I was in the kitchen, washing vegetables and getting ready to make dinner, when my teen daughter started pondering who she might pick if she could have dinner with someone famous, living or dead. We bandied back and forth, tossing out different names and genres of people, and I said: “I hate to pick the most obvious person, which would be Jesus.” That prompted Chiara to ask: “If you could have one million dollars or five minutes with Jesus, what would you choose?” Without hesitation, of course, I said: “Jesus.” I wasn’t looking at her, but I guess that answer gave her pause, so she went a step further: “If you could have 10 million dollars or five minutes with Jesus, what would you choose?” To which I quickly said — without looking up from my prep work: “Jesus.” And from there we moved on, although the conversation stayed with me.

Later that night, I found myself coming back to it and replaying it in my head. On one level, I was not at all surprised by my answer because who wouldn’t take five minutes with the Son of God over anything else, material or otherwise? But another part of me was fascinated. So often I feel like my faith isn’t as deep as it should be, especially during these tumultuous times in our country and our world when we seem to be caught in some sort of existential death spiral. I wish I could let go of the anxiety that has me in its grip lately and trust that, in the words given to the great mystic Julian of Norwich by God, “All shall be well.” It’s not easy, and most of the time I feel like I’m failing and falling despite my best efforts. And then along comes a moment that stops me in my tracks and reminds me that no matter how things may feel on the surface of my spiritual life, deep down there is an abiding faith that knows without hesitation or question where my true loyalty lies.

When I decided to search Julian’s famous quote for deeper context, I came across a beautiful General Audience given by Pope Benedict XVI in 2010 on this very topic:

“Julian of Norwich understood the central message for spiritual life: God is love and it is only if one opens oneself to this love, totally and with total trust, and lets it become one’s sole guide in life, that all things are transfigured, true peace and true joy found and one is able to radiate it,” the late pope said, talking about the challenge of why evil and suffering exists.

“… God’s promises are ever greater than our expectations,” the late pope continued. “If we present to God, to his immense love, the purest and deepest desires of our heart, we shall never be disappointed. ‘And all will be well, all manner of things shall be well.’ This is the final message that Julian of Norwich transmits to us and that I am also proposing to you today.”

It’s a message that continues to speak to us today, when the level of anxiety in our world has reached epic proportions. Talk to friends and family members and the sense of dread is almost palpable, thanks to a culture where violence and division and false promises are the norm. And, so, like Julian, we come back to God. Again. Always.

Put aside all that the world holds out to you — both the terrifying and the tempting — and spend five minutes with Jesus. Choose that.

This column originally appeared in the July 25, 2024, issue of The Evangelist.

Photo by Sonja Langford on Unsplash

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I don’t know why it always surprises me when I open up the daily Scriptures and find a reading that speaks right to my heart, as though God placed it there just for me. And so it was that at a time when I was struggling with some of the more human elements of Church, the underbelly of faith, I came to today’s reading from Acts. “We must obey God rather than men,” the apostles remind us, even as they faced persecution for “the sake of the name.” While we may not have to deal with direct persecution in our daily lives, we often face revelations and realizations that can be as dangerous to our spiritual lives as the Sanhedrin’s threats were to the apostles’ physical lives. Despair and doubt, if allowed to fester, are destructive forces to be sure.

But, if we obey God rather than men, it changes the dynamic. God alone. That is what we must hang our hopes on. Anything or anyone else is bound to be flawed, bound to disappoint, and in the process, likely to shake our faith and scar our souls at some point. So how to obey God first and only when we live in a human world? Prayer. Always prayer. When we are so hurt that we can’t even say the prayers of our Church, we can say the prayers of our heart. Speak to God one-on-one, face-to-face, and let God heal your fractured soul.

Mary DeTurris Poust, “God Alone,” from the May 2019 issue of Give Us This Day www.giveusthisday.org (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2019). Used with permission

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

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Yes, we are all also in the process of living, but, like it or not, the dying part is wrapped up in it, often so deep we manage to ignore it until there’s no choice. This past month, dying was front and center. I left Pyramid Life Center the next morning only to learn my childhood friend, Kari, had died late the night before. I cried for most of the drive home as I thought about her smiling face, about the children, husband, siblings, father and many friends she leaves behind, and about the stellar way she lived her life and the graceful way she lived her death.

Kari’s death followed close on the heels of the death of a Jesuit priest we knew through campus ministry at Le Moyne College in Syracuse. When our son first visited the college, it was Father John Bucki, S.J., whose broad smile, open arms and wise words drew all of us in. I have no doubt he played a big role in making Le Moyne Noah’s top choice, and he continued to be a powerful influence right to the end, not just on the students on campus but on all of us who were caught in the gravitational pull of his joy for life and for his vocation. It was a beautiful thing.

When both of these dear people died, the Facebook posts left on their pages told a story of lives well lived but, more than that, lives touched. Scrolling by on my computer screen were people expressing gratitude and recounting stories of how Kari and Father Bucki made them better people and, in some cases, changed the course of their lives through the simple act of loving first, always, no matter what.

So, when I heard those words—“For those who are in the process of dying…”—I thought not of those on death’s doorstep but of my own inevitable journey toward death, whenever that may be, and the legacy I might leave behind. I cannot hope to have the impact that either Kari or Father Bucki had, but can I, in the time I have left, love a little better, smile a little more, weave a little extra joy and compassion and grace into the process?

I got my answer on how to do that on the last morning of the retreat. Another group staying on the grounds was preparing for a full-immersion baptism in the crystal clear (and very chilly) lake. A group of us hurried down the hill to witness it. As we stood on the shore, a woman dressed in her Sunday best walked into the water, aided by friends from her church. After she was baptized, she came up out of the lake beaming with happiness. The faith and grace and power of that moment left many of us with tears running down our smiling faces. A few minutes later, another woman stepped forward, a little more tentatively. In an effort to ease her way, one of the ministers said, “With every step, say ‘Jesus.’” And suddenly the clouds in my cluttered mind parted and those words were all I could see.

We are all in the process of dying. The only way to get through that is to keep inching toward heaven, no matter what the world throws at us, and with every step, say “Jesus.”

This column first appeared in the October 12, 2017, issue of Catholic New York.

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MARY DeTURRIS POUST

Background: Born and raised in Pearl River in Rockland County. She graduated from Pace University. Her husband, Dennis, and their children, Noah, 19, a freshman at Le Moyne College, and daughters Olivia, 15, and Chiara, 10, who attend Bethlehem public schools, live in Delmar where they are parishioners at St. Thomas the Apostle Catholic Church. She’s director of communications for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany.

Your resume includes reporter, editor, columnist, author and blogger. You’ve switched hats in your new job.

It’s the culmination of everything I’ve done professionally over the past 32 years, not only as a writer but as a public speaker, retreat leader and commentator of Catholic issues. Dealing with the media is my favorite part of my job, because I’ll always be a journalist at heart. I love to find an interesting story in the diocese and get it out there in the secular press: Good news with a capital g and a lower case g. I do sometimes miss being a full-time writer.

Continue reading HERE.

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Why do you remain a Catholic?” That was the challenge issued to me on Facebook a while back. Never one to refuse a good challenge, I pondered that question anew even though I had wrestled with it before in relation to various crises in the Church, particularly the sex abuse scandal. Why do I stay? I had originally thought the new answer to that old question would be easy. But, as I reflected on it more deeply, I realized that my truth is not that simple, because it would imply that the sex abuse scandal is the only thing that makes me wonder sometimes why I stay. And, quite frankly, abuse is just one thing among many that can make this faith a challenging matter.

Don’t get me wrong. My Catholic blood runs true blue and has for all of my 53 years. I love the Church deeply, but sometimes the Church makes me crazy. You know how your family can make you crazy? Yeah, like that. There are days when I want to run away, change my address and take up a new identity. Family can do that to you, and the Church is my family, the Church is my home, and since I’ve worked for the Church for 30-plus years in one form or another, the Church is also my business. When you spend that amount of time with anything or anyone, it can sometimes make you want to run screaming from the room. And yet I haven’t run. I haven’t changed my identity. I am here, not without some fairly regular whining, but here. Firmly planted, whether I am giddy with the joy of faith or grumbling in the pain of darkness. But why? Why not walk away and be done with even the most minor frustrations? Why not find an easier path or maybe even “create my own religion,” as some tell me they have done, where I crop out the hard stuff and fill the frame with only flowers and light?

Because life is never just flowers and light, because there will always be frustrations, there will always be something to whine about, something that doesn’t go according to my plan, and I cannot imagine getting through my daily dose of drama without God ever present in my corner, without Jesus always in front of me, without the Eucharist providing food for the often difficult journey.

When the crowds around Jesus start to have trouble with some of his difficult teachings and begin walking away, he asks his closest followers if they, too, will leave.

“Lord, to whom shall we go?” Peter answers. “You have the words of everlasting life.” That remains at the heart of my answer today. Always I identify with Peter, who never fails to screw up but somehow gets it on a deeper level. He doubts, he denies, he runs away, but Jesus sees through it to the faith that lives inside him. I pray Jesus can do the same with me, see through my mistakes and missteps and failures to the faith that is sometimes shaky, often lukewarm, but always present. For my entire life my faith has been the air I breathe. Like the beating heart we don’t question until it starts to fail, my faith has been beating inside me for 53 years, often without my taking the time to stop and admire its steadfast rhythm and life-giving power. Until someone asks me, “Why stay?”

Like Peter, I can only say, “To whom shall I go?” If not here, where? If not this, what? This is where Truth lives. This is the Way. This is the Word to which I cling. Jesus, the Alpha and the Omega—with me, with all of us, until the end of time.

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That post appeared on Not Strictly Spiritual on Jan. 21, 2014, in response to a sex abuse story that was circulating in the news at the time and making me ask myself that very question: Why do I stay? I originally planned to re-post that link on Elizabeth’s Facebook thread as my response to the new version of that old question and be done with it. Easy peasy. But then I thought, no, that’s not my truth because it would imply that the sex abuse scandal is the only thing that makes me wonder sometimes why I stay. And, quite frankly, abuse is just one thing among many that can make this faith a challenging matter.

Don’t get me wrong. My Catholic blood runs true blue and has for all of my almost 53 years. I love the Church deeply, but sometimes the Church makes me crazy. You know how your family can make you crazy? Yeah, like that. There are days when I want to run away, change my address, and take up a new identity. Family can do that to you, and the Church is my family, the Church is my home, and, since I’ve worked for the Church for 30-plus years in one form or another, the Church is also my business. When you spend that amount of time with anything or anyone, it can sometimes make you want to run screaming from the room. And yet I haven’t run. I haven’t changed my identity. I am here, not without some fairly regular whining, but here. Firmly planted, whether I am giddy with the joy of faith or grumbling in the pain of darkness. But why? Why not walk away and be done with even the most minor frustrations? Why not find an easier path or maybe even “create my own religion,” as some tell me they have done, where I crop out the hard stuff and fill the frame with only flowers and light?

Because life is never just flowers and light, because there will always be frustrations, there will always be something to whine about, something that doesn’t go according to my plan, and I cannot imagine getting through my daily dose of drama without God ever-present in my corner, without Jesus always in front of me, without the Eucharist providing food for the often-difficult journey.

When the crowds around Jesus start to have trouble with some of his difficult teachings and begin walking away, he asks his closest followers if they, too, will leave.

“Lord, to whom shall we go?” Peter answers. “You have the words of everlasting life.” That was the reason I gave in my original blog post on this topic, and it remains at the heart of my answer today. Always I identify with Peter, who never fails to screw up but somehow gets it on a deeper level. He doubts, he denies, he runs away, but Jesus sees through it to the faith that lives inside him. I pray Jesus can do the same with me, see through my mistakes and missteps and failures to the faith that is sometimes shaky, often lukewarm, but always present. For my entire life my faith has been the air I breathe. Like the beating heart we don’t question until it starts to fail, my faith has been beating inside of me for almost 53 years, often without my taking the time to stop and admire its steadfast rhythm and life-giving power. Until someone asks me, “Why stay?”

Like Peter I can only say, “To whom shall I go?” If not here, where? If not this, what? This is where Truth lives. This is the Way. This is the Word to which I cling. Jesus, the Alpha and the Omega — with me, with all of us, until the end of time.

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Operating on a couple of days without sleep, I drove home from the hospital in a fog last Sunday morning, hoping to grab a short nap and check on our girls while Noah rested in the Critical Care Unit with Dennis at his side. I drove through the cold, slushy streets of Albany with hot, salty tears running down my face, begging God, “Please don’t take my baby.” By the time I got home, I was no longer silently begging; I was loudly screaming. And then somewhere in the midst of it came the slow, creeping acknowledgment that despite my crying and carrying on, I had no right to expect an escape from the harshness of life. Suddenly all that kept running through my head was, “Why not me?”

I found some sort of strange solace there, a serenity that created a calm in the eye of my storm. I think it was due to all the prayer requests I had posted on Facebook and sent out by email and text. As I received message after message from people all over the map, I could feel myself growing stronger and my fears growing weaker. Yes, I was still afraid for Noah, and I was still running through the mental laundry list of “what ifs,” but underneath it all was a steadiness grounded in the fact that I was not special, that I shouldn’t expect to be spared the suffering so many others endure. I could feel strength surging up from that place, a willingness to acknowledge things might not turn out exactly as planned and that we would move forward anyway, standing alongside Noah as he faced whatever difficult thing might come his way.

Fortunately the tipping point in Noah’s case shifted in our favor and after a scary few days we were told he would make a full recovery. I could feel myself exhaling for what seemed like the first time in four days. Not long after this positive turn, his Critical Care nurse said, “You’re so calm. You’re really handling this so well.” I smiled at her, but on the inside I was laughing, because anyone who knows me would not put the words “calm” and “Mary” in the same sentence during a crisis.  Efficient and determined, yes, but calm? Not so much. And, again, I felt the blessing of all the prayers from around the world. I never thought those prayers would guarantee a positive outcome for Noah, because I know from experience that prayer doesn’t always get you what you want, like some kind of heavenly vending machine that sends down the spiritual equivalent of a Twix bar on request. But I did know the prayers would help us — Dennis and Noah and me — as we faced the toughest few days of our lives.

Our recent brush with our son’s mortality forced me to stand on the other side of the “Why me?” equation, to see that we were not singled out in this suffering but rather firmly entrenched with so many others in facing the reality of our frail and sometimes broken humanity. The Lord gives and the Lord takes away. I am saying unending prayers of thanksgiving that in this case the Lord kept giving, that in the dark winter of Noah’s illness came the light of spring.

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When I wrote my book Cravings: A Catholic Wrestles with Food, Self-image, and God, I had a resolution revelation. Although I’ve never been a fan of New Year’s resolutions, I always seem to have some form of self-improvement in the works year-round. But as I began to focus less on how much food I ate and more on the way I ate my food and the way I saw myself, things began to change. The PowerPoint slideshow below is based on one of the food-faith talks I give at retreats and workshops. The actual workshop presentation is, of course, a more complete discussion of the topic, but the slideshow will give you the highlights and offer some food for thought — zero calories in this kind of food, so no worries! If you want to learn more, click the “Cravings” tag at the end of this post for other articles, reviews and other posts related to this topic, or buy the book, which has reflection questions, exercises, and meditations to help you put the ideas into practice and shift your focus from worrying about food to celebrating your life. Click HERE to get Cravings on Amazon. And now on to the slideshow. (Expand to full screen for best viewing.)

[slideonline id=25392]

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And now suddenly the world has decided to take notice. Secretary of State John Kerry said President Obama acted “expeditiously” in response to the unfolding humanitarian catastrophe. Um, no, he didn’t. There was nothing expeditious about the reaction for the people who have been executed, for the children who have been kidnapped, for the women who have been raped, sold into slavery or killed in brutal fashion, for the fathers who had to watch it happen before being executed themselves. Their blood is on our country’s hands. Because we did nothing. Because we were silent. And silence is compliance. 

If you follow my Facebook author page, you’re probably sick of me posting stories about this by now, but I can’t help it. At the end of my life, I cannot look back at this horror and know that I didn’t do at least some small thing to stand in solidarity with my brothers and sisters — and all those who are persecuted, no matter what their religion — in Iraq. That is why last night, I printed out a copy of the Arabic letter N (meaning Nasara or Nazarene) that was used to mark Christian homes in Mosul so ISIS would know where to look for the people they needed to kill. It’s a small gesture, insignificant in terms of helping anyone, but it is a reminder to me that there but for the grace of God go I. It is a sign that those poor people — the ones whose lives were not deemed worthy enough of a mention by almost anyone other than a handful of Catholic bloggers and small (mostly Catholic/Christian) media outlets — are not alone. We stand with them, and we pray for them and with them as they face this unthinkable horror.

With the onset of national media coverage as the killing spreads beyond Christians to other non-Muslim religious minorities, more horrifying stories are coming to light and, with them, horrifying photos. Yesterday, as I read news reports, I happened upon the photo of a man holding up his daughter. It would have been a lovely father-daughter photo in a perfect world, but in this world the little girl had no head. ISIS had beheaded her. I saw a photo of a woman having her throat slit. I saw a photo of a half dozen Yazidi children who managed to escape the terrorists only to die of starvation and thirst on the mountaintop where ISIS stranded them. (Just a few of the thousands who are currently at risk of the same fate). Dennis told me to stop looking at the photos because he saw how upset I was getting, but I couldn’t. I needed to look. If I looked away, I might be able to convince myself things weren’t that bad, and they are that bad and worse.

Now every time one of my daughters comes over and asks for a hug — and it has happened a few times since yesterday afternoon — all I see is that father and daughter, and it makes me hold onto my children and silently thank God for my good fortune and pray for those who are not so lucky. And it makes me repost the stories, the tweets, the pleas for peace and aid so that others can’t look away either.

There is very little we as individual Christians, individual Americans can do to stop the madness, but we cannot look away, we cannot be silent, we cannot let a religious cleansing unfold and do nothing. We cannot turn our backs on genocide, not in Iraq, not anywhere. So let’s mark our homes with the same Arabic “nun” ISIS used as a death mark and show our solidarity with our brothers and sisters in Iraq.

After the initial cleansing — the one in Mosul that the world ignored — some Muslims, in solidarity with persecuted Christians, turned the death marks into a statement of unity:  “We are all ن.” (We are all Christian.) And they are right. Because no matter what our religion, we must be united against unthinkable evil in our midst. Because this will not stop with the cleansing of Christians and Yazidi.  Are we willing to be marked on their behalf?

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