Month: February 2023
The Jesus I know and Love ~ and I want You to know Him too!
Thursday after Ash Wednesday, February 23, 2023
Dear Sisters and Brothers,
In the first reading, Moses says:
“I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse.
Choose life, then, that you and your descendants may live, by loving the Lord, your God, heeding his voice, and holding fast to him” (Deuteronomy 30:15-20).
One often hears the words Choose Life as a Pro-Life message. That’s important, but we’re invited to choose life again and again, every day. This Lent is an acceptable time to choose the life that affirms and nourishes us and to deliver ourselves from the dysfunctional communication and game-playing within our own homes that damages the souls of our spouses and our children.
Let’s choose Life this day in the way we speak to and about the folks we meet today.
Choice is an act of the will, the highest power of the human person. We need to choose our words carefully. To preside over–take responsibility for what comes out of our what comes out of our mouths. To realize our words create life or death.
And then in today’s gospel, Jesus says,
“If anyone wishes to come after me, he must take up his cross daily and follow me.
For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.
What profit is there for one to gain the whole world yet lose or forfeit himself? (Luke 9: 22-25)
Jesus gives us a koan here. That’s a Zen word for a riddle given to a student to mull over until the the student gets the insight.
Try to get into it this great saying of Jesus this Lent. Ponder its meaning for you right now. Copy it on a card and repeat it often until you get it.
Jesus’ message is so counter-cultural. In our society people do anything to avoid the smallest bit of pain. There are even numbing pads so that you don’t feel it when you prick your finger for the Accu-check for diabetes. And we avoid emotional pain by not thinking through our problems. Some folks do this by getting a hasty divorce to run away from their problems or by dumping a girlfriend who no longer suits them via way of a cruel text message.
Lent places before us the Cross of Jesus and his loving embrace of it as our Savior, but also as a model for us. He willingly stretched out his arms to be nailed. Jesus knew he would have to face a lot of suffering on his journey. He knew he would make people angry by proclaiming the truth he saw in his heart. He knew that it would lead him to death, but he never strayed from the road to Jerusalem.
The issue is Acceptance of whatever life calls us to. Jesus accepted the Cross because he chose to be faithful to his mission.
He was a person of absolute integrity. No one was going to dissuade him from being who he was.
This is the Jesus I know and love: The one who has the strength to love, no matter what. He’s my Lord, my Savior–and my mentor, if you will. I would like very much to be like Him–if he would grant me that grace. How ’bout you?
Tomorrow we begin to reflect on Jesus forty-day retreat into the desert’ (the Mass text for this coming Sunday) to prepare for his mission.
Now before you go, here’s the old hymn “Jesus walked the lonesome valley” Click here.
And here are today’s Mass readings if you would like to reflect on them. Click here.
With love,
Bob Traupman
contemplative writer
CARNIVAL! When do you let yourself have some fun?
Dear Friends,
Well, this week the Big Easy and Rio have one thing in common — one huge party!
And what is so interesting its very Catholic. It’s a time to let your hair down before the strike of midnight Ash Wednesday morning when we Catholics used to abstain from meat during the six-week Lenten season.
The root of the word “CARnival is the same as the word “inCARnation”~ a word that means the enfleshment of the Son of God.
Now here’s a bit of Carnival or Mardi Gras history for you.
A carnival is a celebration combining parades, pageantry, folk drama, and feasting, usually held in Catholic countries during the weeks before Lent. The term “Carnival” probably comes from the Latin word “carnelevarium”, meaning “to remove meat.” Before refrigeration, that’s exactly what this event was about in a culinary sense. Every store, every home had to “remove meat” before Wednesday morning because Lent in those days did not permit any meat at all. So, they cooked up what they had in the most delicious ways they could.
Typically the Carnival season begins early in the new year, often on Epiphany, January 6, and ends in February on Fat Tuesday (“Mardi Gras” in French). This year Lent begins on Wednesday, February 22nd and Easter is on April 9th.
Probably originating in pagan spring fertility rites, the first recorded carnival was the Egyptian feast of Osiris, marking the receding of the Nile’s flood water. Carnivals reached a peak of riotous dissipation with the Roman BACCHANALIA and Saturnalia.
In the Middle Ages, when the Catholic Church tried to suppress all pagan ideas, it failed when it came to this celebration. The Church incorporated the rite into its own calendar as a period of thanksgiving. Popes sometimes served as patrons.
The nations of Europe, especially France, Spain, and Portugal, gave thanks by throwing parties, wearing masks, and dancing in the streets. All three colonizing powers carried the tradition with them to the New World, but in Brazil it landed with a difference. Not only did the Portuguese have a taste for abandoned merriment, (they brought the “entrudo”, a prank where merry-makers throw water, flour, face powder, and many other things at each other’s faces), but the Negro slaves also took to the celebration. They would smear their faces with flour, borrow an old wig or frayed shirt of the master, and give themselves over to mad revelry for the three days. Many masters even let their slaves roam freely during the celebration. Since the slaves were grateful for the chance to enjoy themselves, they rarely used the occasion as a chance to run away.
Pre-Christian, medieval, and modern carnivals share important thematic features. They celebrate the death of winter and the rebirth of nature, ultimately re-committing the individual to the spiritual and social codes of the culture. Ancient fertility rites, with their sacrifices to the gods, exemplify this commitment, as do the Christian Shrovetide plays. On the other hand, carnivals allow parody of, and offer temporary release from, social and religious constraints. For example, slaves were the equals of their masters during the Roman Saturnalia; the medieval feast of fools included a blasphemous mass; and during carnival masquerades sexual and social taboos are sometimes temporarily suspended.
Tomorrow: Why Ashes on Ash Wednesday. May I suggest that by Wednesday morning to try be ready to enter into a deeper journey into your inner depths to discover our Lord and at the same time your deepest Self. Be ready to experience new life, new growth for your self and for our country.
Dear Jesus,
Today we let our hair down a bit and when the fun is over,
may we be ready to enter the desert on Wednesday with you
and discover how desert experiences can cleanse and purify us and make us whole.
Let us enter the desert willingly and learn its lessons well.
We ask you, Lord, to lead the way.
Amen.
But, before you go, here’s a video of what a Carnival parade is like down in Rio. Click here. Be sure to enter full screen.
(Ladies: Let your husbands have some fun – um ~ it’s not exactly R-rated.)
With love,
Bob Traupman
contemplative writer
Happy Valentine’s Day! True Love is faithful love ~ How do you measure up?
Flagler Beach Florida sunrise / bob traupman.
HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY, EVERYONE!
We’ve been reflecting on St. Paul’s eloquent words about love from I Corinthians 13. And this is my final post on the subject.
Love is not pompous,
it is not inflated,
it does not seek its own interests, it is not quick-tempered, \
it does not brood over injury, it does not rejoice over wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth.
Romantic love wears off in a few months. True love requires fidelity and is long-lasting. I often remember people I met briefly twenty or thirty years ago and there is still a place in my heart for them, even those who had rejected or hurt me. And when I think of them I believe my prayer is able to touch them even now, either living or dead.
We think we know all about love. Yet Love is an Art and a Discipline that is only learned and acquired by trial and error. Thus, we have to learn how to love. Or perhaps unlearn what we have learned in abusive homes or families and find people who can teach us well. I am profoundly grateful for the people who allowed my soul to unfold and blossom because of their love and in their love.
As I mentioned last time, I taught high school seniors (53 years ago!) that I had them read two books, Erich Fromm’s Art of Loving and Victor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning. Both books still should be required reading by anyone who wants to become a whole and healed human person.
Many of us keep focusing on finding the right object of our love. Fromm — and Jesus — tell us that being a person who is capable of loving the stranger in the checkout line at the 7-11 or your sibling whose guts you can’t stand is the way we will learn to love.
Love is being free to love the one you’re with so you can be with the one you love.
It is just not possible to love some and hate others. St. John says, “Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer.” (1 John 3:15)
And yet, in today’s America, I wonder what kind of leadership and example we are setting for our children when some follow our political and business leaders who have sought to take revenge on their opponents instead of striving to be true noble patriots and looking after the needs of the American people.
Love is being able to see and respond to the loving energy of the universe and spread it around instead of trying to possess it for oneself.
Love is faithfully loving whomever God puts in our life at every turn of our life’s journey. A hard task sometimes. I know.
How often we fail. But that’s what growth in love and Christian spirituality is all about. Sometimes it requires a heroic effort and sacrificial love ~ the love of Jesus, the Love of God for us.
So, what is LOVE?
There’s all kinds of love. There’s romance that is the kind that pervades the soaps, the news stand magazines, the ones at the grocery store checkout counter. There’s erotic love. There’s brotherly (or sisterly) love, the love of friends, neighborly love. And then there’s sacrificial love. There’s conditional and unconditional love. There’s love that isn’t love at all.
But here’s a practical suggestion for you to make your own meaning.
At day’s end, reflect on the positive things — even the tiny little things in a chaotic, insane day. Seek out where the LOVE was. Where real life happened.
That’s it! Take a moment. Reflect on your day. Pick two incidents, however fleeting, however small that you might have missed at the time. Savor them for a moment. Those are the moments where love and God has touched you. Be ready to receive into your life and your heart the little moments of LIFE and LOVE that do happen even in the midst of the most terrible day and let them change your life.
It is not the destination that’s important; life and love happen along the way!
And so here’s my final prayer for this Valentine’s Day . . . .
Good and gracious God,
We live in a world that gives us so few models of faithful love.
Help us to learn the art and discipline of loving.
Help us to understand that we cannot love one person — even ourselves — unless we let love — rather than hate — flow from our heart to touch and heal and nourish those around us.
Heal us, Lord.
Let us trust in You, for you are the Source of all Love,
Your Love is flowing like a river giving life to everything and every one along the way,
a river from our own hearts to everyone we meet this day.
I also ask your blessing on all married couples and those engaged to be married.
It’s not easy to be faithful in this world today.
Pour out your abundant blessing upon them in all their struggles.
Renew their love and their joy this day and all the days of their lives.
And please be with all those suffering from this earthquake and violence throughout the world and those who assist them.
We give You thanks and praise this day.
Amen.
And now before you go, wouldn’t you like to hear a romantic melody for your beloved? Well, here’s a very unique one: Cold Play’s True Love Click here.
And here’s a link to a New York Times fun piece about the origins of Valentine’s Day: Valentine’s Day: Did It Start as a Roman Party or to Celebrate an Execution? > > >
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/14/style/valentines-day-facts-history.html?campaign_id=9&emc=edit_nn_20230212&instance_id=85191&nl=the-morning®i_id=60666063&segment_id=125123&te=1&user_id=cc5ab10531bb494e16be97f945fa7fc8
With love
Bob Traupman
contemplative writer
And here is the entire text of St. Paul’s Ode to Love (I Corinthians 13) Savor each line and see how you measure up. . . .
If I speak in human and angelic tongues but do not have love, I am a resounding gong or a clashing cymbal.
And if I have the gift of prophecy and comprehend all mysteries and all knowledge;
if I have all faith so as to move mountains
but do not have love, I am nothing.
If I give away everything I own, and if I hand my body over so that I may boast
but do not have love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient, love is kind. It is not jealous,
Love is not pompous, it is not inflated,
it is not rude,
it does not seek its own interests,
it is not quick-tempered,
it does not brood over injury,
it does not rejoice over wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth.
It bears all things,
believes all things,
hopes all things,
endures all things.
Love never fails.
So faith, hope, love remain, these three;
but the greatest of these is love.
I Corinthians 13
Love transforms us
Dear Friends,
We’ve been talking about St. Paul’s Ode to Love (1 Corinthians 13) ~ the awesome love that transforms.
But many of us don’t know how to love in a way that transforms because we’re more interested in getting love than giving it.
So, let’s think about that for a moment.
Many young folks in our society haven’t experienced the love that transforms, even from their own parents or their spouses. Very often, their relationships center on their own needs, even when they’re “giving” to their significant other.
But in order to love in a transforming way, we have to be loved in a way that frees us.
So I ask you ~
Who are the people in your life who were able to recognize the YOU inside you?
Who-knew-who-you-were behind the mask you present to the world each day?
Who are the people who recognized-your-gifts and called-them-forth-from-the-depths-within-you?
Who-drew-forth-the-goodness-they-saw-in-you when what you were presenting to the world you thought wasn’t very good at all?
That’s love that transforms! That heals. That gets us going again. That moves us down the road a bit.
I’d like to name one such man who has had an enormous influence on my life. He is Father Eugene Walsh. We used to call him Gino. He was the rector of my seminary the year I was preparing for ordination. He was a Father-figure for me and a mentor; I learned most of what I know about the sacred liturgy from him.
I had the good fortunate to get on his short list to have him as my spiritual director. He had a way of listening deeply below the level of my words.
I remember one night in his study. We were sitting across from each other in two easy chairs. I was always intrigued that the wall behind him was bright orange with a large abstract painting on it. I was struggling that night about whether I would proceed toward ordination.
Of a sudden, he sprung from his chair, hugged me and whispered in my ear my name–Bob–and I heard it resonate for the longest time. His voice found me—some place deep within and called me forth.
I can still hear him calling me. At that moment, his deep, resonating love– transformed me. Affirmed me, confirmed me. (I’ll start writing soon about my priesthood and my bipolar journey and I’ll tell the story of this wonderful man and the many others who influenced and shaped my life over the years; there are many; and I am grateful to each and every one.)
More than any other person, there is Jesus; I try to be like him. He was so human. He teaches me how to be a human being, above all. And to be decent human, most of all, is to be capable of loving and receiving love. The same was true of Father Walsh.
And that’s what I’ve always taught: Sin is the refusal Of love, the refusal To love, as well as the refusal to grow and the refusal to give thanks.
So ask yourself: Who are the people who really knew who you were on the inside, accepted you as you are–the good and the bad–and called you forth to be the best person you could be?
Why don’t you reflect on this through the day — while you’re driving, sitting on the john or doing the dishes. Give thanks for them. And maybe give them a call. Not an email; a phone call.
And finally, I want to honor the two-love birds in the picture above. They are John and Betsy Walders of Sebastian, Florida. John passed away in November 2015. They were married for sixty-six years and were as much in love as the day they met in childhood. (Take note that they’re both wearing denim in this picture I took of them some years ago.) In their eighties they went on a serendipity joy ride around the country, quite oblivious to the fact that they weren’t teenagers anymore! The joy and memory of all those years sustains Betsy as she witnessed her beloved withdraw into Alzheimer’s. Asked if they ever considered a divorce, she thought a moment and said, “Divorce, no, murder, yes!”
I love them dearly and miss visiting, but Betsy and I talk and have many a laugh on the phone every once in a while. She’s now 97 and I pray every night for her–as I do for so many others.
But spouses who’ve lost their loved ones still remember them on Valentine’s Day, don’t they?
Beloved,
let us love one another because love is of God;
everyone who is begotten of God has knowledge of God.
No one has ever seen God.
Yet if we love one another
God dwells in us, and his love is brought to perfection in us. (1 Jn 4:7, 12)
Dear Friends, see if you can make this prayer your own ~
Good and gracious God,
You are the One most of all who has loved us into wholeness,
who is calling us forth to be the best person we can be,
calling us not so much to want to be loved as to love.
I thank you for sending people into my life who, even for a brief moment,
have touched me deep within and helped to transform me into a more deeply loving person.
Help us always to be persons who are capable of transforming love.
And now, before you go, here’s a hymn based on St. Paul’s Ode to Love: Click Here. It’s soft and lovely, so be sure to turn up your speakers and enter full screen.
With love,
Bob Traupman
contemplative writer
Jilted lovers ~ or Joyous love?
mesa verde national park of southern colorado / march 2008 / bob traupman.
Dear Sisters and Brothers,
Our society finds it quite acceptable for people to hop into one relationship after another or just satisfy their needs by”hooking up”.
How many times have young people thought that this was the person of their dreams and been dumped by a rude text message–or did the dumping themselves?
How many marriages have ended when one spouse showed up in the kitchen and announced, “I want a divorce!” No discussion. No attempt to work out problems. No mercy. No forgiveness. It was over. Done.
And what happens is that we may add one unsuccessful relationship on top of another. As a result, our heart can become more and more wounded. And less and less trusting, less and less capable of loving . . . unless we somehow find a way to believe again, to hope again.
So, let’s take a deeper look at the truth and the transforming power of St. Paul’s words in I Cor. 13 we’re reflecting on in this series “What is Love?”
Father Bob's Reflections 