The Root of My Perfectionism Is Fear

January 24, 1979

"The root of my perfectionism is fear. Let me analyze my perfectionism as it manifests itself in various areas of my life.

** Time: The continual rebellion against the limitation of so few hours in a day; my anxiety about 'wasting' so much time on non-important things like recreation, cleaning etc. Waiting instead for that 'Big Thing' that I'll do for God and mankind in the future, I miss the big things right here and now where God has me....

**Prayer:  I'm always in a hurry...I race down halls, race through my Breviary, so that I can get busy and do something... I so often dread prayer time because God has made 'success' in prayer impossible, even undesirable. So much of me tends towards doing that being, just being, is almost intolerable. That's why de Caussade's  'Abandonment to Divine Providence' is so important to me...It helps me realize the Big Thing to God is being with me here and now.

**Studies/Apostolate: I read too much, anxiously covering territory without taking time to reflect and integrate sufficiently. In my hurry and perfectionism, I resent the slow, painful human advance and long for 'breakthrough insights'...Too much emphasis in demonstrating learning to others and not enough on simply acquiring knowledge myself. This is the source of my anxiety before lecturing or leading a retreat etc...much of it stemming from my need for success instead of quiet gratitude for and confidence in my role as God's instrument for his people "

His Joy

August 21, 1978
Bihar, India

"Psalm 145: 'The eyes of all look to You, O Lord, and You give them food in due season. You open wide your hand and You satisfy the desire of every living heart.'

"This expresses the grace God is giving me: Confidence and even joy in my poverty and helplessness. This is because He is the Giver, the Lover. Whose pleasure it is to fill the poor. This is becoming my fundamental consolation against which I match my experiences and decisions for their harmony or disharmony with Him.

"I am reminded again that 'When I am weak, then I am strong' for it is God who fights for me...
After some sifting in prayer, I focused on where my desire is; namely, to be filled with God's love for me, so that, in response, I can love and serve Him purely.

"For awhile, I wondered if it may be a bit self-indulgent to simply concentrate on God loving me but it seemed He assured me that nothing could be more appropriate as a subject for prayer....Since in all He has done and is doing in both the order of Creation and Redemption, His single desire and aim is to love me (and every person.)

"It is His joy to love and it is His greater joy to begin to be appreciated and loved back by His beloved creature and son. This, in turn, gives me true happiness...I am a son to Him, a friend, a co-worker and even the image of a Bride to Him seems to be appropriate!"

Now You Are Home

                                                             
Sunday Morning Meditation
March 1978

"I simply placed myself before this Lord, as John did in Revelation, to admire Him and recount His titles and be deepened in my convictions that He is Lord of All and that all that matters is that I belong to Him and want to give my all to follow Him and help Him establish the Father's Kingdom in new hearts.

"Quiet and solid prayer. Told Him that I desired love for Him, lest my service be sort of abstract, the service of men of reason (SpEx #96) who've seen that He is All just rationally. I want and need greater love for Him, so my service will be filled with this passion and reverence and imitation.

"I see two things presently that help me attain this Love:

1. The matter of the Contemplatio. Seeing all the incredible riches He has heaped on me with no other reason than to give me Himself and, in Him, all.
2. His redeeming me. His going down into death to rescue me from the death and helplessness of my sin; His constant mercy in loving me even all these years I've belonged so much to myself and not to Him; His forgiveness in putting it all behind us, as with the Apostles after the Resurrection, and offering still deeper gifts, wanting me to have Peace and no fear.

"Finally, I begged the Lord to make permanent in my being the beauty and truth of what I perceived and felt and knew in this prayer...that He took me gently and permanently into His Trinitarian Family. He was saying,

'Now, you are home. Stay and live with us; enjoy our love; share our Mission.;'"

August 6, 1978
Day that Pope Paul VI died
Bihar, India

"Heaven is the objective fact of the victorious saints who now live with Risen Jesus, Mary, the Father and, today, Pope Paul. The growing awareness of this fact is a constant help to draw me out of a dangerous and sad subjectivity that leads to discouragement.

"Redemption is accomplished. Jesus is risen. Our lives are now incorporated into Him. Our Father loves and cares for us. The Trinity is an Ocean of Joy and Love wanting to flow into my heart and, through me, into the hearts of others!"

Why Do We Refuse Love?

April 18, 1992
Holy Saturday
Manresa

"Today's meditation: Jesus' body is cold dead meat, lacerated and bruised. His heart stopped, no blood in the chambers. Mary waits in hope. The world is stunned at how it tried to kill God, mangled His hand of mercy, reached out in love to save it. 

"Why do we refuse love, reject life? Because we are held in fear by the devil; fear of losing our life if we let God be God to us. The Light waits at the door of our will; when we open, He will flood our darkest rooms, warm our coldest and moldiest crannies.

"I'm amazed to see how in this pilgrimage, God is always serving me, discreetly revealing His Providence. He wants me to live the rest of my life in this faith and confidence. Ignatius says to ask, 'What will I do for Christ?' in the few more years allotted me? Lord, I want you to lead and show me what I can suffer and do for You and for souls. I'll pay any price, bear any burden...but it's quality you want, not quantity...

"What have I done for You, Jesus, with the almost 50 years that have passed? Not a tenth of what I wanted to do. Help me to serve You. Flood my cold and bloodless heart with power of your Resurrection that I might share in the life-giving pattern of your death; be a seed that is multiplied as it falls into the ground!"

Faith Is A Constant Transfiguration

August 6, 1991
Feast of the Transfiguration
Rome, Italy

"First day of the new language school. My breviary ran out. I miss being able to pray through the day with the Church. This Feastday is a favorite of mine. Faith, the gift of faith, is a Constant Transfiguration!
... The Lord says to me, "Want to come to me in prayer; follow your desire for Me as I follow Mine for you. Don't just pray out of duty, as if I were an impersonal God.'"

The Sluice of Grace

                           May 7, 1992
Rome, Italy

"Meditation this morning on the Pierced Heart.
Last summer while praying outside a cottage on God's love and my poverty, down floated a leaf with a hole in the middle. To me, it represented a pierced heart. I have it still.

"In prayer today, I felt another dimension to the Pierced Heart of Jesus and myself. It symbolizes emptiness; the hole through which drained the blood and substance of life. It is Kenosis, self-annihilation. Man's/my poverty both as creature and as sinner. 'I am He who is and you are she who is not,'  God told Catherine of Siena.

"But by His wounds we are healed. And His wounds are our wounds. By our own wounds as taken up by Him, as lived with and in Him, we are healed. Jesus' Pierced Side echoes the tragic emptiness of my own heart, the nothing at my core. But it also reveals how God as turned my wound into the Fountain of Life in and through Jesus.

"The sluice through which flows the river that gladdens and gives life to the heavenly Jerusalem, to the Church, to me...is that Pierced Side of Jesus which passes through my own pierced side. I give God praise and zeal in my poverty."

(7 years after this was written, Fr. Tomasek physically had his heart pierced by surgery which necessitated removing a sarcoma growing on the inside of his heart and the subsequent grafting of healthy pericardium to the site. His condition was diagnosed on June 19, 2009, The Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the opening day of The Year for Priests, as proclaimed by Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI.)

God Sustains Us Even As We Deny Him

Good Friday, April 17, 1992
Monserrat, Spain

"I arrived at Montserrat this morning. Lost my direction sheet. As usual, the Lord asked me to relax and let Him be my guide, as He is everyday. Always with some scary moments and last minute helps to remind me that I am not in control but He is...and that everything is a gift so that, receiving His guidance and goodness, I may praise and serve Him in poverty, in love and for His love. 

"I went one stop too far on the train and had to walk back 2 kilometers. Read the Passion in John while I waited in long lines. Hundreds in line to see the Madonna and Jesus high above the main altar. I prayed to her to place me with her Son and that the Father would place me with Him in poverty, chastity and obedience. In conformity to His life-giving Cross, in full love always. 

"After seeing the image, I prayed in the Chapel immediately behind it in which only her back is visible. Memories of Ignatius' watch at arms in this same place came back to me. I heard Jesus on the Cross say to me, 'Son, behold your Mother. Woman behold your Son.'  Jesus giving Mary and me to each other again. What a loss for her! 

"Yet she bears this dying with joy and love because she loves me though I am still such a child, such a poor sinner. Peter says, 'I don't know him,' his heart cold and gripped with fear and self-preservation...he goes to warm himself at God's creature, fire. God sustains us even as we deny Him. "

A Path in the Wilderness

August 1991. Rome, Italy
"Morning prayer: On God's choice of Israel in Deuteronomy, realized how God's chosen me as a human being, as a Christian, as a Jesuit priest. Then how He's chosen every person to whom He's given existence. Looked at people on the bus with new eyes of appreciation. How precious each is, not just anonymous strangers. Before Mass, lay on my bed and appreciated Mary's picture above my bed as I listened to music that applies so well to her.

"In the past ten days, God has called me to take refuge and dwell in the pure grace of His election and sonship rather than any "works righteousness." Over the Feast of the Assumption, went to Arezzo and Cortona and God in His mercy, through Mary's intercession and many saints, has delivered Russia from slavery!

"As Paul sees Jesus having opened a path through the cosmic heavens between us and God, I see the same path through my own psychic space, where He opens a path through abiding in faith. Past all the demons of guilt, toxic shame, subjective perceptions, bodily weariness and creaturely misery. Yes, Jesus, you reign as King, even when the noon-day devil tries to suffocate my soul."

Where Sin Abounds

July 29, 1978 (79)

"On an inspiration, I decided to look at God's mercy in my life. Like Ignatius, I started with my history (memoria) and looked at what God was doing all along (intellectus). What I saw was this...

"Starting from way back in grade school when my history of sin began, simultaneously, my history of grace began. As I was more attracted to the sin and idolatry of this world (riches, power, lust, lying to get what I wanted etc.), God was attracting me even more strongly to Himself and the things of God. E.g., Even as the sexuality of adolescence burned, God drew me more sweetly through the rosary, prayer, retreats, the idea of a vocation etc...And so during my life as a Jesuit, the more I misused His love, the more love He gave me...He simply loved me in spite of myself.

"The arch instance has to be that, while I was killing Christ, God was giving Him to me and Christ was giving Himself with love and forgiveness to me, His executioner. 'Father, forgive him. He doesn't know what he's doing.' He meets all my sin with grace; all my tiny, lukewarm efforts (like this prayer) with His grand, burning love. 

"He has truly carried, all through my life, on His eagles wings. 'Where sin abounds, grace does much more abound.' God seems to be wanting to win my heart by simply overwhelming me with love. Like Christ turning the other cheek, loving His enemies. It is God's way of redemption!"

The Bird Sings

May 22, 1979

   "I've been getting signals again that I should write, especially now when I'm so limited in my means of expression since I'm living in Korea & still struggling to master the language. I want to labor to express, somehow, what is happening in my soul. but, in my perfectionism, I want to avoid giving finite and inadequate expression to what feels infinite and eternal in me. I'm too proud to incarnate; too afraid to reveal my poverty and myself.
    "But what should I write and for who? Perhaps I should at least keep a diary. 'The bird sings', Steinhaus reminds me. I don't write so others may like it or approve of me. I write because I'm full of something in need of expression, like the bird.
     "Help me, Lord, as I try to help."

Part 1: Fr. Tomasek's last Mass at St Mark Catholic Church 2/15/11. Six months before his death.

Part 2: Fr. Tomasek's last Mass at St Mark Catholic Church 2/15/11. Six months before his death.

I Am My Own Enemy

March 4, 1979

   "Very difficult, fighting sleep, interminable dry suffering. I realized that Jesus was asking me to share the pain of carrying what is, after all, my sin & the world's but I was still impatient & angry at Him. Each prayer has been a contradiction of my hopes today. I keep saying, "yes"...but I'm still angry with Him for making me suffer & tossing me around like a plaything. Also had a frightening sense of how it would be possible for me to, at some point, stop following Jesus. Just rebel & say "Enough! I'm going to live for myself from now on."

    Finally began walking & saying Rosary & asking Mary to help me get back together with the Lord.  I began to experience some clarity when I realized that that He is not my enemy, arbitrarily testing me or making life hard for me. Rather, He's the only friend I've got. Even I am my own enemy. That is, I'm destroying myself thinking I'm loving myself simply because I'm doing my own will, which is disordered. Then He intervenes like a wise parent or physician or therapist. It hurts but He alone knows how to straighten me out. 

   Gradually, gratitude and a return of familiarity ensued. Realized again my deep burning apostolic desires...me, a sinner & so utterly lost & empty one minute (i.e., by my own unaided power) & simultaneously so full of fire for God & grand desires for all mankind. The experience reminded  me of 'Lord, we have fished all night & have caught nothing!' "