You may remember that I made a month-long pilgrimage in the fall of 2022 in the company of twenty-four remarkable souls inspired by the life of St. Ignatius Loyola. Finding God Along the Way: Wisdom from the Ignatian Camino for Life at Home traces our spiritual adventure from its pre-pandemic conception to the lasting transformations we experienced on the far side. Although the book might inspire future pilgrims, I wrote it for those who will make the journey only in their imagination, as the fruit of this experience should not be reserved for those with the freedom to walk away from their life for a month.
I am so grateful to the good people at Paraclete Press for their enthusiastic embrace of my book and their prayerful approach to every aspect of its production and marketing. By mid-May, I’ll have a cover image; stay tuned.
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Pub Date!
Note: We’d originally thought that the book would launch on February 25, and were excited about its being the feast day of Blessed Sebastian de Aparicio, patron saint of travelers and road builders. But we want to have it firmly in people’s hands in time for Lent, so January 14 it is. I can’ wait! (But I shall.)
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Pictured here: one of the countless orange arrows marking the Ignatian Way!
In April, I had the privilege of being a panelist on a webinar co-sponsored by Le Moyne College and the Ignatian Volunteer Corps. Click here for an engaging conversation facilitated by John Green (IVC’s VP for Partnership Engagement) with me, Jim Casey (one of my Ignatian Camino buddies) and his wife Evelyn Cannon (with whom Jim has made many pilgrimages along the Camino de Santiago).
They’re not even ours. The twin spruce trees with gnarly intertwined branches belong to our up-the-hill neighbor. Given the vagaries of property lines here in coastal Maine, however, they are right outside our dining room window. They’re what I gaze at over every meal, almost close enough to touch. I love these trees. And someone has butchered them.
“In this you rejoice, although now for a little while you may have to suffer through various trials, so that the genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold that is perishable even though tested by fire, may prove to be for praise, glory, and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.” (1 Peter 1:6-7)
For decades, I have maintained that the Lent we get is harder than the Lent we choose. We choose give-ups and take-ups that feel challenging yet manageable, then life gets busy throwing at us things that are challenging yet unmanageable. That’s why I’m always encouraging people to “Live the Lent You Get,” allowing life to become its own Lenten discipline. Nevertheless, the intensity of this one caught me by surprise.
Valerie Lee-Jeter McKenzie 1957 – 2024
Or maybe it was just February. In the first half of the month, four friends lost close relatives—not one at a “ripe old age.” One former colleague died; two others landed in the hospital. On the evening of February 6, one of my aunts broke her hip and my choir director stopped breathing at home. My aunt came through surgery and is progressing well, but Valerie never regained consciousness, dying on the day before Ash Wednesday after forty years at the musical helm of St. Vincent’s.
When this weird overlap of sacred and secular observances happened in 2018, it was the first time in 73 years. But we get a do-over now, and another in 2029, so I guess we should pay attention.
Here, then, is a lightly edited version of my previous post on the topic . . .
I’m not sure how many people are dismayed by the collision of Catholic and Hallmark holidays. Probably not as many as the Internet would have us believe. But those who would persuade us that this is a conflict are misunderstanding both days, selling us—literally—on an artificial, commercial understanding of love.
Every February, we’re told that we should “say it with flowers,” and the price of roses shoots up. Grocery stores’ seasonal aisles fill—on the day after Christmas—with giant heart-shaped boxes of chocolate. Jewelry stores run commercials featuring gifts in the the “now I know you love me” price range.
But real love – romantic or otherwise – has never been about that stuff. Real love is much more akin to the three disciplines of Lent—prayer, fasting, and almsgiving:
Flowersv. Prayer Whatever the “it” is that needs to be said, I’d rather have the words. Sincere words / meaningful conversation / shared vulnerability—things that don’t wither up and die by next Wednesday. It’s what we need in our personal relationships, romantic or otherwise, and it’s what we need in our relationship with God. Showing up. Saying what we feel. Listening for the response. Being vulnerable before the One we love. That’s a pretty good description of prayer, and an open invitation to spend a little extra time with God this season.
Candy v. Fasting I do not understand why chocolate is invested with so much power: THE symbol of Valentine’s Day and THE thing to give up for Lent. Real love is always more about sacrifice than consumption. And by sacrifice I don’t mean “Oh no, I can’t eat that; it’s Lent!” I mean that we give up stuff for each other all the time. Parents give up sleep for their infants; teachers give up weekends to grade their students’ papers; housemates give up couch time to do the dishes; college students give up whatever when a friend needs a ride or a shoulder or a study partner. That’s the spirit in which we can frame our Lenten sacrifices, too . . . not setting up some sort of Olympic deprivation hurdle for ourselves, but simply asking what we can let go of in order to create more space in our hearts / minds / lives / schedules. This, then, frees us to be more responsive to the needs of those we love and those God loves—which is everyone.
Jewelry v. Almsgiving TV commercials would have us believe that love is best expressed with a jaw-dropping price tag. We know that’s not true. But real love is generous. Love is open-eyed and openhearted. Love sees the need—the need of the person right in front of us, and the needs of people we will never meet. And love responds—sometimes with money, other times with attention or service or time. Lent invites us to that kind of generosity, and calls it almsgiving.
So as we move into the season of Lent, go ahead and let this divine alignment of Valentine’s Ash Wednesday set the tone.
Carve out quality time with the God you love.
Give up something that gets in the way of your freedom to love.
We’ve reached the end of the Christmas season. Today, Luke’s shepherds and angels yield to Matthew’s magi with their exotic gifts. Tomorrow is the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord. On Tuesday, with a sigh of sadness or possibly relief, we return to Ordinary Time. As we put away our nativity sets, it may be comforting to remember John’s description of the Incarnation, which needs no crèche to hold it:
“And the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.” (John 1:14)
Often, nuances of familiar passages can reveal themselves in unfamiliar translations. Using Bible Gateway, I discovered that the Orthodox Jewish Bible (a 21st century English translation drawing on Yiddish and Hebrew cultural expressions) tells us that “the Dvar Hashem (Word of God) made his sukkah among us.” This is a poignant image for those of us blessed to live in Jewish neighborhoods, where even Catholics know it’s the Feast of Sukkot because of the sukkahs that spring up in nearby yards—or, for the yardless, on decks and balconies.
My favorite translation, however, may be the Message Bible’s chatty paraphrase: “The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood.”
What each of these translations captures in its own way is the startling proximity to which God committed in the Incarnation—experiencing life among and as one of us. This has me musing about times when I have experienced the goodness of proximity with others, or what I’ve taken to calling The Grace of Pajamas.
Three times during this season, Porter and I have awakened in someone else’s home—with family over Christmas and New Year’s weekends, and now in Boston, at the home of fellow pilgrims from our Ignatian Camino. As fun as it is to talk on the phone or go out to dinner, there’s nothing quite like sharing space: encountering sleepy relatives or friends over the coffee pot, experiencing their morning routines, cooking together, visiting the local shops that mark their days, accompanying them on their favorite walks or to their beloved place of worship. There’s a quality of conversation that unfolds over time, an intimacy that grows from the simple sharing of life.
Such opportunities are as golden as they are rare. We can’t do it with everyone; a certain threshold of comfort precedes the invitation to pajamas. But these encounters point—as all good and beautiful things do—to an everyday truth. In Jesus, God has taken on flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood. God shares life with us not just in the special times, but especially in the ordinary ones.
The One who made us and loves us and knows us better than we know ourselves promised to be with us always (and thus in all ways). We don’t need to clean up for God. We don’t need to put our face on. We just need to say, Welcome!
In this new year, as you go about the ordinary routines of your days . . . coffee pot, meal prep, dishes, laundry, work, errands, rinse, repeat . . . may you know God’s startling proximity, trust God’s abiding friendship, and experience the grace of those divine pajamas.
Many thanks to Eric Clayton at the Jesuit Conference for soliciting and publishing today’s reflection. As soon as I heard this year’s Advent topic, I knew what I wanted to write about.
Many thanks to Busted Halo for publishing my ruminations about the women in Matthew’s Gospel and how they can speak to us today. Need a new patron saint? Maybe you’ll find her here.
Kudos to Annamarie Anton for this beautiful graphic!
‘Tis the season . . . to curate gift lists! If you’re seeking inspiration for that hard-to-shop-for someone, consider one of these. I can vouch for the quality of both the writing and the humanity of each author friend.
Links are to Barnes & Noble, with gratitude to Lynn Rosen at the Rittenhouse Square store for inviting me to sell my books in person next Saturday (12/16) from 1-3; stop by if you’re local! If you have an independent bookstore in your neighborhood, however, I encourage you to shop there or support them by ordering through Bookshop.org. (Be sure to check delivery times if it must be there by Christmas.)
If you want to give my books for Christmas and can’t make it on Saturday, just email me and I’ll move heaven and earth to get personalized, signed copies to you or your chosen recipients. (I’ll even gift-wrap!)
With no further ado, here’s my list of Books I Love by People I Love (alpha by author):
The Little Book of Listening: Listening as a Radical act of Love, Justice, Healing, and Transformationby Sharon Browning et al. Through her “Just Listening” work, Sharon has been a blessing to people in the Philadelphia area and well beyond; her co-authors’ credentials are equally inspiring. GIFT THIS TO anyone who genuinely wants to do the hard work of listening to people who come from varied life experiences.
Heart of Stone by David W. Burns Dave is a fellow SJU alum who’s been writing all his life. Like me, he entered a Pitch Week competition at When Words Count in Vermont. Unlike me, he swept all five categories, handily winning the gold. Heart of Stone is the first in a series featuring heroine Kyra Anastas, a Gorgon (yes, snakes for hair) working as a hit-woman in present-day Chicago. GIFT THIS TO anyone who likes fast-paced action with a smart, sassy protagonist and a dash of mythological assassins.
The Diary of Jesus Christ by Bill Cain, SJ I met Fr. Bill at the Ignatian Creators Summit last summer and quickly became enchanted with his work. A playwright and screenwriter, he retells familiar Gospel narratives as they might have been captured by Jesus himself (if the Lord kept a journal). After reading one of the chapters, I texted Bill to say “I’m weeping reading this,” to which he responded “Well, I was weeping when I wrote it, so . . . ” GIFT THIS TO anyone who wants to grow closer to God through imaginative prayer.
The Language of the Soul: Meeting Godin the Longings of Our Hearts by Jeff Crosby Jeff and I became writerly friends after he discovered my first book by spotting it in a catalog. (Who knew that actually happened?) In this cozy book, Jeff explores the concept of saudade—a “vague and constant desire for something that does not and possibly cannot exist.” He muses through ten longings, adding resources for further reading as well as a musical playlist to accompany each one. GIFT THIS TO: any spiritually-minded person who likes to read with pencil in hand.
Renewable: One Woman’s Search for Simplicity, Faithfulness, and Hope by Eileen Flanagan How did a former Peace Corps Volunteer wind up living in a big house with a basement full of stuff she didn’t need? Reading my friend Eileen’s beautiful account of the “midlife spiritual crisis” she experienced on the brink of 50 when I was that age myself, I found it familiar, moving, and inspirational. (Check out her other books you might enjoy.) GIFT THIS TO anyone who needs to recover their bearings and move with courage into the second half of life.
Madonnas of Color by Bro. Mickey McGrath Confession: I love pretty much everything Brother Mickey has ever drawn, written, published, said aloud, or maybe even thought about, but this one is particularly striking. Though it can be devoured in a morning (as I confess I did), each tile in this gorgeous mosaic of a book is exquisite, worthy of its own prayerful contemplation. GIFT THIS TO: anyone brave enough to pray with the history of racism and the divisions in our country in the company of the Blessed Mother.
The Coffeehouse Resistance: Brewing Hope in Desperate Times by Sarina Prabasi I met Sarina at When Words Count when we were each at the beginning of our publication journey, and now I’m delighted to call her a friend. One of my favorite things to do in NYC is visit Buunni Coffee, where Sarina and her husband Elias brew good trouble along with their excellent coffee. From Nepal to Ethiopia to Washington Heights, her memoir is riveting. GIFT THIS TO anyone who loves coffee and democracy. (Or just democracy.)
Darling Girl by Terry H. Watkins Terry and I competed in Pitch Week together; she edged me out by one point and we’ve been friends ever since! This delightful read is a series of vignettes narrated by “DG,” a precocious child from a troubled and peripatetic southern family. We fall in love with five-year-old DG on the first page and root for her all the way to the brink of college. GIFT THIS TO anyone who enjoys curling up with a good story and rooting for the underdog.
This weekend, we celebrate the Feast of Christ the King (technically, “The Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe”). At Mass, we’ll hear Matthew’s account of the Last Judgment (25:31-46), in which Jesus tells a parable about a king who sets the criteria for separating (saved) sheep from (damned) goats:
I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me, ill and you cared for me, in prison and you visited me.
What always moves me about this story is the cluelessness of both the condemned and the righteous. When?!? they both exclaim. When did we see you and do (or not do) what you said? (Cue Felix Unger in The Odd Couple: “When? When? When was I redundant?)
The actual recognizing of Jesus, interestingly, is not the thing rewarded; it’s the behavior alone. The question is not what we professed, but what we did.
We’re not much into monarchs now unless they’re butterflies, but back in Jesus’ day, a monarch was revered (or at least feared). The idea that a king would be present in every human being was astounding—and should be behavior-upending.
Ideally, the conviction that Jesus abides in every person should transform our own random acts of kindness into persistent habits of character and courageous action on behalf of the common good. Yet, too often, Matthew’s warning stirs only a sporadic awareness that any given hungry / thirsty / strange / naked / ill / imprisoned character we meet might be Jesus—as though He had a side hustle as a mystery shopper or undercover boss. The notion fails to compel, as evinced by our own behavior.
After reading Matthew Desmond’sPoverty, by Americafor the SanctuaryFarm book club (follow-up session January 24; stay tuned), I began wondering what Christ the King might say to us today. How about:
I was hungry, and you wouldn’t open a decent grocery in walking distance of my home, forcing me to pay more for less at the corner store.
I was thirsty, and you got me hooked on sugary beverages while overlooking the contaminated water flowing from my tap.
I was a stranger, and you zoned your neighborhoods so I’d never be able to live there.
I was naked, and you flooded the market with cheaply made clothes and other consumer goods that keep profit margins high and workers’ wages low.
I was ill, and you wrung your hands and said what a shame it was that the nation couldn’t afford to provide me with health care.
I was in prison, and upon release you limited my housing and employment options so severely that I wound up right back where I started.
When?!? we bleat, clueless as a damned goat. We didn’t do ANY of these things personally.Why blame us?
More and more, I’m becoming aware that we are responsible not only for what we do, but for what we tolerate—especially when we benefit from policies that subsidize the already-affluent while penalizing the poor. I am not going to pretend that our societal ills have easy solutions. But if we take Matthew 25 seriously, we have to acknowledge that anything we consent to have done to the “least of these,” we consent to have done to Jesus.
It’s a sobering thought—as befits an end-times Gospel. May you be blessed with friends who keep you thinking.
Christine Marie Eberle 