Category: Life

In One Sense…

~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ Leave a comment

President Obama was correct in his “You didn’t build that…” comments. If you read around the sound bite for context you’ll discover that he was talking about all the larger things that make individual success possible. There’s truth there.

Individuals have ideas. Individuals have plans. Individuals have dreams. Individuals take risks. Yet all of that is surrounded by all kinds of resources, people, infrastructure, and community that allow those individual things to flourish. You may be the founder and boss but you need others, employees, buyers, sellers, water pipes, roads, phone lines, a lot of things to make what you envisioned happen.

I think the rich and powerful often forget this. No one is self made, one way or another we need each others. One way or another we have some kind of responsibility to each other. There is a common good and not simply a collection of individual goods that have somehow agreed to live with each other.

Yet, at the same time, I don’t think its the state’s task to enforce that understanding, to pick winners and losers and artificially create identical outcomes. When the state does this some people feel entitled and others become resentful. Everyone sees their success in terms of power, of manipulating the state to their advantage, of making the system work for them and excluding others.

What’s really needed is something beyond politics, something much more difficult. What’s needed is a moral and spiritual sea change and frankly we’ve got our work cut out for us. Those who have need to understand the reality behind what they have acquired and understand that much is required from those to whom much has been given. Their hearts need to be warmed to the common good, to the least of these, and the reality that everything is actually on temporary loan from the Giver and there will be an accounting. Those who have less need to be given more to industry, to supporting each other in good habits and life that make for betterment and less to envy and anger.

Yet we do have our work cut out for us because the Christian impulse that would call the rich to philanthrophy and the poor to industry has nearly disappeared.  We increasingly ask the government to do what we should be doing. We ask our leaders to make the changes we need to make. We’re always one election away from our utopia even as we fail to understand that the world is always going to be the product, for good or ill, of its inhabitants. While our eyes are glued to the television the solution is in our mirror.

Until we get this, and act on it, everything will remain the same and the same means going nowhere.

A Church Rant…

~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ 3 Comments

There is no perfect job. There is no perfect country. There is no perfect, company, government, or politician. Even the people who love you will let you down. It takes a while to figure that out which is probably why people shouldn’t be allowed to vote until they’re at least 30 and had life kick them around a bit.

Yet I’d really like the Church to at least try. I know, I’m no great shakes either but I’m tired, life has taken its pound of flesh and I need some kind of refuge. I need a place where people are at least giving their highest ideals a chance, a place where the harshness, the cynicism, and the politics that make a mess of everything else are the exception and not the rule.

People tell me that I’ll get used to it, but I don’t want to. Some may think I’m naive and I am but I want some thing in my life to be innocent. Just once I’d like to hold out for the best, somewhere, somehow, some way, and I’m not ready to give up because I don’t want to be the kind of person who settles for scraps in everything while the clock keeps ticking.

On Love…

~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ Leave a comment

Saint Silouan on Love

The soul cannot know peace unless she prays for her enemies. The soul that has learned of God’s grace to pray, feels love and compassion for every created thing, and in particular for mankind, for whom the Lord suffered on the Cross, and His soul was heavy for every one of us.

The Lord taught me to love my enemies. Without the grace of God we cannot love our enemies. Only the Holy Spirit teaches love, and then even devils arouse our pity because they have fallen from good, and lost humility in God.

I beseech you, put this to the test. When a man affronts you or brings dishonor on your head, or takes what is yours, or persecutes the Church, pray to the Lord, saying: “O Lord, we are all Thy creatures. Have pity on Thy servants and turn their hearts to repentance,” and you will be aware of grace in your soul. To begin with, constrain your heart to love enemies, and the Lord, seeing your good will, will help you in all things, and experience itself will shoe you the way. But the man who thinks with malice of his enemies has not God’s love within him, and does not know God.

If you will pray for your enemies, peace will come to you; but when you can love your enemies – know that a great measure of the grace of God dwells in you, though I do not say perfect grace as yet, but sufficient for salvation. Whereas if you revile your enemies, it means there is an evil spirit living in you and bringing evil thoughts into your heart, for, in the words of the Lord, out of the heart proceed evil thoughts – or good thoughts.

The good man thinks to himself in this wise: Every one who has strayed from the truth brings destruction on himself and is therefore to be pitied. But of course the man who has not learned the love of the Holy Spirit will not pray for his enemies. The man who has learned love from the Holy Spirit sorrows all his life over those who are not saved, and sheds abundant tears for the people, and the grace of God gives him strength to love his enemies.

Understand me. It is so simple. People who do not know God, or who go against Him, are to be pitied; the heart sorrows for them and the eye weeps. Both paradise and torment are clearly visible to us: We know this through the Holy Spirit. And did not the Lord Himself say, “The kingdom of God is within you”? Thus eternal life has its beginning here in this life; and it is here that we sow the seeds of eternal torment.

Where there is pride there cannot be grace, and if we lose grace we also lose both love of God and assurance in prayer. The soul is then tormented by evil thoughts and does not understand that she must humble herself and love her enemies, for there is no other way to please God.

What shall I render unto Thee, O Lord, for that Thou hast poured such great mercy on my soul? Grant, I beg Thee, that I may see my iniquities, and ever weep before Thee, for Thou art filled with love for humble souls, and dost give them the grace of the Holy Spirit.

O merciful God, forgive me. Thou seest how my soul is drawn to Thee, her Creator. Thou hast wounded my soul with Thy love, and she thirsts for Thee, and wearies without end, and day and night, insatiable, reaches toward Thee, and has no wish to look upon this world, though I do love it, but above all I love Thee, my Creator, and my soul longs after Thee.

O my Creator, why have I, Thy little creature, grieved Thee so often? Yet Thou hast not remembered my sins.

Glory be to the Lord God that He gave us His Only-begotten Son for the sake of our salvation. Glory be to the Only-begotten Son that He deigned to be born of the Most Holy Virgin, and suffered for our salvation, and gave us His Most Pure Body and Blood to eternal life, and sent His Holy Spirit on the earth.

O Lord, grant me tears to shed for myself, and for the whole universe, that the nations may know Thee and live eternally with Thee, O Lord, vouchsafe us the gift of Thy humble Holy Spirit, that we may apprehend Thy glory.

An Entire Generation…

~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ 1 Comment

perhaps more has been raised with the idea that the validation of any idea, proposition, or theory is firmly rooted in the emotions. Evidence is irrelevant. Logic is unimportant. The precedents of history are meaningless. If I “feel” something then it is true to me and the larger culture is obligated to endorse and support my convictions. The problem with this is that emotions are unreliable, easily manipulated, and subject to frequent change. Of course they’re important but when elevated to the level of deity they are a compass with no true north, an anchor with no rope leaving the person who lives their lives solely on them perpetually adrift.

The Festival…

~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ Leave a comment

is over. The tents and tables and chairs are moved. Things that can wait will be taken apart as time provides. The dumpsters have been taken away.

Festivals are places where people plan together, work together. and serve together. They can raise vital funds and put a public face on the parish. My parish and its Middle Eastern Dancers made the largest paper in Minnesota. People working together build bonds with each other, their guests, and put their best foot forward.

Festivals are also a ton of work, months in the making, and often just pure sweat. A handful of people are driven to exhaustion one weekend a year because people want, no need, help to pay for their parish. Tempers build. Relationships are strained. Towards the end there are a lot of tired eyes and faces. Sigh,

I haven’t figured it out yet. I like all the good things and dislike all the bad stuff. Where does that leave me? Pretty much where I was before save for one important thing. Every festival we have reminds me of the fact there are people who truly cherish their church home and are willing to sacrifice and give of themselves in extraordinary ways to see that it survives. There’s a raw pool of energy there that hooked to the right things could change the world and in time by grace it will.