Living Monstrance

When I was ten years old, my Little League team was practicing one day on the field, and we were doing some basic base running drills. I was new, it was my first year with the team, and I didn’t know much about all the nuances of running bases. So, one practice we were working on a simple rule:

When you are on first base, and there are two outs, then you run on any fly ball that the batter hits to the outfield. But if there is less than two outs, you go half way down the base line. That way, if you find out the outfielder can’t catch the ball, you’re already half way to second base. And, if the outfielder does catch the ball, you can still get back to first base before the outfielder can throw the ball there.

Very simple, right?

So, here it is, my turn, and the coach hits the fly ball to the outfield. How many outs are there? I don’t know. I run halfway to second. The coach stops everything and yells, “Jerry, what are you doing? With two outs, you run all the way! Do it again!” So I get back to first base. He hits another fly ball to the outfield. This time I run all the way. The coach is now really angry, and stops everything again. “With one out, you run half way!” Apparently he changed the number of outs. I missed that part. “Come here!”

When I got to him, he took off my hat and said, “Run.” That meant I had to start running laps around the field. Now it wasn’t just a baseball diamond. It had three baseball diamonds and a good little greenspace in the middle. Maybe a half a mile all the way around. So I set out running.

One lap went by. Anything? Nope, I kept going. A second, then a third. I glance over at the coach, looking for a sign to stop. No response. A fourth, a fifth … Anything? Nope.

I ran 10 laps straight that day, about 5 miles, I don’t know how. It’s still something we talk about if I ever run into an old teammate. I’m sure everyone that was on that team remembers it to this day.

For the coach, that was a very, very important rule for me to learn. And you know, I tell you, I never made that mistake again. Even in softball leagues when I got older, when I forget everything else, I still remember that one rule. I think I will remember that base running rule for all my life.

When the Israelites were near the promised land, they were very intimidated about entering it. To possess the land, they would have to fight people who were much bigger and stronger. But God told them He would take care of everything, and told them to go all the way in. But they stayed put. They wouldn’t trust Him. Then, when He became mad and told them to stay put, they ran up to go in. Again, they wouldn’t trust Him. What was the punishment?

A loooong 38-year journey around the desert.

Then we turned, and journeyed into the wilderness in the direction of the Red Sea, as the LORD told me; and for many days we went about Mount Seir. (Deut 2:1)

When they finished that, they held off when God wanted them to, and they entered in when God wanted them to. They lived the impossible, and God blessed them with great gifts. Everything worked out.

They had learned the one rule that to God was very, very important: always trust Me.

Do you feel in life that you are running laps, or circling a mountain in a desert? Then there is a very, very important lesson that God wants you to learn. Seek to know it, because once you get it, everything works out.

Once you get it, you will live the impossible with Him, and you’ll have His great blessings.

A month or so ago I went out to a monastery in Massachusetts to spend the day. I’ll often take a day away like that a few times a month. I can get away from all the distractions - no computer, no email, no cell phone. I also put down all the labor I am doing for the Lord, laboring for souls, for the Church. There is no work, no ministries, no church projects, no responsibilities. Just being with the Lord and recollecting. Total silence.

So anyway, when I got there, I entered the lobby and pushed the button to ring the guestmaster, Fr. Richard. When he came, we exchanged greetings and caught up on what was going on with each other. When we were done, he asked, “So, you need a room?” “Yeah, if you have one, just for the day - I’ll leave this evening.” “Yeah, sure, let’s see … I can put you in room 5.” “Great.”

So, I turned away to take something out of my backpack, and when I turned back around, I saw him fishing through a drawer. He pulled out a pile of name cards, you know, the type you can slide into a holder on an office door. He sifted through a little bit and pulled out one with my name on it: “Jerome”

I thought, “They actually have my name written down. They have a place for me.” I was so happy because my name is written in the place I go to be alone with God.

See, with all the activities going on in the Church, the tending to hearts and the projects and the great things that the Lord is doing, I can get caught up in the works, in what is - or isn’t - happening. I can start to think that I have a home in the activity, and forget what is really important. But there’s only one place where my name is written and hidden away.

It’s in the special place where I go to put everything down and be alone with the Lord.

When the Lord sent out seventy disciples to preach and prepare the way for Him, they came back excited about all the things they saw and experienced, and especially that they had authority over evil and were able to do great works. They were so excited. But the Lord recognized that they could get caught up in the excitement and forget the most important thing:

“Nevertheless do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you; but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.” (Lk 10:20)

Our joy, our reward is not in the works we can do when we are with God in our vocation. It is that we are His. That we have an intimate and private and unique place with Him away from everything else.

That our names are written in heaven.

About 9 years ago, I went out looking for my first new home. I started with some single-family homes at first. But, being a younger guy, I wanted to be closer to the city, at least until I got married. So, I began looking at single-bedroom condos in the Fenway area of Boston. The first one I looked at was spacious and at a decent location - but it was in awful condition. And the window view was a nice scene of bricks. The second and the third - same thing. I was dejected. I went back to the real estate agent’s office, and we were looking at listings on a computer, and I noticed a listing in the Back Bay. A little more expensive, I’m thinking, but still in my price range. Let’s check this out.

It was a studio unit, instead of a one bedroom. It was a little small, too: only 560 square feet. Plus, it was in the basement. And no parking. But I wanted to go look at it. When I saw it, I heard “yes” inside me. Right away, I told my broker, “I want to put an offer down on this.”

Why did I want to put an offer down on a small cubby hole in a basement? Why did I give up a nice single-family home with the yard and the driveway What was I thinking?

Location, Location, Location.

See, the unit is in a brick townhouse in the most exclusive part of Boston. We are talking multi-million dollar historic residences in a multi-million dollar historic neighborhood. It was quiet and tree-lined, even though it’s in the heart of the city. The most beautiful streets are there, Marlborough Street with its brick sidewalks and gas lamps. You’ve got Commonwealth Avenue with its big noble residences. I could get to work by foot, bike, train, bus, and car. The condo was directly across the street from the Charles River, and you know what, when the Fourth of July fireworks display went off in Boston, they were launched directly across the street from my home.

When I gave up the nice home with the yard and driveway, and bought the small basement cubby hole with no parking and no bedroom, I got the best neighborhood in the city. I made a big sacrifice to live in a neighborhood I really wanted to live in more than anything else.

Location, location, location.

Peter and the apostles had a lot of good stuff going on in their lives before they chose to follow the Lord. When the Lord called these men to leave everything to follow Him, they had to make a big sacrifice. They were invited to leave their own lives, their own families, their own homes, their work.

Why did they do it? Why did they take the arduous trekking around, the homelessness, the gossip of neighbors, the humiliating looks from the crowds, the demanding attitudes of the poor and suffering, the continual thankless giving, the anger and the plotting of the religious self-righteous? Why did they take such a low, poor, and radical condition?

They did it because there was something they wanted more than anything else: they were getting to live with Him, in His Kingdom. They were getting the best of all neighborhoods. And they had to give up their own kingdoms to receive it.

Vocation, vocation, vocation.

Here’s the question: do we love Him? Do we want to live with Him more than anyone else? Do we want to live in His Kingdom rather than in our own kingdom?

If we can say “yes” to these questions, then we know we can give up everything to live with Him.

Vocation, vocation, vocation.

Peter began to say to him, “Lo, we have left everything and followed you.” Jesus said, “Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life. (Mk 10:28-30)

Since I will be away until June 17, there won’t be any posts until after then. But by the end of June the blog should be up and going again. God bless you,
Jerome

There haven’t been any new posts recently on the main page because I’ve been trying by the Lord’s grace to finish a description of the recent visitation of the missionary image of Our Lady of Guadalupe. But now it’s done, so if you’d like to see and read about some of the visits, you can click on the page at the left called The Missionary Image Of Our Lady Of Guadalupe Boston 2009. I hope it’s helpful for you in your spiritual life.

At my brother’s wedding rehearsal last June, we all met in the church parking lot beforehand, talking. I had the chance to meet a lot of new people who were friends of my sister in law, so we were all making some new introductions.

In the midst of it, I went up to one woman and said, “Hi I’m Jerome, I’m the groom’s brother.” She gave me one of those looks, you know, where she can tell I had no idea who she was. She pointed over to her left and said, “I belong to him.” Standing there with a big smile was her husband, who I had just met.

So, anyway, they seemed like best of friends and a great couple. We all enjoyed the wedding. But you know, to this very day, I still don’t know her name. But I do remember what she called herself. I thought, that’s her real name.

In writing his Gospel, John never uses his own name. Instead, He calls himself “the disciple whom Jesus loved” a total of five times in his Gospel. What is he doing? He is telling us that he belongs to Him. He is telling us his real name.

Jesus comes to us as a bridegroom to a bride. “Behold, the bridegroom! Come out to meet him.” (Mt 25:6) He seeks to enter into a personal covenant of the deepest union of love with each of us, a covenant that is like marriage, but even deeper. Just like in marriage, He wants to give each of us a new name: and you shall be called by a new name which the mouth of the LORD will give. (Is 62:2)

He wants to give us our real name:

“I belong to Him.”

Over the last month or so, some friends and I had the privilege of bringing a missionary image of Our Lady of Guadalupe around the Archdiocese of Boston. One of the stops I had the privilege of being at was a county prison. The prisoners at Mass each had a chance to approach the image and express their devotion to the Blessed Mother.

Afterwards, I was talking with one of the prisoners. You could tell he was one of the leaders, and he thanked us for being there and for what we had done. I said, “Oh, it’s a privilege. I hope it gives you guys some hope and inspiration.” He said, “Yeah, some inspiration to get out of here and never come back.”

Prison is the pits. It’s one of those few places that God sends us to so that we’ll want to get out and never come back. It’s a place where many people cry out to God. And it’s also a place of second chances.

Jonah ran away from the Lord and ended up swallowed by a giant fish - maybe you remember the story? But God gave him a second chance after that, and by Jonah’s preaching, the whole city of Nineveh was saved, more than 120,000 people.

What did Jonah do in the belly of the fish?

I went down to the land whose bars closed upon me for ever; yet you did bring up my life from the Pit, O LORD my God. When my soul fainted within me, I remembered the LORD; and my prayer came to you, into your holy temple. (Jonah 2:6-7)

If God has put you in the Pit, don’t despair, it’s not over. It’s so that you’ll want to get out and never go back again, so you can fulfill the great plan He has for you. Remember Him and cry out in prayer to Him.

He will give you the inspiration to get out and never go back.

A friend of the family, Jake, came by a few months ago to watch a movie with my father, and we all got to talking about my father’s trip back down to Virginia. Jake loves to travel, and he especially loves to drive - he used to be a truck driver. So, he offered to drive my father down to Virginia when the time came. What a gift of a friend he is!

Well, when we started talking about the trip down, we talked about route 95, and how it’s pretty much a direct trip from Boston to DC. Jake started describing the routes he takes. “I don’t take 95, even though it pretty much goes direct all the way down. I’ll take the Mass pike to 84, all the way through New York and into Pennsylvania. Then I’ll take 81 to 83 into Maryland.”

Wow, I’m thinking, that’s way out of the way. I have done lot of traveling from Boston to Pennsylvania, to New Jersey, even some to Maryland and Virgina. I’ve gone 95, 84, 684, 287, 80, Garden State Parkway, New Jersey Turnpike, and other ones. But I never would have thought of taking the route he described.

I said, “No Tappan Zee bridge?” “I don’t even take the Tappan Zee - they’re always doing construction on that.”

He said, “Even though it adds 90 more miles onto 450, it takes an hour less time. It’s because, except for Hartford, you skip all the traffic in Connecticut, and then you skip New York and Philadelphia completely.

I would never take 95 the whole way.”

Jesus has come to us, and He desires each of us to come to Him. But reaching Him is a journey that takes effort. If we look to reach Him directly, we’ll meet many obstacles in the road - traffic, construction, accidents on the side of the road, backups, delays.

But there is an indirect way we can take, and His mother knows it. She knows it because she is it. Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ. (1 Cor 11:1) This way looks like it’s way out of the way. It looks like a longer way, and it may not even make sense to us at first. But we get there faster and easier.

We skip all the commotion, the back-ups, and delays.

And after taking this way, you’ll never take the direct route again.

Happy Mother’s Day!

A few years ago, I had the gift of scuba diving pretty often with my friend Ron. Now, he’s a dive master, which means he can do just about anything under water. That’s good for me, because I’m a beginner. He would help me with the gear in setting up, he would lead me where to go, and he would help me with the lobstering underwater. And, he always gave me the lobsters afterwards!

Well, one day I went out to dive with another friend Keith, who is not a dive master. He brought some of his equipment. “You need a breather?” “Yeah.” “This works pretty well.” Well, sort of. “The compass doesn’t work on this one - you can use this one.” “OK.” So, off we went into the ocean.

We swam out about a hundred yards and were poking around for lobsters. Nothing was really happening. Finally, my air was running low, so I let Keith know it was time to go back. He says no - see he had only one lobster and needed another one for his wife for dinner. So he kept going. I stuck with him, and gave him some more time.

A little later, again I told him it was time to go back, I was running low. But he still needed that lobster. Finally, I made as much noise as I could underwater, and got him to surface.

Here we were, about 150 yards off shore, with the sun soon setting, and no one on the beach. By this time, I was just about out of air. Now, let me explain a few things to help understand. With scuba, it’s easier to travel at the bottom of the ocean than to swim on the surface. But now, I had to swim on top because my air was almost out. And I am not a good swimmer.

So, I aimed toward the shore, put in my breather, plunked my head into the water, and began to kick, trying to keep my eyes on the bottom of the ocean as a guide. Kicking, kicking, kicking … am I making any progress, I’m wondering. I picked my head up to see if I was any closer to the shore.

There was no shore! I had turned completely around and was heading out to sea!

Now, I tell you, I began to get nervous. I’m thinking, this is how people die out here, heading out like dummies, with equipment that doesn’t work, without a plan, staying down too long to get lobsters. This is how divers become fish food.

So, then I decided I would not be fish food. I would go in by brute force. I aimed to the shore, put my back into the water and kicked and kicked and kicked like I’d never kicked before. We both made it back safe. And afterwards, I had the biggest fried clam dinner I ever had in my life. I never dove with Keith again.

What happened?

I went out without my dive master, my dive buddy. I put my trust in someone else.

Jesus is the only One we can trust our life with. If we abide in Him and His words in us (Jn 15:7), then He sets us up with the right gear in life, leads us in the good paths, and leads us in our life mission. But if we put our trust in someone else, we end up lost and in some predicament. “Apart from me you can do nothing.” (Jn 15:5)

The Lord is our Life Master.

He is our Life Buddy.

Two nights ago, I had the privilege of singing at a Mass in honor of Our Lady of Guadalupe, on the feast of St. Louis de Montfort. St. Louis is the man who enlightened the rest of the Church with a special means of giving themselves to Jesus through Mary His Mother. This consecration has been an important part of my coming back to Christ, and it’s the foundation for a group at the Shrine where I am a member. And, to boot, the Missionary Image of Our Lady of Guadalupe was there as well. So it’s a great privilege for me to be able to sing at the Mass.

Now, I am an OK singer, but certainly not the type you’d put leading the singing in church. I got to sing because the usual musician is out of town and the music director could not make it. I was the last-minute substitute: Choice C.

But as it turned out, I was not alone. There was a nineteen-year-old woman singing with me, Sandy. She was so very kind and humble, she had the most beautiful voice, played the guitar, and, well, she even looked a lot like Our Lady of Guadalupe. (Not to mention that Our Lady was a teenager when she was pregnant with her Son, as she is as Our Lady of Guadalupe.)

Now, my singing voice alone is boring, but not only that, I have gasps, places where I forget to breathe. My timing is off, I sing way too low most of the time, and my volume is all over the place. I sing like a choice C singer. Hack.

I told her, “You have a great voice. You should be doing all the singing, you can do the solos.” She said, “No, we are a team. We’ll sing together.” So, we sang together for the Mass.

And the most amazing thing happened. She sang and played the guitar with me, and by doing that, everything changed. She smoothed out all the rough edges, adapted for the volume, and her higher voice balanced my drone. And even more, she could harmonize at the drop of a hat. Her harmonizing turned every ordinary song into an extraordinary song.

With her guitar playing and singing, we sounded like Choice A. People were even weeping! She got all the accolades of course, and what did I get? I got to sing with her. I would have been a disaster alone, but instead, with her, I got to be a part of the A team.

In his writings revealing the special means of consecration to Jesus through Mary, St. Louis de Montfort wrote that we need this means because, from God’s standard, everything we do is like Choice C: it’s hack. He wrote that we should live life always with Mary so that “she may purify it, sanctify it, embellish it, and thus render it worthy of God.” (The Secret of Mary, No. 37)

Mary gives us the Sacred Humanity of Jesus. When we live life with Jesus’ Humanity, when we live life with Mary, she smoothes out all the rough edges. She adjusts for our faults and weaknesses and fills them in. And not only that, she embellishes our life with a harmonizing that makes every ordinary thing extraordinary. It becomes worthy of God Himself. It becomes the Life of her Son.

We get to live with her, and our life goes from Choice C to Choice A.

We get to be a part of the A team.