Recently in prayer Category

John Allen at the National Catholic Reporter writes that one of the most serious American lawsuits against the Vatican has been dropped:

In a rare stroke of good news for Rome vis-à-vis the sexual abuse crisis, attorneys for three alleged victims in Kentucky have said they're dropping what many analysts regarded as the most serious civil lawsuit against the Holy See in American courts.
Louisville-based attorney William McMurry gave two reasons for abandoning the case of O'Bryan v. Holy See, one legal and the other practical.
As a legal matter, McMurry told media outlets in mid-August, the Vatican's sovereign immunity under American law set the bar too high. More practically, McMurry said, he couldn't find additional victims willing to come forward who haven't already been part of a lawsuit against the church. Without more plaintiffs, it's unlikely that any settlement or verdict would have been sufficient to offset the costs of litigation, even if the lawsuit had prevailed.
The O'Bryan case was originally filed in 2004, and McMurry had hoped to turn it into a class-action suit on behalf of thousands of victims nationwide.

...

The Vatican's American attorney, Jeffrey Lena, welcomed the decision to abandon the Kentucky case.
"This development confirms that there has never been a Holy See policy requiring concealment of child sexual abuse," Lena said in an August 9 statement. "Bringing this case only distracted from the important goal of protecting children from harm."
Likewise, Vatican spokesman Jesuit Fr. Federico Lombardi said Aug. 10, "It is good news that a case ... which has had strong negative effects on public opinion has ultimately been proven unfounded."
In comments to Vatican Radio, Lombardi added that he didn't mean to "minimize the horror and condemnation" of child sex abuse, or the compassion due to victims

Just as interesting as the story is the veritable Vatican slamfest in comments section.

How does Lombardi pronounce this case "unfounded?" Unfounded means without merit. This case had merit it was just stymied by the various legal impediments making it nearly impossible to litigate.
Lombardi doesn't understand that when he uses situations like this to claim innocence of the charges [rather than the good fortune of dodging a bullet due to a technicality] it only infuriates people and further erodes their confidence in the governing arm of the Church.
Makes you wonder how stupid they think we really are.

Whoa, man.

Really really stupid.That is how Church Officialdom sees us.
I think Ann Rice stated the feelings of many, many catholics when she made her public leaving of the Church last week. That they are still making like they do not get it when it comes to the disgust of the person in the pew regarding the COVER UP. Pederasts are sad , sick people but Church Administrators who leave children to the vultures to protect their velvet covered butts are reprehensible indeed. These people are not fit to lead.

Good heavens.

And it makes all of us realize what total unfeeling idiots they
are in the Vatican. Sorry for generalizing but they keep showing the world what backward Medieval people they really have become. Also their lawyer, Mr.Lena, says similar things...anything for money right Mr. Lena? Love to know the fantastic amount he is getting paid to litigate the Holy See out of their cover ups and lack of moral courage.
The heirachy needs to do the right thing and admit to what they did and step down from their positions. I think maybe the Holy Spirit is at work and She wants the church to open the windows like John XXIII suggested and have some serious house cleaning done.

And that's just the first three.

Lower down is a clearly less jaded, less bitter Catholic who observes that most of the abuses occurred in the 1960s and 70s, attributes them to the "Spirit of Vatican II," which he apparently considers an erroneous perversion of the letter of the Second Vatican Council itself, and says that the younger, more committed generation of the Church is now "rebuilding."

He is then promptly compared to Adolph Hitler. Sad when people who are actually interested in building up and restoring the Church as the Body of Christ are compared to genocidal dictators. But that is how the crisis has affected some people, including, apparently, some readers of the National Catholic Reporter.

To my fellow Catholics and others of faith reading this: Let's keep all those whose faith has been negatively affected by the abuse crisis in the Catholic Church and elsewhere in our prayers.

None among the gods can equal you, O Lord; nor can their deeds compare to yours. -- Psalm 86:8

We may think we've moved beyond the time when there were other "gods" that competed with the God for our devotion. I would say the contrary. I would say the more globalized we've become as a human race, the more information we have available at our fingertups, the more "gods" have come out of the woodwork to compete with God for our allegiance and devotion.

But instead of taking the form of religious deities, the new gods are simply taking the form of ... stuff. Entertainment, materialism, basically a whole bunch of white noise. We may not live in a time or a society at least in the Western world where there are many other "gods," but we sure have a lot of stuff.

That's not a bad thing, at least not always. The more I personally see of all the absurd stuff out there competing for my attention, the more confident I become that I'm living for the greatest gift in the world, which is the Gospel of Christ, and the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Not because of my own genius or insight of course, but because it was given to me. It's my heritage.

My favorite Catholic writer, Peter Kreeft, once wrote, "We become like the goals we pursue." So if we pursue absurdity, if we pursue white noise, we become the absurd, we become the white noise of celebrity and greed and sodomy, and all that. We know what the white noise is. If we pursue pointless, we become pointless. And I don't want to be pointless.

The question is what is the goal of your life. I know that at least generally for me, I want to make people happy. I want to make people smile. I don't want to just write a blog about stuff that upsets me, which I have done in the past and which would be very easy for me to continue doing. But I don't want to because in many cases that would just upset more people. Not that I want to ignore the problems of the world. But if all I do is talk about what's wrong with the world and I can't inspire people with something better then I miss the forest for the trees.

The world needs good news. The world needs a reason to smile. And I want my life to be that. I want my life to be a life that blesses other people's lives.

And if that sounds at all like what you want to do too, then you and I have one option. We have to pursue God, who "bestows on us every spiritual blessing in the heavens" (Ephesians 1:3).

This is Satan's big lie: that we can become like God by storing up power and knowledge and wealth for ourselves in this world. No, we become like God by pursuing Him. And when we pursue Him, other blessings follow from that.

When we pursue God, we become blessing for others, because we show them the face of God, the face of Jesus.

When we pursue Him, we become like His love: unconditional.

When we pursue Him, we become like His truth: undeniable.

When we pursue Him, we become like His goodness: unshakable.

When we pursue Him, we become like His beauty: inviolable.

Let's pray to Him that we can remember to always pursue Him first, so that we may become more like Him, so we may go out to our neighbors who are living in a world that is drowning in stuff, and give them a reason to smile.

Came across Psalm 125 yesterday:

Those who put their trust in the Lord
are like Mt. Zion, that cannot be shaken,
that stands forever.

Trust is the key to stability, to fearlessness. Trust means not always knowing why the trustee is doing a particular thing, but accepting that the trustee must do it, because we cannot do it ourselves. It means being okay with not having all the answers all the time.

Trust is difficult for someone like me. Someone who is very cerebral and likes to have all the answers all the time.

It is good to know God and know HIs word and His ways as much as we possibly can. But we can never know even our closest earthly friends so well as to completely understand everything they want and exactly what they are up to all the time. There will always be moments where they have to say to us, "Trust me."

How much more often, then, will God say to us, "Trust me," and how foolish would we be not to oblige.

In a relationship with an earthly friend, provided the friend is reliable and trustworthy, clarity as to what he is up to often comes only after our trust is placed in him.

Like in the movie Aladdin when the title character asks Princess Jasmine:

Do you trust me?

She doesn't know what he's up to until after she says, "Yyyeeeesss?"

Now again it is true: "Trust me" moments are easier the better we know someone. The better we know a person, the more confident we can be that he will not use our trust to take advantage of or hurt us. The second time Aladdin asks Jasmine if she trusts him, she says "Yes" with much greater ease and confidence that everything will be all right. So with God*.

But as with a regular person, we are limited by our singular vantage point. We can't know anyone completely. To demand to know a person completely before trusting is to trust no one ever.

So with God, when we stop trying to completely understand Him and His motives and simply trust Him, and let Him do His work in our hearts, the answers we wanted so badly before we trusted Him will naturally come to us. But trust has to come first.

Every morning when we wake up, God asks us: "Do you trust me?" And we have to answer Yes or No. If you answer yes, don't be surprised if He grabs your hand and tells you to jump.






*who similarly is trying to win our hearts, though dissimilarly not by disguising who He really is.

It's been all over the news since he said it. Here and here for starters. Pope Benedict XVI has said that it is sin "within the Church" that has led to the sex abuse crisis the Catholic Church now faces.

Sounds pretty terrible and scary. But it is good news.

It looks like Vatican Radio broke the story and everyone else ran with it. Said the pope:

... attacks against the Pope or the Church do not only come from outside; rather the sufferings of the Church come from within, from the sins that exist in the Church. This too has always been known, but today we see it in a really terrifying way: the greatest persecution of the Church does not come from enemies on the outside, but is born from the sin within the church ...

His words are getting billed in the press as the "strongest comments" on the sex abuse scandal, that he is dismissing the idea that the whole sex abuse crisis has been ginned up by a press that hates the authority of the Vatican, the celibate priesthood, and him.

But his comments aren't surprising. He is essentially saying what those who follow the pope, and what many faithful Catholics, have known since the sex abuse scandals first started to break in America.

The crisis in the Church is a crisis of fidelity to Christ. It is rooted in the steady departure of the Church from fidelity both in preaching and in practice to the New Covenant in Christ. Components of this departure include a watering down of solid theological and moral teaching, and thereby a de-valuing of the admission of personal imperfection and penance before Christ. But at the root of it is a departure from prayer. At some point, Benedict seems to believe, the Church lost her prayerful soul. All the other ills flowed from that. Benedict continued:

... the Church therefore has a deep need to re-learn penance, to accept purification, to learn on one hand forgiveness but also the need for justice. Forgiveness is not a substitute for justice. In one word we have to re-learn these essentials: conversion, prayer, penance, and the theological virtues.

Bad or inaccurate media coverage, or slanderous accusers, or anything else external, could not create the crisis the Church now faces. Could they in some way contribute to it? Probably. But what could have prevented the crisis from becoming the cancer that it is on the body of the Church is and has always been prayer.

Again, this is good news. Why? Because the illness can be cured with prayer. Our prayer.

It has long been understood that the Church is not limited to the clerical hierarchies and religious celibates. The Catholic Church is all the baptized Catholic faithful. We can hardly affect what detractors and critics on the outside say about the Church and about her faithful. We are quite in a position to strengthen the soul of the Church itself, which is the Body of Christ.

If a man's body is bleeding because of what someone else is doing to him, then he faces the tall order of defending himself and changing the behavior of another. But if a man's wounds are self-inflicted, what he must do is simply change his own behavior. Unlike if his wounds are inflicted by an outside agressor, if he and he alone is responsible for his wounds, then the choice of what to do now is entirely his.

What happens to the Church now has nothing to do with the kind of press she gets. As the Holy Father has said, it requires conversion. In other words, it is our free choice.

Came across this passage from Hebrews Chapter 3, verse 13 while praying the Divine Office this morning:

Encourage yourselves daily while it is still "today," so that none of you may grow hardened by the deceit of sin.

It reminded me of that Kris Allen song "Live Like We're Dying," which is basically about not waiting before you say or do something really important to or for a loved one. The song definitely has a Christian element to it, about how we never know when the end is going to meet us face to face, and we need to always make sure we are reconciled with others.

Encouragement does not only mean "affirmation," telling someone he or she is doing a good job. It can also include telling someone that he or she is capable of doing better.

None of us, in this life, will ever reach a point where we cannot be any holier than we are at the present time. There will always be something more we can give to God. There will always be a way for us to grow closer to Him, to invite Him more into our hearts. There will always be some aspect of our lives in which we can be more like Jesus. That is a good thing, not a bad thing.

Think about who in your life needs to hear that.

Because the key is not to beat ourselves up for not being better than we are now, but to encourage each other to grow.

Prayer is like planting a tree in an empty backyard. One may not always feel like planting a tree. One may even be pressed into doing so by a friend or politely asked to help do so by a dad to whom one owes much of his present success.

Planting a tree takes a great deal of effort, especially in a place like Central Texas, where one encounters hard rock about an inch beneath the surface. You plunge the shovel into the nice brown dirt a couple of times, and then, CLANK.

At that point, all you can really do is keep plunging the shovel into the ground again and again. And what difference might you see between one plunge and the next? If you're not the strongest dude on the block, probably not a whole lot.

So it is with prayer. It may have a certain novelty and fun at first. But then it becomes work. And at times it may appear to be fruitless work. You may not see much if any difference in your life from one prayer to the next. In that way, it may be easy to get discouraged. But one must keep the end in mind.

You might ask yourself, while you're plunging that shovel into the ground over and over again, only to dislodge a couple of tiny limestone shards, what is even the point? The point is not merely to plunge away with increasing impatience and anger at the rock. The point is to make room in the ground. Why? To plant a tree.

You're plunging that shovel into the ground over and over again, at great discomfort to yourself, blistering your hands, in order to bring new life, new beauty into your backyard (or your parents' backyard, as the case may be). The tree spices up the backyard and brings shade to the grass below. It turns the backyard from a flat, uninteresting place to potentially, one day, a garden.

But it starts with plunging that shovel into the hard rock ground.

So it is with prayer. It is the first step to bringing new life into the spiritual soil of one's soul. And at first all one can do is repeat the motions. But one must keep the end in mind. The end in mind is holiness -- turning our flat, uninteresting lives into something more, something blessed and joyful. Prayer is making room in our very crowded hearts and minds for that new life -- which is God.

If I had brought the new tree into the backyard and just thrown it on the ground without first making room for it, the tree could not have taken root. No roots, no life. No life, no shade. No new beauty. In order to enjoy the benefits of the tree, I have to make room for the tree.

If we want to enjoy the benefits of God in our lives, if we want the deep interior happiness and comfort that only He can give, we have to make room for Him. Over and over again.

Pope Benedict XVI preached a homily at Mass with the Pontifical Biblical Academy yesterday, in which he addressed, in off-the-cuff, non-scripted remarks, not just the ongoing sexual abuse scandals plaguing the Catholic Church in various parts of the world, but the errors of modern thought that made such crimes possible, and the fresh opportunity for the Church to open herself to God's transforming power.

So far there is not a complete transcript, just notes taken by Vatican Radio and others. But if the notes are any indication, it was a brilliant teaching moment from Benedict.

Because so much of this is so great, I'm going to quote it a bit at a time and intersperse my comments. If you, dear reader, wish not to be interrupted by my inferior thoughts, please skip over them. You won't offend me. He's the freakin' pope.

Vatican Radio reports:

Speaking without a prepared text, the Holy Father said that in modern times we have seen theorized an idea of man according to which human being would be, "free, autonomous, and nothing else."

This supposed freedom from everything, including freedom from the duty of obedience to God, "Is a lie," said Pope Benedict, a falsehood regarding the basic structure of human being - about the way women and men are made to be, "because," he continued, "human being does not exist on its own, nor does it exist for itself."

I'm not sure there's a man alive on the planet today who better understands the errors of modern thought than Pope Benedict. He understands that the error is based on something that appears on the surface to be a good, which is freedom. When he says that this particular idea of freedom is a "lie," he is not saying that there is no freedom. He is saying that what many in the modern world mean when they say the word "freedom" is not freedom at all. For God is the source of freedom.

In the modern mind, to be free means to be unencumbered by, often by means of separation. For example, being free from homework by being separated from school, or confinement by being separated from prison. Or morality by being separated from God. But to be separated from God is to be separated from the only source of freedom available to man. Therefore, "freedom" from God in the modern sense is actually the opposite of freedom.

He continues:

The Pope said it is a political and practical falsehood, as well, because cooperation and sharing of freedoms is a necessary part of social life - and if God does not exist - if He is not a point of reference really accessible to human being, then only prevailing opinion remains and it becomes the final arbiter of all things.

Citing the Nazi and Communist regimes of the 20th century as examples, Pope Benedict said such dictatorships can never accept the notion of a God who is above ideological power - and he also stressed that in the present, there are subtle forms of dictatorship like that of a radical conformism, which can lead to subtle and not-so subtle aggression toward the Church.

In the modern world quite often people think there are no facts that cannot be disputed -- only opinions that can be rhetorically cleverer than others, and thus more highly valued as "right." Particularly in the area of morality and politics it is the one who can be funnier or more charismatic who wins. That is not to say that such qualities are bad. They can be very good, but only if they are used to advance truth rather than falsehoods. Those who possess good humor and charisma may be right, or wrong. But in the modern world they are admired regardless as being worthy of our agreement. And on the flipside, those who come off as angry or humorless are dismissed as unworthy of our attention, regardless of whether what they're saying may be true.

The Holy Father also stressed that for Christians, true obedience to God depends on our truly knowing Him, and he warned against the danger of using "obedience to God" as a pretext for following our own desires.

If we don't know a person, we can't know what he wants. We may think that perhaps we know what he wants. But if the thing that we think he perhaps wants coincides with what we certainly know we want, how likely are we to make sure we understand him rightly?

That is the awkward position in which many Catholics finds themselves. We have a Church that professes concrete teachings on the principles of Jesus, many of which impose on us what at times appear to be profound inconveniences -- unreasonable prohibitions. Often, it is not simply that we do not know, but that we would rather not know.

But again, only by summoning up the courage to know the truth -- about ourselves and about God and what he wants -- can we be truly confident in God, and only then can we be truly free.

"We have," he said, "a certain fear of speaking about eternal life."

"We talk of things that are useful to the world," continued Pope Benedict, "we show that Christianity can help make the world a better place, but we do not dare say that the end of the world and the goal of Christianity is eternal life - and that the criteria of life in this world come from the goal - this we dare not say."

How true is this! We hear this a lot these days, and not necessarily always in a bad way. But it's very popular to talk about "What Christ's sacrifice means for me," and "How does this impact my life here and now," etc. But there's a certain self-centeredness there when we think of Christianity only in terms of this present world, and my present life. It's important to do that, of course. But have we perhaps lost sight of our ultimate and final end? The complete happiness that we cannot have in this life, no matter how much money we earn, how many friends we make, and how holy we are? Christianity -- Christ -- is much bigger than this world, and will remain long after this world is gone.

We must rather have the courage, the joy, the great hope that there is eternal life, that eternal life is real life and that from this real life comes the light that illuminates this world as well.

And here we have the flipside of that coin. Part of the problem is, I argue, a certain self-centeredness on the part of man. But the other side of it is simply fear. What, really, is going to happen to me after my heart stops beating? When I lose consciousness for the last time? It is simply the scariest question that human beings can ask themselves. And we are the only species on the planet that fears death on more than just an instinctual level, more than just when death seems uncomfortably near. We worry about it in the comfort of our own homes. Am I ultimately going anywhere besides in the ground?

As with virtually every question that weighs on the human heart, the answer is Jesus. We have in Him a demonstration that death is not the end, that we are heading for something greater. Don't just cling to that when you're afraid. Own it always. Believe and know that eternal life is waiting.

The Catholic News Service quotes him near the end of his remarks.

Recognizing the sins of priests who have sexually abused children, performing penance and asking for forgiveness, the Catholic Church trusts that God will purify and transform the church, Pope Benedict XVI said.

"I must say that we Christians, even in recent times, have often avoided the word 'penance,' which seemed too harsh to us. Now, under the attacks of the world that speaks to us of our sins, we see that being able to do penance is a grace."

Like death, we fear penance. Penance is a kind of death because we put to death our perverse desires. And Benedict is pointing to the recent terrible offenses of abusive priests, but also takes this as an opportunity not just for those perpetrators, but for all the members of the Church to really examine ourselves. If we truly possess the truth of the Jesus Christ, if we receive Him fully, then we should be the least afraid of the change it would make in ourselves.

That's the amazing thing about what Pope Benedict is doing here. He's taking the recent egregious crimes of the priests as an opportunity for the whole Church to be an example to the world of the change that Christ can make if we open ourselves to Him. There are many calling for change in how the Church operates as an institution. Such suggestions are worth considering. But Benedict understands that even more urgently needed is the transformation of hearts -- those of the Church's shepherds and their followers.

* * *

When I think of people going off the cuff the way Benedict has, I often picture them launching into rants against this person or that person, angrily speaking and wishing ill. None of that here. He attacks no individual person or group of persons. He simply invites people to examine the prevailing ideas of the modern world. And he does it with love, motivated by the love of Christ and the fire of the Holy Spirit. As his five-year anniversary approaches, I am thankful for this pope.

* * *

Reuters reported on the pope's words here, and the New York Times here.

Hat tip to the First Things blog and Rocco Palmo's Whispers in the Loggia.

This makes me smile:

The parents of 11-year-old Nadia Bloom, who was rescued after wandering for four days in and near a Florida swamp, said their daughter is doing "great."

"She's doing great, she really is," said Tanya Bloom, Nadia's mother, at a press conference today. "It's a story you don't usually get. It's a story of hope."

Tanya thanked her daughter's rescuer, James King, but said the words were not enough.

"'Thank you' is not appropriate for what James King did," she said. "We are so fortunate God used him to bring her back to us."

"You know that part at the end of the third 'Star Wars' when all the ewoks are going crazy? That's how it was," Nadia's father, Jeff Bloom, said of the moment they were told Nadia was found alive.

Other than a lot of bug bites, several scratches and some bacteria that's been identified in Nadia's blood, her doctor, Mary Farrell, said Nadia could go home by the end of the week.

Apparently the girl has mild Asperger's, which is a form of autism. And King, the guy who found her, goes to the same church as the Blooms. He said God "directed his path" to find her.

He wasn't the only one listening to the Almighty.

But while they were worrying at home, Tanya Bloom said Nadia claimed to be praying in the swamps, saying, "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding."

That's Proverbs 3:5. When I read that the thing that struck me is, you know, that's probably not the first time this young lady has ever prayed those words. Praying consistently can help a person to face difficult and dangerous situations more prayerfully and peacefully.

Favorite "awwwww" moment from the story:

Tanya Bloom said Nadia's first words to her were, "I'll obey you more, mommy, now."

King said:

God told him to "follow the sunrise" into the heart of a treacherous swamp where the girl awaited rescue on a log.

"He [God] directed my path," volunteer searcher James King told "Good Morning America" today. "When you're in a swamp, there's no good-looking way. He led me directly to her. ... I would be praying and calling out Scriptures and at one point I called out, 'Nadia,' and I heard, 'What?'

"That's a huge swamp," he said. "It was strictly the Lord. There was no mathematical calculations. It was the Holy Spirit directing me to where he knew she was the whole time."

Although she had been wandering lost in the swamp for four days, Nadia was calm and matter-of-fact about her situation, King said, only a little disappointed he didn't have any M&Ms on him.

"I don't know what we talked about. I told her she was very brave," King said. "She did say she only slept about two hours a night ... [and] she'd seen a black snake at some point.

"But God kept her safe," he said.

Rescuers covered in mud and brandishing machetes emerged from a Florida swamp Tuesday, carrying Nadia on a stretcher through dense alligator-infested wilderness.

King, a member of Nadia's church, said the swamp was so dense it took officials about an hour and a half to get to the pair after his 911 call.

Nadia politely jumped in on that emergency phone call.

"Hi, this is Nadia," she said. "I'm the girl that got lost."

Awesome. More on the story here and here.

Let's ask ourselves: How many times in a day do I say the words "thank you," either to another person or to God? How far into the day do I get before that happens?

Do I react to the morning alarm with thankfulness that I am alive and in sufficient good health to get out of bed? If not, perhaps that sets the tone for and colors the way I approach everything else in my day -- traffic, the job, the news, other people, etc.

Being thankful is a challenge because it is sometimes too obvious. There's stuff to be thankful for everywhere. The breath in our lungs, the people we love, the trees breaming green beneath a cloudless sky on a good day, or the rain that cools us off. But our cynical side may encourage us to simply roll our eyes and dismiss it. What's so great about being in sufficient good health to get out of bed? If you're consciously thanking God for that, all that means is you don't have anything particularly great to thank Him for.

On the contrary, if we do not thank God for the smallest of gifts (I would argue that sufficient good health is quite a marvelous gift, but anyway), we will never recognize the great gifts when they are given.

Thankfulness has to begin from the moment of consciousness in the morning. For consciousness is itself a gift. When I experience it, I should thank God for it. When you wake up, say "Thank you, Lord, for ..." You may not even know what for immediately. You may be half awake as it is. That's okay. It will come to you.

Think about the number of people in this world who respond to their alarm clocks by uttering some profanity. "Son of a b--, shut up clock," etc. How would you prefer to wake up in the morning? The sad thing is many people aren't even aware that they have a choice. That's right. A choice.

Anger and cynicism are not involuntary muscle spasms. They are decisions we make at every moment that we grumble and criticize and dismiss. Real happiness and thankfulness are not the products of brainwashing. They are decisions we make every time we allow some little thing, or some great God, to make us smile inwardly, and outwardly.

It's a choice. Between waking up and spouting swear words and waking up immediately saying "Thank you," immediately setting the tone for our whole day.

If you haven't done it before, or if it's been a while, try it, and see what happens.

Thank you for reading. *high five*

Slight change of plans. I will focus for the final three Lent day reflections on the words of Christ in Good Friday's Gospel reading, from John Chapters 18 and 19.

Pilate questions Jesus as to whether He is a king. Jesus replies:

My kingdom does not belong to this world.

I have often noticed how in talking with other people of faith, such as in church or retreat settings, we talk about the "real world" -- i.e., the world outside of our faith community, the professional world in which all too often the dollar is king and if you tell someone "I'm sorry," you are liable to get chewed out afresh, or sued, or worse. We think of a crowded metropolitan hustle and bustle, a barren place ruled by a cynical anthropology, where no one cares about anyone else but themselves.I believe it is that world to which Jesus referred, where we will not find His Kingdom.

Why anyone ever would call that place the "real world" is sometimes beyond me. It may seem large next to our by comparison small communities of believers who try to follow Christ. But we should be careful. But bigger, louder, and colder does not constitute more real.

This "real world" is so barren and cold and unloving precisely because it is farther removed from God, and the farther removed we are from God, the farther removed we are from Truth, for God is the Truth. The world is, in that sense, actually less "real" than the world in which the follower of Christ lives, in which we fall asleep in Him, and awake in Him.

God is more real than any giant, metropolitan, comsopolitan cauldron of apathy, greed, and sodomy, His Kingdom of passionate love, generous self-giving, and constant adoration will remain long after the "real" world has passed away. His is the real, real world. We just have to look for it.