A Spiritual Break

Posted on October 12, 2024 by Michael J. Cunningham · 1 Comment

Freedom, the Beatitudes, and My Life

Freedom, the Beatitudes and My Life

Our nation has a wonderful tradition of freedom. There are few examples of countries who have offered themselves up to maintain the freedom of others. Perhaps the most essential expression of the greatest love. To lay down your life for another. Many thousands of American citizens have died for the love of their fellow man. May God Bless them all.

Blessed John Duns Scotus, the thirteenth-century Franciscan theologian, expresses God’s greatest gift to us is our freedom and our free will. This is the way we can show our alignment with God in all our actions or words. Or not as the case may be. We have the option to use our free will in whatever form we want. Only to be moderated by the law.

Scotus continues to illustrate with this with blinding simplicity, if our choices are based in love, then they are from God. So, patterns of love are exercised if we align ourselves with God, and therefore do His will with this in our heart. All other actions are not of God.

This simple message is best communicated in Jesus’s words on the Sermon on the Mount, in the beatitudes. Here, and thoroughly, the Way of God is illustrated in all parts of our lives. Loving others, caring for the poor needy, surrendering to God, are all there.

This coming month we have a way of communicating His will using the beatitudes and His love in our duty to vote for those who best represent our personal values and beliefs. It is always a time for me to dig deep into these bigger questions and move beyond the sound bites and divisiveness which seems to encourage a polarizing atmosphere. I often feel, listening to the news that I am hearing “The United Hates of America” and so little of what caused me to move here, so little of what truly makes up the character of an accepting, loving, nurturing and generous nation which is the one I came to in the 1980s. While I am still optimistic, my own decisions, not just in voting, but in everyday life, continue to be informed by these guidelines in the beatitudes.

The word beatitude means “supreme blessedness.” How beautiful is that? Today, I need this blessedness to guide me during my days and weeks. And I will use them next month as I make decisions to determine who I feel is most aligned with those instructions from the Sermon on the Mount.

How are the beatitudes playing out in your life? Perhaps I can should pick on one for the week and see how important it is to me and those around me.

I also pray the divisiveness which permeates the country, communities and even families will be dissipated soon, washed away in the Blood of Christ and the Eucharist we celebrate together today.

Oversensitive

When the pain comes in from those who dislike you,

Or what you have done,

Or seems you had done;

The fork in the road rushes up.

To vilify and engage in debate,

Shredding their argument,

And then their clothes;

Until they are left naked, and your work is done.

Or listen and pray,

Perhaps then, we might hear what is behind the words,

The critiques, the noise,

And learn what is in their heart.

Which may tell us what is in ours.

Posted on August 23, 2024 by Michael J. Cunningham

“Hell and Damnation”

“Hell, and Damnation”

Last week I was at one of the local Bay Area Catholic Churches (Northern region of California) and received quite the surprise. The local Deacon was delivering the Gospel and associated homily. It was based on the importance of the Eucharist, which no one in the Catholic tradition would likely deny. Certainly, the sanctuary which was filled with worshipers would not push back on this observation. But then he started to get really into it. Within a short period, we were transported to a place of Hell and damnation theology where the importance of the sacraments of reconciliation and the Eucharist were determined to be our only clear admittance to heaven.

After noting that only 17 percent of Catholics in the USA attend Mass weekly (the actual stat is 23 percent according to a recent Gallup poll), the Deacon then declared that only those receiving the Eucharist were going to gain admittance to heaven. (Not a great outcome for non-Catholics BTW). The implication was that only this small percentage was heading upwards, the rest elsewhere. I could feel the mood changing in the Church as he was speaking, even amongst these dedicated worshippers. After all, he was talking to the 17% he mentioned in the homily. I digress.

I felt like I had been transported back to my elementary school catechists (Irish nuns) of the 1960s, even those wonderful nuns were not spouting as rigorous or rigid a message as the one coming forthwith. This is the sort of message that causes others to consider whether they should be attending at all. The Deacon continued to mention the grave sin of missing Mass at all, and its consequences of leaving a soul in a state of serious sin, with dire consequences. The Deacon, then by now unceasing, was not just emphasizing the consequences of not receiving the Eucharist, but also then encouraged the congregation to communicate this message to encourage their family and friends who were not attending the service tonight. Fear and retribution are rarely a good method of evangelization; however, this was not just being proposed … but actively promoted.

Now, while you could say there were certain elements of Catholic teaching embedded in the content of this scary homily, it certainly could not be considered invitational to those who were either planning a return to the Catholic Church or those first visiting. This sounded like some of those outside the Church see the Catholic faith; that is judgmental, inflexible, and downright scary. This is not the Church that I know, not even the Church I grew up with. Those nuns from Ireland professed God’s love in their teaching, although sometimes sprinkled with corporal punishment for bad classroom behavior. 😉

Do we get to heaven by avoiding going to hell? Keeping us out of hell may be the good intentions of the Deacon, but I am not sure he is going to convince many in this process.
Perhaps it wasn’t just the Deacon I felt for after the Mass was concluded that day. (BTW he did interject after the blessing and make a clarification he was only talking about people who could make it to Church, and not those who were ill or unable to travel). So perhaps he realized himself that he had gone too far.

Those I felt sorry for were those who were to take his message home. How were they feeling? Should they recite it perfectly to their family, friends, and neighbors and perhaps risk further estrangement?

I know the Deacon’s heart is a good one, but how can we expect others to flock toward us when a message relies on scaring someone? The message of Christ’s love for us is prevalent in all Catholic teaching. Why not lead with this, and those who find the love, beauty, and grace that the Eucharist encapsulates, may be joined by many more than the current 23% of those who participate.

For those of you reading this who are not of the Catholic faith, I can assure you this message is not the onramp that most of us use as an introduction to Christianity, particularly the Catholic variety.

As John Duns Scotus, a great Franciscan theologian once declared. “God is love, and Love is God”.

Posted on July 19, 2024 by Michael J. Cunningham

Contemplation

Contemplation

The word contemplation brings up all sorts of thoughts and prejudices. As I write this reflection, we are getting ready for a six-day silent retreat titled “Following the Footprints of Contemplative Prayer”.

While the topic of contemplation has been the subject of many books, there is not universal agreement on what it means, with perhaps one exception. Contemplation occurs when there is an experience of the divine, or if you like, a palpable encounter with God. Again, even this definition may have others refine or define it differently.

Having spent a great deal of time “in” this subject from an academic, theological, and spiritual perspective over many years, I see several steps which lead up to a potential contemplative encounter or “state”.

When we experience contemplation we will have an encounter with something ineffable. Difficult to explain or describe, but something that is only in the knowing, in the experience itself. These often manifest themselves in an experience of being peace-filled or an experience of love. The more untethered that experience is, the more powerful it becomes. This reservoir of peace or love is something which sustains us in the world and is provided by the communication of love and peace. This is done through grace. We can think of grace as the means to bring us to a contemplative place, a place of loving, of peace. Grace is God’s love communicated directly.

This can be triggered by many means, prayer, in its contemplative forms, being one means that many use to invite the divine which resides within us all, to dwell most wonderfully so we may experience God directly.

To move towards this contemplative state we first need to be aware and notice what is going on around us. We are in the present. In the Now. As we do so we inevitably begin to reflect on what we are noticing, of what we are aware.

Once we are deep in reflection, the second state in the process, we can then move into contemplation. This could be triggered by prayer in a variety of forms, and frequently is facilitated by the process of discernment, where we have an open heart and mind and a willingness to involve God in whatever is on our heart. However, contemplative prayer does not require us to be asking something from God, rather is only requires us to “rest in God” as many Saints, mystics and spiritual leaders have proposed over the centuries.

Contemplation and the various routes to seeking and experiencing it have been a key element of our relationship with God in many traditions. The Christian Mystical Tradition has many paths that are well worth exploring for those looking to deepen their relationship with God.

You might argue that anyone who has experienced that feeling of inner peace, of love from within, of love from others has had a contemplative experience. An encounter with God. So even those who may not be following a particular faith path still get to feel and experience God’s love in this way.

For many, the contemplative way is the only path to true inner peace. Most of us are still finding our way.

Posted on May 31, 2024 by Michael J. Cunningham

Art for Art’s sake

ART FOR ART’s SAKE?

In the world of Church and Prayer, we see seeing in a lot of different ways. In the Christian Tradition, particularly that of the Catholic Church, we find ourselves using objects, images and artifacts as a way of communicating with God.

In the most traditional ways, we use statues, paintings, and other objects as ways of reminding ourselves of our relationship with God. From the Crucifix to the Tabernacle, all of these objects are designed to remind us of some aspect of our relationship with God. This relationship we can call prayer.

In the sanctuary, we consider many of these items sacramentals. Holy objects which help us either enter into or stay in a prayerful relationship. We may not even consider this, but the simple act of blessing ourselves is also a sacramental one, so a sacramental does not always have to be an object, although often it is.

I want to introduce this prayerful way we look at certain objects or art as a means of understanding how we see things in our everyday life. An excellent study of this process is captured in a book by Stephen Pattison called Seeing Things. In this book, Stephen illustrates how we humans have become used to scanning things quickly from a visual perspective, categorizing them, almost without thinking and then miss the opportunity to understand the relationship or meaning they may have in our lives.

While no one would consider throwing a rosary or bible down in anything but a gentle manner, we often ignore what is going on in the objects around us in our everyday lives.

For example, when in an art gallery or museum, we immediately take a different form of attention when looking at the artwork because of its location or the fact it is framed than we do for all the other materials surrounding it. Once informed of its artful nature, we give it the respect it deserves as a result.

Part of this problem is we often view things in this manner by determining if they are “beautiful” or not. In his research, Pattison notes we often blow by something quickly if it does not fit into this category, and alternatively are willing to “gaze not glance” at objects which meet the first category. By doing so, we often miss many of important items that are a vital part of our everyday life, but are not in the category of artwork or a traditional sacramental.

So today, perhaps, we can take some stock at the items we have around us, even on our desks or dressers at home, in the kitchen, the toolshed, and see them for their own importance, their function and then lastly, our relationship with them. We often have a haptic (or feeling) relationship with these items which is sometimes not recognized until they go missing from our lives.

When we begin to notice these other things around us, we may find ourselves drawn into a new form of prayer, one of reflection and gratitude or memories which helps us immensely. We don’t ignore the everyday gifts and objects around us, but are rather thankful for them.

Art Thou Art

The blank frame stands proudly to attention,

Clearly displaying its nudity by the dust on the untouched wall behind it.

Still they stop and gaze

Thinking knowingly, there is meaning within.

Meanwhile the author, a simple carpenter,

Giggles from above,

Watching the security cameras,

Holding her morning Starbucks fav.

Later that day she places the sign below the frame.

“Art thou Art?”

Oncoming