From the rising of the sun to its setting...

A FRIEND SENT THIS PHOTO yesterday of a seabird getting ready for takeoff. Then this morning, in reading the opening lines of the Third Eucharistic prayer, the picture came to mind:

You are indeed Holy, O Lord,
and all you have created
rightly gives you praise,
for through your Son our Lord Jesus Christ,
by the power and working of the Holy Spirit,
you give life to all things and make them holy,
and you never cease to gather a people to yourself,
so that from the rising of the sun to its setting
a pure sacrifice may be offered to your name.

It is either sunrise or sunset in this picture. Notice the coppery gold lines that accent the bird's wings and the softer gold iridescence on the forehead and breast. "...and all you have created rightly gives you praise."

Then I was talking with a young dad after the Mass and somehow the conversation came around to our need to look for the thin gold line of divinity in all things. More than just an optimistic "silver lining" there is God's energy and presence to be discovered in what are often flashes of seconds all around us.

The iconographer understands this, building up the image with translucent paints from darker to lighter -the brightest lights added last - the difference being that in the icon the light energy, the light-sparks originate from within. They indicate our theosis - our becoming the new kind of human person Christ and his saints reveal, filled with divine energies. 

"Stay close to the fire which is Christ, and eventually even the thorns of your life will burst into flame," Brother Roger of Taize would say.

Shinleaf Discovery

THERE IS A SHADY WOODED PART of the property here along the stream bank where I recently found this lovely little plant which is called Shinleaf. It has the pretty Latin botanical name Pyrola Elliptica. Blooming  on schedule, the plant, also called Wild Lily of the Valley, produces one thin stem, low to the ground, crowned with fragrant white or light-pink inverted flowers. The leaves appear in a circular pattern at the bottom of the stem.

There was a wooded lot behind our suburban home on Long Island when I was a young boy - a place of investigating, learning and wondering. I think I built a hermitage there too. I remember the smell of the ferns and decayed leaves, finding a beautiful black and yellow box turtle and a pink Jack in the Pulpit. But this part of North East Pennsylvania contains an even more enormous number of wildflowers that appear one after another through the spring and summer. Shinleaf caught me by surprise this morning. 

"And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden." Genesis 2:8

Some people look for Eden to be a few mystery acres in the Middle East somewhere. Maybe Eden is God's name for the entire planet, planted with so many growing, blooming and often perfumed things.

Actress Helen Mirren was interviewed in the June/July issue of the AARP Magazine. When asked to say something about "God" she said, "The only time I've thought, 'Wow, maybe there is a god,' was when I saw an exhibition of spectacularly gorgeous minerals from the bowels of the earth." 

I'm genuinely happy for Helen Mirren for her moment of maybe. But I'm happier for myself to have come across a dozen or so Shinleafs growing in the woods and when bending down to the ground to make the second discovery of their faint perfume. "Earth is crammed with heaven..." Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote.

The Savior on Spilled Blood

THIS SPLENDID AND FANCIFUL CHURCH in St. Petersburg, Russia  goes by several names: The Cathedral of the Resurrection of Christ but also The Church of Our Savior on Spilled Blood. Completed in 1907, more a museum than an active church, it commemorates the 1881 assassination of Czar Alexander II. The Soviet government closed the church in the 1930's using it as a morgue during the Second World War and the Siege of Leningrad. Still later it was used as a warehouse for vegetables. After a twenty seven year period of restoration the building was re-opened to the public in 2007.

Spiritual genius seems to have designed and built the church while insanity ransacked and closed it. But the world needs this place with the curious name. Indeed, every major city might have a Church on Spilled Blood - not to commemorate a murdered czar or political figure but to call our attention to the blood that is spilled in just about every place on the planet by abortion, genocide, drug-related violence, murders, terrorist blood-letting, internecine wars, bloody revolts, slaughtering attacks and executions.

The Christian can't be simply a nice guy, a law-abider or a good neighbor. A Christian is to feel to his/her very depths what it is to profess and live fidelity to Jesus Christ. Acknowledging our divided nature, and the beckoning of other loyalties, Pope Pius XII said: "Never make a man choose between his Church and his country. He will almost always choose his country."

Seventy years or so later, I would frame it this way, "Never make a person choose between Christ and other loyalties. They will almost always choose the other loyalties."

There are loyalties to political party, firm or corporation, to the media guru or talk show hosts, the loyalties of ideology, our national obsession with fun, sport and entertainment, sensual beauty and physicality.

Blood-spiller rage? At any summer gathering bring up even one of these topics: Catholicism, Catholic priests, homosexual marriage, "gay agenda", abortion, Mexican children fleeing to America's borders, Barack, Michelle, Benghazi, Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman, prison reform. There's a blood-spiller in each human person.

And then there's the blood-spiller-rage that surfaces over our our having been abandoned, dismissed, fired, given away, abused, not consulted, unrewarded, over-looked, trapped, underpaid, betrayed, left disappointed, denied...

The message of the wondrous and luminous church might be, we've got to get the rage out of us. Notice the church's first title is Cathedral of the Resurrection of Christ. The peace of God in the Easter Jesus!.

That today is Sunday won't prevent blood-spilling. But that shouldn't stop us from contemplating the wisdom and vision of Jesus:

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be known as the children of God.
But I say to you; love your enemy,
    do good to those who hate you,
    bless those who curse you,
    pray for those who abuse you.
To those who strike you on the cheek, offer the other also.
And from those who take away your cloak, do not withhold your coat as well.
Give to everyone who begs from you;
And, to those who take away your goods, do not ask for their return.
And as you wish that others would do unto you, do so unto them as well.