Blue Ink News

Tag: faith

  • I Wonder If They Feel It Too

    I Wonder If They Feel It Too

    I have always been drawn to quiet places, especially places where I can hear flowing water. There is something about water moving over stones that settles something inside me. Perhaps it is the movement. Perhaps it is the sound. Perhaps it is simply being surrounded by something God made.

    Nature has always helped me become quiet before God.

    But this morning, I didn’t need flowing water.

    I simply needed a place to sit.

    Our parish has created two outdoor spaces for prayer and meditation. They are simple places, set apart from the activity of the church, where someone can sit for a while and pray.

    This morning, I went to one of them.

    As I sat there, I thought about how often Jesus did the same thing. The Gospels tell us that Jesus regularly withdrew from the crowds to pray. Sometimes He went to a deserted place. Sometimes He went up a mountain. Before important moments in His ministry, He would step away from everyone else and spend time with His Father.

    Jesus knew the value of getting away.

    Perhaps we need to learn it again.

    I sat there for a while this morning and prayed. There was nothing particularly extraordinary about it. No great revelation. No dramatic moment. Just some quiet time with God.

    Eventually, a friend came outside to check on me.

    I smiled when I saw him. I suppose he wondered what I was doing sitting out there alone.

    I was praying.

    When I eventually went back into the church, I noticed something.

    I felt at peace.

    It wasn’t a feeling I had gone outside looking for. It simply seemed to be there when I came back inside. And as I walked through the doors, I began thinking about those two little places outside.

    I wondered how many people would sit there and pray.

    Then another thought came to me.

    I wonder if they feel the presence of the Lord the way I do.

    I know they probably won’t.

    We don’t all experience God’s presence in the same way. What brings me into prayer may not do the same thing for someone else. I may find God in the sound of water or the quiet of the woods. Someone else may encounter Him in a Scripture passage, a Rosary, a sunrise, a song, or simply sitting quietly with nothing but their own thoughts.

    God knows how to meet each of us where we are.

    Maybe that is part of the beauty of these prayer spaces.

    They don’t tell us how to pray.

    They simply give us a place to do it.

    Someone may sit there for ten minutes and say a Rosary. Someone else may open the Bible. Someone may sit there because life has become too heavy and they don’t know what else to do. Someone may sit there without saying a word.

    And perhaps someone will simply sit there and discover that the peace they were looking for was not really in the place at all.

    It was in the presence of God.

    We cannot manufacture that presence. We cannot build a prayer space and guarantee that everyone who sits there will have some profound experience.

    But we can make room for God.

    That may be what our parish has done.

    We have made a little room for people to step away from the noise of life and remember that they are not alone.

    Jesus went away to pray.

    Maybe these spaces give us a small opportunity to follow Him.

    I keep thinking about the people who will sit there in the days and years ahead. I wonder what they will bring with them. Joy. Grief. Questions. Gratitude. Fear. Hope. Perhaps burdens they have never told another person.

    I wonder how many prayers will be whispered there.

    I wonder how many tears will fall there.

    I wonder how many people will sit there for a few minutes and then walk back into the church carrying something they didn’t have when they went outside.

    This morning, I carried back peace.

    And now I find myself wondering if someone else will find it there, too.

    Perhaps that is what a place of prayer is meant to be.

    Not a place where we go to find God.

    A place where we go to remember that He was already there.

    Jesus went away to pray.

    Perhaps, sometimes, we simply need to go outside and sit quietly long enough to remember that we can, too.

  • When the Bible Tells Us to Slow Down

    When the Bible Tells Us to Slow Down

    The Bible is wonderfully honest about the care its difficult passages demand: Scripture can be misunderstood, so faithful reading requires patience, context, and humility.

    The Bible does not pretend that everything in it is easy to understand.

    Peter says so himself.

    Near the end of his second letter, Peter speaks about Paul and his letters. He acknowledges that Paul writes about things that can be difficult to understand—and then adds a sobering warning:

    “There are some things in them hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other scriptures.”
    —2 Peter 3:16, RSV-CE

    That is quite a statement.

    Peter does not say that Paul’s letters are impossible to understand. He says some things are hard to understand. And he warns us that Scripture can be twisted when it is handled carelessly.

    That ought to make us slow down.

    We live in a world of quick answers. Someone posts a Bible verse online, and within seconds another person has explained exactly what it means. A verse is pulled from a chapter and a chapter from a book; before long, an entire theology rests on a sentence that may never have been intended to stand alone.

    But Scripture deserves better than that.

    Peter’s warning gives us the posture: humility. Paul’s background shows us the method: read an author within the world that formed his language, arguments, and assumptions.

    Consider Paul

    The New Testament tells us something important about the man whose letters make up so much of it: Paul was a Pharisee.

    Acts tells us that Paul identified himself as a Pharisee. In his letter to the Philippians, Paul describes himself as a Hebrew of Hebrews and says that “as to the law” he was a Pharisee. In Galatians, Paul describes his former life in Judaism and his extraordinary zeal for the traditions of his ancestors.

    These details matter.

    They matter because Paul did not wake up one morning and become a Christian theologian with no background. He was formed within Judaism. He knew the Scriptures of Israel. He knew the Law. He knew the traditions. He knew the arguments. He knew how his fellow Jews understood the covenant, the promises, the Messiah, and the Law.

    Then Paul encountered the risen Christ, and everything changed—but his Jewish formation did not disappear. It became part of the way he understood and proclaimed Christ.

    When we read Paul, then, we need to read him as Paul—not as a twenty-first-century American Protestant, Catholic, evangelical, secular philosopher, or social-media commentator. We need to hear the apostle in his own world.

    That is harder work.

    And that is precisely the point.

    When Paul writes about the Law, grace, faith, justification, Abraham, circumcision, the flesh, the Spirit, the covenant, or the promises of God, we cannot simply assume that those words carry exactly the same meaning they carry in our modern conversations.

    Paul is arguing with ideas.

    He is answering questions.

    He is addressing real communities with real problems.

    And he is doing all of this as a Jewish Pharisee who has come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and the fulfillment of God’s promises.

    Context matters.

    History matters.

    Language matters.

    The whole of Scripture matters.

    And, perhaps most importantly, the Church’s way of reading Scripture matters.

    This is why I have become increasingly convinced that Catholics need to learn not simply to read the Bible, but to read it well.

    Peter’s warning should make us humble.

    The danger is not merely that we might misunderstand a difficult passage, but that we might do so with absolute confidence.

    That is a dangerous combination.

    A person can take a perfectly true sentence from Scripture and use it to communicate something Scripture never intended to say.

    That is how biblical arguments become endless.

    One person has a verse.

    Another person has another verse.

    Both insist, “The Bible says…”

    And sometimes both have failed to ask the more important question:

    What is the Bible actually saying here?

    Reading Scripture well requires patience.

    It requires us to read the verse in its paragraph, the paragraph in its chapter, the chapter in its book, and the book within the whole story of Scripture.

    And Catholics believe that this whole story has a living context: the community in which Scripture was received, preserved, proclaimed, and interpreted—the Church.

    So slow down in three ways:

    1. Read the immediate context.
    2. Recover the historical setting.
    3. Listen within the whole of Scripture and the Church’s living tradition.

    These habits do not weaken confidence in the Bible; they discipline that confidence with reverence.

    This does not mean Catholics are afraid of the Bible.

    Quite the opposite.

    It means we take the Bible seriously enough to approach it carefully.

    We do not need to be frightened by difficult passages. We need to be humble before them.

    Peter had walked with Jesus.

    Peter was an apostle.

    Peter knew Paul.

    And Peter still said that some things Paul wrote were hard to understand.

    Maybe we should listen to him.

    Maybe the next time we encounter a difficult passage of Scripture, instead of immediately asking, “How can I use this verse to prove my point?” we should ask:

    • What is happening here?
    • Who wrote it?
    • To whom was it written?
    • What problem was being addressed?
    • What did these words mean in their original setting?
    • How does this passage fit within the rest of Scripture?
    • And how has the Church understood it?

    Sometimes the most faithful thing we can do with Scripture is slow down, because the Bible is not ammunition for winning arguments. It is the Word of God, and if we truly believe that, we ought to handle it with reverence.

    Peter’s warning is not an invitation to stay away from difficult passages.

    It is an invitation to approach them with humility.

    Read deeply. Read carefully. Read the whole story. And never be ashamed to admit that sometimes Scripture requires us to slow down before we speak.

  • Two Silences

    Two Silences

    There are two Latin phrases that have been rattling around in my head lately.

    Sacrum Silentium.

    Sacred Silence.

    I know that silence well. It is the quiet that comes after Communion, when the singing has ended and the congregation settles back into its seats.

    For a few moments, nobody needs anything from me.

    There is no place I need to go. Nothing I need to accomplish. No clever thought I need to have.

    Just silence.

    And Christ.

    Then there is another phrase:

    Silentium Magnum.

    The Grand Silence.

    I won’t tell you where I learned that phrase. Some things are better left where they belong.

    But the words themselves have stayed with me.

    The Grand Silence.

    It sounds larger than ordinary silence. Not merely the absence of talking, but the kind of silence that makes you aware of how much noise you normally carry around with you.

    We are not very good at silence anymore.

    If the room gets quiet, we reach for our phones. If the car is quiet, we turn on the radio. If our minds get quiet, we find something else to think about.

    We seem to believe that silence is an empty space that needs to be filled.

    But perhaps silence isn’t empty at all.

    Perhaps it is a place.

    A place where we can sit for a while without trying to fix anything.

    A place where we can listen.

    A place where God doesn’t have to compete with us.

    I wonder if that is why the silence after Communion has always seemed different to me.

    It isn’t an interruption in the Mass.

    It is part of the Mass.

    The words have been spoken. The bread has been broken. Christ has been received.

    And then comes silence.

    Sacred Silence.

    Maybe there are moments in life when we need something even greater.

    A Grand Silence.

    Not because God has stopped speaking, but because we have finally stopped talking long enough to listen.

    — RN

  • Christ Crucified

    Christ Crucified

    There is a phrase in today’s reading from 1 Corinthians that stopped me this morning:

    “We proclaim Christ Crucified.”

    I know the verse is often translated, “We preach Christ crucified.” But today, I find myself wanting to use Paul’s other word: proclaim.

    There is a difference.

    Preaching can sound like an explanation. A sermon. An argument. Something one person says while another person listens.

    But the kerygma—the Church’s proclamation—is something more fundamental.

    It is the announcement of something that has happened.

    Jesus Christ came among us.

    He died for us.

    He rose from the dead.

    And He is alive.

    That is the Gospel.

    And suddenly, I find myself thinking about the crucifix hanging in my home.

    I’ve heard many priests explain why Catholics place a crucifix in our homes rather than simply an empty cross. I’ve heard the theological explanations. I’ve heard the differences between Catholic and Protestant practice discussed.

    But perhaps I’ve been thinking about it too much as an argument.

    Maybe the crucifix isn’t there to argue with anyone.

    Maybe it’s there to proclaim.

    Every time I walk past it, I see the proclamation.

    Christ crucified.

    Not an idea.

    Not a philosophy.

    Not merely a set of moral teachings.

    A Person who loved me enough to enter into my suffering and give Himself for me.

    The empty cross proclaims something absolutely true: Christ has risen.

    Catholics believe that with our whole hearts.

    But the crucifix proclaims something else that I don’t want to forget:

    This is what that love looked like.

    I don’t want Easter to make me forget Good Friday.

    I don’t want the Resurrection to become so familiar that I forget the wounds.

    And perhaps that’s why I need a crucifix in my home.

    Because there are days when I don’t need another explanation.

    I don’t need another argument.

    I don’t need someone to tell me to try harder, pray harder, or have more faith.

    Sometimes I simply need to look at Christ crucified.

    Because when I am suffering, the crucifix tells me that God has not remained safely outside of human pain.

    He entered it.

    He bore it.

    He transformed it.

    “We proclaim Christ crucified.”

    Those aren’t merely words to be preached.

    They are a reality to be proclaimed.

    And sometimes the most powerful proclamation in my home is not something I say at all.

    Sometimes it is the crucifix on the wall.

    Christ crucified.

    Christ risen.

    Christ alive.

    And Christ still with me.

    — RN

    Ex Scintilla Incendium
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