Christ Alone

Happy Easter!  Christ is risen!  May this truth resound throughout your life!

Tonight at the Easter Vigil, Christ and His resurrection were proclaimed in every imaginable way, in every imaginable medium, through every word and action and song, as it should be.  From the gold and white of the vestments and the drapes on the altar and the tapestries to the white lilies all over the sanctuary to the Exsultet to the Scriptures read in darkness to the candles to the Psalms we sang to the beaming radiance on Father Michael's (and Father Wade's and Deacon Dave's) face as he placed his hands on my head and silently prayed for the Holy Spirit for me and made the sign of the cross in sweet-smelling Chrism oil on my forehead, to the hope and reverence as he held up the body of Christ and placed it in my hands, to the joy on each face as he dismissed us, to the final blessing, to walking out of the sanctuary as the Hallelujah Chorus played behind us to the glory of God, every moment proclaimed the resurrection.

I cannot fully describe everything that happened tonight.  I cried at least five separate times. Watching my new friends being baptized was one of the best parts.

I have imagined what the "laying on of hands" would feel like.  The reality was better than I ever imagined.  The oil is still on my forehead, and it smells so beautiful.  I'm laughing at myself as I scheme how I can get away with never washing my forehead again.
When Father prayed and asked that the Holy Spirit would come on me, the old, beautiful voice I've come to know seemed to smile, and said simply, "I have accepted you."

As I was waiting in my pew for the Eucharist to be given, I noticed suddenly how incredibly hungry I was.  But it was the strangest hunger I have ever had; the need and longing rose from my very soul.  I realized with a start that I wasn't physically hungry.  My soul was hungry for the Eucharist.  I must have looked so strange sitting there with this befuddled look on my face as I figured it out and as I then forced myself to sit still and wait.  I've waited nine months, and longed for the Eucharist nearly every day.  But I had never before needed it like I did.

My hands shook a bit when I finally approached Father Michael.  I cannot remember ever seeing anyone look so deeply, genuinely full of joy as he held up the bread for me and said, "The body of Christ."

I held out my hands and replied, "Amen."  Then he placed the body of Christ in my hands.  I'm glad I've watched so many people take Communion; otherwise it would not have been beyond me to just stand there and stare at the body of Christ in my hands, speechless.  As it was, instinct took over, and I put the wafer in my mouth.

Eric asked me later to describe how I felt, admonishing me with a smile, "You're an English minor.  Use your words."  But for Eucharist...




... there are no words.  No words.  There are no words.





The mind just waits in silence when the soul leaps in glorious joy.   Maybe that's why we simply say, "Amen."

The joy is overwhelming.  I do not have the resources to handle the magnitude of the beauty, the glory, the magnificent depth and width and height of the gift God has provided.  Maybe that's why we have a word: Alleluia.

As a mathematics major, I offer the following summary of the night:

Lord, Your glory is overwhelming; Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia.  Thank You, thank You, thank You, thank You.

My Source of Strength, My Source of Hope

Today during Communion, I walked to the front of the sanctuary to be blessed during the Good Friday service at my parish.  A young man I had never met touched my shoulder and blessed me, and I said "Amen" and walked with my head low back to my pew.

I remember the first time I walked to the front with everyone else.  I had just started to accept that the little wafers the people in front of me were getting were the body of Jesus.  If you do not accept that, this will probably make little sense.  But if you do, you may understand how I felt as I approached the front.


The body of Christ was before me. Everything in me seemed to know it. I watched in awe as the person in front of me bowed and then held the body of Jesus in her hands.

I have loved Christ for as long as I can remember.  Achingly, I fought and studied and prayed my way into the deepest faith I could muster.  I had toyed with different theories about the nature of God, each one an attempt to somehow pull into my mind a God who is laughably far beyond its capacity.

Unlike Paul, I was not faultless.  But like Paul, my circumstances gave me every imaginable push into the faith.  At eight, I was baptized into the faith my family taught me.  I was the first person baptized in the new building, and the water was cold.
At nine, I began attending Christian summer camps.  These week-long retreats taught me some of my most valuable spiritual lessons.  Often, those lessons were far from what I was supposed to be learning; I never fit in well and so I learned to find company in God's presence, and friendship in the other nine-year-old outcasts.
At twelve, I received the small Bible that would carry me through the rest of my teenage years.  I had already read my old NIV cover-to-cover.
At fifteen, I heard the voice of God for the first time.

I began to ask myself, "If I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Jesus was in... China right now, what would my next impulse be?"  It became my way of checking my priorities.  I tried to let absolutely nothing stand in my imaginary way of leaving that instant, flying to China, and falling at His feet.  Sometimes I would have fallen at His feet and rejoiced.  Sometimes I would have fallen at His feet and cried.  But no matter my reaction, I wanted this to happen so, so much.  To finally meet the God who suffered for me, the object of my deepest devotion and greatest longing, was the cry of my soul itself.

At twenty-one, I walked to the front of a Catholic church and watched in awe as the girl in front of me held the body of Jesus in her hands.

Suddenly it was my turn.  Hastily, I crossed my arms over my chest.  Father David paused and blessed me, and that was that.  I turned away, slowly returned to my pew, and knelt and cried.
To approach my Lord, to be so close and then to turn away...  I was crying for everything I was and everything I was not, and because my choices had led me to the moment I had longed for, but had also turned me away.

Since then, I have cried during Communion many times, including today. But by the Lord's fantastic providence, tomorrow, at twenty-two, I can watch in awe as I hold the body of Jesus in my hands and feel the blood of Jesus run down my throat.

If I do cry, I will be crying for everything I am and everything I am not, but mostly for the grace that gives me the moment I long for and will never turn me away.

Have a blessed Triduum.

Just One Thing

Phew.  I just finished a particularly difficult couple of weeks, homework-wise.  My stress level shows, most notably in my bedroom (in utter disarray at the moment) and in the kitchen (where the puppy has been the primary mode of floor-cleaning) and in my hair (which gets less and less attention as the exams draw nearer).

But now I have finished the last round of exams before finals and begun the rehabilitation process, resting up for the final push of the semester.

I get a rush of low-grade euphoria the afternoon after an exam, especially if I feel reasonably good about it. I also get a rush of euphoria after grocery-shopping, incidentally.  I love the feeling of being "stocked up"; it makes me feel safe.

So after driving home from my post-exam grocery-shopping trip, I was listening to Comptine d'un autre été, by Yann Tiersen and driving down Texas Avenue.  The gentle happiness seemed to be wafting from my skin, and in the beautiful broken chords, a wonderful peace surrounded me.

Musing on my happiness, I realized:

Survival is having everything you need.  Happiness is knowing you have everything you need.


Most of what I have, I don't need.  My possessions just complicate my life.  I try to minimize the complications, because I want a simple life of grace and beauty.

I think most people do not know what they need.  This is why people are so unhappy and why suicides happen so frequently.

When it comes down to it, what do I need?
Physically, I need water, food, oxygen, sleep, medicines, and so forth.  Emotionally, I need reflection, relaxation, and security.  Spiritually, I need grace, peace, assurance, and so forth.

I do not need the latest gadget.  99% of the time, when I buy something, I'm not buying it because I want it.  I'm buying it because I hope that if I do, I will catch a particular boy's eye, or impress a friend, or be able to avoid a bad habit of mine, or be able to have more free time.  That's what I really want, and even those things are only gateways to something else.

I do not need the things advertised to me.  In fact, if something is being advertised, it's a strong sign I don't need it.  If I did need it, its value would be obvious to me, and they wouldn't be trying to convince me to buy the thing.  They advertise products to me because I do not need them.

I think this realization explains why some of the poorest people in the world are the happiest.  They know exactly what they need, and know that right now, they have it.  They know this because they've seen what it's like to not have those things.
This is true physically, but I think it's also true emotionally.  Some of the happiest people I know are those who have known the deepest suffering. They know what it's like to be without, emotionally.   When they have what they need, they know it.  Thus, they are happy.  And of course, a small voice inside me whispers, "Blessed are the poor in spirit..."

Part of my happiness is knowing that I have what I need.  I don't actually need new clothes, fancy coffee, or special makeup.  I don't need to know who I am.  I don't need to find myself.  I don't need to know what is going to happen or what will become of me.
I do actually need faith, meaning, a sense of purpose, and the utterly irrational, radical hope that has been growing inside me for the last few months.  I do need peace.  I do need Adoration. I do need Confession.  I do need prayers and readings and reflection.
I will not always have what I need emotionally.  It's virtually certain that someday, I will not have what I need physically.

Is this part of the meaning of life?  Life is a battle, a long train of suffering of various kinds.  Life is hard. Life will knock you down, crush you, press you to the floor.  Life will push you to the place where you look up from the darkness and cry out for deliverance.  Life will break you and batter you until you learn to look not at the darkness around you or the darkness within you but at the light above you.
Maybe the purpose of life is to teach me what I really need, to whittle down my must-have list, as time goes on, to fewer and fewer items of greater and deeper significance.
In the end, maybe life is the story of the long, painful suffering designed to teach us, at the very end, that we really only need one thing.

Thanks be to God.

Public Speaking, Spiders, Death, and Confession

Sometime in the next couple of weeks, I have to make my first confession.

Confession (also known as Reconciliation, or Penance) is one of the sacraments of the Church.  The very idea is one of the "weirder" sacraments of the Church, but it is Biblically, historically, and practically sound.  James 5:16 commands confession of sins to other Christians.  Jesus in John 20:20-23 gives the disciples the power to bind and loose, and to forgive and retain sins.  Jesus sends them forth as the Father sent him, suggesting they acted and spoke by Jesus' authority, as Jesus spoke by the Father's authority.

Confession is one of the times when the priest acts "in the person of Christ".  The priest acting as a man cannot forgive sins; he's just a man.  But acting in persona Christi, the priest can say, "I absolve you from your sins in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit."

Historically, the Church has practiced Confession since at least the beginning of the 100's A.D., as explained in the Didache, chapters 4 and 14.

But knowing this, I am still more afraid of Confession than of anything I've walked into voluntarily in my life.  I will be confessing things everyone knows (such as how unforgiving I can be),  as well as things no one on earth knows about me.

So I am compiling a list of every mortal sin I've ever committed.  The magnitude of my sin is overwhelming.  Combing through my life bit by bit has been humbling.  My sinful nature is truly sinful, and truly my nature.
But most of my sins have not been done with full knowledge of their sinfulness, which is one of the criteria for a "mortal sin".  Most of my sins were done out of laziness or ignorance.

But they still hurt God and wounded me.

Sin is sin.

Jen Fulwiler said that ten minutes in the confessional were worth ten years of psychotherapy.  For me, I keep hearing the words "I absolve you of your sins..." in my head and wondering how I'll feel.

I have a couple of very old sins that have eaten at my soul since I was a child.  At times, the sheer magnitude of the guilt I felt over a couple of specific sins drove me into deep depression.  No one told me I had done wrong.  No one had to.

I've mostly moved on, because I simply don't think about it.  But it lingers, driving my oddest actions, motivating me in little ways.
I never speak of these things.  But I'll be telling the priest even about these darkest parts of myself.  This is why Confession feels to me like the next step in the long story of how I've dealt with the reality of my own depravity.

Lord willing, I'll let you know how the story goes after this.  Thanks be to God.

The Story of Love and the Riemann Integral

One of the most common questions in my medical school interviews was, "You majored in math?  Why math?"

I liked this question, because it kept the interviewers from asking more pointed questions like, "Why haven't you done more shadowing/volunteering/traveling?!?",  "Why did you get a B in History?!?", and questions of that ilk.

I also liked it because it was easy to answer: "They say to major in something you like and are good at.  For me, that's math.  I enjoy it, and one of the nice parts of being premed is that you can major in whatever you want."

That's true, and it's short enough for an interview.

But the deeper answer is something like this.

I have loved math for a very long time, often entranced by its beauty.  But when I was in high school, I watched a few surgeries.  Something about that experience just clicked, and suddenly, I was premed.

But I wasn't completely sure I was ready to give up my first love.  Calculus has such an elegant, simple beauty.  Throughout the first two years or so, I occasionally wondered if I was making the wrong decision.

That's really why I majored in math: it was a diagnostic, and a safeguard.  If I still loved math after three years or so, I could still be well on my way to graduate school, research, and professorship.

This continued off-and-on until my junior year, when I took Math 409 Honors with the amazing Dr. Harold Boas.  Math 409 is Advanced Calculus I, and at my school, it is a legendary class.  You begin with questions like, "Are there more real numbers than natural numbers?  How many more are there?  How do we know?"
(The answers: Yes!  Infinitely many more.  Cantor's Diagonalisation Argument.)
From there, you keep moving upwards and define more and more, and eventually we derived the notion of a limit, and then a derivative, from first principles.  From there, we moved on to the beautiful, elegant creature that is a Riemann integral.

Here, the professor took a few minutes to tell us a little about Riemann.

Bernhard Riemann was a mathematical prodigy even as a child.  Through his career, he defined the Riemann integral and proposed the famous, unsolved Riemann hypothesis.
He wrote On the hypotheses which underlie geometry, one of the most important works ever on geometry.  This work had major implications for Einstein's theories, and the implications of Riemann's work are still being investigated today.  In addition to this, Riemann made major contributions to analysis, calculus, and differential geometry.
Then Dr. Boas told us how Bernhard Riemann died at age 39 of tuberculosis.

That was the moment when I knew that I wanted to be a physician more than anything else in the world.

That's the story of how I majored in math because I love it, and left it behind because I love something else more.


Thanks be to God.

Goodbye, Gloria

On Sunday, I let every second of the beautiful Haas Gloria sink into my soul; it's the last Gloria until after Lent.
The Gloria has special meaning to me, because I remember it from the first Mass I ever went to, with my dear friend Jamie.
I was utterly confused, and hoping in the corner of my heart that I wasn't committing some blasphemy by attending a Catholic Mass.  I really hoped God wasn't angry that I was making the sign of the cross.  I was a bit afraid to ask Mary to pray for me and my sins to God.
Even the name bewildered me.  Like Scott Hahn did, I wondered.  Mass?  Mass what? Mass rally?  Mass movement? Mass protest?  

No, silly Sarah.  Mass.  Like Ite missa est.

But then the Gloria began.  The first piano chords seemed to make my heart smile, with their simple, demanding beauty.
And finally, words I could sing without reservation:
Glory to God in the highest!  Sing Glory to God!  Glory to God in the highest, and peace to His people on earth!


Something about it seemed so right, right and fitting in a way I'd never felt before.  No song I had ever sung seemed so right as this simple, beautiful, heartfelt line: Glory to God in the highest, and peace to His people on earth!

I did not become Catholic that day.  But that was the beginning.

Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent.

Lent lasts from Ash Wednesday until Holy Thursday, the day before the Friday Jesus died.  Lent is 40 days long, because the Sundays aren't included in the count; every Sunday is a celebration, whereas Lent is a time of humility, repentance, and austerity.

Included in Lent are several days of fasting and abstinence. Fasting means restricting food intake.  It's canonically defined as one normal meal, with two small snacks, though you're welcome to do more if you like.  Abstinence means not eating meat.  The Latin word used is carne, which only refers to land-animal meat.  This is why Catholics often eat fish on Fridays during Lent. (Allowing fish did not come from a pope with a vested interest in the Italian fish business.  Seriously, where do people get these things?)
I learned in RCIA on Sunday that since I'm a vegetarian anyway, I don't need to do anything special for the "abstinence" part, though I can do something else if I want to.  To do so would be in the spirit of Lent.  To start eating fish on Fridays during Lent would not be in the spirit of Lent.

Even the Mass changes.  The Gloria isn't sung, like during Advent.  The Alleluia, and any use of the word, is stricken from the Mass completely during Lent. Alleluia is a festive word, meaning "Praise Yahweh".  Repentance, fasting, abstinence, and alms-giving, the pillars of Lent, don't fit with "festive".  Humility and austerity, the hallmarks of Lent, don't fit with the joyous nature of the Alleluia.

I already miss it, which is, of course, the point.

The altar is no longer adorned with flowers and greenery.  Instead, bare branches or empty pottery are often used.  Lent is a time of longing, reminiscent of a desert.

Maybe I'm not supposed to do this, but... I've already found myself imagining what the first Gloria on Easter will sound like.  Similarly, I almost hear the Alleluia, and I'll probably hear it in my head before the Gospel reading every Sunday between now and then.

Lent, with its repentance and examination of conscience, approaches quickly.  But it's not here just yet:

Glory to God in the highest!  Sing Glory to God!  Glory to God in the highest, and peace to his people on earth!
Lord God, heavenly king, Almighty God and Father, we worship you, we give you thanks, we praise you for your glory!
Glory to God in the highest!  Sing Glory to God!  Glory to God in the highest, and peace to his people on earth!
Lord Jesus Christ, only Son of the Father, Lord God, Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world!  Have mercy on us.  You are seated at the right hand of the Father!  Receive our prayer!
Glory to God in the highest!  Sing Glory to God!  Glory to God in the highest, and peace to his people on earth,
For you alone are the Holy One.  You alone are the Lord, the most high Jesus Christ, with the Holy Spirit, in the glory of God the Father! 
Glory to God in the highest!  Sing Glory to God!  Glory to God in the highest, and peace to his people on earth!

Goodbye, Gloria!

Thanks be to God. 

Sarah has a New Favorite Book

I just finished reading The Confessions of St. Augustine.  It's a Modern English translation, so it's not difficult to follow at all.

Wow.  "I am swallowed by this ocean, yet not crushed."

Confessions is not a list of sins.  It's a love song.  It is a long, narrated love song of the soul, in the form of an extended monologue of Augustine to God. Augustine describes his soul's journey to God from his unfaithful youth to his conversion, and his prose blows me away.

O Lord our God, under the shadow of Your wings let us hope in Your custody. 

Carry us when we are little. Bear us when our hair is white and we cry out in infirmity. 

When You grasp us, the grip is firm.  When we try to sustain ourselves, the grasp is feeble. 

The only good we can know rests in You. When we turn from the good, You push us aside until we return. 

Oh, Lord, turn us, lest we be overturned. 

Be the good in us that is not corrupted. You are our incorruptible good. 

In You we do not fear that there will be no home to return to if we wander off.  While we are away, You preserve our mansion with a patience that stretches into eternity.

(from Time Loses No Time)

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You are as You were before all happened that we can call "before". 

You are, and are God. 

You are, and are Lord of all You created. 

You abide, fixed forever. 

You are.  

The first cause of all things that will not abide.

All things changeable flow from the spring of Your unchanging Being. In You live the eternal reasons of all the time-bound things that cannot reason in themselves. 

So speak to me, Lord.  I stand before You a beggar. Speak pitying words to me, for I am Your pitiable one. Tell me: Were there times of me that died even before my infancy?  Who was the 'me' who lived in my mother's womb? ...
Was I anywhere?
Was I anyone? ... 

Do You laugh at me for even asking this?  Do You tell me instead acknowledge and praise the 'You' that I do know?
I do acknowledge You, Lord of heaven and earth.  I do praise You for assembling the pieces of my being and for the infancy I do not remember.

(from Infancy)

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But we, O Lord, are Your little flock. Possess us as Yours. 

Stretch Your wings over us and let us fly under them. 

Be our glory. 

May we be Your love? 

May Your words be our reverence?

 (from The Book of Memory)

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Every line fills me with such a sense of such numinous beauty that I read it all breathlessly.  My favorite book before this was Contact, by Carl Sagan.  I love Contact because it so clearly describes the utterly reverent beauty of life and the mystery of what it means to seek God.  It came at a pivotal moment in my life, when I first began to love science and nature.  For the first time, I could look intently at the world around me and hear bits of glory, like a song I can just barely hear before it fades again.*

Confessions comes at another pivotal moment in my life, when I reach tentatively for God with a radical hope I've never before known.  It's also the first book I've ever finished and immediately begun again.

* Yes, that was a blatant plug for Battlestar Galactica.  So say we all.

Thanks be to God.