Dear Friends, Today is December 27, Tuesday after Christmas Day, the feast day of St. John the Apostle of whom it is said was the closest friend of Jesus among the 12 apostles. . . . . I am now ready to write what I began more than two weeks ago, when I spent two hours typing and then lost it all. You might imagine the frustration and my need to postpone trying to write anything more after that very frustrating experience. Yesterday I wrote responses to 21 emails. About four of them were detailed and long. Together they took about four, maybe five hours to do. Skyping for nearly one hour with a great friend in Troy, Michigan was included in all of this. Then the day before, Christmas Day was a day to enjoy some very good food and good company. There were 27 of us for dinner starting around 1:30 PM, half of them guests. It was a happy time had by all. Having a 45 minutes social with drinks and snacks before the dinner started all of the celebration. I must admit I ate too much and I paid for it yesterday. Thankfully I am back to simpler food, less of it too, and am feeling almost normal again. Ha! Will I ever learn??!! (Did I just hear a strong 'No!" coming from the backseat??) . . . . . Our weather here is a little cool for this time of the year--usually in the low 70s; sometimes it gets to the high 70s around 3 PM--and most nights we have a wonderful sky and stunning views of stars and Venus and Jupiter. The pollen from all the flowers makes me itch a lot sometimes. It seems we never really find the perfect setting. I am trusting heaven will lift us above all of these imperfections! One blessing for me is how I almost never get a cold and in more than three years I have not had the usual sinus infection I would get about twice a year when back in Michigan. No antibiotics for me in over three years! . . . . . In the meantime I find my work very satisfying, sometimes deeply satisfying. It is a privilege to have work that you truly enjoy and often feel buoyed up by the promise of a deep exchange of meaning with people in and through the conversations that my kind of work affords me. I often get a "front row view" of the inner workings of God in the lives, in the souls of people who come here for silence and close, intimate exchange with God. How real and close God is. Many times I remark to myself how the world of the invisible is so much more real and satisfying than the visible world with its frequent emphasis on glitter and noise, on having a 'good time' and its offer of meaning through pleasure, but not very much underneath its noise and efforts to entertain and its claims to meaning. It soon wearies us and reminds me of the title of a 1960s British film that studied the empty life of a very self-centered man, Alfie by name. The movie's title and its background song said it all: "Is That All There Is, Alfie?" . . . I want to try to give you some sense of what was given to me during my retreat last November 30-December 7, concluding on the morning of the 8th. This is what I was in the middle of describing when I lost everything last December 10. I will be briefer now than I was intending to describe then. Right from the start of the retreat I was attracted to the bible's description of the piercing of the side of Christ. This moment is found in John's gospel, chapter 19, verse 34. The Roman soldier, doing his job, finishes the execution of Jesus who is nailed and breathing his last. The gospel writer focuses in on the immediate aftermath of the piercing: he says blood and water flow out of the cut made in Jesus's right side when the soldier shoves the spear through Jesus's chest over to the left side into his heart, piercing it and releasing the fluids of blood and lymph/water. That image, that scene held me for eight days. With varying clarity I spent my entire retreat right there, attracted back to it again and again, and seeing more and more deeply into it as the days passed by. I was drawn much beyond just the physical details of that scene and soon into the implications of it all; sometimes I was very aware of Jesus's mother standing there, sometimes quite aware of the gospel writer John who as a young man was witnessing this awful moment, the seeming end of a wonderful friendship he had with Jesus, yet he was being marked for the rest of his long life to be THE eyewitness of a world changing event when God was at His best in the face of the human race being engaged in its most awful, shameful moment. John would tell of this event and leave for all generations to ponder this ultimate expression of the outpouring of God who is Love and Mercy Itself. But I was especially drawn to be present to or aware of God, Jesus's Abba, as if He were standing in the background and sharing silently in this devastating moment, with this best gift He gave to the world spurned, rejected and crucified by a people gone mad. . . That scene, that image which carried something of an awareness deeper than any image of the depths of God kept me still, alert, present without words, amazed, moved, "captured", held with a sense of wonder and love and sometimes deep emotion. I am taking time here to describe something of what I was given because I hope it helps you the reader to notice and find your own way into this same mystery of love and get close to what is ultimately the indescribable goodness and lovableness of the Source of all Reality, the source and fullness of all Beauty and Truth. It is this encounter that heals all brokenness, that gives lasting hope, and makes any sacrifice totally worth it. It truly is a taste of heaven, a glimpse of what the soul of us all is searching for. This is "what it's all about, Alfie!" . . . . . Sometimes prayer is simply getting quiet enough and being attentive, staying steadily aware in the face of what is beyond all words, and then by a gift of God getting "grabbed", getting "pulled in" with awe and being moved with great joy and longing into adoration. You get pulled in and held by what is overwhelmingly meaningful, beautiful, and so good like nothing else in the entire world, and your spirit in its depths knows this, is irresistably drawn to this. You have found the center of your soul and the Source of all goodness and hope waiting there for you. To spend quality time, very attentive, before this Reality this way, just to be quiet and aware with love and awe will change a lot in how you look at yourself, at the world and other people. It leads you to value what God values and to see as empty what much of the noisy world thinks is so important. (What's It All About, Alfie?") In time what happens is a growing sensitivity at deeper and deeper levels of ourselves to this very attractive Reality. Like what St. Augustine says, the "eye of our heart" begins to open and we see what we have passed over many times and were blind to. But now, God has blessed us to see. The "scales have fallen from our eyes," as it did for Saul. This reminds me of the scene in Luke's Gospel with the blind man on the side of the road pleading twice for Jesus of Nazareth to heal him: "Jesus, Son of David, have pity on me!" Jesus says, "what do you want me to do for you?" The man, Bartimeus says, "Master, help me to see. Let me see." And Jesus says, "Be healed. Your faith (in God) has made you whole." And the man then receives his sight and follows Jesus along the Way.) Really, everyone of us is that blind man on the side of the road. But many of us do not even know we are blind to this deeper Reality; no one ever tells us about it as something available to us; no one tells us that seeing much more deeply this One, the really Real, is a gift waiting for us to receive if only we become aware of this new possibility for ourselves and earnestly seek with the help of God to open to it, to ask for it. It is love for God and others that opens up the eye of our soul to the deeper levels of Reality . . . . We start noticing what our fears, worries and greed, our anxieties and lust, our resentment and jealousies make us blind to. . . . . . One theme related to this wound in Christ's side that came up in my retreat was the attraction to the other four wounds of Christ. I have been drawn for years to this theme. I was given a cross, Eastern church style, when I was ordained 44 years ago. It images the five wounds inflicted on Christ, to his hands and feet, his head too. Nearly ten years ago I found in a book we were discussing during the biweekly reading seminars at Manresa in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan a reference to the five wounds of Christ being something one could carry inside their spirit, in their soul, not just in one's body like the stigmatists but inside yourself. This drew me strongly. In this book, St. Gertrude, a 13th century German, wrote about her finding this prayer that expressed the desire to receive from God this "imprint" or mark of Christ's Passion, to carry in one's depths His five wounds, simply because Jesus means that much to you and His passion and death had deeply moved you to want to honor His love and live in His Spirit. Encouraged by what she writes, I began to pray that prayer, daily, but many times up to this recent retreat wondered whether God had answered this prayer for me or not. Then on the very first day of my retreat, it dawned on me during one of my meditations in a very meaningful way that I had been given this gift a long time ago, even before I started to pray that prayer, thanks to my carrying inside myself the wounds of Christ contained in the stories of good people who shared with me about their lives, especially about the wounds in their lives. This light or insight made even more meaningful what was given to me on the first day of my retreat last year when I was shown in a striking image a set of candles all close together and immediately understanding that each candle represented a man or woman friend in my life whom I cared about deeply, friends that I had known and cared about for years. So in this year's retreat I was shown a special feature about these friends: I carry within me with much reverence and sometimes significant emotion their stories with a particular emphasis on their being wounded, some of them terribly so. So I began to reminisce on how some of you have opened up to me about your lives and let me see and feel with you something of your share in the woundedness of Christ: your losing a father when so young and being so vulnerable and how it so affected you into your adult years; or losing tragically your only son, your only child in a soccer freak accident; or being gang-raped a number of times and suffering nightmares because of it and temptations to self-rejection, self-hatred; in being molested as a child and in turn struggling with sexual attractions that would land you in prison if you acted on them; discovering yourself to be addicted to one thing or another (alcohol, drugs, porn, etc), any substance that threatened to eat up your soul and make you seriously contemplate suicide; or being haunted with the memories of choosing to abort your child and then suffering to regain self-respect and trust in the mercy of God for you; or spending many years with a certain loneliness caring for a broken husband, a broken sister and a mother living so long and requiring but deserving so much close care. I cannot tell you how much meaning and consolation during my retreat I found in realizing this level of meaning gained from carrying many of you in my soul and then awakening to how this is really one way of understanding the fulfillment of my prayer over many years: to bear within my depths the wounds of Christ and to do whatever my priesthood calls me to do FROM THIS SACRED SPACE I HAD FRESHLY DISCOVERED INSIDE ME. . . . . Some may still wonder: why the wounds of Christ should be an object of so much attention and care, of so much love? Perhaps it will help to explain it--partially--this way. Really, one does not explain love but either understands it from experience or has not yet opened to real love in their lives. So here goes my attempt to shed some light on this mystery of loving Christ, especially by focusing with deep reverence on His five wounds. I recall my mother who for all her life suffered a lot from eczema to her fingers and into her hands. The skin of her fingers and hands dried out so easily, then cracked and bled thanks to the eczema because she cooked a lot, canned a lot of fruits and vegetables for our winter needs, sewed and crocheted a lot and so exposed herself to many chemicals, natural and synthetic, in her care for us four children. Even though she wore water-protecting rubber gloves, she still got affected by all of this and would often apply sauves of various kinds to gain some relief and hopefully healing of the eczema blisters and itching that went with it all. As I look back on that and remember growing up around her with this kind of dedication and loving care, I am quite moved and feel the desire, yes, to kiss her hands, to look deeply into her eyes and tell her how I will be eternally grateful for her love, a priceless gift. Her wounds were like that of Christ's wounds of love, an expression of everlasting commitment to the lives she and our father generated. I have experienced some of the same love, deeper of course, welling up in me as I pay attention to the wounds of Christ. I own them as the greatest of all gifts to me . . . and for everyone of us. How can I not be moved when I see something of what I have been allowed by God's Spirit to see in this Mystery of love?? How can I not kiss every morning the red stone on that cross given to me 44 years ago (the red stone representing the wound to Jesus's heart) and laying it on my bed to see during the day? Is there anything in the whole of the world's history like it? Absolutely not. I trust that each of us in thinking back to special friends in our life whose stories have touched us significantly we will see the same mystery inside ourselves and will suspect that much more of God's life and activity are going on in you than you ever suspected. A happy, healthy and blessed 2017 to all of you. Bernie Owens

Friends, I just stumbled back into my blogsite after having typed for two hours this afternoon part of a letter I was going to post regarding my recent retreat experience. It seems I have lost it all! I don't find it anywhere. I thought it would be worth sharing some of the retreat with you. I hit the SAVE button before going to dinner and assumed when I returned I would be able to continue. Then, I got locked out of my email and went round and round with Google to get a new password they would recognize. A wasted evening! A fresh experience of being tried in patience! I will give this a try tomorrow while having now to hurry up to some other work I have to deal with. Booo! Bernie Owens

Dear Friends, Here we are on Friday during Thanksgiving weekend. I know most of you who read this are living in the USA and so I wish you lots of relaxation and enjoyment of being with family and friends. Here in Kenya it is a regular week for work and the usual routine. But as an American I cannot help but be with all of you in spirit and wish you the best and the peace that only our good God in Jesus can give. Oh, how we and the USA needs this now at a time of such strife and disrespect from many voices around us. I am so struck by the disrespect and insulting manner reflected in and even fostered in the newspapers, the TV and internet news sources. I am saddened by all of this. We so need to make a choice for listening respectfully to each other, even when disagreeing. We need to calm down and reclaim our center in Him whose love makes all the difference. I am well overall, even though I have had three bouts of dysentery in the previous two weeks. The most recent week I have been normal and hope I have gotten through whatever it was that bothered me so much. Our neighborhood monkey is frequenting us again and makes loud noises when running across our roof tops during our breakfast time. Just imagine a medium sized dog with a long tail running around on top of your own house and looking for any open window to sneak in and steal food. That is what this character is like! He can even open our big sliding door from the veranda into our dining room if the door is slightly left open. About five days ago our monkey succeeded in getting into our dining room and stealing a cluster of bananas off our center table. I had had a banana from that cluster at breakfast the same day and found them too ripe for me. I ate about half of it and cut away the rest. So really, these bananas were ready to be put into banana bread. So this pest did not get the best in what he stole. I did spot him, however, soon after his theft nestled in the crotch of a nearby tree gorging himself on one banana after another. It is after all rather humorous! In the end one has to admit he is cute even though obnoxious at times! Our worry now is how he, and we think a second monkey, are beginning to steal our mangoes. We will have in January a bumper crop of mangoes. Our trees are loaded with them but need to have more time to have them fill out and be ready for picking. And when they are ripe, the eating is out of this world! I assure you, mangoes are on the menu for the eternal heavenly banquet!! In the meantime the damn monkey aims at beating us to them, even before they become ripe! We are planning to throw nets over these trees, which is not an easy task! I begin my own yearly 8-day retreat next Tuesday evening, the 29th, and finish on the morning of December 8, the feast day of Mary's Immaculate Conception. I would greatly appreciate your remembering me during that special time in your prayers. Thank you so much. By the way, do you who are US citizens know that the USA some years ago was put "under the protection of" and dedicated to Mary, under the title of her Immaculate Conception? The basilica or national shrine in Washington, DC, is dedicated to her under this title. The meaning of this title given her and its implications for us who aspire to follow Jesus closely are pretty awesome, something quite worth learning about and applying in one's own spiritual walk with God. It implies extraordinary blessings available to any follower of Jesus who is childlike enough to learn and be led by God's Spirit to new spiritual depths in Christ. It has struck me, and I included this in my book (More Than You Could Ever Imagine), that all the attention and honors given by Christians to the Mother of God are not attention for just her but also constitute wonderful good news for any of us who aspire to follow closely her Son. That is because she and all the blessings God gave her are a mirror and anticipation of the many blessings God has in store for each of us as we make our journey home to God. All that is honored in her is a hint of all the goodness and beauty of God being realized in us. Her story anticipates so much of our own story that is still in its early stages and is unfolding toward a fullness we get glimpses of when looking at her, if we will look! I will close with relating to you a very painful story I heard just last Tuesday. Some of you will most likely find this disturbing; it certainly was and still is disturbing to me, but it does give you the reader a hint of some of the monstrous evil I am learning about here in Kenya, evil going on in this young nation, among a fragile people who are for the most part terribly poor and susceptible to the forces of evil. It is a story of a family with the scourge of alcoholism in a number of members of the family, and I think mental illness too, accentuated by some members calling upon witch doctors and curses to get revenge on other members of the family. the family is said to have become Catholic Christian, baptized, but mixing with such polygamy, philandry, and the consulting of leaders of the occult. The story I tell climaxes in the death of a 39 year old daughter, dying I think from a heart attack, after she was found to be pregnant and got an abortion. Her father, who is mentally unstable and a micro-manager of the grown children he fathered from one or other of his wives, demanded that this daughter get an abortion, a late term abortion at that. So she did because the economic means for her was with her father. She was jobless and dirt poor and vulnerable to being left out on the streets if she refused. So I am told by the one who related this awful story ( half-sister of this woman!) that the baby during the abortion, bleeding and all, was crying when it was thrown into a nearby bucket and there it died. I have heard in my spirit this cry and it so upsets me. My faith in Christ tells me this is a moment in which He, who said that when you give a drink of water to one of the least of my brothers or sisters you do it to Me, is crucified again. The ultimate mystery and meaning of every human life is found in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. This is where we find the meaning and purpose of every human life, Christian and non-Christian. The only resolution to monstrous choices like this is found in His mercy spoken while He hung on the cross, "Father, forgive them, for they really don't realize what they are doing." May you and your families have a blessed Advent. Come, Lord Jesus, Prince of Peace. In You alone is our hope and lasting joy! Bernie Owens

Dear Friends, It is now Sunday evening here, November 6. I just finished leading a weekend retreat, a very different kind of retreat than what I usually lead. This is more like the retreat format at Manresa near Detroit in that I give talks, five of them over the weekend, but also I am the only one available to see retreatants for one-on-one conversations, and then I lead half hour group meditations, in this case, contemplative meditations which are much deeper than any other kind of prayer. One of these on Friday evening, five on Saturday, and two on Sunday morning. We finished with a 1 PM midday meal. I am tired but it is a good sense of tired. I will sleep well tonite! I had a stout beer with dinner this evening; it was a time to celebrate a little. Given the work I do, I hear some hair-raising stories at times. I will say from my hearing women admit to having had an abortion and how that memory lingers with them and haunts them in many cases, I don't see how having an abortion can truthfully be called an instance of "health care", unless it is a procedure done to save the mother's life. Even then, there is deep grief that the mother experiences, sadness over having to do what she is doing to save her life. I hear too many women being damaged psychologically and spiritually by having consented to this procedure for reasons other than to save their lives. Women who shrug off having had one and deny any spiritual damage from it were never close to God or spiritually sensitive to begin with. The other cause for concern I hear about here in Kenya is the widespread involvement with witchcraft and the dabbling in other forms of the occult. This very scary danger is widespread among high school and college age students. The high schools have been infected by people trying to make a lot of money and appeal to naive, vulnerable students to get involved in these rituals. Why you may ask would they do such? It seems that this involvement promises power over others you are angry with or want to hurt or control; also it is a way for becoming financially very successful. In Kenya there is a strong desire to get rich, to enjoy much prestige through wealth and status. Tribalism affects this kind of thinking, makes for greed and envy, also the desire to be powerful through wealth and then to have power over one's enemies through witchcraft. It may seem bizarre and far-fetched to you, my reader, but I will tell you without a doubt, I have witnessed this phenomenon myself, yes in the USA, and I know there are cases of powerful manifestations of evil powers and spirits that are very controlling and dangerous when a person opens the door of their heart to them and gives over power to them. This is very sinful in that it insults God by saying, "You, God, are not enough to guide me or provide for me. I am going to something else that will deliver to me the results I want (money, status, control, revenge, knowledge of someone in the hereafter, etc)." But when a person does such, all hell breaks loose in their lives or in the lives of their children or family. In some cases certain dabblers curse someone else and the impact on the one cursed is very, very dangerous and the one who issues the curse is in deep spiritual trouble, usually for the rest of their lives. I know of curses that affect more than one generation but two or three, and many members of the family tree. Too often certain people will brush away such stories as run-away fear easily explainable by psychological categories. Religious hysteria can indeed by explained sometimes by psychology. I am saying, however, that I know from experience that sometimes what is going on is NOT explainable by psychology but is truly a scary disturbance from the world of evil spirits, that these powers do exist and that they can do grave damage on those who play around with such stuff and put their faith in this power rather than in God. I know such goes on in Michigan thanks to certain cults and the worship of Satan. Pornography and the kidnapping and sexual abuse of children are so often connected with such evil. Here in Kenya I am aware of extreme cases of possessions that require an exorcism; persistent and aggressive spirits that ruin the lives of others and beat them up physically, psychologically, spiritually; who prompt in the possessed person impudent, hateful words, insults, accusations that are just off the wall, wild and crazy. but very threatening, wanting to do violence, even murder. I have had to listen to some religious leaders describe challenges like these, working with persons they have to care for or try to form in the early stages of religious life and who are this disturbed. What I am describing is real, I have had to listen to such cases and this truly happens at times. I am sure that what I am listening to is not just hysteria of one kind or another, but is the result of some people fooling around with the occult or being the victim of someone in their family fooling around with witchcraft and rituals of cursing. Even if later they try to get out of its power, it is often too late and they are miserably oppressed for much of the rest of their lives. What is sad and shocking is that there are some ordained leaders who deny the reality of what I am describing, seeing it entirely in terms of ancient superstitions, and subscribe entirely to explanations that psychologists can offer. Another topic: have you ever had the feeling and desire to respond to something or Someone so good and true and beautiful that you want to give yourself entirely to it or to that Someone, yet you feel very small and utterly inadequate to give what this Other deserves; that your depths are only a fraction of what you want to give, only a fraction of what you sense this something or Someone is worthy of? If you can identify, I am sure you would agree that it is an experience both painful and sweet. Right? If you can relate, I trust you know what I am talking about. It is a holy and such a life-giving experience to want to give our entire self to Someone and at the same time be overwhelmed with their goodness and lovableness while at the same time experiencing the frustration of not being able to even come close to giving what the other deserves, is made for, and is capable of receiving. Is this not the longing for eternity? the longing for the deepest communion with God? To enter into God's depths and to know and to love that which there is no reality more worthy, more lovable, more full of goodness than this One? I am quite tired after a demanding weekend. I am off to bed and pray for the USA, my homeland, and its future. May God lead us well through these tumultuous, sometimes embarrassing times. Bernie Owens

Dear Friends, Today is Tuesday, October 25, a week since my last letter. I am finally back to my routine of meeting daily with five out of a total of the fifty retreatants here at Mwangaza during the next eight days. I have a Belgian layman, a woman from Singapore, of Chinese ancestry and lately has worked in the refugee camps in northern Kenya, then three Kenyan nuns. After a two-week layoff, much needed and much appreciated, I feel truly good to be back into conversations of significant depth, with people baring their souls and letting me "see" God working in their lives and their own thirsts for a deeper life with God. Such conversations are ever new, never boring! Last Wednesday Fr. Bart Murphy and I went into the Nairobi Animal Park immediately south of the city boundaries of Nairobi. It is unique in the world. I learned it is about 30 miles from the western end to the eastern end and close to 20 miles from the northern most point to the southern edge. We arrived there at 7 AM; the morning sun had been up about an hour. We did not finish until 1 PM. What we saw was well worth the trip. While we did not see any lions or rhinos, we did see up close lots and lots of impalas, gazelles, antelopes, wildebeasts, zebras, hindebeasts(spelling?), also a few water buffaloes, two hippos asleep in the morning sun and sticking their heads and nostrils just above the water level of a lake they live in, then about 15 ostriches (truly aggressive characters!), a family of baboons (with babies on the rump end of two mother baboons, one monkey only and a really small one at that, then about 8-10 giraffes, some warthogs too (really ugly characters!). One giraffe, a very tall male, was standing on the road nibbling at some thorny bush with lots of green shoots on it. We pulled up our car abut 5 feet short of hitting the animal. We could not go around him but only stay on the road. The giraffe did not want to move. Soon two vans driven by drivers who are employees of the park and hired by groups of 8-12, were approaching behind us. I wondered how long this impasse was going to last! We inched a little closer to the animal and still the animal would not pay any attention to us but kept eating. Finally, after we revved up the engine while in neutral, the giraffe began to move and lopped leisurely by the car, right by the driver's door, almost brushing it, and continued past the car's right tail light (on the right side, the side of the driver in Kenya) and never once intimated any threat or irritation with us. This gave us an amazing closeup view of this gorgeous animal covered with a beautifully spotted coat and showing an enormously long neck. What a beautiful creature of God! What a privilege to view it close enough to touch it and then in the wild, in its natural habitat. In my previous letter I spoke about how sometimes I feel 'confined' while living and working here, that I don't get out often enough but can get on this treadmill of listening to people making their retreats, listening to what over time is emotionally and psychologically exhausting. In the last few days I have pondered the possibility of God letting this happen to me, having clearly called me here to Kenya (and I am sure He still calls me here), but is challenging me to find ways of changing my routine, spend less time on the computer, take that extra one hour nap in the afternoon (which I fight!) if I feel I need it, and very consciously choose to surrender to Him in any moment when I feel empty or alone, to set aside my preference and accept His ways, sometimes shown in the limitations of my body and its slowly diminished energy-level. There is a Reality, a divine presence waiting to be noticed and loved underneath the feelings of sadness, limitation, loneliness, being unloved. I think I am more and more understanding the ways of these especially impressive Carmelite saints whose biographies I have been reading these last few years (right now a biography on a Chilean Carmelite nun, only 19 years and 9 months old when she died in 1920 thanks to typhoid. St.Teresa of the Andes is her name, Juanita Fernandez her family names. There are deep stirrings that happen in me when I read the lives of these people. The descriptions of their hungers and thirsts for God are often quite stirring for me, as is the case with this teenager who went to God so early in her life. What comes through strongly for me when reading these lives is that it is God who makes saints, not saints who decide to become saints and put all their energy into the relationship they have with God. Each of us is loved and favored by God, usually far more than we realize. Saints seem to be people who really appreciate this, who take time regularly and often to pay attention to this presence and the movements of God in their depths; they walk with humility, endless gratitude, and the joy of close friendship with God. They are often struck with wonder at the goodness and lovableness of God, and this increases their sense of being utterly unworthy of such gifts. Anyway, I am sensing a new chapter in my walk with God while in Kenya and a challenge to experience God, to trust in God in the present moment and not wait for some future day to "start living again!" I am going to move on, pray Vespers, and get ready for dinner. I got new glasses today for distance viewing, tinted also to filter out the ultraviolet rays. I have to wait two weeks to get my new reading glasses. They will be bifocals. It has been four years since I had new glasses. The old ones were becoming increasingly inadequate! Oh yes, I continue to wait for donations to come in from people who promised me donations. I keep working on recruiting interested Catholics for the pilgrimage to the Holy Land I am leading next June 6-19. Are any of you interested?? Bernie Owens

Hi, Friends, It has been a month to this day, September 18, since my last letter. It is not a sign that nothing has been going on! I came back from the US on August 12 and jumped into the work of listening to retreatants three days later. This continued non-stop for a month, and then after two days another 8 day stretch, and after that a week of teaching some classes. Pretty soon I felt exhausted, little or no gas in my tank. I begged for a break and finally got it a week ago last Sunday. Sleep and plenty of it was the first order; then a chance to swim at an outdoor pool and take a car and get out of here for some sight-seeing in downtown Nairobi and elsewhere. Mowing lawn and weeding, pruning and watering the rose beds and buying and planting some flowers to replace some that had died have also been part of the change of routine. I am feeling much more normal now, but also aware that while this place is beautiful and a great place for very meaningful work, I sometimes feel rather confined here and am living in a place that leaves me feeling psychologically cramped, sometimes. Part of the problem is that I really have no friends beyond the walls of this place. I don't get to visit homes or share a meal out somewhere. I have to work harder here than I did at Manresa to find balance and stay fresh in my spirit. I see myself here at least another three years, so I have to make this work. So far, my first three years have generally been very, very fruitful and meaningful. But I also feeling the aging process and that makes me think more than I have in the past of my future here. We shall see! I am sure God will let me know what I am to do, what He wants for us. Tomorrow Fr. Bart Murphy an American Jesuit from our community, and I will drive into the famous Nairobi Animal Park immediately south of the city and observe what animals we can see before the sun gets too high and chases all of them into the shade. The park is really large, about 20 miles or so from one end to the other. Yes, there are lions in it. You can be sure we will be staying in our car with the windows rolled up! God has been extraordinarily good to me during my daily contemplations. He continues to be the most real of the Real, and present as so truly good and worthy of being loved and honored, moreso than any words could describe. Just to sit for 45 minutes with that awareness, to be still and as attentive as possible to this is full of meaning. I hope some of you who read this can relate and find support in what I am sharing. It is the main reason I say anything about this in these letters, even though it is so personal. The election process going on now in the USA? I find it to be so ugly, so disappointing, an embarrassment for our country. It is mud-slinging at such a sordid level. I do not care for either candidate. I fear we will have weak leadership for the next four years, regardless of who is president. I will be so glad when the campaign is finally over, the election itself is done and over with, and we can get back to something else to talk about. I need to head off to bed. God bless, and please pray for the USA and its future. Bernie Owens

Good afternoon, Friends, It is Sunday, the 18th of September. I hope you are well and feeling blessed. Even if you don't feel such, I am sure you are blessed in special ways. Last Thursday morning we finished with all of our retreatants (till next Tuesday evening when a new group of 45-50 comes in for 8 days; I will get five of them to guide). I had five to guide, two for the eight days, and three were finishing up the 30-day retreat. Wow, how each of them was immensely blessed. I am so privileged to listen to their descriptions of what God had given them, inspired in them, moved them to aspire to, so much more in Him. I pinch myself at times with the awareness that I am allowed to see up close these intimate, profound moments between God and these remarkable people. The blessings that are offered to people who develop the habit of daily meditation or contemplation and take 8 days each year to be exclusively with Him, in the silence and with specific bible passages that open up their souls, is so rich for them and for me who gets to listen to them and guide them. Each of the three nuns who made the 30-day retreat came into the last week focused on the resurrection stories from the Gospel and spoke with much excitement about how they felt the same sense of what Mary Magdalene felt when by the risen Jesus she was missioned on Easter Sunday to go back into her daily life and proclaim that she had seen the risen Lord and was to announce that He is alive and in our midst. So too these three; in their daily lives and in action and in word they were to proclaim that He is alive and in our midst, alive and acting now in all who have faith and will look for Him in their daily experience--not just a marvelous memory from 2000 years ago but an amazing reality in the NOW. None of them had consulted or talked with the others; Each came to this on their own from their experience of Him in their prayer. This truly moved me. They spoke with such conviction and joy. Thank you to any and all of you who prayed for them and for me. Then I had a 51 year old Irish priest for 8 days. His work is in South Sudan, a hellhole if there ever was one! That new nation is being torn apart by tribal warfare, so vicious you would be horrified by the stories of hatred and actions of revenge coming from there. He was filled with a joy in the new freedom he was experiencing; a freedom from and a freedom for in his life. Toward the end of his retreat he experienced, as he said, how real God is. "This is the really real! He is so present, so amazing, so utterly real," he said. Yesterday we had a funeral here for a 90 year old Jesuit who had spent the last 24 years in Tanzania, the nation to our south. Ted Walters was his name, an American who had taught and administered at U of D, John Carroll in Cleveland, and at St.John's Jesuit High School in Toledo. At the age of 65 he came to East Africa and did his best, most productive work here; being very instrumental in getting St. Augustine's in Mwanza established as what is now the largest Catholic university in East Africa. He also authored a number of short books to help the faithful understand their Catholic faith much better and to appreciate that they have a vocation, that there is a direction of God going on in their souls, and that each of us is called to personal holiness of life and service of God with our life. He died on September 9, 25 years to the day and almost to the hour when his mother died in 1991. Three days before he died he said, "I am going home on Saturday. I am going to a church where there are many people waiting to celebrate with me." And lo and behold, Ted died 5 minutes before midnight, on Friday, the 9th. What a connection he enjoyed with God to be able to say what he said and to have it come true!" About 100 participated in the funeral yesterday. Many of Ted's former students came a long way to be at this funeral and express their deep gratitude to him. During the late evening of the day before, under the full moon, six of our workers dug by hand his grave. It went down 10-12 feet. After the mass we all processed slowly out to the cemetery. After the usual prayers many of us threw a fistful of loose dirt onto the coffin. Then a number of the younger men used shovels to fill in the grave site. This took some 20 minutes while songs were be sung, some in English, some in Kiswahili. When they finished numerous wreathes of roses were laid upon the mound of dirt. And many of us who were carrying a single long stem rose placed these on the mound of dirt. This morning, after leading the Sunday mass for 20 people in our small chapel and having my breakfast, I began my usual 45 minutes of meditation. I simply sit in silence for it, not reading anything, Bible or otherwise, not focusing on any image or thought but just being present to God in my depths. Something like the Irish priest I told you about up above, I experienced God as so, so real, so close, so immediately present. Just amazing! No images, no words, just an awareness, a very sweet awareness, like two friends simply enjoying being together while looking at and nodding to each other in quiet simplicity. I was just so taken by the fact that I really know Him, truly, truly know Him as so available, so, so present, so humble. But what also happened at the same time was a very strong longing or ache welling up in me to be in complete communion with this friend of all friends. I could not get over it (who would want something like this to end!). Yes, this is the really real. This is the core, the source of everything good, true and beautiful. And it is all gift there for the receiving. No one deserves this but it is offered to everyone until we can receive such. I have never experienced love for someone as I did in such a moment. I later recognized it as the same kind of experience I had when 5 years ago I was unforgettably moved when watching the movie, "Of Gods and Men," which is about 9 French Trappist monks in Algeria in 1996 who chose to stay rather than leave their monastery when threatened with death by some jihadists. All during that movie I was powerfully moved, wept through much of it, and in minutes after the movie experienced the call to leave the USA and come to East Africa. Yes, God is for real, very real, and much closer to each of us than we probably realize. I am left wanting to explore ways in which I can be more proactive, more responsive in making the most of these blessings from God. It is time for me to move on. God bless all you who read this. Thanks for your interest. Bernie Owens

Dear Friends, Here it is Thursday eve, the 8th, our first day of sun and clear sky in over a week, maybe 10 days. It felt so good today finally to feel the sun's warmth. We have been wearing sweaters and coats, hats sometimes too, to fend off the severe cold that has been on us for so long. the constant overcast wears down people's enthusiasm. What a factor to change people's attitude, to put smiles back on people's faces. We are experiencing, hopefully, the end of winter and the first approaches of spring time. I am aware that it isn't till September 21 that spring officially sets in for this part of the world, but it felt like spring today, easily in the mid 70s. The nights have been downright cold, temps in the 40s. With no heat in our rooms you want an extra wool blanket on the bed and a hat on your head throughout the night. Bare tile floors push you to wear socks too. My mornings have been spent listening to retreatants, each talking with me for 30-45 minutes. What moving things they share! There are 22 people here making that retreat; Three of these I am guiding. (I am guiding two others for just 8 days in length.) The 30-day retreatants began their retreat on August 15 and will finish on September 15. In the last few days they have been praying on the passion of Christ, from the last Supper till His death and burial. Today they were praying just on the execution and burial of Jesus. Tomorrow on the experience of Mary, the mother of Jesus, while witnessing the execution of her son and then overseeing his burial. Can you imagine what she went through!!! (This is what I spoke about during the homily of the mass I led for all of them this afternoon, 60 in all. It was the feast day of her birth. What were the spiritual strengths that were hers that enabled her to survive such a test and still trust God??!!)They spend four hours a day, an hour per period, on some aspect of this story . It so humbles them, astounds them at times, even scares some. I myself am very moved by what they say when they debrief. They inspire me, in turn, about things I consider bringing to my book now in the first stages of writing. Last Sunday afternoon it was my turn to lead the mass for the retreatants. It was also the day Mother Teresa of Calcutta was canonized a saint by Pope Francis in Rome. I did not see the TV coverage, even though we had it here, but was with retreatants during the mass going on in Rome. We are one hour ahead of Rome during their summer, two hours ahead when they go off Daylight Savings time. We never change our clocks. I took the three readings of Sunday and showed how Mother Teresa lived out the spirit of each one. Three of the 30-day retreatants are Missionaries of Charity sisters, and they did the readings and organized the music for the mass. I congratulated them and their religious community in public at the end of my homily on this very happy occasion and personally for their own vocations to such a remarkable religious order. I have hurt my lower back and went to a chiropractor last Friday to have it straightened. It did help for a few days. Today it has felt like I have hurt something again in that area. For the life of me, I cannot recall a particular moment when I did hurt myself in that area. Maybe poor posture while sitting in a chair listening to retreatants?? It is really bothersome. I plan to go back to the doctor late tomorrow afternoon. So often there is some reminder that this life is not our final life, this earth is not heaven! I have been reading a short book on the saint (St. Teresa Margaret Redi of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, died 1770) whose preserved body in Florence, Italy I visited last November. Her story continues to stir me deeply and make me long for something of her spirit and focus in relating to God. My prayer these last days has been so blessed! Something really good is going on! Too early to say much more than that. I look forward to November 29 when I can begin my own annual 8 day retreat, finishing on December 8. I need to move on, friends. I wish the best to each and all of you. Overall I am quite fine and really blessed with the work I have the opportunity to do. The book writing moves along in spurts or reading and then writing. 15 years come this Sunday since 9/11. Pray for our country in this coming election. I do not feel encouraged. I so pray we can stay out of any kind of war. There is still so much of it in parts of the Middle East and in spots of Africa. God bless. Bernie Owens

Dear Friends, I am writing to you on Sunday evening. The winter chill is still with us on some nights. I am ready for a warmer room and hopes of putting away my heavy wool blanket. What is most memorable from this last week is a conversation I had with one of my retreatants a few days ago. She is a tall, slender Kenyan from the northwestern parts of the nation, where life is typically given to tending goats and cattle, leading them to watering holes, protecting them from rustlers, and staying out of the hot sun. This is a woman in her mid 30s, very black skin with the hair over her entire head braided beautifully. She speaks softly and with a British accent. I have to strain to understand her. I am not successful all the time! She is soon to make her vows perpetual after being in her religious order for 12 years. The 30-day retreat she is in the middle of and I am guiding her through is to prepare her well for this most special moment in her life next February. Her work is teaching high school age boys and girls. I had given her the previous day a scripture passage (Genesis 22:1-18) to pray with, a text that tells the story of Abraham preparing to sacrifice his miracle child, Isaac, since he understood (mistakenly) that God had asked him to sacrifice his son. As you recall, God intervenes and prevents Abraham from doing such to his son and then praises Abraham to no end for trusting God, putting God first above everything. This young nun prayed on that passage among others but was moved to relate to me a major moment in her life when two members of her religious order had come to her village and to visit her mother to reassure her of her daughter's choice to join and stay with the religious order. In this part of the world where it is considered by so many that you are not whole unless you have become a mother or a father, she had made a radical choice, risking rejection by some and resentment or resistance at least from her mother. Her mother is a quiet, reflective woman and listened well to these two visitors while her daughter sat near them. When it came time for her mother to speak, this nun, her daughter said, "My mother trembled and said, 'Who am I to fight God? God gave her to me and now I give her back to God'." I was so taken by how this young nun told of this great moment in her life when as she said, "my mother really accepted me then and supports me in what I am doing with my life." The love and awe for her mother, and for God, that radiated from that nun's face was something to behold. I later found it very meaningful to know that while I am half way around the world from my homeland, I am listening to a young Christian woman who wants to give her life to God in this way, and comes from a world of goats and cows, thatched huts, and barren surroundings, yet the Holy Spirit moves in her heart in the same way that this same Spirit has moved in mine and in so many others I am privileged to listen to and guide in their walk with God. I had a new sense of the reality of God's Holy Spirit moving in the depths of EVERY human being, no matter what our background. I have had a good first week in writing the beginnings of my new book. I am finding growing enthusiasm inside me for doing this. Maybe it was providential that the course I was going to offer on Teresa of Avila got cancelled! I think my finished product will find many interested readers. At the same time, I suspect it will be a few years into the future before I finish it and have it in a form fit for publishing. There are some parts in this book that will come from the deepest parts of me. That will not be easy to put into words, and I will be willing to wait patiently on that till I am satisfied with what is the final version. I do not see a book coming from me after this one!! I need to go! Have a blessed week. Till next time . . . Bernie Owens

Dear Friends, It has been a long time since I posted anything on this blog site, since early June if I recall correctly. I am glad to be back and telling you what has been happening with me in the last three months. I returned to Nairobi a week ago and am now feeling largely readjusted to the 7 hour time difference between here and the Eastern time zone of the USA. It took me quite some time to feel normal and not wake up for long periods during the nighttime. I have had to sleep a lot to feel rested. Some of the reasons for that, I am supposing, is the kind of work I was doing in the USA during the spring and summertime. For three and a half months I was engaged in trying to raise funds for two buildings much needed here at our retreat centre. The work involved in setting up evening events in donor's homes, or at a restaurant, or at a country club and then getting a list of names and email addresses to ask people to come was a lot of work. It involved much detail and remembering and phoning or emailing. It was that kind of work, dealing with much detail, that made me mentally weary. I did the best I knew how, received some great help from a few people in hosting and setting up these events, and then had the experience of some potential donors giving nothing or much less than I had hoped for. I will not know how well my efforts produced many donations till January 1. The bigger donors wait until the end of the calendar year to decide what they will give. We are about 40% of the way to our goal. My fondest hope is that by this time next year we will be done and ready to build both buildings. One very pleasant part of my time back in the US was visiting my three siblings, meeting two newly adopted members of our family (a 10 year old girl and her 12 year old brother), visiting numerous friends, some of whom I had not seen in many years (one for 44 years!) and then giving two workshops on the book I wrote and published a year ago: one workshop in Modesto, California and the other in Birmingham, Michigan. By the way, my book is presently being translated into Spanish and should be ready for printing in a year from now. Also, a publishing company in India is printing and selling copies in English speaking Asia and Africa. I have said in previous months that I feel inspired to write a second book. That inspiration is still very much there inside me and I feel close to starting, just to get something out on paper. Usually writing generates the desire and inspiration for more writing. Right now I am trying in my mind many possible ways of beginning the book. I want to start with an anecdote, an "attention-getter". So far I have not settled on one. I had the disappointment this morning of being notified by the dean of the seminary that my course in Teresa of Avila's "The Interior Castle" i cancelled for this semester since too few students signed up for it. It is an elective and I am thinking many other electives were offered and I lost out. I will try again for the second semester beginning in January. I would like to think that this cancellation will give me more time for writing on a new book. Next Tuesday I mark 3 years since I arrived here to live and work. Those years have flown by. I have loved the opportunities I have had here. The cancellation of the course on Teresa, of teaching, is a great disappointment. If this keeps happening into the near future, then I will seriously rethink my staying here in East Africa. I am off to bed. tomorrow is Sunday, the 21st. God bless all of you who read this. Bernie

Dear Friends, Wow, it has been 5 weeks since I last posted anything here. And so, so much has happened for me in that time. It is mostly due to my being back in the USA (since April 22) and being busy with arranging fund-raising events in the Detroit area. While I am finding time to reconnect with friends and planning reunions with family members, most of my time so far has been spent in strategizing and organizing events at which as a voice for very poor people in East Africa I will make an appeal for donations. All of these events are in the future, June and especially in July. None has happened yet. I return to Nairobi on August 11. The results of these efforts will be best known com October and November. The weather here has finally turned wonderful--low 80s and no clouds. The first 3-4 weeks were cold or cool. A week ago Sunday, May 15, we had snowflakes falling in the afternoon. That is so unusual for this time of the year! Two evenings ago a friend and I went to the baseball game between the Tigers and Philadelphia Phillies. The home team won what turned out to be a thrilling game, 5-4, and the weather was ideal. During my time back I came across a quote from a 19th century Canadian woman, Marie-Rose Durocher, that has so struck me. It has stayed with me and deepened over the last three weeks since I first discovered it. This is what I would like to reflect on in this letter. The quote is as follows: "I invite you to come to the Heart of Jesus with me, for it is there that I wish to dwell and where, if you wish it, we will never be separated." As I said, this has so drawn my attention and wonder; it is so special, so beautiful and for me very powerful. It draws me into a speechless wonder at what God offers to each of us, the closeness and communion each of us is meant to experience someday with Him and with each other. What does it mean "to enter the heart" of anyone? I can say such has happened for me with some of the people I have met in East Africa. I hear their stories, I pay close attention to what they are saying and feel something of what they are relating: e.g., a major economic struggle for themselves or their families, or their effort to help oppressed people (e.g., young teenage girls pressured to be 'cut' to satisfy tribal customs of genital mutilation) and so I get a glimpse of something of the beauty and goodness in these people. I sense their soul and recognize such nobility and courage in them. So, yes, I "enter their heart," their world with its secrets and hopes, their wounds and victories. I have experienced much the same with Jesus. I do know Him, without a doubt. I have experienced Him. "I know the One in whom I have believed, as St. Paul himself exclaimed." I have been privileged, like everyone is welcomed to do, to "enter His Heart," His world and its joys and pains, its present challenges and find there an overwhelming strength in Him to be consistently a steady, caring, loving, understanding and encouraging Presence. Spending 45 minutes each day in silence with Him, sometimes through the use of a Scripture passage very meaningful to me, or in just being steadily present and aware of Him present to me here and now, has opened me over the years to this Mystery, deeper and deeper. Yes, I have "entered His Heart", His world, His life in doing this. Most amazing of all has been my "enter(ing) into" His way of thinking and choosing in which He gives everything He has and is. To experience such a choice being made for me, and for you, and even for each person that ever existed or will exist is something I struggle to take in. I can hardly take it in; in some respects I know I cannot take in much of this Mystery. It is so beyond me yet draws me irresistably. Never before have I met anyone who has made such a choice as Jesus did in the last hours of His life. It is often too much to stay present to such a choice in the face of the sufferings and death He experienced. It puts me back on myself to consider what it would be for me to make the same choice, to do for someone else what He has done for me. It would take a rare gift from God to give one's entire self that deeply, that completely. So to be "inside Him, in His world, in His Heart", to feel what He feels and to know what He knows, draws me powerfully, but this also leaves me feeling terribly inadequate, so limited in being able to receive such a gift. Yet, it is what God's Spirit attracts me to move "into." And, as the quote of Marie-Rose Durocher speaks to, I want to bring the very special people of my life (really, anyone I can find and is willing to respond with a 'yes') to this most beautiful and sacred of all Places and for them to know for themselves as much as possible something of this most awesome Presence and Loving Assurance. To have this kind of friendship with anyone who has such a focus and attraction is, I am sure, the closest glimpse of heaven any human being can have while here on earth. So while I have been working at setting up fund-raising evenings here in the Detroit area during this summer, this quote I share with you has "moved around" inside me at different times, in ways that capture my attention at times and draws me to an inner attentiveness and a felt need to spend time being still before this great Mystery and letting myself be taken down inside, down into wordless wonder and humbled gratitude. This must be something like what Moses experienced when He encountered God and had to take off his sandals because he knew he was on sacred ground, in a Presence so captivating, so indescribably beautiful and beyond all words. Today, May 25, is the first of nine days many people including myself prepare through some brief prayers for the great feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, (June 3 this year). It is a simple way for asking to be taken "into His Heart," into His world and care for this world to be more and more like He is; it is to be given His Heart and more of His Spirit so that we may become another Christ, another presence of Him in a world that so needs understanding, healing, mercy, truth, conversion, justice and peace. I know that eventually He will have His way with each of us and that we will, by His gifting us, have the quality of mind and Heart He does. But until that day it is "More Than You Could Ever Imagine." "Eye has not seen, ear has not heard what God has prepared for anyone who loves Him." Bernie Owens

Dear Friends, Here I am, four days before I leave Kenya to return to the USA for three and a half months. I fly out of here on Thursday evening, cross the desert of the Sudan and Libya and Mediterranean Sea up to Amsterdam (7.5 hours), have a three hour layover there in the early morning hours, and then fly about 8 hours straight into Detroit. It is a long, long trip!! I will arrive at 1:10 PM in Detroit, but for my body it will be 8:10 PM when I arrive. I know I will have slept maybe four hours or so on the plane, so I expect to feel pretty numb and sleepy when I arrive. Why am I returning to Detroit for so long? First, I will have finished my first three years here in Kenya this coming August and so I am eligible for a home visit to see family and close friends. But I am using much of my time to continue the fundraising efforts I began a year ago last spring. I am about 35% done with this project and hope to God I can wrap it up or come close to that on this year's trip. It is not easy work and is not my work of choice. One great moment I am anticipating is meeting for the first time in late June the two newest members of my family: two adopted children, a boy now 10 and his blood sister, 8 years old. The courts took them away from their parents who are incurable alcoholics and in and out of jail all the time. The children are delighted to have a stable home and lots of love. They now belong legally to my niece and her husband in Charleston, SC. The big news around here is the sighting of a lion about five days ago (reported on local TV) and then the claims of hearing the lion roar about two days ago. Paw prints near our front gate and our fence damaged by the animal have been evident. We suspect it is an older lion, rejected by the harem and so now on its own to survive. It is still dangerous. We think it hides during the day and comes out to hunt once the sun disappears. It roams to other parts of the area and would love to get a dog. I guess they love dogs for their mealtime, not as guests but as the main course! Ha! We have three goats and a sheep on our grounds, and that lion would love to have any one of them! Next door are horses and cows. What a meal any of them would make. So all are vigilant in this area, and the Wild Animal park rangers are hunting for this animal, not easy to find since it is hiding during the day and roams at nighttime. The murder of the four nuns, Missionaries of Charity (Mother Teresa of Calcutta's group), in Yemen a month ago continues to be a conversation piece here. Most of them received a major phase of their training here in Nairobi, and some of those of the nuns here in Nairobi I know and they know one or more of the nuns who were murdered.) It is said the assassins got access to the nuns residence and work place through the appeal of a young boy who came to the door and said he wanted to visit an elderly relative he claimed was in the home care of the nuns. The nuns opened up and behind him rushed in the four solders of Al Quaida. then they hurried into the room where five nuns were serving the elderly in what could be called a nursing home. One of the nuns hid behind the door as they rushed in and pushed back the door. She was the lone surviving witness to the horror of all of this massacre. Two Muslim women from the local area, confronted these soldiers, said they loved the nuns and what they were doing, but then they were shot and killed. The Salesian chaplain, a diabetic was whisked away and is supposedly still being held and was not crucified on Good Friday as some had claimed was to happen to him. One wonders whether he has gotten his medicine for his diabetic condition. The soldiers shot up the place, destroyed anything religious. The priest was supposed to have gone to the tabernacle right away and swallowed hosts in large numbers. After this was all over, one police official, a Muslim, entered the building, found a crucifix on the wall, took it down and while holding it is reported to have said, "all this happened because of this (holding up the crucifix)! I have to go. I am falling asleep on this Sunday evening and am ready to lay down my body and float off into lala land. Goodnite! Bernie Owens.

Dear Friends, It is early Easter evening here. We have had power outages much of today and yesterday. Hence the delay in sending to you this last of the Holy Week/Easter messages that have touched me and I wanted to pass to you. This is a sermon from the late 5th century by a Greek bishop named John Chrysostom. It was given at Easter during one of the years of his leadership. I like it so much that I included it in the last chapter of the book I wrote, whose first anniversary of sales is next Sunday, April 3. (1,500 copies have been sold in one year. I am now in the beginning stages of arranging for its translation into Spanish and hopefully publishing it by a Jesuit press in Mexico City.) The sermon goes this way: "Whoever you are, come, celebrate this shining happening, this festival of light. You, the devout, God's unshakable lover, and you, the servant brimming with thanks. Come, walk into the joy of your Lord. And you the impoverished faster, come for your wages. You who began before sunrise, come for your stipend. You who waited till nine in the morning: the feast is for you. And you, the not-till-noonday starter, do not hesitate: you shall not lose a thing. You who began at only three in the afternoon, have no scruples, come. And you who arrived just before sunset, forget you were late. Do not be bashful. Our master is magnanimous and welcomes the very latest with the very first. He will not entertain you less, you of the eleventh hour, than you the dawn toiler. No, not at all. To this one he gives, and on that one he showers rewards. Whether you were a success or whether you only tried, he will greet you, make much of your effort, extol your intention. Let everyone, therefore, crowd into the exhilaration of our Savior. You the first and you the last: equally heaped with blessings. You the rich and you the poor: celebrate together. You the careful and you the careless: enjoy this day of days! You that have kept the fast, and you that have broken it: be happy today. The table is loaded. Feast on it like princes. The milkfed veal is fat. Let no one go hungry. And drink, all of you, drink the cup. The vintage is faith. Feed sumptuously all: feed on his goodness, his sheer abundance. No one need think you are poor, for the universal empire is emblazoned, wide open for all. No one need mourn uncountable falls, be they over and over, for Forgiveness itself has reared from the tomb. No one need fear death: for our Savior himself has died and set us free. He confronted death in his own person and blasted it to nothing. He made it defunct by the very taste of his flesh. This is exactly what Isaiah foretold when he declared: 'Hell is harrowed by encounter with him.' Of course it is harrowed. For now hell is a joke, finished, done with, Harrowed because now taken prisoner it snatched at a body and--incredible--lit upon God. It gulped down the earth and gagged on heaven. It seized what it saw and was crushed by what it failed to see. Poor death, where is your sting? Poor hell, where is your triumph? Christ steps out of the tomb and you are reduced to nothing. Christ rises and the angels are wild with delight. Christ rises and life is set free. Christ rises and the graves are emptied of the dead. Oh yes, for he broke from the tomb like a flower, a beautiful fruit: the first fruit of those already gone. All glory be his, all success and power . . . forever and ever!" Isn't this lovely??"!! I read it as the conclusion of my homily at mass this morning for about 60-70 retreatants and staff. I know of no better way than this statement for declaring something of the exuberance of Christians when they experience the power of what the Father did in Jesus and the hope, the blessed assurance that this offers to us who sometimes wonder about the meaning and direction of our life. May this Easter season be full of Easter joy and peace for you and deeper assurance of the great Love that is already in your life (and mine too)! Bernie Owens

Good Friday morning to you, my friends. On this day of solemn quiet, I wish you peace and the sense of a hope for each other and for our world thanks to the 'yes' Jesus gave to the Father and to us on that day He passed from this world. I am well aware of an incident going on in Yemen sometime today, a place where four nuns were martyred three weeks ago and the only Catholic priest there, a Salesian, was kidnapped. The report now is that Al Quaida will crucify him sometime today, on this Good Friday, yes, crucify him! May God give him every strength!! And so I pass on to you a statement I found recently. It truly impresses me and seems so fitting for this day, Good Friday. It goes this way: If you would like to know God, look at the crucifix. If you would like to love God, look to the crucifix If you want to serve God, look at the crucifix. If you hope for eternal happiness, then look at the crucifix. If you wonder how much God loves you, look at the crucifix. If you wonder how much He wants you in heaven, look at the crucifix. If you wonder how much you should forgive others, look at the crucifix. If you want to know what unselfishness and generosity are, look at the crucifix. If you want to understand the need for self-denial, look at the crucifix. If you want to live well, look at the crucifix. And if you want to die well, then look at the crucifix. I want to finish here by passing on to you, for your consideration, an essay by Fr. Ron Rolheiser, OMI, a very popular write of Catholic spirituality. It is perfect for reading and pondering on this Good Friday. He says: It is one thing to love when you feel love around you, when others understand you and are grateful for your person and gifts; it is quite another when everything around you speaks of misunderstanding, jealousy, coldness, and hatred. It is one thing to maintain your ideals when they are shared by others, when the gospel works for you, when principle works out in practice; it is quite another when it seems you are alone in some ideal and when the gospel appears to be delivering more death than life. It is one thing to keep your balance when the rhythms of life support it, when there is a healthy give and take to things, when life is fair; it is quite another when things are unfair, when you are unjustly criticized, when everyone else seems to have lost balance, when, like on Good Friday, it gets dark in the middle of the day. It is one thing to be gracious when those around you are respectful, warm, and fair. It is quite another when everyone seems bitter, disrespectful, jealous and cold. It is one thing to bless others when they want to receive that blessing, when they hang on to your every word, when they want to be in your company; it is quite another when their very glance speaks of loathing and when they avoid you when you come into a room. It is one thing to forgive others when that forgiveness seems fair, when it isn't impossible to swallow the hurt, when the wound dealt you is not mortal; it is quite another to forgive someone when it isn't fair, when the wound dealt you is mortal, when the life being murdered is your own. It is one thing to give your life over to family, church, community and God when you feel loved and supported by them, when they seem worth the sacrifice, when you get a good feeling by doing it; it is quite another thing when you do not feel support, when it doesn't seem worthwhile, and when you feel no other reason for doing it except truth and principle. These contrasts capture, in essence, what Jesus did in the Garden of Gethsemani and on the cross. His passion was a drama of the heart, not an endurance test for His body. What made the sacrifice of Jesus, His handing Himself over, so special? We have, I think, focused too much on the physical aspects of the crucifixion to the detriment of what was happening more deeply, underneath. Why do I say that? Because none of the Gospels emphasizes the physical sufferings, nor indeed, in the fears He expressed in conversations before His death, does Jesus. What the Gospels and Jesus emphasize is His moral loneliness, the fact that He was alone, betrayed, humiliated, misunderstood, the object of jealousy and crowd hysteria, that He was a stone's throw away from everyone, that those who loved Him were asleep to what was really happening, that He was unanimity-minus-one. And this moral loneliness, mocked by those outside of it, tempted Him against everything He had preached and stood for during His life and ministry. What made His sacrifice so special was not that He died a victim of violence (millions die as victims of violence and their deaths are not necessarily special.) nor that He refused to use divine power to stop His death (as He Himself taught, that would have proved nothing). What made His death so special is that, inside of all the aloneness, darkness, jealousy, misunderstanding, sick crowd hysteria, coldness, and murder, He held out, He gave Himself over, without bitterness, without losing His balance, His meaning, or His message. This is the ultimate test and we face it daily in many areas of our lives. Some years ago, I was participating in a forum debating a book on chastity. The book, written by a woman still in her early twenties, was a very idealistic one and it urged young people to not have sex before marriage, but to keep their virginity as a special gift for their partners in marriage. One of the panelists, a very sincere woman, had this reaction: "I like what this young woman says, and when my daughters are in their teens I'll have them read this book, but what she says makes a lot more sense when you are 20 years old and know what you are waiting for than when you are 39 years old and no longer know what you are waiting for." The sacrifice of Jesus was so special because, long after the clock had run out on everything and there seemed no reason left to wait for anything, He still held on, to His ideals, His balance, His graciousness, His forgiveness, and His love. The struggle to do that, to remain faithful, is the real drama inside the death of Jesus, and in the end it is a struggle of the heart, not of the body. I plan to post one more Easter-related article, tomorrow sometime. Bernie Owens

Dear Friends, It is hot today in Nairobi, as it has been the last few days. More importantly, we are in the middle of Holy Week and just to begin its most solemn part. I always stand in amazement at what it is like when a person is free enough, ready in spirit, to give their entire self to someone else. When a great Love comes into a person's life, it begins to bring forth from their depths a desire to pour out their entire self, to give their heart, mind, soul and even body, if appropriate, to some other, whether it is to God or to another wonderful human being who has come into their life as really special. This is what I see Jesus doing when He approaches the last hours of His life, what we commemorate today. He knows He will be saying 'goodbye' very soon. He has little time or a opportunity left to speak what is most important to Him, what He so wants to say. Have you ever had a hint of this in your own life? I have, to some degree. I have had the experience of really wanting to give everything, to give "it" all to God. This is why what happened to the four nuns in Yemen about three weeks ago so captures my attention and awe. When someone knows he or she will die soon, they get to "the bottom line" in their values, what matters most in the center of their soul and they speak it however they can. Jesus was in this situation at the Last Supper, a time for Him to say a final 'goodbye' to His closest followers/friends of the past three years. And how did He express Himself? What He said is so profound, so moving, so unique that many people could not and still do not believe Him, or they interpret it to have a lesser meaning, a meaning that would fit what they think is "reasonable" and "realistic." I refer to what Jesus did with the meal He inherited from His Jewish tradition: the Seder meal. He hosted that meal and took specifically the bread and wine and gave these parts of the meal a whole new and infinitely deeper meaning: This is my Body, my whole self. (That is, this is Me that I am giving to you.) This is my Blood, my LIFE poured out for you. I want you to do the same for your sisters and brothers." It is like He was saying, "I am going to leave you very soon, yet I will not leave you. I am going to die as a young man but I will remain with you as your food and drink for the journey you are making home to our Father. I will not abandon you. In fact, I give you my entire self to be with you forever, so much do you, my sisters and brothers, mean to me." I cannot get over this gesture of love in the midst of such vulnerability, and He did it when all hell was breaking loose around Him, when certain people wanted Him dead. To still want to give your all in the face of hatred and violence coming at you is overwhelming. What strength of soul one must have not to run in fear but still be faithful to who you are and still give the best of who you are to anyone willing to receive this gift of yourself! I simply cannot get over this! I end by copying for all of you part of an article a former student of mine submitted for a reflection paper some twenty years ago at Manresa. It still impresses me to no end, still! It is best read today, Holy Thursday, in anticipation of this evening's foot-washing and Eucharist. Here is the article. I hope you enjoy it. When the Bible is seen in its Jewish context, it comes alive in many new ways. There are additional nuances of meaning that can be found when looking at its setting. The following is a good example of this point. In first century Israel, marriage customs were distinctive, particularly the manner of a man proposing marriage to a woman. A young man reaching marriageable age would go with his father to the house of a godly family which had a daughter that would be an appropriate wife. They had never met the girl but they would go to her house to sit and negotiate the "bride price" with her family, because the loss of a daughter meant an enormous loss for her family. When the two visitors and the family had agreed upon the price for this 14, 15, or 16 year old daughter (cows, goats, etc) the young man would then ask her to marry him, but do it in a very Jewish way. The young man's father would take a flask of wine, pour out a cup of wine, and then hand it to his son. The son would then turn to the young woman and, with all the solemnity of an oath before God, would say to her: "This cup is a new covenant in my blood, which I offer to you." In other words, "I love you. I will be your faithful husband. Will you be my bride?" How can anyone, when reflecting on this, not recognize Jesus and what He said at the Last Supper (Luke 22:20) to his Jewish followers who knew so well the Passover liturgy and the significance of the cup offering during this ritual so sacred for Jews? And who will not recognize the personal significance of our drinking from the chalice anytime we participate in the communion ritual of the mass? How could anyone miss the depth of what Jesus is saying to us and what we are agreeing to with Him when we drink from the chalice? And then another striking parallel: When a young man was to marry, he and his father would build a room onto the family's house or a separate house somewhere on the father's land. It was there that the son and his future family would live. After asking a girl to marry him, the young man would say to her: "I am going to prepare a place for you and then I will return for you." Again, who would not recognize the parallel with what Jesus says at the Last Supper: "In my Father's house are many dwelling places. If there were not, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back again and take you to myself, so that where I am you also may be." (John 14:2) May our "Amen" to such a gift get deeper and deeper!! I am so taken by the kind of relationship God wants with us, but, sadly, for many it is too good to believe, to "extreme." Someday we will all see, and what a day that will be! I will post a short saying tomorrow, on Good Friday. God bless! Bernie Owens

Dear Friends, I am two days early with what I had promised during my last post. It makes more sense to state this today, Tuesday of Holy Week, rather than wait till Thursday. It is an excerpt of notes from the retreat diary of a popular writer named Fr. Henri Nouwen. I have found it to be most meaningful when reflecting on the deeper meaning of the betrayal of Jesus by Judas. Nouwen writes this: "Jesus, sitting at table with His disciples, said, "One of you will betray me." (John 13:21) As I look more closely at Jesus' words as they are written in Greek, a better translation would be, "One of you will hand me over." The Greek word "paradidomi" means "to give over, to hand over, to give into the hands of." It is an important term not only to express what Judas did but also what God did. Paul writes, " . . . He did not spare His own Son, but 'handed Him over' for the sake of all of us" (Romans 8: 32). This moment when Jesus is handed over to those who do with Him as they please is a turning point in Jesus' ministry. It is turning from action to passion. After year of teaching, preaching, healing, and moving to wherever He wanted to go, Jesus is handed over to the caprices of His enemies. Things are now no longer done by Him but to Him. He is flagellated, crowned with thorns, spat at, laughed at, stripped, and nailed to a cross. He is a passive victim, subject to other people's actions. From the moment Jesus is handed over, His passion begins, and through this passion He fulfills His vocation. It is important for me to realize that Jesus fulfills His mission not by what He does, but by what is done to Him. Just as with everyone else, most of my life is determined by what is done to me and thus is passion. And because most of my life is passion, things being done to me, only small parts of my life are determined by what I think, say, or do. I am inclined to protest against this and to want all to be action, originated by me. But the truth is that my passion is a much greater part of my life than my action. Not to recognize this is self-deception and not to embrace my passion with love is self-rejection. It is good news to know that Jesus is handed over to passion, and through His passion accomplishes His divine task on earth. It is good news for a world passionately searching for wholeness. Jesus' words to Peter remind me that Jesus' transition from action to passion must also be ours if we want to follow His way. He says, "When you were young you put on your own belt and walked where you liked; but when you grow old you will stretch out your hands and somebody else will put a belt around you and take you where you would rather not go." (John 21:18) I, too, have to let myself be "handed over" and thus fulfill my vocation." I have always been very impressed with this reflection of Nouwen, especially the conclusion of it. It carries with it the challenge of surrendering each moment of my life to God, especially the circumstances of aging, failing health, unpleasant things that happen to me, losses, etc. As upsetting or frightening as these events can be, so often the biggest blessings of life come not in spite of but precisely in and through these events. As Jesus' final hours were so personally disastrous for Him in many ways but issued forth in His greatest gifts to us, I hope I have the longer view, God's viewpoint, and can trust and allow God to "hand me over" to these great blessings of life. Bernie Owens

Dear Friends, Yesterday (the 19th) was the feast day of an often overlooked saint: Joseph, the husband of Mary and the guardian of Jesus. I had occasion to lead a mass twice yesterday, a rather rare occurrence for me. In preparing for the mass it so struck me that Joseph by the manner and circumstances of his life reminds us of how everyone of us is, in a certain way, very ordinary and even insignificant. Like him we did not have to be. The world would hardly be different, if at all, if we had not been born. Yet we were born, and here we are, everyone of us. Like Joseph we become what we are with any value because of a great Love that gave us and continues to give us our life. So often this Love is not noticed or acknowledged. But at sometime in our life, by the Mercy of this great Love, we wake up to it. Often time it is a suffering that is the providential means for us noticing, or it is a loss, a living reminder that we are not in control of our life nor with most of what goes on in it. Sometimes it can be the discovery of a wonderful friend or experience something really beautiful in nature or in the arts. But when we do wake up to the One who gave us our life, to the One who is Love itself, and we start to respond and grow into a living friendship with this Other, then our life takes off. Our life takes on a depth and meaning, a peace, joy and often a happiness that was not there before. This gentle, loving Presence enables us to trust in any situation, to be guided in our truth. This is what is shown in yesterday's Gospel reading from St. Matthew. Mary is pregnant, but not by Joseph. Heartbroken and feeling betrayed, Joseph is ready to divorce her when IN A DREAM he is encouraged to trust his situation. How seemingly implausible what he was asked to trust. Yet he did, and we are all blessed by his choice. It is in situations like this that the greatness of Joseph, a man of very humble circumstances, shines through. It is what makes the people we have known and admire, be anything but just ordinary or insignificant. Joseph, then, for me is the patron of us countless ordinary folks, those who are rarely noticed but on certain occasions, often when they have died or graduate or retire or move away, are finally seen for the extraordinary people Love enabled them to become. I emphasize that is a great Love that brings us beyond our ordinary ordinariness and empowers us to become extraordinarily ordinary; still humble and often unappreciated but filled with a sense of purpose and inner joy in finding what has been called "the pearl of great price." In my previous letter I reflected briefly on the four nuns who earlier this month were executed in Yemen with their hands tied behind their backs and made to lie down on their stomachs and face while their brains were blown out. What thoughts and feelings must have rushed through them in their final moments; to think they were be chosen to love Him in serving the elderly poor, all of them Muslims, but also by the shedding of their blood, to give over their youth and all their dreams and trust Him utterly; just as Jesus did when with tears and bloody sweats begged His Abba to remove the cup He was so dreading to drink. All of them young women who were taken with the ideal of Mother Teresa of Calcutta to serve Him who is this great Love, their greatest Love, which I have referred to by tending to the very elderly and sick. This was their "crime" according to Al Quaida: to be a follower of Christ, to serve Him alive in the elderly poor at a nursing home. Truly, I envy them . . . a lot. We get one life, we walk through this world just once, and what we can choose, a meaning and Love that is there present for us to embrace, is so amazing! This Reality is what makes the great difference in what our lives become. Joseph chose it. Abraham, when he was willing to trust God and give back to God his precious Isaac, chose it. Mary, the teenager, chose to trust the Reality when the angel Gabriel invited her into a much different life than what she was anticipating. I am convinced each of us gets this opportunity, and that it comes to visit us, to invite us more than once until we choose it, finally. I wish each of you the great blessings of Holy Week and of the Easter season. It is my intent to post a letter on this blog next Thursday and another one on Good Friday and still another one on Sunday. Till then . . . Bernie Owens

Good evening, Friends, We have had today in Nairobi a beautiful day for weather, a fine sky, and lovely sunset. It started not so well for me this morning after I was trying to recover and feel normal again after drinking some champagne yesterday at a luncheon birthday celebration and this after I had taken at breakfast a pill for calming down my itching skin. There are lots of flowers here and the pollens often make my nose run and sometimes make my skin go crazy. I never thought at lunch about the pill I had taken at breakfast. (I also had seconds on ice creme and seconds on cake, something we rarely get here. I am about 12-14 pounds under what my usual weight is when in the States. I need to fatten up! Really!) So I went overboard, yes, I confess to such!) For the rest of the day I was sleepy, even though I led a mass at 5:15 PM and thought I did rather well for that! I collapsed into bed at 8:45 PM , about an hour and a half before I usually retire, and was gone almost immediately. Anyway, I slept for 12 hours last evening, yes, 12 hours and woke 4 or 5 times to drink water! It is easy to get dehydrated here, much more so than in the more humid Great Lakes area of the USA. However I never get the sinus infections here that I would get during the volatile weather of the midwest USA. There are some definite gains. So . . . no more champagne or anything alcoholic when taking medicine of that kind for controlling allergic reactions! The primaries in the USA are much discussed at mealtimes here, even by the non-Americans in our community. All cannot believe a person like D. Trump could become president, so shocked are they by his behavior toward people whom he does not like or disagrees with. Anyway, there is lots of discussion around this topic. They see a brokered convention coming in July and a blocking of Trump by the party powers with a compromise candidate being chosen. We shall see! One cultural phenomenon that continues to amaze me here is how the having of a child is so critical in the minds of people in this part of the world for having a sense of your being a man or a woman. Not to have a child as your own is to be an incomplete person, to be so out of the cultural norm, to somehow not belong. This came to my attention recently when I was informed that a young man I had been "coaching" during his journey to being ordained a priest was urged by his married brother, a father of a few children, to have a child, to "pass on the family name." And this conversation took place during the week that his family had gathered to witness his ordination to the priesthood! This priest-to-be was able to deflect what his brother was counseling, but did find it painful to be urged to take such actions completely contrary to what he had promised God. And I had heard a little over a year ago that a priest friend of another priest had been approached by his blood sister to have a child and that she or someone else in the family would keep the child as an adopted child, while he could keep the secret with them that he does, after all, have a son, that he is a father. I suspect this mindset is so ingrained in rural societies where having numerous children is very important in order to have as many hands as possible to run a farm and care for livestock. Consecrated celibacy does not sell well, especially in Africa. Actually, I don't think it "sells well' anywhere. So many project their own human needs and desires on to others who choose to live their lives this way and see their choice to be utterly senseless and stupid, barren, a great waste. And it will be all of that unless the person choosing such a way has found a great love in their life that makes it meaningful and is anything but barren and senseless but, instead, fruitful and life-giving. Much of the talk these last two days around here has been about the four nuns of Mother Teresa of Calcutta's Missionaries of Charity in Yemen being martyred, being bound with hands behind their backs, made to prostrate themselves face down on the floor, and then having their heads blown off. One Kenyan, one from Rwanda, and two from India were shot to death by religious fanatics last Friday. This is another incident where our natural instincts get challenged and are made to ponder what would make a person expose themselves to such violence, to risk their lives and lose them in this case. Again, it is only a great love in our life that would make such risks worthwhile and meaningful. Love is stronger than death, and reaches deep into the soul of a person who is open in the least way. Whether it is a mother having to lay down her life for her children, a doctor for a patient, or a missionary to go to a dangerous area to witness to Christ, it is only a great love in one's life that can overcome the natural instinct of self-preservation and risk the loss of our life. I have met numerous members of the Missionaries of Charity since coming here to Africa. They are very impressive people, and their love for Jesus is so attractive. So much does He mean to them that they take great risks for His sake. To understand such people and what motivates them, one has to get inside their world and experience something of what this great love is that motivates them so. I think love that is other-centered will do this for anyone who is quite other-centered in the ways they think, speak, and choose. Of course, many people are too self-focused and so could never understand this attitude of mind and heart. They are so into assuring their own safety and future. It would seem just absurd to them. But that is because they have not yet opened to real love, love willing to lay down one's life for them,a love that takes them out of themselves and their own world of consuming and being entertained and safe. I will leave you for now. I hope to post one or two more letters before Easter comes upon us. God bless, and a happy St. Paddy's day to all of you who read this. Bernie Owens P.S. Five years ago tomorrow, 3/7/11, my mother died, two months shy of her 95th birthday. How time has flown for me since then!

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