you been sitting at the dinner table and heard the same joke repeated six, seven, fourteen times? Yeah, me too, and I’d rather stick a knife in my eye. So I showed my children vaudeville comedy routines like Charlie Chaplin, the Three Stooges, etc., to prove that comedy comes in 3’s. You take a drink from the wrong glass and spit it out once (funny), twice (hilarious), thrice (peeing my pants), four times (bored, what’s wrong with you?). I don’t know why; I don’t know what it is about our brains, but for whatever reason, the 4th time isn’t funny. Neither is the 12th. Therefore, a joke, punchline, or silly word may only be said three times in one sitting.

#2 We laugh WITH someone, not AT someone

Nothing kills creativity like self-doubt. This was especially apparent in the very small window of time I taught and directed high school theater. One of my mentor-teachers wisely told me (and I remembered this as a teenager) that a drama teacher spends the first year just breaking down the self-consciousness that keeps actors stiff, quiet, and uncertain. They’re so worried about what their peers will think and say (and let’s face it, people can be terrible to one another so the fears are real), that they don’t loosen up enough to play. But children, unless they’ve been through trauma, don’t have those walls up. They’re delightfully silly and their imaginations are wildly free. Imaginative play is vital for a child’s development—I would argue that it’s also vital for a strong faith-life—so it’s super important that each member feels free to be silly. Don’t mock or laugh at your playmates, but absolutely laugh with them! Don’t put down anybody’s ideas, which is related to the next, final, and most important rule:

#3 Yes, AND

One of the more challenging aspects of improv is working alongside someone else’s spontaneous ideas. If someone initiates a scene of invading aliens, you can’t decide that aliens aren’t really your thing and insist you’re an unlucky lobster in a grocery store tank. You also can’t half-ass the effort. The response has to be yes-and, meaning you immediately accept the idea and add to it. And, if you did get stuck with a bum-idea in the first place, the yes-and principle actually saves the scene much quicker than trying to completely change it. This is also the best way for children to approach imaginative play. It takes practice and a little coaching, but when kids use the yes-and principle while playing, each child (ideally) can feel heard, accepted, and included. It’s also important to establish that no one’s idea is dumb, stupid, boring, etc. And you don’t need to try to control the other person’s imagination; your different, unique ideas can work together.

Pas de Deux

When I was 13, I saw The Nutcracker ballet for the first time. It wasn’t my family’s style to go to the ballet, or symphony or theater, but my best friend and her mom had invited my mom and I along. I went in cold without any knowledge of the music or story, and I probably thought I was too cool for it or something, fairies and tutus and such. But the anticipation alone was excitement enough. The whole experience of dressing up, handing over our tickets, finding a seat through the crowd, a live orchestra– all of it was new and exhilarating. I felt immediately elevated; I felt wealthier, smarter, more beautiful; I felt like a classy broad.

As soon as the orchestra played the first several measures and the curtains swept back, I was gone. By thirteen, I had quickly buried my love of fairytales and sense of wonder in favor of a more enlightened and cynical worldview, but The Nutcracker called my bluff. I don’t even know if it was critically good, but I will never know because I was in love with all of it: the costumes, the narrative, the story-telling through dance– all of it was magical. But the moment that transported me was the Pas de Deux. I was sure I had never heard any music so ethereal. I was swept away with its romance and grandeur. When we got home, I picked out the melody on the piano, and later when I received the soundtrack as a Christmas gift, I listened to it over and over again. It was like getting wrapped in a tender whirlwind and lifted off the ground. I regularly listened to that album, just as regularly as Smashing Pumpkins’ Siamese Dream and Tori Amos’s Little Earthquakes.

It wasn’t until I had children that I began to explore more of Tchaikovsky’s work. I excitedly introduced my little girls to Disney’s Sleeping Beauty, which had been my absolute favorite animated movie as a child, only to realize that Disney had borrowed Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty ballet as its score. Watching that movie as an adult was like finding the source of my own aesthetic: the stylized art inspired by medieval tapestry, the sharply angled faces of the heroes and heroines, the woodland cottage and stately castles, and the score that carried it all on a current through peril and triumph. This was the foundation of beauty for me.

I was thrilled to introduce my children to Tchaikovsky, and while the ballet is still expensive, many ballets are available on disc, which is how we watch The Nutcracker every year, and how we’ve all seen Sleeping Beauty and Swan Lake. I have loved watching it capture their imagination as they bound about the room copying the dances and memorizing the melodies, and then when they’re older, discussing themes, motifs, and artistic choices. It renews the wonder for me. Gradually, I take one child at a time to the ballet (or live theater) as we can afford it so they can experience the heightened anticipation of a performance, and possibly be transported by a song.

Even now, thirty years later, something happens to me when I listen to the Pas de Deux, like the invisible string that connects me to my Creator pulls taut and draws my attention. I’ve thought a lot about why. I think it captures the overwhelming feeling of longing and desire, and the exclusivity of romance when the world passes away and the only other body you’re aware of is that of your lover. There’s safety, protection, and strength in its exclusivity and one-ness. The continuous, climbing scales within the song that ascend and descend capture the moments of anticipation, of joy and delight, at times of sorrow, and ultimate ecstasy of love. The grandeur of the song– and the moment in the ballet– captures the pursuit of God the Lover for us, and the full realization of our purpose in communing fully with Him.

Going to the ballet was transformative. It opened up a whole new arena of visual and musical storytelling, of beauty incarnate in the human form. There is a cathedral-like quality in the ballet, a sacramentality where conceptual beauty meets the human form and music tells a story to draw our attention elsewhere, not to escape, but to connect more fully with our humanity.

here, you have a tissue…

… and I’ll just be over here having an epiphany during Mass

One of the purposes of penitential seasons is to simplify, gain clarity, grow closer to Christ. And here is my confession, borne from clarity, that materialized this past Advent season: I am having a crisis of identity. Not my own identity, but of God’s identity. And maybe struggling to see God clearly would naturally muddle my own identity, or vice versa, since I was created in His image. There’s a thought.

January 1 of this past year, 2022, opened with a surgical Confession, the kind that cuts open the chest, takes your heart out, flips it over, sews it back in the right way and you come out a different person. But I didn’t walk out of the church waltzing with Christ into a sunset. I left struck dumb, paralyzed yet free, wondering what was next.

There was a whole lot of “next”.

While in the confessional, the priest had me speak to Christ (like at him, towards the monstrance, inches away from my face) and tell him how my heart had been broken. I said things I didn’t even know were inside of me. It was like I was watching myself, gaping, she just said WHAT? You don’t tell God you’re angry at Him. At yourself, sure, because you deserve every tear you shed. But to cry at God, to ask Him why He wasn’t there, didn’t stop things, etc., was… life-changing, yes… but so f-ing terrifying. The priest, in persona Christi, gently listened, offered wisdom, and assured me how much God loved me.

A few years ago, during the consecration to Jesus through Mary, was the first time I realized that I had a messed-up image of God. I had distinctly separated out the persons of the Trinity in my head, and I didn’t really like talking to God. Jesus, yes. Holy Spirit, yes. But Father-God was terrifying. This awareness had been present, but dormant in my mind until that confession when the damn was broken. I was swimming in it now, the full consciousness of my distorted perception of Father-God.

But what to do with that?

The rest of the year is a longer story, but fast-forward to this past Advent of 2022. I was sleep-walking through it in many ways, but maybe that was a grace: I think I was able to receive what God wanted me to hear.

It was Gaudete Sunday, when you can expect the readings to be hopeful and comforting certainly, but I wasn’t expecting it, wasn’t paying as much attention this year. The church was packed, and our family of nine was sandwiched in a pew between a smaller family of four, and a young woman. We were only a few minutes into Mass when I realized the young woman beside me was weeping. I felt an overwhelming, maternal/sisterly love for this stranger and I wanted to give her comfort. We heard the words of the prophet Isaiah:

The desert and the parched land will exult;
the steppe will rejoice and bloom.
They will bloom with abundant flowers,
and rejoice with joyful song.

Such hope for this suffering young woman! I wanted to proclaim to her, with Isaiah:

Strengthen the hands that are feeble,
make firm the knees that are weak,
say to those whose hearts are frightened:
Be strong, fear not!
Here is your God…
he comes to save you.

The readings continued, and into the Gospel we went where Jesus tells John’s disciples to report to him in prison about what is actually happening: the blind see, the lame walk, the dead are raised. Yes, yes, yes, Christ offers not just promises, but actual healing! I was singing this with my heart as I offered her the only comfort appropriate in the middle of Mass towards a weeping stranger– a tissue.

But this sobering thought hit me soon after: with what enthusiasm I wanted to offer Christ’s tender mercy, comfort, and miraculous healing through the passing of a tissue to a complete stranger, someone I was certain God loved. Why couldn’t I believe that for myself? I believed that God was a healer, a good Father– that’s what I’ve been taught in my twenty years as a Catholic, that’s what I’ve read, that’s what I’ve told others.

My mind wandered back to Isaiah 35:

Those whom the LORD has ransomed will return
and enter Zion singing,
crowned with everlasting joy;
they will meet with joy and gladness,
sorrow and mourning will flee.

Those whom the Lord has ransomed. That’s me.

{Allow me this brief tangent that will connect, I promise: in marriage, you say your vows, you say “I love you” and you mean it. But then something happens, difficulties arise, you quarrel or whatever, and you say “I love you” but it means something even deeper than before in a way you couldn’t have foreseen the first time you said it. And this keeps happening, again and again, until you realize you love your spouse more deeply than ever before, even though you loved them as much as you were able fifteen years before.}

That’s the best way I can think to describe what’s happening to me, only in media res, stuck in the hard part. I said, “I believe, amen”. And I really did believe in God and salvation and Divine Love. But when the damn broke in that confession, all the mucky soil from underneath rose to the top and now I’m swimming in refuse and it’s harder to imagine that I will “bloom with abundant flowers and rejoice with joyful song”. I believe, but it’s a tired “amen”.

This weeping stranger in Mass was a reminder of myself. Offering her one tissue just made her weep more. I persuaded her to take the whole pack. A small gesture of tenderness broke her a little more open. And just as I had wanted to draw her close, comfort her, assure her of God’s love for her, so I must remember that God feels that way towards me. Even when I come to Mass or present myself to Him in prayer weeping, parched, enraged, weary, He wants it all. He takes it all.

the God of Grit

O great mystery,

and wonderful sacrament,

that animals should see the Lord born,

lying in a crib;

The medieval hymn, O Magnum Mysterium, expresses awe at the humility of Christ’s birth. That the birth of the King of Kings should be first witnessed to by beasts of burden, and that the spouse of the Holy Spirit lies on hard ground amidst scratchy hay to labor– this is a magnum mysterium, a great mystery.

During different stages of my life, I have pondered different aspects of Christ’s birth during the Advent and Christmas seasons. As a young adult, the wonder and majesty struck me; as a young mother, the discomfort and peril struck me; at other times, the historical and cultural circumstances have struck me. But this Christmas, it has been poignantly sensory. I am there experiencing the stench of animal urine and dung, the smell and scratch of hay, the frigid night air, the veil of darkness, the base life-sounds of bleating and newborn cries.

This past year I have tried to be honest and receptive in my relationship with God, which has revealed a lot of repressed anger and hurt towards God. I had to work through the shame of feeling angry before I could actually confront the origins of this anger. Interiorly, I wearied, stopped wrestling the darkness, and I’m now just sitting with it. While that’s necessary, it’s dark and cold here at times. But I know this is part of deliverance and healing.

It’s been liberating to stop forcing emotions, like pulling cellophane over a bucket of muck. Right now, Mass is an act of obedience; Communion is a still, quiet moment at the cross. But this is an improvement from running out of Church during the consecration, which is where I was a year ago. Part of that healing has been peeling away the angelic, gilded depictions of Christ and the Church, and discovering the grit. Only then do I see myself and the life God has walked with me through. Only then do I remember that God indeed has been Emmanuel, God with me– not just in consolation and revelation, but He has been faithful in all things, all places, even under the cold veil of night. I don’t know if I believe that yet, but at least I can imagine that I will get there.

What does it mean that God chose to be born in a dank, stench-filled cave, surrounded by dumb animals? If Mary was the beloved of His heart, why would he allow her to give birth in cold, pungent darkness? Magnum Mysterium opens with, “O great mystery”. This, like so much of Christ’s life, is a mystery which theologians debate and mystics contemplate. But what we can know with the same senses that Christ incarnated, is that His birth, while miraculous and mysterious, was also one of stench and grit.

This simple reality makes me feel loved. As John of the Cross wrote, “this delight within your Bride / Would great be increased, / If the flesh she is endowed with / She saw you also shared”. The stench and grit that I am working through is there with baby Jesus and the Holy Family. I will sit with them in the dark, chilly cave, in the great mystery, and trust that salvation is here.

O Blessed Virgin, whose womb

was deemed worthy to bear

the Lord Jesus Christ.

Alleluia!