Claretian Teaching Ministry

“Where’s the milk?” asks the time-pressed, breakfast-hustling husband.

“Where it always is—on the shelf in the fridge,” chirps the patient wife.

Life is punctuated with countless seemingly “urgent” questions that have simple and often overlooked or even ignored answers. One such question that bounces around in the mind of almost every human, sometimes almost as a petulant demand, at other times, just a silent, drifting cloud of wonder, is this:

Where is God when I need him?

To that challenging, often angry, question, Jesus, in his serene majesty—like the indulgent wife countering the querulous husband–provides a simple but often overlooked answer, clearly, succinctly and trenchantly: “Ssurely I am with you always, to the very end of the age” (Matt. 28:20). The basic truth of our Creator’s unwavering presence is reasserted insistently throughout his word: “God has said, ‘Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you’” (Heb. 13:5).

However, Jesus also tells us that someday our very questioning of his presence will become irrelevant to us: “You are now in anguish. But I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy away from you. On that day you will not question me about anything” (John 16:22-23).

“On that day”—the day of his Second Coming—our present questioning of God’s presence will seem utterly silly. Only those rare individuals with a mature faith who had never questioned God will find a question-free state quite normal. But “on that day” faith-anemic souls—that’s most of us—will be embarrassed by having questioned God’s presence in our suffering, especially as we recall Jesus’ own question in response to our question: “When the Son of Man comes again, will there be any faith on earth?” (Luke 18:8).

Job, though he was the holiest man on earth in his time, felt really silly and stupid when he underwent the stultifying experience of his great theophany (Job 42:3-6). His stupidity in questioning God became patent when God questioned him (40:4). Jesus’ esoteric prophecy about the future time of no questioning had been personally preempted for Job by his insightful ecstasy.

For us, as spiritually anorexic children of God, there is a continuous need to feed on God’s nourishing love, which undergirds his divine and mysterious plan that surcharges life’s hurts with meaning. And we must do this without denying the ineffable, inscrutable and disturbing mystery of suffering itself. Jesus’ prophesied non-questioning period coincides with the non-suffering period—“when your hearts will rejoice.” That rejoicing will start with the Parousia (Jesus’ Second Coming) and will continue through heaven’s eternity.

As we grow in our reliance and trust in God’s loving presence, and in his mysterious providence that fashions crowns from crosses, we’ll find ourselves, like Paul, advancing from complaint to gratitude for life’s lacerating thorns. As we strive to cope with our harrowing trials in this vale of tears, while snuggling into God’s compassionate presence, heaven itself will begin to come into view.

John H. Hampsch, cmf

The ancient philosopher Epictetus provided some of the best motivational psychology of his day. He said, “First say to yourself what you would be. And then do what you have to do.” That’s simply gearing your thoughts to a proposed goal and then taking practical steps to make it a reality. Remember that establishing a goal in itself is not sufficient; you can’t learn to drive a car or play the piano by simply desiring those goals; you have to actually drive or actually play the piano until the desired goal is achieved.

Spiritual mediocrity in an otherwise high-minded person is usually the result of sincerely aspiring to holiness without implementing the means to attain it. If left to itself, such complacency will eventually anesthetize the soul; it will tend to cause the person so afflicted to forget or even ignore altogether the Lord’s pervasive and uninterrupted support and beneficence. The antidote to spiritual mediocrity and self-complacency is simply to “launch out into the deep” with surges of humble trust in the Lord. This will not only provide a God-designed protection against petty self-complacency but also further our growth by leaps and bounds.

Pope John XXIII, shortly before his death, said, “I believe that when I stand before God, he will simply ask me: How did you use the gifts of life that I gave you?” Jesus came that we “may have life, and have it abundantly” (Jn 10:10). If we don’t accept and use that abundance, we will have to give an account of our neglected stewardship of his graces and blessings.

For a truly trusting soul, however, no grace or blessing falls through the cracks. A child who trusts his mother for sufficient food would never be deprived of nourishment by her: “Can a woman forget her nursing child, or show no compassion for the child of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you” (Is 49:15). Nothing motivates God to express his love for us more tenderly than when he sees us trusting him for all our needs. The reason for this is simply that by trusting him we are implicitly acknowledging our most basic creatural dependence on him as our Creator, Redeemer, Forgiver, Healer, Sustainer, Protector, and Guide.

 Fr. John Hampsch, “Pathways of Trust”

This post is for everyone who believe that God can heal us, but don’t believe that He will heal us today.

The following is from Fr. Hampsch’s book titled: Faith: Key to the Heart of God. This segment is titled: High Octane Healing (Pg 24).

Once I was anointing with oil after teaching for healing. About 100 people were still there, most having left already. After I went a few feet past one woman I anointed, she suddenly began to scream. I ran over and asked her what was the matter. “I’m healed, I’m healed!” she shouted.

 I asked her what exactly she had been healed of. “When I came in here tonight, I was blind,” she replied. “And now I can see!” Her husband came running over, hugged her and cried. He was almost delirious. We all stopped what we were doing and began to sing and praise God. She had had tremendous faith, faith enough to believe that she was going to be healed of blindness. And she was.

On another occasion, I was in a hotel in San Diego following a local television appearance. It was past midnight after a charismatic conference that was being held there, and many participants were jostling to be prayed over before leaving. There was one fellow who kept getting pushed out of the way. He waited until everyone else was finished, then came up to me. I asked his need and he let me know that he had a congenital total deafness, with consequent impairment of speech. Through a genetic inheritance factor, every member of his family had no eardrums. This was a brilliant young man who could speak seven languages but could hear none of them.

He was certain he was going to be healed. As we prayed over him he heard something pop in his right ear. He was amazed for now he could hear in his right ear. We told him to check with a doctor which he did the following day. He went to his own specialist, a Jewish doctor who did not believe in Christ as a Healer or in miraculous healing. Upon examining this patient, however, he was astonished at what he saw. An eardrum had grown in the man’s right ear and he could pass the hearing tests! Still deaf in the left ear, he now had perfect hearing in the right ear. With unquestioning faith, the young man invited the flabbergasted doctor to attend the charismatic conference with him the following night to watch the other ear get healed!

The doctor came, disbelieving, but with his little medical satchel with ear-examining instruments. When his patient came up on the stage, we prayed over the other ear, and it opened as well. The doctor was invited up to check the ear and test the hearing. He could not believe what he had witnessed.

I had breakfast with the healed man the next morning. I asked how he liked his new gift of hearing. He said, “This is an unbelievable experience. I often wondered what a barking dog sounded like and this morning I heard a dog bark. What an experience! And I’ve never been able to hear my girlfriend’s voice. Today I heard her voice. I’d never used a telephone before today. I called San Francisco from San Diego and talked to my friends who were elated and couldn’t believe I was using a phone. They are so excited that they are flying down this afternoon to celebrate the miracle with me!”

One ear at a time was healed-a two-phase miracle.

This young man had no-doubt faith, which enabled others to see that God is alive, really alive. He wants to do things for us – all we have to do is release His power by exercising faith.

…. If you’re smiling and saying “Praise God, Lord I believe, help my unbelief” you may wish to obtain a copy of this book; you will truly be amazed at the healing that Fr. writes about on page 26.

www.claretiantapeministry.org

   There’s a story about a little old Irish lady returning from a pilgrimage of the shrines of Europe, who was questioned by the customs agent regarding a bottle in her luggage. She protested that it was Lourdes water from the famous shrine where she had witnessed several miracles” When the skeptical customs agent smelled the bottle’s contents, he informed her that it was contraband whiskey. “Glory be to God!” exclaimed the little lady! “Another miracle!”

   It isn’t hard to expose a counterfeit faith. But at venues like Lourdes where miracles really do happen, faith is more often transformed and uplifted than exposed as sham. Of all its many acclaimed miracles its greatest miracle might well be the widespread flourishing of faith, as countless tourists with merely sightseers’ curiosity find themselves absorbing the spiritual mindset of devout pilgrims. Lourdes entertains an average of 6 million visitors each year- 8 million expected this jubilee year, the 150th anniversary of Mary’s apparitions to St. Bernadette. Hardly any visitors remain untouched by the vibrant faith that permeates the very atmosphere of this remarkable heaven-chosen site. Like the hub of a cartwheel toward which all spokes converge and from which they radiate, Lourdes is the global focal point of many aspects of faith.

   Bernadette responded to the many skeptics who doubted her apparitions:

   “I am here to tell you what happened, not to make you believe.” But by God’s grace her compelling testimony aroused in them a faith that blossomed and spread far afield like wild roses. That phenomenon continues even to this day 

   For instance, many pilgrims come to Lourdes with an inferior type of faith called the “faith of urgency” (”Please, please, please, help me, Lord!”), and find their faith burgeoning into a “faith of expectancy” (”Of course you will help me, Lord!”). This expectant faith, a charismatic gift granted by the Holy Spirit, cannot be contrived by human effort, but only petitioned. (The reason for this I explain in my book, Faith, the Key to the Heart of God.) Most significantly for Lourdes devotees, Paul in 1 Cor. 12:9 links this faith charism with the related charisms of healing and miracle-working. This is the kind of expectant faith described in Hebrews 11: 1, and especially in James 5: 15: “Prayer offered in faith will heal the sick.” Jesus speaks of this expectant faith in Mark 11 :24: “Whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it and it will be yours.”

   Another “spoke” radiating from this “hub of faith” is the hallmark of Lourdes-namely, the virtue of faith-also called doctrinal faith. This kind of faith is reflected in the many penitents making life-changing confessions, and those eagerly receiving the sacrament of the anointing of the sick.

   Even more pivotal in this Mecca of belief is the doctrinal faith that experiences Jesus’ Real Presence in the Holy Eucharist. The fervent Mass attendance and countless devout Communions, as well as the Eucharistic Benediction and procession with the Host-bearing monstrance used to bless the sick, all contribute to an incandescent flow of Christ-focused love. Jesus’ mother, who “magnifies the Lord” and who persuaded him to work his first public miracle at Cana, delights in the hidden miracles of grace and soul-healing that inundate her spiritual children as they adore her Divine Son in his Eucharistic Presence. A highlight in my own priesthood recently was the Easter Sunday Mass that I was privileged to celebrate at the apparition site itself.

   On the centennial of Lourdes in 1958-half a century ago-while I was preaching at the apparition site, I hurried to finish my sermon when I noticed a group of pilgrims waiting for their cardinal chaplain to celebrate Mass at that altar. Their shepherd was Cardinal Roncali, later elected as Pope John XXIII.

   One very apparent dimension of doctrinal faith profluent at Lourdes is warm and loving devotion to Mary, especially under the title of her Immaculate Conception. That term attests that by exclusive privilege she was conceived without original sin and remained free of all personal sin also. She waited until the 16th apparition to identify herself under that title, significantly announcing her own sin-free conception on the anniversary of her divine Son’s sin-free conception-the feast of the annunciation, March 25. Mary’s Immaculate Conception-in the womb of her mother, St. Anne-had been an ancient Church teaching, but proclaimed ecclesiastically as dogma only four years prior to the Lourdes apparitions; it needed a devotional promulgation among God’s people. The Lourdes event provided an ideal stage for such a devotional faith response,

   Why did Mary say, “I am the Immaculate Conception” rather than “I have the privilege of the Immaculate Conception”? She chose to use a metonym or synecdoche, that is, a figure of speech by which a noun symbolizes a person or something else; thus, the phrase “tribute to the crown” means “tribute to the king.” If reported as a metonym from a slow-witted and unconversant child like Bernadette, who would never employ a sophisticated figure of speech like a metonym, the doctrinal revelation in that apparition would be more believable. The newly proclaimed dogma would thus be less easily refuted by skeptics.

   The faith ambience of Lourdes filters down from the sacraments to the sacramentals. Thus, the many candles blessed for the spectacular candlelight processions are sacramental symbols of the light of faith, referred to even in the candle blessing prayer itself. The world-renowned Lourdes water! now established as a sacramental and flowing at 30,000 gallons per day, began as a tiny trickle of mud scratched by Bernadette to a miraculous flow of water, the symbol of life. She often insisted to inquirers that the water had no healing power in itself; it is healing-effective only when used with the prayer of faith. This decimated the false faith of those infected with “sacramental superstition.”

   On the first pilgrimage that I shepherded to Lourdes, one lady suffered crippling pain from phlebitis in her legs. A nurse in our group prayed with deep faith at the apparition site and then sneaked up behind this lady and splashed Lourdes water on her legs. Astonishingly, she was cured totally and instantly! That triggered a resurgence of faith in our entire group-and even more cures.

   Pope Benedict, on his recent jubilee visit to Lourdes, recalled his predecessor, Pope John Paul II, whose intense Marian devotion was epitomized in his Marian coat of arms motto: Totus Tuus (All Yours). He affirmed that this reflected a life completely oriented to Christ through Mary, implying the Vatican II statement that all authentic Marian devotion is Christocentric. He said, “Whoever opens his heart to Mary is actually accepted by her and becomes her own.” This, he said, eventuates in a truly spiritual and mystical experience.

   It was that theme that I tried to present in my book, Scriptural Basis for Marian Devotion. Permit me to close by quoting a passage from that treatise:

   Any Marian devotee, trying to explain to a non-devotee the awesome interior love surges or even the exterior phenomena experienced at a Marian shrine, would usually get a disappointing response of calloused indifference. A deep and abiding awareness of Mary as our spiritual Mother is one of the most beautiful, comforting and spiritually uplifting insights granted by the Holy Spirit-undoubtedly part of that “knowledge, spiritual wisdom and understanding” that Paul prayed would be granted to the Colossians (Col. 1 :9) and to the Ephesians (Eph 5:17). As stated in Lumen Gentium in Vatican II, all authentic Marian devotion is ultimately Christocentric; hence all Marian devotees will have a much richer devotion to Jesus because of it.

   One of the greatest rewards of filial Marian devotion this side of heaven is the incalculable joy engendered by deep devotion and love toward Mary. There is a joy in honoring God, the Divine Artist, by admiring Mary, his creatural masterpiece; the joy of being, in some way, another Jesus for Mary; the ineffable joy of feeling constantly secure and at peace because of reliance on her fathomless protective love; the joy of experiencing success in all our work done for God’s glory, as she teaches us to “Make our paths straight .. and give health to the body” (Prov. 3:6-8); the joy of making her known, loved and served; the joy of seeing her honoring God who “has done mighty things for her” and to see herself honored by humans of “all generations that will call her blessed”; the joy of growing in love of Jesus under her tutelage; the joy of bringing happiness to Jesus by honoring Mary, and happiness to Mary by honoring Jesus. The saintly Marianist Brother Leonard once wrote: “To give Jesus the delight and joy of loving Mary through me and in me, and to give Mary the Joy of seeing her Son live in me-what a glorious thought!” Can it be true to say that those lacking a fervent devotion to Mary are missing something very rich in their spiritual life? The question almost answers itself. May God be praised for creating Mary, his masterpiece! +++

John H. Hampsch, C.M.F.

The old bromide that says “it’s always darkest before dawn” does not mean—as one comedian quipped—that it’s the best time to steal your neighbor’s newspaper. It’s a maxim that is mean to encourage us to expect ultimate relief from our inevitable troubles, pains, afflictions and misfortunes.

“The Lord will rescue me from every evil attack and will bring me safely to his heavenly kingdom” (2 Tim.4:18).  And for those who patiently sustain their life’s hardships, Jesus reminds them, “Great is your reward” (Luke 6; 23)

 While “all creation groans in distress,” we—if we are authentically Christian—should “hope for what we do not yet have, as we wait for it patiently” (Rom. 8:22:25). With insistent exigency, Paul urges us to follow that advice, because he himself had experienced that dawn-after-darkness state in his celebrated vision of heaven (2 Cor. 12:2). It was so ineffable that he was frustrated in trying to describe that experience: “No eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the human heart conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Cor. 2:9).

That’s the awesome bliss Jesus refers to when he promises us that we “will have treasure in heaven,” if we “lay up treasure in heaven” (Matt. 6:20; Luke 12:33). But to “lay up” treasure in heaven, Paul advises us to “set your mind on things above, not on things of earth” (Col. 3:1-2). That’ not easy when our faith is faltering and those “things of earth” seem to offer the only relief. That’s when we need the motivation to yearn for that magnificent and everlasting “inheritance reserved for you in heaven” (1 Pet. 1:4).

John H. Hampsch, cmf

If you are interested in listening to the entire teaching on this topic, please consider “From Here to Eternity-Our End Time Options” (6 CDs). This as well as all of Fr.’s teachings can be found at www.claretiantapeministry.org.

Centuries ago a European nobleman built a church to leave as a spiritual legacy for his townspeople. At the opening ceremony the townsfolk began asking, “Where are the lamps? How will it be lighted?”

The nobleman pointed to empty lamp along the walls, each assigned to a family that was given a lamp to be brought and lighted at the worship service each Sunday – A striking reminder that failure to attend Sunday worship would thus leave part of God’s house and God’s people in darkness.

The clustering of persons that forms any community serves many deep sociological purposes, for Aristotle reminded us that humans are “political (social) animals.” But God’s revelation delineates far greater benefits of societal clustering when it is done for spiritual reasons. It not only provides the exercise of supernatural virtues like charity, compassion, patience, fortitude, kindness, and generosity, but it also occasions a very special modality of Christ’s presence when even two or three are gathered in his name (see Matthew 18:20). Moreover, even minimal human clustering for petitioning God can draw down miracles from his hand: “I tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything you ask for, it will be done for you” (v. 19). In prayer, one plus one equals far more than two.

Neglecting to “bring your lamp” to your Christian community will deprive part of God’s people of your light – and his!

Fr. John H. Hampsch

“One- Minute Meditations for Busy People”

Without punctuation, many writings and utterances would be meaningless gobbledygook. As an example, try to make sense of this unpunctuated series of words: “That that is is that that is not is not is not that it it is.” But with proper punctuation added, those same words read: “That that is, is; that that is not, is not. Is not that it? It is.”

The human life, unpunctuated by faith, is meaningless-. In his book Believing, Eugene Kennedy states, “Faith is closely linked to a person … and related to his whole identity. There is no believing that does not involve the whole person. You cannot give a response of faith with only a part of your personality.”

Compare an agnostic’s experience of bereavement with that of a faith-filled individual who believes in an afterlife. Compare a faithless person’s reaction to an insult with that of a Christian with a stalwart faith that has learned to turn the other cheek. Compare a worldling’s frustration in sustaining intractable pain with the pain of a true believer, soothed by the loving acceptance of God’s will in suffering. Compare an atheist’s enjoy-it-while-you-can hedonism with the joy of the friend who attends the bridegroom with a joy that is “complete” (see John 3:29). Truly, only faith-punctuation can put real meaning into otherwise meaningless situations in life.

“One-Minute Meditations for Busy People” by Fr. John H. Hampsch, C.M.F.

– New series Dec. 07, Prescott, AZ – Now Available

An Easy Way to Make It RainWould you believe that it’s possible to make it rain by simply demanding it with a loud voice? It’s true! High in China’s Gaoligong Mountains in the northwest part of Yunnan Province are a group of pools nicknamed “The Enchanting Lakes.” When anyone shouts for rain while standing near the lakes, a downpour often immediately follows, says the Shanghai Liberation Daily. The louder the shout, the heavier the rain; the longer the shout, the longer the rain.To explain this believe-it-or-not phenomenon, physicists theorize that the air around the lakes is often supersaturated with humidity, which precipitates as rain when coalesced by certain vibrations, such as a high-volume or high-pitched voice.We have all fantasized of getting instant response to our heaven-directed prayers, like tourists inducing rainfall by bellowing near the Enchanting Lakes. After all, Jesus did say, “Whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours” (Mk 11:24). But if the belief (faith) requirement is defective, the spiritual ”vibes” will be inadequate.The solution? Two sentences before the above quote, Jesus says, “Have faith in God.” It is only when we exert God-oriented faith that this promise will be effective. Mere faith in our faith or faith in our prayer is not enough to do the trick.

“One-Minute Meditations for Busy People”