It's the Way of Things…

~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ Leave a comment

we become whatever we consume through our mouth, through our eyes, through our emotions, and through our senses. Whatever we fill ourselves with overflows out of us. Whatever is put inside of us changes us into its own nature. It’s why the eucharist is so important and why fasting can actually make us better and stronger

As Lent draws near I’m thinking about what I’ve been feeding on and how that’s affected me and more importantly how that can change for the better. No answers yet but the TV is on a lot less.

Orthodoxy and Yoga…

~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ Leave a comment

I will actually give you another of my favorite examples, which is taken from the saint of our parish, St. Ephraim the Syrian. He has a beautiful image which tells us what kind of effort we are to make. St. Ephraim sees the human person as the “harp of the Spirit,” this lovely musical instrument. To play well the music of the Holy Spirit, we need to be clean: the harp needs to be clean and well-tuned, and its strings neither too tight nor too slack. That is our spiritual effort, the ascesis, all the things that are recommended in the Orthodox Church and the Orthodox tradition of fasting, almsgiving, repentance, thanksgiving, prayer: all these are means to achieve the tuning. That is what I see synergy is: a redirection of energies God-wards so that God’s energies can flow into us and transform us. I hope that answers some of the criticism.

Read more here…

Living La Vida Decaf…

~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ Leave a comment

On Sunday, February 5, I went decaffeinated. Not by choice. It just happened.  Apparently they don’t give throwback Mountain Dew to people with jittery hearts. Thus the end. No tea, coffee, pop, those little cans of whatever they put in to make you get up and go. They bounce your heart around so if it has caffeine, forget it.

Now I’m just out of step with things. I’m the guy in slow motion while the world keeps spinning faster. Everyone around me is jacked up and I’m the one up to my knees in mud. We’re fueled by the stuff, the energy drinks, the coffees, the pop, and I was right in there. When I was traveling to LaCrosse for church I’d have one Monster on the way down and another on the way back. Then pop in between. Diet pop to be sure but still full of the juice. I was in the race, scratching with everyone else for. perhaps, those few extra minutes of awake that were supposed to make the difference between success and failure. I don’t know.

Now I’m living la vida decaf. I’m tired when I’m supposed to be and sometimes when I’m not. I’m sure my ticker is happy that my foot is off the soda accelerator but I’m still trying to catch up. So this is how people lived when they didn’t have Red Bull. The day just did what it wanted to do and you floated along as you could. Sun rise, sun set, work hard, go to sleep. Nothing buzzing, nothing fluttering, nothing wide awake at a time when nature normally says “Go to bed.”

I’m in the eye of the storm, watching the world swirl around me. It’s good because its calm, and quiet, and a lot less jumpy. Yet in a 24 /7 world I’m feeling like a throwback, like someone who just doesn’t get it, an upright bass at a Metallica concert. Some time before early February I had energy to spare and now I bounce along in the current. Maybe this is part of what Jesus meant when he said “Come unto me all you who are heavy laden and I will give you rest.”  It just takes some getting used to.

A Thought from the Pope…

~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ Leave a comment

Source: Catholic Education Resource Center| Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI)

The church will become small and will have to start afresh more or less from the beginning.

She will no longer be able to inhabit many of the edifices she built in prosperity. As the number of her adherents diminishes . . . she will lose many of her social privileges. . . As a small society, [the Church] will make much bigger demands on the initiative of her individual members….

It will be hard-going for the Church, for the process of crystallization and clarification will cost her much valuable energy. It will make her poor and cause her to become the Church of the meek . . . The process will be long and wearisome as was the road from the false progressivism on the eve of the French Revolution — when a bishop might be thought smart if he made fun of dogmas and even insinuated that the existence of God was by no means certain . . . But when the trial of this sifting is past, a great power will flow from a more spiritualized and simplified Church. Men in a totally planned world will find themselves unspeakably lonely. If they have completely lost sight of God, they will feel the whole horror of their poverty. Then they will discover the little flock of believers as something wholly new. They will discover it as a hope that is meant for them, an answer for which they have always been searching in secret.

And so it seems certain to me that the Church is facing very hard times. The real crisis has scarcely begun. We will have to count on terrific upheavals. But I am equally certain about what will remain at the end: not the Church of the political cult, which is dead already, but the Church of faith. She may well no longer be the dominant social power to the extent that she was until recently; but she will enjoy a fresh blossoming and be seen as man’s home, where he will find life and hope beyond death.

A Definition of Holiness…

~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ 1 Comment

Holiness is not something that is just about the saints, whose icons we venerate and whose lives we read about. Holiness is better understood as wholeness, made whole, or healed. We seek healing from the darkness and estrangement that we’ve inherited as a result of the fall. We seek out the God of righteousness Who alone can heal us of our infirmity. As Christ increases in us, our fallen nature decreases. In monastic obedience, the self is replaced by the will of God and the ego is trampled down.

Thoughts…

~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ 1 Comment

How do I love you God?
Not tolerate, not obey, but love?
Mystics clamor for you. I do my duty.
They say when You meet them all is well and soul and source are one.
I do my duty.
I know in my mind. I believe in the facts.
I trust the witnesses. I obey the commandments.
But do I love?
I have no idea.
And that which is more escapes me,
somehow I know many things
but not Abraham’s bosom.
How do I love you God?
Help me to know so that solace will not escape me.

Prayers by the Lake…

~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ Leave a comment

You pour out light over the darkness, Lord, and colors and shapes emerge. You bend Your face over the abyss, whose name is Nothingness, and the abyss tries to depict the beauty of Your face in shadows. All creation expresses You the way the abyss dreams of You.

My lake is also beautiful while the peaceful face of the sun remains bent over it. And all those who pass by praise the beauty of my lake. But as soon as the sun hides its face, my lake becomes dark and abysmal. And no passerby ever offers any praise for the lake except in the presence of the sun or the sun’s radiant companions.

The face of the abyss intoxicates those who do not see the sun bent over the abyss. The beauty of things begins when an onlooker bends his face over them. There is no mirror if there is no face in front of the mirror. But even a face in front of a mirror means nothing if there is no light.

In the light of Your face I pay no attention to any creature. Without You, creatures and I would not be mirrors of one another, but rather darkness, and an abyss, and an opaque chill.

Creation distorts Your beauty the way a dream distorts reality. Creation torments me just as dreams torment me. For what is creation except dreams of Your inexpressible Reality?

My neighbors say: “We have dreamed beautiful dreams.” The universe is my witness when I tell you that you are more beautiful than your dreams. The universe also dreams, and cannot dream enough about its own beauty. O my sleepy universe: as long as a dream dreams a dream, one dream is afraid of another, even if one dream seeks an interpreter and comforter in another. Who is prophesying to whom: the dream to reality or reality to the dream?

O my beautiful universe: dream of Reality and Reality will tell you everything. Admit the Reality, of which you are a dream, and you will awaken, and will no longer ramble about beauty, but will be Beauty. There is only one Reality and only one Beauty, and it is the reason for your dream.

Do not tell me, children, about the beauty of the stars. If the Lord withdrew Himself from the stars, your mouths would be struck dumb. Stand in the thick darkness by my lake and try to sing to it. Truly you will be struck dumb and remain silent until the sun dawns, until the sun pours its beauty over the lake and gives your speechless throat its voice.

Your face pours beauty over all creation. The universe swims in Your beauty as a boat swims in the sea. And when You bend over cold ashes, the ashes are transfigured and receive a face.
Bring my heart to its senses, my Lord, so that it may not be captivated by mortal beauty but by You, my Immortal Beauty.
O my only Beauty!
Allow me to see Your Face, just more and more–of Your Face.

Listening to the Radio…

~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ Leave a comment

a few days ago and a speaker stated that if God had no ability to judge than evil would have the last word. The idea that God can judge is, of course,  something we avoid thinking about most of the time but for those who are seeking righteousness it really is the final granting of their wish. Only the arrogant, the proud, the self-sufficient, the people whose hearts are full of darkness need fear it, for the rest it is their vindication.