Pursuing the Summit

Over and out...

2010-06-08T05:12:00.002-05:00

Ok, so when I began this blog it was intended to be a platform for my articles and the individual lessons of my Bible studies. I was using it, to begin with, as a way to articulate and structure what was in my heart, and an opportunity for feedback about my writing and its content. Now that I am a contributor for Catholic Online, CO has become the springboard that the blog used to be, and the blog is becoming more like my Facebook account, and therefore a little redundant.

I am finding that trying to keep up with all of it on a daily basis is stressing me out, and the content you have come to expect, and I think love, is now part of a yet-to-be-released Bible study or a re-post of what I have already offered on CO or FB.

In addition, happily, we are close to being able to offer my Bible studies on Catholic Online. My pitch/idea was accepted, and we have been waiting for the technology on the site to catch up to my vision for how the studies should be offered. I have waited for this moment for so long, and I believe it is the fulfillment of what God told me many years ago, only in different packaging.

"The dream" looks different than I thought then, and all the way up till about a couple months ago, but I have accepted what God's plan is to be (whatever that is) and am looking forward to participating in and discovering what He is about to do in the world. I shared much of my struggle with you in the "union posts," and sincerely appreciate your help in getting through that bit. Please make all this, and me personally, a matter of your regular prayers. You know, after months of reading me, how desperately I need them!

CO is the largest Catholic website on the internet, second only to the Vatican's. It will be interesting to see how all this pans out, if people will participate in the studies, if they will benefit from them, and if they find God more closely through them. That is the most fervent desire of my heart and has been for almost 12 years, aside from issues related to my vocation as a wife and mother.

So, this is my last post. I will leave the blog up until I can get all the files transferred, and then I will remove it. I have made dear friends here, however, and do not want to lose touch with you. Please, if you don't have one, set up a Facebook account and "friend" me! I do not know your last names, and feel pretty sure that some of you (namely the Abnormals) do not have accounts. Even if you hate the idea, just set up an account. I only recently got on at the urging of my dad (who left me high and dry after I signed up!), and it's a lot of fun. You don't have to post anything. Just let me stay in touch with you!

If not, I know by faith I will see you in the Great By and By. It has been my sincere pleasure to travel with you a while. Thank you for holding my trembling hand along the way.

With Great Love,
Sonja Corbitt
aka, Princess of the Abnormal and PursuingtheSummit

The Shadow of Death

2010-06-07T07:32:00.001-05:00

Job 12:22 He discovereth deep things out of darkness, and bringeth up to light the shadow of death.

This weekend we were headed to my son's piano recital and I was in the passenger seat while my husband drove along the back roads toward the highway. I noticed that the clouds were moving really quickly across the sky, and they were fat, puffy cumulus clouds, so their shadows were very visible and rushing toward us on the road as we drove. It seemed as though we were about to be swallowed by shadows, and that made me think about
death.

Like preparing to jump into the lake for the first swim of the summer, the first time the cloud shadows overtook the car I instinctively held my breath. We were approaching it as quickly as it was approaching us, so we were driving toward a huge shadow as it came barreling toward us on the road. I sucked in my breath, and waited to see how it would feel as we plunged into the "less-light" of the shadows.

I realized a couple of things that will probably sound creepy, but, it was a heady, exciting imagining, that I was "about to meet God," about to plunge into some unknown dimension or other-world. I wondered how death really feels. At the very moment, do we hold our breath and take the plunge, or does it sneak up like sleep and we simply fall comfortably into it, or some combination of both or neither?

I am sure for some it is a terrifying thought, even if he feels "prepared," but for that briefest split-second, I felt ready. I don't worry about my children or husband doing without me anymore. I know they need me, and I need them (obviously, or I wouldn't still be here), but if God removes me from their lives, it will be for their good, and their ultimate, spiritual good is not something I want to interfere with when it is clearly out of my realm. (Doing without them is another story.)

How do you feel about death?

Beautiful Feet: Beloved Priests Attacked By Demons in Broad Daylight

2010-06-04T07:32:00.000-05:00

"And how can men preach unless they are sent? As it is written, 'How beautiful are the feet of those who preach good news!'" (Rom 10:15).

According to tradition, typical demonic responses during exorcism include foul language, references to sexual perversion, deceit, and profuse blasphemy. Similarly, prayers for exorcism outside the Northern Illinois Women's Center abortuary in Rockford have provoked just such a reaction from pro-abortion workers and activists within.
"Not Against Flesh and Blood, But the Rulers of Darkness"

Their revulsion for anything as holy as a Catholic priest is evident in their bizarre window displays, a few of which reportedly include a nun in a coffin, a rubber chicken hanging from a noose, and a picture of Jesus flipping the bird that says, "Even Jesus Hates You."

The beautiful thing about this ongoing battle is that the number of abortions has reportedly been cut by half at this abortuary since the spiritual power of the Jesus was first unleashed through the prayers of the priests who have prayed outside since September of 2008. At least, the abortuary seems to blame them and the special prayers of the Church.

Just this past Friday someone inside the building displayed a sign in reaction to a priest and seminarian praying outside that said "F.... Your Perverted Priests." They have endured personal insults and vandalism of their vehicles. One priest's car was egged, another discovered a hand-written sign that read "I Rape Children" taped to his car.

Another hand-written sign displayed prominently outside the main entrance to the clinic read "Stop the Perverted Catholic Priests from Raping Young Boys." In convoluted pro-abortion logic, it seems that somehow child abuse is bad, but abortion is good.

The priests in Rockford quietly stand vigil in every type of inclement weather with open coats, so that the women seeking an abortion are aware that a priest is present in his flowing, seemingly flaming cassock.

Invoking the matchless power of Jesus Christ through the Church, they make sweeping Signs of the Cross and pray that the abortion mill and the whole earth will be cleansed from the evil that surrounds and drives abortion.

Beautiful Victories

The Rockford mill hates and attacks the priests outside so viciously because they, and priests and pro-life workers like them all over the country, have saved countless lives and souls.

When they first began their vigils, it was reported that the pro-life sidewalk counselors in Rockford noticed an immediate, dramatic decline in the numbers of mothers who go there for abortions, a distinct rise in the numbers of mothers who choose life outside the mill, and the correlation of these changes with the beginning of the displays of blasphemy from inside.

The response at this abortuary has been particularly virulent, but priests are praying outside them all over the country through Priests for Life, in which priests and parishes are paired with specific abortuaries.

It is to St. John Vianney that our beloved priests are entrusted, and he said it so eloquently: "Were we to fully realize what a priest is on earth, we would die: not of fright, but of love. It is he who opens the door: he is the steward of the good Lord; the administrator of his goods. Leave a parish for twenty years without a priest, and they will end by worshiping the beasts there. The priest is not a priest for himself, he is a priest for you."

Because they are priests, they take the good news, uniquely, even into these demonic abortion trenches. As the Year for Priests draws to a close, may we bathe their dusty, tired, beautiful feet with the anointing of our prayers. Amen.

He is not the God of the dead, but of the living

2010-06-02T08:35:00.003-05:00

Why is it that the hardest thing to get over in any serious loss is the "what might have been's"? I mentioned yesterday that I spent an exhausting weekend "being present" with people I love in this quagmire, and I remember it being the hardest thing to get through when grieving myself.

We have these pictures, these ideals, in our hearts of the way things are "supposed" to be, and when for some reason they don't pan out we are devastated by the inability to see past the past. This is especially difficult if our dream is destroyed by someone else, say through a betrayal, divorce, murder, accident, or other horrible turn of events, or ourselves through addictions or other sin.

In today's gospel, Jesus instructs the Sadducees on resurrection. I love this section for several reasons. I wonder how much spiritual effort it required to be actively present, in a healing, compassionate, truthful, supportive way for those Jesus came in contact with, especially those who were so damaged by sin, their own or at the hands of others. Was He in turn discouraged and hopeful?

I think of the disciples, whom Jesus lived with and touched and taught. Although they were often blind and proud and faithless, at least they were willing and obedient. It might have been in the most minute baby steps, slow as molasses, but they made steady progress.

On the other hand, how exhausting the Sadducees pride and error and lack of faith must have been. What did he do with those who writhed around in abysses of loss, pain and sin but simply did not have the faith to see beyond it? This is the hardest part to me, sensing the immediacy of the turning point for better or much worse, but watching the inability or unwillingness of someone you love to move forward for good.

Ultimately, this section of Scripture reminds me that when we have done ugly things to others in our brokenness, and when the worst has been done to us, to our dreams, to the ones we love, God is still not defeated. His healing can flow, because the worst has been done, and from this pile of sin, pain, and destruction, God steps out to meet us.

We need not be afraid of what anyone can do to us, what anyone has done to us, or even what we may have done to another. "The Lord is with me. I will not fear what man can do to me" (Ps. 118:6).

God is not defeated by any of it. "He is not the God of the dead, but of the living." We need not stagnate and expire in the anxiety that all is lost, that what we had hoped for is gone forever. Something else is simply waiting on the horizon for us to take His hand and be alive enough to see it.

Sometimes, however, when they are too weak to reach out, we must hold His hand for them, so that as they reach out to us, they touch Him too.

Missed you

2010-06-01T06:25:00.000-05:00

I have missed you all! I hope your weekend was relaxing.

I was on "vacation," which turned out to be more of a stress marathon. The situations some of my family are in are just so difficult, and attempting to be supportive, or at least compassionate, completely drained the virtue out of me.

Here's an article, in case you missed it.

The Finger of God for Healing: Faith Healing Priest Draws Thousands

2010-06-01T06:24:00.001-05:00

"The Spirit of God is on me. He anointed me to bring Good News to the poor, to heal the brokenhearted and to free the oppressed" (Is. 61:1).

Although he is often referred to affectionately as “the healing priest,” it is a title that Father Richard McAlear shuns. A priest of the Oblate of Mary Immaculate Order, he is one of the few priests in the Catholic Church who call themselves faith healers.

The Catholic Charismatic Renewal began in 1967 after a retreat held at Duquense University in Pittsburgh. The movement grew and gained recognition in the Church among the leadership and laity.

Fr. McAlear received permission from the Oblates, in accordance to Church guidelines, to enter full time charismatic ministry in 1975 after doing retreats and prayer services and witnessing the healing power of God through his prayers in the previous three years.

It began for Fr. McAlear in 1972 at a prayer meeting with a woman in attendance who was in severe back pain. An elderly Pentecostal revert to Catholicism approached Fr. McAlear and told him he needed to pray over the woman. The young priest had no idea what she meant. His only experience with “praying over people,” was a Pentecostal televangelist he had once seen on TV whose healing theatrics included jumping up and down and ecstatic speaking.

Finally, after an awkward, pregnant silence, Fr. McAlear blessed her. And she was healed. Visibly. Publicly. Word spread quickly and, inundated with requests from the gravely ill, he made "healing ministry" his life’s work, traveling the globe, celebrating Masses, and speaking at retreats and conferences.

Contemporary faith healing often provokes images of “Pentecostal faith healing” and other “charismatic” mumbo-jumbo, in which healing is said to be a visible sign and product of one’s faith, and evangelists in tent revivals or on TV sometimes defraud the desperately ill with staged "healings" in order to draw donations.

Rather than faith in what is NOT seen (2 Cor. 5:7) miraculous, visible healing can actually foster a lack of faith when it is pursued this way, for its own sake or out of sensationalism: “Jesus therefore said to him, ‘Unless you see signs and wonders you will not believe’" (Jn. 4:48).

Despite that real danger, healing is a pillar of Christian dogma. Although corrupted by some who would attempt to make a dollar through what the Scriptures call “the doctrine of Baalam” (Jude), true faith healing, like exorcisms, is sanctioned by the Church. The USCCB issued a statement in 1969 stating that the charismatic movement "has legitimate reasons of existence. It has strong Biblical basis."

In the Scriptures, Jesus Christ is said to have cured the sick with the laying on of hands. The gospels encourage priests to go out and anoint the sick with oil. St. Paul lists healing as a spiritual gift. Faith healing has been practiced quietly and faithfully by Catholic priests throughout her history.

The Vatican has not only endorsed faith healing, but Pope Benedict actually called on those who have the gift of healing to share it in the Instruction on Prayers for Healing released by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. As Cardinal Ratzinger, he offered guidance on administering the gift: “Anything resembling hysteria, artificiality, theatricality or sensationalism, above all on the part of those who are in charge of such gatherings, must not take place (Instruction on Prayers for Healing).

The Catechism speaks of healing: “In the sacraments Christ continues to ‘touch’ us in order to heal us” (CCC, 1504). “The Holy Spirit gives to some a special charism of healing so as to make manifest the power of the grace of the risen Lord” (CCC 1508).

In adherence and faithfulness to Catholic Tradition, Fr. McAlear is not the kind of healer for whom people jump from their wheelchairs and throw away their medicines or crutches, although there have been more than a few physical healings through the years. Rather than faith in his own faith, Fr. McAlear surrenders to God.

Shunning sensationalism or hysteria, he facilitates healing with a whisper, using very few, if any, words. "Once you really understand the pain in the people's hearts and the power of Christ to heal, there is nothing to say," says McAlear.

"The Catholic tradition tends to be more sacramental, very earthly and human, gentle, quiet. We pray for healing in a quiet way. This is mostly inner healing for emotional burdens. And when people are healed of those, often physical stuff can go away, too.

“There is a fervor to this, a zeal that can be expressed in a different way. We have to separate style from substance,” he told the New Orleans Clarion Herald in March of this year. It is this philosophy and the guidance of the Church that informs his healing Masses.

By all accounts, they are quiet and reverent, focused on the spiritual interior with a specific emphasis on reconciliation and forgiveness, and Eucharist-centered. They include Adoration and a blessing by Fr. McAlear, who speaks of healing as rooted in the spirit.

“It’s what is going on inside — the inner pain, depression, sadness, grief, loss, loneliness,” he explains. “A lot of times it’s manifested in physical illness. The need is there to touch the heart and the inner spirit. That’s where the healing Masses make their contribution,” he says. “The spiritual need can only be touched spiritually. Then everything else follows. The hope is restored, the darkness is lifted.”

Fr. McAlear does not support exclusive reliance on faith healing, however. He encourages the use of effective natural means for preserving and restoring health as well, saying “Do both,” and quoting Sirach 38:

“The doctor eases pain and the druggist prepares his medicines; Thus God's creative work continues without cease in its efficacy on the surface of the earth. My son, when you are ill, delay not, but pray to God, who will heal you…Then give the doctor his place lest he leave; for you need him too” (1-15).

Fr. McAlear “always” feels the emotional pain of those he prays for, but occasionally he senses their physical pain in what he calls “an ‘inner knowing.’” But rather than overwhelmed or discouraged by the suffering in the long lines of people waiting for his prayers at healing Masses, Fr. McAlear is more affected by their hope and longing for God’s love.

“Sickness, like other forms of human suffering, is a privileged moment for prayer” ((Instruction on Prayers for Healing). Keenly sensitive to the moment and the privilege, Fr. McAlear, like Jesus before Him, is drawn by the hope and faith in those who suffer. It sustains him night after night in churches all over the world, says McAlear, because “God wants very, very much to love them back and for them to be happy.”

“The longing for happiness, deeply rooted in the human heart, has always been accompanied by a desire to be freed from illness and to be able to understand the meaning of sickness when it is experienced. This is a human phenomenon, which in some way concerns every person and finds particular resonance in the Church, where sickness is understood as a means of union with Christ and of spiritual purification (Instruction on Prayers for Healing).

Although in his 40th year of healing ministry, Fr. McAlear does not claim to have the gift of healing, only the gift of prayer: “We pray to God and things happen. I know it’s not me; I know God is there, and I’m almost watching Him do things. It’s Jesus’ compassion, the love of God that is doing the healing.”

One is inexorably drawn to the mysterious intensity of God’s compassion and love in Fr. McAlear as his lips move in silent groanings and he cradles the stricken faces of those for whom he prays, marking them with the sign of the healing cross on their foreheads. Simply watching it through second hand video moves one deeply with an awareness of humanity’s insatiable need for wholeness and union with God.

Fr. McAlear receives no fee for his visits and depends entirely on offerings for his travel expenses. Perhaps it is such demonstrations of love, more than any other evidence, that help prove he is a true finger of God in healing His broken, suffering humanity.

Do Catholics Worship Mary?

2010-05-26T05:22:00.003-05:00

Here's my latest newspaper article. Been some time in coming...
Catholics worship God only, as the Church and the Scriptures have always taught is the first and greatest Commandment. If “Mary Worship" existed in the Catholic Church, it would constitute idolatry.

Catholics are just as aware as non-Catholics that Mary is a human creature and therefore not entitled to the worship reserved solely for God. Not only does God forbid such worship, but the Church also forbids it.

“What the Catholic faith believes about Mary is based on what it believes about Christ, and what it teaches about Mary illumines in turn its faith in Christ” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 487). Everything the Church teaches about Mary, and everything and everyone else, is founded completely in Christ, teaches more about Christ, and makes us love and obey Christ more. To honor Mary, then, is to honor Christ.

Historically the Christian Church has always significantly honored Mary, because God Himself exalted her as the Mother of Redemption, and in so doing He elevated her more than any human person under Christ has ever been elevated before or since. Catholics, along with three quarters of Christians today, simply honor Mary as God honored her, and as Jesus honored His Mother.

The Scriptures themselves exalt Mary, even prophesying her future honor in the Church: “from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed. For he that is mighty hath done to me great things; and holy is his name” (Luke 1:48-49). She appears in the eternal, heavenly temple as the Queen of Heaven (Rev. 12).

Historical writings also illustrate the honor that the Church has always paid her Mother, Mary. In 434 St. Vincent of Lerins defended Marian honor saying, “since the flesh of the Word was born of an undefiled mother, God the Word Himself is most Catholicly [universally] believed, most impiously denied, to have been born of the Virgin; which being the case, God forbid that any one should seek to defraud Holy Mary of her prerogative of divine grace and her special glory” (The Commonitory).

Furthermore, if the angel Gabriel, a messenger directly from God, called her "full of grace," who are we to do any less (Luke 1:28)? As is God’s way, the one most humble is “full of grace,” or the most holy.

In the ancient world there were several different meanings for love which appear and are used in the Scriptures: agape, love of God, phileo, love of neighbor or brotherly love, and eros, spousal or erotic love.

Because the ancient Christian Church did not use English as its founding language, worship had several meanings then as well: latria was, and still is, the worship of God alone. After God, there is hyperdulia, with which the Church honors Mary, the Mother of God. Then there is dulia, with which the Church honors all others.

One can honor others without worshiping them. Americans honor soldiers who died in defense of our freedoms. We honor those who have been instrumental in a great way in the development of our lives or country. Other than the Savior Himself, who played a more vital role in the history of salvation than the one person who brought the Savior into the world?

Ultimately though, Mary herself teaches the Catholic position concerning her, exactly, through the Scriptures: “Whatever He says to you, do it” (Jn. 2:5).

Four more big little things!

2010-05-25T05:12:00.002-05:00

Unless you are as fascinated by this kind of unlikely stuff you probably will not appreciate it, but can you believe this?

We have owl babies!! Here are the mom and dad... HOWL COOL IS THAT??!

LOST

2010-05-24T10:59:00.000-05:00

OK, so has anyone else been following LOST? I hesitated to blog anything on it until I got the final premise of the show, just in case it was utterly horrible, but I have to say it was the best show I've seen on TV in years. YEARS!!

So many of the themes are those we have discussed here previously, but by far the one I identified with most was Jack's sense of purpose and "destiny," and how driven he was to fulfill it.
You knew I would be drawn to that, didn't you (that is, if you watch the show)? Part of Jack's real purpose was to let go of his need for purpose, but ultimately he fulfilled it anyway. I was REALLY struck by that "letting go" of course, but letting go no longer bothers me. I believe I may finally have done so for myself (mostly).

I will admit that I only really started watching it last season, simply because the few times I did, I was LOST too. Somewhere I watched an episode that made the mythology of the show very clear and I was struck by how semi-biblical it was, and at that point that I was hooked. I am also a huge fan of time travel/physics stuff, so when that figured into the mix I was engrossed.

What I loved most was how the writers drew all the characters so closely together in the end, and united them in love, so that their heaven involved each other. Free will vs. destiny was a huge theme. How does one's destiny figure in the decisions he makes? If he decides, is it really destiny? If it's really destiny does he really decide? The whole show was about how different decisions affect ultimate outcomes in these ways

Another really cool part of the finale was how they had to help one another "remember" the island and the remembering was called an awakening. Sort of like we help one another "remember" our God-orientation and image, and "awaken" to Him more fully, at which point we are in "heaven."

So many themes and avenues to explore, but only if you're up for it!

A big little thing

2010-05-19T08:00:00.000-05:00

is completely enchanted with the couple next door. You have to click the picture and look closely, top right and bottom left. They answer when you call to them, and live in the tree just 50 feet from our porch. Stunningly beautiful. I have never seen one in the wild, and here they seem to have adopted us...

This is totally the kind of thing that makes me weep with appreciation. So haunting...

Disaster in Nashville

2010-05-17T05:27:00.001-05:00

A week after The Great Flood of 2010, Tennesseans are proving their grit. They were some of the darkest days in Tennessee history, when 13.57 inches of torrential rain fell in two days last weekend, leaving the city and great portions of the state in darkness due to flood deaths and lack of power.

Authorities were forced to evacuate the downtown area of Nashville where a weak levee gave way, flooding local homes and businesses when record-shattering rains swelled rivers and creeks throughout Middle and West Tennessee to levels not seen in decades, if ever. 21 are dead in Tennessee alone. One died after sitting in interstate traffic blocked by flood waters for over five hours, and 10 more died in Mississippi and Kentucky. Four are still missing.

One week after continuing coverage was reported by anchors in newsrooms with water up to the ankles and rising, 52 of Tennessee’s 95 counties have been declared disaster areas. The earliest damage estimate of homes and business in Nashville alone is $1.5 billion, a total that excludes the contents or public roads and bridges.

Poignant Nashville landmarks were devoured by flood waters; some still hold water in their bowels. The Opryland Hotel, mall, and entertainment complex; LP Field; the Grand Ole Opry; Music City Hall of Fame; Wild Horse Saloon; and Schermerhorn Symphony Center are simply a few of the iconic Nashville landmarks that stood in several feet of fetid flood water from the Harpeth and Cumberland Rivers, as many as 10 feet.

Many of these locations will remain closed for months, as they continue to hold water, and as always in flooding, backed up sewage and other wastes in the standing water threatens public health. Although the city continues round the clock efforts at electricity restoration to one flooded water plant which has been out of service since last weekend's flood, residents in Nashville and the surrounding areas are being asked to cut water usage by half to conserve the water available from the remaining plant.

The main railroad line between Nashville and Memphis will be out for several weeks, as missing bridges are replaced. Two-thirds of spring planting in Tennessee was destroyed by river and stream flow which was above level 'the 500-year flood,' level according to one surface water specialist with the U.S. Geological Survey.

The Diocese of Nashville was affected as well, as homes, parishes and schools took on flooding. The Bishop’s secretary lost her elderly father and his wife in the floodwaters, and the athletic fields at Pope John Paul II High School, the largest Catholic high school in the area, remain under several feet of standing water.

Electricity in the school facilities remains limited, and access to the property is still restricted by floodwaters. Thousands have lost their homes, and are displaced and unemployed. “I feel like I’m homeless and in debt for something that may not exist,” one member of the diocese said of her home.

But light is returning to the darkened city, and it is revealing what Tennesseans are made of. Relief efforts in the diocese have begun through its many Catholic charities and ministries (please donate here!). Nashville Electric Service restored power to 11 buildings downtown early Friday morning, including the iconic AT&T building, nicknamed “the Batman building.”

Although the Schermerhorn Symphony Center and Wild Horse Saloon are among the many businesses that remain without electricity downtown simply because the amount of flood water still around the electrical systems of those buildings makes power too dangerous to restore, the state is awash in charity and goodwill that has stunned everyone who has witnessed or taken part in it.

In Bellvue, a neighborhood especially hard hit, there was not enough space to park the hundreds of cars of the volunteers who turned out to help clean up. In neighborhoods all over the state this weekend, strangers climbed on their bellies into the rank crawl spaces of homes of people they did not know and cleared mountains of ruined property, braving tetanus, dead animals, and other dregs to remove soaked insulation and other debris.

Procter & Gamble’s Tide Loads of Hope will be up and running in Nashville on May 12th , and as the flood waters recede, the state is newly awash in a welcome flood of generosity. Although it is “Music City,” a shocking 1.7 million dollars was raised through the Flood Relief Music Telethon, to which Nashvillian Taylor Swift donated $500,000.

Certainly, we here in Nashville are thankful for our neighbors all over the nation who have given so bountifully to support us in our crisis, but it will take billions to rebuild the state and the city of Nashville. Where will the money come from when no one knows we need the help?

Many of us are scratching our heads at the lack of national attention this disaster has received. Is the media unable to multitask the oil spill, the European financial crisis, and the Tennessee flooding disaster? News reports last night conveyed that he has sent emissaries to the state, but as yet, our President has had nothing to say to us either.

Is he too busy laughing at the immigration crisis in Arizona to even bother with us here? Some have wondered aloud if he would have a word of comfort if we were a third world country, or had voted differently in the national election that swept him into the presidency.

In his defense, it has been stated that government involvement and relief takes time, that the bureaucratic wheel is slow to turn, and that we must be patient with the relief. It worked that way, they say, for New Orleans in 2005, it worked that way for Greensburg, Kansas in 2007, it worked that way for Branson, Missouri in 2008, it will work that way for Nashville in 2010.

I submit however, that it did not work the same way for each of those places. Kansas and Missouri looked a lot through their crises like Tennessee has this past week, as our neighbors feed, clothe, and house one another. No one in Nashville was seen holding signs saying "Obama hates me because I'm white!" or screaming into live news cameras that President Obama wanted them all to die and therefore must have blown up the levees.

There were no reports of looting, or rioting, or even bad behavior. No curfews have been imposed.
No one here in Tennessee was seen clinging to their guns as their homes were swept away, although many of us would proudly say we continue to cling to God as we struggle to recover. We certainly did not wait on the government to come boat and bus us out.

I will go so far as to suggest that that is exactly why our president has had nothing at all to say to us, although within 2 days he declared Boston a disaster over a water main break that made it necessary for 2 million people to boil water before drinking it (Sorry Dave; great for you guys, not so great for us).

The people here have no water. They have no homes in which to boil water, no stoves on which to boil it, and no power with which to heat it. Our governor is not as chummy with the president as Massachusetts’, where within 2 days President Obama's declaration authorized the Department of Homeland Security and Federal Emergency Management Agency to coordinate disaster relief efforts with the state of Massachusetts to “help ease any hardships.”

So the question on many minds here in Tennessee, seven days after what has been called the costliest non-hurricane natural disaster in American history, is exactly how red does a state have to be before it no longer warrants that kind of assistance?

Sick!

2010-05-14T09:59:00.000-05:00

I'm so sorry I haven't blogged: I am still puking! I just haven't felt like doing anything at all. I am starving, but cannot keep anything down. Great way to lose weight. (Totally kidding; this is probably one of the worst things I've ever been through, worse than childbirth, naturally with no drugs!!) It's like one long labor that never stops. Who needs me to offer up my suffering?

Motherhood

2010-05-13T07:01:00.001-05:00

I spent Mother's Day and the next two days cleaning up vomit and diarrhea from the carpet and bedclothes and everywhere else at every hour of the day and night. What was my reward? A personal day of vomit and diarrhea beginning at 1am.

I am limp as a dishrag, but finally better. When something like this happens, I always wonder if Mary went through it.

The Bed of the Soul

2010-05-10T05:17:00.001-05:00

In the midst of the daily grind, and the cares of life and family, there are times when I wonder if anyone loves me. It’s usually when I am pouring myself out for thankless others or something depressing has happened and I am in the throes of a raging pity party.

God doesn’t let me get away with that line of thought anymore, though, not since He taught me that He who hung the universe and counts days in billions of millennia, wrote a simple little song and hid it in a strange, but breathtaking book in the Bible, the Song of Solomon. A ballad about the intimate relationship between the richest king to ever rule Israel and a common girl, it is poetic and outspoken in its message of desire, and cloaked in a Shakespearean spirit that both reveals and conceals simultaneously.

The first chapter whispers, "The king has brought me into His chambers" (1:4), and reveals that it is the virgin who loves Him there (1:3). An echo of Matthew 5:8, He warns that only the virgin in heart are summoned to chamber. Yet far from withholding Himself from us, He crooks His finger in invitation, "I am dark, but lovely" (1:5). The word translated here as "dark" is derived from the root meaning "dim; requiring sincere, diligent search," and is related to the idea of an early rising. The search is so important, one must get up with the dawn, while most are still sleeping, to enquire early. The King of Kings implores you to rise with the dawn and press with all your heart and strength through His veil of secrecy, for He assures you He is lovely enough to warrant it (Mark 12:30).

He even instructs exactly where one can find Him: "O, my dove, in the clefts of the rock,/ In the secret places of the cliff,/ Let me see your face, Let me hear your voice;/ For your voice is sweet, and your face is lovely" (Song 2:14). Hidden in the secret place of the mountain, within the cleft of His Son, the Voice of God is released, sounding, searching, echoing. Something amazing and terrible presses you toward Itself there. He longs to hear to your voice. He thinks you beautiful. His desire is toward you (7:10).

This romantic imagery is sometimes difficult for men to grasp, but there’s plenty of challenge for men too. St. Paul called our time on the earth a walk with God, but Song of Solomon calls it a battle that can only be won with strength, risk, heroism and danger. He calls His mighty men (3:8) to a sacrificial war (2:4). He says they are as virile as a stag (2:17), that they must guard against scavengers and spies (2:15), that they have the benefit of supernatural leadership (3:6) to accomplish the work and responsibilities He has entrusted to them (6:2). And oh, the abundance that awaits the lion hearted (7:11-13).

It is the heart's ache to touch its Lover that God desires for the man above all things. He would touch you as profoundly as you have touched Him. Like a brand, He would mark you possessively with Himself: "Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm; for love is as strong as death, a most vehement flame" (8:6). The literal translation of "vehement flame" is, "a flame of YAH," a poetic form of YHWH, the ancient name of God revealed to Moses. The love of God is a fever on the soul. It is the flaming brand of mutual possession.

God makes a stunning promise in Hebrews: "He who comes to God must believe . . . that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him" (11:6). The mind streaks wildly with thoughts of things it might desire. But He reveals the curious prize. In Genesis 15:1 the LORD presents Abram with the reward. "I AM . . . your exceedingly great reward." The Lord declared Himself the reward. Is that somehow deflating? Can you think of something else you would rather have than Him?

Was Abram's reward worth the stress and pain it took to abandon his home, possessions, and family, and journey without knowing where he was headed or what awaited him there? Is it to you? Can He satisfy your perception of the greatest reward you could ever receive? Yes. He can. He is the exceedingly great reward. "Exceedingly" means vehemently, urgently. "Great" is from the root meaning increase, heap up, multiply, abundant, blessed. The Lover is your furiously increasing reward, your exponentially multiplying abundance; the loveliest song. Interestingly, the word selected by the Church for this reward is the Beatific Vision, or beatitude. Simply stated, it is supreme ecstasy.

When He has total access to every thought and deed and attitude, the soul becomes a place of magic, and you will never again wonder if you are loved. He will touch you so deeply, reveal Himself so carefully, you will want to die. Instead, He hides us within Himself, merely peeking out to take part in the comedy and tragedy of life. As eerie as the loon’s cry on a dark lake, the voice pierces, and the secret bend of man's soul returns him once again to His God. Get up for the early rendezvous.

Take yourself off the throne of your heart, end the adulterous affairs, drive all the other lovers from the bed of your spirit, and it will become a place of visitation, wonderful and strange. Be captured by the mysterious Lover that exists outside of any fantastic imagination. Don't make a sound, and hear Him roar in the silence.

Lemons out of lemonade

2010-05-06T14:18:00.001-05:00

I never posted the coon hat my son made out of that neighbor's raccoon. Before:

And after:

Anatomy, the Woven Veil

2010-05-04T15:44:00.002-05:00

It is modernity, maybe post-modernity, but we are not doing a new thing. We are doing a very old thing. Natural life waxed and waned before our noisy arrival, but life, human life, is uniquely God-breathed, and the context of His epic ambition—restoration and wholeness. We dare not, under penalty of death (Matthew 26:52), presume to transgress this sacred ambition, for it is the holy of holies.

The evidence is in the habitation of the eternal soul in a body. Psalm 139:13-16 rejoices, "My frame was not hidden from You when I was being made in secret." Earlier in the chapter, verse 13 marvels, "You formed my inward parts; You knit me in my mother's womb." This word "knit" is also sometimes translated "wove" or "woven."

David sings that his being was woven together secretly by God. Often this section of Scripture is used by anti-abortion activists to emphasize the inherent sacredness of conception and birth, the invisible invasion of created body by God-breathed soul in the protected covering of a mother's person. But more than a wonder, it is the holy preparation of God.

The word translated "knit" in Hebrew is sakak, meaning “covered.” This word is used almost exclusively in the Old Testament to describe the veiling of the presence of God from human eyes in the Holy of Holies. Sometimes it describes the worshiping cherubim on the ark whose wings “covered” the mercy seat. Frequently it refers to the temple veil: "And he [Moses] brought the ark into the tabernacle, hung up the veil of the covering, and partitioned off [covered] the Ark of the Testimony, as the Lord had commanded Moses" (Exodus 40:21, emphasis mine).

Intricate detailing of this woven, embroidered veil was specified by God Himself—down to the pattern, colors, clasps, and hooks. By His directive, it was hung in the tabernacle to divide the holy place, or the sanctuary, from the Holy of Holies. In the Holy of Holies rested the mercy seat on top of the Ark of the Covenant. In the mysterious cloud above the mercy seat the LORD's manifested presence would rest (Leviticus 16:2). Thus, a woven veil covered the presence of God.

But even more sacred is that the Psalmist used this word to describe his own flesh, stating in the most delicate poetry that his body, your body, was prepared to veil the presence of God—that one day each one’s anatomy should become the temple of God: "Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God . . ." (1 Corinthians 6:19). God personally designed and knit every soul and body with the express intention that it should become a home for Himself.

Woe to the nations that form an unholy alliance with the times and sacrifice their children on the altars of profit, career, vanity, and fear, for the nations who did so in the Scriptures were systematically wiped out. Where are our tears and wailings in the presence of God for these prepared souls, sometimes our own, whose divine vocations fail by apathy, sin, or other abortion? Mary, tender Mother of all, hear our prayers…

Leading Killers Share Genes

2010-04-29T05:21:00.003-05:00

Harvard cancer researcher, Kevin Struhl, and his colleagues have discovered that several of the most fatal diseases known to man share particular genes. Struhl compared genetic data from two different types of cells, mammary and connective tissue cells, first comparing healthy cells to cancerous cells in order to determine which genes were mutated and cancerous.

At that point they compared the diseased genes in the mammary and connective tissue cells to discover that they had 343 in common. Investigation into the functions of the common diseased genes determined that the diseased cells shared altered inflammation and metabolism instruction families.

Metabolism is the basic process of physical and chemical function, and energy availability. Inflammation and altered metabolic processes are implicated in all of the ten leading causes of death in the US. While the link between inflammation and cancer is well known and significantly documented medical knowledge, connections between metabolic diseases and cancer are “stunning,” according to Struhl.

After scanning existing medical literature, the researchers discovered that many of the 343 genes they implicated in cancer had already been associated with heart disease, obesity, diabetes, and others of the most frequently fatal killers, especially those that deposit fat plaques on the walls of arteries.

In order to validate their surprising findings, the researchers broke down the metabolic genes before they were diseased, and discovered that the majority were fundamental to cancer development in both the mammary and connective tissue cells. In additional work, they demonstrated other important genetic similarities between cancer and metabolic disease.

One researcher who studies genes just before and after they develop cancerous and diabetic changes appreciated how the new findings illustrate the involvement of some of the proteins in several different diseases. "The idea is that there's essentially a diseased cell state, but the specific [type] and disease you get depends on what cell type it is," said Struhl.

The importance of these discoveries lies partly in the possibility that some cancer treatments might also be effective treatments for metabolic diseases, and vice versa. Already cross tests of drugs for arthritis, diabetes, and plaque building diseases with cancer cells has yielded successful results. Eleven out of thirteen drugs inhibited cancer development in the cell lines.

The other, seemingly more important implication is that taking steps to prevent one disease inarguably inhibits a host of others.

The Pill's Deadly Affair with AIDS

2010-04-27T05:50:00.001-05:00

This story blew me away. I had to include a post to it.

Easter Breaths

2010-04-26T08:02:00.001-05:00

By His breath
The winter blanket removed
and from the lifeless brown I
struggled forth and
burst.
One in a sea of 10,000 daffodils

Six petals pure white
silken snow borne from snow
a pair of white Trinity
clasping a golden trumpet
fringed in scarlet.
My vanity

Gentle Gardener,
my vanity sings but of Your glory
Please, my Gardener, be pleased

His breath so soft.
I lift my trumpet
to Him
nodding
You exist, my Gardener, You exist

He breathes again
gently.
I and the sea of 10,000
nodding
in syncopated rhythm
You exist, our Gardener, You exist

Your hope is ours
that mournful man may
stop and gaze and listen.
And nod.
Our vanity is but for Him
He exists, our Gardener, He exists

By May’s approach, we
mirror yet inversely our Gardener’s son.
In 3 day’s time
our silken snow will melt
brown.
Trumpets silent.
Chaff

A gentle Breath

And we 10,000 relinquish the song
to daylilies and daisies
who will sing and sing their vanity
and sing our melody
the song of the Gardener’s glory.
While we 10,000 sleep.
Content

Dave, from Boston

This poem first appeared on A Gloss with Spiritual Meaning, and was written by a reader. Thank you Dave.

Simon the Cyrene and The Fifth Station

2010-04-24T07:46:00.002-05:00

Here's something else by a reader that I've been meaning to post. Wonderful.

Abortion in Social Media

2010-04-23T08:14:00.001-05:00

“I’m having an abortion. Right now,” Angie Jackson said with a broad smile on her YouTube video two weeks ago. “It’s not that bad. It’s not that scary. I’m live tweeting my abortion. It’s not nearly as terrifying as I had myself worked up thinking it was. You too can have an abortion if you want one.”
“Empowered” to Kill

Jackson broadcast her abortion online and live from Florida. She discovered her pregnancy within four weeks, in time to take the “French abortion pill,” RU486. An artificial steroid, RU486 interferes with the hormone progesterone, needed to maintain pregnancy.

Progesterone stimulates the growth of the uterine lining which nourishes the developing child, and decreases the frequency of uterine contractions which might dislodge the implanted ovum. It is, therefore, crucial to fetal development.

Once RU486 blocks the life-sustaining hormone, the uterine lining begins to shed, the cervix softens, and bleeding occurs. A second pill stimulates uterine contraction and the pregnancy is expelled. Private. Relatively painless. Cheap. “Some women feel empowered by taking an active role in the process,” says the Feminist Women's Health Center.

After self-administering the abortion pill, Jackson, a newly “empowered,” self-proclaimed atheist, began videoing herself giving a statement about her motives for posting the shocking video and explicit Twittter updates that referred to the helpless one nestled within her body as a “squatter,” a “tumor” and a “parasite.” “I want to KILL THIS THING!” she exploded at one point.

Demystifying the Massacre

Citing peace with her abortion and “no shame,” Jackson defended it for herself and other women on the grounds that it was “not a baby”; that she was not child killer since she already had a son whom she loved; health risks (her first child was born with special needs after sexual abuse in her “fundamentalist Christian cult” family left her at risk for complications); and her desire to “demystify” abortion for other women.

The 27-year-old single mother with live-in boyfriend has 2686 followers on Twitter where she calls herself “the Gwen Stefani of atheism,” and more than 128,000 people have watched her abortion video to date. In the 2 minute 36 second video, she says “it’s not that bad” four times, smiling smugly all the while.

But over the next few days, Jackson’s Twitter updates illustrated the normal affects of the second abortion medication: increasingly profuse bleeding, dizziness, and severe pain. Jackson tweeted that she had quickly exhausted her first supply of painkillers.

At least 12 women have died after taking the abortion pill, and hundreds of other adverse effects, including infection, heart attack, hemorrhages, and surgery to repair damage have also been reported to the FDA. In 5% of cases the pill does not cause abortion at all, and a “suction procedure” is required to complete the process, under the sanitized moniker “aspiration abortion.”

No Shame

Jackson is not the only one broadcasting her online abortion, but she is the most recently conspicuous. Though she has received hate mail and death threats against herself and her son, some wonder if the whole episode was a wretched attempt to profit. In a CCN interview she mentioned a book she'd like to see published about her life, making her abortion on Twitter not simply gross exhibitionism, but a seemingly great way to boost future book sales.

Oddly, for one in whom there is “still no shame,” she somewhat reversed the happy stance maintained throughout her abortion broadcasts, saying in interviews after strong backlash that having an abortion is lonely.

"Emotionally, for me, doing this in the open and having the support of my friends has made this immeasurably easier," she said, claiming that tweeting was the only way for her to get the support she needed and that she has always shared her difficult experiences with her online followers.

Perhaps one should not be surprised, then, that social media is being used even in this disturbing way in an age where people are more desensitized and disconnected from God, from their preborn children, from themselves, and from others. But the inhumanity of a live execution of a human being, a tiny, helpless, vulnerable child, broadcast with smiles from the Internet rooftops … well, surely nothing has the power to shock you to action if this doesn’t.

The Four C’s of Deficit Crisis

2010-04-21T07:12:00.001-05:00

Now that Obama and our Democratic Congress have signed us into trillions of dollars more national debt over the lifetime of entitlement health care insurance subsidies and long-term benefits, many who were rocked to the financial core by the recent Great Recession have awakened from financial stupor, are considering the probability of whether or not we are facing a future financial crisis far worse, and are raising the financial alarm.

C is for “Carte Blanche”

The United States has shown a flagrant disregard for spending staggering amounts of money that it does not possess, to sustain an economy that grows more socialized by the day. Under the present Administration and Congress, we continue to borrow devastating amounts of money, debt that low birth rate demographics predict fewer and fewer wage earners will carry, all while engorging the system with overwhelming numbers of additional dependents.

In addition to the Medicare and Social Security burdens that we are not currently meeting, two entitlements that went bust far more quickly than the Congressional Budget Office predicted, now we add student loan debt and ObamaCare. These are gargantuan education and healthcare legislation packages that “borrow” from previous insolvent entitlements in order to “balance” their new healthcare and education entitlement budgets.

In addition, the President promises more programs are on the way. This “borrowing” from insolvent programs is one of many legislative budget gimmicks, and it is scandalous. National budgets work like personal budgets. The only way to balance a budget is to increase income or cut spending.

Rather than cut spending, the government has elected to increase it exponentially, setting up the need for higher taxation. Higher taxes from fewer people combined with high unemployment and entitlements are all historical bedfellows of hyperinflation, the beginnings of which we have seeing in increasingly higher prices at the grocery store and the pump. Financial gurus everywhere are telling us this is the perfect storm for financial collapse.

C is for “Credit Rating”

By signing the final piece of the ObamaCare legislative agenda despite warnings about the resulting downgrade of our sovereign credit rating, Democrats are also now on record as favoring the disgraceful demotion. The United States' triple-A credit rating works much like a consumer's credit score. Creditors who believe an individual or country can repay on time and fully offer low interest rates and easy terms.

Those who spend beyond their means, however, pay late or not at all, and cannot afford future payments, pay higher interest rates and their access to new credit (spending) is limited to actual income. Numerous commentaries on our financial and political landscape caution that a downgrade in our stellar credit rating sets up a financial debt crisis that will make our recent mortgage crisis mild by comparison.

When one is no longer able to borrow to sustain the status quo, the status quo must go. Where the US economy goes, the rest of the world’s economy follows, but it is not just the US that is navigating these financial rapids. Industrialized nations everywhere with socialized economies have found themselves in the same economic boat, and there can only be more global trouble on the horizon with this trajectory.

C is for “CBO”

How can it be that such entitlements could be responsibly enacted when they are so financially forboding? Touting its financial telepathy, the president said repeatedly, "Those aren't my numbers. They are the savings determined by the Congressional Budget Office, which is the nonpartisan, independent referee of Congress for what things cost."

This is the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) that predicted Social Security would remain solvent through 2019, but due to the mortgage crisis, resulting recession and decreased tax revenue that it could not have predicted, is actually facing a shortfall this year. Both Medicare and Medicaid quickly cost much more than anticipated when they were first signed into law and Medicare hemorrhages red ink.

The CBO predicted that our two new healthcare entitlements will reduce the projected federal deficit over the next 10 years and actually improve America’s bottom line. It was the “ok” on which the President and Democrats ostensibly based the legislation.

But “fantasy” was the term former CBO Director Douglas Holtz-Eakin used to describe the budgetary assumptions behind the new federal health care overhaul, because he knows that the CBO only considers legislation as it is written, and not how lawmakers will skirt it as is their practice, “fix” it with new legislation, or borrow against it to fund other entitlements and programs.

He knows the budget gimmicks and insolvencies of other entitlements should have been taken into consideration along with the CBO’s determination on the “cost” of ObamaCare. He knows, too, that they were either ignored through blind ambition or not seriously considered at all.

No central authority, such as the CBO, can accurately predict the economic future or even completely protect consumers, as our Federal Reserve recently demonstrated during the mortgage crisis. Its job is to protect the dollar's value and to maximize employment, but it cannot do so in the midst of financial instability caused by bad debt.

C is for Taking “Cover”

Economists agree that the biggest financial crises, personally and nationally, arise from too much debt. Borrowers and lenders, happily floating in a bubble, fail to see the need for cash as a cushion against unforeseen circumstance and error, as the recent mortgage crisis demonstrated. When the bubble bursts, as it inevitably must, it leaves behind such overwhelming debt that it bankrupts whole industries, personal portfolios, and national economies.

Because both our President and Congressional Democrats have promised that our nation’s economic policy will continue on a “tax and spend” trajectory, we might be well advised to take whatever practical preparation might be needed to protect ourselves from further hardship and spiritually prepare our souls and lifestyles for more financial purge and poverty.

A Gloss with Spiritual Meaning

2010-04-20T05:37:00.006-05:00

I "ran across" this last night. I have never read his poetry, but after this I am going to go back through some of John of the Cross's writings, namely the poetry. Notice his use of darkness...

Without support yet with support, Living without Light, in Darkness, I am wholly being consumed by Love...

I have said an eternal goodbye
To the world (what extreme happiness)!......Lifted higher than myself,
I have no other Support than my God.
And now I proclaim:
What I value near Him
Is to see and feel my soul
Supported without any support!...

Though I suffer without Light
In this life which lasts but a day,
At least on earth I possess
The heavenly life of Love...
In the way I have to walk,
Lies more than one danger,
But for Love I am willing to live
In exile's Shadows.

Love, I have experienced it,
Knows how to use (what power!)
The good and the bad it finds in me.
It transforms my soul into itself.
This Fire burning in my soul
Penetrates my heart forever.
Thus in its delightful flame
I am being wholly consumed by Love!...

A Gloss on the Divine, Spiritual Poems, St. John of the Cross

Can I get an "Amen"?

Read it here, a much more lovely translation. You have to scroll down about three quarters of the way to "A Gloss with Spiritual Meaning," but this pdf link looks to be all his poetry.

Very interesting; I have never seen this before, probably because I was not ready for it and therefore overlooked it. Previously I devoured all the Ascent and Night writings because they helped me suffer joyfully. Living Flame of Love was the happy, light-filled account I shared in Timid Step Into Dawn. This is different. A dark God beyond the Night: a dark union.

Very providential, as all things are, are they not? For those of you who want to keep up with this line of posts, the ? darkness of union, I am compiling them under the "union" tag/label at the bottom right of the page. I will continue to return to this thread periodically as God adds "light" to the discussion.

How to wait for fish

2010-04-19T07:29:00.003-05:00

The night is long, the waters hold
No sign of life, no sight of rest.
Come, Lord, for faith is growing cold,
Come, fill our nets. Need makes us bold
To lay before you hope's request.

The empty sea gives up its yield,
When we put out at your command
To reap once more this barren field
Where all your bounty lay concealed
Until your love stretched forth its hand.

We fish in vain who fish alone
And think ourselves the harvest's lord,
For we but catch what you have sown
In seas we neither make nor own,
And have no claim to work's reward.

The seas and all their fish are yours,
And we your servents at the oar;
Then let us work while night endures
Until the rising sun assures
That you await us on the shore.

Hymn, Genevieve Glen, Benedictine nun, 1945

The Shroud Codex

2010-04-16T08:03:00.001-05:00

Millions of Christians around the world believe the Shroud of Turin to be the actual linen burial cloth that wrapped the broken and battered body of the historical Jesus of Nazareth after His crucifixion, a hypothesis that has been extensively investigated by both scientific and religious experts.

Does the Shroud of Turin, on display in Turin, Italy’s cathedral right now, offer scientific evidence of the Resurrection? Can an interpretation of the Resurrection through cutting edge physics research correspond with a traditional Christian understanding? Is the Shroud, therefore, somehow a portal to another dimension, heaven perhaps?

I (somewhat) recently received an advance copy of The Shroud Codex, by Jerome Corsi, Ph. D., to review for Catholic Exchange and Catholic Online, the two online publications that I write for. Corsi, inspired and informed by his lifelong interest in the Shroud of Turin, draws scientific speculation on advances in quantum physics and intrigues in religious mysticism – namely stigmata, relics, and near-death experiences – together, until they meet in the Shroud of Turin in a literary Venn approach.

A brilliant quantum physicist leaves science on a religious quest and enters the Catholic priesthood. After a near death experience leaves him with the belief he has a cosmic role to play in history for both science and religion, he begins displaying stigmata that mimic exactly the bloody image left on the herringbone linen weave of the Shroud of Turin.

Atheists and believers in both the scientific and religious communities investigate the reality of the physicist-turned-priest’s claims. Is he traveling through time by way of multiple dimensions to literally experience aspects of Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection, as he claims his stigmata, cutting edge physics, and the Shroud reveal? Or do his stigmata testify, rather, to severe psychiatric disturbance?

As a sharer in Corsi’s interest in both the Shroud of Turin and quantum mechanics, I was particularly interested in how he would bring his scientific and religious themes together through them, and what new information I might discover about the Shroud and particle physics through the story. The images of the Shroud, information on the scientific investigations done on it in the 70’s and since, and the arguments for and against authenticity were significantly explored in the book, at least they were to my satisfaction as a reader.

I was disappointed in the treatment offered on quantum mechanics as a scientific explanation for the soul’s survival into an afterlife and the Resurrection of Christ, the protagonist’s stigmata and related experiences, and the probabilities of our living in a multi-dimensional universe.

The scant discussion left me wondering if Corsi really understood what he and quantum physics seem to suggest about them, or if he was worried his audience would not understand such seemingly convoluted “realities” if he delved too far into them. Either way, I was left wanting more information from that angle, but the author provided extra resources in the back of the book that I will happily explore.

I was also somewhat disappointed in the author’s fiction writing style, but as his professional brilliance, background, and success lie more in political nonfiction, that does not really surprise me. Non-fiction writers often have difficulty writing fiction, and this story suffered from some of the typical pitfalls. I found the whole situation with Anne Cassidy, the contemporary Mary figure, forced and improbable, as well as other, less significant aspects of the story somewhat flat and unbelievable.

However, the book’s pace was brisk, the themes were thought-provoking, I learned quite a bit about the Shroud of Turin through reading The Shroud Codex, and the author’s knowledge, interest and love for the Shroud were evident in the story. Together, these were enough to make me pleased I read it.

If his intention was to explore how faith and science can be mutually supportive, I believe Corsi succeeded. Although the author demonstrates that science and reason can get us to the threshold of understanding great religious events and realities like Creation, Resurrection, afterlife, stigmata and the like, he preserves the mystery and necessity of faith by showing that they can never take us all the way to God, who is immaterial and waits to encounter us in extraordinary ways that will always require a leap of faith.

Thank you

2010-04-16T07:54:00.004-05:00

Wow, you guys, I have the best 52 readers in the blogosphere. Truly you have carried me and helped me pick my way through a brier patch. I am blessed and very thankful for your community. I'm not done, but I'm over the big hump (I think).

I've always found writing therapeutic, but I have to say that simply getting all that out and laying it all in your wise, gentle hands has done me more good than I imagined. Abandonment is hard, is it not? It always takes me a bit to get there on a big or important issue. For me, part of abandonment is the process of working through the loss and the feelings of sadness and anger, just like any grief process, and actually that's exactly what any big change entails. It's when we stifle that process that depression sets in.

Even better, I have a couple more metaphorical tools in my pouch. I have never heard or considered the glacier illustration, and I think you really hit the nail on the head with that one. Pearls before swine was great too. How many times have I watched my pretties get trampled on in slop and mud because I was so delighted with them?

"Just remember that He continues to acknowledge you through the people you touch and inspire... They are the souls you gift to Him." What a precious, beautiful thought, one that makes me weep. Thank you.

Ok, so enough about me. I know you're champing at the bit for something new to read. This last quote from you guys and my comment on it leads me right into to my next post: "The stillness will pass sure as we’re sitting here across the miles." I hope so, but if not, I guess exploring the darkness will be ... interesting.

The Shroud Codex suggests some fascinating things about darkness and God...

"Let us pray for one another, that the Lord will carry us and that we will learn to carry one another – Pope Benedict at his installation Mass as Pope in 2005."

A Timid Step into the Dawn

2010-04-14T09:58:00.023-05:00

As I shared in a previous post, The Dark Side, I have been in the throes of a dreadful confusion. On so many levels I take great comfort in the answers offered there by a couple of dear readers, and have been thinking about them almost non-stop. I began to continue the conversation in the comments section of that post, but it became long. I feel I need to move it to a post for a couple of reasons.

I have struggled for a couple of years with the issue of union.
I have combed the internet and the writings of the saints for answers, and I have to admit I have found some, but the greatest help for where I am right now has been from Dave, a reader here, simply because he is HERE. The saints lived in times and circumstances so very different from our own. They are like us, human beings with real problems and struggles, but their lives are not contemporary in a literal sense. And one cannot ask questions of them and get specific answers. Contemporary saints are unapproachable due to distance or knowledge of them and would never make that claim for themselves. They are just ordinary people whom we might never suspect, unless we knew them well. If we suspect, how do we make contact with them?

Also, and I risk the appearance of pride here, anyone who has experienced union who speaks with another who has not knows immediately that 1) they do not KNOW, and 2) they cannot help. I reached out to my reader because I knew he KNOWS, and by knowing, he inherently and automatically helps.

(I never shared my union experiences with my priest because I worked for him; he was my boss, a brand new boss, and a brand new priest for our parish. In the time since that was no longer true, he has been instrumental in my pursuit of "the Dream" which now, I believe, is crucified and dead, at least my interpretation and expectation of it is. I am in the process of wrapping it up and tenderly embalming and burying it, metaphorically speaking. I have not felt comfortable going to him while I have yet to work the issue out for myself, except in Confession, in which I am constantly asking for help to yield and rest. And I have not had the opportunity to share it with another priest, probably providentially.)

Blessed Mother Teresa's writings have helped me too (Come Be My Light) but I have to say that her darkness seems far more painful and reparatory than my own. I feel extremely uncomfortable likening my experiences in any way to hers, but I will say that, although he describes everything to the point of union exactly and specifically the way I experienced it, my union experiences are far more like hers than John of the Cross's. I think God used him to get me to union, and Mother Teresa to get me comfortable with the darkness and silence that are God (although admittedly I am still very awkward and uncomfortable in and with That). I would love to get my hands on a particular Tauler writing; he seems to totally get the dark silent God.

In any case, however, I have been deeply conflicted partly because I have never told anyone what I am going through for fear. How do you find people in similar circumstances without coming right out and saying you've experienced union? I know there are many, many people who have, but honestly, they are too humble to say so! I've been searching the internet for help, and have not found it. So many times, I have wished SOMEONE would write about their experiences in plain language. It is for this reason I am stepping out from under the protection of anonymity and silence, to post it all here for others who might be experiencing something similar.

So here it is, my continuing conversation with my reader, whom, not knowing, I love dearly.

On The Dark Side, Dave said, "When my dark night was over, I guess things were different but only by virtually imperceptible increments." This has been one of my problems in/with my "mid-life crisis." Should I be having a crisis of any sort in union? Nothing changed for me either! Well, that's untrue, but it was NOT the light-filled dawn that John of the Cross wrote about. Years later it is still dark and utterly, painfully silent. Not painful in the same way as the Night, but definitely not the tiptoeing through the tulips that John of the Cross seemed to describe and that I looked forward to.

This has been very difficult for me because all my light and consolation and warmth and feelings of communion and Love were during the betrothal. Then came this feeling of "If I don't have You I will die, please make me holy so I can have You," until I did "have" Him, at which point the silence and darkness of the Dark Night remained, but the sharp, desperate pains of separation were gone. What came after that was this gathering dread that (dare I say it?) union was the rest of my life in this silent darkness that is God. To me, union has been like trying to get comfortable in a severe hairshirt.

It really has (and I know some of you are recoiling in horror right now) in some ways, been awful. Yes, I said it. In some ways, union has been awful. But I know it's because of my Great Expectations and Interpretations, and lingering backwardness-habit of a sin orientation. I think the discomfort is like God invading the virgin heart with the largess of HIMSELF, if I can use such blunt terms (You girls will understand exactly what I mean.), which takes some getting used to.

I haven't dared tell anyone, because 1) how proud! to tell anyone you've experienced union 2) if it's not like John of the Cross described, it must not be union. I can't tell you the confusion I've been experiencing.

What I can confirm is freedom from passions, and the presence of God. He is there, but He is completely silent, completely dark. I will utter the truth: while I in no way want to go back to before union (there is the deepest, stillest peace at the seat of it) I have really, really not liked it. Isn't that blasphemous?! Yet even though I have "not liked" union, being thrown about by your passions and embroiled in those, interiorly or exteriorly, is infinitely worse. It might be a dark, silent peace, but it IS peace, at least it is if you remain in it.

To me, because there is nothing to feel, nothing to see, nothing to hear or sense in any way at all, no direct consolation from God (which He showered me with during betrothal), what is there to like? You still suffer, even worse because you know it comes directly from God, and there is no consolation to ease it at all. There is just this immovable, dark, silent, stillness. How can I distinguish between the two, peace and comfort, when they seem to be the same? They are not. For me there is no comfort, only stillness, when I remain in it.

Even more (and I hesitate for the way I KNOW this sounds) the stillness seems dead, even while you know without knowing how that it is alive; it is alive but utterly still and fixed. There is no communication from it. I remember trying to articulate this just after union, and all I could say is that it was like having a husband in a coma, or who has his head turned always away from you. It's him, the one you love and who loves you, and he's there somewhere, but he doesn't speak, doesn't touch you, doesn't acknowledge you in any tangible way. This makes prayer very difficult. Whatever direction I get seems to come through circumstances and people... well... really everything but Him directly. How is it for you, Dave? Maybe this changes the more you get used to it.

Ok, so union or not-union is issue #1. Issue #2 is this whole mid-life thing. Could I seriously, if I am "in" union with God, be so completely WRONG?! You helped me here too: "Since then, He has taught me to stop interpreting." Yes, that's been my whole life's story with God, I believe, Great Expectations and Interpretations. "Destiny for me has become the sum of the steps of the journey, letting Him gently course-correct me along the way." Yes, Caussade has helped me immensely with this. Part of my angst during this realization that God is killing my dream, the dream He gave me, is that my angst is caused by a resistance of His will to kill it after giving it to me. Those who are in union do not resist God's will. They are one with it.

Now we're back to the union or not-union issue. Ultimately, I can say I truly want whatever God wants for me and the Dream (since it is clearly not mine anymore), but I have not been happy about it. I do have hope that whatever the Dream is, it will somehow be what He promised, while at the same time being something I never could have imagined and what He had in mind from the foundation of the world. "His plans for us are at times so complex. He moves pieces of the game around at such distances that there’s no way to guess what He has in store for us at some future moment in time." Yes.

I found this in my readings from yesterday:

"But my way goes through death to self, through the crucifixion of everything you have received from your first birth. Everything must be transformed by being surrendered to me, so that you can receive it back from me. You had no choice in your first birth; I give you choice in your second. Everything surrendered and then accepted back from my hand is clearly gift and not your own. That is the meaning of my resurrection; I have shown you the way by giving my Spirit into my Father's hands, and then accepting it back on the morning of my resurrection."

Fifteen Mysteries in the Life of Christ, Richard Hobbs

Speaking to someone who can relate is helping me so much I dare not even try to say. "Let us pray for one another, that the Lord will carry us and that we will learn to carry one another – Pope Benedict at his installation Mass as Pope in 2005."

Tribute to Masculinity

2010-04-12T08:19:00.001-05:00

Without a doubt, secular feminism is on a mission to erase masculinity from social consciousness, or at least to feminize men into utter impotence. I speak generally, but no less truly, when I maintain that some women, in action contrary to their very nature, have turned on men to devour them in their shortcomings and faults rather than working to nurture the fulfillment of their potential.

Science teaches us that a man’s natural “power” lies in his superior strength, and his ability to spread his seed as widely as possible in order to carry forth his genetic information. Too often, men use this basic natural potential to objectify, dominate, and pursue women simply for their own pleasure.

St. Joseph, however, is God’s answer to that proclivity, and His absolute stamp of approval on masculinity, properly understood, embraced, and lived. His presence and role in the salvation of the human family rebukes the satanic influences in our society that motivate female contempt for men, because he shows us why it takes a man’s man to spread his essence into eternity by loving his wife without objectifying or dominating her.

Third Wheel or Third Spoke?

If there was ever a man with the occasion to feel like a third wheel or an unnecessary addition to the real action, it would have been Joseph, for the Incarnation was very pointedly achieved apart from his biological involvement.

Joseph was a man of few words because he was a man of action, a man’s man from a long line of patriarchal family men (Matt. 1). The head of the family – making decisions, executing the plan – was his rightful place, and he had learned it from his own capable father.

But Mary presented a very unorthodox problem. She claimed a “special” plan from God and had already begun executing it. Without telling him anything about it, she had already said “yes” and was already pregnant.

The fact that he would be asked to play the seemingly “tag along” role in the whole cosmic drama, and was only informed after the fact, must have gone against the grain for Joseph. If all of “it” were true, wouldn’t God have used His own established family structure to inform Joseph first, ahead of time? Wasn’t he capable of hearing God himself? Why would God displace him in such a way?

If he trusted, Joseph would have to “sacrifice” his manhood by pursuing Mary into this deliberate displacement in what would amount to a stunning reversal of Adam and Eve. At the dawn of salvation, the New Eve could, then, lead Joseph to Life.

If he followed her, it would mean a redemption of the whole sordid Eden affair in which a New Adam would emerge, but Joseph had to have felt slighted, humbled, silenced at the presence of this Word in his wife. He had to have balked at the sheer preposterousness of the claims.

And the skepticism would only get worse as her pregnancy became obviously untimely and began to mock his manhood. Why would God humiliate Joseph this way? The whole episode seemed designed to prove to him how marginal his role was. Certainly the God who flung forth the universe with a Word could build a better home for Mary and the Baby than he could.

His carpenter’s wage was surely all but unimportant, as the God who trapped the ram in the thicket and rained manna on the wilderness floor would need no help providing for them. And his strength, superior in every way to a woman and baby’s, well, of what use was it for the “Lord of Armies” who conquered the Egyptian military by drowning, and leveled Jericho with pots and torches and a bare handful of bellowing men?

The Measure of a Man

The truth is, God was teaching Joseph what every woman must also learn, most often through her relationship with her husband: humility. No, God surely does not need the Josephs of this world in an absolute sense, but they image God in their daily grind, in their calluses and sweat, in the heroic execution of their sacrificial duties and fatherhood.

God chooses them specifically for their masculinity to do this, because they are the tangible proof of His own profound humility against a matchless strength. They image His interest in the roles of fatherhood and family and the profound importance he places on them, so that simply being a man is a particular gift.

It must have humbled Mary to be, first an instrument, then a receiver of Joseph’s humility lesson, as she and Jesus would be the ones for whom he would sacrifice so utterly and repeatedly. But together in mutual deference to one another, his holy manliness and her delicate femininity, would rest the mysterious union in which God would place His only Son. In this way, God showed the world where he wishes for children to live and grow up, and the conditions under which they can thrive.

Although it was arguably his greatest humiliation, Joseph’s union and presence with Mary despite her publicly perceived betrayal protected and defended her as much or more than their flight to Egypt. It roared in the Scriptural silence attributed to him of his love for her and his confidence in her purity and integrity, despite appearances, more loudly than any recorded word ever could. This degree of loyalty takes the kind of grit only real men possess.

And surely Jesus learned from watching Joseph how to father and shepherd, how cut to the heart of a matter as pithily as possible, to lead and be responsible for a group, how to be silent before God and hear Him speak. It stands to reason that Joseph taught him how to measure twice and cut once, how to marry the joints of seemingly disparate personality pieces so that they fit and worked seamlessly, the importance of every jot and tittle and creative detail, and that spiritual formation is true craftsmanship and cannot be hurried.

That such holiness could come from his family is a testament to the man Joseph. Certainly he sometimes felt marginalized in his own family, yet he was the leader of The iconic family unit, and capable of it specifically for his manhood.

In the Heart of God’s Will

Though Joseph may have been embarrassed that his wife and child slept in a barn, he was under a star that led foreign sages to them who laid riches at their feet. Though he may have felt he was running from the murderous king rather than actively defending his family, Joseph was a protector of the womb.

It was under his leadership to Egypt that the Scriptures could be fulfilled: “’Out of Egypt have I called my son’” (Matt. 2:15). Though his offering of turtledoves may have embarrassed him for their smallness, they brought them all under the aged eye of Simeon who saw Joseph’s sacrifices and their consolation of all Israel.

Joseph’s willingness and openness to the whole extraordinary Plan made him the keeper of salvation, the guardian, the watcher, the eye of God, until it could mature. When the time had come, Joseph left Mary in the hands of the Son he raised with her, so that He could rise to the head of the human family as was His destiny from the foundation of the world. Joseph lived for his family, pouring himself out for them completely, and then faded from the story: “He must increase and I must decrease” (Jn. 3:30). And so we find the key to Joseph’s silence. It is contemplation and interior greatness.

"St. Joseph is the model of those humble ones that Christianity raises up to great destinies;...he is the proof that in order to be a good and genuine follower of Christ, there is no need of great things-it is enough to have the common, simple and human virtues, but they need to be true and authentic" (Paul VI, Discourse, Insegnamenti, VII, p. 1268).

Mary and Jesus needed Joseph. If it had not been true, God would not have given him to them. He is, therefore, God’s absolute affirmation of men who are authentically themselves, providing dignity and keeping godly order in home and society through the work of their hands and other noble labor, taking their places as heads of families, and engaging the world in those wonderful ways that are uniquely masculine.

Every woman blessed with a Joseph “gets” how powerful understatement is. She wonders at him. She respects him. She is moved to profound thankfulness for the glory of her man’s true strength, and she deeply appreciates how he articulates it so beautifully without the noise of words.

The dark side

2010-04-09T08:11:00.004-05:00

I was watching a Disney movie last night after my son nagged me about it for weeks, and I realized that no one ever identifies himself with the villain in those kinds of movies. It made me wonder how many identify themselves with villains in any movie. Don't we see ourselves as the one with the great destiny, as pushing through every possible obstacle to fulfill that great destiny, and the villain as the ultimate obstacle we must conquer to fulfill it?

Last night I was struck by a thought. In this particular movie the villain believed the hero's destiny was his own. The hero was a usurper in the villain's eyes, and his jealousy is what ultimately made him villainous. So what do you do when you are suddenly shown that the place you believed to be rightfully yours, the position or place or goal or dream you have worked your whole life for, is someone else's? What do you do when your "place" is usurped?

Is this the essence of the mid-life crisis? The knowledge that you will never reach that life goal, and that someone else, someone you don't know or don't like, will reach it instead? That you have wasted years of spiritual energy and time and effort, to go nowhere...How did Cain, Esau, Saul, Reuben, and Ishmael feel when they realized "it" wasn't going to be them?

And whom could they be angry at? It was God's doing. His choice of men. Were they going to become like Lucifer and turn against God? Some of these men did.

What I discovered is that I have a villain in me. The villain IS me. Like Annakin Skywalker or the Ben Linus from LOST, one tiny turn of the soul and I could be Saul or Judas, suddenly so angry that I seek to thwart the "usurpers," whomever they are. Sometimes they're me. In this case it's God.

I turn on myself when I don't "measure up," and I am always most brutal to myself. But what do you do when God backs you into a corner and there's no one to be angry at but Him?

I have an anger in me over some of God's providence regarding my life, and it could easily become evil if I ceased caring about it. I used to be angry at myself, but this is really more a Job-like thing. Unless I am REALLY spiritually backward (as this post might illustrate; you decide), I am not at fault. I have done everything I believed I was told to do. Why does He seem to be the obstacle to the "destiny" He gave me?

When EVERYTHING was on the line for you, and it did not pan out like you anticipated, then what? How do you change the whole course of your life when you have spent the whole of it in one direction, and believe to do so would be disobedient? How do you go back to "before"? How close to becoming the villain am I?

Part of King Solomon's Temple Found

2010-04-07T19:28:00.001-05:00

In the area known as Ophel between the City of David and the southern wall of the Temple Mount of Israel, archaeologists have uncovered parts of an ancient complex believed to correspond and date to the time of King Solomon’s Temple.

Located just outside the present-day walls of Jerusalem's Old City, next to the holy site known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary, a 231-foot long, 20 foot-high section of ancient stone wall, believed to be the city wall, was discovered.

Along with these fortifications were found a small house beside a gateway leading to what was once the royal courtyard, a building that served city officials, and a tower strategically positioned opposite the Mount of Olives and overlooking the Kidron river.

Volunteer college students from Oklahoma, hired workers, and archaeology students from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem all participated in the dig under university professor Dr. Eilat Mazar. The excavations were privately funded by a couple in New York with an interest in Biblical Archeology, and took place over a three-month period.

Dr. Mazar indicated how the findings correlate to other archeological discoveries from the time of the First Temple. "The city wall that has been uncovered testifies to a ruling presence. Its strength and form of construction indicate a high level of engineering," she said.

The Scriptures tell us that the Temple and palace King Solomon built were surrounded with the walls of the city of Jerusalem (1 Kings 3:1). Historians believe the Phoenicians helped the Israelites build the structures due to their notable construction skills. The finds help illustrate that 10th century Jerusalem was capable and peaceful enough to conduct such large building projects.

Between the large tower at the city gate and the royal building the archaeologists uncovered a section of the corner tower that is 26 feet in length and 20 feet high. The tower was built of carved stones said to be of “unusual beauty.”

Pottery shards were discovered within the rubble filling the ground floor of the royal building near the gatehouse, and the largest jars ever found in Jerusalem, almost 4 feet in height, were found on the same floor in rooms that are thought to have served as storage areas.
The jars were discovered to have survived a fire, and partial inscriptions on the jars and pottery shards, “for the king” on an ancient Hebrew seal on the jar handles, all indicate that they were possessions used by, and belonging to, high-level government officials within the monarchy.

Dating done on the discoveries supports researchers’ belief that the complex dates to the 10th century B.C.E. "This is the first time that a structure from that time has been found that may correlate with written descriptions of Solomon's building in Jerusalem," Dr. Mazar said.

“A comparison of this latest finding with city walls and gates from the period of the First Temple, as well as pottery found at the site, enable us to postulate with a great degree of assurance that the wall that has been revealed is that which was built by King Solomon in Jerusalem in the latter part of the tenth century B.C.E."

The discovery of this monumental site, the most significant find of First Temple history, is important because the existence of the Hebrew monarchy spoken of in the Scriptures, and its corresponding political strength, is disputed among Holy Land archeologists. It significantly supports the growing body of archeological evidence for the Davidic Kingdom spoken of in the Old Testament, a kingdom from whence came the Christ.

Marriage of Genders, the Rebirth of Civilization

2010-04-06T07:04:00.002-05:00

In our modern culture of man-bashing and female domination, how can we achieve a communion of genders, a mutually supportive, life producing oneness in our own families and the greater human family?

It was written in the corporeality of humanity that “a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh” (Gen 2:24). From this genesis we get a glimpse of what humanity was meant to be, a communion taking place between genders that are united in male and female differences, a union that produces life. Humanity, then, “becomes the image of God by communion of persons” (Theology of the Body, John Paul II), or genders.

Written in the Flesh

When our beloved Pope John Paul II coined the term “feminine genius,” he referred in a special way to the idea that motherhood is written into woman at the very basis of her creation, and as women give themselves uniquely, they reflect that capacity for physical and spiritual motherhood (Mulieris Dignitatem, On the Dignity and Vocation of Women, John Paul II).

In the same way, to be a man is to be a father, so that true manhood reflects this capacity for physical and spiritual fatherhood. Physical masculinity and femininity teach us something about how the human genders are to relate to one another, and therefore to God.

“For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. Ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made” (Rom. 1:19-20).

In the physical realm, a man is first drawn to what is beautiful and good. He is created to then give away the essence of himself, his seed, to this beauty in order to create new life. It is his urge and his need to give himself away like this, a cooperation that makes use of his inherent bent toward specialization and single-mindedness.

If he does not make this donation, there can be no life. Jesus showed us what that really means by giving to his bride, the Church, his own very essence, and in doing so new life was possible.

Something else was needed, however, for new life: a warm, safe, nurturing place for this essence to take root and grow. A “womb.” Jesus first found this womb, this receptivity, in His mother, and then in the other women who supported and nurtured His spiritual fatherhood and that of the disciples He was teaching to be fathers.

Women must remember that men are profoundly affected by the path of their lives, as both Eve and Mary attest. Man must find true beauty, modesty, and sanctity in the woman when he looks for it. It will attract him and direct him to the place where he can give himself in order to produce the most fruit.

The woman must faithfully guard this beauty and sanctity against exploitation or objectification, just as she protects new life in her physical womb until it can safely be born. If she does not, then her beauty is separated from its spirit and purpose and is objectified for the pursuit of the man’s pleasure alone.

The Church has always taught this model: “Wives, be subject to your husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. As the church is subject to Christ, so let wives also be subject in everything to their husbands. Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her” (Eph. 5:22-24).

A Spiritual Communion

Man, then, must give himself to the woman: fully to wife and/or Church first, then in a more limited, spiritual way to mother, sister, and even coworker as he discerns their need. As he images Christ in this way, he ultimately gives himself to Christ through the “woman.”

Practically, this means that he does not give himself completely to his job or his hobby or anything else; he reserves his complete self-donation for her only. He does not withhold parts of himself from his wife if he is married, and his Church if he is religious, for his own pleasure. His bent toward specialization and single-mindedness is employed toward this complete self-giving end.

This obviously involves profound vulnerability for him; it is the “nakedness” of Adam and Eve. Man gives himself fully to the “woman.” A man is “head” of his wife, not to be lord over her, dominate her, or even necessarily direct her, but primarily in order to give up his body, life, and essence for her and thus create new life.

In order for life to be physically conceived, however, a woman must allow a man to come inside of her. Woman must receive man – husband, priest, father, brother – fully, as he is, faults temperament, personality and all. She must accept that he is who he is, without trying to change him, direct him or manipulate him.

Instead, she receives him warmly, and in so doing, she becomes a safe place for him that nurtures who he is created to be. Through this receiving, woman seeks to draw out the best of man, just as she does in the sexual act. In this way, women lead men to become all they can be as fathers, imaging the fatherhood of God.

The “Marriage” of Civilization

When the complete self-giving of men is met in marriage with a real receptivity in women, there is fruitfulness, physically and spiritually. While he shares in parenthood, man always remains somewhat outside the process of pregnancy and birth. He returns to productivity, competently and capably protecting the woman.

The woman, meanwhile, turns to those nurturing functions that do not necessarily involve economic production and consumption. Her nurturing vocation takes longer than his productivity. It is “fruitfulness” and requires patience and cooperation; it appreciated, not measured. Her fruitfulness brings the new life to maturity so it can be “born.”

Her vocational service to wholeness testifies to the worth of the human person and promotes the health and advance of all of humanity. A woman can earn a paycheck, and a man can do dishes. But a man cannot be a mother, and a woman cannot be a father. Humanity desperately needs the communion of both.

When a woman spiritually aborts or contracepts by refusing to fully receive the man, attempting to usurp him or be “like” him, she rejects the essential force of her womanhood, her ability be a mother. This makes the life-giving man an unwanted intrusion.

When the man, in turn, aborts or contracepts by withholding parts of himself or refusing to sacrifice, he rejects his position as “head,” placing himself in effect “beneath” the woman, and the woman’s inherent fertility. Their communion is now sterile, fruitless. Physical and spiritual life is unwelcome and prohibited.

The Rebirth of Civilization

Every man helps restore Christ in society by giving himself to his wife or the Church, withholding nothing, and every woman helps restore the Church in society by truly receiving her husband. This model challenges man, woman, and society to growth.

In the Gospels the apostles were supported by a group of women both before and after the Crucifixion, and their apostolic works flourished under their invisible support. It will be the same in society. Self-donating masculinity and the new feminism must marry if there is to be peace: the “no shame” of Eden’s vulnerability and nudity (Genesis 2:25).

The responsibility for this marriage and rebirth lies primarily with women who, it seems, have yet to truly receive men, as is implied by the great profusion of productivity on earth in the face of comparatively little fruitfulness.

True feminism is not just about women, it is about the human family. Peace, the acceptance of our own and others’ “nakedness,” will proceed from the active communion of masculinity and new feminism among men and women of the earth. From this peace, this communion, will be born a new civilization.

Easter Monday

2010-04-05T08:01:00.000-05:00

Happy Easter Monday to all of you. I wanted to let you know that most of the meditations this Lent were from the Magnificat Lenten Companion, or the meditations within the usual Magnificat. I also used a couple from the Universalis website, and I made up a few too.

All of these are great for having the daily readings and meditations at your fingertips all year. If you have never heard of these or used them, you should give them a try. In addition to the readings, order of the Mass, meditations, quotes, and saint profiles, Magnificat always has the most beautiful classical art too. I can't live without it.

Alleluia

2010-04-04T09:36:00.000-05:00

I am so excited, so thankful, so full of Him, for He is Risen INDEED! Alleluia! Peace be with you, brothers and sisters! Peace!

Woe

2010-04-03T06:01:00.000-05:00

Weep and mourn. Jesus was dead and in the tomb.

Suggested penance: Wear black.

Most precious savior, thank you. +

What's good about Good Friday

2010-04-02T07:11:00.001-05:00

"Christ's execution notice became with paradoxical unity the "confession of faith," the real starting-point and rooting point of the Christian faith, which holds Jesus to be the Christ: as the crucified criminal this Jesus is the Christ, the King.

His crucifixion is his coronation; his coronation or kingship is his surrender of himself to men, the identification of word, mission, and existence in the yielding up of this very existence. His existence is thus his word.
From the cross faith understands in increasing measure that this Jesus did not just say and do something; that in him message and person are identical, that he always already is what he says" (Pope Benedict XVI).

Suggested penance: Watch "The Passion" or make the stations of the cross today or tonight.

Eternal Father, the death of your son on a cross redeems the world. Make me a loving and obedient disciple of that same Son, Jesus Christ, who is our exalted Lord. +

Glory and power

2010-04-01T08:12:00.001-05:00

Foot-washing was a slave's job, like emptying the night's chamber pots or cleaning one's toilets. It was the most menial job to be had, because people wore sandals and walked everywhere they went. Their feet were exposed to every refuse found on country roads and city streets in a day where there was no Waste Management and most scraps, swill, and trash, solid and liquid, was pitched out the front door and onto the streets. It was a dusty, dirty, disgusting and humiliating job, one in which the washer was literally bowed before the washed.
"When the God of the universe comes and takes on himself a slave's task, washing of feet, we have a true and accurate picture of what God is. He is not here to trample us, but kneels down before us in order to exalt us. The mystery of the greatness of God is seen precisely in the fact that he can be so small... Only when our "power" is changed from the inside, and we accept Jesus and his way of life, whose whole self is there in the action of foot-washing, only then can the world be healed and the people able to live at peace with one another" (Pope Benedict XVI).

This is truly what caused Judas and the Pharisees to seek his execution: Jesus preached and illustrated that the God of the Old Testament, of fire and brimstone and military routs, was humble to the point of pain and death, and he expected them, us, to be also. His washing of feet, healing the sin-sick, and giving of himself in the Eucharist and on the cross corrected their presumptions about God, and their (our) place in the world. It's not on the throne. Really.

No pomp and circumstance. No recognition. No power trip, power grab, or power play. No reward. No pat on the back. Perfect holiness concealed in a "regular" guy, good works done in secret. Rather than the big splash, the media frenzy, the big things, God is hidden in the humiliations and regular stuff. Bread and wine. Men and women. Spit and mud. Execution.

He lays himself at our feet, in order so that we too can lay ourselves down at others' feet. This is the height of spiritual power and divine love. This is so hard, hard to hear, hard to bear.

Suggested penance: Today where you live or work, do the job everyone hates.

Lord of armies and galaxies, show me the glory of humiliation and smallness, so that rather than resisting and fighting it to my misery and anxiety, I may rest in it when it approaches and find you in it. I confess my desperate need for grace to even pray this prayer with sincerity, much less carry it out. My eyes are firmly on you these next days, as you show me how it is done. +

What leads to despair

2010-03-31T05:06:00.002-05:00

The Lord's passion unfolds like a drama. Suspense mounts as Christ speaks these words, "Woe to that man by which the Son of man is betrayed." That man is Judas Iscariot, one of the twelves disciples.

Judas was no stranger to Jesus. Judas accompanied Jesus from the beginning. Judas heard the truth the other apostles heard. He saw the miracles the others saw. All that Christ did to reveal himself as the Savior of the world, Judas witnessed firsthand.

Now in a flash, Judas "forgets" everything. "What are you willing to give me," he asks cunningly, "if I hand him over to you?" These words should inspire awe in each of us. To be sure, Judas forgot Christ's deeds, his great wisdom, his saving ministry. What is more pitiable, Judas forgets the lesson a sinner like himself most needs to remember. It is the lesson of forgiveness.

We will never know why Judas forgot the one lesson that would have saved him from suicide. His self-inflicted fate however, serves as a stark reminder of sin's final payoff. Judas' despair should serve also as a warning. Whatever sin one may commit against Jesus, on and only one remedy exists. Turn back toward Jesus and ask forgiveness.

Suggested penance: Go to Confession before Sunday.

Merciful Father, the passion of your only begotten son forgives sins and brings new life. Keep my heart turned toward Jesus, who lives and reigns with you for ever and ever. +

Finding our way through the cross

2010-03-30T06:57:00.001-05:00

This was an important moment. If the apostles understood nothing else in the upper room, they understood this. John stays as close as possible to Jesus, close enough to lean against Jesus' chest. He does not want to miss a moment; his understanding may lag behind, but his love for Jesus keeps him right at Jesus' side.
Peter professes his desire to follow Jesus even to the death. His resolve will lag behind, but his desire is there.

Judas leaves. He leaves in order to betray this moment with Jesus and everything that went before. He leaves into the night. He was not yet at the point of no return. He could have said, "Lord I don't want to go, I want to stay with you," and all would have been changed, all would have begun to heal. And who can imagine how Jesus would have responded? Jesus imagined it for us when he told us the story of the merciful Father of the prodigal son.

In the midst of my sin, I wan to turn back to Jesus as Judas could have done. I want to stay with Jesus as Peter wanted to do. Therefore I want the love of John. For it is the only kind of love that allows us to stay with Jesus even at the cross.

Suggested penance: Pray and give alms for those falsely convicted and imprisoned.

Father, the cross of your Son reveals your love for me. May none of my crosses ever compromise my love for you. +

Hidden in plain sight

2010-03-29T07:03:00.001-05:00

Have you ever been shocked at a child's inability to find things in plain view? Mine tell me they have looked everywhere for something that takes me ten seconds to locate.

One year on our beach vacation, my grandmother shared her habit of "non-looking." It became
an inside family joke to go to the refrigerator or kitchen cabinets, throw open the doors, and immediately say something like, "Don't we have any so-and-so? Where is it?" in loud, irritated tones.

When we go and locate the "missing" item, do we find it because we see better or because we know it is there? There is a story about children who are playing hide and seek. One boy hides and waits for the others. He waits and waits. But the others don't come.

God has done the same thing, challenging us to come find him. Our problem is that we don't look.

Though God has revealed himself in a clear and striking way in the cross, we often find him "hiding" in our everyday lives. We wonder where he has gone. But when a child we know disappears in hide and seek, we don't wonder about his existence-- we simply start looking.

In the same way, Jesus challenges us to come and find him when he seems hidden. He invites us to trust in his continued presence, rather than being distracted by an unfounded fear that - simply because he is hiding - he has left us. He will never leave us. We must look for him in confidence, because he is there.

Suggested penance: Seek out someone who is alienated from you and say "I'm sorry."

Lord, help us to find you wherever you are revealing yourself. Let us not be discouraged by our difficulty in seeing your presence at first glance, but continue searching for you, confident in your presence. +

As we lay dying...

2010-03-28T05:49:00.002-05:00

"'Father into your hands I commend my spirit'; and when he had said this he breathed his last" (Luke 23:46).

"It is so final. It takes place after all has been said and done, seen and suffered, tried and tested, and we have finally moved on. He at last consigns himself utterly to his Father.

"I cannot help thinking of so many hospital patients who have said with dejection and defeat in their voices, "You see, there's nothing to do now but to put it into God's hands." Then, after tears, silence, prayer, and conversation, they would end up saying the same words with a different tone. They would perceive that placing themselves in the Father's hands was the one place of certainty and hope for them.

"The same words that had been an expression of defeat had now become a boast of conquest, giving peace and positivity. In his hands always had been the best place for things to be, but it took this trial to accept it freely.

"Jesus himself had to learn this: "Son though he was, he learned obedience from what he suffered" (Heb. 5:8). Having consigned himself to the Father, he has won the victory over sin and death, and he is here now so that, through him, we can consign all things to the Father and gain Christ's peace."

Magnificat Lenten Companion

Suggested penance: Make a holy hour with your family to pray for the graces of Holy Week.

Father, you have withheld nothing from us, but handed over to us even your own Son. Though we have misused and abused him, yet let now this sacrifice give us the courage to abandon ourselves to you through him. +

Holding living water

2010-03-27T07:28:00.001-05:00

"After our soul has risen up in fear, aware that we are servants and that we cannot hide from his sight, we begin to pull our disordered affection and love away from the world and reorder it in conformity with our Master's will. There is no other way we can please him, for, as Christ said, it is impossible to serve two masters, because if we serve one we are opposing the other.

"When our soul has been drawn by fear, we run on very vigilantly, getting rid of every fault and sin. This kind of love acts just like a domestic servant who is hired to clean out dirty jugs. But once our soul has become a child, that is, once we are living in perfect charity, we behave like a true child who tenderly loves his or her father.

"A child loves a father not with a mercenary love, that is for any advantage to be had from him. Nor does a child fear to offend a father for dread of punishment, but only for the father's goodness and for the father's loving gift of his own nature. So it is nature and the power of love that compel a true child to love and serve a father.

"Such, I tell you, should be our love for our heavenly Father; love him not in view of any advantage you may get from him, nor fear of the suffering he might make you bear, but only because he is supreme and just and eternally good, and for his infinite goodness he deserves to be loved. Nothing else deserves to be loved except in God; but to love creatures in him and for him is to love the Father.

"And just as it is the ask of the fear I spoke of to clean out the jugs, so this sort of love has to fill the soul's jug with virtue after emptying out all the pompous show of vainglory, all worldly impatience and injustice and vanity and wickedness. It empties out as well remembrance of past injuries, so that only the remembrance of God's blessing and goodness remains -- and with it true and perfect humility, patience in bearing all suffering for the gentle Jesus' sake, and a holy justice that will give every person what is justly due."

Letters of Catherine of Sienna

Suggested penance: Make a conscious effort to prepare well for your next Mass.

Lord, Cleanse me and I shall be cleansed. Touch me and I shall be whole. Breathe on me and my soul shall become a fountain of living water. +

Salvation is in the unexpected places

2010-03-26T07:36:00.001-05:00

Last week the readings included Jesus saving an adulterous woman from stoning. Today an adulterous woman was brought to Jesus so that evidence could be gathered in order to stone Him. The evil of Holy Week has begun, and yet...

Even in "emergencies" Jesus never does what we expect, does He?
He always surprises us. Today, the Gospel says "they tried to arrest Him; but He escaped from their power." Sunday, He will purposely enter Jerusalem to insure that they arrest Him.

The Son of God was sent to earth to lead us back to God the Father, yet He seems to have as many enemies as followers. He possessed the power to escape, yet surrenders Himself to a former disciple. He was the Savior, yet He would die a humiliating death. The king was a carpenter. God, a man. The God of matchless power is perfect Humility. The rich are poor. The blind will see. Following a God who never does things the "usual" ways, can be frustrating and confusing.

Today's Gospel reminds us that though He is unpredictable, however, He does everything for our salvation, for he escaped to a place where they could find Him, a place that would cleanse them if they followed: "He went back to the Jordan to the place where John first baptized, and there He remained. Many came to Him...and many there began to believe in Him."

Jesus went to a place that would ask something of those who sought after him. They would have to pass through the baptismal waters of the Jordan to get to Jesus, just as new converts will do next Holy Saturday night (Magnificat Lenten Companion).

Suggested penance: Find a way to turn an intended wrong against you toward the offender's good.

Father of mercy, do not abandon those who have abandoned you.+

The humility of the God of the universe

2010-03-25T08:00:00.001-05:00

"He took the nature of a servant without stain of sin, enlarging our humanity without diminishing his divinity. He emptied himself; though invisible he made himself visible, though Creator and Lord of all things he chose to be one of us mortal men. Yet this was the condescension of compassion, not the loss of omnipotence. So he who in the nature of God had created man, became in the nature of a servant, man himself.

"Thus the Son of God enters this lowly world. He comes down from the throne of heaven, yet does not separate himself from the Father’s glory. He is born in a new condition, by a new birth.

"He was born in a new condition, for, invisible in his own nature, he became visible in ours. Beyond our grasp, he chose to come within our grasp. Existing before time began, he began to exist at a moment in time. Lord of the universe, he hid his infinite glory and took the nature of a servant. Incapable of suffering as God, he did not refuse to be a man, capable of suffering. Immortal, he chose to be subject to the laws of death.

"He who is true God is also true man. There is no falsehood in this unity as long as the lowliness of man and the pre-eminence of God coexist in mutual relationship.

"As God does not change by his condescension, so man is not swallowed up by being exalted. Each nature exercises its own activity, in communion with the other. The Word does what is proper to the Word, the flesh fulfils what is proper to the flesh.

"One nature is resplendent with miracles, the other falls victim to injuries. As the Word does not lose equality with the Father’s glory, so the flesh does not leave behind the nature of our race.

"One and the same person – this must be said over and over again – is truly the Son of God and truly the son of man. He is God in virtue of the fact that 'in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He is man in virtue of the fact that the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us'" (Jn. 1).

Pope Leo the Great

Suggested penance: Do something constructive to rescue someone ensnared in sin.

Lord, the favor you have shown us makes us tremble with awe. We pray you would make us worthy of the lofty goals that are your plans for us from the foundation of the world. +

Breaking through barriers

2010-03-24T07:33:00.000-05:00

"Walls can be made of many things, but the most resistant, the hardest material, is in walls constructed of our sin, the consequences of our laziness. This yoke is terrible because at first we're attracted to sin; then, sin becomes a reason for desperation, and you can go on no longer. I'm not speaking primarily of a gesture, of sin as a given action, but of sin as a state, as a normal condition.

"I wanted to remind you of the word 'hope,' showing you or calling you to realize that hope is an energy, the energy of vigilance, an energy that continually pierces through, penetrates, continually tries to penetrate through the shadows. This is indicated in the expression "be vigilant" because as everyone knows it is the verb of the night watchmen.

"The energy of hope breaks, perforates the hard walls of the tomb in which distraction, intemperance, and worries enclose us. It's not the disappearance of distraction, intemperance, or worries, it's that in the midst of distraction, worries and intemperance, unconquerable hope continually breaks the walls that continually form. This is the living heart, the sign of God living within the land of the dead."

Traces, Monsignor Luigi Giussani

Suggested penance: Pray with special openness about the most fortified walls in your heart and life. Ask God what specific steps you should take to begin dissembling them.

Teach me how to cooperate with You to dissolve the protective barriers I would set up against those things through which you would come to me, Lord, including walls of trouble and pain and hopelessness, so that I may be receptive to your Spirit and ready to embrace the peace and work You want to brings to me. +

Health Care Legislation, the Fiery Serpent

2010-03-23T05:16:00.003-05:00

"From Mount Hor they set out by the way to the Red Sea, to go around the land of Edom; and the people became impatient on the way. And the people spoke against God and against Moses, "Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we loathe this worthless food.

"Then the LORD sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many people of Israel died. And the people came to Moses, and said, "We have sinned, for we have spoken against the LORD and against you; pray to the LORD, that he take away the serpents from us." So Moses prayed for the people.

"And the LORD said to Moses, 'Make a fiery serpent, and set it on a pole; and every one who is bitten, when he sees it, shall live. So Moses made a bronze serpent, and set it on a pole; and if a serpent bit any man, he would look at the bronze serpent and live'" (Num. 21:4-10).

On this historic day of horrendous legislation, it is interesting to me that this symbol, the symbol of the serpent on the pole that saved the griping children of Israel who were dying from the consequences of their sin, is today the symbol of the medical profession.

Almost as though God is STILL inviting us to repentance, even though we have made our proverbial bed and will certainly lie in it. There is always still mercy.

Suggested penance: pray and sacrifice for the 4400 babies who will die of abortion today.

Lord, how we deserve to suffer for our sin against you. Help us to personally look to you, the Great Physician, to heal our sin and our land. We confess our deep distrust of your laws and guidance, both individually, and as a country, a rebellion that has led us to this day of infamy. +

Open your mouth wide and I will fill it

2010-03-22T07:49:00.004-05:00

"I am the LORD your God, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt. Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it (Ps. 81:10)"

"The ideal is for us not to control our appetites at all, but to allow them full rein in the wake of an uncontrolled appetite for God. We all too easily speak and think as if righteousness resulted chiefly from the curbing of our appetites, as if our appetites were only for sin. But strictly speaking we have no appetite for sin.

"What we experience as an appetite for sin is a sick appetite which has mistaken its object. In moments of despondency we may perhaps look around and think that we should be much happier if we gave up trying to be good, if we could enjoy all the vices of the world around us. But that is only a fantasy. The desire for goodness is really a much more robust desire than any alleged desire for evil...
"We must be content to grow slowly towards goodness, taking, if need be, a long time to convalesce. Most of us, maybe, will still be barely at the beginning of our recovery even when we die. But that is better than killing ourselves pretending to be healthy...

"St. Thomas says desire is the faculty that receives, so that the bigger our desire is, the more we can receive...Our part in this is to learn to want largely and earnestly enough to make us capable of the infinite righteousness of God's kingdom...The more we try to tame and reduce ourselves and our desires and hopes, the more we deceive and distort ourselves.

"We are made for God and nothing less will really satisfy us. We we must allow our innate appetite for infinity to dislodge us whenever we are inclined to settle down and call it a day," or throw down our spiritual toys and quit playing. (The Beatitudes: Soundings in Christian Traditions, Tugwell)

Suggested penance: What is your most sinful habit right now? Begin thinking, today, about what could be the underlying need that drives you to desire that sin. Rather than suppressing that need, go to God with it. Show him how large and overwhelming it is. Ask Him to fill that need. See yourself opening your mouth wide, and God filling that need. Wait.

Lord, thank you for pointing out that when I desire sin most desperately, I am really experiencing an appetite for you that has become misdirected. Give me the grace to step back and rest in the yawning need within me, so that with your help I can identify what I really need, and ask you to fill that need in me. +

Fear is useless, what is needed is trust

2010-03-21T05:35:00.004-05:00

"The Lord has not given us a spirit of fear" (Rom. 8:15).

Suggested Penance: Contact your Congressmen and women.

Lord, remind me that yours is all of history, and that all things will one day be well. Help me to faithfully give witness to your love while I wait in joyful hope of the coming of our Savior, your Son, Jesus Christ. +

The Radiant Life

2010-03-20T03:34:00.001-05:00

The gospel shows us the Savior coming to the soul and imparting truth and virtue by the touch of a hand, the brushing of a garment, a bit of moistened earth applied to the locked eyelids. One look from him is enough to make an apostle out of that idler yawning under the fig tree -- less time than it took to convince Nicodemus! Jesus did not always need a miracle, or even a word.
A tone or inflection often served his purpose, and somehow the intervening gulf was bridged. The lost sheep recognized his Master's voice and responded with a feeble bleat.

I Believe in God, Paul Claudel

Suggested penance: Speak kindly today.

Dear Lord, help me spread your fragrance wherever I go. Flood my soul with your spirit and life. Penetrate and possess my whole being so utterly that all my life may only be radiance of yours. Shine through me and be in me so that every soul I come in contact with will feel your presence in my soul. Let them look up and see no longer me but you, oh Lord. Stay with me and then I will begin to shine as you shine so as to be a light to others.+

Divine Interruption

2010-03-19T05:51:00.003-05:00

"The angel doesn't command Joseph to take Mary as his wife; he tells him not to fear doing so. 'Joseph, the good news is that your dream can come true. What you assumed would end your marriage is in fact the beginning of a beautiful friendship. The Holy Spirit and a heaven-sent Son are now in this larger picture!'

"Divine and human plans come together. Joseph feels ecstatic joy when the crushing report of human infidelity is changed in to the astounding news of divine fidelity. Yet God's entry here, due not to sin, but to the nature of personal relationships and marital love, is admittedly awkward.

"His coming into our wold as a real actor and not simply as divine director and producer can alter our meticulous plans and cause real disruptions. When God shows up to play a part, dislocation ensues. Like St. Joseph, we are expected to have a plan for our lives, yet to understand it as provisional scene in a larger work. My life is part of the divine drama; my role is indispensable and I contribute to the story line" (Magnificat Lenten Companion).

Where does God seek to interrupt your personal relationships? What is he saying to you? What does he want you to do?

Suggested Penance: Reconnect with someone who was responsible for generating faith in you.

Loving Father, through St. Joseph's intercession help me to accept the entry of your will into my plans so that my will can enter into yours.+

Seeing Christ

2010-03-18T05:14:00.019-05:00

Today's gospel has great significance for me. Years ago, as I secretly researched the teachings of the Church, I became increasingly convinced that God was speaking through her, because from the very first pages of the Catechism and the writings of the saints on charity and love I was struck by the Voice I had learned to hear and recognize as an evangelical.

It was the same Voice calling to me from the Eucharist and the saints and the Catechism, that called to me in the mornings and whispered delightfully in my awkward ear, to love until it killed me. But I struggled deeply with "the Church" because a lot of the teachings were too strange and new for comfort. Although it seemed that the depth of teaching available to me in the Church was what I had prayed and searched for after feeling as though I had sort of plateaued as a Protestant, its unfamiliarity scared me a lot.

In the end, I was arrested by today's reading; "You search the scriptures, because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness to me; yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life" (Jn. 5:40). The hallmark of the Pharisees hardness was their lack of agape, sacrificial love (Jn. 8). Only those who love sacrificially (charity) are of God, St. John says in his letters. This lack of love kept the Pharisees from recognizing Love when it stood before them incarnate.

I had been taught that Life was in the Scriptures, that Jesus was in the Scriptures, and I had found Him there, but when Jesus Himself came to me and invited me to embrace Him through His Church, I balked EVEN THOUGH I recognized His love in her. Jesus pointed out my Pharisaism through the Scriptures, just as He pointed out the Pharisees' errors.

I discovered that the Scriptures and Jesus were two different things. The Word of God is a person, not a book. I, and all Protestants, had elevated the Scriptures to almost an idolatrous status, so that when Jesus came to me with a Love I recognized, I almost neglected to receive Him. Protestants elevate the Scriptures this way, not because they do not love Jesus, but because their forefathers removed all their other tools, the Sacraments, leaving them with ONLY the Scriptures. Sola Scriptura, or Scriptures Alone was Martin Luther and the "reformers'" mantra.

Because God is desperately interested in their salvation, He speaks to Protestants through what they have left to them. There is so much more, however. There is the Word Incarnate in the Eucharist, and in the Church. He is here, literally and truly, and the Scriptures themselves, while not always overtly teaching what the Church presents as the Deposit of Faith, NEVER contradict it. The sign of the Word is His works of Love. Wherever you see this love, you have seen Christ.

Suggested Penance: Do something sacrificial for someone you love.

Father of mercies, your Son Jesus, "the Word made flesh that dwells among us," testifies through His works to the truth of your Church and your love for us through her. Give us faith to see her as His Body, and to see Him in all our brothers and sisters, particularly those who are separated from us. +

Doing God's Work

2010-03-17T05:44:00.000-05:00

How do we know what God wants us to do? The same way Jesus did: He looked to see where and how God was working, and He joined Him.

"But Jesus answered them, 'My Father is working still, and I am working.' Jesus said to them, 'Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing; for whatever he does, that the Son does likewise...I can do nothing on my own authority; as I hear, I judge; and my judgment is just, because I seek not my own will but the will of him who sent me'" (John 5:17-30).

This is God's will: faith, hope and charity. Where there is no faith, put faith. Where there is no hope, put hope. Where there is no charity, put charity. Where there is no God, put God. These are things that only God can do through us. We have no natural power on our own to believe, hope and love heroically and sacrificially, like God does.

Where people are seeking God, God is working, for no man seeks God on His own. Seek to cooperate with this movement of God. Ask Him how He wants you to contribute.

Suggested Penance: Look for people in which God is working and wants to work, and ways in which you can help them today.

O God, open the eyes of my heart to the light of your presence and movement in my neighbor. Like Jesus, give me eyes to see where you are working and how to cooperate with your work. +

Do You Want to be Well?

2010-03-16T05:26:00.004-05:00

"I will not ask God to deliver you from your trials, but I will ask him earnestly to give you the patience and strength needed to suffer as long as he desires. Find consolation in him who keeps you fixed to the cross; he will release you when he judges it appropriate. Happy are they who suffer with him. Get used to suffering, and ask him for the strength to suffer as he wants, and for as long as he judges necessary.

"The worldly do not understand these truths, and I am not surprised; the reason is that they suffer as citizens of this world and not as Christians. They consider illnesses as natural afflictions and not as graces from God, and therefore they find in them only what is difficult and harsh for our nature. But those who regard them as coming from the hand of God, as signs of his mercy and the means he uses for their salvation, ordinarily find great sweetness and perceptible consolations in them.

"I wish you were convinced that God is often closer to us in times of sickness and suffering than when we enjoy perfect health. Seek no other doctor but him. I think he wants to cure you by himself. When suffering comes from God, he alone can cure it, and he often leaves us with physical illness in order to cure our spiritual illness. Find consolation in the sovereign doctor of body and soul."

Practice of the Presence of God, Brother Lawrence

Suggested Penance: What in your life needs the cure and touch of God? Rather than in novenas, personal labors, medals, or other rituals, imagine placing that issue before the altar at Mass and uniting it to Jesus there, for it is "by his stripes we are healed."

Lord, do not let me mislead myself into thinking that the cure for my ills is in my efforts; help me to realize that my hope can only be in you. +

Our Last, Holiest Offering

2010-03-15T04:51:00.001-05:00

"We are not alone in our hour of death; we have nothing to fear in our hour of death: because when the time comes Christ identifies himself with us so closely that fear gives way to trust and anguish to peace. He has lived all our lives, died all our deaths; to all of us he has given peace. It is in the hour of death that our fear, our anxiety, our loneliness will end.

"Death is too big a thing for any one of us to face alone. It separates us, for a time, from those we love on earth. It is difficult for us earthbound,
rooted creatures to want heaven; it is impossible for us to realize what the glory of God will be like to us. It is loving God, and that only, that can make heaven, heaven. Here imagination does not help us: we cannot really imagine ourselves loving the "Supreme Spirit" -- we even want to cling to our human frailties and comforts, to our human weakness.

"It is now that Christ takes over. He has died all our deaths on the cross; now we are going to die his; it is Christ in us that surrenders to God. It is not with our own heart and our own will that we can long for God, but with Christ's, and Christ has given his heart and will to us. In this is the supreme mercy that comes to us in the hour of death...

"Now I love with Christ's will, with Christ's heart, with Christ's trust; and because he has taken whole possession of me, in the hour of my death I shall at last my friends too with this love."

The Way of the Cross, Caryll Houselander

Suggested penance: Pray for all the souls who will die today.

Lord, give us the grace to carefully consider the day and hour of our death, so that we can more carefully and fully observe and live our lives. +

Hungry Children

2010-03-14T05:19:00.001-05:00

What is it that finally moves the prodigal son to return home? Hunger. It is easy to overlook, however, that the older son is also hungry and in dire need. He is hungry for his father's approval and needs a sign of his love. Both sons are needy, the one who wasted his father's gifts and now has nothing, and the one who was a careful steward and seems to have everything. In this gospel, God is speaking to us about what we all really need: the love of our Father.

Some of us come to this realization after a humiliating fall. Others after expecting,
but failing to receive, a big reward after a series of jobs well done. Each of us has probably experienced both at different times in our lives. In either event, fall or failure, though we feel like incompetent disappointments, "the answer is not in grasping. It lies in God's offering, God's gifting, '[f]or everything he has is ours.'"

The hunger of what remains unreconciled in us is what leads us back to the Father. We must go to him, certain as these sons, that our Father will feed us and assuage our hunger.

Home, our "yes" is always in God.

Suggested penance: Offer your day for someone who has fallen away from the faith.

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy Name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our failures as we forgive those who fail against us, and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. +

Spiritual Snobbery

2010-03-13T05:16:00.002-06:00

Very, very seldom do we read a gospel like today's and see ourselves in it. "The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, 'God, I thank thee that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week, I give tithes of all that I get.' But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, 'God, be merciful to me a sinner!'" (Luke 18:11-13).

I can't say I have ever said these words, myself, but I have said something like this:
"Thank you Lord that by living by your commands, I avoid the drama and slavery and lack of control I see in my neighbor." Do you see that these prayers are almost exactly alike? It is good that we can see how far we have come, but our fault in this type of "prayer" lies in the inability 1) to be moved enough by our neighbor's plight to help him, and 2) see how these thoughts are in themselves sin.

The fact that we have, through grace and self discipline, have learned how to conquer some of our outward sins, does not mean there is not plenty of work still to be done inwardly. We cannot stop with appearances and behavior. We must progress to perceptions and inward, explosive passions that drive behavior and appearances. We have to remember that God is repulsed by this type of pride. He only EVER is attracted to our admissions of guilt before Him: humility.

Suggested penance: When someone else's sin comes to your attention today, strive to turn the attention to your self and discern where you are guilty of the same sin or a similar one. If you make a habit of this you will be shocked to discover that every offense you see in another is simply a finger pointing out your own.

Lord, give us eyes to see our own true wretchedness in your sight and the plight of our neighbors caught in traps of sin. Give us compassionate spirits and clarity of vision so we do not alienate ourselves from you in our effort to feel better than another of your children. +

The Main Thing

2010-03-12T08:03:00.004-06:00

"We shall say no more, 'Our God' to the work of our hands" (Hos. 14:3). Few of us are guilty of outright idolatry, but we are all guilty of allowing our decisions and actions to be ruled by powers other than the one true God: desire for approval, addiction to work or other self-medicating escapes from reality, greed for gain, need for control. "These dictators can become so powerful that we no longer recognize the voice of God who speaks a different language than they do."

When a scribe asked Jesus which of the numerous commandments of the Law of the Torah was the most important, he probably expected Him to choose one of the 10, possibly the first: "You shall have no other Gods before me." But scribes were experts on every question of the Law. Was this scribe asking out of a desire to know Jesus' point of view, to know God more deeply, or to trap Him? It is not said. What we know is that this scribe was captivated by something about Jesus, and Jesus in turn seems somehow intrigued by the scribe.

"Perhaps his gaze, so tender and knowing, pierced through to the scribe's soul. Maybe the authority in His voice or manner disarmed him. We can only imagine that to be in Christ's presence must have been disorienting for all but the hardest of hearts, but we will never know how Jesus overcame this individual; all we know is that the man momentarily forgot his previous goal and fell under the power of Christ's presence. Perhaps it was this fact, even more than the truth of the scribe's answer, that led Jesus to conclude that the man was not far from the kingdom of God."

What we can be sure of through this exchange is this: whatever our motives, whatever our perceived needs, whatever our desires in approaching Jesus, when we position ourselves under His presence, we discover that the main thing is to keep the main thing, the main thing.

Suggested penance: What routinely distracts you from the presence of Jesus? Fast from that thing today, and make Him the "main thing."

Lord, allow us to succumb to the power of your Son. Take away our hearts of stone, so that we remain naked and disarmed in His presence. May our hearts be pierced by the tenderness in His gaze. +

Lord of the Flies

2010-03-11T07:54:00.004-06:00

One distinctive hallmark of Satanic activity is the tendency to attribute evil to what is good. Politics is rife with this complete disorder: abortion is an obvious issue. It is backwardness, and we do this to our neighbors in an effort to keep our own perceptions in tact. Being challenged to our core is part of growth. Yes, we must be discerning, not following every wind that blows, but we must not point the finger of judgment until we have first been diligent to remove the beam that prevents proper vision.

This was the Pharisees' true guilt. They accused the God of the universe of occultism and put Him to death for challenging them and their personal, political power. I cannot use strong enough words to warn of this danger, because every time we are guilty of gossip, false conclusions, bad judgments, we participate in the work of Satan in small, but destructive ways. This is his mission: destruction, and sadly, he uses us to do it.

"I would have you know that every virtue is obtained by means of your neighbor, and likewise, every defect; you are obliged to love your neighbor as yourself, you own first chief neighbor.
Against whom does pride bring forth evils? Against the neighbor, through love of one's own reputation. Whence comes hatred of the neighbor, reputing oneself to be greater than he, and in this way injury is done to him.

"And if a man be a person of authority he produces also injustice and cruelty. See now that in all places and in all kinds of people sin is always produced against the neighbor, and through his medium. In no other way could sin ever be committed either secret or open. A secret sin is when you deprive your neighbor of something you should give him; an open sin is where you perform positive acts of sin.

"A man who does not love, does not help his neighbor, and thereby does himself an injury for he cuts off from himself grace and injures his neighbor by depriving him of the benefit of prayers and of the sweet desires he is bound to offer for him to Me. Thus every act of help that he performs should proceed from the charity which he has through love of Me. And every evil also, is done by means of his neighbor, for if he does not love Me he cannot be in charity with his neighbor, and all evils derive from the soul's deprivation of love of Me to his neighbor."

Dialogue, St. Catherine of Sienna

Suggested Penance: Pray for and give alms for someone you think is an evil or bad person, because even in them, God is at work.

Awaken me, God ever true, to the ways in which my own words and actions cancel themselves out, so that I may see and call good and evil by their proper name, and delight in detecting the seed of the Word at work in others. +

The Light at the End of the Tunnel

2010-03-10T08:14:00.002-06:00

"The will is a master that has, in theory, the ordering of everything, but in fact, the full control of nothing. It becomes the "will" when it seeks to claim its "rights," to acquire mastery over the passions and feelings. It is "good" when this is done according to the divine plan, and to the grace of the present moment, seeking neither more nor less than what God wants for it. A will that allows itself to be dethroned and puts up no fight against its rebellious servants [passions and feelings], is weak and does not merit the name of will, nor of good. It is not enough not to will evil.

"When we give God our will fully, little by little he takes the rest, all our faculties, the whole man. The conquest no longer rests with us, but with God; it becomes his affair. He does this by the various states and by the trials he sends us. We must cooperate with him with our will in [this].

"Where God is at work, the devil is not idle. When you try over a period to correct yourself on a particular point, do not be surprised if you have to submit to violent temptations on that very point, even to repeated falls. The important thing is to never give in. The effort, which is part of the battle, even when there is nothing to show for it, plays an enormous part in the formation of the will."

Where Silence is Praise, Dom Augustin Guillerand

Suggested penance: Clean up someone else's mess today.

Lord, grant that we may learn from our Lenten observance and be nourished by your word, so that we gain control over ourselves, wholeheartedly devote ourselves to you, and become forever one in prayer to you. +

Building Bridges

2010-03-09T07:16:00.002-06:00

It was an awful day when God asked me to ask my father's forgiveness for anger and angry expressions provoked by profound wounds I received at his hands as a child. He was an extremely aggressive authoritarian, abusive, although not physically, and I was a very sensitive soul, especially as a child. I had carried and tried to deal with the hurt and anger my whole life, cut myself off from my father and tried very hard to simply pretend he did not exist.

God wanted me to ask him to forgive me for not honoring him as my father, and I felt betrayed by God that He would ask it of me because of the pain my father had heaped on me all my life. It was my dad's duty to ask ME for forgiveness. I had no fault whatsoever in the wrongs done to me.

I remember God drawing a parallel between these wrongs and persecution, and that bothered me, because although I had suffered a great deal, I had not died a martyr or even literally been persecuted for my faith, and the word "persecution" held martyrdom connotations for me. Even so, God affirmed that to suffer because I loved him, and in obedience to him, was the same as persecution and received the same reward. I was amazed.

I wish I could say I promptly called my dad up and asked for forgiveness; I didn't for a long time. I had formed a deeply rooted conviction that I would never be humiliated before my father again. I did not want to give him even a tiny bit of power over me with which to hurt me one more second of my life, and I did not want to cry as was my habit any time I got near those emotions. But I did tell God that day that if He would help me, I would come to desire what He wanted of me, and would try to do it.

The day I called my dad to ask his forgiveness, he returned to his old routines and tactics like a dog to vomit. He denied ever having done anything that could have been hurtful, and accused me of lies and various other sins of which I knew I was not guilty. Our whole difficult relationship was my fault and my responsibility. I was the child, he was the parent. It was my duty to honor him.

I cried until I feared I was incoherent, but I plowed forward and finally got the deed done. What a delight and shock when I hung up the phone a free woman! Nothing he had said to me had touched me in those deep places. They were not "healed", but they were no longer bleeding out and in danger of killing me. I could not believe it. I wasn't reeling, I wasn't confused, I wasn't affected, except to feel sorry for him.

In time, God led me to begin looking for my father's good points, and I was shocked to the core to discover so many. I fell in love with my dad. I came to see him more as he was than the caricature I had formed of him in my mind and heart. He was simply an angry, fearful, insecure man who desperately needed love and God.

Today, our relationship is not really "close" because I believe he is incapable of real intimacy and that he could still harm me if I did not maintain some boundaries, but it is a really good relationship. I love him. Really. And that is truly miraculous.

Forgiveness is the hardest human thing we do. That is why it is such a precious, valuable act of love in God's sight. When we cannot, will not, or do not forgive, we have not yet seen our own guilt before God, for we are all guilty of hurting others out of our own pain, and to the same or deeper degrees.

"If the Lord rescues me from the snares of my faults, should I not extend the same hand of rescue to my neighbor? Resentment, grudges, retaliation do not help those who offend me. They merely confirm the breach between us. Bridge building is expensive, as the cross demonstrates, but the people stranded on both sides are all freed by the bridge."

Suggested penance: Look for virtue in the person for whom you hold a grudge. In their temperament and personality, there are positive elements. Seek out how you contributed to your rift. List the person's virtues and your own faults before God and ask for his help to forgive the person, remembering that it is a process that must be repeated as you fall back into to your anger, and is not often a one time event.

Heavenly Father, forgive me for forgetting your forgiveness and for failing to send it heartily into the lives of my brothers and sisters in debt to both of us. +

The Battle Line

2010-03-08T08:22:00.001-06:00

"On the earth, the Church is made for fighting; by vocation, she wages war against evil; by mission, she stands on the front lines of evil; by office, she delivers from evil. A realistic love for the Church, for Christ, necessarily entails taking your blows and living with bruises. What gives the Church's combat meaning, is hope.

"The [literal] frontier of the Church passes directly through each of us.
This is the line that divides good from evil; it is the line which separates the 'with God' from the 'against God.' The place that Christian hope assigns to us is that narrow ridge, that borderline, at which our vocation requires we choose, every day, and every hour, to be faithful to God's faithfulness to us. While we are on the earth, this choice cannot help but tear us in two.

But hope never allows us therefore to fall to self-pitying. It is the suffering of the woman who is bringing a child into the world. Each time we are thus torn apart, we become as it were breaches in the world's resistance. We create a space for God's life to pass through."

We, the Ordinary People of the Streets, Madeline Delbrel

Suggested penance: Look for an opportunity today to stand in the spiritual gap for someone: perform some good for your neighbor, or pray for him or her.

Lord, it is a fearful thought that I am part of the frontline, the line that divides what is yours and what is not. Remind me that my actions, demeanor, and words can stand in the gap for others and win another step in the advance of love through your Church, your body on earth. +

Brown Thumbs

2010-03-07T16:08:00.002-06:00

So was it just me, or did the gospel reading today smack anyone else upside the spiritual head? I have really been struggling with a fig-tree issue. I have been complaining/discussing/sobbing to the Lord about my own fig tree that I have faithfully cultivated for some years now in response to His direction and leading, but no fruit.

For about a week, I have been making my case to Him, often in tones of frustration and even desperation. I am ready to cut this barren fig tree down. It's completely fruitless and I am sick of babying it to no avail. The proverbial hatchet is at the base, and I've simply been waiting for the hutzpah to finally put myself out of misery.

I am ready to admit I was wrong and be done with the whole affair. As painful as that is, it has become far more painful to continue seeking fruit on a barren tree, and it is beginning to affect my spiritual life in a negative way.

And then the reading: "And [the vine-dresser] answered [the vineyard owner], 'Let it alone, sir, this year also, till I dig about it and put on manure. And if it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down'" (Luke 13:9).

So one more year, one more growing season. And that's it. I mean it. It's hard for me even to consider waiting that long to chop the hateful thing down. But I will, and I will wait for the vinedresser (who is really the vineyard owner) to cultivate it Himself. He'll have to, because apparently I have a brown thumb.

Suggested penance: Go plant something, and while you do so, talk to God about that fig tree that you're ready to give up on. Commit to one more season before you cut it down and give up. Tell Him how you feel: "'Come now, let us reason together,' says the Lord" (Is. 1:18). Make your case and then wait to see what He says and does.

O Lord, our Father, teach us to trust in your providence and your timing in all things and all events, and most of all to look to Christ, who "for the joy set before Him endured the cross" (Heb. 12:2). Surely if His joy helped Him persevere through that awful agony, then our joy will help us to endure too. We ask for grace to do so, for we are weary and ready to give up. +

Going Home

2010-03-06T10:04:00.002-06:00

Today's gospel is the parable of the prodigal son. Since being received into full communion with the Church, this parable has special meaning for me, because as a Protestant I was taught that the verse "no man can pluck you out of His hand" meant that I, myself, was unable to "un-choose" God.
There are SO many passages of Scripture that correct this view; but I think this parable has extra punch because it teaches we can un-choose.

This son has every advantage that being a son can offer. Yet, he chooses to leave his father, his father's house, and his brothers and sisters for a different life. One that is away from the father. Away from home. Away from the family love. He chooses it specifically so that he can do what he wants, live fast, party hard. And the father lets him, presumably with the knowledge that to prevent it would make things worse. This boy must learn the hard lessons, the hard way. Been there! Haven't you? Broken-hearted, the father watches him walk away, and even gives him his inheritance prematurely, knowing it will go to complete waste.

Look what the father says about the son: "he was dead; he was lost." The son un-chose and became dead to the father, lost to him. Out of reach. Thankfully, we are never out of reach of our Heavenly Father, who through His own obedient Son teaches us that He is waiting and watching for our return, offering us grace upon grace to move us to repentance and return. But God created man with free will, the freedom to choose the good, or the evil. Every choice counts. Every one is important.

"Truly, truly, I say," we have the freedom to choose. Always. God does not change His mind. He gives free will, and He does not take it back until our lives are fully over and we have chosen for the last time. And choose we do, often wrongly and painfully.

The beautiful news is, however, that when we have learned, when we have turned back, when we go home, God is always, always, always already looking and hoping and waiting for us. And He works all our awful experiences into our salvation and for our good, if we will simply allow Him to.

The Church is always waiting for her children to come home. Won't you?

Suggested penance: Go to church. Go to Confession. Fall into the arms of your Heavenly Father and come home to your brothers and sisters.

"Almighty Father, your love never fails. In my darkest moments, you wait to embrace me and give me life again. Turn my steps away from sin and show me the way home to you." +

Avoiding Evil

2010-03-05T07:34:00.001-06:00

"When the devil aims to keep a man enslaved to sin, he not only banishes thoughts that could lead to repentance, but instead of them he implants evil and depraved thoughts, at the same time providing opportunities for committing the sin which is most habitual for him and enticing him to fall into it, or into other more grievous sins as often as possible. Thus the sinner becomes more and more blind and darkened" (Magnificat).

I have always been fascinated by the Pharisees because I believe they give us a really accurate picture of what evil really is. At its most malevolent, it wears holy clothes while perpetuating every foul and angry thing, and it preys on the holy ones when they are most vulnerable: children, old people, when we are hurt, hungry, weak.

The Pharisees in the gospel today were not simply ignorant of who Jesus was. They didn't just make a terrible mistake, or find themselves accidentally on the wrong side of the road. They preached religion, how to worship God, and then, full of malice and contempt, they publicly tortured and murdered the one they pretended to love, the one who loved them. This kind of evil is only possible after a considerable period of darkening and sin. And every sin leads down this path.

Because spirit is dynamic and alive, it is always moving in one direction or the other. It either moves toward God or away, and every decision contributes to its movement. We should truly pray for grace during temptation, pray to persevere, pray to remain humble and close to the cross of God. That is true worship.

Suggested penance: When are you most vulnerable to sin? What is your "habitual" sin? How do you handle that temptation? Spend ten minutes praying the ancient Jesus prayer:

Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner.

Hearing God Speak

2010-03-04T08:11:00.004-06:00

I was sitting in Bible study one Sunday morning in a very wealthy mega- church, full of perfectly manicured, SUV driving, mansion owning, beautiful, professional, kind-hearted people. They were all of us. The question was, "how can you know for sure whether or not your wealth is dangerous to your spiritual life?".

There were several pat answers, but a woman sitting near the front who was known to have very little compared to those in the room said that you can know absolutely that wealth is not an idol by giving it away. The room sat in stunned silence for several moments.

Most of us would not regard ourselves as "rich," but I suggest we are compared to large portions of the earth. There is always something we have that a neighbor needs, that we can give away.

"What the rich man was looking for in fine garments and sumptuous dining he was meant to find in the beggar on his doorstep. Every person and circumstance God puts in our path becomes the way to the fulfillment we are looking for."

What are you looking for in life? What is that "thing"? The one that if "it" would happen, everything would be RIGHT with your world. The truth is, God speaks through our current circumstances, we are just often unwilling to hear through the unexpected ways he speaks, because they do not line up with what we are searching for. While God's answer sits on our doorstep, we are too busy working to force what we want to pay attention to it.

Suggested penance: Consider what your "thing" is. Is it sitting on your doorstep? What IS sitting on your doorstep? What might God be trying to tell you about your "thing" through your circumstances and through what is already on your "doorstep"? Are you willing to listen to Him? If you are willing to hear God, give something you love away today. Remember that whatever you give, you really give to God who is "disguised" in the other person.

Lord, help me to see the signs you place in my life and through which you speak, and once I have heard, give me the grace to accept and follow your will. +

From the Bottom of the Pile

2010-03-03T08:01:00.000-06:00

Don't you just hate people who break line in the grocery store while pretending they don't know that's what they're doing? And then there are those people who drive on the highway median for a mile or more, bypassing you and countless others in the line of traffic when there's a wreck or construction. Do you do that?

In today's Lenten gospel we see the disciples breaking line. Their mother goes to Jesus and asks that they get the best seats in His kingdom. Jesus indicates what such a position will require - He laid out brutal martyrdom in the verses just before their request - and they, rather casually, insist they can handle whatever it takes to get the position.

I want to deride the disciples for their arrogance, but I have done this very thing too many times. Asked for something or committed something to God, something BIG, and then realized down the road what a stupid thing I had done. How presumptuous it was. How rude.

It's interesting to me that Jesus tells them they'll get the suffering they insist they can handle, but not necessarily the seats. It's almost a test to see if they'll follow anyway.

Suggested penance: What do you expect to "get" from God for following Him? Consider it here. Will you continue to follow Him if you never receive it? Talk to Him about that.

Lord, I confess that most of my following you involves getting something for myself. Teach me the selflessness of your Way. Impress on me the weight of leadership, and the reality that it requires my being at the absolute bottom of the pile and at the disposal of everyone else first. Give me the grace to serve like you served, and when I attempt it most heroically, the grace to persevere. +

Blind Guides

2010-03-02T08:18:00.001-06:00

When I came into full communion with the Church several years ago, I was met with nothing less than persecution from several people who completely astounded me. I was so shocked by their dogmatism for their own beliefs because they had absolutely nothing to show for them.

They hadn't been to church in 20 years or more, rarely prayed, were carnal and worldly minded, and enslaved to all sorts of physical habits and addictions. This was just the stuff I could see and knew about. Who knew what they harbored privately?

These were people who claimed themselves religious, qualified to teach and rebuke me. Needless to say, I was turned off by the hypocrisy and they got my deaf ear. Jesus saved His most scathing rebukes for these people. The ones who are blind to their own condition, but claim to see clearly the conditions of others beneath them.

Sadly, we all have this tendency. It is so important that when we see another's faults, that we pray for them (1Jn 5:16 If any one sees his brother committing what is not a mortal sin, he will ask, and God will give him life for those whose sin is not mortal.). I have learned over and over and over that things are not always as they seem.

Suggested penance: When someone's fault is put before you today, pray for them.

Lord, remind me that the beam in my eye obscures my vision and causes me to make false and unloving judgments. Show me the areas in my life that I am hypocritical, and that turn non-Christians off of faith and away from you. +

Getting More God

2010-03-01T04:57:00.001-06:00

"[T]hat very same measure with which a man measures [love] to me, does he receive in himself the measure of My goodness."

Treatise of Divine Providence, St. Catherine of Sienna

It is a frightening thought that God gives to us in the measure that we give to Him. No wonder we are habitually emaciated in spirit. This Lent, make it your purpose to give extravagantly to God, for He will give back in "good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over; [it]will be put into your lap. For the measure you give will be the measure you get back" (Luke 6:38).

Suggested Penance: Give up something extra today, but do it for an enemy. Give what you give up to him. If you are unable to do this literally for distance sake, make it a spiritual exercise. If you cannot bring your self to do this, ask God to make you willing to do so in time.

Lord, we confess our stinginess to you in the face of your overwhelming generosity to us. Teach us to risk it all on you. Teach us to abandon everything to you and to trust you hilariously and extravagantly, and as we do so, remind to us to watch as you overflow the cups of our lives with every good thing. +

Storming the Obstacles

2010-02-28T17:49:00.004-06:00

"It is a measure of our humanity that we should come to be fascinated by God, and then all our life will fall into place, all our faculties will function in the way that God intended them to function, we can then put up with an awful lot of tiresome things in life, because they pale in significance beside the wonder of God. In that [transfiguration] light even pain and failure and betrayal cease to matter too much. Even they can be seen to shine, when they are seen in God...

"If we allow [the drive to transcend ourselves] to affect us, we shall be laying ourselves open to the most dangerous and devastating force in existence. The urge that drives us to seek God is the same as the urge to drives us to smash things. The old psychologists were absolutely correct in the ambiguous role they ascribed to our power of anger. It is the power that smashes through limitations, leading us to either become visionaries or to become vandals."

The Beatitudes: Soundings in Christian Traditions, Fr. Simon Tugwell

Suggested penance: When you would speak during prayer, remain silent. Remain silent that you might hear the whisper of God.

Lord, help us remain silent, as you instructed an impatient St. Peter to remain silent on the mountain of Transfiguration. As we wait for you there, transform us in that occupied and peopled silence, and teach us the inestimable value of it for our souls. +

End of post

Our Quality of Life

2010-02-27T14:59:00.003-06:00

"Be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect" Matt. 5:48). This verse from today's gospel used to bug me. Everybody was always telling me I had to grow into the likeness of Christ. That I should be holy, because God is holy. I always wondered why. If God is holy, why should I be? And who's perfect anyway? The whole idea just seemed pointless.

Later, I discovered that "perfect" in the Scriptures means "mature." God wants us to be mature and healthy because He is both. But He is also holy, or "set apart", and He wants me to be too. The point of holiness regards our quality of life.
There is a certain quality to God's life that the beatitudes call "blessed." This blessedness becomes our own in the measure that we live the kind of life God lives.

What kind of life does God "live"? Is He happy? At rest? At peace? Is He useful, creative, in loving relationship? Yes! But specifically, God "lives" sacrificially. The more sacrificially we live, the more like God we become. The more like God we become the better our quality of life is. We grow in this holiness throughout our lives, until our capacity to receive God and therefore to live sacrificially, is maximized (or we should anyway). Our quality of life is then maximized.

Suggested Penance: Do something sacrificial today, sacrificial to the point of pain. Ask for grace to do so.

Lord, help us as we struggle to become more like you, to grow in grace and holiness. We desperately need your help and call on you and your saints and angels on our behalf as we serve others sacrificially today. +

Where is everybody?

2010-02-26T12:35:00.000-06:00

This is a sticky post. Today's meditation is below.

Ok, so I must have the shyest (but the absolute best) 52 followers in the blogosphere. You never comment! I tried to make it easier by adding a "rate this" button to the end of each post, but it's not working for some reason. Thank you for following and reading. I pray blessings on each of you...

Lord, I am so thankful for the privilege of sharing this space online and in history with my readers. Please bless them with a great sense of your presence here, and of my gratitude for their attention. I pray we would all seek you, and in seeking, that we would find the thrill and the most profound love of our lives. Hail Mary... + Amen

Achieving Happiness

2010-02-26T09:49:00.003-06:00

"The true definition of happiness is not 'living as you will,' but the satisfaction of all wants when nothing is wanted wrongly ... if we truly desire happiness, we are desiring immortality."

Augustine of Hippo

Suggested Penance: Gain a mental picture of something you want very badly. Think about what will happen if you do not get it. Will you be mad at God? Will you stop following Him, even for a little while, a day?

Now consider: is this something God wants for you? Do you put Him first? "Delight in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart" (Ps. 37:4). "Seek first the kingdom of God, and all these things will be yours as well" (Matt. 6:33).

Lord, sadly we admit that we do not always want for ourselves what you want for us. But we truly want to be one with you. Make us want what you want. Show us exactly how to put you first. Align our desires with your will, and we will be truly happy.

End of post

The Measure of Love

2010-02-25T03:14:00.004-06:00

My husband's grandmother is increasingly unable to do the smallest of things for herself. She cannot go to the bathroom, she cannot wash, she cannot cook or clean for herself. Recently I had to help her on a bedpan. There was no one else in the room, and although I did not want to embarass her since I am technically not a close relative, I was the only one available. She told me she wished I didn't have to do it for her.

Some would say she has outlived her usefulness, but what she is teaching me in her helplessness is that this is what I am here for.

"As I get older Lent becomes less a time of recounting my sins and more a time when I sense how things have changed in my life. I consider the situations in which I have no control. The challenge of faith is how to stand firm in those moments. The journey of Lent is a time of counting on the power of Jesus to keep me firm and steady when the ground below me shifts. All around me, there are people for whom the journey has become more difficult. They do not need my judgment or opinions" (Magnificat Lenten Companion). They need me to be present with them in the power of Jesus. That is what we are all here for. It is what we all need.

Suggested penance: visit an elderly person and do something difficult but special for him or her out of pure love.

Lord, Teach me to measure my days, but not my love, as the measure that I use toward others is the measure that you will measure unto to me (Matt. 7:2).

End of post

Cast Your Cares Upon the Lord

2010-02-24T15:31:00.004-06:00

"You cling too fast to these doubts and fears. You concentrate upon them too much, instead of ignoring them and casting yourself upon God in utter self-abandonment, as I have consistently exhorted you for so long past.

"When we have reached the lowest depths of our nothingness, we can have no trust in ourselves, nor in any way rely upon our works; for in these are to be found only wretchedness, self-love, and corruption. Such complete distrust and utter scorn of the self is the one source from which originate those delightful consolations of souls wholly surrendered to God -- their unalterable peace, their blessed joy, and their unshakable trust in none but God.

Ah, would that you knew the gift of God, the reward and the merit and the power and the peace, the blessed assurance of salvation that are hidden in this abandonment; then would you soon be rid of all your fears and anxieties."

Abandonment to Divine Providence, Fr. Jean de Caussade

Suggested penance: Mentally gain a picture of the one major fear or anxiety in your life. Imagine yourself laying it at the feet of Jesus. Every time you catch yourself worrying over that issue, return in your mind to that picture and lay it at the feet of Christ again and again, until it is finally and truly his.

Lord, Help me know and remember that I can always cast all my cares at your feet, because you love me so much. (1Pe 5:7 Cast all your anxieties on him, for he cares about you.)

End of post

Why Doesn't God Answer My Prayer?

2010-02-23T08:55:00.000-06:00

"And this is the confidence which we have in him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us.
And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have obtained the requests made of him" (1Jn 5:15).

Sometimes we ask for things that are not God's will, even though it may seem like a good thing. "You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions" (James 4:3). We simply want our way whether it is good for us or another person, or not.

The key is to ask according to God's will. How do we know God's will? By getting to know Him. God always answers our prayers. He always says "yes," "no," or "wait." I find that "wait" is the hardest answer, and that we may have to wait a LONG time!

Suggested penance: Go out of your way to perform random acts of kindness today. When it is difficult, ask for God's grace. That is always an answered prayer!

Lord, please give me the grace both to know and to yield to your will.

First Monday of Lent: How to Be Above Temptation

2010-02-22T12:26:00.001-06:00

I particularly love the Scriptural account of the temptation of Christ, because it reinforces what I have found to be true in my own life, and what the Church has always taught: that the Scriptures are part of the "one table of the Lord" (CCC 103), food for the journey, and ammunition and protection from attacks of the enemy.

Jesus uses the Scriptures in these temptations to rebut the suggestions Satan makes. Not only does He have the Scriptures hidden in His heart so they can be of help when He is in need, but He applies them directly to the temptation, and rises above the lies suggested and offered by Satan with the truth of the Scriptures.

And so we learn that man cannot live on bread alone, he must also live by the Scriptures: "every word that proceeds from the mouth of God."

Suggested penance - memorize this verse of Scripture today: "Man cannot live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God."

Lord, thank you for giving me the tools to live a holy life. Please also give me the desire and will to seek out and learn verses of Scripture that can help me combat temptation.

End of post

First Sunday of Lent

2010-02-21T11:40:00.002-06:00

How often we are tempted to rely on material things, for security, for happiness, for worth. Maybe food, maybe the 401K, maybe the home, maybe the acceptance of certain people. Why does God allow us to hunger? Why does he allow the gnawing at our souls that motivates our desperate attempts to fill the need in ourselves?

Maybe we are tempted to think that poverty is the cause of all the world's trouble, if everyone in the world simply had enough to eat, all our ills would be solved.

No, the hunger simply reveals the true issue.

"Man shall not live on bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God." Jesus was quoting the Scriptures in Deuteronomy that tell us the reason God allows the world, you and I, to hunger:

"And you shall remember all the way which the LORD your God has led you these forty years in the desert wilderness, that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments, or not. And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know; that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but that man lives by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the LORD" (Deut. 8:2-4).

When you hunger for love, for acceptance, for respect, for worth, God is prompting you to seek Him more fully, "in the hope that [you] might feel after him and find him. Yet he is not far from each one of us" (Acts 17:27). He promises to feed you with heavenly food, with manna, a food with which you were previously unfamiliar, so that you will know that what life is truly about, and that only Jesus can satisfy the hungry souls of men.

Dear Lord, thank you for reminding me that my desert has a purpose, that the hunger there is meant for my good. May I remember to come to you with the deep, persisting hungers that cry out to be fed in my soul this Lent.

Suggested penance: fast from something extra today.

Saturday after Ash Wednesday

2010-02-20T05:40:00.006-06:00

"Watch and pray that you might not undergo the test. The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak" (Matt. 26:41).

Surely nothing proves the truth of this statement than the penances and fasts of Lent, if we really enter into them. How very weak is the flesh, terrifyingly so. Just when we have "it" licked, we hit a rough patch, get lonely, get hungry, get hurt, get angry,

and what happens? We fall. We turn outward, rather than inward, and grasp at the forbidden thing that calls to us to just "fall." We clutch and grasp, desperate to get at the nameless something than claws and gnaws at us, and we fall with relief. A short-lived, devastating, embarrassing "relief."

This was the temptation of Christ in the desert, the desert we share during Lent, if we dare enter into it and allow God to show us how weak we really are.

Yes, we fall. Are fallen.

But Jesus rose. And so will we.

Dear Lord, help me to turn inward to you when I feel the emptiness that whispers the temptation to fall. Let us, instead, fall into the bed of faith prepared for us by and through Christ.

Friday after Ash Wednesday

2010-02-19T18:28:00.002-06:00

I'll be honest. My whole life for the last couple of years has been one, looooonnnnggg fast and penance. I was laid off in the first wave of job losses, back in November two years ago. I've been out of work for that long, and the thought of what to give up for Lent had me ... well, snippy. What's left to give up? I do without so much already, and truly, I got a little snippy with God about it.

Until this verse popped into my head, "For consider him that endured such contradiction of sinners against himself, lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds. Ye have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin (Heb. 12:3-4).

I realized I have not yet given it all, but Someone else did. For me. Surely He is worth that extra penance. Isn't He?

Lord, give me the grace to be scandalously generous with my penances this Lent, and to remember how scandalously generous you are with men.

Thursday after Ash Wednesday

2010-02-18T04:23:00.002-06:00

"From dust you came and to dust you will return," are the words pronounced on us as we received ashes yesterday. How many days are written in the book of your life? How many have you read? Right now, seriously consider how much time you have left. How much time remains to

reconcile that relationship, forgive that offender, get serious with God, fulfill that dream, reach that goal? Spend some time in thought today about your own dying, about leaving the people you love to live on without you. What are your fears? Your hopes?

Remember all those who will die today, this hour, this minute. Pray for them.

The words "to dust you will return" are an invitation to Lent.

Lord, I fear the transience of my existence. Help me face the inevitability of my own dying, and that of those I love, with peace and love, so that I may enter into the holiness of death unto resurrection life.

Wordless Wednesday

2010-02-17T05:00:00.000-06:00

Here's something suggested by a reader. Beautiful.

QOTD

2010-02-16T08:32:00.002-06:00

God is the friend of silence, in that silence he will listen to us; there he will speak to our soul, and there we will hear his voice. The fruit of silence is faith. The fruit of faith is prayer, the fruit of prayer is love, the fruit of love is service and the fruit of service is silence.

In the silence of the heart God speaks. If you face God in prayer and silence, God will speak to you. Then you will know that you are nothing. It is only when you realize your nothingness, your emptiness, that God can fill you with Himself. Silence gives us a new way of looking at everything. We need this silence in order to touch souls. God is the friend of silence. His language is silence. 'Be still and know that I am God'.

Blessed Mother Teresa

Living Water

2010-02-15T05:11:00.018-06:00

Water is such an invigorating element. Biology tells us it is the main ingredient necessary to generate and sustain life; it is, therefore, a telling symbol, as Jesus so beautifully indicated. It was into the waters of primeval chaos that God spoke and brought forth natural life.

In the Old Testament area, between the horned altar of sacrifice and the entrance to the sanctuary, stood what Protestants would call a baptistry, Catholics a baptismal font. In the Scriptures it is called a “laver,” from the word wash; we get the word lavatory from the same root.
Ordered as part of the tabernacle equipment, it was made of copper (“bronze”), a symbol of judgment (Exodus 30). Of two parts, “the bowl and its foot,” it was shaped something like a birdbath, and made from the polished mirrors of chaste women who served at the entrance of the tabernacle.

The laver was constantly refilled, probably from the stricken rock, which was the only available water source in the desert. "It was no motionless rock which followed the people” ( S, Ambrose, de Sacramentis, lib. v. c. 1). Tertullian called this water-rock their “companion” and said, "This is the water which flowed from the rock which accompanied the people" (de Baptismo, c. ix.). This water-giving rock followed them miraculously through the desert as a type of life-giving Christ (1 Cor. 10:1-4). The sacrifices and priests were ritually cleansed in the laver of water.

The forerunner of New Testament Baptism – the meaning of wash (laver) in Greek is baptism –the only two New Testament occurrences of the word laver are in Ephesians 5:26, “…that He might cleanse her (the Church) by the washing (laver, baptism) of water with the word,” and Titus 3:5, “he saved us, not because of deeds done by us in righteousness, but in virtue of his own mercy, by the washing (laver, baptism) of regeneration and renewal in the Holy Spirit.”

These verses are an echo of what Christ said to Nicodemus: “unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God" (John 3:5). He emphasizes His meaning is spiritual, a spiritual rebirth that must be generated by water and the Holy Spirit. St. Peter re-emphasizes this point, saying baptism saves us (1 Peter 3:21).

The Ephesians passage indicates that it is the Rite of Baptism, the “water and the word” spoken (as always, the words of Jesus), that accomplish the cleansing. The Titus passage clarifies that the action of grace performed by the Holy Spirit makes the water and words "generative" and efficacious. The necessity of faith not disputed, taken altogether these verses indicate that Baptism does indeed generate new life.

As always, however, the complete meaning of this laver/baptism was unknown until Christ. His first miracle was to change the water used for ritual cleansing in Judaism into the wine-blood of the New Covenant under Mary’s direction. This miracle was a fulfillment of the prophets’ use of water as a symbol of the New Covenant that revealed how cleansing, baptismal waters would soon also create new life. Then He shows us what New Testament baptism would mean.

Just before His Passion, Jesus takes up the priestly girdle in a towel of menial service; he washes the disciples’ feet, Judas included, speaking of the importance of baptism, sacrificial service, repentance and forgiveness, and then He reveals the crowning glory of what baptism means: “The cup that I drink you will drink; and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized,” he said, and proceeded to walk the terrorizing hill of Golgotha to be crucified.

Jesus was our example in all things, reminding the Church that she must also take up her cross daily, and be crucified with Him at the hands of others and in service to them. It is the Law of the New Covenant, and the Holy Spirit’s fountain of living water (John 4), our refreshment and restoration, rushing, flowing, moving, springing, redeeming, musical, quenching water.

Called to Freedom: Nuns Image the Church on Oprah

2010-02-10T05:17:00.001-06:00

It was a luminous report, burgeoning with respect, ripe with joy. It was a shot of glory between baking salmon fillets, disciplining a wayward 3 year old, and folding a load of colors.

Having previously abandoned Oprah for her politics and new-ageism after years of following, I was a little anxious at the treatment our Dominican convent in Ann Arbor, MI might receive at the hands of reporter Lisa Ling and Harpo producers.

But when, straight out of the chute, the convent was described as “thriving,” the young women “flocking” to it as they never had before, and the laughing, bright, fresh faced sisters proceeded to preach a full Catholic sermon simply by sharing their home and way of life, my apprehension turned to laugh-out-loud delight.

A Golden Opportunity Seized Through the Virtue of Hospitality

A golden opportunity rejected by other convents in the nation, the Ann Arbor Dominicans’ hospitality challenged conventional worldly wisdom in a forum that can only be characterized as miraculous and that represented Catholic women in the most refreshing way I have ever seen on TV. Because the convent is home to 100 sisters whose average age is 26, the feature communicated the vitality of a relationship with a living Christ in the most captivating way.

What constitutes restriction and freedom, happiness and joy, contentment and emptiness? How can I find fulfillment when the fabulous job, the designer duds, the handsome, fascinating boyfriend, and all the comforts and ideologies of modern life are not enough? Where can I “give who I am”? Where does consumerism and “being skinny” cease to matter for women?

These were the questions raised by the sisters’ testimonies of being called by God to religious life. “Did you hear an audible voice?” Oprah asked.

“God wanted me here and made it very clear,” 22 year old sister Francis Mary answered.

Those unexposed to Catholicism or religious life who might have expected inanity or “girliness” from a community of young women, were handed what amounted to a Catholic treatise wrapped in pithy packaging by one of the professed sisters: “Everyone is on a journey in life. But we are on a more intimate journey.”

Another went on to add that in the religious life [people] are “free to pursue God fully,” while admitting that such a life is not “for every woman,” only those in whom “noise gnaws at the human soul” and pleads for silence there.

Those who imagined religious life requires rulers hidden in the recesses of religious habits or faces clouded by somber melancholy were shocked at the brightness, the transparency and the unrehearsed sincerity of the nuns’ answers and a look at their daily routine and experiences.

What About Sex?

When asked about sex, and leaving it behind along with physical motherhood, one sister pointed out how the pervasive sexualization of our society “undermines the dignity of the human person,” while another took up the same thread by expressing that religious men and women “use the same desires [that “regular” people experience] for a greater calling.”

One postulant expressed her recent willingness to abandon sex and physical motherhood for the greater intimacy of spiritual motherhood, in part, because she did not “want to be an object.” Speaking of most nuns and their “spiritual marriage” to Jesus, Sr. Francis Mary admitted, to raucous laughter, that He is a “hard husband, because if something goes wrong in the relationship, I know it’s me.”

By far though, one of the best accounts was given by one of the sisters whose very loving, pre-convent relationship ended in separation, only to ultimately be rediscovered again later in God; she had entered the convent, and he the priesthood! What a breathtaking image of the Christian life, and it was on the world stage.

Spiritual Motherhood and Freedom

The sisters were everything beautiful and truthful that the Church has to offer: they were Christ to Oprah and to a world in need of its meaning in Him. I felt as though, finally!, someone was speaking with my voice and my faith, and not by rejecting men, sex, society, or even necessarily material things, but by their acceptance of something inexplicably more holy and beautiful. It was real feminism at its best, and true spiritual motherhood, for who knows how many vocations will be born from the womb of this broadcast?

Lisa Ling’s investigative report for Oprah inspired me to deeper love: to a greater, more total, more radical obedience, a brotherly love on which I place no limits, shocking generosity and simplicity, and an attractive, positive modesty and its accompanying spiritual allure.

In a world where religious brothers and sisters probably hold the seams of a morally teetering earth together with their invisible, fervent, ceaseless prayers for us all, the broadcast revealed the Church in all her glory through our religious brothers and sisters. Surely those sisters inspired Lisa Ling to investigate true freedom, for the last words about them before the end of the show were hers, “Their lives are much more liberating.”

QOTD

2010-02-09T22:24:00.001-06:00

Fear of loss a path to the dark side is. –Yoda

end of post

Who Wears the Pants?

2010-02-08T12:30:00.006-06:00

The lesson last night in the Super Bowl commercials seemed to be that men do not “wear the pants” in any modern arena. Was anyone else struck by the man-bashing in the Super Bowl ads? While I was thankful there was no re-occurrence of the Janet Jackson “bra failure,” it seemed the advertisers held a meeting to see how else they could paint men in the stupidest possible light.

Taking Doritos from Children

Doritos highlighted the masculine leadership dilemma for the African American community, pointing out that black men leave women to mother alone, so they can chase other women with other children. Since men have largely abdicated the responsibility in that community, the commercial seemed to say, young children must protect the home, the mother, and the Doritos from the ravenous, sex-seeking, Doritos eating Man.

Then there were the Dodge and FloTV commercials. Dodge featured the “typical” beleaguered and dazed male in close-up while a litany of humiliations he endures at the hands of his female other, by the hour, on a daily basis, rolled through in a voice over. For Dodge, the focus was that adult men, all over the world, have no masculine behavior left to them but racing a hot, black car down the road.

FloTV emphasized the stereotypical bored-man-following-materialistic-woman-around-the-shopping-mall like the pet the advertiser sought to make him, holding her purse as she tried on shoes and clothes. Insulting female stereotypes aside, wouldn’t watching the game on your cell phone make all these demeaning, menial activities so much more enjoyable? I mean, he was certainly not portrayed as holding the woman’s purse or being present with her out of love and a spirit of charity.

No Pants Allowed

In case you guys get to thinking you might “wear the pants” at work, CareerBuilder hopes to disabuse you of that notion by highlighting careers at companies with semi-naked workplaces. I know I have worked in several of those, haven’t you?

And Dockers claims you men don’t wear pants anywhere at all, and are happier for it. Their commercial followed a group of you in underwear on a pilgrimage through a wheat field singing about how happy you men are to be relieved of, and freed from, the unfair constrictions and responsibilities of pants.

For those who sadly believed they already were men, Dove rolled out “Men Care” which consists, not of nurturing, support and respect, but solely of body wash and shampoo, with a jazzy aftershave scent, I am sure. The jingle implied that manhood requires body wash.

How About We All Wear Jesus Instead

I’d just like to say that I do not “force,” or even ask, my husband to carry my purse (although he would if I needed him to), he has never used body wash except when I have forgotten to buy a bar of soap, drives a Suburban that holds all our fishing, hiking and camping gear and can still go 120, and has never worn a leopard print thong or had a spray tan like Jim McMahon.

He just tries to raise two quality sons, be a loving husband to me, and a responsible employee. He doesn’t do it for the money; there’s never enough. He doesn’t do it for the glory, because the glory won’t be revealed until heaven. He does it because he’s a real man: solid, steady, sacrificial, true, and loyal.

At the dinner table recently, after having been up at 4:30 and worked all day, he gave up the last piece of chicken on the table for my son without a single word. It made me angry at first, because I knew he had skipped lunch that day and probably wanted and needed it, and shouldn’t the best of anything go to the one who works hardest?

But God literally silenced me, when I would have intervened, to point out the picture of sacrifice it painted for us all. A small thing, yes, but it hit me hard, and I have never loved or respected my husband more than in that moment.

The one man allowed any respect by advertisers last night was Tim Tebow who was celebrated as a labor of love by his mother, while the commercial that honored him was decried in other media by the shrieking No Parenthood types. When is the social pendulum going to finally reassert itself into some modicum of balance?

For me, the most celebrated night of advertising of the year proved how pervasive the agenda is to effeminate modern men. It makes me sick. As God “works all things together for the good,” I will personally use it to motivate actions that inspire and build up healthy, godly masculinity in my husband and boys, and men in general. Ladies, it begins with us. It always does.

In Support of Men: The Genius of Women

2010-02-05T15:11:00.001-06:00

I saw a commercial last night for gym membership in which a man attempted repeatedly to open the lid of a pickle jar, only to have his wife open it for him with a derisive glance. It reminded me of a T-shirt I saw on a young girl recently that said, “Girls Rule, Boys Drool”.

In both cases I wondered what would be said if the roles were reversed. Would insulted women boycott that gym for a similar commercial demeaning the strength of women? Would a boy who wore a shirt with a similar derogatory sentiment about women be sent home for hate speech?

Female Domination, the Diminishment of Women

Increasingly, I lack sympathy for women who pontificate about society’s double standards regarding gender while conveniently denying that we women have created it. Women who claim the right to sex without love, marriage, or children, yet bemoan that they can’t get men to respect them, simply reap the whirlwind after sowing the wind. Haven’t we heard the “old wives” saying, “Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free”?
Why should men be responsible providers and work to support their families when women are determined to do it or want the government to do it? Why should men marry women who live with them and take care of them in every way outside of marriage? Why should men be responsible fathers when women seek single motherhood through fertility treatment, divorce, and custody rulings?

Why, simply for the sake of sacred marital holidays like anniversaries and Mother’s Day or a consumer holiday like Valentine’s Day, should men feel coerced to celebrate wives who marginalize or belittle them, who laugh at or make “stupid man” jokes at their expense? Could any one of us seriously imagine Mary gathering up her skirts, snatching the saw from Joseph’s calloused, creative hand, and taking over the workshop while pointing her haughty finger toward the dirty supper dishes in the kitchen?

I confess our modern double standard makes me sad and angry, because while misogyny is considered a crime tantamount to rape, man-hating is routine, accepted, and even promoted, ostensibly for historical oppression of women by men. The idea is that men are simply sowing what they reaped in ages past. There is some truth to that, but woe to those through whom the judgment comes.

Where we have allowed masculinity to remain, it is called “cowboy” or “caveman” in the most derogatory terms. Women who edify the strength of their husbands and sons are seen as objects of sympathy. Certainly this type of modern “feminism” qualifies as nothing more than the bullied becoming the bully.

The wholesale diminishment and disrespect of men is evident in our society from the heights of academic circles to the trenches of pop culture where examples of strong, virtuous, capable men are either disappearing or nonexistent. The number of men is dwindling at institutions of higher learning. History books eliminate any reference to the brilliance, foresight, and ramrod-straight virtue of our forefathers.

Sitcoms perpetuate a pervasive characterization of men as obtuse baboons who need their wives and children to explain the smallest, simplest matters. Reality shows feature gender confused or hyper-sexualized male adolescents who deride morality, virginity, and simple goodness. This is our mission field, ladies. Are not our men and boys worthy of our support?

Edification of Humanity, the Genius of Women

How does imitating the rejected model of male domination qualify as progress for women? Doesn’t it, rather, stifle the “genius of women” which is the inherent gift of women to assert their femininity while simultaneously nurturing the identity of others? Pope John Paul II insisted that, because of a woman’s moral and spiritual strength, God entrusts the human being to the woman in a special way (Mulieris Dignitatem, On the Dignity and Vocation of Women, John Paul II).

Women, we must remember that men are profoundly affected by the path of our lives; both Eve and Mary attest to that reality. We must, in the name of Charity, consider that true freedom for women respects the dignity of males as well. The in-your-face “I can do anything you can do better” attitude is patently false, as our beloved John Paul II explained. We simply do some of what they do differently, and that is what makes our partnership beautiful. What would happen if we saw our colleagues, husbands and sons as co-creators rather than adversaries?

How would we grow personally and individually if we sought, in active demonstrative ways, to build up the masculinity of our own men, and men in general? What could we become, working alongside such protective, robust leadership? We would become like Mary Magdalene, Martha, the Samaritan woman, and Mary Our Mother, women to whom Jesus entrusted some of the most profound truths of His identity and ministry and who changed the world.

This is the vista from a “new feminist” perspective. “How can it be broad to be the same thing to everyone, and narrow to be everything to someone? No, a woman’s function is laborious, but because it is gigantic, not because it is minute” (What’s Wrong with the World, G. K. Chesterton). Humanly speaking, to you, I am simply someone. To my husband and sons, however, I am everything, and that, indeed, is feminine dignity.

The Mountain of God

2010-02-04T15:12:00.002-06:00

Hebrew is a pictorial language. Because, in Hebrew, there existed no word for “famine,” the Old Testament writings stated the peoples’ teeth were clean for seven years. Clean teeth depicted a lack of food.

In the same way the terms "Most High" and "Almighty" in Psalm 91:1 are parallel and convey a "mountain-like" picture of the majesty of the Lord in the Hebrew language.

My husband and I live a state away from my family, and every time we go home we drive through the Blue Ridge Mountains. On our scenic route through Tennessee and North Carolina there is a lookout between the towns of Hot Springs and Leicester where we stop every trip. It is unique because it does not look over the tops of the misty, blue mountains, as do most of the lookouts.

I always climb the rock wall that protects tourists from falling off the mountain and stand on its surface with my arms thrown wide. While this is not something I would allow my sons to attempt, it certainly affords a better effect. Without the rock wall to restrict the view the whole side of a mountain is in my face. All I see from this perch is the vast, green face of God.

He looks me in the eye.

His breath smells like earth, fir, and pine, and His voice swirls in a whisper of misty fog around my body. It leaves me breathless. I wholly identify with the inspired psalmist's anthem. When one retreats to the shadow of the mountain he is truly concealed in the secret place of God.

Psalm 46:10 entreats, "Be still and know that I am God." The wording means literally, "cease striving." In the frantic stress of our daily living something stirs the pool of the heart with its finger, beckoning a momentary abandonment of our laborious bedlam. A Presence of neither limit nor end waits there quietly for our consideration. There is an indescribable serenity in the mountain. His voice echoes with the river through the gorge calling, "To you ... I call ... For whoever finds Me finds life" (Prov. 8:4,35).

Wordless Wednesday (sort of)

2010-02-03T10:01:00.000-06:00

Today, I invite you to offer your prayer intentions (requests), possibly by using the "comments" feature, so we can all pray with you.

For me, pray for a "yes" to an unspoken request.

In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen...+

end of post

QOTD, on humility

2010-02-01T08:38:00.001-06:00

The Song of the Water
"Come, oh come! let us away
Lower, lower every day.
Oh, what joy it is to race,
Down to find the lowest place.
This is the dearest law we know-
'It is happy to go low.'
Sweetest urge and sweetest will,
'Let us go down lower still.'
Hear the summons night and day,
Calling us to come away.
From the heights we leap and flow,
To the valleys down below.
Always answering to the call,
To the lowest place of all.
Sweetest urge and sweetest pain,
To go low and rise again."

Hinds Feet in High Places
end of post

The "Woman" of the Bible

2010-01-29T09:43:00.002-06:00

May I say that I am utterly disgusted with inane TV sitcoms that habitually present men as dazed, beer guzzling, bosom scrutinizing oafs who can hardly string two intelligent sentences together, and “progressive” female politicians who claim to speak and “fight” for me as a woman?

Granted, I’ve had my “feminist” difficulties with religion and church, my insecurities stemming from male domination in childhood. I understand that baby boomer women have an inherent suspicion of some authority structures and the men who crafted them. I get that.

I appreciate their tirelessness in providing me with the luxury of the vote, the sight of the horizon above the glass ceiling, a job that earns my own money and an education consisting of more than the minutiae of home economics. I celebrate those accomplishments on my behalf and try not to take them for granted.

Woman Oppressed

I remember the insult of what is sometimes called the “Scriptural idea” that woman was somehow a creative afterthought to man. The claim was that I seemed to exist to assuage his lonely fear and to merely help him while he alone has the capability and right to do all the doing that gets done. “Then the LORD God said, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him’” (Gen. 2:18). I remember wondering why I must always be a “helper” rather than a “doer” in my own right.

Additionally, when teaching the Galatians about one of the most important events in salvation history, St. Paul called the mother of Jesus “woman” rather than by her name, "Mary." "When the time had fully come, God sent forth his son, born of woman" (Gal. 4:4). This bothered me, but he was only following Jesus’ example: “When the wine failed, the mother of Jesus said to him, ‘They have no wine.’ And Jesus said to her, "O woman, what have you to do with me?" (Jn. 2:3-4). This sounded like marginalization of women to my sensitive ear.

I hear the argument that the Catholic Church oppresses women all the time. As a convert to that Catholic Church the only response I have ever been able to manage to that is simply “What?!” There are strains of Protestantism that are simply archaic by comparison to the Church.

When I came into the full communion of the Catholic Church I was bombarded by well-meaning Protestant wives who rebuked me for stepping out from under my “husband’s authority” and following my conscience into the Catholic Church. The verse, “Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord” (Eph. 5:22) was used against me like a club until I was sorely bruised.

As a Protestant teacher, I had been constantly reprimanded for curious men who found themselves in my Bible classes, until one precious pastor defended me. After all, the claim was, women can only teach other women or children, should not voice opinions in church, and when they want to know something about God they should ask their husbands.

Woman Raised

Conversely, what I found in the Catholic Church was the unique dignity of “woman,” for she is personified in “The Woman”, Mary, the Mother of the Lord. The previous examples from St. Paul and Jesus echo Genesis 3:15 where “the woman” is first seen at the center of salvation: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel."

The God who previously “spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days has spoken to us by a Son" (Heb. 1:1-2), fulfills the prophecy and comes as a man "born of woman," a final, eternal, saving revelation. The final Word, from a woman.

“This is the eternal and definitive Covenant in Christ, in his body and blood, in his Cross and Resurrection. Precisely because this Covenant is to be fulfilled "in flesh and blood" its beginning is in the Mother” (Mulieris Dignitatem, “On the Dignity and Vocation of Women”, John Paul II).

Rather than an insult, St. Paul indicated the profundity of this unique mission with the words, “in the fullness of time." God revealed the extraordinary dignity of "woman" and restored her to the elevated place lost through Eve’s sin. By using the Genesis terminology when speaking of Mary’s role in the Incarnation, St. Paul hearkens back to the beginning of creation, a beginning that illustrates woman as she was first created to be, in the center of the heart and mind of God and in the communion of the Trinity, and illustrates an intentional new beginning for every woman.

Mary becomes one with God, without a sexual act, but in the deepest possible way, the way of complete self-giving. As both Virgin and Mother, this self-giving, without which one cannot fully find him- or herself - speaks to us women whether celibate religious, consecrated virgins or married, whether we give birth to physical children or spiritual ones, and is why the fathers of the Church so lovingly referred to her as the “New Eve.”

This is “radical” feminism. It gets back to the root, what radical means. This is the path to authentic “power” and provides the dignity all women want and political "feminists" grasp at. Mary retains her utter uniqueness, because she alone can be one with her Son in the way of a mother and child. At the same time, it opens up a oneness we can all receive by entering into Mary’s “yes” as “The Woman,” a oneness that was communicated through a Man, one who “gave Himself up for her” (Eph. 5:22) even unto death.

I find myself increasingly moved to pity when I hear the ramblings of those of the Barbara Boxer, Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, and Camille Paglia ilk, especially those who are “Catholic” and stubbornly assert that the rights of women should include such things as aborting a human person, whether through a surgical procedure or contraception (an abortifacient). I am ready for them to simply get out of the way and allow the social pendulum to assert itself in a more youthful, feminine centrality.

“In transforming culture so that it supports life, women occupy a place, in thought and action, which is unique and decisive. It depends on them to promote a "new feminism" which rejects the temptation of imitating models of "male domination", in order to acknowledge and affirm the true genius of women in every aspect of the life of society, and overcome all discrimination, violence and exploitation” (The Gospel of Life, Pope John Paul II).

To my fellow sisters joined in what is the real “feminist” mission, the evangelization of all men and women, let us get to work. The future cries out.

Doing God's Will

2010-01-28T10:47:00.002-06:00

Be calm, infinitely calm, both in soul and in body. Do not attempt too much, but what you do, do well and gently. Quality first, but good quality. Follow grace in souls; take its step. It is adagio; often adagissimo (very slow, superslow), but very sure. Forget about yourself completely - time, studies, health, reputation...Give yourself utterly, without counting the cost, without reserve, without thought
of yourself. God alone!

We know that "all things work together for good to them that love the Lord" (Rom. 8:28). To those with good will: that is to say, those who, submitting and making over their reason and will to the Holy Spirit and allowing themselves to be guided by Him, invariably arrive at that perfection willed for them by God. That does not mean we can sit with our arms folded and leave it all to Him. On the contrary, we must make use of all that divine Providence sends us: reverses, falls even; bearing always in mind the good that the Holy Spirit wants us to draw from these things. Given that disposition, the Holy Spirit will never be absent. He also makes use of reverses to correct our faults and set us on our way again. Use everything, then, with this end in view; in all weathers, keep your compass pointing to God; make Him you aim.

Where Silence is Praise, Augustin Guillerand

Wordless Wednesday

2010-01-27T08:17:00.003-06:00

End of post.

QOTD

2010-01-26T08:18:00.000-06:00

The spur of Thy truth, O God, to man is a pain most dire.

Coronal, Paul Claudel

End of Post

We Call Him Papa

2010-01-25T07:54:00.000-06:00

Here is my latest newspaper article. I write one for the local paper once a month for the church section.
Do Catholics Worship the Pope?

Catholics do not worship the Pope any more than Protestants worship their own pastors or associational or denominational leaders. Catholics are, however, protected from denominational and interdenominational disunity and conflicting teachings by the authority structure of the Catholic Church, the head of which is the pope.

Catholic authority structure is centered around the local bishop, and as the head of the visible Church, the pope is the head bishop whose own diocese is in Rome. He is also called the chief earthly shepherd and father of the Church, our pope, meaning papa.

Beginning as early as the second century, the earliest recorded lists of popes all name St. Peter as the first pope (Hegessipus, Caius, Cyprian), the first earthly shepherd of the Church: “There shall be one shepherd and one flock (Jn. 10:16); “Feed my lambs … feed my sheep” (Jn. 21:15-17).

As the chief earthly shepherd of the Church under Christ, the pope leads and speaks for the unity of all the local bishops of the whole Catholic Church. They deliberate, adjudicate and speak as one, exclusively on matters pertaining to faith and morals. As such, the pope is divinely protected from speaking falsely when he teaches authoritatively on matters of faith and morals (Matt. 16:18-19).

This protection is called papal infallibility. Because the pope is also a man, and subject to human error, this infallibility does not mean he is sinless, and therefore does not apply to personal actions, opinions or teachings, or to subjects other than the Faith, such as nutrition, engine repair or football.

Infallibility only applies to authoritative teaching on matters of faith and morals; it is assured through the action of the Holy Spirit for the protection of the faithful; it must be interpretive in nature, not original; and it was given to the first pope by Jesus Himself and passed on to every current pope through papal succession (John 17:20, Matt. 16:18, Luke 10:16, Matt. 28:20).

The pope is not God; he has no authority to originate new doctrine and is not in any way the author of revelation, only its chief guardian and explainer. The pope’s infallibility is limited strictly to doctrinal interpretation. He has no power to add, change or subtract from the Deposit of Faith in any way, and he always speaks for all the bishops all over the world, not according to private interpretation which is prohibited by the Scriptures (2 Pet. 1:20).

For Catholics, our beloved pope is the symbol and reality of the protection and unity of God: one Lord, one faith, one baptism (Eph. 4:5). It is a unity the Word of God established, commanded, and one that remains active and operative until the end of the ages, as all His promises do: “[I pray] that they may all be one; even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that thou hast sent me” (John 17:21-23).

Any interpretation of Catholic expressions of love for the pope as worship is a misunderstanding of the command to love and obey our leaders (Phil. 2:29, Heb. 13:17) even while rejecting their personal sins (Matt. 23:3). The essence of being Catholic is adherence to the “one faith”: the Church as “the pillar and foundation of truth” (1 Tim. 3:15) and the pope as its visible shepherd. Admittedly, we do so with great passion, as to the Lord.

Our Lady of Love

2010-01-20T09:23:00.004-06:00

She is a strange and beautiful grace, a holy mystery, Our Mother. There was never a moment in Jesus’ thirty three years that Mary did not surround Him with the womb of her love, as she surrounds all of us. The first to whom God gave Himself fully, the Old Testament reveals her mysterious role in the most remarkable way, foreshadowing a poignant truth and inspiring deep veneration.

Called the Ark of the New Covenant by the Church Fathers, the Blessed Virgin was intimated by the characteristics of the Ark of the Testimony in the tabernacle. Located secretly in the Holy of Holies, the inner chamber of the tabernacle, no man was allowed to touch the ark upon penalty of death. Even the High Priest was completely restricted from its vicinity except on the annual Day of Atonement, the holiest day of the Jewish year, on which he sprinkled the ark with sacrificial blood.

It was Mary’s purity, then, upon which the presence of the Lord would one day uniquely rest, just as He had once rested on the untouchable ark, and it was she who would be anointed first with the sacrificial blood of her Son, the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.

Similar in language to "king of kings," the "holy of holies" wherein the ark rested expresses the superlative, meaning the holiest of what is holy. Yet our Immaculate was not chosen because she was uniquely holy; Mary was holy because she was uniquely prepared and chosen. To be holy simply means to be dedicated or uniquely set apart, and the significance and nature of this holiness becomes clear only with an understanding of the word “ark.” Strangely and prophetically, “ark” means coffin, so that the ark in the tabernacle was uniquely dedicated to suffering.

This suffering would be excruciatingly private, intimate, and divinely assisted, however. The ark was secluded on one side by a veil, richly woven in blue, scarlet, and purple thread and embroidered with ornate worshiping cherubim. On the remaining sides, the ark was protected within the Holy of Holies by wood paneling overlaid with gold. Within this beautiful cocoon, the ark, uniquely dedicated to suffering, rested secretly in the most holy place of the tabernacle and bore the presence of the Lord.

In addition, the ark’s lid was decorated with two of the glorious, worshiping cherubim beaten from a single piece of gold, the one piece signifying unity, and the hammered gold signifying sacrificial worship. Thus the cherubim, worshiping in perpetual service to God, enclosed the ark within the covering of their wings, depicting their role in assisting and surrounding the ark and secluding it in the privacy and mystery of the sacrificial love of the Trinity.

Contributing even more to the mystery surrounding the ark is that the priests were instructed to cover it in anointing oil in a profoundly sacred ritual that tangibly and literally consecrated and emphasized the “otherness” of its particular use. The divine formula for this holy anointing oil included myrrh as a primary ingredient.

Myrrh was outrageously expensive, and so a lavish and precious commodity; but it was also bitter, so that in Ruth 1:20-21, Naomi took the new name Mara, similar to myrrh, to designate the “bitterness” of her trials. It was also used extensively as a preservative embalming agent, and therefore was a death spice, and came to have connotations of mourning and grief.

Our Lady of Sorrows, then, her name derived from Mara, was foreknown from the foundation of the world, uniquely dedicated and consecrated to willingly and wholly embracing the bitter sword that would pierce her heart (Luke 2:35), lavishly anointed and set aside, awash in aromatic suffering for the sacrificial purposes of God, just as the ark had been before her.

The suffering our Blessed Mother endured was not arbitrary or otherwise specially added to her, and not abnormal, or even holy on its own, in any way except the most important one. Mary’s suffering was for her son, her child, her infant, who was God Almighty Himself, Incarnate.

A mother’s natural pity and anguish became infinite and eternal because of its precious object. Proceeding most inescapably from her maternal relationship, Mary’s love was exponentially more painful, and more efficacious, for the absolute matchlessness of her Son. It was through this natural relationship that they suffered together, God Himself, the Incarnate Word of the Father and Our Lady, united together in the New Ark in the Holy of Holies of agony and sacrifice.

It was because He was the son of her heart that the sword would pierce her there, but it was because He is the Son of God that her suffering would be forged so intimately with His in the Holy of Holies. To discern the unity of Our Lady with the Ark of the New Covenant is to grasp the utterly unique intimacy Mary shared with the Trinity through a most natural but profound offering, an offering of which each one of us is also capable.

She offered herself, utterly, and all the love of which she was capable for a child, whom she offers to us all. In this most sacred way, intimated through the Old Testament Ark, our Holy Queen’s sorrows and those of the Presence she would bear to the world, would become the throne from which they rule with God from the secret place of royal humility.

Monday Quote of the Day

2010-01-18T07:34:00.003-06:00

History will have to record
that the greatest tragedy
of this period of
social transition was not
the strident clamor of the
bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.

Martin Luther King Jr.

End of post

Laughter in Hope

2010-01-15T09:52:00.002-06:00

Occasionally, in our walk with God, our communion with Him will produce a promise. God’s word to us will be direct and personal, and we will know without any doubt that He has spoken to us and about us in some way. When this happens, the promise may seem too good to be true, too impossible to come to pass, because it will specially coincide with the desire of our heart.

Such was the case with Abraham’s wife, Sarah in Genesis 18. Visitors have come. Abraham prepares a meal for their weary travelers, and as they sit down to eat, Sarah, hears a promise concerning her while standing at the door. It was the same promise given to Abraham long before, one they had believed in together for many years: the promise of a son.

To be childless in that day was seen as a special judgment of God, and was therefore a great public reproach. Surely those upon whom such dishonor rested carried the burden of it so that the promise of its removal would be the desire of their hearts and their deepest, most daring hope.

For 24 long years Abraham and Sarah had believed and hoped with nothing to show for it. They were 99 and 90 years old. When the years began to drag, with no evidence of fulfillment, they attempted to reconcile the promise with their circumstances by thinking the son would be an adopted slave, or the child of a surrogate. So thinking, they attempted to force the fulfillment through a son with Sarah’s servant (causing all kinds of trouble), but God reassured them the heir of promise would be Sarah’s.

When Sarah hears the promise repeated, yet again, she does what I have done, she laughs in contempt of it. It’s not from a lack of faith. We know that because Sarah and Abraham continue to have relations that eventually lead to a pregnancy. Their faith is working toward the promise in love, and is therefore a lively faith.

It’s her hope that is stretched to the absolute limit. It’s her hope that has been dashed over and over, with every passing month. It’s her hope that holds its breath, the tiny desire of her heart that needs fuel to remain aflame. It’s her hope that God is growing.

I know how they felt. Don’t you? Haven’t you ever waited so long for the fulfillment that you despair of it’s ever happening? Did you make a mistake? Did God change His mind? Did you sin somehow and forfeit the promise?

The simple truth is, either you heard from God or you didn’t. If you did, then you must believe, for God does not lie. Does God change His mind? No. We must wait for the proper timing (Gen 18:10), and in the meantime, allow God to grow our hope, one of the three greatest virtues (1 Cor. 13:13).

“Christian hope takes up and fulfills the hope of the chosen people which has its origin and model in the hope of Abraham, who was blessed abundantly by the promises of God fulfilled in Isaac, and who was purified by the test of the sacrifice” (CCC 1819). “Hoping against hope, [they] believed and thus became the father [and mother] of many nations” (Rom. 4:18).

As we wait and rest in our many disappointments, we must not laugh in contempt of our promise. We must save our laughter for the time of fulfillment when it fizzes freely out of us in the joy of receiving what we scarcely dared hope for all along.

How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Count the Ways...

2010-01-12T15:20:00.007-06:00

My 11 year old has been reading a lot of primary source material for history; he just finished studying Medieval and Renaissance history and moved recently into Trade and Empire. In quite a bit of it, the language is that of King James - thees and thous - because that is how everyone spoke, then. It is very poetic and he likes the beauty of it.

So, for my husband's birthday, he wrote a poem. This is the poem. I laughed so hard I cried. For real. I tried to stifle it, I tried to hide it, but I couldn't help it; so many things about it caught me off guard, and my poor child thought his poem was stupid. I convinced him that I really liked it (I do!), and he gave it to his father, whom I forewarned. In fact, because there is so much in it that is hilarious without meaning to be, I think it's one of the best things I have ever read, and I have kept it completely intact, as is, for you.

"Dad, it’s your birthday. Thanks for the love and care you bring. A cake we have been baking, for the man that’s feeds us each day so aching. If it weren’t for you we would go hungry, Oh Dad we love thee. It makes me happy that you care, and each day a bad job you must bear. Each day when you come home you give us all a smile, which all began on your wedding day when Mom came down the aisle. Each day with you is a gift from God, and the way you handle tough situations is something to be awed. Although he doesn’t have wings my dad is someone who came down from heaven, I’m sure God is pleased with him for providing for his wife and children. I wouldn’t want anyone else for a dad; he is holy and full of grace, it must be obvious for you can see it on his face. The end of this poem is drawing near, but I have one more sentence which I want you to hear: Dad I love you in everything you do, and your tender loving heart is something nobody can about argue."

Ok, so is it just me? or did you laugh? I am still laughing...

Happy Monday

2010-01-11T07:57:00.000-06:00

"If one advances confidently
in the direction of his
dreams, and endeavors to
live the life which he has imagined,
he will meet
with a success unexpected
in common hours."

Henry David Thoreau

The Work of Love

2010-01-08T11:23:00.005-06:00

One of the distinct arguments here in the Bible belt against Catholicism is that all those “rules, feasts, laws, and works” are what Paul preaches adamantly against. They are therefore unbiblical and Catholicism is a cult.

This was never a view I personally held, except very early on in my faith when I, like Martin Luther, having been reared by an aggressive tyrant of a father, deplored anything at all to do with rules that seemed arbitrary or excessively constricting. I, like Luther, was relieved to accept that the Gospel is “solely of faith and not works,” because I knew from experience with my father that no amount or quality of works would ever be enough, and that the righteousness of men is as filthy rags.

Pretty quickly I realized that this cannot be the case, however, because many, many people claim faith in Christ while their lives are despicably sinful. Church people. The distinction in Baptist circles was “being saved” (that is, asking God into your heart), and making Him Lord of your life are two different things.

Everyone can “be saved” simply by asking God into his heart, but only those who are truly saved will make God Lord and obey Him. I confess that, for me, this always smacked of hair-splitting of the silliest kind, but I assumed I must be misunderstanding something or I would “get it.”

St. Paul addresses the topic of “works” in the book of Hebrews, written to Pharisaical Jews. In his letter St. Paul warns these converts to Christianity not to return to the works of Judaism. These new Christians were under severe persecution from the Roman government and the Jewish establishment and were sorely tempted to simply return to the familiarity and comfort of their native religion. St. Paul warns them that to do so is to forfeit their salvation, because salvation is not of Jewish works, and Protestants take this to mean
Paul is against works.

Similarly, St. Paul addresses “works” in his letter to the Roman church, a church consisting of both Jewish converts and Gentile converts. To both groups, he explains that life with God is not a matter of the strict rules and ceremonies and traditions (works) of the Old Testament Jewish Law, or even the natural, moral law of which the Torah was representative.

It is very, very important that “works” to Paul are works of the Law, the Old Testament Torah, not works in general. The works Paul speaks about are the Old Testament temple sacrifices and feasts prescribed by God for proper worship before Christ, as I will illustrate.

Interestingly, St. Paul stipulates that he has been freed from this Law, the Torah, and its close connection with temptation/sin (man always wants what he can’t have), through baptismal death and resurrection (Rom. 6). Once this death has taken place the Christian is free through rebirth (water and spirit, John 3) to transfer his loyalty to Christ in the same way a widow is free to marry again (Rom. 7:1-6).

What is the reborn “new creature” (2 Cor. 5:17) free to do? He is free, then, to do Christian works, works of love, works of the New Testament Law: “Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law. The commandments, ‘You shall not commit adultery, You shall not kill, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,’ and any other commandment, are summed up in this sentence, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the Law” (Rom. 13:8-10).

New Testament “love” is agape love, a love based on willful action and not emotion. We don’t love like Christ by simply being nice. Love always does for the neighbor what is in his best interest, and can do so even though it dislikes its object.

This is divine love, sometimes translated “charity” (1 Cor. 13). It is action, not feeling, an action that proceeds from Christ, and is therefore grace. It is a love we cannot earn, and is therefore free. “For by grace are you saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God” (Eph. 2:8).

In both Hebrews and Romans, St. Paul says that the New Testament Law of Love trumps the Old Testament Torah as signified in the Ten Commandments, because it includes, contains and expands it. It is the same Law, only more, bigger, fresher, more complete and in all ways better. In addition, it will bring salvation because this love proceeds from the eternal Christ, and we who are born into Him through the grace of water and spirit, proceed from Him too.

We get the word charity from charis or karis, meaning grace, but grace is so inextricably linked to love, it is sometimes used interchangeably, as in 1 Cor. 13: “Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal...”

Agape, Christian love, always gives: “For God so agaped the world that He gave…” (Jn. 3:16). Giving what one does not nor cannot deserve is a gift, a work, but it is a work of Christ, a work of grace, a work of love, work for which we were made: “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus (baptized and reborn) unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them” (Eph. 2:2-8).

This is work we must to do be saved. Jesus said we must give from love to be saved (Matt. 19:16-17), and that God will render to every man according to his deeds. Those who love, obey the command to work (Jn. 14:21). We obtain eternal life through perseverance in good works (Rom. 2:2-8). Nothing counts but faith working through love (Gal. 5:4-6). We must work out our salvation with fear and trembling (Phil 2:12-13), because man is saved through works and not faith alone (James. 2:14-24).

Man is only saved by faith and works, not faith alone, and not of the Torah, which could never save. “Not of works, lest any man should boast.” What works cannot save? The works of the Circumcision, or Torah (Eph. 2:11-12).

Catholic works are not works of the Torah which can never save; we don’t sacrifice bulls and lambs, as the Book of Hebrews explains. Catholic works are works of Christ – obedience, love, and faith – the only way we can be saved.

I reiterate for my Protestant readers, I am not saying or implying in any way that all Protestants will go to hell or that all Catholics will be saved. I am only explaining how Catholic works are not works of the Torah which can never save.