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

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

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

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!

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

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

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