Friday, December 1, 2017

Good afternoon, Friends, I write on Friday, December 1, on a day with temps in the mid to high 70s and I am surrounded by blue skies and lots of flowers. So different from what many of you are now experiencing. It is a stark reminder for me of how life is in the southern hemisphere of the world. Our hottest months will be the next three, the heart of summer for us. I had planned on making my annual retreat (8 days mandated for every Jesuit every year) in Mombasa, a port city on the Indian ocean abut 250 miles from here during Christmas week and the first few days of January. But some Jesuits who visited there recently said, "Wow is it HOT^ there and humid too." That comment made me change my mind right away. I cannot do any work at all, let alone pray and make a retreat, when my skin is wet and I am perspiring so, which would be the case in that city. It is great for tourists. Many Kenyans who have at least modest money will take their children there over Christmas time to play in the water, which is truly wonderful I am told. So, like the last four years I am staying here for my retreat and have whatever resources at hand I will need. Besides, this setting is really beautiful for making a retreat, especially if you can be under a tree during the middle of the day. I have just finished leading 17 people through an 8-day retreat in which I gave the talks, two a day, and made myself available for numerous one-on-one conversations with any of them who needed that. I had many, many pages to xerox and staple. I established the theme for each article, then gave it to them as a summary and points/topics to pray from. The entire retreat was about who is the Spirit of God, what does that Spirit do in each of us and in the world. It seems many Christians have little or no knowledge of who is this Holy Spirit, so to provide instruction on this fundamental of our faith -life seemed fitting, reflected in how glad people were to get instruction and be able to pray much more deeply in regard to the Spirit. They loved the retreat from what I can see, but wow, was I ever tired when we finished yesterday. This past month of November has been a demanding one for me. Besides the retreat I was host, taxi-driver sometimes, and tour guide for part of two weeks for three American friends. The highlight of the two weeks was the four of us going to Masai Mara, the spacious game park in western Kenya, a 6 hour drive from here, an hour and a half of it over very bumpy roads. IN two full days and parts of two other days we saw so, so many wild animals. In one day we saw what are called the big five: lions, elephants, leopard, water buffalo, and rhinos. All in all, we saw 31 lions, all of them up close (maybe 40 feet away from our four-wheeler), some 25 feet away; 14 giraffes (so elegant!), one hyena, one rhino, countless water buffalo, wildebeasts, heartebeasts, and zebras, a few crocodiles, a dozen or so cheetahs, countless antelopes, gazelles, impalas, guinea-fowls, baboons, and many, many hippos, two of which came to the back area of our lodging and were so loud when munching grass. I woke up at 4:30 AM two of the mornings we were there because of the noise thinking it was an elephant up close to my bedroom window; instead it was a mother hippo with her baby munching in a rhythmic manner. What a site. They were probably 35-40 feet away from me. One of the most dramatic scenes was two female lions eating a wildebeast. We had come upon this scene maybe 20 minutes after the chase and kill. One lion was the mother of the other; she was gorged and lying almost on her back sound asleep. The daughter lioness, maybe 2-3 years old, had the wildebeast on its side and was feasting on the rib cage area and then worked hard to turn over the victim to get at more of the flesh yet to be torn off and eaten. One of the wildebeast's front legs was sticking straight up in the air while being worked over by this pretty large lioness. All of this happened in the middle of a shallow river; the wildebeast was lying on a sandbar and part of its body in the stream with the water running by gently. For me a bonus was the enormous vistas one gets at that park. I think it must be 50-70 miles in all directions; you can see in all directions over very gently rolling meadows with some mountains that form boundaries at opposite ends, 80-100 miles away. Very few trees over these vistas. It was so impressive to spot zebras, water buffalo and herds of elephants at different parts of the park at great distances. Binoculars really helped. One other very impressive scene was a herd of elephants up close with a baby elephant perhaps 2-3 weeks old. It was so interesting to watch the baby stick very close to its mother and be on the other side of her away from us. We would stop, turn off our engine, and stare for like a half hour. A moment of great humor came when I spotted on the side of our road in the park what is called a dung beetle. It is about the size of an adult's thumb. It rolls into a ball the dung of animals in the area, like that of the impalas and antelopes, and pushes with its rear legs this ball while pivoting off its front legs. It was hilarious watching how vigorously this beetle was pushing, doing its job to provide food for its eggs. I need to go, friends. Another batch of retreatants comes in this evening, so I go back to work with six people to guide in one-on-ones conversations each day. A blessed Advent and Christmas to each and all of you. Bernie Owens

Thursday, November 2, 2017

Dear Friends, It is November 2, the day Roman Catholics especially remember in prayer the deceased members of our families and friends. It is a tradition taken from many centuries, more than a millenium, to intercede with God for those who have passed on but, we believe, may still have issues and ways of relating that indicate their not being in complete union with God and their neighbor. In other words, there is still need for some purification of their past, something that needs "correcting" and realigning with God's Spirit before they are ready to be with God face to face. When we appreciate what is needed in the human soul before it is ready to be with God, it becomes immediately obvious how many of us upon death probably do not meet the minimum state of interior freedom and purity of heart necessary to be with God. How God does this purification and completing his work of transforming us in Christ so that we are in complete harmony with Him, God alone knows. In any case today is special just for this reason and for caring for those who have gone on in the Lord. ................................................................................................................................ In an hour I leave for the Nairobi airport to meet three American friends who are coming for a two-week visit. The four of us are planning to go to the famous game park, Masai Mara, next Monday through Thursday. I am really looking forward to this--to drive in a truck next to a group (pride) of lions or near the giraffes, etc. It is such a special place in the world. Right now it is raining and leaving everything very green. Spring is in the air, the flowers and trees in bloom add abundant color, a feast for the eyes. The jacaranda trees with their light purple bells in clusters are for me the most spectacular display of nature's colors at this time of the year................................................................................................................................. The repeated election, held on October 26, is over, the incumbent declared the winner, and the political jousting continues. The loser in this second election is a big source of pain to most in the nation. Most just want the economy to get going again. It has been stagnant for so long. Many want to go back to work. At the same time some major structural changes are needed in the way government is run and the elections are conducted. This is a young nation with many growing pains. Some observers are of the opinion that the next generation is needed to come into power before the old crony system modeled by the British dies; the Brits ran this place for more than a century as one of its colonies. So much favoritism toward the few families who own most of the land. this makes bribery and embezzelment easy for the way of operating, and staying out of prison while you can continue committing money related crimes and an occasional assassination or elimination of a political foe. There is a small middle class, too much unemployment still, which make for the seeds of violence and thievery. Thank God for the Christian churches, especially for the many nuns who run so many of the institutions that show care for the ordinary citizen and then the very poor, not-so-ordinary citizens. There are so many orphans and abandoned children, idle men and alcoholism. I sense many parallels with where the USA was after the American Civil War and into the 20th century. ...................................................................... I feel good about having predicted from the beginning of the baseball playoffs who would be the two teams in the World Series and that Houston would win it all. I am also glad that Justin Verlander finally got his World Series ring after two failed attempts with the Tigers (in 2006 and 2012). The trade that sent Verlander to Houston last July 31 made a huge difference for Houston getting to the WS. As a Tiger fan I must admit I have great hopes for the Tigers picking some great talent during the next couple of years and being back in competition in the not too distant future. ................................................................................................................. Will the government of the USA ever calm down? Will our populace ever calm down and show respect and be ready to listen to the other perspective for what truth is in it, if any? It seems we have so many who have adopted a "me-first" attitude and ready to accuse the other. Our culture is experiencing the ferment of men and women using each other through lots of sexual misbehavior so that those involved can become very rich and live the wild life. If anyone is exposed, they have an excuse and then point the accusing finger as if they have nothing from which to repent. Is it possible that a truly competent, inspiring leader emerge and get elected? Will Christian voices that are not fundamentalistic and capable of speaking knowledgeably to the injustices in the USA political, economic, racial, and cultural realms get a platform so that they are heard as widely as the standard media are able to be heard?...... .....................................................................................................................I continue to make good progress on my new book. I am presently toward the end of chapter 7 and hope to have the entire first draft done by June. God bless. I need to go to the airport now! In Christ, Bernie Owens

Sunday, October 15, 2017

Dear Friends, I have been remiss, yes. Too many other things getting my immediate attention, especially the time I have been putting in on writing the next chapter of the book I am writing (five chapters done with the part of the book I am most interested in yet to be written! Book-writing can be all-consuming, and after a while I don't think of anything else.)......................................................................................................................................... What is this book about? I am showing the various stages of spiritual and psychological, emotional growth possible in a person's life, if they deeply connect with Christ as the greatest discovery of their life and develop a deep friendship with and love for him. (So many do not really know Him; they know about Him but do not know Him!) I am using many sources to explain this but principally the framework of Teresa of Avila and some of the great insights of John of the Cross. Both of these people are Carmelite saints of the 16th century and so perceptive. I discuss why it is that most people do not grow beyond a certain relatively early point in the spiritual journey and miss out on realizing the greater, richer possibilities we have in becoming truly happy and fulfilled. What I seek to show in the latter half or third of the book some of the richer experiences available to us in these latter, more mature stages of life. It all depends on our taking a few basic steps to open up to and receive those deeper gifts of God. The problem is: like the Rich Young Man in the Gospel, so many of us don't want to take those few steps but would rather stay in our comfort zones and pretty much settle in to a certain level of growth and there live out the rest of our lives. God still loves us as we are but there could have been so, so much more for us if we had sought guidance and learned more about the possibilities available to us all, if we had made more courageous choices. So, I hope readers in the coming years will find my book to be like a map and guide to a richer, much happier life................................................................................................................................................ While I live far from the USA, I do read from the internet each day a quick summary of the news of what is going on in the USA. Like so many US citizens I feel concern for the deepening disunity in the US, great distress at the deepening godlessness of many elements and how the media reflect an implicit atheism in the politically correct values they approve of, then the fighting and disrespect shown in public speech and behavior, and the unthinkable consequences of a war that would be fought with the weapons now in the hands of nations who keep threatening each other. It all leaves me feeling rather powerless and praying urgently that God spare us lest we end up like Sodom and Gomorrah consumed in sulphuric fire. We so need credible, articulate voices that will witness to and proclaim in a public way a basic humble and grateful attitude, rooted in a deep faith in God, and a new dedication, especially in marriages and families, to live such values. Something has to be done to counter the hypocritical philosophy or system of values praised in the last two weeks by the media when Hugh Hefner died. The media were filled with testimonies to how he was a champion of and trailblazer toward a new freedom from repression. (Yet one twitter sent in said, "I think it safe to say this is one guy who is not in a better place!") But the media treated his death and his long life as a great contribution to a better culture and better USA, even though it acknowledged that Hefner in some interview early in his career of promoting his infamous magazine and the objectification of women admitted that women are objects (for the pleasure of men.)..................................................................................................................................... Then what struck me as so hypocritical of the media was their present obsession with and condemnation of Harvey Weinstein and how he has used so many actresses for satisfying his own addiction. I ask: is there any essential difference between Hugh Hefner and Harvey Weinstein?? Why is one so praised by the media and the other so heavily condemned? Is it that one is supposed to look and fantasize but never touch?? I ask that cynically! This moral rot is killing many spiritual lives, destroying people in their hearts to indulge their ego-centric passions and live without any intent to keep any promise or vow that would inconvenience them. They lie to themselves, helped by the media, when they claim that living this way is the new freedom, is the way out of repression and joyless living. Yet when you see the fruits, the results of their choices and lifestyles, the fury of people who counted on their being faithful and trustworthy, you say, "how can that be freedom?" I have had to listen to too many people who bemoan their addiction to pornography and their loss of freedom (yes, there is that word again) and enslavement to habits of lust. Such is the legacy of Hugh Hefner and others like him; I am sure Harvey Weinstein fed his fantasy life with the garbage that Hugh Hefner and others like him dumped on America from the early 1950s till our day. ................................................................................................................................................... With the ugliness of lust there is closely connected violence and rage, like the attitude shown in Steven Paddock, infamous forever for his murdering so many people in Las Vegas. Along with his successful gambling and spending money and time with the whores of that city he indulged his furious, bitterly angry attitude toward who knows what. Sex and violence together make for a never ending source of fascination. twisted curiosity, and perverse entertainment. (I have learned that getting hooked especially on porn makes people hide from God, hide from their true selves, and often lie to others close to them, also to stay at a pretty superficial, self-focused level of life.) Too many people in our nation are expressing their contempt and fury at someone (e.g., two years ago toward little children in a Connecticut school) by turning guns made for military combat on them. ..................................................................................................................................... Why am I so interested in this area of what troubles our nation? Because I anticipate spending the last years of what is left of my life helping teens and their parents look at their lives as a gift from God to do something God needs from them, something that will make their lives really meaningful, rooted in love and friendship with Christ and His Father, and contribute to the betterment of other people, to find their joy and fulfillment in living out of these values and cares. To think first in terms of living out a call from God rather than thinking first and foremost of choosing a career to become financially well-off (One is focused on God, the other on self): I want to give the rest of my life to precisely this and to confront the powers of evil and twisted values fostered by ex-Christians and unbelievers of other backgrounds like Hugh Hefner and other egocentric failures of our society. ......................................................................................................................................... Please pray for Kenya. We face a national election next October 26. Right now on this 15th day of October, things are very fluid. It seems the election will go forward, but who knows what will happen soon after it? I have three friends coming from the States a week after the election. We are staying in safe places, not going downtown Nairobi, and will be going to the famous game park, Masai Mara, a six hours drive west of here (on November 6-9) to see the lions, giraffes, antelope, hippos, water buffaloes, crocodiles, leopards, etc. Ironically, it will be more secure to be with the animals and some of the violent people who live in the big cities of this country!!................................................................................................................................... All for now! God bless America! May God raise up some truly great Christians in our land to live the Christian faith and be the leaven in a new dough God will create to regenerate our nation. We need a new politics, a new dedication to the family and to fidelity in marriage; we need men and women who will come not to be served but to serve and give their lives out of gratitude to Him who laid down His life for each of us, Christian and non-Christian, with no exceptions. See the second letter of St. Paul to the Corinthians, chapter 8, verse 9 and his letter to the Galatians, chapter 2, verses 19 and 20. Bernie Owens

Sunday, September 3, 2017

Dear Friends, Greetings from Nairobi on a grey, chilly, damp, overcast Sunday morning. I am trusting that by noon the sun will break through and we will enjoy a nice afternoon like we did yesterday. (Spring, yes, spring cannot come fast enough here; I miss the warm days.) I spent yesterday morning doing some long-awaited weeding and tilling soil in a large patch of roses that I had extensively pruned two weeks ago. The roses are beginning to assert themselves, some more than others, and promise to be fully grown by late September and full of blossoms again. It is such a gift for me to get outside and not look at my computer screen and forget the writing of my next book, which I am almost in the middle of. Writing for me can become compulsive; I wake up thinking about it, I go to bed thinking about it; the desire to finish the book and get out of me onto the computer all that is going on in my mind, heart, and spirit can be all-consuming. This is why working in the dirt with something that will be beautiful, enjoying no pressure nor time constraint, is truly relaxing for me. ............................................................................................................................................... I have waited a full week to write this letter while anticipating sharing with you something of the results of the Kenyan election. Perhaps you know that the loser in the election appealed the election results to the Supreme Court of the nation. Kenya waited two weeks for the seven judges with their many fellow lawyers to decide. Last Friday, at noon, during a Muslim holiday, the judges on a 4-2 vote (one judge was in the hospital) declared the election invalid, that it had not followed the Constitution's directives. (Can you imagine such a reason, such an alleged omission and gaffe??!!) So, another national election must be held in 60 days, on the presidential issue only, not on the other offices. This election, I am told, will be conducted on November 1. What is so exasperating is the waste of time and money, all the money that was spent on the previous election of August 8, the most expensive one in Africa, ever!; and over 1000 foreign observers, on their own money, had come to volunteer as observers and guarantors of the integrity of the election at various polls. By the way, they all said matters were conducted well and from what they saw the process was fine and trustworthy. John Kerry, the former secretary of state, was among these observers.................................................................................................................................................................................................... It seems to me that this outcome is a great embarrassment to the nation to spend all that money and time on a national election and have the presidential part of it declared invalid and has to be repeated. Kenya has had major strikes by nurses, doctors and also, in a separate strike, by teachers demanding the money that the government had promised them for raises. It always seems that the rich and the politically powerful find the money for what they really want, but so many others are denied. I find this situation something that leaves many, and myself, so weary. It reminds me of the very long process of campaigning, primaries, and finally an election in the USA. The two political parties, here in Kenya and also in the States, spend far too much time wrangling and focused critically on each other, and do not do enough real governing. Will the American citizens ever get a real choice, a choice that they are enthusiastic about? The USA did not get such a choice at the last national election. Will the election in 2020 be any different??!! ................................................................................................................................................. I marked four years in East Africa last August 23...................................................................................................................................... Underneath the various discouraging signs in the Kenyan economy and social structures, I experience the awesomeness of God's presence and power active in the lives and stories of the retreatants I am privileged to listen to and guide. I am deeply impressed with what I hear. For the three who are making the 30-day retreat--one from Kenya, one from Zambia, the other from Burundi-- I sense God saying, "no matter what the inequities in economics and social structures, I am with you through it all, and for those who are interested in a deep friendship with me, I will pour out my best gifts." In the midst of it all, God is singularly good to me, especially in my daily morning contemplations. At times it so moves me at how God supports me and is close. It is so awesome. .......................................................................................................................................... I must go now. With the Labor Day weekend over, the rhythm of the nation changes, children return to school, summer for the northern hemisphere is over, etc. God bless all of you. Bernie Owens

Sunday, August 13, 2017

Good morning, Friends. It is three weeks since I last wrote you a letter. I do hope you read the previous two letters about an amazing missionary in South Sudan. Hr story is one of the most amazing stories I have heard since my coming to Nairobi four years ago. ............................................................................................................................................... With that said, I will now tell you a little about the weirdest week I have witnessed so far in this part of Africa. Last Monday this nation of 45 million people "shut down" to engage in national elections. The preparation for it has been very long and drawn out, like in the United States. NO work, stores closed, public transportation was at a minimum. The invective, charges and counter-charges, were played up in the newspapers. The newspapers were obsessed with the campaign and political rhetoric. After awhile you wanted to pull a blanket over your head and withdraw from all the bombast, just like it is in the US during its campaign. In this campaign the incumbent president was running against a man who had lost three times before, THREE TIMES!! It must be said in his defense that he had the election stolen from him during his second try, in 2007 (elections are every five years) and this travesty of justice led to major riots and killings with men, women and children being hacked to death, in public, with long machete knives; Scenes of such carnage were even shown on local TV. Ugh! The World Court tried to convict the incumbent vice-president for having given orders to gangs to conduct such open violence but it never succeeded in making the charges stick. Witnesses disappeared over time (threatened or bought off) and so the case evaporated............................................................................................................................. So the memory of that traumatic time ten years ago was referred to over and over again in the media and was reflected often at the prayers of the faithful during daily mass. It seemed the whole nation was holding its breath that something similar might happen this time. So police and army were seen all over the nation. Over 1000 foreign observers, including former Secretary of State John Kerry of the Carter Institute, came to monitor the whole process of voting. In the end they said the process was conducted very well and with integrity, despite charges of the challenger to the incumbent president that the process was rigged and the hand-count of votes was done superficially. He claimed victory even though the official count came to be 55% to 45% in favor of the incumbent, President Uhuru Kenyatta. Out of nearly 15 million votes in all (out of 19 million eligible to vote), he won convincingly. But then because of the long process of verifying the vote count and the rumors of violence here and there in the nation, most stores remained closed ALL THROUGH THE WEEK. Many businesses did not open all week long. It was Friday evening, two days ago, that the official voting commission announced the winner. That is a long time following Monday, the voting day. ........................................................................................................................................ Another Jesuit and I wanted to visit over this weekend the port city of Mombasa on the Indian Ocean, a great resort place, four hours by train from here, but when he called to book two rooms, the caretaker strongly advised our not coming. He said the city, which had strongly supported the opponent, was still quite tense; it was not a good time to come, he said. Since we had no retreats here for the last nine days, I (we) have been holed up in our place for almost all of this time. I did go see a podiatrist on Tuesday, the day after the election, and found things in the city of Nairobi very quiet. I was even downtown, in the financial district of the city, and easily walked around without any fear. Again, people were far fewer than usual. I would like to think that because I am white colored in skin and visibly stand out in Nairobi's public, I was the least likely target of any violence. All of the tension is tribal in origin, with various tribes vying against the dominant tribe for political and economic advantage. As usual, these tensions come down to money and security and being able to provide for your families, to have a job and some fiscal security................................................................................................................................... The advantage in getting elected is that you have immense power to acquire land for yourself, as a perk for your public service. In this way you can amass significant wealth for yourself and your family members. These lead to a lot of dishonest dealings. And this is at the core of this nation's inability to get going in the world community. (This is the case in most other African nations.) No one at that level of government ever goes to prison for dishonest dealings. Those who accuse and their family members are threatened or bought off. So, in the end, it has been very easy to drive around this week, no longer experiencing the usual heavy traffic jams. Can you imagine anything like this happening in the States, where the nation closes up for a week, where business is halted in most places, where people are so concerned about their safety and stay home?? ................................................................................................................................ In the meantime I continue to make progress on the new book I hope to have done in a year or more. Sometimes I feel very enthused about it, at other times wondering whether anyone will want to read it!! The African provincial comes for his annual visit at the end of this month. I have some very big questions and issues to discuss with him. Prayers please. Thanks. I will tell you in September the results of that conversation. Again, prayers please. Thank you very much. Bernie Owens

Sunday, July 23, 2017

Good morning, Friends, It is Sunday for me, in the middle of Saturday night for you. It is rainy, chilly and completely overcast here. We so wish it would rain heavily and for some time. The ground is terribly dry and the maize (African corn) crop is failing due to lack of rain. Life is so tough here for many people....................................................................................................................What moves me to write again so soon after the last letter I wrote only two days ago is the continuing story of this Comboni nun from Costa Rica I am guiding through her 8-day retreat. You have to hear what I have been hearing from her. Again, she lives most of the time in South Sudan, a nation very young and completely destroyed by tribal hatred and war. So many murders and robberies, and no one is imprisoned for doing such. This nun, Sr. Lorena Mulare is her name, tells me that two years ago she and the people she lives with and cares for in a South Sudanese village were being chased by armed rebels killing anyone in their path. These soldiers had a tank with which they were firing shells and cannons. Everyone in the village was fleeing and ran for the bush area to hide. While running a shell landed near Sr. Lorena and knocked her to the ground. It kicked up gravel and sand which got embedded in her leg and some of it cut into her arm. She said, "God, I guess I am going to die today." But after some seconds passed, she felt her leg and arm where the blast of the gravel had cut into her and she brushed away much of it and realized she was not going to die. So, she first fell into a fetal position, trying to protect herself. But her instincts told her this would not do, that she had to get up and continue to try to flee. When she stood up and tried to run, her body, thanks to all of this trauma, would not respond and so all she could do was walk, and that she did and continued into the heavily protective bushes and managed to collapse for rest and regain her composure. So hard was her heart beating that she thought she might die of a heart attack. In the days that followed, she and the villagers survived on roots dug up from the surrounding ground and their water came from a swamp whose water they filtered through the cloth of some of the dresses of the women or shirts of the men and women. ...............................................................................................................................................Then last year, in May, she had another traumatic experience thanks to the warring parties of the government troops and the rebels. Word had gotten out that trouble was coming,, that a battle between the two groups was drawing close to the village where Sr. Lorena and these very simple, very poor people were living. Most of the villagers where Sr. Lorena was living evacuated but she and a few of the other villagers unfortunately delayed and got caught, trapped between the two warring parties. There were bullets coming from both sides and flying over them and near them. The remaining villagers asked Sr. Lorena what to do, so scared were they. She said for all of them to gather in the church and lie down on the floor and together they would pray the rosary for God's protection. That they did and for some 20-25 minutes the shots continued and the killings of rebels and government troops by each other continued. When the shooting stopped, the villagers ventured outside the church and saw that not one bullet had hit the church, that all were safe yet exhausted by the stress of surviving under such violence and death all around them. .......................................................................................................................................... What I tell you here in this letter is still so fresh for me, I am still trying to take it in and appreciate as much as I can the meaning of all of this. I could focus on the idiocy of the tribes hell-bent on destroying each other; but what so moves me is what God is doing through this woman who chooses to risk her own life in order to stay with and care for these people who have no choice but to try to survive under such deadly circumstances. God has to mean so much to you that you would choose to stay with these most vulnerable of His children. No wonder, as I said in my previous letter two days ago, they experience the reality of God as a loving God and that this amazing God cares for them, especially by being with them through Sr. Lorena in their sufferings. ............................................................................................................................................. Yesterday she told me that it was so helpful for her to speak out her story to someone, to me in this case, since it helped her to heal from the trauma and the temptations to resent and hate the warring soldiers, especially the government leaders and rebel leaders. Everything in her tells her that her unresolved dark emotions will come back to eat her up if she does not work at bringing it all to God. She had to return to the places where these events took place, to walk there, to choose again to be with these poorest of the poor who are living so dramatically the passion and dying of Jesus. Only in this way could she come to peace, to reconcile with it all and to let the love of God flow again in her heart and soul. Many of her acquaintances, Combonis and villagers, have died already in this endless conflict. She is very aware of them in heaven now. She added that the gift that has followed is being more sensitive to the risen Jesus, seeing His presence and hope and even joy at times in the villagers and in her fellow Combonis. Yesterday was the feast day of St. Mary Magdalene. In the Gospel reading for mass Mary says to Peter and John on Easter morning, "I have seen the Lord!." This is what Sr. Lorena is telling me and I had to pass it on to you. So, I feel encouraged to look around at the people I am with in the coming days and ask God to give me the freedom from my own worries and burdens to see with a heart of love and faith this same mystery unfolding around me--of the dying and rising of Jesus in the world around me, in Kenya and in the USA. in people who trust Him, even though it costs everything to trust. God is for real! Very, very real. And what a gift it is to see Him in action, doing what death and war, violence and revenge cannot overcome. ....................................................................................................................................... Bernie Owens

Thursday, July 20, 2017

Dear Friends, It is Friday morning here, July 21, and a little chilly which is normal for here at this time of the year. We are in the Southern Hemisphere, just barely (50 miles south of the equator), but also up in the mountains, 6000 feet up. It won';t warm up for us until the middle or late part of August. All things in time I guess!............................................................................................... I am prompted to write by two recent events. One is a conversation I had yesterday with a retreatant I am presently guiding. The other is what happened to me this morning during and right after the Eucharist while pondering the first of the two scripture readings..................................................... The conversation was with a woman missionary to South Sudan. She is a member of the Comboni missionaries, men and women who trace their origins to the 19th century founder, Daniel Comboni, already a canonized saint (If you knew his life story you would see why he has been singled out as such an outstanding follower of Jesus). The retreatant is in her early to mid 50s, a woman from Costa Rica. She has been serving the very poor of that war torn nation for quite some years, and after a 6 month leave to care for her 90 year old mother and 91 year old father back in Costa Rica, she is returning to South Sudan because she sensed in her prayer God calling her to continue serving these wretched people of South Sudan. What impresses me so from our conversation yesterday is her describing the chaos these people live in while the two main tribes of that nation war against each other; almost everyone, private citizens too, have guns. There are so many murders and no arrests. The poverty is grinding, homes are often robbed, sometimes even burned down along with crops. Life stinks in so many ways for these people who are powerless to stop the fighting and build a nation. I asked her whether the people ever ask why you choose to live with them and not some other safer, nicer place on earth. She said, "yes, they do but usually indirectly. They watch us closely, she says, to see over time whether we are who we appear to be. In time they will ask why we sisters stay with them in such hellish conditions. We stand out so glaringly with our white or olive skin among people whose skin is very, very black, thanks to the especially hot sun in that part of Africa." Then this nun said what really touched me. She said she has been told by these Sudanese people that the sisters staying with them in their terribly difficult living circumstances make God's love for them believable; they can see that God cares about them and is with them in their plight. In time these people give names to these missionaries. The name she has been given is "daughter of God." ........................................................................................................ The story of this retreatant reminds me of the four American women (three nuns and one laywoman) who went in the 1970s as apostles from the Cleveland diocese to be with the rural poor of El Salvador during the deadly civil war that was going on in that nation. Their letters to family and friends back in Ohio told of how there was no hope for these simple people to better their living circumstances but saw the meaning of their mission to be one of being companions with them while in a very difficult situation, encouraging them while these poor tried to raise their families and assure their safety while in the midst of so much war and bloodshed. It was, as these four missionaries described it, a ministry of accompaniment. Perhaps you know who are these four women I am talking about. On December 2 of 1980 they were raped by government soldiers and then murdered. .............................................................................................................At mass this morning, which I led for the community, we heard for the first reading the instructions to the Israelites, trapped in Egypt as slaves of Pharoah, of how to celebrate a meal with a roasted lamb. This would forecast what God would soon do for them; It would be called their Passover meal that celebrates their liberation from their enslaved state in a foreign land. Blood from the lamb would be smeared on the doorways of their homes as a protection from God's angel while it would strike down the oppressors but spare (pass over) them. Of course, this passage is loaded with symbols that find their fulfillment in the death of Jesus and especially in the shedding of His blood and how the Eucharist is our Passover meal. The more we wake up to our need for God, how caught we all are to some degree by our enslaving tendencies or attachments, we also wake up to the DESIRE for a freedom we don't have, to live a life with greater integrity and meaning, to give ourselves to something really worthwhile. And so, with faith in the love God has for us, when we wake up to that awesome fact, we then especially appreciate the blood of Him that was shed so that we could pass over from self-centered living to living a life that is really worthwhile and a DESIRING to give of ourselves back to the God who in Jesus shed His blood for us......................................................................................................................................................... I really got hit this morning with this awareness. I am at times overwhelmed with the depth of God's love, not just for myself but for you too and everyone for that matter, even for the most harden, uncaring, and self-entered of us--Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, aboriginies, etc. Everyone from the beginning of time. Nothing is more powerful, nothing more meaningful. NOTHING! This is the only power than can overcome death and in the end it blesses us with the gift of being able to pass over from this troubled world into the Infinity of God's new world and the family He is creating and wants us to be part of forever. In the meantime there are walking among us people who are pouring out their own blood for their spouses, their children, their suffering parents and relatives and neighbors, fellow parishioners, even their enemies, the wretches of South Sudan too--saints among us even though they are not aware of being so. ..................................................................................................... The next time we drink from the chalice hopefully we will catch in that action the allusion to how a marriage proposal was done in Jesus's culture. A man and woman would give their 'yes' and seal their life-long commitment to each other when they both drank from a cup of wine that had been poured out by the father of the future groom. Jesus on the last night of His life gave us Himself as blood, inviting us to drink from the cup and say our personal 'yes' to a relationship that is more profound than any other relationship on this earth could be. He poured out His blood literally, the following day. He is inviting you and me to grow into a similar sense of generosity, to say a 'yes' with the same depth: pouring out our selves completely as He did for us. Yes, it will take a lifetime to do such but what matters is the DESIRE to do so and each day to live with the hope that in God's timing we will each be given the generosity to make this same kind of gesture back to Him, with boundless gratitude and infinite love. Bernie Owens

Saturday, July 1, 2017

Dear Friends, Here I am after a really busy month of June when I was away from my computer for almost all of the month. I spent two weeks in the Holy Land, then after less than three days back here, and getting lots of sleep and time to pack and leave again, I spent a week away in Tanzania leading a retreat for 14 Notre Dame nuns. While in Tanzania I got a really bad case of bronchitis which I am slowly getting over. It requires so much extra sleep. Groan! Besides, winter has settled in here and it gets quite chilly at night. With no heat in the room nor on the floors, it demands extra blankets and a cap sometimes on my head! But I am so glad to be back home and no longer living out of a suitcase. ........................................................................................................... The time in the Holy Land was just the best. We were 30 in all with a terrific guide, Rula Shubeita, a Christian Palestinian who is very competent in her role. So satisfying for me to work in tandem with her, she as guide, I as chaplain. ............................................................................................................ Our weather was most agreeable, even though pretty hot in the afternoons. One has to drink lots of water. This caught up with me when in Galilee. I got quite dehydrated on my third day there and got very weak. I had to stay home in bed for a day to regain my strength. I suspect the altitude difference was a factor. I live at 5800 feet above sea level here in Nairobi and the lake of Galilee is at 600 feet BELOW sea level. the day this happened was the 45th anniversary of my ordination as a priest. I was well enough by the evening to join everyone for a fabulous meal at a restaurant some 30 minutes by bus from our hotel facility. On the drive back from the restaurant we could see the full moon shining beautifully off the serene surface of the lake. On the following evening, our last one in Galilee, I was able to see the same full moon come up slowly over the mountain range (blood red at first) that forms a boundary on the other side of the lake, 8-10 miles across. Wow, what a stunning thing to watch. ........................................................................................................ What stood out on this trip, my 5th time there? Being able to pray mass at Calvary, so close to where the cross was mounted. So too praying mass on the top of Mount Tabor in the magnificent basilica commemorating the transfiguration of Jesus on that spot. Also, going to the rock in the Garden of Gethsemane where he prayed for three hours on the last night of his life and begged the Father for some other way out but eventually surrendered and was willing "to drink the cup." I have often thought of that place is where our future was decided on; it is the place where he said 'yes' and from that moment forward we were guaranteed the opportunity of eternal life. I have many times asked, "Suppose he had walked out before the soldiers arrived to arrest him; suppose he backed out on his call and on us? There are no bigger words in our stories than 'yes' and no'. ........................................................................................................ I was also quite touched by the church built on Mt. Nebo, the burial place of Moses overlooking the Dead Sea and the Promised Land. This is where Moses died and finished his call to lead the Hebrews out of Egypt; it is quite close to where Jesus started his public life and was baptized by John the Baptist. So impressive how the end of one journey was taken up by Jesus to begin his own journey, for us, to finish what Moses began! The one hour boat ride on the Lake of Galilee, going relatively close to the shoreline where so many of the places Jesus did extraordinary things; this was a great way to preview what we would visit later. I always enjoy walking through Capernaum because it was the headquarters, so to speak, for Jesus during his three years in Galilee. It is special to take time there and imagine how busy the market there had to be, an international crossroads. To see the basement of St. Peter's house still intact and imagine Jesus having resided in one of those many rooms, at Peter's invitation. Then to visit the synagogue or remnants of it across the street from St. Peter's house and read from Mark's gospel the account of what happened there to Jesus, what he did there. Just amazing! I am so taken by looking at the nearby open fields next to Capernaum and know that it was in that general direction that Jesus would go to pray each morning he was in town, before the sun rose. So very special. ........................................................................................................ then in Jerusalem, to finally make the traditional Stations of the Cross (as apposed to the path scholars say he more likely took on his way to Calvary) and feel the hustle-bustle of the Old city and its mobs of people. We were there during Ramadan, the Muslim holy month and met huge crowds of Muslims who came from far away to get to the large mosque called the Temple Mount. It estimated that a half million were there. Perhaps you know that on the evening of one of the days we were there, three Muslim men were shot dead after one of them knifed to death a 23 year old Israeli guard who was part of the crowd control. I was amazed that so many Muslims came inside the Holy Sepulchre church (where the tomb of Jesus and Calvary itself is) and were visiting different parts of it, having their pictures taken inside it--one group near me in front of a bronze relief of Jesus and Mary Magdalene. It left me wondering what it all means to them. I know Jesus is considered a great prophet for them, but still . . . When we got outside the church I chose to try to make conversation with three Muslim women, two of whom seemed to be daughters of the third woman. The older one could not understand me, the other two had some knowledge of English but not much. We made it out that they had come from Nablus, a major city in the West Bank Palestinian territory. We had visited Jacob's well in that city a few days earlier (the place Jesus met the Samaritan woman at the well), the first time ever for me to visit there, and were excited to speak with residents from there. They seemed pleased to have some interaction with Christians and then Americans. I had a sense of God's great love for all of these people and the oneness of the origin of us all, everyone of us, a unity that transcends all the tragic religious and nationalistic divisions now dividing us. .............................................................................................. I got quite a surprise while in Jerusalem when on one of the mornings we were walking in a area where there were almost no people. While we were chatting and moving along quickly there was a rather haggard, short man walking quickly toward us and weaving through our group. He was acting like a vendor, holding high a number of postcards that when folded out stretched over about 5 feet. He was allegedly trying to interest us in buying these. I have had plenty of these cards before and so was not interested. It was crazy how he came at me, I dodged right to avoid him, then left as he "stayed" with me, then I went back right, wondering what on earth this guy was trying to do. My eyes were forward and up. Immediately he disappeared and then I looked down at my money-pouch fastened to my belt and saw that it had been "picked." He had distracted me long enough to unzip the top of my pouch and grab what was inside and then run before I knew what had happened. I was stunned, stood still in shock, and then began wondering whether the pouch had been left open from the time when I was on the bus five minutes earlier. Maybe the money or contents were on the floor of the bus. But soon I realized, no, I had been "picked" and this guy was a pro at what he was doing had caught me flatfooted.. He got close to $100 in US currency and a 50 euro bill. While I felt humbled by it all, feeling stupid and "out of my league" around a pro like that pickpocket, I soon realized that just the previous evening I had removed from that pouch $700 in US currency, my passport, my credit card, and my cellphone and left all of them in the strongbox or safe back at the hotel. I was immensely grateful for the "inspiration" to do that. If he had gotten any of these items, I would have been so, so distressed and would have become a terrible distraction to the other pilgrims for the last three days of our trip. God was very good to me on that one! I suspect the thief was quite disappointed with what he got me for. I am amazed how three of the pilgrims within the next 15 minutes gave me almost the same amount of money this pickpocket had taken. ...........................................................................................................One last item, there is at the hotel we stayed at in Jerusalem, Notre Dame, a 3D computerized reconstruction of the Man of the Shroud of Turin. Many suspect it is Jesus. It could be, but it might not be. But you should see it! To look right at him and see his build. about 5' 11", maybe 6' even. The wounds to his side and hands, feet too are so awesome. The look on his face is full of peace. Absolutely amazing. You wonder, you just wonder: am I looking at a reconstruction of what we worship as the Savior of the world looked like?? I wish all of you could see it. I purchased at the bookstore a booklet on this with many of the pictures with text presenting the scientific investigations relating to the cloth that wrapped the body of this man! This and the "Jesus Boat" that was found in 1985 buried in the sands of the Lake of Galilee seashore are two amazing elements to witness when going to the Holy Land and will stir you deeply. ..................................................................................... I need to go to bed, nearly 10 PM here on Saturday July 1. ............................................................ The retreat I led for 6 days with the Notre Dame sisters in Arusha, Tanzania, 5 hours south of here (June 22-29) was very blessed, but I got a horrible case of bronchitis when there. I am still nursing a cough and needing lots of extra sleep and water. Fortunately, I can sleep late any of the days of this coming week. I am off retreats all this week. This is as close as I will get to sharing with you in a 4th of July type holiday! ................................................................................................God bless. Bernie Owens

Saturday, June 3, 2017

Dear Friends, I am soon to start leading a pilgrimage in the Holy Land with 30 others. It will be a much needed and welcomed break from the sometimes hectic pace here at the retreat center in Nairobi. Good work here but sometimes it leaves me feeling brain-dead. ..................................................................... ...................................... It is quite meaningful to me that this two week venture first in Jordan where Moses is buried and Jesus was baptized at the start of his public ministry and then our going into Israel comes right after the end of the Easter season and the feast of Pentecost. As the years go by I am increasingly moved by the meaning and promise in this feast of Pentecost. It puzzles me as to why the church's leaders do not make more of it and explain more fully its richness, of what it offers to the fullness and happiness of our lives. It seems the Sunday celebration of this feast ought to be as great as the celebration of Christmas and Easter. My retreats lately have put an emphasis on the gift of the Holy Spirit, on what the Spirit does in us and in the world; people who take in this explanation respond with enthusiasm when they realize what is there in the meaning of this feast, tomorrow's great celebration. It seems we ordinarily are blind or minimally aware o what is going on in our depths, what is being offered to us, how distracted and unresponsive so many people are to what is available in our depths......................................................................................................... I have been working on a new book and am feeling lots of frustration, lots of pain over what I have written so far and what I have had to delete because it just does not resonate well with what I am trying to say. This is becoming a painful "pregnancy," a process of not a little stress and even back, neck and skull pain over it. Once one tries to write something good enough for publication and the subject matter concerns something of the interior world of the human soul, you appreciate the difficulty there is in finding words, stories, and images adequate to the topic. I "swore" when writing my first book that I would never again go down that road; but I have to say there is something so strong welling up inside me that pushes me to write this second book. I truly sense God is pushing me on this and wants me to do this. The title of the book is: "Realizing Your Deepest Desires: Experiencing God As Never Before." I am using as the overall the structure of the book the structure used by Teresa of Avila, the 16th centuy Spanish saint, in her great book, "The Interior Castle" to discuss different capacities for meaning, life, happiness and love in our lives as human beings. In it I want to show why so many people stagnate at a rather early stage of the process of human, spiritual development but also show something of the incredibly rich developments that are possible and do happen when people let themselves be led by God beyond the blocks and attachments, blind spots, etc that leave them get stuck at the earlier, more elementary stages of life. It seems so very many people realize just a small, very small bit of what life is offering us. We prefer what leaves us comfortable and what we think we can control....................................................................................................... Two days after I return from the pilgrimage I will leave here to lead a retreat for a group of 18 nuns in Arusha, Tanzania, beautiful territory not far from Mount Kilimanjaro: June 22-29. This month of June, then, has me on the road. I am glad to have this chance, to change my routine and get what I hope is a good mental rest through being away from this computer and being with people. A week ago I finished a six-day retreat for 23 African seminarians at a retreat house that is at 7500 feet above sea level. Farms everywhere. (On the way home we drove past a large open area from which emerged a herd of zebras and a family of baboons.) The place where I was for a week has 53 acres with a very impressively managed farm to provide for lots of its needs in the kitchen. It is so well laid out and has lots of hired hands to milk cows, tend to hogs and goats and geese, chickens, etc, and manage the gardens. The whole operation is owned by the Catholic diocese. I loved doing this retreat and being with young people, all around 30 years of age from so many different countries of Africa: the Congo, Uganda, Togo, Chad, the Central African Republic, Ethiopia, Benin, Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Ghana, the Ivory Coast, Zimbabwe, Zambia and Kenya of course. This is a special time in my life to be with future leaders of this part of the world, where the church is so young and is tying to grow in the midst of a lot of economic struggle and greed, stealing, governmental corruption and violence. As I traveled to and from this retreat center I saw many people engaged in agriculture, with simple homes and bringing produce into villages to sell. The buildings and ambiance made me think that this part of the world is in its social structures and infrastructure similar to where the USA was 100-120 years ago, maybe around the turn of the 20th century........................................................................................................... I am going to conclude now. I ask that you pray for the 31 of us making the pilgrimage in Jordan and Israel, June 7-18. It will be my 5th time there, my 4th time to lead a pilgrimage there. All of us are American citizens except two from Rome, who are very close friends of mine. Thanks so much for joining us spiritually through your prayers. A highlight of our two weeks will be a stop at a very nice restaurant on Saturday evening, June the 10th. It overlooks a vast plain of Galilee and some mountains in the distance. We will have the full moon that night to view and watch it rise over those mountains. I will be marking that day the 45th anniversary of my ordination to the priesthood. The next morning we travel to a village 4-5 miles from Nazareth and join a parish of Catholic Palestinians to celebrate Trinity Sunday, 9:30 AM mass. I have been there (Al Reina) twice before and the readings and prayers are mostly in Arabic and some in English. The church will be jam-packed, the choir loft too with children and teenagers in it that Italian nuns will "police" during mass; It is so funny to see this, just like when I was a kid at a parochial grade school. These children attend the parish sponsored school that has 1100 students. After mass the parishioners invite us to their large hospitality hall and school grounds for coffee and some snacks. What is so impressive during the mass is how just before the reading of the Gospel and when the deacon brings up from the back of the church the book of the Gospels, the men who sit on one side of the church (the women and pre-school children children on the other side!! yes, Arabic segregation!) put their thumb and first two fingers to their lips and then touch with those three fingers the pages of the book of Gospels as the deacon slowly walks by. That gesture of reverence for the Word of God is so, so moving to me. I look forward to seeing again this display of love for Christ and His saving Word. I wish it were a custom in our American churches!.................................................................................................. God bless. A happy Pentecost to all of you who read this! Bernie Owens

Tuesday, May 9, 2017

Dear Friends, It has been about a month since my last post. After seven of them in the last two weeks of Lent I thought I would take a breather for a good while!!.......................................................................................I have been busy with wrapping up preparations for a two week pilgrimage in the Holy Land (June 6-19) and writing chapters for a book I have been at for the better part of a year's time. I don't think there is anything more stressful for me than trying to write something good enough to be published. Only God could push me to write a second book, and that is exactly where I am getting the motivation for doing this. It really has its ups and downs. And at times it is so hard to let go and take breaks. I can carrying lots of tension in my neck and shoulders, in my face and with my grinding my teeth in my sleep. Ugh!! .......................................................................There are times, one of them over the last weekend, when I get this sense of such a deep friendship with God and also with a certain circle of men and women acquaintances I have made over the years. It hits me in a very deep part of my soul, with the sense that I have been given such precious gifts and this makes me feel profoundly consoled and blessed. This is something I cannot buy; that I know. It is all gift and valuable beyond any estimate. Is this one of the gifts of living a long time??............................................................................................... I heard yesterday a story from one of my retreatants, a delightful Australian Christian brother who works in the slums of Nairobi here. It is a story that disturbs me greatly. He told of a fellow Christian brother who was going to "blow the whistle" on a small group of villagers who gang-raped a young orphan, a girl about 11 or 12 years old. (Orphans are especially vulnerable to this horrendous crime!) This fellow Christian brother was going to expose these despicable rats to the law but learned that they had bribed their way out of going to prison. So they go free to this day. This is so typical in this land!! The brother was cautioned to be less aggressive lest he take a bullet and die. Ironically he did die a little later in a taxi accident, one of the many in Kenya where drivers speed so much and take chances and get killed and kill others they are taxiing. Life can be so cheap here!! I feel so very sad for that young orphan. What a difficult beginning for her life. Surely God must have a special love for such people and his mercy is endless with them.......................................................................... I am really tired and am retiring early this evening. Thanks for being interested in reading these posts. May God be very good to you! Bernie Owens

Saturday, April 15, 2017

My Friends, It is 6 PM here, Holy Saturday, two hours before our Easter Vigil mass. We have dinner in 40 minutes. Our weather has been rather warm this afternoon. At 1 PM I finished with my four people who have been here this last week for their 8-day retreats and then met with two others who come for occasional spiritual guidance, each for an hour, and finally an hour of skyping with a friend back in Michigan. Whew! Quite a full day. I will be brief here with my concluding reflections on the last words of Jesus, this time on his 7th and last saying. It is" "Father, into your hands I commend my spirit." Luke 23:46 I have frequently given this text to retreatants to pray with along with the text from John, chapter 3, the second half of verse 34 and all of 35. The two together are like "bookend" statements about the Father and Jesus. Let me offer some reflections here, first on this statement and then on the saying of Jesus when He dies...................................................................... Early in Jesus' public ministry John the Baptist in chapter 3 of John's Gospel is said to have declared, "The Father did not spare the gift of His Spirit on His Son." In other words, the Father gave EVERYTHING to Jesus, SPARED NOTHING, giving all that He is and has to Jesus, all that His Holy Spirit of Love is. Nothing held back, all that could be given was given.............................................................................................................At the end of Jesus' life, the last thing He is said to have said is: "Father, into your hands I commend MY SPIRIT." Note that each gives to the other the Holy Spirit; the Father at the beginning of Jesus' mission; Jesus at the moment He finishes His mission. Everything Jesus had and was, He gave to the Father. At that moment His life among us was complete. He gave from His Divine depths, His Divine Spirit to the Father just as the Father gave from His Divine depths, His Divine Spirit. The mutual giving and receiving, the knowing and being known, the loving and being loved that took place between Father and Son is their relationship, is the Holy Spirit, the One who holds together the entire story and meaning of Jesus' mission, which is to bring us with Him into this same quality and dynamic of life where we are total given to each and all, giving who we are, our total selves. Like Jesus and the Father with each other, we are destined to give everything we have and are. Our everlasting joy will be characterized by this same kind and quality of exchange of total mutuality, by our knowledge of and total love for each other. It is more than we can imagine, but for those who long for God, who at times ache for this depth of relationship, they can see this possibility coming, as "through a glass darkly" and at a distance. ......................................................................So, in His final moment, with what breath He had left, Jesus made the most beautiful gesture any human can make with his or her life: loving completely to the end all that is of God, giving one's all. I think there is nothing more beautiful among us humans than being around someone who has this attitude, this way of living his or her life, and is so given, not self-centered at all, but again, so given. This was supremely so with Jesus. And the moment of His dying, the moment He says these last word are very, very beautiful to me. It seems to me we really do not become our full self unless and until we live with this kind of spiritual freedom and depth, free from all fear and self-centeredness, loving with our whole heart and mind, soul and strength............................................A very blessed and enjoyable Easter to all of you who read this. Bernie Owens

Thursday, April 13, 2017

Dear Friends, It is Thursday afternoon here, less than an hour from the time to celebrate the Passover of the Lord in today's Eucharist. The meaning of that gift, Eucharist, is so profound. When a person gives all they are and have, especially when they know they are about to die and are saying goodbye to the people who mean the most to him or here, one cannot help but be moved. I am blessed this year to lead this celebration, this sacred event for what I anticipate will be about 70-80 people. Twelve have volunteered to have their feet washed, and four of us will dry. I am the only priest among them; most of the volunteers are African nuns. Almost all of the music will be in Swahili, which I do not understand, but for this I do not need to understand. I will read the Gospel selection and give the homily. Those will be in English! Ha!....................................................................................Now to the sixth installment of reflections on the seven last words of Jesus: "It is finished." John 19:30. After saying those words he put his head forward and the Gospel writer says, "He gave up his spirit." ....................................................This cry, "It is finished" is not just a statement that all is over and that he will now die. Rather, it is a cry of triumph. It means, "It is completed". What he literally says is, "It is perfected." At the beginning of the Last Supper John, the Gospel writer, tells us that "having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to perfection." On the cross we see the perfection of love............................................................................................ I hope that all who read this can admit to having had dreams of perfect love, love that is utter and complete. When we are young especially, but also at other times of life, we can be infatuated and we may think that no one has ever been so totally in love as us. Many people who marry feel sure on their wedding day they are at the beginning of eternal bliss, but as time goes on they usually mature about this question. Experience tells them that the honeymoon ends. They soon discover that they are much the same, remaining much the same self-centered person as they were before. So too their beloved, not quite so fantastic either. He or she may be self-centered, have a terrible sense of humor, snore in bed, or have other irritating habits. Was their dream of perfect love just an illusion? Do we become cynical??.................................................................These words of Jesus quoted above invite us to carry on seeking to love perfectly. We will arrive at that fullness of love in the end and at the end. In fact each of these sayings of Jesus shows us the successive steps in the deepening expression of his love for us. "Forgive them for they know now what they do." In these words he does not even address us. He talks to his Father. "Today you will be with me in Paradise." This is a more intimate love. It is addressed to us, but from above, as a king. "Behold your mother, Behold your Son." This is a further step toward closeness, addressed to us not as a king but as our brother. "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" This is so deeply intimate that he has entered into our very souls and embraced our own desolation. But the perfection of love is in the words, "I thirst." The fullness of love comes when Jesus begs for something from us and accepts it with gratitude. Now his love is complete. ...................................................................................................The soldiers give Jesus what they have, some sour old vinegar. It probably tasted disgusting but it is what poor soldiers drank and so they shared it. The could not afford decent wine. Jesus accepts what they have to offer. At the feeding of the 5,000 Jesus asked the disciples what they had to give to the crowd and they reply, "Just five loaves and two fish." It is not much. It is all they had and so it was enough. Faced with our hungry world with millions who starve, we may not feel that we have much to give. If we give what we have, then it will be enough. ...................................................................The perfection of love comes when we receive the gift of the other person as he or she is. They might not be quite what we had dreamed of. They may be less intelligent, less witty than we had hoped. They will certainly one day be less beautiful. We dreamed of first-growth Merlot or Cabernet and perhaps what we got was just old vinegar. If we can accept that gift with gratitude, then our love will be on the way to perfection..............................Perfect love is possible and we see it on the cross. If we love at all, then God's perfect love can make its home in our fragile and faulted loves. If we accept to love the other person as they are, without complaint or blame, then God's perfect love will make its home in us. ................................................................................................... Bernie Owens PS. Over 100 people jammed our chapel for our Holy Thursday Eucharist this afternoon. All went well including the music, most songs in Swahili, with drums, the footwashing, and the procession of the Blessed Sacrament throughout the chapel immediately after the mass. Very moving!

Tuesday, April 11, 2017

Fifth Installment: "After this Jesus, knowing that all was now finished, said, 'I thirst'." John 19:28...........................................................................................Early in John's gospel Jesus meets the woman from Samaria at Jacob's well and says to her, "Give me a drink." At the beginning and the end of this rather long story Jesus asks us to satisfy His thirst. This is how God comes to us, as a thirsty person wanting something that we have to give. God's relationship with creation is entirely that of gift. To be a creature is to receive one's being as a gift. God wants to be in friendship with us, and friendship always implies equality. And so the one who gives us everything invites us into a friendship of equality by asking for a gift back, whatever we have to give. Most of all God wants us, our unique self. Usually we think that reaching God is hard work. We must earn forgiveness; we must become good, otherwise God will disapprove of us. But this is not correct. God comes to us before we have ever turned to Him. God thirsts for our love. The same desire He had on the cross is the same He has now and shall have until the time of the last soul to be saved is in His bliss. ......................................................................There is something embarrassing about admitting that you long for someone when the other person does not fully reciprocate. You feel foolish and vulnerable admitting that you love more than you are loved. The moment you own up to your longing, then you become open to rejection and humiliation. Yet this is how it is with God. God is overwhelmed with thirst for us and for our love, and yet He must put up with the occasional rather condescending pat on the head, "Oh, it is Sunday, we had better go and visit God," as if God were a boring relative. So when we find ourselves more loving than loved, then we are in the position of God and maybe have a better sense of what God endures and risks, all for the sake of receiving what only we can give, our own self, our love........................................................................ But we too are thirsty. Maybe we do not really thirst for God as yet. Maybe we only have little thirsts: for a bit more money, for companionship, for success at work, etc. If these are our little desires, then we must start there. The Samaritan woman wanted water and so she went to the well and there met Jesus. If we are honest about our little desires, then they will lead us to Jesus too. We will learn to become thirsty for more, even to become thirsty for God who thirsts for us. Most people think of religion as about the control of desire. Desire is dangerous and can be disturbing, and so religion helps us tame it. But traditionally this has not been the teaching of the Church. We are invited to get in touch with our deeper desires, to experience the power of God in our depths, to let our deeper desires be opened up and released, as happened to the woman at the well. There is so much more of life for each of us to choose and live......................................... ....................................................Thirst is a very fundamental experience, probably because our bodies are largely water. Dehydration is the seeping away of our very being, our substance. We feel we ourselves are evaporating. So often the last desire of those who are dying is for something to drink. It also stands for that deepest thirst of our souls for the One who gives us substance and being at every moment and who promises eternal life: "Oh, God, my God, you I long for, for you my soul is thirsting. My body pines for you, like a dry weary land without water." Psalm 63 ...............................................................................................On the cross the dying Jesus asks you and me for the gift of water. But soon afterward He will die and His side will be opened, and out will pour living water. He will unlock our own spiritual depths and richness if we take the time and allow ourselves to be attracted to Him, lifted up on the cross. (See John 3:14; 12:32; 19:34) As He said in the temple, "If anyone thirsts, let him/her come to me and drink. Anyone who believes in me, as the scripture has said, 'Out of his/her heart (the actual word is belly) shall flow rivers of living water'." John 7:37-38 Bernie Owens

Sunday, April 9, 2017

The Fourth installment: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" Mark 15:34 The first three sayings dealt with forgiveness, happiness and then the birth of community, in that order. This saying or words deal with pure desolation. It is a cry of pain and loneliness. Is it a question without an answer? Is there anything to be said at all?? This is more than the absence of someone whom one loves. Rather, it is the collapse of all meaning, as if the center of your life had been sucked out and you are left hovering over a void......................................................................................................... Few of us will ever have to endure such utter desolation, but there may have been moments when we feared being swallowed by the void, and when our lives appeared to be without sense or meaning because God had gone. In such times proofs of the existence of God are of no great help. Words are rather empty. ................................................................These words quoted above by Jesus come from Psalm 22. He very likely knew it by heart, from memory. Jesus took these words and made them his own. He embraced that experience of desolation and shared it. Even this experience of God's absence is somehow brought within God's own life by going through it. No one can say, then, to God: "you don't know what I am going through." In Jesus God says, "In Him, my son, who is your brother, I have been and am there with you through it all." ......................................................................................... Sometimes we have to be with people who are faced with a suffering that seems pointless, dumb and meaningless. We may have lived such moments ourselves. Someone we love may have faced death by cancer, that they were in the prime of their life, or we may lose a child in an accident and see a loved one early in life become disabled. We may suddenly discovered our lives are ruined physically or financially. Someone may ask us, "why? why? where is God now in all of this?" And we may be very insecure in realizing we have nothing to say to these questions. All the pious words that come to our lips sound worse than empty. All that we can do, then, is to be there, and trust that God is there as well. I have had hints of such and chosen to sit still during my morning prayer saying nothing, thinking nothing, just holding in my hands that were resting in my lap a crucifix that was given me on the day I became a Jesuit (1961) I felt a sense of identification and tried to center myself during a time of terrible, relentless pain from great hurt to my soul. In time, over some days, this helped and I calmed down and regained my emotional and spiritual balance.................................................................................................. I have been with Jesuits from Rwanda who are students at our nearby seminary in Nairobi. One of them when driving me back home from a class shared with me that he had lost all of his family in the 1994 genocide. This pretty well stopped any further conversation between us during that ride back home. This moment in hearing of such a loss for this young priest-to-be reminded of my visiting El Salvador 19 years ago and seeing photos of six Jesuit confreres having their skulls blown wide open after being surprised by soldiers coming to their residence at the University of Central America at 5 in the morning and making them lie face down on the grass of their backyard and take a bullet in the back of their heads. The photos I saw made me hyperventilate and quickly leave the room; I had never before witnessed anything like that nor since. I said later that TV shows that re-enact murders make everything look so anticeptic, so clinical compared to these pictures of horror. They were horrifying and shocked me so suddenly. This is the closest I have gotten to mass killings and monstrous evil. I have heard of others being unable to talk for quite a time after witnessing something like this, and then weep and sob at the stories they heard and the things they saw..................................................... I wonder whether anyone at the cross on the day Jesus died had any similar reaction, either in that moment or in their memories that welled up later and haunted them. To be exposed to something like this makes me be all the more awed by what Jesus embraced in his experience on the cross. In Him God chose to be there for each and all of us when our moment of terrible pain comes and a sense of loneliness overwhelms us and we feel forsaken. What Jesus went through embraced the worst any human can go through, so it seems to me. If one has faith in this kind of God, then one has the assurance of never being forsaken, no matter the suffering, even if one feels forsaken. Bernie Owens

Saturday, April 8, 2017

Dear Friends, Here is "installment" #3 regarding the last seven words of Jesus. I hope my efforts are worth it!! This is taking some time, yet I find great meaning in this and hope it enriches your experience of Holy Week andEaster........................................................................................... The third set of words of Jesus is spoken to His mother and closest friend and youngest disciple, John. He says to His mother standing at the cross, "Woman, behold your Son." And then to John,, "Behold your mother." There is so, so much meaning in these words and they say a lot about who we are to Jesus and to His mother. .....Let us look at this. Good Friday saw almost everyone of Jesus' friends go into hiding. Judas sold him out; Peter denied him three times, and most others ran for fear for their lives. All of Jesus' efforts to build this special community seemed to fall apart. But in these words to his mother and to John we see this community coming into being at the foot of the cross. His mother is given a son in his closest friend, and the beloved disciple is given a mother. .....................................................................This is not just any community. Rather, it is our community; it is the birth of the Church, our spiritual home. Note that Jesus does not call Mary "Mother" but instead "Woman. This is because for Jesus in that moment she is the new Eve. The old Eve was the mother of all living beings. This is the new Eve who is the mother of all who live by faith. So this is our family, the place where we realize that Mary is our mother and John is our brother. Why is our new family born at the foot of a cross? Because what breaks up human community is hostility and accusation. We are hostile to others because they are not like us: black or white, Russian, Chinese or Syrian, Jewish or Muslim. They are people of homosexual orientation, political liberals or conservatives. Too different! We want to deport them or force them out of our neighborhood. Societies are too often built upon exclusion. We seek scapegoats who can bear away on their backs our fears and rivalries............................................................................At the cross Jesus takes upon himself all our hostilities, all the accusations which we make against each other. He is the "stone which the builders rejected but has become the cornerstone (of this new family)." (Psalm 119) So yes, Jesus is among us as one who is cast out, expelled. We have to be willing, then, to look at who in today's society do we want to accuse and expel, deport and exclude--in the nation, among our relatives or siblings, in our parish? Whom do we blame for the ills of our society or nation or family, for our own pain? To be a Christian, to take seriously being a follower of Jesus, is to recognize that at the foot of the cross our family is born and no one can be excluded from it . . . no one. We are brothers and sisters of each other. Do we really believe that? These are not just honorary titles. In Christ we share the same blood, the blood of the cross. Has this hit home yet for us?? To call someone your brother or sister is not just to state a relationship; it is the proclamation of reconciliation. When Joseph who was sold by his brothers into slavery but later ended up in Egypt as an important governmental figure and revealed himself to his brothers when they were desperate for food and protection for their families, he says to them, "I am your brother, Joseph, whom you sold into Egypt (Genesis 45:4) It is a statement of a healing truth............................................................................ In our world today, especially in the West, our Church, our family that is, is quite divided and polarized and needs people who will be courageous as Joseph was toward those who failed to love him. ................... Mary and the beloved disciple (he represents you and me) are brought to the cross by their love of Jesus. But their loves are different, that of a mother and that of a closest friend. Yet they have become one family in which there is no competition nor rivalry. The Church welcomes, embraces all kinds of very different ways of articulating the Christian faith life. Each of us is brought to Christ by a different sort of love. And often we miss recognizing our God in the love of another person. We can dismiss their faith as traditional or progressive, as romantic and too mystical, to intellectual or abstract. We may see it as a threat which we must deal with by expulsion. But at the foot of the cross we find each other as family. We are challenged to reach across all the boundaries, hostilities and suspicions that divide human beings and say, "Behold my brother, behold my sister." ........................................What about our ordinary families, then, the parents who gave us life, the people we marry, the children we beget, the fellow religious we live with in community? A family or community that is genuinely Christian goes beyond its natural boundaries and discovers other brothers and sisters in those who are not their relatives or kind. A family is supposed to form us to belong to humanity and more and more to see as Christ saw when hanging on the cross for us all.................................................................................................. Goodnight, and a very blessed Holy Week to you all. Bernie Owens

Thursday, April 6, 2017

Good evening, dear friends. ............................................................................................................ I promised another "installment" on the seven last words of Jesus. Here are some reflections on his second statement, "Today you will be with me in Paradise." Luke 23:34.............................................. This pitiful thief in his dying moments recognizes Jesus as a King, humiliated and powerless though he be. What this implies is that Jesus promises us that we will attain happiness, that it is going to happen. Every human being as a child of God is destined for such and all the powers that threaten this ending of our journey will not prevail. Happiness is not an emotion that we may or may not have. It is being alive. We will attain this as our destiny and nothing can stop that because of who Jesus is. There is no power anywhere that is able to contradict or prevent that, not even our physical, earthly death, whether it be peaceful or tragic and violent. We live in a society that is so preoccupied by the search for happiness. We live in dread of all that might threaten that happening: loneliness, the collapse of relationships, failure, poverty, disgrace. This statement of Jesus allows us to rejoice because of who Jesus is and because of his reassurance to the thief and, by implication, to any of us who trust Jesus. We simply need to receive this gift when our time comes to receive it................................................................. The Gospel text actually does not say Thief when describing the two on either side of Jesus, only that they were "wrong-doers." I suppose that makes it easier for us to identify with this wretched man. Still, it makes much sense to refer to him and the other as thieves since at least this one of them knew how to get hold of what is not his. He pulls off the most amazing theft in history. He gets Paradise without paying for it. As do we all. We just have to learn how to accept gifts.......................................... God is throwing happiness at us all the time We have to learn to keep our eyes open and our hands too so that we can catch it when it comes, like a ball thrown to us in a game. In a true sense, we are being bombarded with God tossing happiness at us, if only we can be quick-eyed enough to spot and catch it......................................................................................................... Let us look a little deeper at what is this happiness. Some people have a really poor, shallow sense of what constitutes happiness. So let us look deeper. The Gospel's description of the baptism Jesus underwent at the hands of John the Baptist is described as a profound soul-stirring moment for Jesus. He "heard" God saying, You are my beloved in whom I am well pleased. This very human moment for Jesus, encountering His heavenly Father loving him so much, reflects the heart of the life of the Triune God, the Father's delight in the Son and in turn the Son's delight in the Father; that ongoing life of complete mutuality is the Holy Spirit. A 14th century Dominican mystic, Meister Eckart describes the joy of God in this holy exchange among the persons of the Trinity to be like the exuberance of a horse that gallops around the field, kicking up its heels in great delight. He says the Father laughs at the Son and the Son laughs at the Father, and their laughter brings forth pleasure and that pleasure brings forth joy, and that joy brings forth love. Wow!! All of what Jesus is about, according to all four Gospels, is that we are invited to find our home and joy in that happiness of God. God says to each one of us: I am so glad you are. My plans for the world would not be complete without you. I want you to be part of my joy, of my life." This frees us to be in God's unconditional acceptance with all of our unfinished business, with our weaknesses and failures. So, in a real sense, we are no different than that good thief, with the opportunity to "steal" heaven, so to speak, yet really it being offered to us freely and without cost, before we would even think of stealing it.....................................................So God takes pleasure in all we are. This is the beginning of the Good News of Jesus Christ. He eats and drinks with tax collectors and the prostitutes of his day, those considered the scum of his society. Until we know this first and most important truth, then nothing else can be understood. We will never be really happy until we know this in the depths of our being. Do you wonder why so many people do not seem to be happy???................................................................................................... This happiness we are talking about is compatible with sorrow. All the most joyful saints also had their times of sorrow. Francis of Assisi was a man filled with this joy, yet he bore in his body for the last two years of his life the stigmata, i.e., the five wounds of Jesus. What a profound mystery. I cannot help but think many women who have born children know what I am talking about when they see in their own bodies the price they have paid to have children and raise them.................................................................................................... So happiness means that we share God's delight in humanity. Like God, we choose to be invested in life, not in a narrow focus of seeking our own personal welfare and the false sense of happiness it gives us after promising what only God can give. This means we have to share in God's sorrow as well at the sufferings of his sons and daughters. We cannot have one without the other. Sorrow hollows out our hearts so that there is space in which God's happiness and joy can dwell. The opposite of happiness is not sadness but being stony hearted, refusing to let ourselves be touched by other people. It is putting on armor that protects us from being involved and moved, being too busy to notice. To be happy, we have to be vulnerable, to be willing like God to get involved in what often is life in all of its messiness and problems and feeling overwhelmed at times. Happiness and sorrow free us from getting trapped in our own little, ultimately boring world, our self-made hell. The good thief chose in his finest moment to trust the person of Jesus and now lives forever in the resurrection. I truly look forward to meeting him someday on the other side and hear the details of his story leading up to that amazing final moment of his life. The meaning of our lives is something else, isn't it!!..................................................................................................... Bernie Owens

Sunday, April 2, 2017

Dear Friends, I write on Sunday evening, April 2, two weeks to the day before Easter. I want to tell you briefly about a funny incident that happened to me earlier this past week, and then pass on to you a summary of some very meaningful reflections on the first of Jesus' seven last words spoken in his last hour or two of his earthly life. It is my hope to give similar summaries of the other six words on this blogsite over the next two weeks................................................................................................................................. First, the funny incident. Last Wednesday, late morning, I was sitting in my high-back chair at my desk and looking intently at the screen of my laptop computer. There was the usual pleasant weather outside, so as I always do, unless it is raining, I had my windows open, and so too the door to my room on the opposite side of the room. Doing this gives me good cross ventilation. The open door leads out to a long grassy area and flowers that separate our Jesuit living quarters into two wings. The windows in my room are almost full length windows that reach nearly to the ceiling and then down to a lower counter cut in a shape to match the bay window arrangement. So the windows start around three feet above ground level. While I was reading intently what was on my computer, suddenly I noticed from the corner of my right eye a shadow. I first thought it was one of the cats that roams our grounds. Two or three times one of the cats has come into my room, slowly, carefully. But this shadow darted in and behind my chair. I then quickly looked left and noticed scampering out my door a lengthy slender monkey, with light brown hair and graced with a very long tail. As quickly as it had entered, it was gone, out into our court yard and probably looking for other members of its family of monkeys visiting our mango grove and glutting themselves on the many ripened mangos. (Don't worry, we have been getting our share of very tasty mangos. They are so very good eating!) I think he (or was it a she?) saw from outside my windows a quick way to get to the courtyard and used my room as a quick passageway. ................................................................................................................ OK. Now to something more seasonal, the first of Jesus' last words spoken from the cross. I have to say ahead of time that what I am writing is inspired by what I have been reading from Fr. Timothy Radcliffe's little book, "Seven Last Words." He is a British Dominican priest and a very gifted writer. I have found much of what he writes to be quite meaningful. I pass along these gems to you in hopes you too will find them meaningful and conducive to prayer in these last two weeks of Lent......................................................................................................The first word of Jesus from the cross is: "Father, forgive them for they do not know what they do." Luke 23:34 Just amazing, before the crucifixion, before all the insults, forgiveness is offered. And so too in our own lives, before we sin, forgiveness is offered. How shocking! How easy to abuse by presuming such from God! At the same time how embarrassing!!! God's mercy does not trivialize our lives and actions. God takes seriously what we do and how we choose. How could He not?? His beloved Son was crucified! Sin does such things! But loving mercy is infinitely stronger and more lasting than sin. That is why Easter Sunday follows Good Friday, why forgiveness overcomes our evil following from our self-centered choices and petty selfishness. It makes the dead live and the ugly beautiful. Forgiveness enables us to dare to face what we have done. We dare to do this not to feel awful but to open our lives to this re-creative love of God. It makes all that was sterile and barren to be meaningful because in forgiveness God brings what was cut off by selfishness back into His Heart and thereby redeems it, reconnects it to Himself. ................................................................................................. Jesus asks for forgiveness not just for those who murdered him but also for those who were being crucified with Him. The two thieves stand for the millions of people throughout history who have been crucified in such a variety of ways. We have to ask ourselves: who are the people we are now crucifying by the way we structure the world economy, called globalization, and the poverty it is producing? Who are we crucifying through our violence and war? Whom do we wound even within our homes? Because we know that forgiveness comes firs, then we can dare to open our eyes to all of this. Forgiveness means that our sins can find their place in our path to God. No failure, then, need be a dead end. Instead, it can be, if we accept forgiveness, something about which we will be able to say: "O happy fault." because paradoxically it opened us to coming closer to Christ. .............................................................................................................. There is told the story of a Japanese artist painting a vase with a beautiful picture of a glorious mountain on it. Then one day someone dropped the vase and it shattered into many pieces. Slowly the artist glued all the pieces back together. And to acknowledge what had happened to this vase, its broken history, he lined each joint with a thread of gold paint. The vase turned out to be even more beautiful and admired than it was before.