Hidden Delights

“The world is not only hungry for food, but also for beauty.” With those words, Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta helps explain why Pope Benedict is encouraging us to return to Catholic art as a privileged place for prayer. The vision of a gifted, accomplished, faith-filled artist can reveal to us a glimpse of God’s beauty, sparking an encounter with his love – and that’s the heart of all Christian prayer.

When I was just discovering the Catholic faith, before entering the Catholic Church, I used to wander into churches and gaze at the works of art, sometimes for hours at a time (college students have plenty of free time). This high relief sculpture of the Annunciation caught my eye, and my heart, even before I discovered that the Renaissance master, Donatello, had carved it out of pietra serena (a type of gray sandstone native to Tuscany) in the early 1400s.

What I Wasn’t Looking For

I have to make a confession about this work of art. It is located in a famous Italian Gothic church in Florence, Santa Croce. This church is home to immortal monuments like frescoes by Giotto, chapels by Brunelleschi, and the tombs of Galileo and Michelangelo. The first time I visited this church, I was interested in those famous monuments, not in Donatello’s little relief sculpture. Likewise the second time, and the third. In fact, this Florentine treasure of a church became a favorite stop on my way to class – I would light a candle for prayer intentions there as a part of my morning routine.

These repeated visits brought me in regular contact with Donatello’s Annunciation. It is located on the right side of the nave, between other monuments and side altars. I would walk by it every time I went through the church. Gradually, day by day, it began to demand more attention.

An Elegant Drama

We are used to seeing this type of depiction of the Annunciation, the moment when the Archangel Gabriel appears to the Blessed Virgin Mary and invites her to be the Mother of our Lord. But Donatello was the first sculptor to depict this scene with such drama. And it was the drama that struck a chord with me.

On the one hand, we can see that St. Gabriel is interrupting Our Lady. She is just closing her little prayer book with one hand, and with the other hand she is pulling her cloak over her as if to protect herself. Her right knee is turning away from the angel, but her left foot is still planted and hasn’t yet caught up with her body’s motion. But even while her body is moving away from the angel, as if she is surprised or frightened, her face and head show that she is actually mesmerized by the vision and the angelic presence.

And isn’t that exactly how it is with all of us? When God breaks into our lives, interrupting our routine with an invitation to repent, or to serve in a new way, or to somehow follow him more closely, isn’t our automatic reaction one of fright or resistance? We say, “Well, Lord, I have a lot to do, and I don’t think your idea is going to fit into my plans.” And yet, even as we resist, there is a place in our hearts, way down deep, at the very core of our being, where we feel the excitement and the draw of the Christian adventure. We know that we are made for God and that his will is the path to the meaningful, worthwhile life that we truly desire. And so, our true self – represented in the sculpture by the Virgin’s face, since the face is always the fullest expression of the person – wants to pay attention to God’s voice and invitations as they stir our hearts and conscience. But our lower tendencies of selfishness, represented by the lower body of the figure in the sculpture, tend to flee from the Lord. As St. Paul put it: “For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind…” (Romans 7:22-23).

The Charm of Grace

The charming elegance and sincere reverence with which Donatello depicts that drama was something else that resonated with me, in addition to the drama itself. In Mary’s case, the interior battle was much less violent than in our case. She was preserved from original sin and free from personal sin. And so, though the angel’s message caused her to be “greatly troubled” (Luke 1:29), she recovered quickly. Donatello’s rendition captures in Mary’s postures and attitudes the graciousness and gracefulness of her soul: he says with pietra serena what Gabriel said in words: “Hail, full of grace!” How could I not be attracted and intrigued by such beauty? How could I not be inspired by seeing the Mary’s natural agitation being conquered by her supernatural affinity for God?

The year that I visited Santa Croce so frequently was the year that God first began calling me into his Catholic Church. Throughout that year, I played out in my own soul this drama that Donatello captures so beautifully. My lower self resisted God’s interruptions, but my soul was mesmerized, and dazzled, and won over by the sheer goodness and beauty of God.

This Advent, as we spend time contemplating Our Lady’s journey of faith, so full of joy and trepidation, perhaps admiring Donatello’s magnificent snapshot will release the adventuresome spirit within us, and give us a share of Mary’s courage so that we, like her, can answer God’s invitation (whatever it may be) with the perfect prayer: “Behold the handmaid of the Lord, let it be done unto me according to thy word” (Luke 1:38).

How should I prepare for Advent?

Q: Dear Father John, Advent is coming! Even from a distance I feel my shoulders tightening up from the stress of all the noise of the season that has nothing to do with Christ. Do you have any recommendations for how I might better prepare this year? Are you aware of any good books that I can use for spiritual reading through this season to help me to keep my eyes on Christ?

A: Thank you for asking this question BEFORE Advent arrives! I am sure you are not the only one with the tightening-shoulder-syndrome. I am also sure that the tightening of your shoulders does not come from the Holy Spirit.  So, what to do? You may want to read over some of our Advent posts from the past (like this three-part post on Advent Anxiety). But in the meantime, I would like to offer five suggestions.

First, decide what you are going to say “no” to. The Advent and Christmas Seasons get filled up with a lot of stuff. We end up rushing around so much – parties, visits with relatives and friends, family reunions, kids back from college, shopping, school concerts, vacation, service projects, parish activities… To stay spiritually grounded during these weeks of intense activity requires planning ahead. It didn’t used to require as much as it does now, by the way. In past ages, local customs defined how families and communities spent their time. Nowadays, however, we have so many options that we end up over-committing ourselves and going 100 mph. It’s hard to pray in that scenario. It’s hard to reflect and enjoy God’s gifts. It’s hard to avoid becoming self-absorbed and superficial.

The remedy? Well, as mundane as it may sound, we have to apply basic time/energy management techniques. Sit down with your spouse (maybe with the whole family) sometime this month, before Thanksgiving, and look at the calendar. Go through it. Identify the commitments that you must fulfill and the ones that you really want to commit to. Consciously, intentionally decide to make those truly meaningful. (In going over your calendar, think about including some of the items mentioned below.) Then consciously, intentionally decide to say “no” to other things that come up on the spur of the moment – well, at least don’t say “yes” to them right away; wait until you can talk it over with your spouse. This will give you a measure of interior peace right from the start – you won’t be at the mercy of the apparently urgent tugs that are sure to come. And you won’t end up at the last minute trying to squeeze all the important things into three or four days of hectic activity. You will have planned ahead.  Remember, peace is the tranquility that comes from order (that’s St. Augustine).

Second, change your meditation material. I am assuming that you have a daily God-time in which you engage in personal prayer, in Christian meditation. If you don’t – start! If you do, think about changing the source you are using for your meditation. If you have been meditating on the daily liturgy, for example, think about switching to a devotional book of some sort (for example, you could simply meditate on the Gospel of St. Luke, start to finish, using the commentaries in The Better Part, one unit per day). If you have been using a favorite devotional, switch to the liturgy, or to another devotional (like Alban Goodier’s classic The Prince of Peace – if you can find a copy). The liturgical seasons are given to us precisely because we need to change things up. We are creatures with one foot in time and another in eternity. This means we need rhythms in our lives, and rhythm means some things stay the same (Advent comes every year), but some things change (Advent doesn’t last all year). This needs to be reflected in our spiritual disciplines. I would like to invite ALL our readers to share ideas for this by commenting on Advent/Christmas books and devotionals that have helped them in the past!

Third, plug into your parish. Every parish has Advent and Christmas liturgies (like the daily Mass liturgies and the Advent penitential services), and they also have other seasonal activities (like Christian service projects). Engaging in them as a family (if possible) will help you keep Christ in the center, and it will also help you help others to keep Christ in the center. Building up your parish by participating in these liturgies and activities is a specific, nitty-gritty way to build up the Kingdom of Christ on earth. Personally, I would love to see as many parishioners going to daily Mass during Advent as we see during Lent.

Fourth, do an Advent retreat. This could be a weekend retreat, a retreat organized in your diocese or offered by a local retreat center, or just a simple personal retreat that you do during a full day or half day in a quiet place away from the ordinary hustle and bustle (like a convent or a monastery). We need silence and reflection in our lives – this has been a constant motif in the Holy Father’s series of catecheses on prayer. Even a daily God-time, lived with devotion and dedication, needs to be bolstered once in a while with extended periods of silence and prayer. Bring some good spiritual reading on your retreat, and maybe work in some extra time for more-than-usual spiritual reading throughout Advent. A worthy spiritual reading project would be to download from the Vatican website the Midnight Mass homilies of Pope Benedict (he has given five of them now) and those of Pope John Paul II (he gave 26 of them!). Make a booklet out of them and work through them little by little…

Fifth, choose your entertainment strategically. We all benefit from the inspiration and relaxation that entertainment affords us. We actually need to make healthy recreation a part of our lives – we are not robots, after all. But too often we aren’t strategic about this; we just kind of do whatever everyone else does, or whatever we have always done. Take some time to reflect, individually and as a family, on what entertainment activities you will enjoy during Advent and Christmas. Maybe you will want to fast from a particular activity during Advent (it is a penitential season, after all). Maybe you will want to schedule some sledding adventures (with lots of hot cocoa when you come home!). Or maybe you will simply want to watch your four favorite Christmas movies, together as a family (maybe even inviting friends over), on the Saturdays before each of the four Sundays of Advent. With a lot of fresh popcorn. It’s a Wonderful Life, for example, is a powerful film that can provide necessary relaxation and also spiritual inspiration. I would invite our readers to share their favorite Christmas movies to get some ideas flowing (I just mentioned mine)!

These are suggested actions you can take to make sure you don’t miss Advent (although the first item, I would say, is a little bit more than a suggestion – I think it is a necessity!). But it’s important to remember that the primary agent in making for a spiritually fruitful Advent is God. We can make adjustments and do our best to have our activities reflect our true priorities, but in the end, God is the one most interested in using this liturgical season to draw us closer to himself, to fill us with more of his wisdom, and to give us new tastes of supernatural joy. We need to follow his lead. He will draw us and guide us and inspire us – if we let him.

Finding God in Advent Activity

St. Teresa of Avila once said, “We must be careful in doing good works, even those of charity, not to fail to have frequent inward recourse to our God.” This is a necessary condition to be observed in order to prevent external activity from disturbing interior recollection. “I will never do anything with haste or agitation.” This was the constant resolution of St. Teresa Margaret who, in the midst of a surprising amount of activity, always maintained “a peaceful, calm attitude, which showed her perfect self-control in each one of her actions.” Such an attitude implies keeping complete control of oneself and one’s activity so as to avoid the danger of being dominated and carried away by this activity. Those who rush headlong into action, without taking precautions, will soon lose their calm, become agitated, unable to recollect themselves, and their activity will become ever more and more absorbing and demanding.

Jesus chided Martha, not because she gave herself to activity, but because she was too anxious about it: “Martha, Martha, you are careful and troubled about many things” (Luke 10:41). God wants activity, but not anxiety, for even in activity, the soul should attend to “the one thing necessary,” that is, union with Him. Therefore, as soon as a soul perceives that it is beginning to lose its interior calm, it should interrupt its work, if possible, at least for an instant, and retire to its interior with God. These brief moments of pause, frequently repeated, will accustom it, little by little, to keep calm and recollected in God, even in the most absorbing activity.

Father Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalen, O.C.D – Divine Intimacy #21 (adapted)

PS from Dan: If you are looking for a simple way to do this, while you are shopping, each time you think of the person for whom you are shopping, pray a simple prayer of blessing for them. If you are cooking, writing, or creating a gift, do the same for each of those you love and plan to serve.

Happy Advent!

Painting from Dunbar Galleries

Advent Anxiety – What do I do? – Part III of III

Q: Dear Father John, I am looking forward to Advent and Christmas this year with a little bit of enthusiasm and a lot of anxiety. I know it should be the other way around: a lot of enthusiasm and a little bit of anxiety. What am I doing wrong? How can I reverse the proportion?

A: Attitudinal and practical adjustments can help us plug into the grace of this privileged liturgical season, and they can also help us anticipate and combat the difficulties that loom on the horizon, sparking Advent anxiety. In the last post we addressed one of the most common difficulties: Advent busy-ness. In this post we need to address another, more dangerous difficulty: Advent sadness.

The Roots of Advent Sadness

In the United States, more suicides happen during the Advent and Christmas seasons than any other time of the year. Deaths from drunk drivers increase. Family violence rears its ugly head. Why? The season is primarily about joy, the joy of God’s love and presence in our lives and in the world. But for those who are estranged from God and stuck in cul-de-sac of secularism and egoism, being surrounded by symbols of joy can be disheartening instead of inspiring. It can highlight the existential angst that is eating away at their soul. It can aggravate their festering wounds of unrepented sin and tighten the suffocating grip of their regrets.

Those of us who have faith in Christ and a friendship with him are less vulnerable to extreme depression in the face of the season of joy, but we are not invulnerable. We all still have emotional and spiritual baggage. Much of that baggage is connected with our family relationships, our past experiences of growing up. And during the holiday season, we spend more time with extended family. Under the surface, reconnecting with family members who rub us the wrong way, bother us, or have wounded us in the past (or whom we have wounded) can create irritating or painful interior turbulence. Add to that the simple fact that our defenses are often already worn thin because of the stress of busy-ness, and you have a formula for meltdowns. Even on a physiological level, emotional lows naturally come after emotional highs. During these days, we often enjoy intense emotional highs – which means the lows will come soon after. We have experienced this before. The anticipation of experiencing it again is a cause of Advent anxiety.

Going on the Offense

What to do? There is no quick fix. The long-term solution for this source of anxiety is nothing other than growth in humility and closeness to Jesus Christ. Only he can heal wounds caused by sin (our sins or those of others). Only he can teach us to forgive and allow ourselves to be forgiven. Only his light can shine in every darkness. Once again, therefore, we see the crucial importance of not cutting corners during these days on our daily God-time. And once again, I highly recommend spending more time than usual in daily, personal prayer, even if it’s only five minutes more. (It may be that you usually don’t spend time in daily prayer every single day – Advent is the right season to form this daily discipline.)

Our daily time with God, where we contemplate his goodness, power, wisdom, and mercy, is the best defense against these subtle attacks of the enemy of Advent (the devil). But we can also go on the offense. Advent is about the coming of Christ. There is no better time of the year for us to strive to embody this truth in our words, actions, and behavior. We can decide to live Advent as ambassadors of reconciliation, as messengers of Christ and his gentle goodness to everyone in our lives. By going on the offense, we create a spiritual momentum that will enable us not only to withstand spiritual attacks, but to roll back the forces of egoism and discouragement that cloud the hearts of those around us. Make a point of reaching out to others during these weeks, even if it means spending less time making Christmas cookies and sending Christmas cards. A visit to an ornery relative, to a prison, to a nursing home, to an orphanage… A call to someone you haven’t spoken to in a long time, a word of kindness to someone who is struggling, a family rosary offered for broken families… These are ways to embody in our own actions the coming of Christ that we contemplate and celebrate during Advent and Christmas. If we all strive to spread the joy of Christmas, we ourselves will experience more of that joy – just as during the candlelight service at Midnight Mass we enjoy an increase of light ourselves when we use our candles to light the candles of those around us.

The Little Broom Stick

An old story illustrates the beauty of going on the offense during Advent.

A poor little girl was taken sick on a street London one Christmas eve. Some good people found her shivering on the sidewalk and took her to a hospital. There she heard for the very first time the story of Jesus, the Lord and Savior of history, coming into the world as a little baby. One morning, Little Broomstick, as they called the girl because she was so thin, whispered to her nurse. She said she was having a very good time in the hospital, and she hoped she would take a long time to get well, so that she could stay. Then she asked her nurse if she had ever heard the story of Jesus being born. The nurse said she had, and then told Little Broomstick to stay quiet and still, because she needed to rest. But the little girl looked up at the nurse with surprise and said, “You did know about Jesus? I thought you looked as if you never heard about it before, and I was going to tell you.” The nurse’s curiosity was piqued. Forgetting she had just told the girl to stay quiet, she said, “Why? How did I look?” “Oh,” answered Little Broomstick. “Just like most people, sort of sad. And I thought you wouldn’t ever look sad if you knew about Jesus being born.”

That little girl had experienced the joy of God’s love, and she overflowed with it. If we give ourselves a solid few minutes each day to contemplate Jesus in prayer, the same thing will happen with us.

Advent anxiety flows from the subconscious anticipation of the difficulties we face during that season, especially those of busy-ness and sadness. But by attitudinal and practical adjustments that keep us in tune with the message of the season, and by planning preemptive strikes to minimize the difficulties, we can live Advent well. And by the way, you can count on my prayers for you and all the readers of this blog, who are becoming kind of like virtual members of a spiritual family – at least, that’s how I see it, and I always pray for family members during Advent.

Yours in Christ, Father John Bartunek, LC, ThD

Advent Anxiety – What do I do? – Part II of III

Q: Dear Father John, I am looking forward to Advent and Christmas this year with a little bit of enthusiasm and a lot of anxiety. I know it should be the other way around: a lot of enthusiasm and a little bit of anxiety. What am I doing wrong? How can I reverse the proportion?

A: God has new, personalized, fresh graces ready for each of us during the liturgical season of Advent, as he does during every liturgical season. By making small attitudinal and practical adjustments, we can tune into them and live Advent well. Having reflected on those truths a bit in the previous post, we are now ready to deal with the feeling of anxiety or stress that can often come to even the most well-intentioned Catholic during this season.

The Source of Advent Anxiety

Advent anxiety arises from past experience of difficulties that tend to crop up during the holiday seasons. Having experienced these difficulties in the past, we subconsciously associate them with the season itself. As the season approaches, therefore, we anticipate the stress those difficulties bring, and so start feeling the stress itself. If we can pinpoint and name the difficulties, and plan for them, we will be able to reduce our anxiety and turn the stresses of the holiday season into opportunities for spiritual growth.

Busy Busy Busy

The first difficulty is busy-ness. This season involves a huge amount of added activity: gift shopping, Christmas cards, Christmas concerts, Christmas cooking, holiday parties, school vacations, family get-togethers, and decorating the tree, the house, and the yard. In past ages (at least in many parts of the Christian world), as this kind of liturgical-season-activity increased, the normal secular activity (work and economic life) tended to diminish. In the northern hemisphere, this was partly due to the weather. The economy of Christian Europe was overwhelmingly agricultural until the nineteenth century. And during the winter, the amount of field work decreased dramatically. But those times are gone. Now we tend to simply add on all our holiday activity, without putting any of our secular activity on hold (unless you are a student, that is). This increase in activity and work is draining. It causes stress, even though we believe in its value. Anticipating this stress triggers anxiety.

What do to? Four things.

The Top Three Tips

First, if it is at all possible for you to decrease your amount of normal, secular work during this season, do so. For example, some people can take work-vacation time during these weeks, or get ahead in certain projects during the first couple weeks of Advent so as to have more flexibility during the days immediately preceding and following the Solemnity of Christmas.

Second, be realistic. Some people have a tendency to bite off more than they can chew. They don’t admit their limitations. Instead of running up your credit card debt to buy an abundance of Christmas gifts, for example, buy fewer gifts, thinking carefully about each one in order to make them meaningful. Instead of going to every Christmas party you are invited to, choose one or two that will be exceptionally meaningful, and then take the people who invited you to the other ones out for a cup of coffee and some enjoyable one-on-one conversation. Don’t rush the process of putting up decorations; make it a family affair, decorating different parts of the house together as a family, gradually, throughout all four weeks of Advent. Maybe skip the Christmas cards this year, and instead gradually send out personalized thank-you cards after the New Year to everyone who sent you a Christmas card… The key here is to recognize that all the activity has a purpose: to help you (and those around you) keep your heart focused on the three comings of Christ (which converge on Christmas day) and what they mean for your relationship with God. If the amount of activity you undertake distracts you from that, you are undertaking too much. Whenever we say “no” to one thing, if our intention is pure, we are saying “yes” to something else.

Third, spend more time in personal prayer. This is counterintuitive: when someone is busier than usual, shouldn’t they cut down on their God-time rather than increase it? No. Periods of intense activity can put us off our guard, making us vulnerable to egoism and temptations. We become like Martha, “busy with many things,” and we forget that “only one is necessary,” hearing and heeding the word of God (see Luke 10:38-42 for the passage about Martha and Mary). If giving fifteen or twenty minutes solely to God each day during Advent will significantly disrupt your schedule, your schedule is, most likely, significantly dysfunctional.

We will all be so busy during these holy days that it may take a seemingly heroic effort to squeeze in any time alone with God. But unless we make it a priority to have a daily God-time, how will we be able to hear what God wants to say to us, to see what he wants to show us? The hustle and bustle surrounding this time of year can either exhaust or exhilarate us. If we try to live it with just our own strength, we will be exhausted. If we stay close to God, renewing our confidence in his Providence by spending time with him each day, we will be exhilarated.

Fourth, instead of heaping things onto your external to-do list, alter your internal to-do list. In other words, focus on doing what you ordinarily do, but doing it with an extraordinarily Christmassy attitude. Instead of rushing to complete various tasks, what would happen if we looked at each task (even the normal ones) as part of an Advent mission, a campaign to spread the Christmas spirit throughout our sphere of influence?

There is a beautiful, true story about one woman who re-discovered this active Christian spirit not during the four weeks of Advent, but two days after Christmas. The heroine of our story lived decades ago in the Midwest. She was the owner of a news-stand and novelty shop in small town. One year, shortly before Christmas, she fell sick and spent the whole holiday confined to bed. She felt rather gloomy and even somewhat bitter about missing Midnight Mass and the other Christmas celebrations. But when she re-opened her store two days after Christmas she had an idea: “Why not make today my lost Christmas?” She carried out her plan by putting the spirit of Christmas into the whole day. She smiled more frequently and more warmly than usual. She tried to be extra accommodating and friendly with her clients. She even gave spontaneous discounts to customers who were low on cash. After closing the store for the day, she took some small presents to several home-bound neighbors. And she also visited some poor families to give candy to the children. By the time she came home, she was so full of joy and the spirit of Christmas that she had never felt happier in her life. She decided from then on to keep the spirit of Christmas as long as she possibly could.

How different Advent would be, for ourselves and for those around us, if, with the help of God’s grace, we were to spend these four weeks actively ushering in the spirit of Christmas, instead of passively waiting for it to arrive while we scramble to check things off our to-do lists!

Knowing that the extra busy-ness of this season, which is already weighing on our subconscious, is one cause of Advent anxiety can help us make a pre-emptive strike against its negative effects, reducing anxiety now and reducing stress later, and helping us live Advent the way God wants us to.

But busy-ness isn’t the only difficulty Advent brings with it. We’ll look at another one next time.

Yours in Christ, Father John Bartunek, LC, ThD