Lackadaisy: Go Out To Deeper Waters

I received a call from a grateful mother for Catholic Charities  of the Diocese of Las Cruces having helped her bipolar daughter cover a utility bill. Mostly, her sense of gratitude was because her daughter told her that based upon our meeting and discussions, she and her husband are returning to the church. You might ask: “So what?” (Or) “You get that a lot, don’t you?”

 Of course, Catholic Charities never makes a grant of aid conditional on worship choices. Somehow, the couple eventually related a multitude of dimensions to a dilemma that erupted into a bill that could not be paid potentially forcing the utility company to turn off their water. In Las Cruces, New Mexico in the middle of the summer the temps go up past 100 degrees.  Not to have water to an evaporative cooler is an invitation to dehydration especially for the elderly. In the course of my discussions with the daughter and her bi polar husband, they talked about the difficulties of life that they are trying to make together. Inevitably, faith becomes a topic of conversation in situations such as these. I literally give them openings to move in that direction.  So in the end, after they left, it seems the purpose of their visit was less for a request for monetary aid and more a request for spiritual aid.  

The “Catholic” part of what Catholic  Charities does is Eucharistic Love that is rooted in the Real Presence. There is something very powerful about having Jesus here with us in the chapel in the Real sense. Well, you still might ask: “Your point?” As it turns out, the mother who called related that she was one of the people who initiated perpetual adoration of the Blessed Sacrament some 13 years ago at Immaculate Heart of Mary Cathedral. Since establishment, this loving mother, has never missed her 9:00 a.m. meeting with the Lord during which she prays for her bi polar daughter and husband. Her prayers also have been a pleading to God that her daughter rediscover her Catholic roots. Apparently, the daughter had wandered to an evangelical church that made her“feel better.”  

What is so wondrous of this and many other instances of my work is that the Lord allows me to center the mundane benefit of paying a bill upon something more "transsubstantial." As if blown by the wind, they walk through our door daily and seemingly at random. But I think differently that they are holy spirit directed by virtue of prayer, a "deeper than deep" prayer, by some member of the Mystical Body of Christ. The prayer, not the source of prayer, is the power. It doesn't matter if the prayer comes from a saint in heaven or a mother's desires, or someone known or unknown to the beneficiary. That they walked through the door is good enough for me that someone was and continues praying for them. But it is very likely that an encounter with an authentic hope experience blooms like a vine rooted deep in the soil of a mother’s pleading prayer, or a grandmother’s faithful fingering of rosary beads, or some soul offering prayer  before the Blessed Sacrament for a heretofore unlabeled cause or need best identified and dispensed by the Lord Himself. What power this imprisoned Lord of heaven and earth has! From His vantage point of self imprisonment, a most humble state, He simply waits for us. What simplicity he pines for in hoping that even in the modern world there remains the generosity of the faithful to simply believe "into" our self-confined God of no limits except those which He sets for Himself for our sake. 

From the more practical standpoint, regarding Catholic Charities' resources, divine providence is what has provided Catholic Charities at times, “just enough” (sometimes unbudgeted), resources to offer their plight the help that allows their lungs to take a deep breath and hope. And of course, the financial breathing room cascades quickly into socio-psychological, and even spiritually based "breathing room." Now, if you would repeat this story hundreds of times, that would be the story of my life this last year since May 2, 2012.  We remain one of the smallest if not "the smallest" Catholic Charities affiliated organizations in the entire country. So, there is not a day gone by that I do not visit my Lord in the Chapel and ask Him for Catholic Charities' "daily bread." Best budgetary management practices would instruct us to pray for our "annual bread." Sometimes, I'm tempted to do just that.  You now may ask again: "What's your point, Baca?"

Here is my point. If those who dedicate their lives to helping the poor do anything remarkable, it is the labor that results in just one, “just one”, poor soul coming closer to the Real Presence of Jesus Christ, especially within the context of this mixed up world. What the Epistle to James advocates in filling the bodily needs of someone as a sign of our true faith is that loving acts for the poor is only as efficacious as it is not an end, but rather a door or "threshold of hope." Ministers must go  beyond this social aspect of ministry and witness the deep blue faith we have, the fathomless sea of mercy held in the Eucharistic Presence. Some may ask: "what good is that if you have not satisfied the physical need?" The result is we set souls upon a path made clearer so they can discover the indelible sacramental pattern of their souls, regardless of phenomenological obstructions, devices, diversions of our sensate culture. These diversions are enemies to endurance, enemies to perseverance, revelers of giving up, and true antagonists to trusting in God.

The Eucharistic Presence is the essence of "the Catholic sacramental identity" This identity is in fact Jesus Himself and the power He brings in his physical presence in the Blessed Sacrament. Would that we could be a reflection of Him. That is the true "high bar." Let me wax philologically here: in my phrasing of my point: We love ourselves best by loving the very subject who loves the objects of His love best; and we are those objects. So as not to overwhelm us, He would reverse roles and make of Himself the object completely subject to our whims. There He is in all the tabernacles of the world, so powerless, silent, quiet, invisible, hidden. And their He waits in such a place that if he were only human and not God, He would reside in darkness; He would have a "keyhole" perspective of the world. Instead, because of His divine nature, He sees through it all -- knowing we are many times unaware that His radiance permeates through the physical plain beyond the bounds of the laws of thermodynamics and quantum mechanics. He reaches up with wounded hands to give a gentle knock upon our sometimes wooden "pinnochio-like" hearts. He does this to offer us His own heart in replacement. This is the purpose of faith. This is the pro-purpose of hope. This is the ontological essence of Love: "caritas" Himself.

So in the case of the bi polar daughter, here we have one soul, who by the world's standards, naively walks into a chapel and kneels not knowing what to do or say to Love. And what we have here is in fact the answer to God's own fervent prayer. Yes, this is the conundrum. An all knowing God, dares us to defy our inclinations so as to "surprise" Him by freely choosing Him, freely waiting upon Him. Yes, we can surprise God because even though He knows when and if you will make such a wonderful choice, the humanity in Him reacts with joy and surprise when and if you do. That is one of the essential elements of God being fully human: He experiences the wonder of the surprise that we hear Him and respond. Why would it be otherwise?

So my daily goal is to surprise Him.  Each morning I simply bask in the radiance of the Blessed Sacrament. When leave, then I know I will receive the daily bread sufficient that I may do my little job unworthily well. If I can get even one more soul who is lost in the muck of excessive poverty, dispair, and hopelessness to do the same, and that person then decides to continue returning to the point of returning to the faith of their Baptism, then I will have done my little job almost worthily well. 

I don’t tear up very easily, but I did at this beautiful mother’s phone call to thank me for giving cause for her daughter to return to the Church.This experience prompted me to write a poem to all “ministers”, especially to the ministers of the Lord in this diocese, lay and clerical, all who in their own way little and big, pour balm upon the wounds of the poor and disenfranchised, and let them see the tear in the Lord’s own eye at their return to Him. He waits for all of us.

 

I have dedicated this poem to you my coworkers and friends.

 

Lackadaisy

(For all Clerical and Lay ministers)

Don’t be so quick

To wipe your

Tears a ways.

These pearls that

From within

Their hollow core

Resplend with bubble,

Sparkly-flection,

Rays,

As ropes strung

Taught, they pull and

Pull the more,

A Lackadaisy metal,

Heavy laden

Iron of our days

To deeper waters

Tugging….braided frays;

A “worthship” cost

To tow, a troubled

Heart, from shore.

Don’t be so quick

To wipe your tears

Aways, aways.

Tom Baca (2013)