…That They May All Be One

by Jen Owens

I have a confession to make. I have never responded well to the image of Jesus that I find in the Gospel of John. There’s something strange to me about John’s Jesus. He seems almost ghastly at times, with not enough humanity to plant his feet squarely on the ground; to the contrary, he almost floats above it, touching down only long enough to call himself cryptic things like the Way, as Becky Fullan reminds us in her essay in From the Pews in the Back. And he often seems to know the ending of the story before the rest of us do. I don’t know about you, but I can’t stand it when people are like that—when they’ve already seen the movie, already read the book, already heard the punchline, and hang it over your head, almost tauntingly. None of this fits with the image of Jesus that often guides my spirituality—the Jesus whose mother proclaimed the Magnificat, the Jesus with a real body that sweats and gets hungry and grows tired, the Jesus who begins his public ministry by proclaiming freedom to all who are bound, the Jesus who cares about other people’s bodies and their most basic needs in the Beatitudes, the Jesus who is one with all our brokenness at the cross, the Jesus who rises again and eats and eats and eats some more with his friends.

As a result, when I came across this Sunday’s Gospel passage, I was predisposed not to love it. But something shifted in me as I read. The earnestness of Jesus’ prayer moved me, in a way wholly unexpected. Maybe it’s because our church feels so divided for such sound reasons. Maybe it’s because people I care about are struggling with leaving. Maybe it’s because I relate to them more than I want to admit. Maybe it’s because I am regularly reminded of how deeply my own brokenness affects the way I walk in the world.

Whatever the reason, the Jesus of this passage reminded me that he does not turn his back to the sufferings of his people, even if the institutional wing of one of his churches chooses to emphasize the “pastoral instead of the political,” as though the two are entirely unrelated. He reminds me of the individual priests and nuns and pastoral workers who stand with those the sex abuse scandals have affected most directly. He reminds me that he is with us in our pain, that he feels it, too. He reminds me that healing can come to even the most broken world, the most broken church, the most broken community, the most broken family, the most broken person, in body and spirit alike. He reminds me that there is still hope and that the risen Christ is present in that hope.

Pray for Us

by Jessica Coblentz

I had forgotten the Litany of the Saints. When I heard the familiar melody at the Easter Vigil a few weeks ago—I realized I had forgotten all about it.

It was a strange oversight. I had so eagerly told my friends of the Easter flame that would burn and crackle in the dark sanctuary, the bells that would clamor during the Gloria, and the new baptisms and the renewal of our own—but I had said nothing of the names we would chant together. Nothing of the familiar faces that would appear in my mind as I called out these names—images from famous paintings or from the descriptions embedded in epic hagiographies. Nothing of the silent prayers I would offer them at the end of the refrain when the lyrics would cease for a moment and I would be left wordless, staring up at the ceiling with hope.

When I heard the familiar notes of the opening bars, I wanted to drop to my knees. Having grown up in a church without kneelers, I am not one to genuflect on a whim. Yet, as I began to recite these familiar names and recall the great lives that comprise my church, the immensity of the tradition came upon me. I needed this.

The Questions That Haunt Me

Dangriga, Belize, before sunrise

by Jen Owens

Questions follow me. Sometimes they’re like little children, calling after their parents as they go about their days, asking them to explain why things happen the way they do. Other times they’re like a knowledgeable teacher who uses the Socratic method to bring me to a conclusion that leads me to further questions of my own. I find God in these questions. They help me make sense of my life, of my faith, of the world around me, and I am ever grateful for them.

But lately, the questions that pursue me are more like spectres, like persistent ghosts who need to resolve something from their former lives, and they haunt my waking hours and my resting ones alike. I can only function this way for so long before I start to feel like the start of the new day is just a continuation of the restless night before. These questions, the ones that haunt me, take a while to find the words that give them shape. Sometimes they feel like an absence, like an emptiness begging to be filled.

I started out the Easter season with a clear question, focused and singular. What does it mean to be a people of resurrection? In reflecting on that question—in my studies, in conversations with family and friends, in public and private acts of prayer—again I find myself haunted. This time was different, though. The urgency that accompanied my Lenten prayer has returned, but it is so all-encompassing that I don’t feel like I can escape it.

Venerating the Crucified People

by Jen Owens

I almost didn’t go to the evening service at my parish on Good Friday this year. I had attended the Stations of the Cross and had led musical worship at the Seven Last Words service that afternoon, and the practicalities of the everyday worked together to mount a pretty good argument as to why I deserved a night in to rest. Maybe I should just chalk it up to Catholic guilt, but something made me feel like it wouldn’t be quite right, like I wouldn’t be quite right if I didn’t attend the evening service.

I slid into the pew next to my spiritual director just a few moments before the service started, and I noted an absence. Throughout this Lent, there has been an urgency to my experience of prayer, especially when I am worshipping alongside my community. I’ve been praying for healing and reconciliation, in myself, in my family, in the communities to which I belong, in my church, and in the world. And every day the concerns seemed more pressing than the day before, on small scales and large—with my Mamita just out of the hospital and my Grandma needing surgery, a beloved mentor recently home from a procedure to remove the cancer that had begun to attack his body, the earthquake in Chile, the sex abuse scandals in Ireland and Germany—it was almost overwhelming. But I believe in the power of prayer to change things. I believe that sending that positive energy out into the world changes the world, changes us, changes God.

However, that day, my heart felt quiet. And when it came time for me to venerate the cross, the spiritual clamor that characterized this Lent subsided, and I felt the words, “Thank you. Amen,” push themselves forward. I knelt down, pressed my hand against the base of the cross before me, and bowed. Only a few seconds passed, and it was over.

What If Resurrection Is A Choice?

by Jessica Coblentz

“What if the resurrection was a choice?”

I was stunned when my professor posed this question in the last seconds of class the other day. She invited us to think about this over the Triduum weekend ahead, particularly as we prepare for a class unit on Christology beginning next week. Upon this striking concluding inquiry, the other students began to fold their laptops, pack their books, and put on their coats. My only movement was the slight tilting of my head, and eventually the fluttering of my pen as I scribbled this question into the margins of my notebook: What if resurrection was a choice?

Recently, I have been struggling to believe in the resurrection—perhaps more than ever before. While I have faith in the historical reality of Christ’s rising from the dead, my convictions about the resurrection have long centered on a once unshakable belief in the persistence of the resurrection in our world today. In fact, it has not seemed so crazy to believe in the historical resurrection of an incarnate God because of the resurrection I have witnessed around me: triumphant hope amid overwhelming suffering, love and forgiveness in the face of persecution, resistance to injustice and the slow but real irradiation of evil that occurs in some seemingly impossible circumstances. Christ’s resurrection mirrors the miraculous instances of resurrection all around us.

Or so I thought. These days, alongside many Catholics, I am struggling to believe that suffering can be radically transformed for good. That love still has the radical power to replace sin and evil. Once again, we find many church leaders implicated in unthinkable abuse—the abuse of innocent young people, and the abuse of power that allowed many to ignore this crime. What’s more, we find accusations that this abuse has permeated nearly every level of the Church hierarchy. While reading the news and talking to fellow Catholics during the past two weeks, I have found myself covered by the darkness of Good Friday, wondering more than ever before: How will resurrection ever come? How will this church possibly experience resurrection?

Something More

by Jen Owens

The song of the psalmist echoes throughout the Gospel reading this week. “Lord, let your face shine on us.” It reminds me of a conversation I had with my youngest brother David during his first year of high school and my first year of divinity school, a conversation that started out like any other. David telling me about his classes and friends, his voice brimming with pride over his triumphs at his latest track meet. I asked him how preparation for confirmation was coming, and the simple honesty in his response was disarming.

“Jen, I don’t think I’m ready to get confirmed. I go to church, and I take communion, and nothing happens. Something’s supposed to happen, right? And I want it to happen, and it doesn’t. I just think that if I’m going to get confirmed, I should have had an experience of God already.”

In his words, I heard a yearning for the Something More that Thomas Merton describes. He was seeking an experience of God like the one that the disciples had, leaning close to hear Jesus say to him too, “Peace be with you. Touch me and see.”

In recent weeks, I have blogged about the way in which I feel the institutional church at times creates impediments to my own relationship with the Divine, rather than encouraging us to become closer. Like David and the disciples in today’s Gospel, I felt burdened by the weight of my questions, and I experienced a Lent filled with desolation. But I dis-covered the strength to start asking them out loud. And in finding my voice, I have been able to encounter the immense consolation of Easter that reminds me of the ever-welcoming Jesus, the risen Christ who always responds to my questions, to my pleas to see his face with a spirit of invitation and peace. Touch me and see, you who question. Touch me and see, you who challenge. Touch me and see, you who seek more than the present arrangements allow for.

My experience of Lent and the encounter to which it led at Easter have taught me that spiritual journeys like David and mine are hardly characterized by doubt. Rather, they are marked by a deeper conviction that Something More lies just beyond us. We are blessed with the desire that David voiced, a spirit filled with restlessness that seeks the kind of unity the disciples find with Jesus in today’s reading.

What is the Something More that you seek? With what communities do you journey toward it?

David Owens was confirmed at St. Irenaeus Parish in Cypress, CA, in 2006, and his sister cantored the Confirmation Mass.