This beloved saint, the patron of parish priests and confessors, has a lot to teach believers the world over.

John Baptiste Vianney, affectionately called the “Curé of Ars,” is the Catholic Church’s patron saint of parish priests. If you travel across the United States, chances are you will find a parish named after John Vianney (1786-1859) in almost every diocese.

He was a champion of the poor as a Third Order Franciscan and a recipient of the coveted French Legion of Honor. Vianney’s remarkable sanctity and commitment to his small rural parish in France drew over 100,000 pilgrims each year. People journeyed from all over Europe to attend his Masses or sit in his confessional where he spent up to 16 hours a day hearing penitents.

Recently, I had the pleasure of visiting France, and decided to research this unique, holy pastor. John Vianney’s parish in Ars is situated along the Rhone River, a 30-minute drive from Lyon, in France’s magnificent Beaujolais wine region. Vineyards, lovely birch trees, elms and willows line the gently rolling hills.

Pope John Paul II himself visited Ars in 1986 at the 200th anniversary of John Vianney’s birth and referred to the great saint as a “rare example of a pastor acutely aware of his responsibilities…and a sign of courage for those who today experience the grace of being called to the priesthood.”

The pope also emphasized the numerous hardships John Vianney overcame in his life to become a great priest, the first being his expulsion from the Grand Seminary in Lyon because he could not master Latin. It was only through the goodness of Father Balley, a family friend and local pastor who personally tutored Vianney, that the bishop of Lyon finally agreed to ordain him.

Humble Beginnings

Ars is a tiny village, composed of one main street, a square and several quaint hotels. A statue in the main square depicts John Vianney alongside two shepherds, commemorating a true story: When Vianney’s bishop first assigned him to Ars, he got lost trying to find the town. Two young men tending flocks in the fields pointed him in the right direction. Vianney told them: “You have shown me the direction to my parish. I will one day show you the way to heaven.”

The tiny church originally dedicated to Saint Sixtus, where John Vianney said daily and Sunday Mass, still stands in the town center much as it did in his day. The interior, with only 20 rows of seats, more than accommodated the village’s populace. But with the renowned transformation of Vianney’s parish bringing pilgrims from as far as Eastern Europe, the church was often packed beyond its walls.

Inside the church are several side altars that John Vianney built over the years to some of his favorite patrons. St. Philomena, a first-century Roman martyr, and St. John the Baptist, Vianney’s own patron, are two of them. Canes and crutches still line the side altar to St. Philomena, as a result of numerous healings attributed to her by Vianney himself.

A very modest basilica that seats 200 people is now connected to the church where Vianney’s body rests in a glass coffin. In preparation for Pope John Paul II’s 1986 visit to Ars, a 400-seat chapel was built underground.

Love for People Reached Beyond Parish

According to the Acts of Beatification and Canonization, John Vianney’s gift as a confessor is what drew thousands of penitents to line up, sometimes three days in advance, to experience what many recalled as his ability to see into the deepest recesses of the soul.

Kneeling in Vianney’s confessional can be a mystical experience. You can almost see his face behind the grated partition. Part of his popularity as a confessor was his personal connection to all who went to him. It is clear that John Vianney saw the sacrament as integral to true conversion and one of the most powerful roads to reconciliation with God.

“His first glance seemed to reach into the very depths of your soul,” Christine de Cibiens commented during the Acts of Canonization in reference to waiting in line for confession.

In the Acts of Canonization there are countless testimonies of penitents being astounded by Vianney’s poignant insights into their personal struggles with sin. He reportedly knew remarkable details about their lives without ever having met them before.

Vianney’s humor was also noteworthy. When a Paris socialite visiting Ars complained of waiting in line for confession, he told her she would have to wait even if she were the queen of England. When Francois Dorel, a local plasterer, visited the church during a duck-hunting trip with his dog in 1852, Vianney spotted him and told him: “It is greatly to be wished that your soul was as beautiful as your dog.”

Vianney had a soft spot for the forgotten as well. La Providence, an orphanage for young girls that John Vianney started in 1824, can be found across the street from the church. At the end of the Napoleonic Era, France’s grave economic woes gripped the country. Countless women and girls roamed the streets selling themselves as prostitutes.

In the true spirit of St. Vincent de Paul, La Providence was John Vianney’s response to the social injustice of national poverty. The orphanage is a modest, white, two-story French country house where numerous young teenage and orphan girls in need of spiritual direction and shelter learned skills such as housekeeping from Catherine Lassagne, who headed the house.

One of John Vianney’s great pleasures was his noontime catechism to the orphan girls. In fact, once Ars became a hot spot for pilgrims, Father Vianney’s midday chat with the girls became a crowded affair, one that had to be relocated to the church.

Those sermons included a host of topics. He praised the beauty of prayer: “The soul should move toward prayer the way a fish should move toward water; they are both a purely natural state.” He advised on the love of the cross: “My children, it is in loving the cross that we find true peace, not running from it.” And he encouraged a love of the Eucharist: “There is no better way to experience the good God than to find him in the perfect sacrifice of the Mass.”

The parish of Ars was literally changed into a community of piety, prayer and heavenly peace through Vianney’s simple example of sanctity and love for his flock.

Pope John XXIII, in his 1959 encyclical Nostri Sacerdotii Primitias at the 100th anniversary of John Vianney’s death, called him a “model of priestly life and pastoral zeal which helped accomplish such dramatic results rarely seen in history.” A true ascetic, Vianney often fasted on a few potatoes a day and prayed sometimes through the night for the conversion of his parish.

Touring Vianney’s Home and Heart

John Vianney also had a great devotion to St. Francis of Assisi and, though a diocesan priest, he became a Third Order Franciscan because of his love for the poor. Today a Franciscan friary has been built on the parish grounds and the friars now say the Masses and hear the confessions of pilgrims at Ars.

When asked by people if they should give to the poor, John Vianney would often reply with a smile: “We will have to answer for why we did or didn’t give, and the poor will have to answer for what they did with what is given them.”

The presbytery where John Vianney lived is a two-story house with narrow stairs and wood floors. During a self-guided tour, you can view his bedroom, guest room and kitchen where he ate what little he allowed his cook, Madame Bibost, to feed him.

Vianney’s room is left in much the same way it looked when he was alive, with personal items such as his rosary  and pictures of numerous saints whom he admired hanging on the wall. Near his bed is a substantial bookshelf that includes two of his popular reading companions: his breviary and a book on the lives of the saints.

Something Wicked This Way Comes

Perhaps one of the most bizarre ingredients in the Process of John Vianney’s Canonization are witnesses testifying to “hauntings” of this presbytery building during the course of his assignment from 1824 to 1859.

Father Trochu’s extensive biography, borrowing from the Process testimonies, reports a plethora of incidents, which include Vianney’s own sister, Marguerite Vianney, testifying in a deposition that she once spent the night at the presbytery only to be awakened by strange rapping on the wall and table in her room.

When Marguerite lit a lamp, she found everything in order, but the noise continued after she returned to bed. Finally descending to the church where her brother was hearing confessions late in the night, she found the Curé, who said to her:

“Oh, my child, you should not have been frightened: It is the Grappin [pitchfork]. He cannot hurt you. As for me, he torments me in sundry ways. At times he seizes me by the feet and drags me about the room. It is because I convert souls to the good God.”

In the museum at Ars’s presbytery, probably one of the strangest relics is John Vianney’s old soot-covered bed frame, which was reportedly burned by the devil when his room caught fire on the morning of February 24, 1857.

According to Father Trochu’s book (from a deposition taken from Father Alfred Monin, a young priest), John Vianney was in the church hearing confessions when he was informed of the fire in his room. “The Grappin is very angry,” Vianney remarked. “He couldn’t catch the bird so he has burned the cage. It is a good sign. We will have many sinners this day.”

The strange stories of rectory hauntings, as well as John Vianney’s stringent fasts, which resulted in his emaciated appearance, aroused suspicion, adding to the growing struggles in his life.

Tattered Clothes, Unbreakable Spirit

Even John Vianney’s attire seemed to cause trouble. No slave to fashion, he dressed simply. According to several parishioners, his cassock, not unlike that of Francis of Assisi, was often torn or worn out. The bishop of Belly, when informed that Vianney had appeared in public without his sash, however, reportedly responded: “The Curé of Ars without a sash is worth any priest in my diocese with one.”

Still, the pilgrims came by the thousands, and many tepid souls were reconnected to the Church through Vianney’s confessional. To this day, France honors him as a giant of spirituality.

It is remarkable that a poor village boy, who couldn’t pass his exams in the seminary, later became a universal symbol of the Church’s clergy. John Vianney reminds us that the true love of Christ can powerfully manifest itself through guileless prayer and service.

Key Events in St. John Vianney’s Life

1786  Born in Dardilly, France. Lives as a poor farm boy and shepherd with his family.

1806  Begins formal seminary school very late because of family’s financial state. Does not excel in studies and is expelled because of his considerable difficulties with Latin.

1810  Is drafted into the French Army, but frail health forces him to miss his recruiting call.

1815 Sponsored by a local priest, he reenters the seminary and is ordained at age 30.

1818  Assigned to small parish of Ars as its pastor.

1824  Starts La Providence, a home for orphan girls.

1855  Is hearing 20,000 confessions a year. (This number will increase to nearly 75,000.)

1856  Receives the French Legion of Honor.

1859  Dies on August 4 (his current feast day).

1905  Beatified by Pius X.

1925  Canonized and named patron saint of parish priests.

He’s pastor of St. Francis Parish in war-besieged Aleppo. Here is an excerpt from his gripping daily journal.

I always wanted to study, from a young age and as a friar, but the Lord, through obedience and necessity, has brought me far from my studies. After having finished a licentiate degree in dogmatic theology in Rome, I registered for doctoral studies. My superiors said that I was greatly needed in the Custody, particularly in Syria (where 12 other friars minister).

In prayer and silence, I then made two requests of the Lord: to send me to a difficult place to do what I can and not allow me to see needs that I cannot meet.

In 2014, my superiors proposed to send me to Aleppo, a devastated city whose people had suffered greatly. I had been prepared to continue my studies in Italy, but the Lord’s will was not what I had thought. During my reflections and meditations before the Blessed Sacrament, I saw something completely different: the heart of the Good Shepherd was turned toward his sheep. Father Pierbattista Pizzaballa, then guardian of the friars in the Holy Land, asked if I was available. From my mouth came out the same reply I gave to the Lord many years ago, when I was 19 years old: “Here I am.”

The Daily Drama

Electricity arrives for half an hour a day. Recently we were without water for nine days in a row. On the fourth day, we turned on the big electric generator to pump water from our well and to open the doors to people. They immediately came to draw water to take home. Lacking water means that they cannot even eat. It makes an impression to see the elderly who have no one, and sometimes children, bringing empty and heavy containers, often along with young women and men, all lined up for a few liters of water.

The worst thing of all, however, is the bombs falling on homes. We are 150 meters away from an armed militia. Around our church, many bombs have fallen, almost as if militia members were aiming at us—and indeed it is so. In addition to those living in the houses, they kill young people, children, and others walking along the street.

There is a huge wave of suffering, despair, and bitterness because of all this death. In response, for a short time people run away, all trying to avoid this area; they go to other churches in different areas—even if those areas are not always safe—until this wave of sadness passes.

Then, slowly, normal life returns. This is what happened recently when a cylinder bomb fell very close to our church: it broke all our church’s upper windows, which fell upon the faithful during the evening Mass. A young person and a man, both Christians, died; they were buying things in a nearby store. There was the pain of the funeral, many people crying, the presence of all the clergy of Aleppo. With the passing of days, the fear subsides, and the people try again to live normally.

Several parishioners have addressed existential questions to me: “How long, Father, will we be put to death, one by one? How much longer can we remain here? Can’t you send them all away? Can’t you do something for us beyond what you have already done?”

The Importance of Presence

As a pastor, I am smoothing the way for Jesus to lead this mission. I act with compassion in my heart and allow that compassion to guide me. Perhaps the strongest sign that people perceive and love is that they know the parish priest, the friar, is ready to give even his life for them. Our people feel that this love is true: it is not merely words.

They feel through gestures and deeds that the only safety is to stand close together, go to church to pray, and follow what we tell them through the word of God.

The Experience of Self-Giving

I thought a lot about why the Lord wanted me here in Syria, about what this experience means for my spiritual path as a friar and a priest. By meditating, I have realized that God wants to give a pastoral shape to my ministerial life, allowing me to enter deeply into the pastoral life of these people. God wants me to experience this gift of the suffering sheep, that I have an extended experience with the suffering of God’s people in Syria. So I turn myself to God’s providence.

Although some had told me that going back to Syria would be too dangerous, that I should decline and finish school, I replied that I did not have the strength to refuse a request that, in my heart, I felt very strongly and deeply about. The strength of the Holy Spirit has also pushed me to say words that I had not even thought. I have felt a courage and a special sweetness; it is the sweetness of someone who succeeds in experiencing obedience even if he does not understand the reason.

Face of the Suffering Jesus

Responding to the needs we face requires immense courage. I think about the experience of the terrible cold that we have lived through this year, or the lack of water we have experienced for four years, periodically and without prior notice.

The people remain for a week, sometimes 15 days, without a drop of water in their homes. Thus, we friars have learned how to shower with a single liter of water, or to heat up only a modest amount, or shower with cold water (a terrible experience). This has made me think about how much waste we often generate, in terms of natural resources, electricity, water, and food. Once we recognize Jesus in these people, it becomes very easy to visit them and console them.

_{^{Women and children in Manbij, Syria, wait in a shelter while fighters of the Syrian Democratic Forces secure their village from Islamic State fighters.
(CNS photo/Rodi Said, Reuters)}}

Regarding food, we have decided to live as truly poor people and to experience concretely what it means to be hungry, to go without meat or fish, and to eliminate many unnecessary things; we try to live only with the minimum. One day a woman came, almost all her clothes in shreds, and told me she has two hungry young children who have had nothing to eat for days. She feared that the children would go out and steal or do anything to get food.

Only when we experience firsthand the hunger does the situation of the people become truly understandable. Perhaps what sustains us in these situations is remembering Jesus’ thirst on the cross; he was said to be thirsty, and see how he still suffers; it is not only thirst but also hunger, cold, and aching.

The Choice to Remain

Despite all this—together with many Christians who have already left the country, or would like to do so but do not have the means—there is a rooted sense of frustration. I have also met several individuals and families who have decided not to go away because, as they say, this is a holy land, irrigated by the blood of martyrs. Today they are strengthened by the merits of these great martyrs, and it’s up to them, and to us, to give our contribution for the faith of the future. To me this seems the most beautiful reason why many families remain.

I have lived in Aleppo since October 2014. I have never experienced, not even for a moment, the temptation to abandon my mission.

Stories of Intense Pain

The worst thing, no doubt, is not the house destroyed or damaged, but the fact that different people have lost their children or parents under the rubble. Many injured people are in clinics and hospitals, and it is unknown if they will survive.

A Christian family had a 15-year-old son who died under the rubble because of a missile that hit their house, completely destroying it. The father is now recovering in a clinic, and the mother, who still does not know the loss of her son, is in another clinic. She has a disfigured face and shattered facial bones; she has lost an eye, and it is not certain that she will ever see again. This woman needs to undergo a long series of surgeries. Every day, in homes and hospitals, we hear similar stories. We continually hear of emotional jolts that make us sharers in an intense pain that involves us totally as people. This is part of our ministry, “Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep” (Romans 12:15).

Various Forms of Assistance

We friars coordinate some 18 volunteers who provide various types of assistance. At times, in welcoming people, we face 25 difficult cases in a day. For the most part, they are individuals or whole families who need every type of concrete help.

A few days ago, we distributed 140 boxes of good-quality food: a box for each family, which can make a bit lighter the weight of their survival. This distribution will continue for all the 624 families of the Latin rite; we are investigating a way to extend this service to 300 Armenian Catholic families, who totally lack food. In fact, we try to help people belonging to other religious faiths.

An essential part of our task is in any case the priestly ministry, which consists of confessions and celebrating Masses, even in the afternoon and with daily homilies. We also dedicate ourselves to pastoral visits in homes and in hospitals to meet the sick. For those who are close to death, we administer the Sacrament of Anointing and bring viaticum. Many people contact us for spiritual direction.

Sometimes, at the end of a long day, when the Internet works, we answer messages, trying to tell the world something about us; thus, we feel less alone.

Our Relationship with Muslims

Many times, in our churches and communities, during the prayer of the faithful, we have prayed for those who bombard us, for those who have killed several of us, and we did this alongside families who have lost loved ones. Not only do we think of ourselves when we distribute food parcels, but also of them. We do not follow any other ways because only this is the teaching of Christ.

New Missiles in Our Area

On the afternoon of Saturday, January 16, around 4:15 p.m., five rockets were fired on our area, on houses.

I was in the parish office with some employees, while in the waiting area several people were wanting to speak with me. All of a sudden, we heard the explosion. The first missile exploded about 150 meters from the church; we held our breath and called on providence. Next, there were other bursts until another missile exploded even closer. Instinctively, we all stood up and started trying to figure out where it had fallen; I telephoned several families close to where we imagined it had happened. After those conversations, we followed the firefighters into the streets.

^{_{Syrian citizens clear streets in late April after shelling in Aleppo. Chaldean Catholic Bishop Antoine Audo of Aleppo says Christians are losing hope, but not faith, as fighting continues.
(CNS photo/Syrian Arab News Agency handout via Reuters)}}

Despite having several times seen the scenario of bombed-out homes, I was immediately struck by a profound bitterness and sadness. We do not get used to so much wickedness: hitting unarmed people in their homes, especially the elderly, children, or young people who are studying in their rooms.

I went into every house and prayed with the families amid an intense agitation. There were no deaths, but people were injured, some seriously. Most of all, a huge fear is seen in their eyes. In prayer, in every home, I thanked the Lord that people were not killed.

Listening to the Cry of the Innocent

Sometimes I laugh to myself because, as a lover of books and advanced theological studies, I find myself in Aleppo doing the work of a fireman, nurse, caregiver, and, of course, the work of a priest. This is very nice because this is a real experience of consecrated life, but also the laypeople feel called to serve and build.

One day, I stopped a man who was carrying buckets, some of which were very filthy. I offered to carry them, but he did not want to accept my help: “Father, this is likely to dirty your habit.” I answered that our habit is meant to be used in service to others.

A Franciscan Prayer

In Aleppo, then, living a true conversion is natural. In this I see the surgery of divine providence—for our journey as Franciscans throughout the Middle East, especially in Syria. I perceive how the Lord uses all this unexplained pain to bestow a greater good, a special grace. This is the grace of conversion and returning to our origins, according to the teaching of St. Francis, who recommended that the friars not possess anything, but rather remain free from everything in order to take care of their mission alone—with the same heart of the Father who awaits his sons.

We friars continue to pray and encourage people to have confidence: the Father, tender and merciful, will not allow his people to perish. Because with our bodily eyes we do not see a future, we close them and look instead with the eyes of the heart, the eyes of faith. We fix our gaze not on the towering and threatening waves around us, but on the serene face of Jesus walking on the water, watching us and encouraging us to walk with him, unafraid of sinking.

These entries are part of a larger collection of Father Ibrahim’s letters to fellow friars and to Italian newspapers. They are published as a book, in Italian, by Edizioni Terra Sancta (Milan). We are grateful to Greg Friedman, OFM, at the Franciscan Monastery of the Holy Land (MyFranciscan.org), in Washington, DC, for bringing this book to our attention. Pat McCloskey, OFM, oversaw the translation.

Pope Francis encourages us to build bonds between young and old.

Last December, as he marked his 80th birthday, Pope Francis quoted the ancient Roman poet Ovid to say that as old age slips up on us, “It is a blow!” The Holy Father laughed as he celebrated Mass with a group of elderly cardinals. “But also, when one thinks of it as a stage of life that is to give joy, wisdom, hope, one begins to live again, right?”

Just two days later, Pope Francis spoke with a group of young people on the other end of the life span and gave them homework. “Speak to your grandparents,” he said. “Ask them questions. They have the memory of history, the experience of living, and this is a great gift for you that will help you in your life journey.”

At this moment, and given the staggering changes to the coming population, it is especially important to pay attention to the pope’s focus on respecting our elders’ gifts and making sure our young people can learn from them. Every day until 2030, about 10,000 Americans will turn 65. In a few decades, one in five Americans will be over 65. Across the globe, the over-65 population will double in the lifetime of our children—from 7 percent in 2008 to 14 percent in 2040. Because we’re living longer but having fewer kids, by 2020, all over the world, little ones under the age of 5 will be outnumbered by senior citizens over 65—a disparity that has never occurred before in human history.

The implications are staggering for many reasons. Economics, politics, and health care come to mind, but what about ministry? Parishes and dioceses spend a lot of time talking about educating our children and bringing our young adults back to church, but are we taking our elders for granted? Do we give them the special attention they deserve?

Papal Lessons on the Value of the Elderly

Our recent popes have certainly been paying attention. There was that wonderful paradox of young people crowding St. John Paul II’s Masses, especially at the World Youth Days he established. It seemed that as he got older and more frail, St. John Paul II became even more of a hero to the youth.

In the next papacy, Pope Benedict XVI told residents at a London home for the elderly: “As advances in medicine and other factors lead to increased longevity, it is important to recognize the presence of growing numbers of older people as a blessing for society. Every generation can learn from the experience and wisdom of the generation that preceded it. Indeed, the provision of care for the elderly should be considered not so much an act of generosity as the repayment of a debt of gratitude.”

Just a few months before his surprise resignation, a weary and aging Pope Benedict XVI visited a Roman home for the elderly. In solidarity, he said to them (and reminded the rest of us):

“The wisdom of life, of which we are bearers, is a great wealth. The quality of a society, I mean of a civilization, is also judged by how it treats elderly people and by the place it gives them in community life. Those who make room for the elderly make room for life! Those who welcome the elderly welcome life!”

Pope Francis has picked up the topic handed off to him by his two papal predecessors, often preaching about bridging the generation gap. Writing about the elderly in “Amoris Laetitia” (191-193), Pope Francis asked us to include our elders in our families and parishes with a sense of gratitude and an awareness that older women and men are “a living part of the community.”

He quoted St. John Paul II in identifying the role older men and women play in “the continuity of the generations ” by their “charism of bridging the gap. ” Francis then bridged that generation gap himself, “Listening to the elderly tell their stories is good for children and young people; it makes them feel connected to the living history of their families, their neighborhoods, and their country.”

Biblical Lessons on the Gifts Age Brings

What lessons can we draw from the Bible about our senior citizens and the gifts they give us from their lives of faith? If we read the biblical stories and proverbs about aging well, we quickly learn that old age can be both a blessing and a burden. We find many stories that teach us the virtue of patience as well as the role that humor plays as a good companion who helps us along our faith journey. These stories encourage us to reflect on our experiences and gain wisdom and perspective from them.

Let’s take Sarah and Abraham, for example. When they learn that she is pregnant, both 99-year-old Abraham and 90-year-old Sarah burst out laughing. Abraham is so taken aback that he “fell face down and laughed as he said to himself, ‘Can a child be born to a man who is 100 years old? Can Sarah give birth at 90?'” (Gn 17:17).

Sarah overhears three mysterious visitors tell her husband that she will have a son, and she chuckles to herself, “Now that I am worn out and my husband is old, am I still to have sexual pleasure?” (Gn 18:12). There’s a delicious exchange where Sarah, suddenly frightened, denies laughing, to which God replies, “Yes, you did” (Gn 18:15). You can’t fool God. Our older heroes and heroines tell us that since we have a lifelong relationship with God, we can be very candid in expressing not only our gratitude and trust but also our disappointment and even anger with God. Watch Moses boldly bargain with God, for instance.

Moses was already about 80 when he encountered God at the burning bush. Even though God is on his side, Moses often seems to be trying to get out of doing things because he’s scared or overwhelmed. When God orders Moses to speak to the pharaoh, Moses questions whether the great king will listen to a nobody like him and if he’s even up to the task, wondering aloud to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?”

Moses tells God that he’s never been eloquent. He pleads, “If you please, my Lord, send someone else!” (Ex 4:13), which is how Aaron, his elder brother by three years, ends up as Moses’ spokesman.

As we follow Moses, time and again we find rather unheroic behavior: he complains, whines, pesters, and frets. Moses can come across as weak, fearful, and faithless. He laments that God is being harsh to the Israelites and himself: “Lord, why have you treated this people badly? And why did you send me? . . .You have done nothing to rescue your people” (Ex 5:22-23).

But here is also a wise man of bravery, surely born of his decades of experience, who is not afraid to bargain and negotiate with God. Once he sees results, Moses starts telling God what to do: the plagues of frogs and flies did their job, the patriarch informs the Lord, so you can get rid of them now.

As time passes, the ever-bolder Moses bargains more with God and even changes the divine mind. Furious that Aaron had made a golden calf and the Israelites had turned away from their deliverer, the Lord wants to punish them. Moses cautions God not to give the Egyptians a chance to say, “See, God wanted to kill them after all.” Or, to put it more bluntly: Moses warns God not to be a liar since God had promised Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to deliver the Promised Land and a long line of descendants.

“Turn from your burning wrath,” Moses tells God forcefully and directly. “Change your mind about punishing your people.” God listened: “So the Lord changed his mind about the punishment he had threatened to inflict on his people” (Ex 32:12,14).

A Quiet Place to Rest

We also find a certain contentment and wisdom that come from even difficult experiences and, more importantly perhaps, from reflecting on how God’s hand was at work—though times were tough in the biblical school of hard knocks. Here we’ll look not at a well-known biblical figure, but an unknown.

You may never have heard of Barzillai the Gileadite. In an obscure, short scene in 2 Samuel 19:32-40, we meet Barzillai, a worn-out 80-year-old man. The only other place in the Bible where Barzillai appears is in a brief reference when he helps David and his retinue by providing them with food as they flee from Absalom. Years later, he visits David, now king, in Jerusalem. David, mindful of Barzillai’s help all those years ago and respectful of his old age, asks him to stay comfortably in the capital.

Barzillai doesn’t consider the offer, asking in what we imagine to be a bemused, self-aware, reflective tone: “How much longer have I to live, that I should go up to Jerusalem with the king? . . . Please let your servant go back to die in my own city by the tomb of my father and mother.” King David graciously relents, gives Barzillai a kiss of peace, and sends him off.

We can learn a lot from this bit player in the epic stories of David. Barzillai just wants a quiet place to rest and to die at home. He doesn’t want to cut any deals with David, except to be left alone. Barzillai enjoys the wise perspective and very clear-eyed self-awareness that experience has brought him. He’s not fooling anyone, least of all himself.

Barzillai knows who he is. He offers us his example of perspective and open eyes with no illusions about the end of a long life.

Lessons for the Ministry of Uniting Generations

What might we do with these papal directives to honor our elderly and to encourage a good relationship between our younger and older sisters and brothers? How might these and other biblical lessons be our guides?

Throughout the Bible, and indeed in many cultures until our own modern times, households weren’t small units of parents and children. Grandparents, aunts and uncles, and cousins all lived together in multigenerational homes. But now we are more separated from each other, so we should make an effort to bridge and connect the generations.

What if seniors do some babysitting while parents go Christmas shopping? How about a shared movie night—parents not allowed?

Maybe your parish has an elder with grandkids far away or just the opposite. Pairing needs would help the senior and the young person. Perhaps children preparing for their first Communion and teens getting ready for Confirmation might do oral history interviews in retirement homes or with their own older relatives. The key question for the young person to the elder would be, “How did you live your faith at a moment of growth or challenge?”

Using the digital tools that they know better than adults, these young people could be dispatched to record and then discuss their elders’ memories of their introduction to the sacraments. We ask, “Where were you when 9/11 happened?” But do we ask of World War II, Korean, or Vietnam War veterans, “What was it like to receive the Eucharist in a battle zone?” How about connecting a would-be teacher with a classroom retiree? Or a budding nurse with an ER supervisor? The possibilities are endless and can provide our young people with spiritual guidance, professional insight, and practical advice.

We ask students to do service projects, which is admirable and indeed indispensable for opening their hearts. But what if they also recorded for history someone who marched in a 1960s civil rights protest? “What was the cost?” they might ask of their elders. “What difference did it make?”

In every case, we would be taking some good papal advice and linking it with biblical insights and pastoral sensitivity. We would be giving life to our elders by asking them to share the fruits of what they planted over the years. We would ground our young people in our past and shape them for the future. We would be building bridges.

Through prayer I began to sense the one I trusted was always with me, albeit now in a quieter way. 

The fog loomed so thick I could barely detect the street signs when I left for my weekly morning retreat of solitude and prayer by the Des Moines river. In spite of the blurred visibility, I kept on driving, confident the heavy mist would soon lift. It didn’t. By the time I arrived and parked my car facing the water, I could only see a white blanket of film in front of me. From past experience I knew the thick woods existed on the opposite bank and the attentive blue herons would be sitting on the branches waiting to snatch their breakfast.

And so I sat there, enveloped in a world of indistinguishable reality, knowing I could do nothing to alter the landscape. I could only enter into it and wait silently for the obscure view to change.

Ever so slowly the dense fog dissipated. Gradually the objects of the Cottonwood Recreation area took on shape and color. First, I dimly glimpsed the rapidly moving water, then the blurry outline of the trees on the opposite bank, and finally the herons patiently perched on the branches. As the air cleared, white terns flying low over the water and an eagle sitting on a rock surprised me with their presence.

When I drove away several hours later, I left with a new awareness of the dense fog being a powerful portrayal for the spiritual experience of losing a sense of relationship with the Holy One during difficult times of transition. As with physical fog, when our inner world is clouded, we can only perceive what we know of that relationship from past experience and wait with hope for what will be revealed. Like the unanticipated terns over the water and the eagle on the rock, positive surprises often reveal themselves when our inner sky finally clears.

Our prayer life is bound to be affected by what happens in our outer life. Events such as medical emergencies, divorce, and other relationship breakages, death of a loved one, loss of home or work, and many other unwanted experiences all affect our inner world in some way. Even events that seem positive can shift our inner landscape significantly, such as retirement, the last child leaving home, a new position at work, or a move to another city. Loss of any kind pulls us inward and often takes away our secure history of relating to the Holy One.

Undesired transitions elicit all sorts of unexpected emotional and mental responses. Anxious, uncertain, angry, bleak, boring, blaming, resentful, confused, doubtful, questioning, hopeless—these and a multitude of similar words describe the undesired developments that take over the sacred space we once regarded as a tender joining of our heart to the one heart.

If we do not resist the process, these transitional occurrences that conceal our mental vision and block our emotional connection with the Holy One serve to release our inner world of its egoic security and lessen our tight grasp on our supposed treasures.

The Fog Lifts

During my 40 years as a spiritual director, one of the most challenging and rewarding aspects of this ministry has been to witness the profound movement of spiritual growth that takes place when a person openly enters an uncomfortable period of uncertainty, a stage that leads eventually to discovering and accepting a deeper, broader, and oftentimes, quite different way of being in relationship with self, God, others, and the larger world.

Not being able to identify where we are or how we are interiorly is particularly disconcerting to the person who embraces a daily spiritual practice and yearns for union with the beloved. When foggy times arrive, instead of sensing this former state of consolation, an inability to do so emerges and with it a certain powerlessness to sense anything but an inaudible void. No striving, pushing, shoving, enticing, coercing, promising, crying out, resisting, insisting—nothing a person attempts— changes the dulled landscape of the heart.

I first came across the phrase “don’t know” and the necessity of this experience for spiritual growth in Stephen Levine’s Healing into Life and Death. Levine quotes a Korean Zen master telling students to “trust that don’t know.” Levine then develops the significance of this teaching:

It is the space in which all wisdom arises, in which alternatives are to be discovered. “Don’t know” is without all previous opinion; it does not perceive from old points of view, it is open to the many possibilities inherent in the moment. It doesn’t force conclusions, it allows the healing in…the difference between confusion and “don’t know” is that confusion can only see one way out and that way is blocked, while “don’t know” is open to miracles and insights.

This “not knowing” period finds its way into most everyone’s experience during difficult changes. It has been given a variety of names and metaphors. Liminality is one of the terms psychology uses to designate this transitional “don’t know” phase of personal growth.

A “limen” consists of the threshold or in-between space in a doorway, thus liminality suggests the place where one is neither in nor out. It contains the ambiguity that develops when we are standing in the middle of a juncture of significant change. Liminality implies a disoriented vagueness in which we wander about, searching for what seems out of reach. We lose a sense of clear identity, question what seems to be a dissolving relationship with what we once believed or experienced, and doubt the nearness of divine presence. All of which leads to a painful or uncomfortable review of the values and beliefs that have given our life meaning and direction.

My liminal times have been many and varied. Usually some unexpected and unwanted development shoves me on the threshold of uncertainty. Something as devastating as the sudden death of my 23-year-old brother sucked me into a bleak cave of sorrow where I could neither pray nor find any sort of consolation. Something as deliberate as moving from a beloved home where I lived for twenty years took my spiritual breath away and left me weary with the reality of impermanence. In each of my liminal times, I have rarely lost a belief that what I was going through was necessary for my ongoing spiritual transformation even though I could not find my way spiritually.

One of my experiences of this foggy spiritual realm occurred when I entered my early fifties. I had meditated with Scripture for 30 years, usually taking as my source the liturgical readings of the day. This form of meditation provided both insight and inspiration. Gradually, Scripture no longer worked as a source for meditation. I felt more and more distant and disjointed in prayer. No matter how persistent I was, I could not force even a remnant of satisfaction.

Over a year later my restless fog lifted when an intuitive spiritual director suggested I stop struggling to pray as I did in the past and be open to another way. With some fear and trepidation, I stepped across the threshold and went toward the unknown. Gradually, I discovered contemplative prayer, a silent meditation without words or deliberate thoughts. Slowly the fog lifted, and I began to sense again the one I trusted was always with me, albeit now in a quieter way.

St. Francis found the truth that leads to freedom in the truths of the Gospel, and the freedom he found was the freedom to love.

“As we forgive those who trespass against us,” and what we do not fully forgive, O Lord, make us fully forgive, so that for your sake, we may truly love our enemies and devoutly intercede for them with you, thereby rendering no evil for evil, but striving in you to do good to all. —St. Francis, paraphrase of the Our Father

In his writings and in the early biographies of St. Francis, he emerges as a person formed and informed by the Gospel of Jesus Christ. What does that mean? How do we even begin to live the Gospel, as he did, in our own time? We delight in Francis’s playfulness and in his joyful response to beauty and goodness, but like us, he also had to struggle with the harder questions posed by the Gospels. It is the implications of these more difficult questions that I would like to explore in this chapter on living the Gospel today.

One cold January night when the world seemed to lie in darkness, I sat down from a long day and turned to C-Span2, BookTV. One of the books that piqued my interest was James H. Cone’s, The Cross and the Lynching Tree. I’d not heard of it before, and as the book was being discussed, something awakened in me, and I saw how vacuous was the Christmas I had participated in a few weeks before.

Even though I was centered on the Christ Child and the Franciscan emphasis on the Incarnation, it was a sentimental Baby Jesus who filled my prayer and my imagination—not the baby who grew and matured and gave us the Sermon on the Mount which he then lived out and because of which he was put to death on the hanging tree of the cross. I was looking at the Baby Jesus of countless crèches and not at the babies who were slain by King Herod because of the Baby Jesus.

The Christmas I’d celebrated was in the midst of a frenzied commercialism equaled only by the despair of so many who had lost homes and jobs and dignity in support of an imperfect and money-corrupted government that insists on supporting an often selfish and corrupt corporate empire that controls the world. The implications of the connections between Jesus in the crib and Jesus on the cross, like someone hanged from a tree, are overshadowed and seem, at times, almost eradicated by the world that our greed, self-interest, and neglect of the poor and the disenfranchised have created.

St. Francis saw the connection between the crib and the cross. Brother Thomas of Celano, in his first life of St. Francis, said of the live Christmas crib which Francis began near the town of Greccio, in the very center of Italy:

His greatest care, his most vivid desire, his supreme resolution was to observe the holy Gospel always and in everything and with all vigilance and care, with all of his mind’s desire and his heart’s fervor, he wanted to follow the teachings and imitate the examples of our Lord Jesus Christ to perfection. He continuously recalled and meditated over His words and with very keen contemplation, he kept His works before his eyes.

The humility of the Incarnation and the charity of the Passion were foremost in his mind, so that he rarely wanted to think of anything else. And so we ask ourselves, what is to be done, what can we do to bring the Christ of the Gospel back into Christmas in a way that is more than a bumper sticker slogan that ends up being mainly a political football? How can we bring the Christ of the Gospel back into our daily lives so that we actually live out the teachings of the Gospel where we first learned the story of Christ?

In the quote above Brother Thomas says of St. Francis, “His greatest care, his most vivid desire, his supreme resolution was to observe the holy Gospel….” And this very Gospel emphasizes over and over again the imperative of reaching out to those who, like the man in Jesus’s parable of the Good Samaritan, have fallen among thieves, which in turn calls to mind the rapaciousness of those forces and structures that control our economy and of the many who are left by the wayside. How, then, can we today reach out to those fallen and to the thieves, as well? 

St. John the Evangelist tells us that the truth will set us free. But what does that mean? St. Francis found the truth that leads to freedom in the truths of the Gospel, and the freedom he found was the freedom to love. God’s truth imparts to us the freedom not only to grasp the truth that is being imparted but also the freedom from what previously had been preventing us from acting on that truth. The Gospel itself will show us not only how we are to discern the truth, but how the truth leads to the action we call love.

These five simple questions lead to honest prayer.

Growing older seems effortless, I discover, as I suddenly realize that my birthday is only weeks away. I have done nothing to hurry the hands of the clock. I have had no say in how one day melts into the next, or how months melt into one year, and then another.

Growing older, it seems, requires little more than showing up. But the inner work, the intentional work of maturing, challenges me. I am stretched in this process of aging well in attitude and in spirit. Sometimes I must let go of the old and embrace the new. Sometimes I must bring the old and the new into honest conversation—old presumptions and new expectations, taken-for-granted abilities and encroaching limitations, fading hopes and beckoning horizons.

The Work of Maturing

This inner work of maturing into midlife and beyond, I am learning, requires skill and grace as I navigate what is unknown and sometimes dreaded. Truth be told, this work of maturing requires that I cherish, at the risk of heartbreak, what fades before me. It challenges me to trust that which is unseen, yet promises to hold me up when I think I will fall. On some days, I admit, this work of maturing feels like a stretch. And it is. And it should be.

This interior work of maturing sometimes invites me into unexpected, deeper conversations with others—on the bigger topics, the painful topics. Sometimes that necessary, deeper conversation is between self and work.

And, if I am paying attention, I will be drawn into sobering and uncomfortable conversations between self and the world in which I live. When I am feeling honest and courageous, I find that this inner work of maturing invites me into deeper conversations with God. We call this meditations and prayer.

I am keenly aware of how easily I can bracket these deeper conversations for a later date. “Maybe when I can get away,” I convince myself, “when I have some uninterrupted time in that idyllic setting, when nothing is nagging for my attention.” Someday, maybe. I am also keenly aware of how skilled I am at fooling myself. Getting away for uninterrupted time to sit with the bigger questions is not going to happen. What I need in my overcommitted and maddeningly distracted life is oxygen for the next breath, and the next, here and now.

So I will share with you five simple questions that give me spiritual oxygen for each day and invite meaningful reflection on my life. You can think of these as the big questions in simple form, big questions that will lead to honest prayer.

What Gives Me Joy? I find that joy is the necessary thing, a reliable indicator of how well I am navigating along life’s uncertain surfaces. I describe joy as an interior stirring of the Holy Spirit when my life, my actions, my ways of being present in the world touch others in a way that blesses them and gives joy to God.

Joy is a preeminent sign of the Holy Spirit at work in my life. In short, joy is vocational. Therefore, I pay keen attention to what gives me joy. In that moment and in my reflection at the end of the day, I strive to name what has given me joy because I know I need to call it forth. Applying myself to the work for which I am gifted, listening intently and lovingly to a friend, making merciful space for a stranger, or engaging in creative activities that benefit others—these are gateways, for me, into the experience of joy. The joy I experience, in fact, is a participation in God’s joy.

When I can notice and name what gives me joy, I can more clearly notice and name my mission as it matures in this stage of my life.

What Robs Me of Joy? If joy is a sure sign of the Holy Spirit at work in me, then I need to pay keen attention to what robs me of it. This is not the same as being inconvenienced. When I feel robbed of joy, I feel a hole in my life, in my heart, where God’s joy and blessing had wanted to be.

What robs me of joy in this season of my life may be what gave me joy in an earlier season: an assignment, perhaps, that is finished but which I have not quite let go. What robs me of joy may be a persistent, stubborn pushback to an invitation to grow in new ways. What robs me of joy may be relationships, activities, or habits that distract me from giving myself wholeheartedly to my mission. Or what robs me of joy may be a pervasive sense of being vocationally, relationally, or existentially lost.

What robs me of joy may be a cold blanket of depression or feeling as though those closest to me do not want to know what I am experiencing or how I feel. Honestly naming what robs me of joy or drains me of life is a first and critical step toward a new vocational clarity, especially when I feel that I am heading into uncharted territory.

The antidote to feeling vocationally lost is not to pray harder. We probably have all prayed at some point: “Dear God, what do you want me to do? Just tell me. Speak plainly.” The answer to such a prayer is always the same: do what gives you joy and that blesses others in some way. God gives us such astonishing freedom.

What Breaks My Heart? When I feel robbed of joy, I feel a hole in my life. A broken heart is different. A broken heart more painfully bespeaks something in my life or in my world that truly is broken, sometimes beyond repair.

What breaks my heart hurls me into the land of death, where dying seems so final, the tomb so thoroughly sealed—the land where what is new cannot be felt or even imagined. Embedded within the question “What breaks my heart?” is the challenge to live a life that is intentional enough, and uncluttered enough, to allow heartbreak to register. And why admit heartbreak? Why would I not fortify against it?

Eventually, heartbreak is the price we pay for loving with costly love. It is not convenient love or love that assures us of love in return. Jesus loved with costly love. And look at the price he paid. He died with a broken heart.

I admit, I easily become numb to the daily newsfeed of unrestrained human violence and human anguish, numb to the massive loss of hope amid the rubble. I also become numb to the beautiful stories of unimaginable courage and resilience in this complex 21st-century world.

Many of us avoid heartbreak by structuring our lives so that which is most human, and therefore most vulnerable, can never find a way into our overstuffed schedules. Frankly, a broken heart is not efficient; it is a drag on personal productivity.

Yet, if I am an apostle of the Lord, I can expect that certain things will break my heart but also spur me to moral action. Certain things will break my heart precisely because they first break the heart of God. The heart sealed against heartbreak, I discover, is a heart sealed against grace. To defend the integrity and power and beauty of my own humanity and that of others, I need to be conscious of, and able to name, what breaks my heart.

What Am I Resisting? As a maturing human being, and even more so as one who is anointed in the Holy Spirit, the very quality of my life depends on my openness to God’s invitations and my responsiveness to them. Vocationally, God’s invitations are no small thing. Nor are they rare or usually for someone else. God’s invitations, I have discovered, will stretch me and challenge me. They will make me go where I had not thought to go and strive for what I assumed was beyond me. Resisting God’s invitations comes so easily. It’s like the instinct for self-preservation, arguing for the status quo, preferring to play it safe and not rock the boat.

I can stubbornly insist on staying on a road that clearly is leading me away from my mission. Or I can be on the right road but only grudgingly inch my way forward with the brakes on. Because, in perfect love, God will never coerce, I can resist opportunities to grow toward my fuller self-in-God. But why would I settle for living with such a lack of freedom?

I can run, I have learned, but ultimately I cannot hide from the One who is passionate about my life, my joy, my fruitfulness, passionate about calling forth the dignity and inherent beauty of my maturing life. In fact, I can exhaust myself in my resistance to grace. But why would I want to resist grace? So, vocationally, I need to be honest with myself about what I am resisting in this stage in life. I need to gently, mercifully expose my resistance to the light and name it.

What Am I Accepting? Accepting anything—not grudgingly but humbly, gratefully—is a mature, courageous act. Accepting the unbidden invitations of a maturing Christian life has everything to do with mission, and what I call missional fruitfulness.

And so, it is important to be clear about what I am now coming to terms with, accepting, and even embracing, although the grace of the upside may be slow to reveal itself. At this later stage in my life, I may finally be accepting that I always have been—and always will be—a good B-plus student, that I will never be as polished or witty or acclaimed as I think I should be.

I may be accepting that opportunities of earlier years are gone, that my physical strength is ebbing, that my mental edge is growing dull, or that my zest for life these days seems a little flat. I may be accepting limitations or personal poverties, which seem inherently unfair: a poverty of health or mobility, a poverty of education or experience, a poverty of connections, friendships, or love.

Or I may be accepting the astonishing reality that I am, in fact, gifted enough right now to accomplish certain good for the few whose lives I will touch in whatever time is left to me. I do not need to read one more book, take one more class, or acquire or perfect any more skills in order to be enough for the assignment. I am good to go, right now, just as I am.

The mere act of accepting my conditions—whether undesired poverties, actual readiness, or even unbidden riches—gives God something to work with. The quality of my life and the way I reflect on it indeed matter as I mature. “Come close and declare; let them take counsel together,” the Lord God urges (Is 45:21). It is good, I discover, and humbling, honest, and spiritually helpful to sit daily in counsel with the Lord God.

This is the same Lord who walks humbly, so that I might learn how to walk humbly, too, with God hidden beside me, and in me, as I walk through my small patch of this 21st century world.