“Widows, orphans, and strangers”, that’s code in scripture for the three most vulnerable groups within a society at any given time. And both the great Jewish prophets and Jesus, himself, assure us that ultimately we will be judged by how we treated these while we were alive.

It’s interesting to look at any given book in the bible ask this question: “What did the author of this book consider as the very essence of religion? You’ll get different answers. For example, if you had asked that question to the authors of Exodus, Deuteronomy, or Numbers, they would have answered that what was central to their faith was proper religious practice, keeping the Commandments and being faithful to the other prescribed codes of religious practice of their time.

However when the great prophets (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Joel) came along they painted a different picture. For them, true religiosity was not identified simply with fidelity to religious practice; it was judged rather on how one treated the poor. For them, the quality of your faith is to be judged by the quality of justice in the land; and the quality of justice in the land is always to be judged by how “widows, orphans, and strangers” fare while you are alive.  For the prophets, the practice of justice took priority over proper religious belonging and fidelity to religious practice.

We see numerous sayings by the prophets that warn us that what God wants from us is not sacrifice on altars but fair wages for the poor, not the recitation of prescribed prayers but justice for widows, and not the honoring of religious festivals but the giving of hospitality to strangers.

It should be noted, of course, that, after the prophets, we have the great wisdom figures in Jewish history. For them, the essence of religion was neither faithful religious practice nor simple outreach to the poor, but having a wise and compassionate heart, out of which you would then be faithful to both proper religious practice and outreach to the poor.

This is the tradition that Jesus inherits.  What does he do with it? He ratifies all three. For Jesus, true religiosity asks for all of these: faithful religious practice, outreach to the poor, and a wise and compassionate heart. For Jesus, you don’t pick between these, you do them all.  He tells us clearly: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14); but he also tells us that we will ultimately be judged on the basis of how we treat the poor (Matthew 25); even as he tells us that what God really wants from us is a wise, compassionate heart. (Luke 6 & 15)

For Jesus, we are true disciples when we have compassionate hearts out of which we keep the commandments, humbly worship our God, but make it a religious priority to reach out to the most vulnerable groups in our society. Indeed, on this latter point, Jesus’ warnings are much stronger even than those of the great Jewish prophets. The prophets affirmed that God favors the poor; Jesus affirmed that God is in the poor (“whatsoever you do to the least, you do to me”). How we treat the poor is how we are treating God.

Moreover (and I doubt we’ve ever taken this seriously) Jesus tells us that, at the final judgment, we will be judged for heaven or hell on the basis of how we treated the poor, particularly on how we treated the most vulnerable among them (“widows, orphans, and strangers”). In Matthew 25, he lays out the criteria upon which we will be judged, for heaven or for hell. Notice that in these particular criteria there aren’t any questions about whether we kept the commandments, about whether we went to church or not, or even whether our sexual lives were in order.  Here we’re to be judged solely on how we treated the poor.  It can be rather frightening and confusing to take this at face value, namely, that we will go to heaven or hell solely on the basis of how we treated the poor.

I highlight this because today so many of us, sincere, church-going, Christians do not seem to have either an eye or a heart for the “widows, orphans, and strangers” around us. Who are the most vulnerable groups on our world today? Who today, as Gustavo Gutierrez defines the poor, does not have a right to have rights?

Let me risk stating the obvious: Among the “widows, orphans, and strangers” in our world today are the unborn, the refugees, and the immigrants. Happily, most sincere Christians are not blind to the plight of the unborn. Less happily, too many of us are religiously blind to the plight of millions of refugees looking for someone to welcome them. Every newscast we watch tells us that we’re not much welcoming the stranger.

How soon we forget God’s warning: “You are to love those who are foreigners, for you yourselves were once foreigners.” (Deuteronomy 10, 18-19)

When is our life fulfilled? At what point in our lives do we say: “That’s it! That’s the climax! Nothing I can do from now on will outdo this. I’ve given what I have to give.”

When can we say this? After we’ve reached the peak of our physical health and strength? After giving birth to a child? After successfully raising our children?  After we’ve published a best-seller? After we’re famous? After we’ve won a major championship? After we’re celebrated the sixtieth anniversary of our marriage? After we’ve found a soulmate? After we’re at peace after a long struggle with grief? When is it finally done? When has our growth reached its furthest place?

The medieval mystic, John of the Cross, says we reach this point in our lives when we have grown to what he calls “our deepest center”. But he doesn’t conceive of this the way we commonly picture it, namely, as the deepest center inside our soul. Rather, for John, our deepest center is the optimum point of our human growth, that is, the deepest maturity we can grow to before we begin to die. If this is true, then for a flower, its deepest center, its ultimate point of growth, would be not its bloom but the giving of its seed as it dies. That’s its further point of growth, its ultimate accomplishment.

What’s our ultimate point of growth? I suspect that we tend to think of this in terms of some concrete, positive accomplishment, like a successful career or some athletic, intellectual, or artistic achievement that’s brought us satisfaction, recognition, and popularity. Or, looked at from the point of view of depth of meaning, we might answer the question differently by saying that our ultimate achievement was a life-giving marriage, or being a good parent, or living a life that served others.

When, like a flower, do we give off our seed? Henri Nouwen suggests that people will answer this very differently: “For some it is when they are enjoying the full light of popularity; for others, when they have been totally forgotten; for some, when they have reached the peak of their strength; for others, when they feel powerless and weak; for some it is when their creativity is in full bloom, for others, when they have lost all confidence in their potential.”

When did Jesus give off his seed, the fullness of his spirit?  For Jesus, it wasn’t immediately after his miracles when the crowds stood in awe, and it wasn’t after he had just walked on water, and it wasn’t when his popularity reached the point where his contemporaries wanted to make him king that he felt he had accomplished his purpose in life and that people began to be touched in their souls by his spirit. None of these. When did Jesus have nothing further to achieve?

It’s worth quoting Henri Nouwen again, in answering this question: “We know one thing, however, for the Son of Man the wheel stopped when he had lost everything: his power to speak and to heal, his sense of success and influence, his disciples and friends – even his God. When he was nailed against a tree, robbed of all human dignity, he knew that he had aged enough, and said: ‘It is fulfilled’” (John 19, 30).

“It is fulfilled!” The Greek word here is Tetelesti.  This was an expression used by artists to signify that a work was completely finished and that nothing more could be added to it. It was also used to express that something was complete. For example, Tetelesti was stamped on a document of charges against a criminal after he had served his full prison sentence; it was used by banks when a debt had been repaid; it was used by a servant to inform his master that a work had been completed; and it was used by athletes when, tired and exhausted, they successfully crossed the finish line in a race.

It is finished! A flower dies to give off its seed so it’s appropriate that these were Jesus’ last words. On the cross, faithful to the end, to his God, to his word, to the love he preached, and to his own integrity, he stopped living and began dying, and that’s when he gave off his seed and that’s when his spirit began to permeate the world. He had reached his deepest center, his life was fulfilled.

When does our living stop and our dying begin? When do we move from being in bloom to giving off our seed? Superficially, of course, it’s when our health, strength, popularity, and attractiveness begin to wane and we start to fade out, into the margins, and eventually into the sunset. But when this is seen in the light of Jesus’ life, we see that in our fading out, like a flower long past its bloom, we begin to give off something of more value than the attractiveness of the bloom. That’s when we can say: “It is fulfilled!”

Shusaku Endo, the Japanese author of the classic novel, Silence (upon which Martin Scorsese based his movie) was a Catholic who didn’t always find his native land, Japan, sympathetic to his faith. He was misunderstood but kept his balance and good heart by placing a high value on levity. It was his way of integrating his faith with his own experience of occasional personal failure and his way of keeping his perspective on a culture which misunderstood him. Levity, he believed, makes faith livable.

He’s right. Levity is what makes faith livable because humor and irony give us the perspective we need to forgive ourselves and others for our weaknesses and mistakes. When we’re too serious there’s no forgiveness, least of all for ourselves.

What is humor? What’s its meaning? A generation ago, Peter Berger wrote a book, A Rumor of Angels, in which he looked at the question of humor philosophically. I like his conclusion. In humor, he submits, we touch the transcendent. To be able to laugh at a situation, no matter how dire or tragic, shows that we’re in some way above that situation, that there’s something in us that’s not imprisoned by that situation, or any situation.

There’s a wonderful example of this in the writings of the Russian poet, Anna Akhmatova. During the purges of Stalin, her husband had been arrested, as had many others. She occasionally tried to visit the prison he was in to leave letters and packages for him.  Standing in long lines outside of that prison in St. Petersburg, she waited alongside other women whose husbands or sons had also been arrested. The situation bordered on the absurd. None of them even knew whether their loved ones were even alive and the guards made them wait for hours without explanation, often in the cold of winter. One day, as she was standing in line waiting, another woman recognized her, approached her, and asked: “Can you describe this?” Akhmatova replied: “I can,” and when she said this something like a smile passed between them.

A smile passed between them. That smile contained some levity and that allowed them both to realize, however unconsciously, that they were transcendent to that situation.  The smile that passed between them alerted them both to the fact that they were more than what they were in that moment. Awful as it was, they weren’t ultimately prisoners to that moment. Moreover that smile was a prophetic and political act of defiance, based upon faith.  Levity is subversive.

This is true too not just for how we live inside our faith lives; it’s true too for how we live, healthily, inside our families. A family that’s too serious will not allow for forgiveness. Its heaviness will eventually drive its members either into depression or away from the family. Moreover it will make an idol out of itself. Conversely, a family that can take itself seriously but still laugh at itself will be a family where there is forgiveness because levity will give them a healthy perspective on their foibles. A family that’s healthy will sometimes look at itself honestly and with the kind of smile that passed between Anna Akhmatova and her friend, say of itself: “Aren’t we pathetic!”

That’s true too of nationalism.  We need to take our nation seriously, even as a certain kind levity keeps this seriousness in perspective.  I’m a Canadian.  As Canadians, we love our country, are proud of it, and would, if push came to shove, die for it. But we have a wonderful levity about our patriotism. We make jokes about it and enjoy it when others make jokes about us. Consequently we don’t have any bitter controversies regarding who loves the country and who doesn’t. Our lightness keeps us in unity.

All of this, of course, is doubly true of faith and spirituality. Real faith is deep, an indelible brand inside the soul, a DNA that dictates behavior. Moreover, real faith does not sidestep the tragic within our lives but equips us to face the heaviness in life where we meet disappointment, personal failure, heartbreak, injustice, betrayal, the breakdown of cherished relationships, the death of loves ones, sickness, the diminishment of our own health, and ultimately our own death. This is not to be confused with any natural or contrived optimism that refuses to see the dark.  Rather real faith, precisely because it is real and therefore keeps us inchoately aware of our identity and transcendence, will always allow us a discreet, knowing, smile, no matter the situation. Like the English martyr, Thomas More, we will be able to joke a bit with our executioner and we will also be able to forgive others and ourselves for not being perfect.

Our lives often are pathetic. But it’s okay. We can still laugh with each other! We’re in good hands. The God who made obviously has a sense of humor – and therefore understanding and forgiveness.

Too many books on Christian spirituality might more aptly be entitled: The Unbearable Heaviness of Faith.

More than fifty years ago, James Hillman wrote a book entitled, Suicide and the Soul. The book was intended for therapists and he knew it wouldn’t receive an easy reception there or elsewhere. There were reasons.  He frankly admitted that some of the things he proposed in the book would “go against all common sense, all medical practice, and rationality itself.” But, as the title makes clear, he was speaking about suicide and in trying to understand suicide, isn’t that exactly the case? Doesn’t it go against all common sense, all medical practice, and rationality itself? And that’s his point.

In some cases, suicide can be the result of a biochemical imbalance or some genetic predisposition that militates against life. That’s unfortunate and tragic, but it’s understandable enough. That kind of sickness goes against common sense, medical practice, and rationality.  Suicide can also result from a catastrophic emotional breakdown or from a trauma so powerful that it cannot be integrated and simply breaks apart a person’s psyche so that death, as sleep, as an escape, becomes an overwhelming temptation. Here too, even though common sense, medical practice, and rationality are befuddled, we have some grasp of why this suicide happened.

But there are suicides that are not the result of a biochemical imbalance, a genetic predisposition, a catastrophic emotional distress, or an overpowering trauma. How are these to be explained?

Hillman, whose writing through more than fifty years have been a public plea for the human soul, makes this claim: The soul can make claims that go against the body and against our physical wellbeing, and suicide is often that, the soul making its own claims. What a stunning insight! Our souls and our bodies do not always want the same things and are sometimes so much at odds with each other that death can be the result.

In the tension between soul and body, the body’s needs and impulses are more easily seen, understood, and attended to. The body normally gets what it wants or at least clearly knows what it wants and why it is frustrated.  The soul? Well, its needs are so complex that they are hard to see and understand, not alone attended to.  As Pascal so famously put it: “The heart has it reasons of which reason knows nothing.” That is virtually synonymous with what Hillman is saying. Our rational understanding often stands bewildered before some inchoate need inside us.

That inchoate need is our soul speaking, but it is not easy to pick up exactly what it is asking of us. Mostly we feel our soul’s voice as a dis-ease, a restlessness, a distress we cannot exactly sort out, and as an internal pressure that sometimes asks of us something directly in conflict with what the rest of us wants. We are, in huge part, a mystery to ourselves.

Sometimes the claims of the soul that go against our physical wellbeing are not so dramatic as to demand suicide but in them, we can still clearly see what Hillman is asserting. We see this, for example, in the phenomenon where a person in severe emotional distress begins to cut herself on her arms or on other parts of her body.  The cuts are not intended to end life; they are intended only to cause pain and blood. Why?  The person cutting herself mostly cannot explain rationally why she is doing this (or, at least, she cannot explain how this pain and this blood-letting will in any way lessen or fix her emotional distress). All she knows is that she is hurting at a place she cannot get at and by hurting herself at a place she can get at, she can deal with a pain that she cannot get to. Hillman’s principle is on display here:  The soul can, and does, make claims that can go against our physical well-being. It has its reasons.

For Hillman, this is the “root metaphor” for how a therapist should approach the understanding of suicide. It can also be a valuable metaphor for all us who are not therapists but who have to struggle to digest the death of a loved one who dies by suicide.

Moreover this is also a metaphor that can be helpful in understanding each other and understanding ourselves. The soul sometimes makes claims that go directly against our health and well-being. In my pastoral work and sometimes simply being with a friend who is hurting, I sometimes find myself standing helplessly before someone who is hell-bent on some behavior that goes against his or her own well-being and which makes no rational sense whatsoever. Rational argument and common sense are useless. He’s simply going to do this to his own destruction.  Why? The soul has its reasons. All of us, perhaps in less dramatic ways, experience this in our own lives. Sometimes we do things that hurt our physical health and well-being and go against all common sense and rationality.  Our souls too have their reasons.

And suicide too has its reasons.

We’re called to a name change.

We’re all familiar with the incident in the bible where God changes the name of Abram to Abraham. The change seems so small that often times it isn’t even picked up by those reading that text. What’s the difference between Abram and Abraham?

The name Abram, meaning “Exalted Father”, is the name given the great patriarch to whom God made the promise that one day he would be the father of all the descendants of the nation of Judaism. But later when God promises this same man that he is to be the father as well of all nations everywhere, God changes his name to Abraham: “You will no longer be called Abram; your name will be Abraham, for I have made you a father of many nations.” (Genesis 17, 5).

What is implied in this change? The name, Abraham, in its very etymology, connotes a stretching to become something larger; he’s now to be the father of all nations.  Abram, the father of one nation, now becomes Abraham (in Hebrew, Ab hamon goyim) the father of all the other nations, the “goyim”.

That change doesn’t just stretch a word; it stretches Abraham, a Jew, and redefines his understanding of himself and his mission. He’s no longer to understand himself as the patriarch of just one nation, his own, his ethnic and religious family, but he’s to see himself and the faith he is entrusted with as someone and something for all nations. He’s no longer to think of himself as the patriarch of one particular tribe, since God is not a tribal God. As well, he’s no longer to think of just his own tribe as his family, but to think of all others, irrespective of ethnicity or faith, as also his children.

What does that mean for us? T.S. Eliot might answer that by saying: Home is where we start from. Our particular ethnic, religious, cultural, and civic roots are precious and important, but they’re not the fully mature tree into which we’re meant to grow. Our roots are where we start from.

I grew up a very sheltered child, in a very close family, in a very enclosed rural environment. We were all of one kind, our neighbors, my classmates, everyone I knew, all of us, we shared a common history, ethnicity, religion, cultural background, set of values, and lived in a young country, Canada, that for the most part looked exactly like we did. I value those roots. They’re a great gift. Those roots have given me a stability that has freed me up for the rest of my life. But they’re only my roots, precious, but merely the place where I start from.

And it’s the same for all of us. We take root inside a particular family, an ethnicity, a neighborhood, a country, and a faith, with a particular slant on the world and, with that, some people constitute our tribe and others don’t. But that’s where we start from. We grow, change, move, meet new people, and live and work with others who don’t share our background, nationality, ethnicity, skin color, religion, or particular slant on life.

And so today we share our countries, cities, neighborhoods, and churches with the “goyim”, the people of other tribes, and that makes for the long struggle, hopefully successful, to eventually see that those others who are different from us, share the same God, are also our brothers and sisters, and have lives that are just as real, important, and precious as those of our own biological, national, and religious families. Like Abraham we need a name change so that we don’t make idolatry out of our youthful patriotism which has us believe that our own tribe is special and that our own country, skin color, background, and religion give us a unique and privileged claim to God.

Our world is globalizing at a dizzying pace and countries, neighborhoods, and churches are becoming ever-more plural and diverse ethnically, linguistically, culturally, and religiously. Our countries, neighborhoods, workplaces, and churches are literally taking on a different face. The old sheltered communities that gave us our roots are disappearing and for many of us this is scary and the temptation is retrench, to go hard to the right, to militantly defend the old boundaries, and to claim God and truth more exclusively again for ourselves. That’s understandable, but not where we’re called to be by what’s best inside our humanity and our faith. Like Abraham, we’re called to a name change.

We’re called to cherish our heritage, country, mother tongue, culture, faith, and church because only by being firmly rooted within primary community are we stable and altruistic enough to offer family to those outside of our own. But home is where we start from. From those wonderful families that give us roots, we’re called to stretch our hearts religiously, ethnically, culturally so that everyone eventually is embraced as family. We’re called to move from being  Abram to becoming Abraham.

Woe to chastity that is not practiced out of love, but woe to love that excludes chastity.

These are the words of Benoit Standaert, a Benedictine monk, and I believe they can be profitably read in our culture today where, to the detriment of everyone, the sexually active and vowed celibates alike, sexuality and chastity are generally seen as opposed to each other, as enemies.

Unfortunately, this opposition is not very well understood today, either in our culture or in our churches. In our current culture, chastity is mostly seen as a naiveté, a lack of critical sophistication, a quality you honor and protect only in children. Indeed, within the popular culture today, chastity is often disdained and seen as a fear-based moral rigidity. Ironically many of us in our churches who are trying to defend chastity are no healthier. We never link the chastity we defend to a spirituality that’s wholesome enough to able to celebrate sexuality as a beautiful gift from God that’s intended to be linked to exuberance, spirituality, and delight.

Sexuality and chastity aren’t enemies, as our culture and churches make them out to be. They’re different sides of the same coin. They need each other. Sexuality without chastity is invariably soulless and not respectful. Conversely, chastity that sees itself as somehow above or divorced from sex will invariably end up in sterility, judgment, and anger. Woe to either – if it doesn’t take the other seriously.

Unfortunately, with few exceptions, our churches have never grasped sexuality well; just as our culture, with even fewer exceptions, has never grasped chastity well. One searches, mostly in vain, for a Christian spirituality of sexuality that’s truly wholesome and which properly honors the wonderful gift God gave us in our sexuality. Likewise, one searches, mostly entirely in vain, for a secular voice that grasps the importance of chastity. When Moses was standing before the burning bush and God told him, Take off your shoes because the ground you are standing on is holy, God was speaking pre-eminently about how we, as humans, stand before each other inside the mystery of love and sexuality. Sex is life-giving only if it is given and received with proper respect.

Sexuality, as we know, is more than sex. When God created the first human beings, God looked at them and said: “It’s not good for a person to be alone!” That wasn’t just true for Adam and Eve, it’s true for every human being, every living thing, and every molecule and atom in the universe. It’s not good to be alone and sexuality is the fire within us that at every level of our being, conscious and unconscious, body and soul, drives us outward beyond our aloneness, towards family, community, friendship, companionship, procreation, co-creation, celebration, delight, and consummation.  Sexuality is linked to our very instinct to continue breathing and cannot be separated from the sacredness we feel inside of us as creatures made in the image and likeness of God. And, as an energy, sexuality is sacred, never to be denigrated in the name of something higher or reduced to the casual.

Chastity, as we don’t always know, is first of all not even a sexual concept. It’s about much more. Chastity is proper respect and proper patience, not just for how we stand before sex but for how we stand before all of life.  Chastity is not celibacy, much less frigidity. One can be celibate, but not chaste; just as one can be sexually active, and chaste.  Chastity, properly understood, is not anti-sexual; it strives to protect sexuality from its own excessive power by surrounding it with the needed filters, patience and respect, thus allowing the other person to be fully herself or himself, allowing us to be fully ourselves, and allowing sex to be what it was intended to be, a sacred, life-giving gift.

Annie Dillard in Holy the Firm offers an interesting image of chastity. She describes how, one day, watching a butterfly struggle to emerge from its cocoon, she gave in to impatience. The process was fascinating but interminably slow; at a point, she took a candle and added some heat to the cocoon. The butterfly then emerged more quickly, but, because the process had not been given the necessary time and freedom to unfold on its own terms, the butterfly emerged with damaged wings. The natural order of things had not been given its due, a fault in chastity, an ill-advised impatience, a prematurity that causes a limp in nature.

Sexuality and chastity need each other. Sexuality brings the energy, the longing, the fire, and the urgency which keep us aware, consciously and unconsciously, that it’s not good to be alone. If we shut that off, we become sterile and angry. Chastity, on the other hand, tells us that, in that process of seeking union with all that’s beyond us, we must have enough patience and respect to let the other fully be other and ourselves be fully ourselves.

Sometimes all you can do is to put your mouth to the dust and wait. That’s a counsel from the Book of Lamentations and while perhaps not the best response to the recent revelations of clerical sexual abuse and cover-up in the Roman Catholic Church, it seems the only helpful response available to me as Roman Catholic priest today. Beyond prayer, I’ve been hesitant to respond otherwise to this current situation for three reasons.

My first hesitation has to do with the seeming futility of yet another apology and breast-beating. Since the report on sexual abuse and clerical cover-up was released in Pennsylvania a few weeks back, there have been apologies issued by virtually every diocese, every parish, and every priest in America, including one from the Pope himself. While these apologies have been almost universally sincere, non-defensive, and rightly focused on the victims, they’ve also for the most part not been well-received. More generally the response has been: “What good does that do now! Where were you when this was all happening?” The apologies have generally met with more cynicism and anger than acceptance. And yet it’s important that they be made, though I’m not sure my adding another one will be helpful.

My second hesitancy stems from the fact that there’s so much anger and grief around this issue right now that words, even the right ones, generally don’t hit their mark, akin to telling someone freshly grieving the death of loved one that “she’s in a better place.” The words are true, but moment’s too raw for the words to be heard. They only become effective later. And that’s the situation now; we’re in a time of raw anger and dark grief. These are in fact the same emotion (just that one’s hard and the other soft) and so for many people dealing with the revelations of clerical sexual abuse and cover-up right now, apologies, while necessary, are not being heard. The moment is too raw.

And, one last hesitation: As a priest with a vow of celibacy I’m painfully aware that right now I’m at an understandable disadvantage to speak out on this.  Victims speak from a position of moral privilege, rightly so, their voices carry extra authority; but those who stand symbolically connected to the perpetrators, and that’s me, are understandably heard with suspicion. I accept that. How could it be otherwise? At this particularly charged moment, what moral authority can my voice carry on this issue? What does my apology add?

But, for what it’s worth, even given those caveats, I do offer an apology: As Roman Catholic priest, I want to publicly say that what’s happened in the church in terms of sexual abuse by the clergy and cover-up by the hierarchy is inexcusable, deeply sinful, has harmed thousands of lives irrevocably, and needs radical redress in terms of reaching out to the victims and of prompting structural change in the church to ensure that this will never happen again.

Let me add something else: First, as a Roman Catholic priest, I do not distance myself from this by morally separating myself from those who have done wrong by declaring: “They’re guilty and I’m not!” The cross of Jesus doesn’t allow such an escape. Jesus was crucified between two thieves. He was innocent, they weren’t; but he didn’t protest his innocence, and those looking at three crosses that day didn’t distinguish between who was innocent and who was guilty. The crosses were all painted with the same brush. There are times when one does not protest one’s innocence. Part of Jesus’ mission,  as our liturgy puts it, was “to become sin for us”, to risk having his innocence mixed in with guilt and be perceived as sin so as to help carry darkness and sin for others.

Beyond our apologies, all of us, clergy and laity alike, are invited to do something for the church right now, namely, help carry this scandal as Jesus did. Indignantly separating ourselves morally from this sin is not the way of Jesus and the cross.

Like Mary standing under the cross, we must not replicate the anger and darkness of the moment so as to give it back in kind. Instead, like her, we must do the only thing possible sometimes when standing beneath the consequence of sin, that is, let our posture, like Mary’s, speak deeply through a voice that, unlike bitterness or collapse, says: “Today, I can’t stop this darkness, nobody can. Sometimes darkness just has its hour. But I can stop some of the sin and bitterness that’s in the moment by absorbing it, not distancing myself from it, and not giving it back in kind.” Sometimes darkness has its moment and we, followers of Jesus, may not self-servingly distance ourselves from the sin but need to help absorb it.

Sometimes all we can do is put our mouths to the dust … and pray … and wait. Knowing that, at some future time, the stone will again roll away from the tomb.

Thomas Aquinas once suggested that it’s a sin to not give a compliment to someone when it’s deserved because by withholding our praise we’re depriving that person of the food that he or she needs to live on. He’s right. Perhaps it’s not a sin to withhold a compliment but it’s a sad impoverishment, both for the person deserving the compliment and for the one withholding it.

We don’t live on bread alone. Jesus told us that. Our soul too needs to be fed and its food is affirmation, recognition, and blessing. Every one of us needs to be healthily affirmed when we do something well so as to have resources within us with which to affirm others. We can’t give what we haven’t got! That’s self-evident. And so, for us to love and affirm others we must first be loved, first be blessed, and first be praised. Praise, recognition, and blessing build up the soul.

But complimenting others isn’t just important for the person receiving the compliment, it’s equally important for the person giving it. In praising someone we give him or her some needed food for their soul; but, in doing this, we also feed our own soul. There’s a truth about philanthropy that holds true too for the soul: We need to give to others not just because they need it but because we cannot be healthy unless we are giving ourselves away. Healthy admiration is a philanthropy of the soul.

Moreover, admiring and praising others is a religious act. Benoit Standaert submits that “giving praise comes out of the roots our existence.”  What does he mean by that?

In complimenting and praising others, we are tapping into what’s deepest inside us, namely, the image and likeness of God. When we praise someone else then, like God creating, we are breathing life into a person, breathing spirit into them. People need to be praised. We don’t live on bread alone, and we don’t live on oxygen alone either.

The image and likeness of God inside us is not an icon, but an energy, the energy that’s most real inside us. Beyond our ego, wounds, pride, sin, and the pettiness of our hearts and minds on any given day, what’s most real within us is a magnanimity and graciousness which, like God, looks at the world and wants to say: “It is good! It is very good!” When we’re at our best, our truest, speaking and acting out of our maturity, we can admire. Indeed, our willingness to praise others is a sign of maturity, and vice versa. We become more mature by being generous in our praise.

But praise is not something we give out easily. Mostly we are so blocked by the disappointments and frustrations within our lives that we give in to cynicism and jealousy and operate out of these rather than out of our virtues. We rationalize this of course in different ways, either by claiming that what we’re supposed to admire is juvenile (and we’re too bright and sophisticated to be impressed) or that the admirable act was done for someone’s self-aggrandizement and we’re not going to feed another person’s ego. However, more often than not, our real reason for withholding praise is that fact that we ourselves have been insufficiently praised and, because of that, harbor jealousies and lack the strength to praise others. I say this sympathetically, all of us are wounded.

Then too in some of us there’s a hesitation to praise others because we believe that praise might spoil the person and inflate his or her ego. Spare the rod and spoil the child! If we offer praise it will go to that person’s head.  Again, more often than not, that’s a rationalization. Legitimate praise never spoils a person. Praise that’s honest and proper works more at humbling its recipient than spoiling him or her. We can’t be loved too much, only loved wrongly.

But, you might ask, what about children who end up self-centered because they’re only praised and never disciplined?  Real love and real maturity distinguish between praising those areas of another’s life that are praiseworthy and challenging those areas of another’s life that need correction. Praise should never be undeserved flattery, but challenge and correction are only effective if the recipient first knows that he or she is loved and properly recognized.

Genuine praise is never wrong. It simply acknowledges the truth that’s there. That’s a moral imperative. Love requires it. Refusing to admire when someone or something merits praise is, as Thomas Aquinas submits, a negligence, a fault, a selfishness, a pettiness, and a lack of maturity. Conversely, paying a compliment when one is due is a virtue and a sign of maturity.

Generosity is as much about giving praise as about giving money. We may not be stingy in our praise. The 14^th century Flemish mystic, John of Ruusbroec, taught that “those who do not give praise here on earth shall be mute for all eternity.”