Journeying Into Mystery

I have tried to maintain contact with people by phone over the past 2/3 weeks. Last evening I was talking with Fr Kevin Clinton. Kevin and I both retired from active ministry on June 30, 2019. I was talking to him about some of the “guidelines” the Archdiocese had sent priests and deacons about sacraments during this time of quarantine.

As Catholics, we believe in the real presence of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament (the hosts consecrated at Mass). There are some who are devoted to the honorable practice of meditation in front of the Blessed Sacrament. The recommendation was that if this devotion was to continue in parish churches, social distancing has to be strictly observed and the church disinfected at regular intervals to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Other suggestions was to have the Blessed Sacrament exposed from a window so that people can sit in their parked cars and meditate. One priest in New Brighton has been bringing the Blessed Sacrament in a monstrance (in reality a big, golden reliquary) to city parks so that people can meditate from their cars in the parking lots of the city’s parks. I do not poo-poo Eucharistic Adoration, however, if one only finds the real presence of Christ in a consecrated host placed in a overly decorated golden vessel, then it is problematic. This is not Eucharistic adoration, but more Eucharistic magic. It basically denies the real, incarnate presence of God in all of creation.

We cannot isolate God to a consecrated host in a monstrance. God is everywhere, in the air, the earth, our water, all living creatures, and especially in one another. The Eucharist is not magical, it is very concrete. When we receive holy communion, the presence of Christ becomes very much one with our corporal bodies, becoming part of our very breath, our blood, our flesh, our hearts.

As Kevin and I were talking about this, he told me that one of the priests who is a part of the AUSCP (Association of United States Catholic Priests) spoke to him about some young priest in his diocese who had a camera trained on a Consecrated host so people could do “virtual” Eucharistic Adoration. I said it reminded me of the “Yule Log” loop that is on a cable station during the Christmas season, in which you see the same fire place with burning logs on a recorded loop on your television. Every now and again a virtual hand stirs up the burning logs. I said that this “virtual Eucharistic Adoration” reduces Eucharistic Adoration to a “sacramental Yule Log.” I suggested, tongue in cheek, that perhaps the priest could film the Blessed Sacrament, putting it on a recorded loop with Benediction every two hours.

To think we can control and confine God to just one form is poor and bad theology. It reduces the Blessed Sacrament/Eucharist to magic. I remember visiting a young man who was dying. While he had been baptized Catholic, he hadn’t really lived his faith during his lifetime. He had rosary beads hung around his neck like a magical talisman. He put all his trust, in his words, “in the beads.” I visited him a week later. His condition was growing worse. He complained that “the beads weren’t working”. I asked him if he ever took them off from around his neck and tried praying the rosary? He hadn’t. He died a couple of days later. His belief that a rosary was a magical talisman that would somehow prevent his death, didn’t prevent his dying. The rosary is a form of prayer, like many other forms of prayer. You must put it into action.

While praying before the real presence of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament is a good practice, I think it far more important in respecting and honoring the presence of Christ in ALL of God’s Creation. When we open our eyes, our minds, and our hearts to the real presence of God all around us and within us, we don’t have to confine ourselves to the darkened nave of a church to pray in the presence of God. We can do this anywhere, any place, and any time. Simply, staying home, finding a quiet place, sitting down in silent prayer will sustain us as well if not better than sitting in a parked car in a city park and looking at a golden monstrance with a consecrated host. As Archbishop Hebda expressed so very well, it is Catholic teaching (Catechism) “That God is not bound by the sacraments.” I think this is an important teaching at this time of isolation.

This poem is a part of my reflection on the Covid-19 virus.

A POEM DURING A MODERN PLAGUE

Every morning upon rising
Routinely searching my vital signs
As a poverty stricken person
Searches pockets for spare change.
The grim news reports,
The skyrocketing death tolls,
Mausoleums more populated
Than the emptied churches,
Many desperately seeking God
From the confines of their dwellings.

I remember the time, early in life,
When I use to peer from my window
Into the darkness outside
For the headless Dullahan at the reins
Of the Cóiste Bodhar (coach-a-bower),
Its four black black horses
Powerfully pulling the death coach
Up to my front door, as I ruminate
On the words of Yeats, casting
A cold eye on life, on death.

Life, death, such separate entities,
Or so it seems, on the surface.
Yet, forty-two years of lessons
By grieving families have only
Taught me the oneing of life, of death.
As the beloved Anchoress of Norwich
Gazed out the window of her cell
Upon her nation devastated by
The Black Death and war,
So I gaze out my window on a world
As broken by plague and political violence,
And am comforted by the word of Christ
To this simple Middle Age mystic,
“All shall be well, and all shall be well,
And all manner of thing shall be well.”

(c) 2020, Robert Charles Wagner. All rights reserved.

I don’t know what it was about last week. It was a hard week to post anything on this blog. It was not so much about the stay at home order by Governor Walz. Ruthie and I, with all our injuries have had a lot of practice staying at home, and not by choice. Ruthie is up to close to a year and half of staying at home due to the injuries she received after having been run over by a pickup truck. I have been at home for over 9 months from the time I fell down the steps at Suel Printing company, with surgeries spaced over three months.

Covid-19 has turned into a 21 century version of the Black Plague that decimated all of Europe in the Middle Ages. As the Black Plague turned Europe inside out, so has Covid-19 done the same to our modern society with all its sophistication and technology.

I spent a part of last week calling and talking with those isolated by this worldwide illness. You can almost smell the fear of people in the air. We all like to be in control. We all like to think that we control our own destiny. It is something in which we take great pride, isn’t it? Covid-19 has revealed what an incredible myth, what an incredible hoax this kind of thinking truly is. It is very humbling and frightening to know that something so microscopic as a virus can bring down someone in the peak of health.

Before our retirement, Ruthie and I spent our careers ministering to many who were sick and many who were dying. Ruthie’s ministry was as a nurse to the elderly and chronically ill in nursing homes. My ministry was in a parish setting. We are not strangers to death. I have personally danced rather closely with death on four different occasions in my life. We reflected about how nature has a way of culling old life so as to allow new life to happen. Prairie fires and forest fires occur naturally in nature, the blackened plant life absorbed into the soil, fertilizing it, and out of its dead ash new vibrant life sprouts. Over and over again, the Phoenix rises from its ashes to live again.

What makes humanity think that the same cannot occur to us? Plagues have historically visited and devastated human populations. The Bubonic Plague (aka Black Death), Typhoid, Smallpox, Yellow Fever, Cholera, Measles, Spanish Flu, Encephalitis, London Flu, Ebola, HIV/AIDS, Polio to name just a few. This has been a recurring, tragic part of human life.

The other thing Ruthie and I have talked about is the extraordinary courage of nurses, nurses aides, doctors, EMT’s, law enforcement. So often we lay the mantle of bravery and courage upon soldiers who storm beachheads under extreme fire from enemy weapons fired from secured and fortified positions. Our medical personnel can be numbered among our heralded heroes and heroines as they minister to those critically afflicted and those dying from this invisible enemy.

So often during times like these, churches are filled with people seeking solace and some sort of certainty. The churches were filled following 9/11. Denominations that previously had damned one another as heretics gathered together for mutual prayer. Somehow, something as tragic as terroristic attacks opened our eyes, minds, and hearts to the fact that we all worship the same God. We found mutual comfort in our gathering to pray.

It is paradoxical that the mutuality for which we long in our worship communities is being denied us. What a cruel trick it is that in gathering together to pray, we might actually be condemning ourselves to death. It redefines the meaning of the word church. The word Church no longer is isolated to just a church building. The word Church goes beyond a mere building. In our forced isolation, we, as families, are rediscovering the ancient tradition of the home church. That wonderful anchoress of Middle Age Norwich, Julian, wrote that God is closer to us than our souls. God is not confined only to a church building, but rather God is more attached to us than our very soul.

As Julian looked out of the window of her little cell attached to St Julian’s Church in Norwich, England, she looked out on a city ravaged by war and disease. Rather than be overwhelmed by the horror that lay outside her cell, she was at peace. Christ appeared to her in a mystic vision and told her, “All shall be well, all shall be well, and all matter of things shall be well.” As we look out the windows of our homes upon our world so broken by the Covid-19 virus, let the reassurance spoken to Julian by Christ resonate in our ears. “All shall be well, all shall be well, and all matter of things shall be well.”

I completed composing this musical prayer this morning. I think we are all feeling a sense of fear and uncertainty as the COVID-19 pandemic continues. So many have been their source of income. So many have gotten sick. And most tragically, so many have lost their lives. So, if you are feeling weighed down by all this, I invite you to listen to this song.

One form of music that is able to express the losses in life so succinctly is the Blues. I composed this song as a Blues. I can safely say that I have been channeling my George Gershwin in this song. I call it “The Book of Job Blues”.

In 2012, I composed settings of two psalms, Psalm 92 and Psalm 8. I composed these for the praying of morning prayer at a Franciscan Day of Reflection. Over the past two weeks, I have re-composed these two hymns as piano pieces.

The first song is entitled “We Do Well To Your Name”.

I have dedicated this musical prayer for Ruth Weinandt who is a colleague in pastoral ministry at the New Prague Catholic Community. She is a wonderful person of compassion and care.

This second song is entitled “From The Lips of Babes and Children”. It is a setting of Psalm 8, re-composed for solo piano.

I have dedicated this musical prayer for my Franciscan colleague, Mary Higgins, whose ministry stretches way beyond the parish boundaries of the New Prague Area Catholic Community.

We are immersed in a time of great stress and uncertainty. May praying Psalm 92 and Psalm 8 bring a little break from worry, and may listening to this music assist you in relaxing in the loving embrace of God.

I recently did an Ancestry DNA test to look at my ancestry. It revealed I am 43% Polish/Slavic (makes sense my dad was a 100% Polish), 27% Irish (Connaght), 9% Norwegian, 8% German, 7% British, 4% Swedish, 1% Baltic, and 1% Finnish. I commented to my Aunt Mary (who is incredibly Irish) that apparently the “Swedish Joints” I have are the only thing I got from the Jernstrom side of the family (my maternal grandfather). In spite of the heavy DNA presence of Slavic Europe, that pesky 27% of Irish (my maternal grandmother) is the one that has had the most influence in my life. Probably explains why I started an Irish folk group in high school aptly named “The Irish Tipplers” (comprised of myself, Doug Meuwissen, Steve Snyder, Bob Windorksi, and Jeff King).

On St Patrick Day in St Paul, we didn’t play in the bars downtown. Rather we played in the big bank lobbies, and picked up gigs at the homes of rich bankers and lawyers. We had kind of a standing gig at some lawyer’s home in Forest Lake ($20 a piece, all the booze and food you could drink and eat … we did have a designated driver back then).

Having been a student of Irish traditional music (books, recordings of numerous Irish musical groups (Dervish, Danu, The Chieftans), harpists like Grainne Hambly, Janet Harbison, Mary O’Hara and others), the folk artists (primarily the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem), I have tried to compose music influenced by these sources.

Many of the Irish traditional bands put jigs, reels, ballads into a set. So that one set of 5 or 6 minutes may have a jig segueing into ballad into a reel, giving you the impression of one song. I submit two songs for this St Patrick’s Day. The first is a prayer song I composed in memory of a great man, Bob Murphy, husband of my cousin Greta, who died from Parkinson’s several years ago. The second is a prayer song I composed for my beloved mother-in-law Rose Ahmann (Burg-McNeily) who use to host a big St Patrick’s Day at the family farm. The third song is a prayer song I composed for my daughter-in-law, Olivia Reyes Wagner.

The one thing that this music reveals is the mix of my DNA (above). The songs start with a strong Irish reel or jig then moves into a distinct Northern European/Slavic middle section, then goes back into jig or reel that started it.

I composed this song for Bob Murphy in May/June of 2016. It begins with a stylized jig that came to me while I was driving one day, segues into an Irish musical decorated slower middle section that evolves almost into a Beethovenesque moment, then back into the Irish jig. For some reason I composed it in Sonata-Allegro form (theme 1, theme 2, development in which both themes appear, then back to theme 1). It was not intentional but serendipity.

This second Irish influenced song for Rose Ahmann was composed in February of 2018. It is a jig, again followed by a Beethoven/Mozart influenced middle section, and then back to the jig. I remember my beloved bride, Ruth, telling me she really liked the middle section … must be the German in her ancestry coming out.

This third song I composed for Olivia Wagner (Reyes) in 2016. It has a very Irish kind of melody. Of course, Olivia, who ancestry is 100% Filipino, would on the surface to be the less likely person, in terms of ancestry, to be Irish. However, Irish men, known to behave whilst in Ireland, sexually misbehaved all over the planet once they left the Emerald Isle. So, I wouldn’t be surprised if there is a hint of Irish in her ancestry. While the melody might be Irish, the rest of it is strictly Northern European based on the musical form, variation on a theme.

HAPPY ST PATRICK’S DAY!

The stark reality of this world plague has struck home in the lives of many Americans this past week. As a 6 on the Enneagram, I felt overwhelmed this past Wednesday as the dire news of COVID-19’s impact on human life was revealed. While it is easy to find scapegoats to blame, for instance a political leader blaming others and other nations for the plague, or the lack of a much needed response to produce the tests needed to detect the virus, that is energy uselessly wasted. it neither eliminates nor prevents the spread of the virus, and, as importantly, the spread of anxiety and fear of the virus.

In 2017, I composed six musical prayers for my six grandchildren (one of whom was a miscarriage) as a Christmas present. One of these musical prayers was a Nocturne (music for night). People who listened to this song told me that in listening to the song, they felt a great sense of peace.

I offer this song today to those who may be feeling overwhelmed by the anxiety and fear of this virus that is now spreading throughout our communities. I hope that it can bring a moment of peace to your lives.

Peace,

Deacon Bob Wagner

Today the symbol of life-giving water, both in a physical and spiritual sense, is present in this Sunday’s scriptures.

In the first reading, we hear the story of the Israelites complaining that they will die of thirst in the desert. Instructed by God, Moses strikes the rock in Horeb with his staff, and water pours out of the rock for the Israelites to drink. We hear a parallel story about water in the Gospel the familiar story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well. Jesus asks her for a drink of water from the well. There follows a conversation between the woman and Jesus about the defined differences between Samaritans and Jews and the cultural social distancing that existed between them. Jesus then tells her that he can offer her water in which her thirst will be satisfied for ever. “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again; but whoever drinks the water I shall give will never thirst; the water I shall give will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” (John 4:5-42, NAB) Of course, the woman asks Jesus to give her that water so that her thirst would be satisfied and she would never have to draw water from the well ever again.

This Gospel story is packed with so much it can be hard to focus on just one part, however, I would like to focus on the story of the life giving water about which Jesus speaks. I would like to build on that which I have homilized for the past two weeks of Lent.

In the readings of the first Sunday of Lent we hear the story of Adam and Eve and the fall of humankind. In their quest to become gods, like God, they eat from the tree of knowledge only to find in their nakedness, that they already had the divine presence of God dwelling in them. Their greed blinded them from discovering that divine presence within them.

In the readings of the second Sunday of Lent, we hear the story of the Transfiguration of Jesus. On the top of that mountain, the divine presence of God was revealed in the person of Jesus as a bright, dazzling light. This divine light dwells within us now. The Gospel challenges us to reflect on our lives and find that impedes that divine light within us.

The focus on that everlasting water about which Jesus speaks stands out for me this year more than ever. Upon hearing this story over the years of my life, I always thought that this everlasting water was something from which one could only draw after our human life ended. This year I have come to an entirely different conclusion, namely, that this water is already available for us from which to draw. This well of everlasting water is not some physical entity that exists outside us. This well from which we can satisfy our thirst for ever dwells within us.

Paul in his letter to the Romans speaks of this everlasting water. “The love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” (Romans 5:5-8) Paul goes on to say that this love, this grace of God, was not earned by us. Rather, God’s love and grace has been poured abundantly into our lives freely by God.

Jesus calls upon us to draw deeply from this well of grace in our lives now in the present. Don’t wait for some future time, but draw deeply from this well of God’s never-ending grace in our lives. At times of crises, like we are experiencing right now during this COVID-19 pandemic, we are to draw frequently from this water of God’s love and grace and drink deeply of it. This well will sustain us during the crises in our lives and will sustain us into everlasting life.

The time is now to drink deeply from the well of God’s love and grace within us.  As Marty Haugen wrote so beautifully in the fourth verse of his hymn, “Gather Us In” (© GIA Publications, Inc,) “Not in the dark of buildings confining, not in some heaven light years away, but here in this place, new light is shining, now is the Kingdom, now is the day.”

My friends, let us not put off drawing from the love and grace of God in ourselves. Let us tap into that love and grace immediately. It is a well of love and grace that will never be depleted, but will only grow all the more as we continue to drink deeply from it.

As the Coronavirus rages around the world, I empathize with the many who have fallen ill and those who have died from the illness. The way the president and his administration have dismissed so off hand those who are sick, especially those on the cruise ship off the coast of San Francisco, has troubled me greatly. This afternoon and evening, I composed a musical prayer for these people and all who are suffering from illness and injury.

John Michael Talbot once said at a conference that music is the language of the Spiritual Realm. As you listen to this short piece of music, think of someone you know who is suffering at this time from an illness and/or injury and offer it as a prayer to God for them.

The music is called “Prelude For Those Who Are Suffering.”

Peace,

Bob

So here we are again, the second Sunday of Lent, and, as we do on each second Sunday of Lent, we hear the story of the Transfiguration of Jesus.  Jesus appears to his disciples as he truly is. The fullness of Jesus’ true nature is briefly revealed to them. While we don’t know the subject of the conversation between Jesus and the prophets in both Matthew and Mark’s account of the story, in Luke’s account of this story, Moses and Elijah are relating to Jesus the suffering and death he will endure when he reaches Jerusalem. However, this is alluded to in Matthew and Mark’s stories when Jesus tells the disciples NOT to say anything about the Transfiguration until after Jesus has died and rises from the dead. So how does this impact you and me?

Scripture tells us that we are made in the image and likeness of God. The radiance of light revealed in Jesus at his Transfiguration is a part of our lives, too. In fact, God’s radiance is present in all of Creation.

St Francis of Assisi believed in the universality of God present in all things, mineral, air, water, animal, and human. His beautiful Canticle of the Sun, is all about the glory of God being revealed in the Sun, the Moon, the rain, snow, wind, earth, fire, and all of created life. God is incarnate in all the world around us, but God is especially incarnate in you and in me. It is this that is revealed to the disciples on Mount Tabor at the transfiguration of Jesus, the fullness of God’s incarnation in Jesus.

God’s incarnation, that dazzling whiteness revealed in Jesus, God reveals in your life and mine. That incarnation came with us in our birth. We didn’t earn it. We can choose to acknowledge and accept it. We can also choose to reject it.

As this is revealed to its fullness in Jesus’ death and resurrection, so often, the same is revealed to us in our own paschal mystery, our own suffering and resurrection. We need not seek out suffering. No one escapes some form of suffering in life. For some of us it may come in the form of an injury or an illness, physical, emotional, and mental. We experience suffering in the loss of relationships in our lives, for instance, the loss of a loved one or spouse in death, or the loss of a spouse and significant people in the process of a divorce. It may be the suffering associated with the loss of a job, or having to relocate to a different community. Our suffering may come in a loss of health.

Whatever form suffering may take in our lives, it has a way of stripping away the non-essentials in our lives. When our lives are stripped down to the essentials by our sufferings, we find our lives transformed and transfigured. We discover, by necessity or coercion, that which is truly important in our lives. The stripping away of the non-essentials allows the glory of God’s presence to shine all the more brightly in our lives.

So, for this second week of Lent, something upon which to reflect is doing an interior search of ourselves for the presence of God in our lives. Is there something, some non-essential in our lives that is covering up or clouding the revelation of God’s glory in our lives? If we have undergone some suffering in our lives, in whatever form that may have taken, how has that suffering pointed to something greater in our lives? How has our suffering revealed the glory of God in our lives?

God does not will anything evil in the world. God does not will people to suffer. God did not will Jesus to suffer and die. In his suffering and in his death, Jesus revealed his solidarity with all of humanity. Suffering is a part of life. Suffering will come to all of us. What is important when suffering occurs in our lives is to not ask the question, “Why?” or, “Why is God being so cruel to me?” The question to ask when we undergo suffering is, “As God was revealed to the world in the suffering and death of Jesus, how is God being revealed in my own suffering?” Jesus’ path to the glory of the resurrection was through his suffering. Let us also be reassured that ultimately, our own suffering will lead to the same glory.