Dying For Others

July 1941.  Auschwitz.  A prisoner escapes.  In retribution, the Nazis condemn ten prisoners to death.  At roll call, they announce the names of the persons who they will send to their deaths.  One of the ten sentenced to death, Francis Gajowniczek, cries out that he has a wife and children.  Another inmate there at roll call, a Franciscan priest named Maximilian Kolbe, steps forward and says he would like to take the place of Gajowniczek.  

The Nazis agreed to the switch.  Kolbe and the other nine were subjected to forced starvation.  Despite dehydration and starvation, after two weeks Kolbe still had not died.  Kolbe was executed by a lethal injection on August 14, 1941.  

Gajowniczek later described how he could only thank Kolbe with his eyes.  He added that it was the first and the last time such an occurrence transpired at Auschwitz.  

Beauty and warmth and compassion can spring forth in the midst of horror and atrocities.  Kindness can be shown when brutality is all around us.  Love can be offered in reply to hate.  

Often we cannot control what happens to us.  However, we can always choose how we respond. When we are convinced that our freedom has been taken away from us, we can realize that we still have the free will that God has given to us because He loves us so much.  When we ask in disbelief and misunderstanding how God can allow such pain and suffering in the world, we can realize that God loves us so much that He gives us our free will.  God loves us so much that He will not force us.  God loves us so much that He lets us make our own decisions.  

Today as we celebrate the feast day of Saint Maximilian Kolbe, we can be led through the remembrance of the bravery of this saint to carefully consider our own choices.  We might never be given the chance to sacrifice ourselves courageously by physically dying for someone else.  However, in every fleeting moment of time, we can decide to die to ourselves so we can live for our neighbor in little ways.  Over and over again, we can put our neighbor before ourselves as we perform little acts of love for others, as Saint Therese of Lisieux did in her little way.  In every little action we do, we can decide to give away our lives for our neighbor, and thus save the life of our neighbor.  In each and every moment, we can choose to love our neighbor as ourselves,* as Jesus taught us to do.  

* Matthew 22:39; Mark 12:31; Luke 10:27; Leviticus 19:18; Romans 13:9; Galatians 5:14 

Love Gently Waits

If you love someone, you wait for them.  Feeling love, you do not try to force or coerce another person.  

If your friend does not wish to go with you, with love you do not insist on your friend going with you.  Love does not demand; love does not intimidate; love is not overbearing.  

Love gently waits.  Love generously gives room to another person to come when he or she is ready, or even never at all, if that is what the other person chooses.  Love lets someone else choose for herself.  

Love respects another person's free will.  Love gives someone else comfort and peace from the dignity of being allowed the latitude to make his own choices.  

Love softly submits to the law of freedom.  Love obeys the necessity that people must have the dignity of making their own choices.  Love tenderly tells that others must be free to realize in their own time who they are.  

Since we desire our own freedom, we must let others be free, and not enslave them in our ideas of who we want them to be.  If we wish to be respected, we must respect others.  Knowing that we wish to be loved, we can come to love our neighbor as ourselves, as Jesus taught us to do.*  

* Matthew 22:39; Mark 12:31; Luke 10:27; Leviticus 19:18; Romans 13:9; Galatians 5:14 

Love Patiently Endures

If you love someone, you are patient with them.  Love is patient.*  

When you love someone, you open your heart to Jesus, who is in your neighbor.  When you accept love from your neighbor, you embrace Jesus.  

As you love someone, you become able to bear all things with that person.  Love brings endurance.**  We endure with those we love.  

In the end, we end up with love.  In the end, love remains.    

* 1 Corinthians 13:4 
** 1 Corinthians 13:7 

Loving Poor Treasures

When we love, we choose to be humbled.  As we give of ourselves, we let ourselves be humbled, since we are choosing someone else over ourselves.  When we allow ourselves to be humbled, God gives us the grace to love our neighbor, including those among us who are marginalized.  By the grace of God, we can come to see how persons living on the fringes of society are more like us than we had thought, and thus come to love and cherish them.  Thus, since we come to see we are more like others than we had thought, we necessarily give up our conceptions of ourselves so that we can become who God has always intended us to be.  We let go of our images of ourselves so we can see God made us in His own image.  We relinquish our false ideas of ourselves so we can love.  As we empty ourselves of our untrue conceptions of ourselves, God can fill us up with the love* we have seen our brothers and sisters demonstrate for us over the centuries.  

Sometimes we might think this love is out of our reach.  Yet God gives us opportunities to open our hearts and choose this love.  

We can think that saints have nothing to do with us.  We can decide that we are far removed from them.  In addition to saints inspiring us through their outstanding examples, they point out to us to consider what we value, and to act accordingly.  Thus, although at first they might seem distant and unreachable, by pondering their choices, we can come to realize they are closer to us than we had thought, since like they have done, we too must decide everyday who and what are important to us.  Through our choices, we can embrace the types of people the saints treasured.  In how we opt to act, we can show we wish to love others like the saints have done, and thus be close with the saints, honoring their memory.  

Today we remember Saint Lawrence as we celebrate his feast day on this particular date.  He was a deacon in the city of Rome in the third century.  He was charged with giving aid to those in need.  Saint Lawrence loved impoverished people so much that he gave all of the money in his care to poor persons.  He even sold expensive items to be able to give more to those who were indigent.   

Since Saint Lawrence was one of those in charge of funds for the church, Roman officials ordered him to bring them the treasure of the church.  As the priest explained during his sermon today at Mass, in reply to this demand, Saint Lawrence said it would take him a few days to gather this treasure.  Then he brought disabled, blind, ill and needy individuals to the Roman officials.  Saint Lawrence maintained that these outcasts were the treasure of the church.  

In response, the Roman authorities killed Saint Lawrence.  He died while he was tied to a grill set above a fire so that he was roasted alive.  Although Saint Lawrence suffered much as he died, God gave him grace.  He had been so strengthened by God that he made light of his plight.  At one point he told those torturing him to turn him over because he was done on the side that had been cooking.  

Saint Lawrence received grace from God.  Saint Lawrence had humbled himself by cherishing those who were impoverished.  Those who are humble receive grace from God.**  

Those of humble heart are close to those who are least among us.  Jesus told us that whatever we do to those who are least among us, we do to Him.***  People who are humble welcome Jesus into their hearts.  Jesus stands at the doors of our hearts and knocks.  If we open to Him, He can come into our hearts and dine with us.****  The poor stand at our doors and knock.  Jesus, in the poor, stands at our doors and knocks.  If we let the poor in when they knock, they can come in and dine with us.  If we let them into our homes, we let Jesus into our hearts.  

Last week a young couple, interested in volunteering here at the Catholic Worker House, came here to the house, and, over coffee, said that they have let homeless persons sleep in their home.  This man and this woman have opened their hearts to those who have no place to rest their heads.  They have welcomed impoverished individuals into their home, and thus have embraced Jesus.  They have clearly demonstrated that they consider those who are poor as treasures to delicately and gently treat.  

Jesus told us, "Where your treasure is, there your heart will be."*****  Seeing who and what we value, there our hearts reside, in community with them.  As we demonstrate to others that we appreciate them, we welcome them into our hearts.  We can embrace those who are poor and treat them with dignity, helping them to see that they are treasures to be valued, rather than treating them as if they are trash to be discarded.  We can choose to show warmth and tenderness to those who are often cast aside, and thus truly love them.  

If we truly love, we will allow ourselves to be humbled.  As we consent to being humbled, God will give us the grace we need to love our neighbor.  At times in our lives, we might misperceive our neighbor and mistakenly believe she is nothing like us.  Through the grace of God, we can come to have much compassion for our neighbor, once we recognize that our neighbor is much more like us than we had thought.  Seeing our neighbor is more like us than we had thought, we come to love our neighbor as ourselves.******  As we open our hearts to love, we open our hearts to God.  As we seek to always do the will of God by always loving our neighbor, we come to love God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength.*******  Amen.  

* Romans 5:5 
** 1 Peter 5:5; James 4:6 
*** Matthew 25:40 
**** Revelation 3:20 
***** Matthew 6:21; Luke 12:34 
****** Matthew 22:39; Mark 12:31; Luke 10:27; Leviticus 19:18; Romans 13:9; Galatians 5:14 
******* Deuteronomy 6:5; Deuteronomy 10:12; Matthew 22:37; Mark 12:30; Luke 10:27 

Presently Prayerfully Loving

Today is the anniversary of the bombing of Nagasaki.  Today we also celebrate the feast day of Edith Stein, a nun martyred in Auschwitz.  One could think that these commemorations have nothing to do with how today I sat and talked with a recent college graduate.  Yet in all of these opportunities rests the duty of the present moment.  In every moment we are called by God.   
As we remember how a plutonium bomb was dropped on the Japanese city of Nagasaki exactly 72 years ago on August 9, 1945, killing tens of thousands of people, some of us might wonder what we can do to avert war.  I am convinced that in seeking world peace, the most effective step we can take is to pray.  I also strongly believe that we can take efficacious measures for world peace by praying the rosary.  One hundred years ago, at Fatima in Portugal, our Blessed Mother Mary instructed us to pray the rosary for world peace.  Had more people ardently implored our Blessed Mother Mary to intercede with her Son Jesus, the second world war would not have happened.  We fulfill the duty of the present moment when we pray.  

We also carry out the duty of the present moment, as was described in the eighteenth century by the Jesuit priest Jean-Pierre de Caussade, when we seek to do God's will.  Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, previously known as Edith Stein, was raised Jewish.  However, after voraciously reading the autobiography of Saint Teresa of Avila late into the night, she not only became Catholic, but eventually also became a Carmelite nun.  Due to her Jewish heritage, the Nazis arrested her and sent her to Auschwitz, where she died in a gas chamber, probably exactly 75 years ago, on August 9, 1942.  She said that we surely may pray to be spared, but that certainly we should add the additional prayer to God, "Not my will be done, but Thy will be done."*  We find God's will in the present moment, so when we submit to the present moment and what it demands of us, we obey God's will.  Wherever we are in the present, there may God's will be done.  Where we find ourselves, there we pray.  

Today I found myself sitting at the kitchen table here in the Catholic Worker House with a young woman who I heard speak at Mass this past weekend.  At the end of Mass she got up and spoke briefly about how she is devoting her efforts to helping other young people who have fallen away from their faith.  She indicated she would be happy to speak with anyone who would like to hear more about her work.  After Mass, I asked her to contact me.  We arranged for her to come here to the Catholic Worker House.  

In relating to me how she aims to get to know the persons she seeks to help, I felt indirectly guided in what she said.  It seemed to me that the Holy Spirit was speaking through her.  It occurred to me that perhaps Jesus was telling me that I must get to know the homeless people and other impoverished persons I aspire to serve as a Catholic Worker.  I believe that in hearing her story, I was being told how I am to live my life, how I am to love my neighbor as myself.**  I would want someone to care enough about me to get to know me, so as to understand me; thus I should get to know others so I can better understand them.  In better understanding others, I can more easily be compassionate towards them, and thus love them as I love myself.  When I find myself in the present moment, I am to listen as best I can to my neighbor.  In giving my neighbor my full attention, and learning about her, I love my neighbor, and thus I fulfill my duty to the present moment.  

We embrace the present moment when we love our neighbor.  We carry out the duty of the present when we pray.  We open our hearts to the present when we do the will of God.  No matter how disparate the circumstances, no matter what is happening, we are called to pray and to love our neighbor, and thus do our duty right now, and thus do the will of God.  Let us open our hearts, and love God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength,*** and our neighbor as ourselves, and thus do God's will.  Amen.  

* Matthew 26:39,42
** Matthew 22:39; Mark 12:31; Luke 10:27; Leviticus 19:18; Romans 13:9; Galatians 5:14 
*** Deuteronomy 6:5; Deuteronomy 10:12; Matthew 22:37; Mark 12:30; Luke 10:27 

God Calling Us

When we listen to God, we feel the love of God.  If we accept who God is calling us to be, we feel great joy.  If we become who God has always intended us to be, we become our real selves.  Upon following the will of God, we welcome God into our hearts, and thus welcome love into our hearts.*  Love reigns in hearts which are fully open to God.  

At times God calls us in ways we can hear with the ears of our bodies.  At other points God speaks to us in ways which resonate deep in our souls.  

Yesterday when I was walking up to the church for Mass, the church bells were ringing.  I heard not only the reverberating volume of the sonorous bells vibrating against my eardrums.  I also felt echoing in my soul how I had been previously called to prayer by resonating bells.  

I was reminded of when I was traveling in Europe, right after I had finished serving in the Peace Corps in Morocco.  At one point during those travels in Europe, I found a church by following the sound of the tolling of the church bells.  

Yesterday as I approached the church, I thought too of when I lived at the hermitage in Big Sur.  In that Benedictine monastic community, where I thought I was going to become a monk, the church bell sounds before each Mass and each recitation of the Divine Office, in which Psalms are sung and spoken.  The monks, upon hearing the church bell, proceed to the church for Mass or the Divine Office.  They do their best both to hear the call and to follow it.  

We can be guided by what we hear.  God directs us too through the Holy Spirit speaking to us deep within us.  

God is calling out to us.  As Jesus told us, anyone who has ears should listen.**  When we listen, and submit to God's will, and obediently follow the calling God has ordained for us, we find true joy, for then we find our true selves, and become who God has always meant us to be.  As we live out our vocations, we become who God made us to be.  If we become who God intended us to be, we embrace God, and feel love, for God is love.***  As we feel the love of God, we feel joy.  In finding this joy, we are brought on our way back home to God.  

* Romans 5:5  ** Matthew 11:15; Matthew 13:9; Mark 4:9; Luke 8:8 
*** 1 John 4:8,16 

God Is Mercy

Today while I was out and about here in Redwood City, I crossed paths with a certain Hispanic homeless man I'd previously met.  His real name is Jesus.  

As I stood there speaking with him, all of a sudden he started talking about God's promises to us.  He was telling me how he feels that God makes amazing promises to us, and then fulfills them.  

Later in the day, I thought back to how he had said that God remarkably carries out his great promises to us.  As I mused upon these words about God's promises spoken to me by the man named Jesus I had met, I thought of how Jesus Christ explained to us that while some things are impossible for humans, nothing is impossible for God.*  

I have thought that I can forgive my neighbor only because God has given me the grace to do so.  Without the aid of God, I would not be able to forgive my neighbor.  God has mercy on me and gives me the grace to forgive my neighbor.  

And so, thinking of God's great mercy while I stood there speaking with this man named Jesus today, I said to him something like, "We try to do good, but we end up sinning.  But after we die, when we get before God, we can beg God for his mercy.  Since God is love,** God will be merciful and forgive us."  

Jesus looked at me and said, "Yes!  He has to!  It's who He is!"  

God will forgive us our sins, because to forgive is to love, and God is love.  God will be true to His promise, for while we are unfaithful to Him, God cannot be unfaithful to us.  Jesus Christ told us that He is The Way, The Truth and The Life.***  God is Truth, and God is love.  God tells us that He is love, and since He is Truth, He will be true to His Word, and love us: out of His great mercy, He will forgive us if we beg Him for the grace to forgive our neighbor.  

* Genesis 18:14; Jeremiah 32:17,27; Matthew 19:26; Mark 10:27; Luke 1:37; Luke 18:27
** 1 John 4:8,16 
***  John 14:6 

Clarity About Love

We are all called to have clarity about love.  We are to order properly our love.  

In a foundational way, we are to love ourselves.  As a prerequisite to loving others, we must love ourselves.  If we do not love ourselves, we cannot love others.  When we love ourselves, then we can love our neighbor as ourselves,* as Jesus instructed us to do.  

When we love ourselves, we are grateful to God.  Loving ourselves, we thank God that He made us. First and foremost, we are called to love God with all our heart, with all our mind, with all our soul, and with all our strength.**  

In relation with people, we stand on a solid foundation if we love ourselves.  Loving ourselves, we are equipped to love others.  

We are to love our families.  We are to honor our father and our mother.***  

We are to love not only our friends, but we are to expand our horizons and love our enemies.****  Giving love in response to those who mistreat us, we can convert our enemies by so afflicting their consciences that it is as if we are heaping hot coals upon their heads.*****  

Confronting hate, if we react with hate, we become what we hate.  If we hate, we become hate.  

Encountering hate, if we reply with love, we become what we love.  If we love, we become love.  

God is love,****** and so God loves us.  Do we love God?  If we love, we welcome God into our hearts.  If we love, we embrace God.  Let us love, and turn to God, and embrace Him.  Amen.  

* Matthew 22:39; Mark 12:31; Luke 10:27; Leviticus 19:18; Romans 13:9; Galatians 5:14 
** Deuteronomy 6:5; Deuteronomy 10:12; Matthew 22:37; Mark 12:30; Luke 10:27  
*** Exodus 20:12; Leviticus 19:3; Matthew 15:4; Ephesians 6:2
**** Matthew 5:44; Luke 6:27 
***** Proverbs 25:21-22; Romans 12:20
****** 1 John 4:8,16 

Loving Buried Treasure

When we love our neighbor, we give to our neighbor.  If we love our neighbor, we store up treasure in Heaven.  As we love, we feel joy.  Energized by the joy we know when we realize that God is love,* we become empowered to let go of all we have.  As we become detached from what we have, and give it out of love, we prepare ourselves to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.  

We hear what the Kingdom of Heaven is like in today's Gospel reading.  There we hear that 

Jesus said to his disciples:
"The Kingdom of Heaven is like a treasure buried in a field,
which a person finds and hides again,
and out of joy goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.
Again, the Kingdom of Heaven is like a merchant
searching for fine pearls.
When he finds a pearl of great price,
he goes and sells all that he has and buys it."**  

The Kingdom of Heaven is like treasure buried in a field.  In Heaven we find what is most valuable.  

When we realize the joy we will have in Heaven, we feel great joy now.  Once we taste merely a tiny morsel of the love of our Heavenly Father which we will feel in Heaven, we are joyous now.  

Feeling the love of our Heavenly Father, we are empowered to do as Jesus says, and go and sell all we have from love of God and our neighbor.  Some people might wonder whether all of us are called to give up everything we have and live with nothing.  We are all called to be completely detached from what we have.  If we are totally unattached to what we own, then we can do as we are called to do, and thus love God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength,*** and love our neighbor as ourselves.****  Thus we are called out of love to let go of what we have if our neighbor needs it.  When we can live out such relinquishment of what we possess, we can enter the Kingdom of Heaven.  

We give up all we have to gain Heaven.  If, out of humility, we can become nothing for ourselves, then we can become something of great value to our neighbor.  

When we let go of things which we mistake for ourselves, then we can find our true selves.  As we gradually discover that our true identity rests in giving up ourselves for our neighbor, then we will be able to do as Saint Therese of Lisieux explained she was able to do: then, like her, little by little we are able to sacrifice ourselves more easily and without hesitation.  Bit by bit we can come to realize that what we think we have is not ours alone.  

As we release our hold on what we think is ours, we find we share it with others.  With every little thing, when we loosen our grip on it, we come to gain a grasp of the reality of love that binds us together with our neighbor.  

When we perform little acts of love for our neighbor, we plant seeds of love in our neighbor's heart.  As we act with love, we are sowing love in the world.  In every little loving choice we make, in time we can come to bear a rich harvest of love in our neighbor's heart.  

When we give up all we have from love of our neighbor, especially those amongst us who are most in need, we store up treasure in Heaven.  Upon letting go of what we have had, with our hearts emptied of all we thought we had had, then we can be filled with what God wants to give to us.  Having given up all we have had, then we can follow Jesus.***** 

Jesus told us that where our treasure is, there our hearts will be.******  When we fully give ourselves to our neighbor out of love for our neighbor, we live with transformed hearts: we reside in the hearts of our neighbor, and, residing there, we can love our neighbor as ourselves.  Having planted seeds of love in our neighbor's heart, we can come to find a rich harvest there.  Having given away all we have out of love of our neighbor, we can come to realize that, in the love we find in our neighbor's heart, we have treasure buried in the heart of our neighbor.  Having placed our love in our neighbor's heart, we can find our love abounding there if we cultivate it there.  Those who sow in unrestrained love reap rich rewards.  

Let us reap a rich harvest.  Let us give away what we have, and thus love God and love our neighbor, so we may find buried treasure.  Amen.  

* 1 John 4:8,16 
** Matthew 13:44-46 
*** Deuteronomy 6:5; Deuteronomy 10:12; Matthew 22:37; Mark 12:30; Luke 10:27 
**** Matthew 22:39; Mark 12:31; Luke 10:27; Leviticus 19:18; Romans 13:9; Galatians 5:14 
***** Matthew 19:21; Mark 10:21; Luke 18:22 
****** Matthew 6:21; Luke 12:34 

Trust Yields Grace

When we fear, we are not trusting in God.  When we arrogantly assume we can get along without God, we are deciding that we will not trust in God.  

When we have faith in God, we are trusting in God.  When we admit we need God's help, then we can start to trust in God.  

When we truly, fully trust in God, we find our faith is well-placed.  God will not scorn a humble, contrite heart.*  God gives grace to the humble.**  

* Psalm 51:17  

** 1 Peter 5:5; James 4:6