Abbey-Roads2

I live yet do not live in me,
am waiting as my life goes by,
and die because I do not die.

No longer do I live in me,
and without God I cannot live;
to him or me I cannot give
my self, so what can living be?
A thousand deaths my agony
waiting as my life goes by,
dying because I do not die.

This life I live alone I view
as robbery of life, and so
it is a constant death — with no
way out until I live with you.
God, hear me, what I say is true:
I do not want this life of mine,
and die because I do not die.

Being so removed from you I say
what kind of life can I have here
but death so ugly and severe
and worse than any form of pain?
I pity me — and yet my fate
is that I must keep up this lie,
and die because I do not die.

The fish taken out of the sea
is not without a consolation:
his dying is of brief duration
and ultimately brings relief.
Yet what convulsive death can be
as bad as my pathetic life?
The more I live the more I die.

When I begin to feel relief
on seeing you in the sacrament,
I sink in deeper discontent,
deprived of your sweet company.
Now everything compels my grief:
I want — yet can’t — see you nearby,
and die because I do not die.

Although I find my pleasure, Sir,
in hope of someday seeing you,
I see that I can lose you too,
which makes my pain doubly severe,
and so I live in darkest fear,
and hope, wait as life goes by,
dying because I do not die.

Deliver me from death, my God,
and give me life; now you have wound
a rope about me; harshly bound
I ask you to release the cord.
See how I die to see you, Lord,
and I am shattered where I lie,
dying because I do not die.

My death will trigger tears in me,
and I shall mourn my life: a day
annihilated by the way
I fail and sin relentlessly.
O Father God, when will it be
that I can say without a lie:
I live because I do not die? - St. John of the Cross

“You have no idea of what your life will be like tomorrow.” -James 4

Would you bristle if someone called you an adulterer?  I’m sure very few of us ever use or even hear that word unless we are in divorce court.  What if we called other people what we think of them, or what their behaviour categorizes them as?  What if we called a woman who had an abortion a baby-killer?  Or a woman who sleeps around a slut?  Or a guy who has sex with men a faggot?  I know many people do use these terms, but most of us are too PC to do so, and none of us want to be sued for defamation.  And since we really do  live in an adulterous age, none of these things are considered to be wrong or immoral anyway - so how dare we judge?

Yet the Holy Spirit rebukes us saying, “Do you not know that to be a lover of the world means to be at enmity with God?  Therefore, whoever wants to be a lover of the world makes himself an enemy of God.”- Letter of James

“This is the end of those contented with their lot.” - Psalm 49

This whole week we have been listening to St. James…  I’m piously convinced the Liturgy of the Word is the “Spirit speaking daily to the churches” as the Lord said in the Book of Revelation.  Today the Spirit calls to us,

“Come now you rich, weep and mourn over your impending miseries.  Your wealth has rotted away… your gold and silver has corroded… and that corrosion will be a testimony against you.  You have stored up treasure for the last days… the wages you withheld from workers.   You have lived in luxury and pleasure, you have fattened your hearts for slaughter…” - James 5:1-6 

“But now you are boasting in your arrogance.” - James 4

As oil prices go up and up, along with food prices, our standard of living may be going down.  Indeed, Obama-rama may be correct when he said:

“We can’t drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times … and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK.”  - Barrack Obama

I’m not fond of Obama of course, but he isn’t alone in his forecast, and if things keep going the way they are, our standard of living will indeed be in full-blown recession.  Wars and rumors of wars with Iran, earthquakes in various places, and cyclones and food shortages, and  other disasters throughout the world - doesn’t it seem like something is going on?  It sounds so biblical, huh?  Yet many good people are defiant - “No one is going to tell me at what temperature to keep my house at, or what to drive!”

“This is the way of those whose trust is folly.” - Psalm 49

So is it just national pride that moves people to say, “No way in hell - this ain’t gonna happen.”  Even though it seems events are unfolding before our eyes?

Though in his lifetime he counted himself blessed,

“They will praise you for doing well for yourself,”

He shall join the circle of his forebears

who shall never more see the light. - Psalm 49 

May 22 is her feast day. 

Since my youth I had devotion to St. Rita - not so much because she is venerated as the saint of the impossible, or that she was supposedly a  battered wife who had been miraculously admitted to a convent by saints after her family died, but because she looked so good in that black habit.  Really.  I liked the image of her in the Augustinian habit, receiving the stigmata before the crucifix - so I developed a special devotion to her.

Did you know she married at age 12?  Kind of Mormon-ish, don’t you think?   Also, her community wasn’t very nice to her… And her wound was accompanied by a fowl smell.  She may not have become a saint if she had been attractive to the other sisters, or her wound smelled pretty, or even if her husband had treated her well.  Adversity is often very good for the soul.