You're not crazy

Sometimes all we really need to hear is, "You're not crazy."

I had a student come in and talk to me after school.  She described a few things and seemed worried about my response.  I told her a couple times that I didn't think she was crazy.  The visible relief in her face and whole person was incredible.

Fear likes to keep us locked inside, convinced that speaking or revealing the truth would make us appear inferior.  We worry about what others would think and we worry about appearing vulnerable.  Trapped inside, fear can quickly become the ruler.

Satan seeks to destroy true peace and make us fearful, anxious, and worried.  Speaking truth into that darkness can begin to set us free from our self-made or at least self-perpetuated prison.

You're not crazy.  Now tell Jesus about your fear and go in peace.

Rise and Take Up Your Mat

"Do you want to be healed?"

Of all the questions Jesus asks in the Gospels, this is one of the ones that I find most provoking.  The setting is Jerusalem and He is speaking to a man who has been paralyzed and lying on his mat for 38 years.  My sarcastic nature wants to respond to Jesus with raised eyebrows and a retort of, "Of course he does!  He has been lying there for THIRTY-EIGHT YEARS!"  The answer seems obvious to me.  This provoking question is why this is one of my favorite passages to discuss with my sophomores.  (I have many favorite passages...I'm not certain how many, but a lot.  Favorite depends on the day.)

Why would Jesus waste the time to ask this poor man if he wanted to be healed?  From outside the situation, we assume that healing is what is desired.  In this situation, the man desires healing and he finds it in Jesus Christ.  However, Scripture is the living Word of God, which means that there is something in this passage for me in 2015.  Jesus is presenting the same question to me today: Do you want to be healed?

One of the highlights of teaching is when you can, as an entire class, deeply enter into the passage.  Their fidgeting ceases and the room feels still.  This is where the encounter happens, I believe.  The class is led through a lecture/conversation that is like the following.  We are quick to realize the necessity of physical healing---few would have a broken leg and drag themselves around on it, insisting that it will get better or that it is no big deal.  Yet we do this with our internal wounds all the time.  Jesus pinpoints our wound and asks as the gentle God that He is, "Can I heal this?"  He asks if we want it.

As a class we discussed possible reasons why the paralytic might be scared of being healed.  Perhaps he wonders if the healing will last, maybe he doesn't want to get his hopes up that it could happen, and perhaps he will walk oddly or trip when he walks.  I asked them in what was his identity rooted.  After being a paralytic for 38 years, it would make sense if that was how he primarily thought of himself--as someone who couldn't walk, someone who felt abandoned by God.  Yet to be healed would mean that his identity must change--he would no longer have the characteristic he used to define himself.  That change could be frightening.  We began to see how the man is brave to seek healing from Jesus.  In seeing the importance of the paralytic accepting Jesus' healing, we saw how we also needed to embrace the healing that Christ offers.  Ours may not be a visible, physical healing, but rather an internal one.  Yet if the Healer desires to heal, shouldn't we embrace that?

We live in a wounded culture.  I hate that we are so wounded, yet I love that sometimes I am able to point to this woundedness and proclaim, "In the beginning, it was not so!"  We are longing for wholeness and perfection because we were made to desire that.  But first we need to see ourselves where we are---we are the paralyzed man, lying vulnerably before the Giver of all good gifts, being asked if we want to be made whole.  May we have the courage to say 'Yes' and to embrace all that will come of being healed, particularly if it means coming to a deeper understanding of our identity as a child of God.

"Rise, take up your pallet, and walk." Jn. 5:8

Duc in Altum: Classroom Missionary

I've spent the last two months deciding if I would continue teaching next year.  There were pros and cons on both sides and I couldn't tell which side was weightier.  Even though my mother insisted, repeatedly, that I should sit down and make a pros and cons list, doing so didn't seem to really help.  The benefits and drawbacks of either decision seemed incapable of being captured in words to jot on one side of a t-chart.  I couldn't go with my gut because it, too, was conflicted.  In the end, I chose to stay and while I'm still uncertain if that was the correct decision, it was a decision and I finally made it.  A part of me felt sadness to pass up a great service opportunity and another part feels concern that next year I will be climbing the walls of my classroom, wondering what momentary weakness caused me to sign another year of my life away.  Despite these concerns, I am beginning to make plans about what this next year of life will look like.  As a teacher, life stills comes about on a yearly schedule, broken neatly into semesters with lovely summer and winter breaks.

Last semester I was growing more and more convinced that I would love to not teach next year.  It wasn't one thing in particular, but it was a bunch of things all wrapped up together.  Yet after applying for and being offered (even if only temporarily) another job, the joys of teaching became clearer to me.  The things that I would miss stood out in my mind and I didn't even want to think of telling my department head that I would be leaving or cleaning out my classroom.  Yet I didn't want to stay just because I didn't want to do those things.

As frustrating and foolish as students can be at times, they can also be hilarious, witty, deep, encouraging, and beautiful souls.  Yes, they complain, test my patience, seem incapable of following simple directions, make me question my own sanity, and relentlessly insist on moving the far row of desks next to the wall so they have a backrest.  Yet at times we laugh together, we can reach a beautiful depth at times, we develop a relationship that is unlike any other relationship I have formed before--one of student and teacher.  Over the past three years I've grown more comfortable with my students.  Today I gave a test to my seniors and after they were finished, I couldn't help but look at them and feel pleased.  We aren't best friends, but it is my class and we do have a unique dynamic.

I don't know how long I will teach for and how long I want to teach for depends on the day.  In the midst of my crisis (the I-have-only-two-days-to-know-if-I-am-going-to-sign-my-contract-and-I-don't-know-what-I'm-doing crisis), I called my sister.  She asked me questions that I didn't know how to answer about my personal desires and feeling peace.

"Answer this as quickly as you think of an answer," my sister told me.  "If you could do anything, what would you do or be?"
Pause.
"A missionary."

Then she read me something.  At first, I wasn't quite certain what she was reading me.  After a little while, I realized she was reading me one of my very first blog entries.  "Young," first-year teacher Trish was writing about how she was a missionary of the classroom and how even as she longed for greater missions, she was called to be a teacher and minister in the seeming mundane aspects of life.  And that young teacher inspired me.  As my sister read my writing, I felt inspired to truly take up the mission of being a teacher and to live it with a radical zeal that I had forgotten.  At some point I had begun to resign myself to having a job rather than being a missionary.

So even in the midst of uncertainty, I am starting to look forward to another school year (of course, after my (I believe) well-deserved summer break) to be a missionary in a high school classroom.  Because Christ instructed us to put out into the deep and I intend to cast my nets into the high school ocean.  Because the harvest is abundant and the laborers are few.  Because the Church needs the youth.  Because Jesus says there is a millstone with my name on it if I fail to bring the little ones to Him.  Because, for some unknown reason in God's inscrutable Will, I am called to teach.

The Triduum

The Triduum is an experience for all of the senses.  While I've never been anything but Catholic, I cannot imagine another church matching the beauty of the Triduum and the way the liturgies invite us into the Pascal Mystery.

Holy Thursday begins with joy and beckoning us to the table of Our Lord's Last Supper.  I can imagine Christ bending low to wash my feet as the priest in persona Christi stoops to wash the feet of the young men called forward.  After the Eucharistic prayer, I approach the priest to receive from him my Lord, the Word made flesh and remaining in the appearance of bread and wine.  Tonight, I am an apostle from another century, experiencing the Last Supper and encountering Christ in a tangible way.  My senses are alive as the Eucharistic procession weaves its way around the church.  An incense thurible fills my nose with the sweet, rich odor I link only to the Eucharist.  The priest is embracing Jesus as we sing Pange Lingua Gloriosi.  Our Lord is carried to an altar and the faithful are invited to come and wait with Him.

I fulfill my role of a disciple well.  In the intimately dim chapel, I wait with Jesus and I drift off to sleep at times.  Can I not wait one hour?  Apparently not.  It is beautiful to see the others in adoration, praying with Jesus before He is hidden from us, when the stark reality of the Pascal Mystery will become more obvious.  Then the time of waiting in the Garden is over and we depart in silence.  Talking seems inappropriate.  Nearly anything seems inappropriate on such an evening.

Good Friday is spent anticipating and remembering the Passion of Jesus.  The simplicity of the Good Friday service is unnerving and striking.  I can always feel an ache in my heart.  The tabernacle is left open and I am continually reminded that He is gone.  Approaching the cross so as to venerate it, I am questioning where to kiss Jesus.  My stomach feels the hunger of fasting and I kiss the crucifix with the kiss of Judas, with the kiss of John the beloved.  Good Friday fills me with a longing and with a sorrow.  The rest of the world seems to be continuing at its typical pace but I cannot carry on as normal.

The waiting of Holy Saturday is difficult.  Christ has been crucified and laid in the tomb.  He has yet to rise, though.  Fasting is not obligatory yet the feasting of Easter is still premature.  We wait.  Waiting is perhaps the focal point of Holy Saturday and it makes it all the more difficult.

Yet the Easter Vigil will arrive with its dark and quiet entrance.  A fire lit and from it, a flame passed to light all the candles in the darkened church.  There is a stillness of expectation.  We know the story, we know Christ will rise, and yet we are waiting for it to be lived out, to be fulfilled in this sacrifice.  Darkness turns into light.  As a church we are led through salvation history, to hear how God remains ever-faithful and is responding to the longings and yearnings of His people in an unforeseen way.  We are reminded that we are a part of something far larger than ourselves or our parish.  We are united to a Church that is truly universal and timeless.  Joy mounts in my soul as we continue through the Mass. As the beautiful music announces a living reality in my life: Christ has risen.  He rose 2,000 years ago and He rises today in my heart.  The highest feast of the Church is celebrated with all the pomp owed to a King who mounts a cross as a throne and gives Himself as the food for the wedding banquet.


Easter Sunday is bright and joyful, a renewal of the joy felt the night before.  While Easter Vigil tends to hold a heavy joy for me, Easter Sunday is a light, uplifting joy.  The sun must shine on such a day and if it does not, the joy of the feast becomes a light of its own right.  The lilies decorate the Church and we sing words that we have refrained from saying for weeks.  It adds a depth to the joy that would not be found if one simply arrived at Easter without the Lent.  The Easter Sunday celebration continues for the Easter Octave, each day the Church repeating the joy of the resurrection.  Liturgically, we celebrate the Easter Mass repeatedly.  We cannot move on, we must make it known that this is the highest of all celebrations.

The Triduum and Easter season are for all of the senses.  Breathing in the incense from the Eucharistic procession, waiting with Jesus in the Garden, saying the words of the angry crowd as Jesus is condemned to death, kissing the cross of Our Lord, waiting as Jesus is held in the tomb, lighting our candle from the Easter candle representing the light of Christ Himself, and singing with exultation the joy central to the Catholic faith: we worship a God made man who rose from the dead.  The Triduum calls us to live out the final days of Christ and to enter into the mystery by which we are saved.  In a beautiful combination of music, art, sights, and sounds, the Church transports us to the time of Jesus Christ.  Or, perhaps, she causes us to acknowledge that the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus are truly timeless events that we experience now through the beauty of the Body of Christ, the Church in her tri-fold magnificence.