Dear Friends, A good Friday morning to you all. I write in between the end of one batch of retreatants and the arrival this evening of another group of folks who will be here for 8 days. Our weather continues to be gorgeous. We are into summer big time and are enjoying the beautiful temperatures while feeling the comfort of the cool weather during the nighttime. Once the sun goes down, you need a light sweater. A little excitement during the previous week: three lions got from the nearby city park into the city. One was actually a lioness with one or more cubs. We think they found a culvert in a construction zone, got curious, and followed it from the park out into the edge of the city areas. No one got hurt and the animals were successfully rounded up and brought back to the park. Anyone who visits here must find time to visit that park. It is unique in the world. All kinds of animals live there in the wild, in the open. You can drive through it in your car on a dirt road (with a full tank of gas and your cellphone with you in case your car breaks down!) It is not a zoo but a free zone for animals to live there as they did before the big city was built near them. The park is probably 40 miles from one end to the other and quite deep, maybe 25 miles. It has a big wall around it to separate city and animal park. I have spoken before about a family of baboons coming out across the road I take to get to the seminary where I teach. They do this when we go through a dry spell and they are forced to go looking for food outside the park. Some gardener suffers the ravaging of his hard work when these baboons wipe out his produce. In stop and go morning rush hour traffic I get to watch these animals up close as they gauge when it is safe to cross the highway and return to the park. Fascinating!! There is much talk here about the national elections coming up next year. The tribal factions make for scary conversation and threats of violence. We pray! The elections of 2007 are still talked about with stories of unspeakable violence, tribal war, machete deaths, beheadings, brutal torturing. This nation is so young and struggles to get on its feet. A number of people live so dishonestly, in ways that would easily put them in prison if the justice and penal system were reliable. There is so much cheating regarding public funds and people living like kings and queens as a result. It is so evil in view of the fact that the vast majority struggle just to survive. I am reminded of yesterday's Gospel reading about the rich man who lived in luxury, oblivious to Lazarus who lay just outside his gate, where the dogs licked his sores. Jesus makes it clear that it is not riches by itself that are to be condemned but those who live with much apathy or indifference about those near them who struggle for life and do not help them out of their plenty. The drug problems among the teens here are significant, so too the luring of these children and teens into witchcraft and sexually perverted ways of relating. The devil exists and in some places is thriving. Parents do not monitor their children sufficiently, too busy with their work careers and chasing the good life! This sounds like the same situation in some families of the USA. Today's mass had two compelling readings: one about the selling of Joseph by his brothers who were jealous of him and the love their father showed for him. They sell him for 20 pieces of silver to merchants on their way to Egypt. Joseph ends up being the right hand man of the pharoah and negotiates the salvation of the whole nation of Israelites who are struggling to survive under the Egyptian king as his workers. Such good being drawn out of evil!! Then the Gospel passage is the famous parable of the son of the vineyard owner being sent as the last gesture of the owner in an appeal to have a trusting, mutually beneficial relationship with the tenants he had hired. The tenants had beaten or killed the previous emissaries. The vineyard owner says, "surely they will respect my son." But no, they see that they will get the vineyard for themselves if they get rid of, that is kill, the one who is to inherit it all. The homilist, a retired Jesuit bishop who lives with us after he retired at the age of 75 from being bishop in Ethiopia, made the point that this selling of people, like what happened in both readings, goes on in our own day and is one of the most dramatic examples of how Jesus continues to be crucified in our own times. ("Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?!) He cited an internet piece of information he found some two or three weeks ago that states that from all of the refugees that have poured into Europe during these last two years, over 10,000 teens and children are unaccounted for, have disappeared, and are thought to be victims of human trafficking. He made the point that in some cases, these people "sell" their own selves to obtain money for their families, so poor and desperate are they. Of course, many female minors and adults, sell themselves in prostitution just to survive and have something for their children. What a desperate way to live!! No wonder it leads some to commit suicide. How ugly and evil this situation! I mentioned in earlier letters on this blogsite that since returning from Italy and the pilgrimage I led there last November, I have found myself gripped by the story and spirit of a young Carmelite nun (St. Teresa Margaret of the Sacred Heart of Jesus) who died at the age of 22 and whose body, since 1770, has been perfectly preserved and can been seen, as I was able to do, in a side chapel at the monastery in Florence. Her biography and its description of the life of her soul, her aspirations, her longings and deep relationship with God have stirred some profound thoughts and feelings in me. Perhaps the single greatest blessing that she was given was a very, very deep sense of how beautiful and true it is that God is LOVE, yes, LOVE. The Spirit of God overwhelmed her with a sense of this truth. As I was reading slowly her story, over a four week period after the pilgrimage, and took lots of notes, I was getting the sense that many passages were opening up for me new and spiritually richer ways of relating to God, to others, and to myself. One set of experiences that recur on and off for me is a very strong sense inside me of the goodness and lovableness of certain men and women friends I have gotten close to over the years. This awareness will happen oftentimes around 4 or 5 AM when I am beginning to wake up, and so I just lie there with this amazing new sense of a certain person, or two or three of them. I liken it to what happened to the apostles Peter, James, and John when on Mt. Tabor they suddenly saw Jesus in a way they had never seen Him before: radiating with a light that showed His depths, His pure goodness, and divine origins. In moments like these early morning "revelations" I feel so close to God, so overwhelmed by divine beauty and goodness in such people. It many times moves me to a lot of tears. I don't think they know that I have been allowed to see them this way, but I email them sometimes to say something of this awareness to them, maybe in retrained ways lest they think me nuts and that I have gone off the deep end. I have certain acquaintances, some I think in my family, who think this sorry state has happened to me already and they don't need this latest data to base their judgment on my alleged manic state. I do think when any of us are blessed to be brought to the edge of eternity and Divinity and that we are grasped in our depths by this Divine Presence, this Divine Friend and, yes, intense Lover, we are invited and urged to see ourselves as much, much more than we think we are, that what we are being prepared for is so far beyond our expectations and hopes. ("More Than You Could Ever Imagine: On Our Becoming Divine") We get to see, for just a brief moment, the glory of God, of God Himself and that glory each of us carries around inside ourselves. Our busyness and practical concerns so often distract or blind us from noticing this Reality, but then, in certain unexpected moments, the curtain is pulled back and we do see, we see as God sees and we begin to feel something of what God feels when He looks at anyone of us His precious children. This is why God suffers so much when He sees us hurt anyone of our neighbors, any of His children, any brother or sister. As Jesus said in the last hours of His life, "My commandment is this: I want you to love one another AS I HAVE LOVED YOU." And this implies He wants us to be willing to die for each other, to put ourselves on the line that much, to love life and the people in our lives that much. Love is not a feeling; it is a choice, and some of the times it hurts and even costs us everything. When we realize this, we no longer can cynically caricature such talk as romantic prattle or mushy talk. No, this Reality demands everything out of us and the willingness to lay down our lives for each other, stick out our necks for each other, protect each other's dignity and well-being, to be alert to the Lazarus type people outside our gate waiting to be listened to, cared about, helped in their struggles. I need to go. May your Lent continued to be blessed. I lift all of you up each day at the Eucharist, joining you and your life with its challenges and joys to the offering of our Brother and Savior, Jesus, who brings us all with Himself to the Father and with Whom we are each given more of their Spirit so that we can go back to our daily lives empowered by Divine Love in a world that largely does not see, is not aware of, this great truth and Good News. Bernie Owens