CatholicGeek.... for God and for others

Sure Cure for Discontentment

2010-08-24T07:19:00.000-07:00

Here's a nifty reading for today's Feast of St Batholomew. I've spent a lot of time being vocationally discontented and this reading and the quiet and scripture facets of Bartholomew's spiritual practice are a good Rx for that discontent. Enjoy.

An even, unvaried life is the lot of most men, in spite of occasional troubles or other accidents; and we are apt to despise it, and to get tired of it, and to long to see the world, -- or, at all events, we think such a life affords no great opportunity for religious obedience.

To rise up, and go through the same duties, and then to rest again, day after day, -- to pass week after week, beginning with God’s service on Sunday, and then to our worldly tasks, -- so to continue till year follows year, and we gradually get old, -- an unvaried life like this is apt to seem unprofitable to us when we dwell upon the thought of it. Many indeed there are, who do not think at all; -- but live in their round of employments, without care about God and religion, driven on by the natural course of things in a dull irrational way like the beasts that perish.

But when a man begins to feel he has a soul, and a work to do, and a reward to be gained, greater or less, according as he improves the talents committed to him, then he is naturally tempted to be anxious from his very wish to be saved, and he says, “What must I do to please God?” And sometimes he is led to think he ought to be useful on a large scale, and goes out of his line of life, that he may be doing something worth doing, as he considers it.

Here we have the history of St. Bartholomew and the other Apostles to recall us to ourselves, and to assure us that we need not give up our usual manner of life, in order to serve God; that the most humble and quietest station is acceptable to Him, if improved duly, -- nay, affords means for maturing the highest Christian character, even that of an Apostle. Bartholomew read the Scriptures and prayed to God; and thus was trained at length to give up his life for Christ, when He demanded it.

From Sermon XXVII on the Feast of Saint Bartholomew the Apostle by John Henry Newman, in Parochial and Plain Sermons, volume 2 (London: Longmans, Green, & Co., 1891).

Eagan Home for Lease

2010-04-20T12:33:00.000-07:00

The Classic Rambler Walkout, Updated…

A suburban retreat, close to nature in Southeast Eagan
with a lower level suite can function as separate residence,
ideal for a larger family,multi-generational living, or rent lower level out for extra income.

5 bedrooms, 2.5 baths,
2 garages feature 3.5 stalls/ workshop with lots of storage
large corner lot
quiet neighborhood
1/2 block from park

even a prayer garden!

offered for lease, minimum 1 year,

also, lease to own or contract for deed/ owner financing possible

Available July 15th

Interested in more information or a tour? E mail eaganbanker@yahoo.com

Here's are details with pictures

The Home.....

Main Floor

Front Deck entry from landscaped front drive
Eastern exposure for sunny mornings reading the paper
Daytime shade in summer

Formal Living/Dining Room
Large picture window overlooking landscaped yard
New carpet
New entry flooring
Pocket door to kitchen

Eat-in Country Kitchen
Newer fridge, stove, dishwasher
Classic wood cabinetry
Butcher block center island with gas stove
Newer flooring

Great Room adjacent to kitchen (added in 2007)
Vaulted ceilings
Recessed lighting
Gas fireplace with ceramic surround and oak mantle
Whisper-quiet Mitsubishi wall unit A/C
Sun-drenched- six large windows overlooking expansive backyard
French doors opening onto back deck and adjacent patio

Mud Room
Entry from kitchen
Both outside and garage access
Adjacent half bath with pocket door
Bath features washer/dryer

2.5 stall attached garage
Heated
Plentiful cabinet storage
Extensive shop area wired with 220v for welding
One stall has oversized door- great for RV, large truck, auto repair
New insulated windowed doors with openers

Bedroom 1

Bedroom 1 second view

Bedroom 2

Bedroom 3

Sunny eastern and western exposures

third bedroom would be great as Study/Nursery/ Library

Full bath with tub/shower
Glass block window
block vanity/ separator
Linen closet

Hall coat closet

Lower Level Suite (walkout entry to front)

This suite would be ideal for inter-generational living- adult children returning home or older parents- close by but they have their own living space

Bedroom 4

Bedroom 5

Note: large egress windows

Full bath

tub/ shower

mirrored vanity
linen cabinet

extra storage under stairs

Additional eat-in kitchen with second family room
Sunny windows looking out on landscaped front yard
utility room storage areas

Private entrance and driveway- separate from upper level
Adjacent garden areas and walkway to meditation garden

Lower Garage
Extra deep with lots of storage capability

Heated
New insulated windowed door with opener

The Property...

2/3 acre
Corner lot
2 dozen mature trees plus landscaping
Well water for watering
Semi-shaded concrete patio- adjacent to deck and great room
Second patio surrounds eight foot city regulation-conforming firepit
25 by 25 ft vegetable/ flower garden
Adjacent storage/ work shed with electricity and land phone line
Two decks- front (entry) and rear (great room)
Tree shaded meditation garden with labyrinth
Small, secluded neighborhood - extra quiet
District 196 schools-Pinewood Elementary .61 miles away

Close to nature

½ block away from South Oaks park
Natural prairie area
Newer playground
Picnic tables
Game field
Fishing dock access to Hay Lake

10 minute walk from Lebanon Hills Regional Park
Canoeing
Kayaking
Hiking
Cross country skiing trails
Camping areas
Nature center and trails
Sand beach on Schultz Lake

Convenient to shopping
1 mile to new “boutique” Cub foods,

a short drive (3 miles) from Kowalski’s, Byerly’s, Kohl’s, Home Depot, Rainbow Foods, Eagan Town Center

Handy Access to main arteries

½ mile to South Robert Trail/ Highway 3
Connections south to Rosemount Cty Rd 42, North to Highway 149 and Interstate 494
Highway 52 less than 5 minutes away-
15 minute travel to downtown St. Paul with no traffic signals

A History of Home Care and Improvement

1976- Home constructed

1985- 2.5 stall garage added

1998- House re-roofed

2002- Major renovation ($25,000)
Living room, upper bath windows replaced
Glass block shower added to upstairs bath

New central heat/ AC
New oversized electric water heater
New carpeting
Landscaping improved

2004
New flooring- both bathrooms and upper kitchen
Second kitchen restored to lower level ($3000)
Lower residence rented out at $750/ month

2005
New downstairs kitchen flooring
11 new exterior lights with dusk to dawn low impact lighting
Sand volleyball court turned into meditation garden

2006-7

Major renovation/ additions ($80,000)
Unfinished breezeway between house and garage demolished
Replaced with mudroom with adjacent half bath with washer and dryer
Back deck demolished
Replaced with 14x20 ft great room
New soffits and gutters all around house
New Downstairs living area windows

2008

Two patios added to back yard- one adjacent to back deck, one with firepit adjacent to garden

2009
New main entrance storm doors-3/4 glass ventilated
New garage doors - insulated, windowed
Front deck rebuilt,
New roof on garage
New living/ dining room carpet and front entry flooring

Changes and Chances

2009-05-12T07:45:00.000-07:00

All the beautiful changes and
chances
Through which the landscape flits and glances,
Till now, you dreamed not what could be
done
With a bit of rock and a ray of
sun

James Russell Lowell

Recently, it felt like not much was being done with my own changes and chances. Really kind of aggravated by the recent twists and turns of my life
I came across the traditional Roman Catholic collect for this past Sunday.

It helped a little.

For those unfamiliar, here is a translation:

O Almighty God,
who alone can order the unruly wills and affections of sinful men:
grant unto your people
that they may love the thing which you command,
and desire that which you promise;
our hearts may surely there be fixed,
where true joys are to be found.

My "dialogue with God" version:

Phil: "Lord , get me out of this...... temptation.... mess.... situation."

God: "I will.... when you come home to be with Me and not one moment before....
All you are experiencing now is prelude and instruction and practice in the school of Love....
until you become Love itself."

It's not only true that God works and walks with us
in every change and chance of this life.
We get the further grace of knowing and experiencing
how He uses those circumstances to turn our hearts to Him.

We never quite get there while here on earth.

I suspect even the desire to do so might be evidence,
alternatively, of spiritual pride or laziness.

In my own case it's a bit of both.
But then we are bid to turn our eyes heavenward,
to find out where our true Joy is found
to find our own "bit of rock and ray of the sun."

Measure Twice, Cut Once: Nature and Grace in the Workplace

2009-05-01T10:32:00.000-07:00

One thing among many others I learned from my father in law was the handyman's axiom "measure twice, cut once." It's true in the spiritual realm as well.

Another axiom...the angelic doctor Thomas Aquinas declared "grace perfects nature."

Let's think about the two axioms together. For every action we take we need to make two measures, either consciously or unconsciously.

First, is what I am going to do in accord with the nature of who I am? Second, is what am I going to do in accord with the law of grace?

If the two appear to be in conflict, then we need to ask ourselves very carefully whether or not we are asking the right question.... or perhaps the right question in the wrong way. Conversely, if we aren't even asking ourselves these questions, we have lost our spiritual way.

That seems to be the case today when ethical decisions boil down to a relativistic "what's best for me" or when the questions AND their answers are driven by a compulsive need to assert one's "true" identity. I am a woman, I am gay, I am Hispanic,... you fill in the blank.

That sort of self-absorbed compulsion should not be a surprise. It happens when folks have concluded that there is no objective moral truth, nor AnyOne who cares enough to set boundaries. I am left to my own devices, to create my own reality, to decide who I am. and because there are no givens, affirming that identity and having everyone else affirm me becomes an obsession.

It seems to me, though, that the life of St Joseph under the title of "Worker" provides a sublime illustration of how both of these important questions can merge gracefully, and be answered in a single life. And that answer is the antidote to today's workplace malaise as well as the perpetual identity crisis.

Of course, Joseph's work as a carpenter (or more accurately in ancient terms, an artisan) , reflected his nature. Most of us have experienced the fact that some of us are born handymen- others not. But if we are handy with tools, we still intuitively feel that "yes!" SOMEWHERE in our lives, whether it be in the heft of a hammer, the beauty of a well composed symphony, or the symmetry of a perfectly balanced spead sheet.

But Joseph's hidden life as the teacher of Jesus, as the listener to God's whispering guidance, as protector of the Blessed Virgin Spouse, are pieces of his life which represent the perfection of his own nature under Grace.

One healing aspect of this Feast is the very fact that it does bring the two facets of life back together. Indeed, the feast arose out of the Church's felt need to respend to the plight of workers in their struggles to gain basic rights.

In that sense, St Joseph the Worker lays blessing hands upon the turmoil of our work lives, as he did on the labor struggles of the nineteenth century. Nowadays communal May Day demonstrations have given way to the supreme isolation of texting during meetings.

But, the basic bifurcation is still the same. We think that what we do for work is our work, not God's. And the answer to that unnatural split is in the sublime nature-grace unity of bringing our tools, our work lives, our hours of labor, to the altar of Grace.

St Joseph, Pray for Us!

Staned Glass, Stained Hearts in our Suffering

2009-04-29T07:10:00.000-07:00

Back in the mid 1980's while I was still a Protestant, a friend of mine had a sister who was a nun. We went and visited her at her convent and she took us on a tour of the chapel. When she came to the window which depicted St Catherine of Siena, she paused dramatically and said with a flourish of her wrinkled hand, "...and here we have OUR doctor of the Church, St Catherine of Siena." Funny thing, she wasn't Dominican, and yet she felt such a strong kinship with one of the few women doctors of the Church. "OUR Doctor."

I suspect there was more kinship here than meets the eye. "Strong" women in the Catholic Church have found themselves advocating for womens' ordination for years. They point to the gifts of women like Catherine of Siena as evidence of the validity of womens' priestly calling. I won't go into the arguments pro and con here today. Nor can I hide the fact that I support the Church's practice or ordaining only men to the ministerial priesthood.

However, I'd like to look deeper.... from the stained glass to the stained hearts of those who experience the suffering a delayed or denied vocation can cause.

Bitterness, disallusionment, listlessness.... My own experience is that this agony itself becomes the fount of a deeper identification with our Lord in his suffering. The old Catholic adage of "offer it up" stands up against the worst tests we can put to it.

Bloodied hands and side and the interior bloodied hearts, need not be signs of weakness, victimization, or defeat. If, in the citadel of our souls, we bend to accept God's will, whatever that might be, we can join our sufferings to the One who made Himself as nothing for us. It is the way of the inward stigmata, the way in which Catherine of siena walked. It is the sword which pierced our Blessed Virgin's heart also, all unseen and unknown by any but her most intimate Confidant, the Holy Spirit.

This hold true for almost any unchangeable circumstance in our lives. Here are some relevant quotes from St Catherine, well worth meditating on for this her Feast Day:

"O Eternal God, receive the sacrifice of my life in this Mystical Body of Holy Church. I have naught to give save what Thou hast given me." -----Prayer of St. Catherine

"It is not the hour to seek one's self for one's self, nor to flee pains in order to possess consolations; nay, it is the hour to lose one's self." -----Letters of St. Catherine

"I turn me and lean against the most Holy Cross of Christ Crucified, and there I will fasten me." -----Letters of St. Catherine "What hast Thou taught me, O Love Uncreated? Thou hast taught me that I should bear patiently like a lamb, not only harsh words, but even blows harsh and hard, and injury and loss." -----Letters of St. Catherine

"To the servant of God . . . every place is the right place, and every time is the right time. -----Letters of St. Catherine

"I have no other desire in this life save to see the honor of God, your peace, and the reformation of Holy Church, and to see the life of grace in every creature that hath reason in itself." -----Letters of St. Catherine of Siena

St Catherine of Siena asked for the privilege of receiving the pain of the stigmata without the outward marks thereof. May we do so also and happily pray as St Paul did (Colossians 1:24-29):

"Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ on behalf of his body, which is the church, of which I am a minister in accordance with God's stewardship given to me to bring to completion for you the word of God,

the mystery hidden from ages and from generations past. But now it has been manifested to his holy ones, to whom God chose to make known the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; it is Christ in you, the hope for glory.

It is he whom we proclaim, admonishing everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone perfect in Christ. For this I labor and struggle, in accord with the exercise of his power working within me."

St Catherine of Siena, pray for us!

Two Theresas with One Thirst

2009-04-28T13:38:00.000-07:00

Are you and I as thirsty for the good for others as Jesus is?

Recently I have been convicted how little my conscious motivation is to bring the love of God and His good to souls. I was remnded once again of Jesus' great passion for souls, a passion shared by many of his saints, including Therese of Liseux and Mother Teresa.

In that connection, I bring an excerpt from a recent book,

I THIRST: SAINT THERESE OF LISIEUX AND MOTHER TERESA OF CALCUTTA by Jacques Gauthier. (Staten Island, New York: Society of St. Paul)

"The thirst of Jesus, his thirst for love and for souls, is one of the major reasons for the mission and extraordinary significance of St. Therese. It is this thirst which explains the mission of Mother Teresa.

She wrote in her Spiritual Testament that everything about the Missionaries of Charity is intended to quench the Thirst of Jesus. As Mother Teresa stated, "As long as you do not know in a very intimate way that Jesus is thirsty for you, it will be impossible for you to know who He wants to be for you, nor who He wants you to be for Him."

It was quite evident that Mother Teresa quenched the thirst of Jesus in loving the poorest of the poor. The author calls upon the imagery of the Samaritan woman to illustrate the awareness of thirst within the Gospel narrative.

A second major connection between Mother Teresa and St. Therese was their call "to be love" in the Church. St. Therese in writing to her sister Celine illustrates: Jesus wills that the salvation of souls depends on the sacrifices of our love. He is begging for souls from us. . . Let us make our life a continual sacrifice, a martyrdom of love, in order to console Jesus.

In a later piece of correspondence the following year, she states: "He has so much need of love and He is so thirsty, that He expects from us the drop of water that must refresh Him! Ah! Let us give without counting the cost."

Watch and Pray through Temptation, a la Cardinal Newman

2009-04-28T12:58:00.000-07:00

I am auditing a class at St Paul Seminary and this morning our instructor, Fr. Andrew Cozzens, made reference to a homily of John Henry Cardinal Newman concerning those who know God's will but choose not to follow it.

Stay with this- even though the first two thirds of his homily seem a little hard to take. Newman takes his fellow countrymen to task, especially those who don't know God's will, or or who know it but just turn away for a variety of reasons.

The pay off comes in the last third where Newman addresses those of us who want desperately to do God's will, but find ourselves falling short or down again and again and again.

He addresses such sweet words of comfort to us, that I felt I had to share it. Those words are in boldface red way down at the bottom. You can skip there, but it pays to read the whole thing.

Sermon 3. Knowledge of God's Will without Obedience

"If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them." John xiii. 17.

{27} THERE never was a people or an age to which these words could be more suitably addressed than to this country at this time; because we know more of the way to serve God, of our duties, our privileges, and our reward, than any other people hitherto, as far as we have the means of judging. To us then especially our Saviour says, "If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them."

Now, doubtless, many of us think we know this very well. It seems a very trite thing to say, that it is nothing to know what is right, unless we do it; an old subject about which nothing new can be said. When we read such passages in Scripture, we pass over them as admitting them without dispute; and thus we contrive practically to forget them. Knowledge is nothing compared with doing; but the knowing that knowledge is nothing, we make to be something, we make it count, and thus we cheat ourselves.

This we do in parallel cases also. Many a man instead {28} of learning humility in practice, confesses himself a poor sinner, and next prides himself upon the confession; he ascribes the glory of his redemption to God, and then becomes in a manner proud that he is redeemed. He is proud of his so-called humility.

Doubtless Christ spoke no words in vain. The Eternal Wisdom of God did not utter His voice that we might at once catch up His words in an irreverent manner, think we understand them at a glance, and pass them over. But His word endureth for ever; it has a depth of meaning suited to all times and places, and hardly and painfully to be understood in any. They, who think they enter into it easily, may be quite sure they do not enter into it at all.

Now then let us try, by His grace, to make the text a living word to the benefit of our souls. Our Lord says, "If ye know, happy are ye, if ye do." Let us consider how we commonly read Scripture.

We read a passage in the Gospels, for instance, a parable perhaps, or the account of a miracle; or we read a chapter in the Prophets, or a Psalm. Who is not struck with the beauty of what he reads? I do not wish to speak of those who read the Bible only now and then, and who will in consequence generally find its sacred pages dull and uninteresting; but of those who study it. Who of such persons does not see the beauty of it? for instance, take the passage which introduces the text. Christ had been washing His disciples' feet. He did so at a season of great mental suffering; it was just before He was seized by His enemies to be put to death. The traitor, His familiar friend, was in the {29} room. All of His disciples, even the most devoted of them, loved Him much less than they thought they did. In a little while they were all to forsake Him and flee. This He foresaw; yet He calmly washed their feet, and then He told them that He did so by way of an example; that they should be full of lowly services one to the other, as He to them; that he among them was in fact the highest who put himself the lowest. This He had said before; and His disciples must have recollected it. Perhaps they might wonder in their secret hearts why He repeated the lesson; they might say to themselves, "We have heard this before." They might be surprised that His significant action, His washing their feet, issued in nothing else than a precept already delivered, the command to be humble. At the same time they would not be able to deny, or rather they would deeply feel, the beauty of His action. Nay, as loving Him (after all) above all things, and reverencing Him as their Lord and Teacher, they would feel an admiration and awe of Him; but their minds would not rest sufficiently on the practical direction of the instruction vouchsafed to them.

They knew the truth, and they admired it; they did not observe what it was they lacked. Such may be considered their frame of mind; and hence the force of the text, delivered primarily against Judas Iscariot, who knew and sinned deliberately against the truth; secondarily referring to all the Apostles, and St. Peter chiefly, who promised to be faithful, but failed under the trial; lastly, to us all,—all of us here assembled, who hear the word of life continually, know it, admire it, do all but obey it. {30}

Is it not so? is not Scripture altogether pleasant except in its strictness? do not we try to persuade ourselves, that to feel religiously, to confess our love of religion, and to be able to talk of religion, will stand in the place of careful obedience, of that self-denial which is the very substance of true practical religion? Alas! that religion which is so delightful as a vision, should be so distasteful as a reality. Yet so it is, whether we are aware of the fact or not.

1. The multitude of men even who profess religion are in this state of mind. We will take the case of those who are in better circumstances than the mass of the community. They are well educated and taught; they have few distresses in life, or are able to get over them by the variety of their occupations, by the spirits which attend good health, or at least by the lapse of time. They go on respectably and happily, with the same general tastes and habits which they would have had if the Gospel had not been given them. They have an eye to what the world thinks of them; are charitable when it is expected. They are polished in their manners, kind from natural disposition or a feeling of propriety. Thus their religion is based upon self and the world, a mere civilization; the same (I say), as it would have been in the main, (taking the state of society as they find it,) even supposing Christianity were not the religion of the land. But it is; and let us go on to ask, how do they in consequence feel towards it? They accept it, they add it to what they are, they ingraft it upon the selfish and worldly habits of an unrenewed heart. They have been taught to revere it, and to {31} believe it to come from God; so they admire it, and accept it as a rule of life, so far forth as it agrees with the carnal principles which govern them. So far as it does not agree, they are blind to its excellence and its claims. They overlook or explain away its precepts. They in no sense obey because it commands. They do right when they would have done right had it not commanded; however, they speak well of it, and think they understand it. Sometimes, if I may continue the description, they adopt it into a certain refined elegance of sentiments and manners, and then the irreligion is all that is graceful, fastidious, and luxurious. They love religious poetry and eloquent preaching. They desire to have their feelings roused and soothed, and to secure a variety and relief in that eternal subject which is unchangeable. They tire of its simplicity, and perhaps seek to keep up their interest in it by means of religious narratives, fictitious or embellished, or of news from foreign countries, or of the history of the prospects or successes of the Gospel; thus perverting what is in itself good and innocent. This is their state of mind at best; for more commonly they think it enough merely to show some slight regard for the subject of religion; to attend its services on the Lord's day, and then only once, and coldly to express an approbation of it. But of course every description of such persons can be but general; for the shades of character are so varied and blended in individuals, as to make it impossible to give an accurate picture, and often very estimable persons and truly good Christians are partly infected with this bad and earthly spirit. {32}

2. Take again another description of them. They have perhaps turned their attention to the means of promoting the happiness of their fellow-creatures, and have formed a system of morality and religion of their own; then they come to Scripture. They are much struck with the high tone of its precepts, and the beauty of its teaching. It is true, they find many things in it which they do not understand or do not approve; many things they would not have said themselves. But they pass these by; they fancy that these do not apply to the present day, (which is an easy way of removing any thing we do not like,) and on the whole they receive the Bible, and they think it highly serviceable for the lower classes. Therefore, they recommend it, and support the institutions which are the channels of teaching it. But as to their own case, it never comes into their minds to apply its precepts seriously to themselves; they know them already, they consider. They know them and that is enough; but as for doing them, by which I mean, going forward to obey them, with an unaffected earnestness and an honest faith acting upon them, receiving them as they are, and not as their own previously formed opinions would have them be, they have nothing of this right spirit. They do not contemplate such a mode of acting. To recommend and affect a moral and decent conduct (on whatever principles) seems to them to be enough. The spread of knowledge bringing in its train a selfish temperance, a selfish peaceableness, a selfish benevolence, the morality of expedience, this satisfies them.

They care for none of the truths of Scripture, on the ground of their being in Scripture; these scarcely {33} become more valuable in their eyes for being there written. They do not obey because they are told to obey, on faith; and the need of this divine principle of conduct they do not comprehend. Why will it not answer (they seem to say) to make men good in one way as well as another? "Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, are they not better than all the waters of Israel?" as if all the knowledge and the training that books ever gave had power to unloose one sinner from the bonds of Satan, or to effect more than an outward reformation, an appearance of obedience; as if it were not a far different principle, a principle independent of knowledge, above it and before it, which leads to real obedience, that principle of divine faith, given from above, which has life in itself, and has power really to use knowledge to the soul's welfare; in the hand of which knowledge is (as it were) the torch lighting us on our way, but not teaching or strengthening us to walk.

3. Or take another view of the subject. Is it not one of the most common excuses made by the poor for being irreligious, that they have had no education? as if to know much was a necessary step for right practice. Again, they are apt to think it enough to know and to talk of religion, to make a man religious. Why have you come hither today, my brethren?—not as a matter of course, I will hope; not merely because friends or superiors told you to come. I will suppose you have come to church as a religious act; but beware of supposing that all is done and over by the act of coming. It is not enough to be present here; though many men act as if they forgot they must attend to what is going {34} on, as well as come. It is not enough to listen to what is preached; though many think they have gone a great way when they do this. You must pray; now this is very hard in itself to any one who tries (and this is the reason why so many men prefer the sermon to the prayers, because the former is merely the getting knowledge, and the latter is to do a deed of obedience): you must pray; and this I say is very difficult, because our thoughts are so apt to wander.

But even this is not all;—you must, as you pray, really intend to try to practise what you pray for. When you say, "Lead us not into temptation," you must in good earnest mean to avoid in your daily conduct those temptations which you have already suffered from. When you say, "Deliver us from evil," you must mean to struggle against that evil in your hearts, which you are conscious of, and which you pray to be forgiven. This is difficult; still more is behind. You must actually carry your good intentions into effect during the week, and in truth and reality war against the world, the flesh, and the devil. And any one here present who falls short of this, that is, who thinks it enough to come to church to learn God's will, but does not bear in mind to do it in his daily conduct, be he high or be he low, know he mysteries and all knowledge, or be he unlettered and busily occupied in active life, he is a fool in His sight, who maketh the wisdom of this world foolishness. Surely he is but a trifler, as substituting a formal outward service for the religion of the heart; and he reverses our Lord's words in the text, "because he knows these things, most unhappy is he, because he does them not." {35}

4. But some one may say, "It is so very difficult to serve God, it is so much against my own mind, such an effort, such a strain upon my strength to bear Christ's yoke, I must give it over, or I must delay it at least. Can nothing be taken instead? I acknowledge His law to be most holy and true, and the accounts I read about good men are most delightful. I wish I were like them with all my heart; and for a little while I feel in a mind to set about imitating them. I have begun several times, I have had seasons of repentance, and set rules to myself; but for some reason or other, I fell back after a while, and was even worse than before. I know, but I cannot do. O wretched man that I am!"

Now to such an one I say, You are in a much more promising state than if you were contented with yourself, and thought that knowledge was every thing, which is the grievous blindness which I have hitherto been speaking of; that is, you are in a better state, if you do not feel too much comfort or confidence in your confession. For this is the fault of many men; they make such an acknowledgment as I have described a substitute for real repentance; or allow themselves, after making it, to put off repentance, as if they could be suffered to give a word of promise which did not become due (so to say) for many days. You are, I admit, in a better state than if you were satisfied with yourself, but you are not in a safe state. If you were now to die, you would have no hope of salvation: no hope, that is, if your own showing be true, for I am taking your own words. Go before God's judgment-seat, and there plead that you know the Truth and have not done it.

This is {36} what you frankly own;—how will it there be taken? "Out of thine own mouth will I judge thee," says our Judge Himself, and who shall reverse His judgment? Therefore such an one must make the confession with great and real terror and shame, if it is to be considered a promising sign in him; else it is mere hardness of heart. For instance: I have heard persons say lightly (every one must have heard them) that they own it would be a wretched thing indeed for them or their companions to be taken off suddenly. The young are especially apt to say this; that is, before they have come to an age to be callous, or have formed excuses to overcome the natural true sense of their conscience. They say they hope some day to repent. This is their own witness against themselves, like that bad prophet at Bethel who was constrained with his own mouth to utter God's judgments while he sat at his sinful meat. But let not such an one think that he will receive any thing of the Lord: he does not speak in faith.

When, then, a man complains of his hardness of heart or weakness of purpose, let him see to it whether this complaint is more than a mere pretence to quiet his conscience, which is frightened at his putting off repentance; or, again, more than a mere idle word, said half in jest and half in compunction. But, should he be earnest in his complaint, then let him consider he has no need to complain. Every thing is plain and easy to the earnest; it is the double-minded who find difficulties. If you hate your own corruption in sincerity and truth, if you are really pierced to the heart that you do not do what you know you should do, if you would love God if {37} you could, then the Gospel speaks to you words of peace and hope. It is a very different thing indolently to say, "I would I were a different man," and to close with God's offer to make you different, when it is put before you. Here is the test between earnestness and insincerity. You say you wish to be a different man; Christ takes you at your word, so to speak; He offers to make you different. He says, "I will take away from you the heart of stone, the love of this world and its pleasures, if you will submit to My discipline." Here a man draws back. No; he cannot bear to lose the love of the world, to part with his present desires and tastes; he cannot consent to be changed. After all he is well satisfied at the bottom of his heart to remain as he is, only he wants his conscience taken out of the way. Did Christ offer to do this for him, if He would but make bitter sweet and sweet bitter, darkness light and light darkness, then he would hail the glad tidings of peace;—till then he needs Him not.

But if a man is in earnest in wishing to get at the depths of his own heart, to expel the evil, to purify the good, and to gain power over himself, so as to do as well as know the Truth, what is the difficulty?—a matter of time indeed, but not of uncertainty is the recovery of such a man. So simple is the rule which he must follow, and so trite, that at first he will be surprised to hear it. God does great things by plain methods; and men start from them through pride, because they are plain. This was the conduct of Naaman the Syrian. Christ says, "Watch and pray;" herein lies our cure.

To watch and to pray are surely in our {38} power, and by these means we are certain of getting strength. You feel your weakness; you fear to be overcome by temptation: then keep out of the way of it. This is watching. Avoid society which is likely to mislead you; flee from the very shadow of evil; you cannot be too careful; better be a little too strict than a little too easy,—it is the safer side. Abstain from reading books which are dangerous to you. Turn from bad thoughts when they arise, set about some business, begin conversing with some friend, or say to yourself the Lord's Prayer reverently. When you are urged by temptation, whether it be by the threats of the world, false shame, self-interest, provoking conduct on the part of another, or the world's sinful pleasures, urged to be cowardly, or covetous, or unforgiving, or sensual, shut your eyes and think of Christ's precious blood-shedding.

Do not dare to say you cannot help sinning; a little attention to these points will go far (through God's grace) to keep you in the right way. And again, pray as well as watch. You must know that you can do nothing of yourself; your past experience has taught you this; therefore look to God for the will and the power; ask Him earnestly in His Son's name; seek His holy ordinances. Is not this in your power? Have you not power at least over the limbs of your body, so as to attend the means of grace constantly? Have you literally not the power to come hither; to observe the Fasts and Festivals of the Church; to come to His Holy Altar and receive the Bread of Life? Get yourself, at least, to do this; to put out the hand, to take His gracious Body {39} and Blood; this is no arduous work;—and you say you really wish to gain the blessings He offers. What would you have more than a free gift, vouchsafed "without money and without price?" So, make no more excuses; murmur not about your own bad heart, your knowing and resolving, and not doing. Here is your remedy.

Well were it if men could be persuaded to be in earnest; but few are thus minded. The many go on with a double aim, trying to serve both God and mammon. Few can get themselves to do what is right, because God tells them; they have another aim; they desire to please self or men. When they can obey God without offending the bad Master that rules them, then, and then only, they obey. Thus religion, instead of being the first thing in their estimation, is but the second. They differ, indeed, one from another what to put foremost: one man loves to be at ease, another to be busy, another to enjoy domestic comfort: but they agree in converting the truth of God, which they know to be Truth, into a mere instrument of secular aims; not discarding the Truth, but degrading it.

When He, the Lord of hosts, comes to shake terribly the earth, what number will He find of the remnant of the true Israel? We live in an educated age. The false gloss of a mere worldly refinement makes us decent and amiable. We all know and profess. We think ourselves wise; we flatter each other; we make excuses for ourselves when we are conscious we sin, and thus we gradually lose the consciousness that we are sinning. We think our own times superior to all others. "Thou {40} blind Pharisee!" This was the fatal charge brought by our blessed Lord against the falsely enlightened teachers of His own day. As then we desire to enter into life, let us come to Christ continually for the two foundations of true Christian faith,—humbleness of mind and earnestness!

Can you see Him in her?

2009-04-28T08:47:00.000-07:00

"Our body is a cenacle,
a monstrance:
through its crystal the world should see God."

St Gianna Beretta Molla
Wife, Mother, Doctor, Martyr,
Italy (1922-1962)
FEAST DAY - April 28

St Gianna, pray for us!

the Professor(s) and Mary Ann, Here on Jenkin's Isle

2009-04-27T12:43:00.000-07:00

I am not a copy cat (not usually) but as a Notre Dame grad I follow with interest Father John Jenkins' hi-jinks and especially appreciate Mary Ann Glendon's reasoned response- see Rocco's choice piece below.

Also, I heard through the grapevine that Notre Dame is fishing around for a second choice to whom they can offer this year's Medal...

"Hey, the Prom's Saturday night, wanna go with me? Mary Ann dumped me."

Laetare, Declined
via Whispers in the Loggia by Rocco Palmo on 4/27/09

A full update on the continuing controversy surrounding President Obama's selection as Notre Dame's commencement speaker is in the works... in the meantime, however, just hitting the wires comes news that former US ambassador Mary Ann Glendon, the intended recipient of the university's highest honor, the Laetare Medal, has declined the award, citing "the very serious problems" raised by the university's invite -- one taken, she said, "in disregard of the settled position of the US bishops."

Long ago dubbed "God's Lawyer" and the "First Lady" of the Stateside church, the Harvard law prof -- a highly-respected figure at the Holy See -- made the announcement in an open letter to University President Fr John Jenkins CSC published this morning by First Things, whose site is currently down, ostensibly crashed from the demand.Glendon received notice of her selection as the Medal's 127th winner in December, months before the President's appearance at the 17 May ceremonies was arranged.More soon -- as always, stay tuned.

SVILUPPO: As the FT site's still down for the count, here's the letter's fulltext....

April 27, 2009
The Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C.
PresidentUniversity of Notre Dame

Dear Father Jenkins,

When you informed me in December 2008 that I had been selected to receive Notre Dame’s Laetare Medal, I was profoundly moved. I treasure the memory of receiving an honorary degree from Notre Dame in 1996, and I have always felt honored that the commencement speech I gave that year was included in the anthology of Notre Dame’s most memorable commencement speeches. So I immediately began working on an acceptance speech that I hoped would be worthy of the occasion, of the honor of the medal, and of your students and faculty.

Last month, when you called to tell me that the commencement speech was to be given by President Obama, I mentioned to you that I would have to rewrite my speech. Over the ensuing weeks, the task that once seemed so delightful has been complicated by a number of factors.
First, as a longtime consultant to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, I could not help but be dismayed by the news that Notre Dame also planned to award the president an honorary degree. This, as you must know, was in disregard of the U.S. bishops’ express request of 2004 that Catholic institutions “should not honor those who act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles” and that such persons “should not be given awards, honors or platforms which would suggest support for their actions.” That request, which in no way seeks to control or interfere with an institution’s freedom to invite and engage in serious debate with whomever it wishes, seems to me so reasonable that I am at a loss to understand why a Catholic university should disrespect it.

Then I learned that “talking points” issued by Notre Dame in response to widespread criticism of its decision included two statements implying that my acceptance speech would somehow balance the event:
• “President Obama won’t be doing all the talking. Mary Ann Glendon, the former U.S. ambassador to the Vatican, will be speaking as the recipient of the Laetare Medal.”
• “We think having the president come to Notre Dame, see our graduates, meet our leaders, and hear a talk from Mary Ann Glendon is a good thing for the president and for the causes we care about.”

A commencement, however, is supposed to be a joyous day for the graduates and their families. It is not the right place, nor is a brief acceptance speech the right vehicle, for engagement with the very serious problems raised by Notre Dame’s decision—in disregard of the settled position of the U.S. bishops—to honor a prominent and uncompromising opponent of the Church’s position on issues involving fundamental principles of justice.

Finally, with recent news reports that other Catholic schools are similarly choosing to disregard the bishops’ guidelines, I am concerned that Notre Dame’s example could have an unfortunate ripple effect.

It is with great sadness, therefore, that I have concluded that I cannot accept the Laetare Medal or participate in the May 17 graduation ceremony.

In order to avoid the inevitable speculation about the reasons for my decision, I will release this letter to the press, but I do not plan to make any further comment on the matter at this time.

Yours Very Truly,
Mary Ann Glendon

Hiatus ended

2009-04-27T12:32:00.000-07:00

Well, it's been, how long? over 18 months since I last blogged. I've taken several classes at seminary, done a lot of spiritual direction and soul searching, and it seems like the right time to resurrect this blog and begin with baby steps once again in order to share some thoughts.

Suffice it to say right now that I am still on my vocational journey, still intimately connected to the Catholic Church, both through my work and through my role as Oblate of the Cistercian Abbey of Our Lady of Spring Bank.

I noticed that there is still traffic to my site- although that has been going down over time. I hope this reminds me that my goal is not to drive the numbers up but to be faithful in sharing my thoughts.

Hiatus

2007-09-16T06:13:00.000-07:00

I will be taking a break from posting for a while- how long I don't know.

Could just be a week, or a month or several months. As some of you know, I am taking a theology class now so that is an additional time constraint. That, as well as the prayer-intensive process of vocational discernment indicate that I need to be away for a while.

Thank you all for your attention and your comments.

Peace and Light in Christ Jesus.

Lift High the Cross!

2007-09-14T07:24:00.000-07:00

“To attract souls
and transform them into Himself through love,
Christ has revealed His own infinite love,
His own Heart inflamed by love for souls,
a love that impelled Him to mount the Cross,
to remain with us in the Eucharist
and to enter our souls
and to leave us in testament
His own Mother as our Mother.”

St. Maximilian Kolbe

We adore You O Christ, and we praise You,
because by Your Holy Cross, You have redeemed the world.

Climb THIS mountain.

2007-09-11T13:25:00.000-07:00

Today's gospel speaks of Jesus' prayer practice of retreating to the mountains (Luke 6:12):

In those days he departed to the mountain to pray, and he spent the night
in prayer to God.

Those were the days when Christ was getting ready to appoint his chosen Apostles, in the days BEFORE he turned his face to Jerusalem to die and take us with Himself to God. Before he did those courageous things, he took time to turn to the Father.

Saint Ambrose (c. 340-397), Bishop of Milan and Doctor of the Church, speaks of this turning to God. This mountain-climbing prayer belongs not only to Christ but to all of His true followers.

Which mountains are you facing today?

Mountains of decision?
Mountains of work?
Mountains of dispair?

There's another mountain which you need to climb BEFORE dealing with these other mountains. It's the mountain of prayer to the Lord.

(SC 45)

Not all those who pray climb the mountain…, but those who pray well, who rise up above the goods of earth to higher goods, climb onto the summit of watchfulness and love from on high.

Those who worry about worldly riches or honours do not climb the mountain; no one who covets another’s lands climbs the mountain. Those who seek God go up it and those who go up beg the Lord’s aid for their journey.

All great and noble souls climb the mountain for it is not to the first comer alone that the prophet says: “Go up onto a high mountain, you who announce glad tidings to Sion. Cry out at the top of your voice, you who bring good news to Jerusalem,” (Is 40,9).

Not by physical exploits but by high-minded actions will you scale this mountain. Follow Christ…; search the Gospel: you will find that only his disciples climbed up the mountain with the Lord.

Now, for the rest of the story....

2007-09-09T16:20:00.000-07:00

This morning I read my St. Paul Sunday Pioneer Press. They reprinted a nice article on on-line confession from the Los Angeles Times. Inexplicably (unless you know the Pioneer Press track record) the article stops in mid paragraph.

The initial part of the article details the decline and (supposed) demise of Confession and Absolution in the Catholic Church, then goes on to what the Press really "digs," groovy descriptions of on-line and Protestant alternatives. Just as the article veers back toward the Catholic Church and appears ready to pick up the Catholic response, it is cut off.

Sure enough, the on-line version at that point reveals the important distinctions which set the Catholic sacrament apart from its therapeutic and consumer-oriented imitators.

As some of you recall (hopefully from recent personal experience) in Reconciliation one is being reconciled by a real person representing Jesus Christ in his Church (the priest). As his representative, the priest speaks the words of Christ himself "I absolve you."

This is so very far away from the on-line confessionals. They appear to be supporting a therapeutic and apparently also voyeuristic self-catharsis. It reminds of a cartoon a priest-friend sent me yesterday. I couldn't post it without paying a $25 fee, but here's the gist.

A priest is sitting in the confessional listening to an earnest penitent and is thinking "this is SO in my blog!" Anyone who knows how tightly the confessional door "seal" is shut, understands the joke. But it does illustrate, however, how foreign our tell-all culture is to the private and personal nature of the confessal relationship. But I digress.

To summarize, other types of confession are about "me and my problems." They represent subjective, self generated solutions based on feeling.

The Catholic Sacrament of Confession, on the other hand, is about the recognition of sin, an objective failure on our part, and the joyful reception of an objective redemption offered to us by a loving God who came to save us in His Son Jesus. That same Jesus established a Church which offers that word of forgiveness.

If you'd RATHER have that kind of bloodless forgiveness, where its just Jesus and you, go ahead and knock yourself out. I can't guarantee that you won't be forgiven. Not my job to determine that.... its God's. But on the other hand, if you want to experience the whole nine yards of forgiveness, then go seek out a priest and just ask.

While the on line article doesn't quite go that far in making the distinction, it does offer up some helpful observations from penitents and priest alike which point the reader in this direction.

For whatever reason, the Pioneer Press chose to cut this last part off, doing injustice both to the original article and its author, as well as its own readers. As in the past, only a crossword-loving roommate stands between me and a noisy protest-driven cancellation letter.

Get up and Follow Christ!

2007-09-09T07:03:00.000-07:00

Here is some wisdom around today's gospel reading.

From Philoxenes of Mabbug (? c.523), bishop in Syria

Homilies, no.9 (cf SC 44)

To be his disciple

"Listen to God’s voice prompting you to leave yourself behind to follow Christ and you will be a perfect disciple: “Whoever does not forsake all he has cannot be my disciple.” What have you to say? What answer could you give to that? All your uncertainties and questions fall flat before that single word; the word of truth is the exalted path by which you will make progress.

Again, Jesus said: “Whoever does not renounce all his goods and take up his cross to walk after me, cannot be my disciple.” And to teach us to renounce not only our goods - to give him glory - and the world - to confess him before men - but our life too, he added: “If anyone does not renounce himself, he cannot be my disciple.”…

In another place he said: “Whoever hates his life in this world keeps it for eternal life. If anyone serves me, my Father will honour him,” (Jn 12,26). And he then said to his own: “Get up, let us go,” (Jn 14,31). By this word he showed that his place is no more to be found here below than that of his disciples. Lord, where then shall we go? “Where I am, there also let my servant be,” (Jn 12,26).

If Jesus cries out to us: “Get up, let us go!” who will still be so foolish as to consent to remain with the dead in their tombs, dwelling among captives? So every time the world tries to detain you, remember Christ’s word: “Get up, let us go!” So long as you are living, this voice will be enough to stir you. Every time you feel like sitting down, settling, being content to stay where you are, call to mind that voice saying to you insistently : “Get up, let us go!” We shall have to go, anyway.

But go as Jesus went; go because he has told you to and not because death has carried you away in spite of yourself. Whether you like it or not you are walking the road of the departing. But leave at the word of your Master and not simply because you have to. “Get up, let us go!”… Why delay? Christ also walks with you."

How do we know what to do?

2007-09-08T13:21:00.000-07:00

Sometimes Christians can seem a little arrogant, claiming to know God's will for themselves, and sometimes for everyone else also.

All three of Sunday's lectionary readings for Mass provoke us to think a little deeper about certainty, risk, decision making.

The author of Wisdom (9:13-18b) kept on asking the right question....

For the corruptible body burdens the soul and the earthen shelter weighs down the mind that has many concerns. And scarce do we guess the things on earth ,and what is within our grasp we find with difficulty;

but when things are in heaven, who can search them out?

Really, who CAN know with certainty about things both earthly and heavenly? What DO we do with that relationship? that job? that heartache? that joy? that errant child? that troublesome thought?

Good question.

In our Second Reading Paul has written a letter asking the recipient to release Paul's friend Onesimus from slavery. He does so in order that Onesimus might help Paul out in his missionary journeys around Asia Minor. Apparently, this slave had run away from his master and was converted by Paul's preaching. Now Paul has sent the slave back to his Christian owner with his request. But notice the nuanced statement of the Apostle:

"...but I did not want to do anything without your consent,

so that the good you do might not be forced but voluntary."

Sure, Paul could have used his authority and the obvious moral certainty about freedom to force the owner to decide to release Onesimus. But he didn't. He respected the freedom of the other.

Good lesson for us.

God won't force our hands. He waits like the gentleman that He is, to be asked His opinion. We could do worse for our own selves.

But wait, there's more..... I knew we couldn't get off THAT easy. Life decisions can be tough.... and, as usual, Jesus is going to make them just a little bit more difficult...

I have to repeat the whole passage, its just THAT challenging, and THAT good.

Luke 14:25-33

Great crowds were traveling with Jesus,and he turned and addressed them,

“If anyone comes to me without hating his father and mother,wife and children, brothers and sisters,and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.

Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.

Which of you wishing to construct a tower does not first sit down and calculate the cost to see if there is enough for its completion? Otherwise, after laying the foundationand finding himself unable to finish the workthe onlookers should laugh at him and say,‘This one began to build but did not have the resources to finish.’

Or what king marching into battle would not first sit downand decide whether with ten thousand troops he can successfully oppose another king advancing upon him with twenty thousand troops? But if not, while he is still far away,he will send a delegation to ask for peace terms. In the same way,anyone of you who does not renounce all his possessions cannot be my disciple.”

The saying starts out tough, and gets tougher.

It seems that Jesus is really asking us to give up our relationships, our money, our decision making power, all that.... and to focus entirely on Him.

And maybe that's true. God is never content to be just a part of a well balanced life, as if he were a breakfast cereal, which needed toast and juice and maybe a little coffee in order to be "complete and nutritious."

But I think it's a much deeper and lengthier process than simply deciding that it all belongs to God and just chucking all responsibility away. Instead, to me this whole discipleship thing really begins when we face a tough decision in life , "what ARE we going to do with X?"

Then, and usually only then, does God give us the freedom of will to turn to Him- by admitting that we don't have any idea of what we are to do, and give him the preferential option we too often keep for ourselves.

What do YOU want me to do, Lord?

Tough ground to stand on. But high ground too. God, help us to arrive there.

Mother, Show us Jesus!

2007-09-08T12:59:00.000-07:00

Today is the 20th anniversary of my mother's death. It's also the Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. In so many ways, I feel that Mary has become even more my Mother since my mom's passing... not taking her place, but continuing that unconditional merciful caring that my mom consistently showed to me.

However, that love isn't just or even primarily maternal. That love springs from a Source even deeper and more profound. I see the tableau of Jesus on the Cross over the figures of Mary and the Beloved Disciple. In that moment the purpose of Mary's birth was fulfilled. The Son whom she bore was bearing our sins away forever. That's the true Love of which maternal love is an imperfect although very beautiful image.

Then I see the great transaction- signaled by Jesus' handing over of His Mother to her new son, John. "Son, behold your mother.... Mother, behold your son." In those words Jesus not only commited his Mother to the care of the Beloved disciple. He also created a new relationship for me, for all of us, with the Mother of All Souls. She cares for us, and we care about Her.

So, today I am thankful for my earthly mother. And just as much for my heavenly Mother.

I know I've been posting a lot of B-16 recently. But here are some irresistable paragraphs from the Holy Father's Homily at Mariazell for the Nativity of Mary.

"To gaze upon Christ" is the motto of this day. For one who is searching, this summons repeatedly turns into a spontaneous plea, a plea addressed especially to Mary, who has given us Christ as her Son: "Show us Jesus!" Let us make this prayer today with our whole heart; let us make this prayer above and beyond the present moment, as we inwardly seek the Face of the Redeemer.

"Show us Jesus!" Mary responds, showing him to us in the first instance as a child. God has made himself small for us. God comes not with external force, but he comes in the powerlessness of his love, which is where his true strength lies. He places himself in our hands. He asks for our love. He invites us to become small ourselves, to come down from our high thrones and to learn to be childlike before God. He speaks to us informally. He asks us to trust him and thus to learn how to live in truth and love.

The child Jesus naturally reminds us also of all the children in the world, in whom he wishes to come to us. Children who live in poverty; who are exploited as soldiers; who have never been able to experience the love of parents; sick and suffering children, but also those who are joyful and healthy. Europe has become child-poor: we want everything for ourselves, and place little trust in the future. Yet the earth will be deprived of a future only when the forces of the human heart and of reason illuminated by the heart are extinguished -- when the face of God no longer shines upon the earth. Where God is, there is the future.

"To gaze upon Christ": let us look briefly now at the Crucified One above the high altar. God saved the world not by the sword, but by the Cross. In dying, Jesus extends his arms. This, in the first place, is the posture of the Passion, in which he lets himself be nailed to the Cross for us, in order to give us his life. Yet outstretched arms are also the posture of one who prays, the stance assumed by the priest when he extends his arms in prayer: Jesus transformed the Passion, his suffering and his death, into prayer, and in this way he transformed it into an act of love for God and for humanity. That, finally, is why the outstretched arms of the Crucified One are also a gesture of embracing, by which he draws us to himself, wishing to enfold us in his loving hands. In this way he is an image of the living God, he is God himself, and we may entrust ourselves to him.

"To gaze upon Christ!" If we do this, we realize that Christianity is more than and different from a moral code, from a series of requirements and laws. It is the gift of a friendship that lasts through life and death: "No longer do I call you servants, but friends" (Jn 15:15), the Lord says to his disciples. We entrust ourselves to this friendship. Yet precisely because Christianity is more than a moral system, because it is the gift of friendship, for this reason it also contains within itself great moral strength, which is so urgently needed today on account of the challenges of our time. If with Jesus Christ and his Church we constantly re-read the Ten Commandments of Sinai, entering into their full depth, then a great, valid and lasting teaching unfolds before us.

The Ten Commandments are first and foremost a "yes" to God, to a God who loves us and leads us, who carries us and yet allows us our freedom: indeed, it is he who makes our freedom real (the first three commandments). It is a "yes" to the family (fourth commandment), a "yes" to life (fifth commandment), a "yes" to responsible love (sixth commandment), a "yes" to solidarity, to social responsibility and to justice (seventh commandment), a "yes" to truth (eighth commandment) and a "yes" to respect for other people and for what is theirs (ninth and tenth commandments). By the strength of our friendship with the living God we live this manifold "yes" and at the same time we carry it as a signpost into this world of ours today.

"Show us Jesus!" It was with this plea to the Mother of the Lord that we set off on our journey here. This same plea will accompany us as we return to our daily lives. And we know that Mary hears our prayer: yes, whenever we look towards Mary, she shows us Jesus. Thus we can find the right path, we can follow it step by step, filled with joyful confidence that the path leads into the light -- into the joy of eternal Love. Amen."

What's sauce for the goose...

2007-09-07T06:55:00.000-07:00

... is sauce for the gander. That's what my mother used to say when I didn't want to eay what everybody else was eating at the family meal.

It's true at the table of the Church also.

I thought of that today when I read Benedict XVI's comments during his audience with prelates from Asia. I don't think he's necessarily giving the same advice to leaders, irrespective of their country of origin. But I sure hear the wisdom in his words which can be applied to our own American situation. The highlighted comments about clear announcement of the faith, respectful dialogue and works of compassion are especially meaningful.

CASTEL GANDOLFO, Italy, SEPT. 6, 2007 (Zenit.org).-

The Church wants the freedom to announce the faith, not impose it, says Benedict XVI. The Pope said that today when he received in audience bishops from Laos and Cambodia, in Italy for their five-yearly visit."You carry out your ministry at the service of the Church," the Holy Father told the prelates, "in often difficult conditions and in a great variety of situations. Be sure that you have my fraternal support and the support of the universal Church in your service to the people of God."The aid you receive in various fields from older Churches, especially as regards pastoral care workers and formation, is also an eloquent sign of the solidarity that Christ's disciples should show to one another."

Benedict XVI said that one of the most important elements of the bishops' ministry is the announcement of the Christian faith.He noted that "the recent celebration of the 450th anniversary of the presence of the Church in Cambodia was an occasion for the faithful to gain a deeper awareness of the long history of Christians in the region."

The Pope added: "In truth, the Christian faith is not foreign to your peoples."'Jesus is the Good News for the men and women of every time and place in their search for the meaning of existence and for the truth of their own humanity,' and in her announcement to all peoples, the Church does not wish to impose herself but to bear witness to her respect for human beings and for the society in which she lives."

The Holy Father said that in the social and religious context of the regions where the bishops work, "it is vitally important that Catholics express their own identity, while always respecting other religious traditions and cultures. ... This identity must be expressed, primarily, through an authentic spiritual experience based on accepting the word of God and on the sacraments of the Church." Thus, the Pontiff told the bishops their priority is the formation of the faithful, above all religious and catechists.He said that "with a solidly founded Christian faith, they can establish authentic dialogue with members of other religions so as to cooperate in developing your countries and in promoting the common good."

The Bishop of Rome also addressed the issues of education and family."Appropriate preparation for Christian marriage is particularly important," he said.He encouraged the prelates to teach young people "family values such as filial respect, love and care for the aged and the sick, love of children and harmony, [which] are held in high esteem in all Asian cultures and religious traditions."

Benedict XVI concluded with an appeal to care for the underprivileged, calling this "a specific sign of the authenticity" of faith.The Church's social activities, he said, "enjoy the appreciation of the population and of the authorities" because "they eloquently highlight God's love for all human beings with distinction. Therefore, it is very important that the Church's charitable work maintains all of its splendor and does not become just another form of social assistance."

Musical Pope

2007-09-05T19:17:00.001-07:00

How cool is this? I was reminded one again about how much our Holy Father Benedict XVI loves music by this note today on Zenit:

VATICAN CITY, SEPT. 5, 2007 (Zenit.org).- Benedict XVI says that music has the power to lead us to the Creator of all harmony.The Pope said this Tuesday, following a concert he attended in the inner courtyard of the apostolic palace at Castel Gandolfo, south of Rome.

According to the Vatican press office, the event was organized by the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra as part of the celebrations marking the 100th anniversary of the archdiocese of that German city.

The Pontiff said that music "has the power to lead us back ... to the Creator of all harmony, creating a resonance within us which is like being in tune with the beauty and truth of God, with the reality which no human knowledge or philosophy can ever express."Benedict XVI thanked the conductor and members of the orchestra, as well as the event's organizers and promoters.

He said the concert was a "gift which I interpret as being the sign of a special bond of affection between the Archdiocese of Bamberg and Peter's successor."He added: "May your jubilee pilgrimage to the tombs of the apostles […] strengthen your faith and joy in God, that you may become his witnesses in daily life."

"Cantare amantis est" (trans- singing is a lover's thing)- St. Augustine, as quoted by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger in The Spirit of the Liturgy

Mother Teresa's Heart of Darkness

2007-09-05T12:12:00.000-07:00

"To be alone with Jesus in adoration and intimate union with Him is the Greatest Gift of Love - the tender love of Our Father in Heaven."

- Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta

Interesting quote from Mother Teresa, especially in light of recent "revelations" about her dark moods and decades-long feelings of adandonment. If you put this quote right up next to those darkest of moments, what happens?

One response is to see in Mother Teresa symptoms of a systemic problem. We are all familiar with the best-seller question: why do bad things happen to good people? But the question becomes even more acute when one internalizes the whole experience, the problem of suffering writ small, on the tablet of the human soul

The question then goes like this: how could a loving God tolerate provoking feelings of abandonment in His children, imposing on them decades of emotional suffering? Christopher Hitchens blames the situation (as he frequently does) on organized religion. Hitchens is headed along the right trail, but he doesn't go far enough along it to view the true source of Teresa's angst.

The "crushing unreasonableness" is not a burden imposed on weak souls by the Church itself, as if some internal belief system were the source of Teresa's emotional suffering. It's much deeper, much more profund than that.

The imprint of this unreasonableness finds its source in the Heart of God himself, especially as that Heart reveals its powerful Self in the Sacred and Immaculate Hearts of Jesus and Mary. These two hearts are not direct doorways to sweetness and light, as those who persevere in these twin devotions know.

There is in their midst a Heart of Darkness.

Inside of that Heart there are the teeming poor,wretched souls from Bosnia and hopeless people dying of AIDS. Inside of that Heart are all of the external circumstances which weigh down the world. These are the very wounds which Blessed Teresa of Calcutta herself loved and dressed in the body of this aching world. Like the Sacrament, there are in this Heart the Body broken, and the blood outpoured.

So, it should come as no surprise when a saint's life reveals an inward desolation, a barreness seemingly God-forsaken. It is precisely there where the fruit of love is born. It is precisely and only in the Heart of Darkness that we begin to experience the resurrection light. It is only those who have been there, or at least peered into the Mystery, who understand this divine necessity. It is the necessity which drove our Lord to His Cross. It is the divine necessity which drives His people to sacrifice themselves in lives of service.

Blessed Mother Teresa was not a saint in spite of her inward turmoil, but precisely because of it.

Enough said.

He helped the doing by showing

2007-09-03T09:59:00.000-07:00

What made Saint Pope Gregory the Great (540-604) so great?

One could point to his many accomplishments. He was Benedictine, the first monk to be elected Pope, and during his fourteen years as pontiff he suffered many physical ailments. Despite his infirmities, he is credited with wise management of the papal holdings and distributing much of the increase to the poor. He also organized and codified the chant which still bears his name.

Above all, though, he strove to improve the "serve" of church leadership. His pastoral rule is renowned for its sensitivity to individual circumstance, as well as its high view of the pastoral office. It became the gold standard for clergy performance review throughout the early middle ages. Again and again, the Church would fall from this high standard, only to return again and again to this fountainhead. We are in the middle of another such cycle today.

Truly, as its own words advise, Gregory himself helped what he commanded to be done by showing it forth in his own life. Here are some translated excerpts from the Pastoral Rule, through which Gregory's spirit glows.

"The conduct of a prelate ought so far to be superior to the conduct of the people as the life of a shepherd is accustomed to exalt him above the flock. For one whose position is such that the people are called his flock ought anxiously to consider how great a necessity is laid upon him to maintain uprightness. It is necessary, then, that in thought he should be pure, in action firm; discreet in keeping silence; profitable in speech; a near neighbor to every one in sympathy; exalted above all in contemplation; a familiar friend of good livers through humility, unbending against the vices of evil-doers through zeal for righteousness; not relaxing in his care for what is inward by reason of being occupied in outward things, nor neglecting to provide for outward things in his anxiety for what is inward.

The pastor should always be pure in thought, inasmuch as no impurity ought to pollute him who has undertaken the office of wiping away the stains of pollution in the hearts of others also; for the hand that would cleanse from dirt must needs be clean, lest, being itself sordid with clinging mire, it soil all the more whatever it touches.

The pastor should always be a leader in action, that by his living he may point out the way of life to those who are put under him, and that the flock, which follows the voice and manners of the shepherd, may learn how to walk rather through example than through words.

For he who is required by the necessity of his position to speak the highest things is compelled by the same necessity to do the highest things. For that voice more readily penetrates the hearer's heart, which the speaker's life commends, since what he commands by speaking he helps the doing by showing."

May all our clergy, at every level, do as much. I know that many have been hurt by the harshness of clergy or by their leaders' failure to live up to the gospel standard of the Chief Shepherd.

The door through which many have left can also be the entry point through which they return. My prayer is that any and all who have had this experience may also encounter, in God's providence, those men of God who can bring them back once again into the One Fold.

Saint Gregory the Great, pray for us!

Taking the Last Place

2007-09-02T07:16:00.000-07:00

From Blessed Charles de Foucauld (1858-1916), hermit and missionary to the Sahara

On Retreat, Holy Land, Lent 1898

Following the servant Christ to the last place

[Christ:] See [my] devotion to men and consider what your own should be. See that humility for man’s good and learn to humble yourself to do good…; to make yourself small to win others; not to fear to go lower or lose your rights when it is a matter of doing good; not to believe that in descending you make yourself powerless to do good.

To the contrary, by descending you imitate me; by descending you make use of the same means, for the love of humankind, that I myself employed; by descending you walk in my way and, therefore, in the truth and you are in the best place to lay hold of life and give it to others…By my incarnation I place myself on a level with creatures; by my baptism …on that of sinners; descent, humility…Always descend, always humble yourself.

Let those who are first always stand in the last place, through humility and in disposition of spirit, with an attitude of descent and service. Love of men, humility, the last place: in the last place so long as the divine will does not call you to another, since then you must obey.

Obedience before all else; conformity to God’s will. In the first place be spiritually in the last, through humility: occupy it in the spirit of service, telling yourself that you are only there to serve others and lead them to salvation.

What is YOUR profit?

2007-09-01T07:42:00.000-07:00

This story was shared this past week at the funeral of a fellow parishoner, Firmin Alexander. I thought of it again today when I heard the parable of the talents at Mass.

Firmin definitely didn't bury his talent in the ground. He shared of himself as educator, father, volunteer. Not rich by earthly standards, Firmin found true riches in his Catholic faith, in his family and in service to both. May light perpetual shine upon him.

"The son told his father who operated a small grocery store, "Look, you keep bills in a cigar box, you keep all your money in the cash register, and you keep your receipts in a shoe box! No wonder you don't have any profits- you're so disorganized!"

The father replied, "When I came to this country thirty=fice yars ago, I only had the pants I wore! And now, your sister is a doctor, your brother is a fine teacher, and you soon will be an accountant!"

He continued, "Your mother and I have a nice place to live and a good car!"

"and so, I add this all up- and subtract the pair of pants- this is my profit!"

That We May Be Christ

2007-08-31T11:19:00.000-07:00

"All these thoughts on the Eucharist make it clear to us that in this Sacrament,

in which He not only gives grace to us but also gives Himself,

we are led to a supreme peak of spiritual fulfillment.

This Sacrament is not given to us merely in order that we do something,

but that we may be someone: that we may be Christ.

That we may be perfectly identified with Him.

Comparing the Eucharist with confirmation, St Thomas says that confirmation brings us an increase of grace in order to resist temptation, but the Eucharist does even more: it
increases and perfects our spiritual life itself, in order that we may be perfected
in our own being, our own personality, by our union with God ...

In other words,
by our union with Christ in the Eucharist we find our true selves.
The false self, the "old man", is burned away by the fervor of charity
generated by His intimate presence within our soul.
And the "new man" comes into full possession of Himself
as we "live, now not we, but Christ liveth in us."

Thomas Merton, The Living Bread

Keeping Christ at the Center

2007-08-30T06:55:00.000-07:00

"During a prayer time the week before Easter, I was amazed by how much the monstrance seemed to symbolize the Catholic Church.

Like many Protestants, I had been concerned that Mary, the saints and the sacraments were roadblocks between believers and God so that to get to God, one would have to go around them. They seemed to complicate life with God unnecessarily like accretions on the sides of sunken treasures; they had to be discarded to get to what was important.

But now I could see that the opposite was true. Catholicism was not a distant religion, but a presence oriented one. Catholics were the ones who had Jesus physically present in churches and saw themselves as being tabernacles after receiving the Eucharist. And because Jesus is the Eucharist, keeping Him in the center allows all of the rich doctrines of the Church to emanate from Him, just as the beautiful gold rays stream forth from the Host in the monstrance."

- Kimberly Hahn
Rome Sweet Home, Our Journey to Catholicism

Martyr-dumb

2007-08-29T18:03:00.000-07:00

A little discourse on martyrdom in general, in honor of John the Baptist's beheading.

I remember back in my grad school days studying the cult of the martyrs and wondering "what gives?" Why is there this fascination by the early Christians with the idea... wait no.... the experience of giving themselves away to God by dying for Him?

The most egregious example I read about at the time was Ignatius of Antioch. I really liked the guy----- after all, one of dissertation study questions was dedicated to him. But, come on now, he was more than a little "over the top" about dying for the Faith.

One of his most famous sayings is this:

"I am the wheat of God,

ground fine by the lions' teeth

to become the pure bread of Christ"

Alright, I admit it. I was dumb, martyr-dumb. This sounded strange to me.

It took me almost 10 years of living this Catholic life to get the serious (and unavoidable!)connection between the Eucharist, the concept of martyrdom, and the daily death to self we are all called to undergo.

Now that I "get it" I understand how intertwined our own everyday sufferings (and the greatest suffering- martyrdom) are with the suffering and death of our Lord. No wonder Jesus had to ask Saul of Tarsus, "Why are you persecuting me?"

From the moment he hung on the Cross, Christ has been gathering up what we experience in this life and making it fodder to transform us into fit subjects for the next life. Paul himself recognized this throughout his ministry.

The remindesr are sprinkled here and there throughout the Pauline corpus. Suffice it to mention one- Colossians 1:24-27

Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake,

and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking

in the afflictions of Christ on behalf of his body,

which is the church,
of which I am a minister in accordance

with God's stewardship given to me to bring to completion

for you the word of God,
the mystery hidden from ages and from generations past.

But now it has been manifested to his holy ones,

to whom God chose to make known the riches of the glory

of this mystery among the Gentiles;

it is Christ in you, the hope for glory.

Ah-ha! This passage always used to bother me as a Protestant- waddaya mean? isn't Christ's suffering ENOUGH?

Now it begins to make sense.... Identity with Christ takes up our lives into His divine life... that IS the Church... that is what the East calls the mystery, or we in the West the sacrament of God's presence.

Cool.

The New Catholic Manliness

2007-08-29T06:55:00.001-07:00

Here is an article from the most recent Crisis magazine. This was shared with me by a priest-friend for whom I have the utmost respect.

Although the article's examples may be a little exaggerated, I think the author, Todd Aglialoro, hits on an important component in contemporary American Catholic parish life.

Ten years ago it was "where are the men?" Now it's "here come the men." It's about time.

Mother Teresa's "Depression"

2007-08-28T11:41:00.000-07:00

In the wake of JustMe's recent comment on my previous post about John the Baptist, here is some commentary on the current Mother Teresa "publicity" from the Papal preacher, Capuchin Fr. Cantalamessa. (By the way, does anyone know what his name means in Italian? Isn't it something like "sing the Mass"?)

Seriously, though, I think Father Cantalamessa does a great job of pointing out what is important and unique about Mother Teresa's unique path to God. Depression doesn't always equal a dark night of the soul. That's journalistic oversimplification at work.

But in our "happy-happy" society, the spiritual value provided by Mother Teresa's witness of constancy and discretion is worth noting.

Mother Teresa's Dark Night Unique, Says Preacher

Father Cantalamessa Calls Her Saint of the Media Age

VATICAN CITY, AUG. 27, 2007 (Zenit.org).-

Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta's dark night of the soul kept her from being a victim of the media age and exalting herself, says the preacher of the Pontifical Household.Capuchin Father Raniero Cantalamessa said this in an interview with Vatican Radio, commenting on previously unpublished letters from Mother Teresa, now made public in Doubleday's book "Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light," edited by Father Brian Kolodiejchuk, postulator of the cause of Mother Teresa's canonization.

In one of her letters, Mother Teresa wrote: "There is so much contradiction in my soul. Such deep longing for God -- so deep that it is painful -- a suffering continual -- and yet not wanted by God -- repulsed -- empty -- no faith -- no love -- no zeal. Souls hold no attraction. Heaven means nothing -- to me it looks like an empty place."

Father Cantalamessa explained that the fact that Mother Teresa suffered deeply from her feeling of the absence of God affirms that it was a positive phenomenon. Atheists, he contended, are not afflicted by God's absence but, "for Mother Teresa, this was the most terrible test that she could have experienced."He further clarified that "it is the presence-absence of God: God is present but one does not experience his presence."

Martyrdom

Father Cantalamessa contended that Mother Teresa's spiritual suffering makes her even greater. He said: "The fact that Mother Teresa was able to remain for hours in front of the Blessed Sacrament, as many eye-witnesses have testified, as if enraptured … if one thinks about the condition she was in at that moment, that is martyrdom!"Because of this, for me, the figure of Mother Teresa is even greater; it does not diminish her."

The Capuchin priest further lauded Mother Teresa's ability to keep her spiritual pain hidden within her. "Maybe, this was done in expiation for the widespread atheism in today's world," he said, adding that she lived her experience of the absence of God "in a positive way -- with faith, with God."

Not scandalous

Father Cantalamessa affirmed that Mother Teresa's dark night should not scandalize or surprise anyone. The "dark night," he said, "is something well-known in the Christian tradition; maybe new and unheard of in the way Mother Teresa experienced it."

He added: "While 'the dark night of the spirit' of St. John of the Cross is a generally preparatory period for that definitive one called 'unitive,' for Mother Teresa it seems that it was one stable state, from a certain point in her life, when she began this great work of charity, until the end."

In my view, the fact of this prolongation of the 'night' has meaning for us today. I believe that Mother Teresa is the saint of the media age, because this 'night of the spirit' protected her from being a victim of the media, namely from exalting herself."In fact, she used to say that when she received great awards and praise from the media, she did not feel anything because of this interior emptiness."

Repentance: Set Free From Ourselves

2007-08-28T09:47:00.000-07:00

Thursday we will remember the Martyrdom of St. John the Baptist. The gory details need not detain us here. You can read the full account in Mark 6:17-29, or listen to it at Mass if you prefer. Dancing girls, a wicked ruler, beheading... none too attractive but all too interesting.

Leave it to Benedict XVI to pull from the story a spiritual lesson of the first magnitude.

"The task set before the Baptist as he lay in prison was to become blessed by this unquestioning acceptance of God's obscure will; to reach the point of asking no further for external, unequivocal clarity, but,instead, of discovering God precisely in the darkness of this world and of his own life, and thus becoming profoundly blessed.

John even in his prison cell had to respond once again and anew to his own call for metanoia or a change of mentality, in order that he might recognize his God in the night in which all things earthly exist. Only when we act in this manner does another- and doubtless the greatest- saying of the Baptist reveal its full significance: 'He must increase, but I must decrease' (Jn 3:30). We will know God to the extent that we are set free from ourselves."

Beauty Ever Ancient, Ever New

2007-08-27T17:12:00.000-07:00

I was sitting in my ex's house over the weekend musing over beauty, hers, ...her home's,... and all of the "finer" things that a bachelor somehow seems to miss when his lady has left. It's more than just picked up socks, a clean sink, scented candles and matching wall colors, although that's part of it.

She's a fine woman. No doubt of it. There's a sense of beauty which she brought to the seven years of our home and life together. I appreciated it once again when I took time to notice the beauty and atmosphere of her current home.

But knowing that this week we are facing the memorial of St. Augustine I couldn't help but move on to ponder Beauty in its more abstract forms....

Late have I loved you,
O Beauty ever ancient, ever new,
late have I loved you!

You were within me, but I was outside,
and it was there that I searched for you.
In my unloveliness I plunged into the lovely things which you created.

You were with me, but I was not with you.
Created things kept me from you;
yet if they had not been in you they would not have been at all.

You called, you shouted, and you broke through my deafness.
You flashed, you shone, and you dispelled my blindness.
You breathed your fragrance on me;
I drew in breath and now I pant for you.

I have tasted you, now I hunger and thirst for more.
You touched me, and I burned for your peace.

~ St. Augustine, Confessions of St. Augustine

Beautiful scenery, beautiful places, beautiful buildings, beautiful persons, all of these provoke a reaction in our most human souls- a sense of desire but also a lingering sense of incompleteness.

That sadness only remains sad or deepens into depression, however, when it ceases to perform its proper function in our lives- to lead us back to God, who is True Beauty, to provoke thanksgiving toward the Father who created it AND us.

Beauty of whatever type only becomes pornographic when it somehow gets detached from the meaning and purpose of the Creator. Then, it becomes like an inscrutable symbol... pretty to look at, but contentless on its own, without a Meaning.

Conversely, Beauty can lead us towards a grand vision of All and Everything brought to God.

So, I sat on Sunday morning in a comfy chair in a beautiful home
and read that last and greatest vision of Isaiah (66:18-21).

Here the grand Prophet fulfills the hope of the Exile.
Here lies the final End of all 66 chapters of dancing images,....
punishment and redemption,
burning coals on sinful lips,
roads made straight for God's feet,
the faceless Servant's death.

This is the final fantasy fulfillment of God's City,
as Augustine also no doubt also saw
from its southernmost outskirts in North Africa:

"They shall bring all your brothers and sisters from all the nations
as an offering to the Lord on horses and in chariots,
in carts, upon mules and dromendaries,
to Jerusalem, my holy mountain,
says the Lord,
just as the Israelites bring their offering
to the house of the Lord in clean vessels."

St Monica for Moms

2007-08-27T11:21:00.000-07:00

Today is the Memorial for St Monica, mother of Augustine. She wept and prayed for her son's conversion. And, of course, her prayers were answered in abundance.

She reminds of my own mom. We all idolize our own mothers. However, like St Augustine, many sons often leave their mothers on the pier crying while we sail off into life's adventure. Sometimes we don't even leave a forwarding address. Only much later do we realize how well our spiritual garden was watered by their tears.

So it was with me.

Twenty years ago this week I arrived home in Texas fresh from Clinical Pastoral Education at Ebenezer Society in Minneapolis. After an absence of years, both physical and emotional, I was excited to share with my mother some of the insights from my CPE experience.

Little did I know that this sharing was to be our last.

Early one morning, I took off to return to Minneapolis for Fall seminary classes before Labor Day weekend. The following Tuesday, September 8th, I got a call from my dad while at work in the Luther Seminary Library. My mom had died of a sudden heart attack at home in her favorite easy chair while my father was 70 miles away at his office.

I barely remember the hundreds of people in two memorial services which followed my hasty return to Texas a few days later. But person after person shared their own stories of how much my mother's life had affected them. Yet, until the last possible moment, I myself had ignored my mother and her loving prayers and attitude.

Now her prayers mean more to me.
Now I ache to see her again, even 20 years later.
Now I look forward to seeing her again, where in heaven we'll share
in the fullness of the Eucharistic faith which I came only later to embrace.

Augustine records in his Confessions his own experience of own mother's passing with great pathos. It is an understanding which now he and I share together.

To Augustine and his brother, Monica says ...

"Bring my body wherever you will; let not care of it cause you any concern. One thing only I ask of you, that you remember me at the altar of the Lord wherever you may be."

At the Lord's Table is where I feel closest to my mom now. It is where my memories of her are most vivid. It is from that platform that I hope to launch into an eternity of praising God with her in company of the other saints and all the angels.

Here's a daily novena prayer, asking Monica's intercession on behalf of children. It was given to me by a dear friend, a long-suffering mom with children in various stages of way-wardness.

Don't ever give up, moms. If prayer worked on me, it certainly can work on your own sons and daughters.

Dear Saint Monica, once the sorrowing mother of a wayward son,
be pleased to present our petition to the Lord God of heaven and earth.
(Pause to mention intentions in silence).
Look down upon our anxieties and needs,
and intercede for us, as you did so fervently for Augustine, your firstborn.

We have full confidence that your prayers
will gain favorable hearing in heaven.
Mother of a sinner-turned-saint,
obtain for us patience, perseverance, and total trust in God’s perfect timing.
In His appointed hour, in His merciful way,
may He respond to your prayers and ours,
which we offer through you. Amen

Better Late than Never

2007-08-26T16:24:00.000-07:00

I just picked up this homily of Holy Father Benedict XVI for the Feast of the Assumption from today's Zenit. They say things move more slowly in Italy in August. So, there's my excuse.

Anyway, here it is. Quite the masterpiece of reading the Scriptures with the signs of our times.

"Take Heart, It Is Love That Wins in the End!"

CASTEL GANDOLFO, Italy, AUG. 25, 2007 (Zenit.org).- Here is a Vatican translation of the homily Benedict XVI delivered Aug. 15, solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, at St. Thomas of Villanova Parish in Castel Gandolfo.

* * *

HOLY MASS ON THE SOLEMNITY
OF THE ASSUMPTION OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY
HOMILY OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI
St. Thomas of Villanova Parish, Castel Gandolfo
Wednesday, 15 August 2007

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

In his great work "De Civitate Dei," St Augustine says once that the whole of human history, the history of the world, is a struggle between two loves: love of God to the point of losing oneself, of total self-giving, and love of oneself to the point of despising God, of hating others. This same interpretation of history as a struggle between two loves, between love and selfishness, also appears in the reading from the Book of Revelation that we have just heard.

Here, these two loves appear in two great figures. First of all, there is the immensely strong, red dragon with a striking and disturbing manifestation of power without grace, without love, of absolute selfishness, terror and violence.

At the time when St John wrote the Book of Revelation, this dragon represented for him the power of the anti-Christian Roman Emperors, from Nero to Domitian. This power seemed boundless; the military, political and propagandist power of the Roman Empire was such that before it, faith, the Church, appeared as a defenceless woman with no chance of survival and even less of victory.

Who could stand up to this omnipresent force that seemed capable of achieving everything? Yet, we know that in the end it was the defenceless woman who won and not egoism or hatred; the love of God triumphed and the Roman Empire was opened to the Christian faith.

The words of Sacred Scripture always transcend the period in history. Thus, not only does this dragon suggest the anti-Christian power of the persecutors of the Church of that time, but also anti-Christian dictatorships of all periods.

We see this power, the force of the red dragon, brought into existence once again in the great dictatorships of the last century: the Nazi dictatorship and the dictatorship of Stalin monopolized all the power, penetrated every corner, the very last corner. It seemed impossible in the long term that faith could survive in the face of this dragon that was so powerful, that could not wait to devour God become a Child, as well as the woman, the Church. But also in this case, in the end love was stronger than hate.

Today too, the dragon exists in new and different ways. It exists in the form of materialistic ideologies that tell us it is absurd to think of God; it is absurd to observe God's commandments: they are a leftover from a time past. Life is only worth living for its own sake. Take everything we can get in this brief moment of life. Consumerism, selfishness and entertainment alone are worthwhile. This is life. This is how we must live. And once again, it seems absurd, impossible, to oppose this dominant mindset with all its media and propagandist power. Today too, it seems impossible to imagine a God who created man and made himself a Child and who was to be the true ruler of the world.

Even now, this dragon appears invincible, but it is still true today that God is stronger than the dragon, that it is love which conquers rather than selfishness.

Having thus considered the various historical forms of the dragon, let us now look at the other image: the woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, surrounded by 12 stars. This is also a multidimensional image.

Without any doubt, a first meaning is that it is Our Lady, Mary, clothed with the sun, that is, with God, totally; Mary who lives totally in God, surrounded and penetrated by God's light. Surrounded by the 12 stars, that is, by the 12 tribes of Israel, by the whole People of God, by the whole Communion of Saints; and at her feet, the moon, the image of death and mortality.

Mary has left death behind her; she is totally clothed in life, she is taken up body and soul into God's glory and thus, placed in glory after overcoming death, she says to us: Take heart, it is love that wins in the end!

The message of my life was: I am the handmaid of God, my life has been a gift of myself to God and my neighbour. And this life of service now arrives in real life. May you too have trust and have the courage to live like this, countering all the threats of the dragon.

This is the first meaning of the woman whom Mary succeeded in being. The "woman clothed with the sun" is the great sign of the victory of love, of the victory of goodness, of the victory of God; a great sign of consolation.

Yet, this woman who suffered, who had to flee, who gave birth with cries of anguish, is also the Church, the pilgrim Church of all times. In all generations she has to give birth to Christ anew, to bring him very painfully into the world, with great suffering. Persecuted in all ages, it is almost as if, pursued by the dragon, she had gone to live in the wilderness.

However, in all ages, the Church, the People of God, also lives by the light of God and as the Gospel says is nourished by God, nourishing herself with the Bread of the Holy Eucharist. Thus, in all the trials in the various situations of the Church through the ages in different parts of the world, she wins through suffering. And she is the presence, the guarantee of God's love against all the ideologies of hatred and selfishness.

We see of course that today too the dragon wants to devour God who made himself a Child. Do not fear for this seemingly frail God; the fight has already been won. Today too, this weak God is strong: he is true strength.

Thus, the Feast of the Assumption is an invitation to trust in God and also to imitate Mary in what she herself said: Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; I put myself at the Lord's disposal.

This is the lesson: one should travel on one's own road; one should give life and not take it. And precisely in this way each one is on the journey of love which is the loss of self, but this losing of oneself is in fact the only way to truly find oneself, to find true life.

Let us look to Mary, taken up into Heaven. Let us be encouraged to celebrate the joyful feast with faith: God wins. Faith, which seems weak, is the true force of the world. Love is stronger than hate.

And let us say with Elizabeth: Blessed are you among women. Let us pray to you with all the Church: Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.

On True Love

2007-08-25T11:17:00.000-07:00

This article was so good, I had to include the whole thing, from Holy Spirit Interactive

On True Love by Alice von Hildebrand

Reason speaks in words alone, but love has a song. —Joseph de Maistre

We live in an age of confusion. It might even be said that we major not only in intellectual confusions but in affective confusions as well. Many do not know how to gauge their emotions; they cannot distinguish between valid and invalid feelings. They do not know for certain whether they are truly in love or whether they are animated by wishful thinking and believe themselves in love because they crave the excitement that love gives. They confuse "loving" with having a crush, or "discerning" forever without coming to a decision.

Far from claiming that I can answer this question, all I aim to do is offer some "signposts" that might be helpful when people ask the question: Am I or am I not in love?

Great experiences usually come as a surprise—incredible gifts that are in no way the fruit of wile or planning. They overwhelm us, and our first response is: "I am not worthy of such a gift. He (or she) is so much better than myself." Our hearts are overcome with gratitude, a gratitude that makes us humble. We feel unworthy of such a gift, which seems to awaken us from a deep sleep. No doubt, the person in love "truly starts living." The person who has never loved lives in a state of somnambulism and moves about as an automaton fulfilling his daily duties with dullness of heart—a heart that does not seem to beat.

When in love, we experience a deep, profound joy—a joy that is both ardent and calm, like a burning bush; but this ardor is not destructive, and is marked by deep recollection. It springs from the very center of our being. How different from the loud excitement of those who experience violent emotions that do not come from their depths and, like a straw fire, shine brightly for a short while but are soon extinguished.

The heart is not only on fire, but this fire has a melting effect. We feel as if a goodness that does not come from within has taken hold of us. Dietrich von Hildebrand speaks of "fluid goodness" of a loving heart.

True love makes the lover more beautiful; he irradiates joy. If this is not the case, we can raise doubts as to whether he is truly in love. One says in French: "Un saint triste est un triste saint"—a sad saint is a pitiful saint. Similarly, a sad "lover" should question whether he truly loves. Small, modest duties are done joyfully, because either they are done "with him" or "with her," or because they become acts of loving service.

True love makes one humble. All of a sudden our weakness, misery, and imperfection flash up before our minds, but with no depressing effect. We see our mistakes with the wish to unveil them to the loved one, and this unveiling is coupled with the wish to beg for his or her help in order to overcome them. We wish to unveil ourselves spiritually in a chaste way, to be truly known by the person we love; we fear to cheat our beloved into believing that we are better than we truly are. We feel that the loved one is entitled to know both our "valid name" and its caricature.

Love is also linked to a holy realism. The beauty of the loved one appears in front of us, but with no illusion; his beauty is not a fruit of wishful thinking, but a real vision—as on Mount Tabor—that the lover will have to remain faithful to, to hold on to when the vision is inevitably dimmed by the dullness of everyday duties.

The lover will always be willing to give the loved one what Dietrich von Hildebrand calls "the credit of love"—that is, when the loved one acts in a way that we do not understand or is a disappointment to us, instead of condemning him, the lover will trust that, human life being as complex as it is, his actions may be justified, even though at first glance they strike us as regrettable. The true lover eagerly looks for "excuses" when the conduct of the one he loves is a disappointment. He carefully refrains from being overconfident in blaming the other’s conduct, baffling as it might be at first sight. He rejoices upon discovering that he was mistaken.

How sad it is in Shakespeare’s play Cymbeline when Posthumus, being informed by the scoundrel Iachimo that his wife, Imogene, had betrayed him, believes the slanderer, even though he had ample previous evidence that she loved him and was pure. The play has a happy ending, but it sketches powerfully the bitterness, rage, and despair of someone who is convinced that the one he loved, the one whose image was the source of his joy, has betrayed him.

We can say that we truly love when a loved one’s impatience, ingratitude, or "rudeness" (in other words, when his true beauty is veiled) cause us greater grief because he is staining his beautiful garment and presenting us with a caricature of his true face, rather than because he has wounded us. Most of all, the true lover is grieved because the loved one has offended God. On the order of importance, the offense against God is the primary source of sorrow; the harm that he does to his own beloved soul is second; last—even though deeply painful—is the wound he inflicts upon the one who loves him so deeply.

The true lover is more concerned about the interests of his loved one—whatever truly benefits his beloved’s soul—than about his own. Hence the readiness to make sacrifices for him in the very many little things of daily life in which people’s tastes differ: a very warm room or a cool one; eating at home or in a restaurant; going to a soccer game or staying home; watching a television program when one’s spouse wishes to watch another one, and so on. Yielding should be limited to cases of subjective preferences, of course, and should never extend to principles. Still, we all know spouses often ill-treated by their husbands (or wives) who are so concerned about the eternal welfare of the loved one that they accept all these sufferings, offering them up for his or her sake.

A great sign of true love is the loving patience that one has toward the weaknesses of the beloved. It can be his idiosyncrasies, his temperament, his mannerisms (we all have them); it can be his physical frailties, his psychological oddities, his intellectual inability to follow a straight line of reasoning; his disorder, or his fanaticism for order. If a monk is constantly given occasions to "die to his own will" (as St. Benedict says), the same is true of marriages. John Henry Cardinal Newman writes that even in the deepest human relationships, when love is authentic, life in common will give one plenty of opportunities to prove one’s love by sacrificing one’s preferences.

Mannerisms, idiosyncrasies, moods; physical, psychological, and intellectual weaknesses are either interpreted as positively as possible or are borne with patience. Benedict writes about monks striving for holiness who nevertheless almost inevitably cause irritation for those living close to them. "Let them bear with the greatest patience one another’s infirmities, whether of body or character" (Holy Rule, chapter 72).

The History of a Soul, from this point of view, is also a spiritual treasure. St. Thérèse of Lisieux clearly suffered much from the lack of education and manners in some of the other nuns. She learned the holy art of using every single irritation for God’s glory, including the nerve-racking noise that a sister made in the stall next to hers, which prevented her from praying and being recollected. Still, Thérèse emerged victorious through love.

Surprisingly, this can also bring happiness to the best of marriages, even though the being we love has wounded our hearts. A true lover whose love is baptized will use these insignificant sacrifices as they did in the Middle Ages, when artists used some bits of wool to make superb tapestries.

The true lover always has the word "thank you" on his tongue. It is also easy for him to say "forgive me," for in the best relationship, one inevitably falls into mistakes. If someone imagines that he can find himself in a situation in which he will never make a mistake, that person should not get married, or have children, or enter a convent. The holy art of living is to know that we will make mistakes, to recognize them, to repent, and, with God’s grace, to have the readiness to change.

Simultaneously, it is important that both lovers recognize their mistakes. We all know cases in which one of the lovers is always critical of the other and easily forgets that "the readiness to change" should be reciprocal, and that he too is affected by original sin.

Another characteristic of true love is that the loved one is "superactually" always with us; he is there, even when we are busy or absorbed by some duty. He creates the framework of our thoughts (after God). Just as faith in God and love of God should always be the background of all our thoughts and actions, the loved one is always with us; that is, everything that occurs is never unrelated to our love.

The lover feels a holy urge to say "thank you" and "forgive me." It flows from his heart without effort. The true lover experiences the deep truth of the words in the Canticle of Canticles: "If a man were to give the whole substance of his house for love, he would despise it as nothing."

the 500 Hats of Batholomew Apostle

2007-08-24T16:46:00.000-07:00

Not much is known about the Apostle Batholomew, whose feast day it is today. He was called under the name Nathaniel and brought to Jesus by Philip, as recorded in the gospel of John chapter 1. Beyond that, not much is known about him except that he went as a missionary to India and there died a martyr's death.

Whenever we celebrate an apostle's feast I think of Paul's description of his apostolic life, which forms part of the Office of Readings propers for apostolic feasts. I always marvel at how varied Paul's life was, and how he was led (forced?) by his position to become all things to all people. Out of pastoral concern, he wanted to lead as many people as he could to Christ. A true Shepherd and spiritual Father.

1 Corinthians 4:9-16

For as I see it, God has exhibited us apostles as the last of all, like people sentenced to death, since we have become a spectacle to the world, to angels and human beings alike. 10 We are fools on Christ's account, but you are wise in Christ; we are weak, but you are strong; you are held in honor, but we in disrepute.

11 To this very hour we go hungry and thirsty, we are poorly clad and roughly treated, we wander about homeless 12 And we toil, working with our own hands. When ridiculed, we bless; when persecuted, we endure; 13 when slandered, we respond gently. We have become like the world's rubbish, the scum of all, to this very moment. 14 I am writing you this not to shame you, but to admonish you as my beloved children. 15 Even if you should have countless guides to Christ, yet you do not have many fathers, for I became your father in Christ Jesus through the gospel. 16 Therefore, I urge you, be imitators of me.

As it was with Paul, so it is with the successors of these apostles. Our bishops (at least the ones I have seen close up) are men who labor night and day to make sure that all the people under their care can have the opportunity to understand and accept the love that God has for them.

As with Paul, it makes for a hard life. These men who don the mitres wear so very many hats.

Shepherd.
Teacher.
Reconciler.
Administrator.
Intercessor.

With all of these various hats to wear, they need our prayers. In honor of St Bartholomew and all the apostles, pray for your bishop(s) today.

What's your response?

2007-08-23T07:14:00.000-07:00

Today's gospel speaks of the eternal wedding feast where Christ the Bridegroom celebrates His love for us, His bride. The response of those invited to the feast varies. Some ignore the invitation, some slip in unannounced and underdressed for the occasion. Some even get down right angry and try to spoil the party.

What's your response to the Invitation? He's waiting to hear from you today.

Mt 22,1-14.

"Jesus again in reply spoke to them in parables, saying, The kingdom of heaven may be likened to a king who gave a wedding feast for his son. He dispatched his servants to summon the invited guests to the feast, but they refused to come. A second time he sent other servants, saying, 'Tell those invited: "Behold, I have prepared my banquet, my calves and fattened cattle are killed, and everything is ready; come to the feast."'

Some ignored the invitation and went away, one to his farm, another to his business. The rest laid hold of his servants, mistreated them, and killed them. The king was enraged and sent his troops, destroyed those murderers, and burned their city. Then he said to his servants, 'The feast is ready, but those who were invited were not worthy to come. Go out, therefore, into the main roads and invite to the feast whomever you find.'

The servants went out into the streets and gathered all they found, bad and good alike, and the hall was filled with guests. But when the king came in to meet the guests he saw a man there not dressed in a wedding garment. He said to him, 'My friend, how is it that you came in here without a wedding garment?' But he was reduced to silence. Then the king said to his attendants, 'Bind his hands and feet, and cast him into the darkness outside, where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.' Many are invited, but few are chosen."

From Jacob of Sarug (around 449 – 521), Monk and Syrian bishop

"Women are not so closely united to their husbands as the Church is to the Son of God. What husband other than our Lord ever died for his wife, and what wife ever chose as husband someone crucified? Who has ever given his blood as a present to his wife, otherthan the one who died on the cross and sealed his bridal union by his wounds? Who have we ever seen dead, lying at the banquet of his wedding, with, beside him, his wife who embraces him to be consoled? At what other feast, at what other banquet, has anyone ever distributed to the guests, under the form of bread, the body of the husband?

Death separates wives from their husbands, but here it unites the Spouse to her Beloved. He died on the cross, gave his body for his glorious Spouse, and now, at his table, day after day, she receives him for food … She is nourished by him under the form of the bread which she eats and under the form of the wine which she drinks, so that the world may recognize that they are not anymore two, but only one."

It's about life, it's about virtue

2007-08-22T14:25:00.000-07:00

From Saint John Chrysostom (around 345-407),

Bishop of Antioch, then of Constantinople, Doctor of the Church

Homilies on Saint Matthew, no. 64

“You too go along to my vineyard.”

"It is obvious that this parable is addressed both to people who have been virtuous since their youth and to people who become so only in their old age: to the former, to preserve them from pride and to stop them from reproaching the people of the eleventh hour; and to the latter, to teach them that they can deserve the same salary in a short time.

The Savior had just spoken about giving up wealth, about scorn for all goods, about virtues, which require a big heart and courage. For that, the zeal and energy of a youthful soul are necessary. So the Lord rekindles in them the flame of charity, strengthens their sentiments, and shows them that even those who came last receive the whole day’s salary.

All of Jesus’ parables - those about the virgins, the fishing net, the thorns, the barren tree – invite us to show our virtue in our actions. He speaks little about dogmas because they don’t require much effort. But he often speaks about life. Or rather, he talks about it all the time because, since life is a constant combat, the effort is also constant. "

Generous in Graces

2007-08-22T08:01:00.000-07:00

Today is the Memorial of the Queenship of Mary.

I think of this day like the scene between Frodo and Galadriel in the "Lord of the Rings" movie. Those who have read the book or seen the movies will remember this pivotal scene, where Frodo encounters Galadriel. Glimpsing his fate through her mirror and understanding her humility, Frodo is strengthened for the journey which is his and his alone to travel.

A Queen, terrible and great,
crystalline in Her perfection.
Yet, kind in intention and compassionate,
She shares Her vision with a pilgrim on a great journey.

She is Strength in adversity,
a Light in darkness,
a Reminder and Strength for mission.

Such is our Lady's Queenship.
She is humble before God.
She is exalted because of grace,
and so is able
generously to give Her graces to us
who are also travellers on the Way.

Whose are you?

2007-08-21T07:43:00.000-07:00

Today's Gospel talks about the burden riches impose upon those who want to advance in God's kingdom.

Mt 19,23-30.

"Then Jesus said to his disciples, "Amen, I say to you, it will be hard for one who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for one who is rich to enter the kingdom of God." When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished and said, "Who then can be saved?" Jesus looked at them and said, "For human beings this is impossible, but for God all things are possible."

Then Peter said to him in reply, "We have given up everything and followed you. What will there be for us?" Jesus said to them, "Amen, I say to you that you who have followed me, in the new age, when the Son of Man is seated on his throne of glory, will yourselves sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. And everyone who has given up houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands for the sake of my name will receive a hundred times more, and will inherit eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first."

But there is an underlying question here, not about who our riches belong to, but about Whose we are. Unless we give up our own ego and self to Christ, the money and goods we offer to God are only hostages in an unfought war. Whose are you?

Saint Peter Damian (1007-1072), hermit then bishop, doctor of the Church Sermon 9,

PL 144, 549-553

"It is a great thing, in truth, to “give up everything”, but greater “to follow Christ”, for, as we learn in books, many people gave up everything but did not follow Christ. Following Christ is our task, our work, in that consists the main part of man’s salvation, but we cannot follow Christ if we do not leave behind everything which hinders us. Because “like an athlete he joyfully runs his course” (Ps 19:6) and no one can follow him laden down with a burden.

Peter said, “We have given up everything”, not only worldly goods, but also the desires of our heart. For those who remain attached, even just to their own life, have not given up everything. Moreover, it’s no good leaving everything behind except one’s self, for there is no burden heavier than our ego.

What tyrant is crueler, what master more pitiless for man than his own will? ... Consequently, we must give up our possessions and our own will, if we want to follow him who had “nowhere to rest his head” (Lk 9:58) and who came “not to do his own will but the will of the one who sent him” (Jn 6:38)."

Light my Fire

2007-08-20T19:14:00.001-07:00

A few days late.... since I was on retreat at the Cistercian Abbey since Saturday and fasting from Internet.

I was meditating on the baptism of fire in the 12th chapter of Luke's gospel.

"I have come to set the earth on fire, and how wish it were already blazing."

Here and in the Matthean passage where Jesus speaks of the baptism of fire and of his death we see a close connection between that fire and the fiery trial of Christ's passion. Two or three other other scriptures also came to mind: Deuteronomy 4 and Heb 12:29 where God is described as a Consuming Fire. In both places we see that the fire of God is a fire of jealous love, of One who wants us only for Himself. That God appraoches us in Jesus and immolates himself on the Cross in the fire of that love.

Here a way cool text on the fire from a famous monk, Denis the Carthusian (1408 - 1471),

Commentary on the Gospel of Luke, 12: 72-74,To light in human hearts the fire of God's love

"I came down from the heights of heaven and, by the mystery of my Incarnation, I made myself manifest to men in order to light in human hearts the fire of divine love; “and how I wish it were already blazing!”, that is to say that it take hold and become a flame activated by the Holy Spirit, and that it bring forth abundant acts of kindness!

Christ then reveals that he will undergo death on the cross before the fire of this love ignites in humanity. It is, indeed, the most holy Passion of Christ which merited such a great gift for humanity, and it is above all the memory of his Passion which lights a flame in faithful hearts.

“I must be baptized”, in other words: “It falls to me and it is reserved to me by a divine decree to receive a baptism of blood, to bathe and to plunge as if in water, in my blood shed on the cross to redeem the whole world; “and how great is my anguish until it is accomplished!”, in other words until my Passion is completed, and when I can say: “All is accomplished!” (Jn 19:30)

Let the Children Come

2007-08-18T08:44:00.000-07:00

Today's gospel contains some valuable advice on how to deal with kids. Bring them to Jesus.

Here's a very practical exposition of that advice from Benedict XVI's address on occasion of the Fifth World Meeting of Families to Valencia (Spain), 8 July 2006:

"The disciples rebuked them, but Jesus said, 'Let the children come to me'

"Father and mother have said a complete "yes" in the sight of God, which constitutes the basis of the sacrament which joins them together. Likewise, for the inner relationship of the family to be complete, they also need to say a "yes" of acceptance to the children whom they have given birth to or adopted, and each of which has his or her own personality and character.

In this way, children will grow up in a climate of acceptance and love, and upon reaching sufficient maturity, will then want to say "yes" in turn to those who gave them life… Christ has shown us what is always be the supreme source of our life and thus of the lives of families: "This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one had greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends" (Jn 15:12-13).

The love of God himself has been poured out upon us in Baptism. Consequently, families are called to experience this same kind of love, for the Lord makes it possible for us, through our human love, to be sensitive, loving and merciful like Christ. Together with passing on the faith and the love of God, one of the greatest responsibilities of families is that of training free and responsible persons.

For this reason the parents need gradually to give their children greater freedom, while remaining for some time the guardians of that freedom. If children see that their parents - and, more generally, all the adults around them - live life with joy and enthusiasm, despite all difficulties, they will themselves develop that profound "joy of life" which can help them to overcome wisely the inevitable obstacles and problems which are part of life.

Furthermore, when families are not closed in on themselves, children come to learn that every person is worthy of love, and that there is a basic, universal brotherhood which embraces every human being."

Ok... so JustMe suggested I ask a question once in a while to see if I can up the level of commentary on the blog.

Here's your question:

How do YOU bring your children to Jesus, especially when sometimes it feels more like "dragging them kicking and screaming to Jesus"?

It's simple.

2007-08-17T18:25:00.000-07:00

It's a lot easier to take the prophet Micah's prescription at 6 in the morning when you are running through a glorious cool morning with a rosary in hand.

Everything seems so clear and simple then:

What, then does the Lord require of you,

but to do justly, and to love mercy,

and to walk humbly with your God?

But, heh, then a big, long day intervenes.

A huge spreadsheet re-do at work.

A moving funeral Mass for a 91 year old priest (Msgr. Sweeney, I know you're praying for me)

Last but not least coming home to find the dog had messed up the house... really messed it up. First time in six years... he just got sick all over for the place. Poor Jack!

But now it's 8:30 p.m. I've cleaned the house up, mowed the yard, prayed Evening Prayer, made and eaten homemade Roma tomato soup. I've watched "Dr. Who" with the obligatory bowl of vanilla ice cream and now the crickets are quietly chirping outside the open window.

It all seems simple once again when I get to slow down and thank God for one very long but fulfilling day.

In You All Find Their Home

2007-08-16T06:54:00.000-07:00

In baseball, it's the place where you're safe. According to Robert Frost it's "the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in." There's no place like it.

Home.

Largely due to the Solemnity of the Assumption, twice in the last two days the Liturgy of the Hours has directed our attention to Psalm 87, which contains the following memorable lines:

"Of you are told glorious things,

O city of Cod!"

It is He, the Lord most high,

who gives to each his place.

In his register of peoples he writes,

"These are her children,"

and while they dance they will sing:

"In you all find their home."

I love that last line especially. Throughout history, the symbolicly powerful image of God's city has been applied to various entities.

For Israel, it is the navel of the earth, holy Jerusalem. For the Western Church, it is, alternatively, the heavenly City above and its dim-by-comparison earthly counterpart, Rome. For those in the East, it speaks of the not-yet-forgotten glories of new Rome, Constantinople and its spiritual successor, Moscow.

Not least of all, the wisdom of the Church has applied this image to the Blessed Virgin Mary.

It's a most apt image for Her.

Our Mother Mary IS a safe haven, a stronghold,

a place where people of diverse cultures and different background and deep needs all find a joyous welcome.

Anyone who trusts in Her Son Jesus has passed through the gates and finds his or her self enfolded in loving Arms of Mercy. We are Her children today as well as God's.

Welcome home.

Veni, Domine Jesu

2007-08-15T07:27:00.000-07:00

Again from Spence's mom, via e mail, I received this beautiful message:

"Let us take our place, dear brothers and sisters,
at the school of the saints,
who are the great interpreters of true Eucharistic piety.
In them the theology of the Eucharist takes on
all the splendour of a lived reality;
it becomes 'contagious' and,
in a manner of speaking, it 'warms our hearts.'

Above all, let us listen to Mary Most Holy,
in whom the mystery of the Eucharist appears,
more than in anyone else, as a mystery of light.

Gazing upon Mary, we come to know
the transforming power present in the Eucharist.
In her we see the world renewed in love.

Contemplating her, assumed body and soul into heaven,
we see opening up before us those 'new heavens' and that 'new earth' which will appear at the second coming of Christ.

Here below, the Eucharist represents their pledge,
and in a certain way, their anticipation: 'Veni, Domine Iesu!' (Rev 22:20).

Pope John Paul II, Ecclesia de Eucharistia, 62

What She became, we shall be

2007-08-15T06:42:00.000-07:00

Back in 1993 I knew next to nothing about the Blessed Virgin Mary, a Lutheran pastor, perfectly unable to tell the difference between Her Immaculate Conception and Her Assumption. But both feasts bothered me, because they weren't "in the Bible."

In fact, Father Jim Berning, then Parochial Vicar of St Theodore's in Albert Lea, MN had a humongous portrait of Mary in his office. I remember that he once asked me whether I knew what it was. The Assumption? The Immaculate Conception? And of course I had to confess that I didn't.

I know better now.

The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary wasn't formally defined as a dogma of the Catholic Church until 1950. However, the most ancient teachers in the Church, especially in the East, taught about Mary's glorification at death. Written stories about her death circulated among Christians as early as the third century A.D.

It makes one wonder about the reticence of New Testament writers to speak about Her. It falls into the same class as the doctrine about the Holy Trinity and Sacraments. You get glimpses of these teachings here and there in the New Testament. However, the truths are never as openly taught nor so clearly stated as the Church later would do after centuries of thought and reflection.

So it is with Mary. We see her, first in the proto-gospel prophecy of Genesis 3:15, and later primarily in the gospels of Luke and John and the book of Revelation. There she is always by our Lord's side and instrumental in His work of salvation.

But with this Feast we are not simply concerned with the individual fate of Mary.

What She became, we shall be.

And if you doubt that the Mother of God could or would be taken to heaven in a glorified state, then what about us?

Romans 8:30 talks about the Christian in this way;

"Those [God] predestined, he also called,;
and those He called He also justified;
and those He justified He also glorfied."

When you get down to it, Mary's Assumption is really setting the pattern for the rest of the Church, and following in the wake of Her beloved Son's glorifed fate.

Like Elijah and Enoch and perhaps Moses in the Old Testament, Mary simply got there first. In fact, this ascension to heaven makes real sense if, with the New Testament, we believe that Mary was the first Christian, the first to conceive Christ within her through the Holy Spirit.

So, this Solemnity fills me with holy longing to become all that God has called us all to be, predestined in Christ, justified in Christ, and soon to be glorified in Christ.

Just like our Mother Mary.

Totally Yours!

2007-08-14T18:35:00.000-07:00

Totus Tuus! I used to joke that this sounded like a line from the Wizard of Oz ("Toto,too?"). No more. It will be one year tomorrow since I made my own total consecration to our Lord Jesus through our Mother the Blessed Virgin Mary. Totally Yours!

While I was at EWTN in July 2006 to appear on "The Journey Home," I "happened" to end up at a silent retreat rooming with a young man from Florida. Before the retreat started he eagerly shared with me his experience of St. Louis de Montfort's total consecration. He gave me his copies of Preparation for Total Cosecration Acording to Saint Louis Marie de Montfort and also True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin.

I started reading the book and- whamo- it hit me like a ton of bricks.... this was what I was supposed to do. By then it was the middle of the silent retreat, and during mealtime I was so overwhelmed with the loving Presence of Christ that I had to leave the table. I fled, holding back tears, to the Sacrament Chapel and purposed there to complete the 28 day cycle of meditations leading up to the consecration. Very un-Phil like, but very powerful.

One reason I had become Catholic in 1998 was because of Mary. It was not so much the doctrine about her that drew me, but more the loving support I felt through Her as I knelt in prayer in the Mary Chapel at the Basilica or in the Grotto at Notre Dame. Those were tough days... doctoral studies, separation and divorce, the decision to leave the Lutheran Church, search for a new career, relocation.

I can still feel the graces I received then and also last year. It's funny, they don't feel like HER graces, they are graces FROM Christ, and she is the channel through which all this glory and grace flows. So any discussion of Mary's mediatorship "taking away" from the sole mediatorship of Christ will fall on deaf ears in my case. Now that I have experienced it for myself, I understand that anything that happens through Mary happens, by definition, through her Son Jesus. It's all Him, and She is all His. and we are all His through Her.

Here's a prayer for the Eve of the great Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. It's the closing prayer for the Little Crown of the Virgin, a set of prayers given to his religious by St Louis de Montfort. It expresses my perfect joy this night:

Hail, Mary, Daughter of God the Father;
Hail, Mary, Mother of God the Son;
Hail, Mary, Spouse of the Holy Ghost;
Hail, Mary, Temple of the most Holy Trinity;
Hail, Mary, my Mistress, my treasure, my joy, Queen of my heart;
my Mother, my life, my sweetness, my dearest hope ---- yea, my heart and my soul!
I am all thine and all that I have is Thine, O Virgin blessed above all things!
Let thy soul be in me to magnify the Lord;
let thy spirit be in me to rejoice in God.
Set thyself, O faithful Virgin, as a seal upon my heart,
that in thee and through thee I may be found faithful to God.
Receive me, O gracious Virgin,
among those whom thou lovest and teachest,
whom thou leadest, nourishest and protectest as thy children.
Grant that for love of thee I may despise all earthly consolations
and ever cling to those of Heaven until,
through thee, His faithful spouse,
Jesus Christ thy Son be formed in me for the glory of the Father.
Amen.

a full jewel box kept closed

2007-08-14T07:53:00.001-07:00

Maximilian Kolbe was a Polish priest who died as prisoner 16770 in Auschwitz-Birkenau, August 14, 1941. I remember when he was canonized in 1982 the press made a great deal out of his having worn at Auschwitz the pink triangle usually given to gay men. He had specifically asked to be given this badge of the "lowest of the low" in the camp, in order that he might share more fully and more humbly in the sufferings of his fellow prisoners.

The humble self sacrifice which St. Maximilian Kolbe carried out in life he also fulfilled by the manner of his death. In August 1941, when a prisoner escaped from the camp, the Nazis selected 10 others to be killed by starvation in reprisal for the escape. One of the 10 selected to die, Franciszek Gajowniczek, began to cry: "My wife! My children! I will never see them again!" At this, St. Maximilian stepped forward and asked to die in his place. His request was granted.

How does one rise to such heights of self sacrifice? Kolbe wrote the following:

"Be recollected; whoever pours himself out on exterior things quickly loses the graces he has acquired. A full jewel box is always kept closed. Humility: Avoid all those words which can draw down on you glory, esteem or the appreciation of others....Willingly accept every opportunity for humbling yourself.... Welcome occasions of being disregarded and humiliated, first with patience, and then willingly, without raising any difficulties, and then finally with joy

That will be perfect humility.

Make acts of humility, beginning with a rather small number of them; then increasing these continually, and make more and more progress. This, in fact is how one acquires a good habit and makes it grow strong. Humility is the foundation of the virtues."

A Sheep-ly Prayer from Iraq

2007-08-14T07:33:00.000-07:00

"What is your opinion? If a man has a hundred sheep and one of them goes astray, will he not leave the ninety-nine in the hills and go in search of the stray? And if he finds it, amen, I say to you, he rejoices more over it than over the ninety-nine that did not stray. In just the same way, it is not the will of your heavenly Father that one of these little ones be lost."
Matthew 18:12-14

Here's a sheep-ly prayer from an Eastern Christian, Saint Isaac the Syrian (7th century), monk in Nineveh, near Mosul in present-day Iraq

Ascetical Discourses, 1st series, n°2 "The stray sheep"

"Lord Jesus Christ our God,
I do not have a heart which sets off resolutely in search of you,
nor is filled with repentance or tenderness,
nothing which brings children back to their inheritance.

Master, I have no tears with which to pray to you.
My spirit is darkened by the things of this life
and has no strength to aim towards you in its pain.
My heart is cold in its trials,
and tears of love for you cannot warm it.
But you, Lord Jesus Christ my God,
treasure of all that is good,
give me perfect contrition and a longing heart,
so that with all my soul I can set out in search of you,
for without you I shall be deprived of all good;
oh good God, give me your grace.

May the Father who, outside time, in eternity,
begot you in his inner being renew in me the form of your image.
I abandoned you; do not abandon me.
I went out of you; come out in search of me.
Lead me to your pasture; count me among the flock of your elect.
With your sheep feed me on the green grass
of your divine mysteries,
where the pure in heart dwell,
that heart which bears in itself the splendor of your revelations,
the consolation and the sweetness
of those who have borne injury and insults for you.
May we be worthy of such magnificence,
through your grace and your love of mankind,
you our Savior Jesus Christ, for ever and ever. Amen.

The Aliens Among Us

2007-08-13T17:17:00.000-07:00

To Israel from God in today's Old Testament Reading (Deuteronomy 10):

"You too must befriend the alien,

for you were once aliens yourselves in the land of Egypt."

This high powered version of the Golden Rule applies equally well to Christians as to Jews. and all of us are equally guilty of violating it. How hard it is to love and accept "the Other," when that other is someone quite different than Us.

How is it, why is it, that those who have been oppressed often turn around and do exactly the same things to the minorities among whom they live when they get half a chance? I don't need to cite specific examples here, and good thing, too, because I would no doubt get in trouble for stereotyping.

However, it does seem to be human nature to do this dastardly deed, and in so doing to ignore the common respect for human life which is our shared human birthright as sons and daughters of God.

I do have some bright news to report, however. In my experience the last 3-4 years I have run across at least two core city parishes where a very successful transition has been made from a largely European ethnic identity into one which not only welcomes but embraces a quite different Asian or Hispanic culture.

Entering these communities, I had expected a war zone. Opposing factions,... dwindling, aging European versus burgeoning, young and emerging culture. The demographics would almost inevitably set the stage for conflict in leadership transition, parish style etc.

Much to my pleasant surprise, it isn't happening. Rejoice with me that, in some places at least, folk are living up to the true meaning of Catholic identity by uniting around a shared Faith and a common Mother, irrespective of how or in what language we worship.

But then what?

2007-08-12T06:04:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm taking "the plunge" this Fall.... I enrolled in a class at St Paul Seminary, ... while I'm working full time. Pretty dangerous..... the class is ...ta-da..... Theology of the Sacraments. Those of you who read this blog know how I love the sacramental life of the Church. So, being asked to read hundreds of pages about sacraments is no hardship.

However, because I'm taking the class while working I decided to go ahead and start reading through the syllabus ahead of time so that I can better prepare for class with all these full-time seminarian priests-in-waiting that I'll be in class with.

Here's the first of many gems I've run across. It's from a book entitled The Wellspring of Worship by Jean Corbon. It looks at liturgy from an Eastern Christian point of view, and offers a lot of insight into the commonalities that link the two lungs of the Church (East and West), and keep us all breathing the Ruach of God's Spirit.

"What then does it mean to say that God saves human beings? Does it mean that he gives them a course in theology?

That he gives them a moral law, or even that he gives them the commandment of love?

That he teaches them to change structures, whether personal, social or economic?

That he lets them know in the smallest detail the kind of worship agreeable to their creator?

That he reveals to them that God is a Father, and kind and merciful, and does so by letting them experience it, as we do with one another in our good moments?

But then what?

All that I have just been saying has been the object of the human search for centuries, in religions, philosophies, sciences, ideologies....

Of what use to me are models of morality and fine promises of life as long as the root of this disasterous tragedy- death- has been pulled up- not tomorrow, but now?

This is the only really important question. Everything else is just a passing episode and a distraction.

the Father's Love

2007-08-12T05:48:00.000-07:00

I love the comedy show "Seinfeld," and one episode that stuck in my mind and recently resurfaced is "The Burning." Part of the plot is that Elaine's dim-bulb boyfriend Puddy turns out to be a Christian. She's disappointed for two reasons.... because one of the attractions was that he was so one-dimensional.

A further issue, and the one I've been thinking about, is that Puddy didn't seemed to care that Elaine was going to hell. He believed, but it didn't make any difference to him that she didn't.

Then in this morning's Office of Readings I read this from Catherine of Siena:

My sweet Lord, look with mercy upon your people and especially upon the mystical body of your Church. Greater glory is given to your name for pardoning a multitude of your creatures than if I alone were pardoned for my great sins against your majesty. It would be no consolation for me to enjoy your life if your holy people stood in death.

For I see that sin darkens the life of your bride the Church – my sin and the sins of others.It is a special grace I ask for, this pardon for the creatures you have made in your image and likeness. When you created man, you were moved by love to make him in your own image. Surely only love could so dignify your creatures.

She's right, you know. And her observation about how love dignifies God's creatures is soooooo true.

Reading this passage makes me yearn once againto share that Father's love with everyone, not just in word and deed but in prayer. And for those who are within my circle but not yet responsive to God's love, I especially pray today.

Singular Flower

2007-08-11T17:44:00.000-07:00

This has been a weekend full of nature. Last night at 3:00 a.m. a huge thunder/wind storm broke over our neighborhood and blew around and poured on us until about 5 or so. 2 and a 1/2 inches of much needed rain along with numerous branches to pick up.

Then tonight I was sweating out a Divine Mercy Chaplet and Evening Prayer (still very humid, despite the rain) in the Mary Garden when I noticed a little red and orange flower on the edge of my pot of impatiens right behind the satue of Mary.

The pot is stuffed to overflowing with little red and burgundy and white blossoms.... and then there's this one scraggly little orange/red flower (weed?) off the side of the pot.

Poor thing!

But then I noticed something else. About two weeks ago the exact same kind of flower made a solo appearance over under a big tree- the only flower in a grass lawn with wood chips surrounding the tree. My first inclination had been to pluck it up, because it really just didn't fit. But pity stayed my hand. And now I am glad that it did.

Those two flowers provided a valuable lesson for me tonight.

Some of our souls- and I believe mine is among them- are not meant to be in a crowd or part of "the group." We blossom off by ourselves and we aren't noticed very much. But as I thought this I also got the overwhelming impression that even this odd little bloom- even the soul most singular and different than the rest- is still valued by the Gardener.

I am thankful for that Gardener's love and pity.

the Church's True Treasures

2007-08-10T08:04:00.000-07:00

St. Lawrence was a Deacon in the Church of Rome, renowned for his fortitude under suffering and for his love of the poor. May we be more like him in every way.

From Saint Augustine (354-430), Bishop of Hippo (North Africa) and Doctor of the Church

Sermon 303, for the Feast of Saint Lawrence

"Saint Lawrence was a deacon in Rome. The persecutors of the Church demanded that he hand over the Church’s treasures. In order to obtain a real treasure in heaven, he suffered torments, the account of which you can only listen to with horror: he was laid on a grill over a fire. However, he triumphed over all the physical suffering by means of extraordinary strength, which he drew from his charity and from the help of Him who made him steadfast.

For “(w)e are truly his handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to lead the life of good deeds which God prepared for us in advance.” (Eph 2:10) This made the persecutors angry… Lawrence said: “Send some chariots with me with which I can bring you the Church’s treasures.” They gave him chariots. He filled them with poor people and sent them back saying: “Here are the Church’s treasures.”

Nothing is truer, my brothers. The Christians’ great wealth is to be found in the needs of the poor, if we really understand how to make what we possess bear fruit. The poor are always with us. If we entrust our treasures to them, we will not lose them."

Serratelli on Liturgy, Part III

2007-08-10T07:12:00.000-07:00

Here is another installment of Paterson, New Jersey Bishop Arthur Serratelli's thoughts on liturgy.. cogent, to the point, pastoral. Find other columns here.

The Sacredness of Life and the Real Presence

According to recent statistics, over one billion people use the Internet. The Internet grew out of a government experiment. In the 1960’s, the U.S. Department of Defense wanted to create a computer network that would continue to function in the event of a disaster, such as a nuclear war. Their work gave birth to the Internet. And the result has been explosive.

The Internet has changed the way we live, not just locally, but globally. Information, business, travel, and personal communication are no longer the same. People can shop on line for anything from books to baked goods. Hassling other bargain hunters in crowded stores, standing in line to purchase sports tickets or theater tickets, and browsing through a library are all rapidly receding into the past. Even banking is conducted on line.

Today many people sit in front of their computer. They live in a virtual world. They fade out of the real world. Because of modern technology, they can watch movies without ever going to a cinema. They can listen to music all alone on their iPod.

Technology that connects us also disconnects. We too easily forgo the many opportunities simply to be with other people. We lose the human touch. Surrounded by things, we become lonely. Perhaps this is part of the reason instant messaging, chat rooms, cell phones are so popular. We are a people constantly reaching out to stay connected. We need a sense of personal presence. And the deepest longing that we have for personal presence is fulfilled in the Eucharist.

The Eucharist as meal; the Eucharist as Sacrifice; the Eucharist as eschatological anticipation: all these dimensions of the Eucharist come together in the Real Presence. Theodore of Mopsuestia (350-428 A.D.) gives witness to the consistent faith of the Church in the Real Presence. He says, "The Lord did not say: This is a symbol of my body, and this is a symbol of my blood, but rather: This is my body and my blood. He teaches us not to look to the nature of what lies before us and is perceived by the senses, because the giving of thanks and the words spoken over it have changed it into flesh and blood" ( Epistle to Magnus, 6).

It is the reality of the Lord’s Presence that takes the Eucharist out of the category of mere symbolism and makes the Eucharist the Mystery of Divine Presence. Not only while Mass is celebrated and the Sacrifice is offered, not only when Holy Communion is received, but Christ remains with us in the Eucharist reserved in our churches. He is Emmanuel, that is, "God with us."

Day after day, Jesus builds up His Church by his Eucharistic presence. As St. Paul teaches, "Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread" (1Cor 10:17). In the mystery of the Eucharist, Jesus draws us into the communion of divine life that is the Church. He prays at every Eucharist, as he prayed at the Last Supper, "Even as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they may also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me" (Jn 17:21). He makes our life sacred with the Presence of God.

It is especially in the Eucharist that we come face to face with the immeasurable treasure of divine love. Our communion with the Lord in the Eucharist through the reception of Holy Communion and through adoration is the true source of the unselfish love that transforms our personal lives and society as well.

In the Eucharist, Jesus fulfills the longing of every disciple first expressed by the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. "They pressed him to stay with them saying, ‘It is nearly evening, and the day is almost over’" (Lk 24:29). In the Eucharist, the Lord stays with us. Day and night the Lord is in our midst. He dwells with us, full of grace and truth.

"Therefore both public and private devotion to the Most Holy Eucharist even outside Mass should be vigorously promoted, for by means of it the faithful give adoration to Christ, truly and really present, the ‘High Priest of the good things to come’ and Redeemer of the whole world" (Redemptionis Sacramentum, 134). The worship of the Eucharist outside the Sacrifice of the Mass is closely linked to the celebration of the Eucharistic Sacrifice. It is not a devotion separated from the Sacrifice of the Mass, but a deepening of the very mystery of our redemption. In those parishes where there is regular adoration of the Most Blessed Sacrament, parish life is enriched, families are drawn together and vocations increase.

Because of the loss of the sense of the sacred in our world, we need to work at cultivating a lively awareness of Christ's Real Presence. Every parish, every Catholic, should set time aside to worship and adore our Eucharistic Lord. This is why it is most expedient that the Blessed Sacrament be reserved in every parish in a place of prominence. The placing of the tabernacle in a place clearly visible to the faithful who enter the church already draws us into that communion of love that takes places in the celebration of Mass and continues in our daily life. The arrangement of our churches should reflect our belief that the Eucharist is Jesus Christ, Crucified and Risen!

Likewise, our conduct should always reflect our faith. The reverence we show to the Blessed Sacrament by the positioning of the tabernacle in our churches, by our silence and prayer, and by the gesture of genuflection before the tabernacle—a custom lamentably lost in some places—lifts us beyond the profane into the awareness of the mystery of God among us.

Adoration of the Most Blessed Sacrament is an authentic expression of faith in the Eucharist. It helps us recover the sense of the sacred in the liturgy and also in life. By adoring the Most Blessed Sacrament, we come to know not simply intellectually but experientially the meaning of Jesus’ final words in Matthew’s gospel: "Behold, I am with you always, even until the end of time" (Mt 28:20). Thus, we become aware of how sacred all life truly is.

Go to the Heart of Things

2007-08-09T12:27:00.000-07:00

“If we visit our Eucharistic God
and seek His counsel in all our problems,
if we let ourselves be purified
by the sanctifying power that flows from the altar,

if we offer ourselves to the Lord in this sacrifice
and receive Him into our souls in Holy Communion,
then we cannot but be drawn ever more deeply
into the current of the divine life.”

St. Teresa Benedicta (Edith Stein)

Carmelite Nun & Martyr,Germany (1891-1942)
FEAST DAY - Aug 9

"O my God, fill my soul with holy joy, courage and strength
to serve You. Enkindle Your love in me and then walk with me
along the next stretch of road before me.
I do not see very far ahead,
but when I have arrived where the horizon now closes down,
a new prospect will open before me,
and I shall meet it with peace."
St Teresa Benedicta

St Teresa Benedicta, pray for us!

In his homily at the canonization Mass, Pope John Paul II said: “Because she was Jewish, Edith Stein was taken with her sister Rosa and many other Catholics and Jews from the Netherlands to the concentration camp in Auschwitz, where she died with them in the gas chambers. Today we remember them all with deep respect. A few days before her deportation, the woman religious had dismissed the question about a possible rescue: ‘Do not do it! Why should I be spared? Is it not right that I should gain no advantage from my Baptism? If I cannot share the lot of my brothers and sisters, my life, in a certain sense, is destroyed.’”

Addressing himself to the young people gathered for the canonization, the pope said:
“Your life is not an endless series of open doors! Listen to your heart! Do not stay on the surface but go to the heart of things! And when the time is right, have the courage to decide! The Lord is waiting for you to put your freedom in his good hands.”

Edith Stein: Love of the Cross

2007-08-09T11:45:00.000-07:00

You don't have to be a member of God's chosen people, a philosopher, a virgin, a nun and a martyr in order to gain great insight into the suffering of Christ.

But it helps.

Today the Church remembers Saint Teresa Benedicta (Edith Stein + 1942). She was born of Jewish parents in 1891, and became an influential philosopher after extensive studies in German universities. Following her conversion to Catholicism, she became a major force in intellectual German life. Entering the Discalced Carmelites order in 1933, she was arrested by the Nazis in 1942, along with all Catholics with Jewish background. Transported by cattle train to Auschwitz, she died in the gas chambers there.

Here are some thoughts from her on the Way of the Cross:

Love of the Cross: Some Thoughts For the Feast of St John of the Cross

"We hear repeatedly that St. John of the Cross desired nothing for himself but to suffer and be despised. We want to know the reason for this love of suffering. Is it merely the loving remembrance of the path of suffering of our Lord on earth, a tender impulse to be humanly close to him by a life resembling his? This does not seem to correspond to the lofty and strict spirituality of the mystical teacher. And in relation to the Man of Sorrows, it would almost seem that the victoriously enthroned king, the divine conqueror of sin, death, and hell is forgotten. Did not Christ lead captivity captive? Has he not transported us into a kingdom of light and called us to be happy children of our heavenly Father?

The sight of the world in which we live, the need and misery, and an abyss of human malice, again and again dampens jubilation over the victory of light. The world is still deluged by mire, and still but a small flock has escaped from it to the highest mountain peaks. The battle between Christ and the Antichrist is not yet over. The followers of Christ have their place in this battle, and their chief weapon is the cross.

What does this mean? The burden of the cross that Christ assumed is that of corrupted human nature, with all its consequences in sin and suffering to which fallen humanity is subject. The meaning of the way of the cross is to carry this burden out of the world. The restoration of freed humanity to the heart of the heavenly Father, taking on the status of a child, is the free gift of grace, of merciful love. But this may not occur at the expense of divine holiness and justice. The entire sum of human failures from the first Fall up to the Day of Judgment must be blotted out by a corresponding measure of expiation. The way of the cross is this expiation. The triple collapse under the burden of the cross corresponds to the triple fall of humanity: the first sin, the rejection of the Savior by his chosen people, the falling away of those who bear the name of Christian. The Savior is not alone on the way of the cross. Not only are there adversaries around him who oppress him, but also people who succor him. The archetype of followers of the cross for all time is the Mother of God. Typical of those who submit to the suffering inflicted on them and experience his blessing by bearing it is Simon of Cyrene. Representative of those who love him and yearn to serve the Lord is Veronica.

Everyone who, in the course of time, has borne an onerous destiny in remembrance of the suffering Savior or who has freely taken up works of expiation has by doing so canceled some of the mighty load of human sin and has helped the Lord carry his burden. Or rather, Christ the head effects expiation in these members of his Mystical Body who put themselves, body and soul, at his disposal for carrying out his work of salvation. We can assume that the prospect of the faithful who would follow him on his way of the cross strengthened the Savior during his night on the Mount of Olives. And the strength of these cross-bearers helps him after each of his falls. The righteous under the Old Covenant accompany him on the stretch of the way from the first to the second collapse. The disciples, both men and women, who surrounded him during his earthly life, assist him on the second stretch. The lovers of the cross, whom he has awakened and will always continue to awaken anew in the changeable history of the struggling church, these are his allies at the end of time. We, too, are called for that purpose.

Thus, when someone desires to suffer, it is not merely a pious reminder of the suffering of the Lord. Voluntary expiatory suffering is what truly and really unites one to the Lord intimately. When it arises, it comes from an already existing relationship with Christ. For, by nature, a person flees from suffering. And the mania for suffering caused by a perverse lust for pain differs completely from the desire to suffer in expiation. Such lust is not a spiritual striving, but a sensory longing, no better than other sensory desires, in fact worse, because it is contrary to nature. Only someone whose spiritual eyes have been opened to the supernatural correlations of worldly events can desire suffering in expiation, and this is only possible for people in whom the spirit of Christ dwells, who as members are given life by the Head, receive his power, his meaning, and his direction. Conversely, works of expiation bind one closer to Christ, as every community that works together on one task becomes more and more closely knit and as the limbs of a body, working together organically, continually become more strongly one.

But because being one with Christ is our sanctity, and progressively becoming one with him our happiness on earth, the love of the cross in no way contradicts being a joyful child of God. Helping Christ carry his cross fills one with a strong and pure joy, and those who may and can do so, the builders of God’s kingdom, are the most authentic children of God. And so those who have a predilection for the way of the cross by no means deny that Good Friday is past and that the work of salvation has been accomplished.

Only those who are saved, only children of grace, can in fact be bearers of Christ’s cross. Only in union with the divine Head does human suffering take on expiatory power. To suffer and to be happy although suffering, to have one’s feet on the earth, to walk on the dirty and rough paths of this earth and yet to be enthroned with Christ at the Father’s right hand, to laugh and cry with the children of this world and ceaselessly to sing the praises of God with the choirs of angels this is the life of the Christian until the morning of eternity breaks forth."

The Dominican at prayer

2007-08-08T12:47:00.000-07:00

Every night, after his friars

had gone to bed,
St. Dominic would go to the church,
and there, near the Lord,

spend the long exacting hours of the night in prayer
where he found interior consolation,
solace, secret joys, ineffable delights,
which our Lord poured out from His enchanting Heart
in this holy Sacrament of love.”

Hidden Treasure, Louis Kaczmarek
St. Dominic
Spain (1170-1221)Priest, Preacher
Founder of Dominicans
St Dominic, pray for us!

This is the day the Lord has made...

2007-08-08T12:02:00.000-07:00

... let's try not to screw this one up.

The minority report from the Israelite reconnaisance crew in today's Old Testament reading (Numbers 13) was the correct one. Joshua and Caleb correctly assessed the situation in stating that the people of Israel, newly liberated from Egypt, were perfectly capable, with God's help, of entering and taking possession of the bountiful Promised Land. They were overruled, however, by the other ten scouts who believed their people incapable of defeating the Canaanites. So, the story goes, this lack of vision and trust doomed God's people to wander the desert for forty years until the faithless generation died off.

We memorialize that mistaken wandering every morning when we pray these words from Psalm 95 in the Liturgy of the Hours to start our day::

“For forty years they wearied me, that generation.
I said: their hearts are wandering, they do not know my paths.
I swore in my anger: they will never enter my place of rest”

However, we memorialize that mistake in our actions also when we deny the God's willingness or ability to make a concrete and positive difference in our lives TODAY.

As the Psalm also pleads:

If only, today, you would listen to his voice:
“Do not harden your hearts as you did at Meribah,
on the day of Massah in the desert, when your fathers tested me –
they put me to the test, although they had seen my works”.

Make no mistake, though. It's not God's anger that results in this "stuck-ness." Instead, the fault lies with us. We need to consistently and daily assess our own response (or lack thereof) to God's graces.

Stunted growth, lack of development in virtue, wearied wandering... all of these indicate that we're not yet tapped into God's freely flowing River of Life which is the grace coming through His Son Jesus. They may be the signs of spiritual dryness.... a place we need to leave in order to fully enter the Land of God's Promise to us. Consult your local spiritual director for details.

I used to be ashamed of my former life, the fact that for many, many years I claimed godliness but lacked the power and the practice of it. But now that I have begun to see some fruit of grace, I can look back and see where I've come from.

How did I get to this place? It was only through the unmerited gift of God as it got applied to my life through the practices recommended by Holy Mother Church. Daily Mass, the Rosary, Chaplets of Divine Mercy and Frequent Confession are not the causes of God's grace, but for me they are its conduit.

So, today if you hear God's voice, harden not your heart.

More on Cardinal Lustiger

2007-08-08T08:35:00.000-07:00

From the First Things website, here is a meaningful reflection on the Cardinal's life.

A Cardinal, A Jew, the Son of an Immigrant

2007-08-07T12:31:00.000-07:00

In Paradísum dedúcant te ángeli,

in tuo advéntu suscípiant te mártyres,

et perdúcant te in civitátem sanctam Jerúsalem.

Chorus angelórum te sucípiat, et cum Lázaro

quondam paúpero aetérnam hábeas réquiem.

Cardinal Lustiger, who died on Sunday aged 80, was the only Jewish convert to Roman Catholicism to become a French bishop in modern times.

Lustiger became a Catholic at 14 during the early days of the German Occupation, and lost his mother two years later when she was arrested and sent to Auschwitz , where she died. He saw his conversion as a natural progression, believing that Christianity and Judaism were "indissolubly linked" and that "the New Testament was hidden within the Old and the Old Testament came to light in the New", since Christ was the Messiah of Israel.

Lustiger's prominent role as a Jewish convert was strongly condemned both in Israel and in the Jewish diaspora. This hostility reached its height in 1995 when he was invited to address a conference at the Hebrew University in Tel Aviv on "God's silence during the Holocaust". The Chief (Ashkenazi) Rabbi disrupted his visit to Israel by publicly accusing him of "betraying his people and his religion".

Lustiger, deeply hurt by this attack, replied that it was the first time he had ever heard that it was "worse to be baptised than to commit the crimes of Hitler".

Aaron Lustiger was born in Paris on September 17 1926, the oldest child and only son of Charles and Giselle Lustiger, who kept a hat shop in Montmartre . His parents, emigrants from Poland , had started selling goods from a street stall before prospering and taking French citizenship. Although the children's grandfather had been a rabbi, they were given no religious instruction and had a secular upbringing.

The family spoke French at home, but the parents spoke Yiddish if they did not wish their children to understand. The Lustigers moved to an apartment in the 5th arrondissement, and Aaron attended the Lycée Montaigne, where he showed great ability in literature and languages.
In 1937 he was sent to stay in Germany with an anti-Nazi Protestant family whose son was in the Hitler Youth. Thinking that their visitor was a Gentile, the boy showed Lustiger a dagger, confiding that the Hitler Youth intended to kill "all the Jews in Germany during the summer solstice".

When young, Lustiger wanted to become a doctor. He later described himself as "a proud child with a difficult personality". His mother forbade him to read comics and his father would not let him leave the house during Christian festivals. But the boy read the Bible secretly, and later said that he had the impression that he was "reading something he already knew".

On the outbreak of war in 1939 the family left Paris , hoping to find a refuge in Orléans. During Holy Week in 1940 Aaron Lustiger disobeyed his father's instructions, and for the first time visited a church (Orléans cathedral), feeling a strong attraction to the empty building.

On returning the following day, Good Friday, he decided to convert. He was instructed by the Bishop of Orléans and baptised as Aaron Jean-Marie. His parents reluctantly consented to his conversion, believing that it was a sensible precaution to take in 1941.

Leaving his children in Orléans, Lustiger's father moved to the Unoccupied Zone while his mother returned to Paris to run the shop. When the round-ups of Parisian Jews started in 1942, Giselle Lustiger was denounced by the family maid, who wanted to take over the apartment. When Giselle was arrested by the French police, the Bishop of Orléans arranged for Jean-Marie to live at a seminary outside Paris , where he passed his baccalauréat. Later he rejoined his father and sister in the south of France , where the family remained in hiding until the Liberation.

After the war Lustiger's father, assisted by the Chief Rabbi of Paris , tried to get his son's baptism annulled on the ground that Aaron had converted for empirical reasons, an argument that Jean-Marie strongly denied. Lustiger entered the Sorbonne University , where he decided to become a priest, a decision that caused a complete rift with his father. In the seminary Lustiger was later remembered as a stubborn and insubordinate student.

Following his ordination in 1954 Fr Jean-Marie became assistant chaplain to the Sorbonne and then general chaplain to the universities of Paris . In 1969 he was given his first parish, St Jeanne de Chantal in the 16th arrondissement, from which his fame as a preacher spread. He usually spoke without notes and with a sincerity, humour and intelligence that quickly increased the size of the Sunday congregation.

Lustiger's time as a young priest was dominated by the leading intellects of French Catholicism - Henri de Lubac, François Mauriac, Paul Claudel and Jacques Maritain - and he set out to be worthy of that tradition.

He eventually wrote 16 books in which he argued that where Christian anti-Semitism existed it was a consequence of the infidelity of Christian nations to Biblical Judaism. He traced modern anti-Semitism back to the Enlightenment, to the anti-Semitism of Voltaire, Diderot and Hegel, and to the preference for individual reason over the teaching of Christ.

Rationalism he dismissed for its pretensions and its failure to answer the ultimate questions facing mankind. The great Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar was so impressed by Lustiger's published sermons that he translated them into German to add to his earlier translations of Pascal, Péguy and Claudel.

Lustiger's ability and unusual background soon attracted the attention of the papal nuncio, and in 1979 Jean-Paul II made him a surprise choice as Bishop of Orléans. This appointment was the start of a warm friendship with the Pope who, after only 13 months, promoted Lustiger to the archbishopric of Paris .

Charles Lustiger, who had watched his son's remarkable progress without enthusiasm, died the following year, by which time father and son had been reconciled and were able to pray together. Archbishop Lustiger asked a cousin to say the Kaddish over his father's grave in the cemetery of Montparnasse , although the funeral service had to be cut short because of a bomb warning.
Lustiger was appointed a cardinal in 1982. He took part in the papal conclave of 2005, by which time he was too ill to be considered papabile; but if Pope John-Paul II had died younger, Lustiger would certainly have been among the favourites to succeed.

As Archbishop of Paris he was a restless reformer, determined to increase the number of ordinations. After falling out with the rector of the existing seminary he opened his own; and, in the course of time, he ordained 200 priests. These represented 15 per cent of the French total, drawn from a diocese which had two per cent of the population.

He was suspected of bearing some responsiblity for an incident during Pope John Paul II's visit to France in 1986 when the entire French clergy were summoned to the remote country parish of Ars, near Lyon . Once seated they were given a blistering lecture by the Pope, while Lustiger's raucous seminarians, seated in the front row, roared their approval.

Despite his outstanding ability, the French hierarchy never elected Lustiger to the presidency of the national bishops' conference, though he was compensated for this slight in 1995 when he was elected by the Académie Française to the seat formerly occupied by the Cardinal Primate of France .

Lustiger's first political test had come in 1984 under François Mitterrand's first presidency, when the anti-clerical minister of education, Alain Savary, tried to pass a law restricting the rights of Catholic schools. Lustiger confronted Mitterrand at an icy meeting in the Elysée Palace that was followed by a peaceful march of 800,000 Catholic protestors. Shortly afterwards Savary resigned and the bill was abandoned.

Subsequently, Lustiger played a prominent role in dissuading the Carmelite order from building a controversial convent at Auschwitz, and in the French bishops' public apology in 1997 for their predecessors' failure to protest against the Vichy government's anti-Semitic laws. The latter was at the site of the Drancy concentration camp from which Lustiger's mother had been deported.
Earlier the same year Lustiger had presided over Mitterrand's state funeral; a delicate business since the Socialist Party was opposed to a service at Notre Dame while Mitterrand's family insisted on one. Eventually, 84 heads of state attended a ceremony that had everything except the body of the deceased, which was present at a private family ceremony held simultaneously at Jarnac, a small town far from Paris .

One of the last acts of Pope John-Paul II was to accept Lustiger's resignation as archbishop of Paris , because of ill health, in 2005.

Lustiger summarised his own life by saying that he had been "a cardinal, a Jew and the son of an immigrant".

"We Could Understand the Mass"

2007-08-07T08:41:00.000-07:00

When I read this I understand why daily Mass is so important:

A priest who was in the German prison camp in Dachau
describes the Mass after all the German guards were in bed:

"Our lives were in danger if we were ever discovered. A young priest had to memorize the names of all those who had received communion, but it was forbidden for us to gather in groups for prayer. After night call and bed check, we would set our guards, darken the windows, and the lucky one to be chosen to celebrate for this momentous occasion would carefully brush his pathetic prison garb, put the stole over his shoulders and by the small light of his smuggled candle begin the commemoration of that other great passion of which our own was the physical continuation.

We could understand the Mass.

All that could crowd into the room were there, tears of joy running down our cheeks. Christ the Lord, who knew what suffering was, was coming to suffer with us, to bring us strength and consolation. The small hosts were broken into as many particles as possible so the greatest number could communicate. We had to keep a secret roster of those who received.
We missed some of the liturgy perhaps, but I think God looked down into that prison room and found a particularly refreshing response to his cry of love from the cross, 'I thirst'. There was nothing that could keep us from doing all in our power to be closer to God."

Excerpted from Mother Teresa's address to the
Jesus through Mary Foundation
as found in the AUGUST 2 entry of
My Daily Eucharist - Joan Carter McHugh

Get There Through the Cross

2007-08-06T11:07:00.000-07:00

Today's Transfiguration Feast gospel reading (Luke 9:28-36) recounts an experience from the inner circle of the apostles, Peter, James and John. These three went up on a mountain to pray with Jesus, according to Luke, and there they saw Christ transfigured, his divine glory revealed. The gospel author says that Christ appeared surrounded by light and talking with the Old Testament saints Moses and Elijah.

How do we achieve this glory? We get there through suffering, by uniting ourselves with our Lord in the glory which is the Cross. The Gospel story itself provides a clue that this is so. This is what Jesus is discussing with Moses and Eljah during the vision, his Exodus, which he was to accomplish in Jerusalem. On the tip of our Lord's tongue, witnessed by both the Law and the Prophets, are his intention to enter the Will of His Father, even though it lead to his death.

Likewise, we are called to journey toward the Cross. Benedict XVI tackled this difficult subject during an Angelus Lenten Meditation in March:

"At the Transfiguration, the Pope recalled, “Jesus listens to the Law and the Prophets who speak to Him of his death and resurrection.” In response to that discussion, the Pope continued, “Christ enters more deeply into this mission, adhering with all of Himself to the will of the Father; and He shows us that true prayer consists in uniting our will to the will of God.”

Jesus recognizes that “in order to reach glory He will have to pass through the Cross,” the Pope said. The Lord recognized that reality and accepted it. So too for Christ’s followers, "prayer does not mean evading reality and the responsibilities reality brings; rather it means a complete assumption of those responsibilities, trusting in the faithful and infinite love of the Lord.”

In Christ, prayer is always effective, Pope Benedict continued. He noted that in the Garden of Gethsemane, Christ asked the Father to save Him from death.” That prayer was answered, the Pontiff reminded his listeners. “The proof of this is the Resurrection.”

Union with Jesus in prayer is essential for all Christians, the Pope concluded “Only those who pray-- in other words those who entrust themselves to God with filial love-- can enter into eternal life, which is God Himself."

"Bring out the riches held captive there"

2007-08-05T12:19:00.001-07:00

St. Basil has a much more radical social justice "take" on the Parable of the rich fool.... Phew! Tell it like it is, will ya?

Saint Basil (about 330-379), monk and bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia, doctor of the Church
Homily 31

Building new barns

'You fool, this night your life will be demanded of you; and the things you have prepared, to whom will they belong? The behavior of the rich man in the Gospel is more derisory than eternal punishment is rigorous.

Indeed, what projects does this man, who is going to be taken away from this world so soon, mull over? “I shall tear down my barns and build larger ones.” I would say to him gladly: you do well, because the barns of the injustice deserve only too much to be demolished.

By your own hands, destroy from top to bottom what you built dishonestly. Let collapse your reserves of wheat, from which nobody ever went away comforted. Demolish any building that harbors your miserliness; remove the roofs, bring down the walls, expose to the sun the wheat becoming mouldy, bring out of their prison the riches which were held captive there...

“I shall tear down my barns and build larger ones.” And when you will have filled them up too, what will you decide? Will you demolish them in turn to rebuild still more? Is there any worse madness than plotting endlessly, forever building and destroying! If you want, you can have for barns, the houses of the needy. “Store up treasures in heaven”. What is stored there “neither moth nor decay destroys, nor thieves break in and steal.” (MT 6:20).

Goods versus Good

2007-08-05T11:41:00.000-07:00

My downstairs neighbor Barbara asked me before Mass this morning whether or not we had received- or wanted- the Ikea Catalog that came with their Sunday Star Tribune. She and I agreed that we were both at the point in life where we are practicing Divestiture... that is, we are shedding material things acquired through the years rather than acquiring even more.

I thought of that catalog in reference to today's Gospel reading, about the man who kept accumulating material goods but neglected the more basic and essential good of his soul (Luke 12,13-21).

"Someone in the crowd said to him, "Teacher, tell my brother to share the inheritance with me." He replied to him, "Friend, who appointed me as your judge and arbitrator?" Then he said to the crowd, "Take care to guard against all greed, for though one may be rich, one's life does not consist of possessions."

Then he told them a parable. "There was a rich man whose land produced a bountiful harvest. He asked himself, 'What shall I do, for I do not have space to store my harvest?' And he said, 'This is what I shall do: I shall tear down my barns and build larger ones. There I shall store all my grain and other goods and I shall say to myself, "Now as for you, you have so many good things stored up for many years, rest, eat, drink, be merry!"

But God said to him, 'You fool, this night your life will be demanded of you; and the things you have prepared, to whom will they belong?' Thus will it be for the one who stores up treasure for himself but is not rich in what matters to God."

Whether one is twenty years old and just beginning to acquire life's goods or seventy years old and shedding them, this Gospel lesson rings true. Our worth and mission bear no intrinsic relationship to the amount of worldly goods we possess. In fact, gospel values would tell us just the opposite. Those things we treasure so much, the cars, and toys, and homes and clothes which society uses to define us often can hinder our line of sight to God.

However, God is not simply in the moving business, requiring that we get rid of the things which clog the way to Him. Qoheleth only had the first half of the divine equation in today's Old Testament Reading from Ecclesiastes: all is vanity. True as far as it goes. But the final goal of our lives is much loftier than that.

It reaches to the heights pointed to by our Second Reading in the book of Colossians (3,1-5.9-11.) God isn't simply interested in tearing down our old lives. He is building a new Home for himself, a heavenly home with its roofline in heaven and its floor in the human heart. That is the soul we will be required to present before God after death.

" If then you were raised with Christ, seek what is above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Think of what is above, not of what is on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ your life appears, then you too will appear with him in glory. Put to death, then, the parts of you that are earthly: immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and the greed that is idolatry.

Stop lying to one another, since you have taken off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed, for knowledge, in the image of its creator. Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all and in all."

I keep hearing the words of the Evangelical Missionary-Martyr Jim Elliot, whose life and death were both built studily toward the eternal Good. He wrote the following in his diary in 1948:

"He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose."

SJV on Eucharist, Love and Prayer

2007-08-04T07:44:00.000-07:00

Some good quotes, courtesy of Spence's mom:
"Every consecrated Host is made to burn Itself up with love in a human heart."
-St John Vianney

And another thought about fires....
Recommending liturgical prayer, St John Vianney would say,

“Private prayer is like straw

scattered here and there:
If you set it on fire

it makes a lot of little flames.
But gather these straws into a bundle

and light them,
and you get a mighty fire,

rising like a column into the sky;
public prayer is like that."

St John Vianney, Pray for us!

2007-08-03T19:36:00.000-07:00

St John Vianney was a humble parish priest in Ars, a small French country hamlet. He was sent there after ordination in 1815, having barely passed his classes at seminary. At that time he was thought to be "too slow" to be of much use in ministry. Instead, he flourished in Ars, attracting people from all around the region by his holiness of life and manner in the confessional. No wonder that he is considered the patron saint of seminarians.

Here is a catechesis from him on the Holy Spirit:

"O my CHILDREN, how beautiful it is! The Father is our Creator, the Son is our Redeemer, and the Holy Ghost is our Guide. . . . Man by himself is nothing, but with the Holy Spirit he is very great. Man is all earthly and all animal; nothing but the Holy Spirit can elevate his mind, and raise it on high. Why were the saints so detached from the earth? Because they let themselves be led by the Holy Spirit. Those who are led by the Holy Spirit have true ideas; that is the reason why so many ignorant people are wiser than the learned. When we are led by a God of strength and light, we cannot go astray.

The Holy Spirit is light and strength. He teaches us to distinguish between truth and falsehood, and between good and evil. Like glasses that magnify objects, the Holy Spirit shows us good and evil on a large scale. With the Holy Spirit we see everything in its true proportions; we see the greatness of the least actions done for God, and the greatness of the least faults. As a watchmaker with his glasses distinguishes the most minute wheels of a watch, so we, with the light of the Holy Ghost, distinguish all the details of our poor life.

Then the smallest imperfections appear very great, the least sins inspire us with horror. That is the reason why the most Holy Virgin never sinned. The Holy Ghost made her understand the hideousness of sin; she shuddered with terror at the least fault.

Those who have the Holy Spirit cannot endure themselves, so well do they know their poor misery. The proud are those who have not the Holy Spirit.

Worldly people have not the Holy Spirit, or if they have, it is only for a moment. He does not remain with them; the noise of the world drives Him away. A Christian who is led by the Holy Spirit has no difficulty in leaving the goods of this world, to run after those of Heaven; he knows the difference between them. The eyes of the world see no further than this life, as mine see no further than this wall when the church door is shut. The eyes of the Christian see deep into eternity. To the man who gives himself up to the guidance of the Holy Ghost, there seems to be no world; to the world there seems to be no God. . . . We must therefore find out by whom we are led. If it is not by the Holy Ghost, we labor in vain; there is no substance nor savour in anything we do. If it is by the Holy Ghost, we taste a delicious sweetness . . . it is enough to make us die of pleasure!

Those who are led by the Holy Spirit experience all sorts of happiness in themselves, while bad Christians roll themselves on thorns and flints. A soul in which the Holy Spirit dwells is never weary in the presence of God; his heart gives forth a breath of love. Without the Holy Ghost we are like the stones on the road. . . . Take in one hand a sponge full of water, and in the other a little pebble; press them equally. Nothing will come out of the pebble, but out of the sponge will come abundance of water. The sponge is the soul filled with the Holy Spirit, and the stone is the cold and hard heart which is not inhabited by the Holy Spirit.

A soul that possesses the Holy Spirit tastes such sweetness in prayer, that it finds the time always too short; it never loses the holy presence of God. Such a heart, before our good Saviour in the Holy Sacrament of the Altar, is a bunch of grapes under the wine press. The Holy Spirit forms thoughts and suggests words in the hearts of the just. . . . Those who have the Holy Spirit produce nothing bad; all the fruits of the Holy Spirit are good.

Without the Holy Spirit all is cold; therefore, when we feel we are losing our fervour, we must instantly make a novena to the Holy Spirit to ask for faith and love. . . . See, when we have made a retreat or a jubilee, we are full of good desires: these good desires are the breath of the Holy Ghost, which has passed over our souls, and has renewed everything, like the warm wind which melts the ice and brings back the spring. . . . You who are not great saints, you still have many moments when you taste the sweetness of prayer and of the presence of God: these are visits of the Holy Spirit.

When we have the Holy Spirit, the heart expands - bathes itself in divine love. A fish never complains of having too much water, neither does a good Christian ever complain of being too long with the good God. There are some people who find religion wearisome, and it is because they have not the Holy Spirit."

First Fruits is You

2007-08-03T14:07:00.000-07:00

We've been particpating in a concept at our parish called "First Fruits." It's really a lot more than a stewardship program or a round-about way of getting dollars in the door. It's about discipleship under the Lord Jesus and a way of living the Life.

Today's First Reading recounts the source of this "first fruits" concept. Each year Israelites were asked to bring to God the first produce from their crops (Leviticus 23:11) . The priest took the portion and offered it to God in thanksgiving for all that God had given.

Similarly, we are asked to give a portion of our substance to God through the Church- time, talent, treasure.

Today I've been thinking about the future. What might I offer to God? I could go a lot further in obeying the evangelical counsels- which deal (among other things) with food, power, and the thought life.

But even if I were to give up more personal options on how to spend my money, my time, my energy, I could still withhold myself from God. It could end up sounding something like this: "ok, Lord, you can have this part of me. Aren't I grand and spiritual for making this sacrifice?"

But somehow I think that idea misses the real point of First Fruits. Really, all that we have, all of who we are, belongs to God in the first place. Unless we recognize that fact, all of our sacrifices are really nothing more than a great big shell game with the Divine. It's really about total abandonment to God.

I realized this last Wednesday afternoon after I was being prayed for at the Companions of Christ Conference. At one point in the prayer time all I could do was cry out "Lord, all that I want is YOU." As I prayed those words, I realized that my whole life has to be given to God, not just my time, not just money, not just my sex life. And all of this happens BEFORE a word is said about vocation. It's just part of the great divine exchange program.

His riches for our poverty.

His obedience for our rebellion.

His purity for our unclean-ness.

God gives us all of who He is in Christ and His Spirit. It seems to me that once that work is recognized and appropriated, the giving back becomes a part of living,.... not an obligation, but a joyful surrender of self.

Sometime earlier this month I read in the Office of Readings these words from 2 Corinthians. Paul is speaking about the Macedonian churches and their generous response to his collection on behalf of fellow Christians in the Holy Land. "First they gave themselves to the Lord, and then to us through the will of God" (2 Cor. 8:5).

That's what I purpose to do. God give me strength.

Companions of Christ: Treasures On the Way

2007-08-02T19:39:00.000-07:00

I just got back this afternoon from the Companions of Christ 4-Day Annual Conference. Phew!

What a blessing and what a challenge to be sharpened in focus by spending an obscenely extravagant amount of time in prayer, worship, learning and recreation with guys who have such hearts for God.

During our Holy Hour this morning I was drawn to today's gospel reading, Matthew 13:51-52. It talks about scribes trained for the kingdom of God and compares us to householders who bring out of their treasure both new things and old.

In the Gospel context Matthew is talking about the leaders of the Christian community skillfully and sucessfully combining the old and the new, as in Moses and Jesus. The whole book of Matthew's teaching is a five sermon outline about how God's kingdom is begun, lived ruled, challenged and fulfilled in Jesus.

But my study this morning became more personal as I was led on a little Spirit treasure hunt of passages that talk about treasure.

First, I discovered that the treasure is really something inward, according to another passage in Matthew's gospel. Out of his or her treasure each one brings out good or evil (Matthew 6:.21) It's an inward resource.... built out of our character and virtues.

Second, from Colossians 2:11 I learned that we find that this treasure comes not from our own selves but from Christ. Christ in us, the hope of glory. That's a comfort. Because I already know how bankrupt I am on my own power and in my own self. I need to begin learning the fullness of those treasures of wisdom which Paul praises in Colossians. But it's a comfort to know its "out there."

Third and finally, we hold this treasure in earthen vessels, 2 Cor. 4:7. This passage turned out to be the first reading at Mass this morning, because Father Tom chose to celebrate the votive Mass for priests with its kindred readings. So, I was reminded once again during Mass how precious that treasure is. We hold it lightly and not under our own initiative. We are called by God and called to share the treasure of His Love and Sacraments, not hoard them, not force feed them, but offer them with an open hand.

That's the treasure I received this week from these brothers. I saw that again and again as my brothers who are ordained led us all on a journey,.... gently, firmly, beautifully and repeatedly, to the Table which is really a vessel, containing within it all sweetness and every good and needed instruction.

Thank you, Lord, for this band of brothers. They are my true treasure in You.

Prayer: Our Most Delightful Occupation

2007-08-01T10:49:00.000-07:00

From the Conclusion to St Alphonsus Liguori's Short Treatise on Prayer

"Let us pray, then, and let us always be asking for grace, if we wish to be saved. Let prayer be our most delightful occupation; let prayer be the exercise of our whole life. And when we are asking for particular graces, let us always pray for the grace to continue to pray for the future; because if we leave off praying we shall be lost.

There is nothing easier than prayer. What does it cost us to say, Lord, stand by me! Lord, help me! give me Thy love! and the like? What can be easier than this? But if we do not do so, we cannot be saved.

Let us pray, then, and let us always shelter ourselves behind the intercession of Mary: "Let us seek for grace, and let us seek it through Mary," says St. Bernard. And when we recommend ourselves to Mary, let us be sure that she hears us and obtains for us whatever we want. She cannot lack either the power or the will to help us, as the same saint says: "Neither means nor will can be wanting to her." And St. Augustine addresses her: "Remember, O most pious Lady, that it has never been heard that any one who fled to thy protection was forsaken." Remember that the case has never occurred of a person having recourse to thee, and having been abandoned. Ah, no, says St. Bonaventure, he who invokes Mary, finds salvation; and therefore he calls her "the salvation of those who invoke her." Let us, then, in our prayers always invoke Jesus and Mary; and let us never neglect to pray.

I have done. But before concluding, I cannot help saying how grieved I feel when I see that though the Holy Scriptures and the Fathers so often recommend the practice of prayer, yet so few other religious writers, or confessors, or preachers, ever speak of it; or if they do speak of it, just touch upon it in a cursory way, and leave it.

But I, seeing the necessity of prayer, say, that the great lesson which all spiritual books should inculcate on their readers, all preachers on their hearers, and all confessors on their penitents, is this, to pray always; thus they should admonish them to pray; pray, and never give up praying. If you pray, you will be certainly saved; if you do not pray, you will be certainly damned."

Pugnacious Ignatius

2007-07-31T12:09:00.000-07:00

The system won't let me copy and post graphics here on the computers at SJU Collegeville, but here is a great quote for the feast day of St. Ignatius Loyola.

Like its author and the Society of Jesus he founded, the quote takes no prisoners. But, it rings true. This is so especially in light of my week-long conference here at St John's University Collegeville with that OTHER world-changing society, the Companions of Christ. There's not much time or facility for blogging right now, but trust me, this week continues to be a life-changing time. .

The breath becomes a tempest.

"It is true that the voice of God, having once penetrated the heart, becomes strong as the tempest and loud as the thunder. But before reaching the heart it is as weak as a light breath that scarcely agitates the air. It shrinks from noise and is silent amid agitation."

A Realistic look back

2007-07-31T11:55:00.000-07:00

From Zenit, a little perspective from our holy Fatheron the place of the Vatican II council in the post-modern world.

Pope Surveys Post-Vatican II Trials

Aide Says He Gives Vision of Realism and Humility

VATICAN CITY, JULY 29, 2007 (Zenit.org).- Benedict XVI says he had great enthusiasm during the Second Vatican Council, but acknowledges the difficulties the Church has faced since those years.

Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi recounted the Pope's words during the most recent edition of the Vatican Television program "Octava Dies." The Vatican spokesman was commenting on the Holy Father's question-and-answer session last Tuesday with priests from two dioceses of northern Italy.

Father Lombardi recalled that the Bishop of Rome answered a priest who spoke of living through the Second Vatican Council, the hopes of "changing the world," and the difficulties of the succeeding years.

The Pontiff replied: "I also lived the time of the Council with great enthusiasm; it seemed that the Church and the world had met again. We had hoped a great deal -- but things showed themselves to be more difficult."

Father Lombardi affirmed that the question-and-answer session had a "relaxed climate of reciprocal confidence among those who have dedicated their lives to so many years of pastoral service in a difficult world that is in constant change."

In this context, "the Pope delineates with a few very effective sketches the Church's path of the last decades, profoundly interpreting it in the context of the contemporary world," the Vatican official added.

Real hope

Father Lombardi said Benedict XVI recalled "above all the cultural crisis of the West that exploded in '68, with the fascination for Marxism and the illusion of creating a new world, and the crumbling of the communist regimes in '89: the fall of the ideologies that did not give room to faith but rather to skepticism.

"The Christian proclamation has to come to terms with this context," the Vatican spokesman added. "And the Church faces it with realism and humility without ceding to the triumphalism of those who think that they have found the way to the new world.

"At the bottom of this is the humility of the Crucified, which will always be contrasted by the great powers of the world, but which generates a real hope that is manifested in the creative vitality of the Church: in her communities and her movements, in the new responsibility of the laity, in ecumenical relations, in liturgical and spiritual experiences.

"The Pope of great theological ideas and great cultural wealth is also the one who helps us to live the simultaneously humble and rich condition of the hope of the Church on its way, as he says: 'With our feet on the ground and our eyes turned toward heaven.'"

the Price of Souls: Never Give Up

2007-07-29T10:41:00.000-07:00

There's some old-fashioned Middle Eastern haggling going in today's Old Testament Reading (Genesis 18:20-32) between Abraham and God. The subject is Sodom and Gomorrah, and the price of souls is.... well.... the subject of negotiation. Listen To Abraham's approach:

"Then Abraham drew nearer to him and said: "Will you sweep away the innocent with the guilty? Suppose there were fifty innocent people in the city; would you wipe out the place, rather than spare it for the sake of the fifty innocent people within it? Far be it from you to do such a thing, to make the innocent die with the guilty, so that the innocent and the guilty would be treated alike! Should not the judge of all the world act with justice?"

The LORD replied, "If I find fifty innocent people in the city of Sodom, I will spare the whole place for their sake." Abraham spoke up again: "See how I am presuming to speak to my Lord, though I am but dust and ashes! What if there are five less than fifty innocent people? Will you destroy the whole city because of those five?" "I will not destroy it," he answered, "if I find forty-five there."

But Abraham persisted, saying, "What if only forty are found there?" He replied, "I will forebear doing it for the sake of the forty." Then he said, "Let not my Lord grow impatient if I go on. What if only thirty are found there?" He replied, "I will forebear doing it if I can find but thirty there."

Still he went on, "Since I have thus dared to speak to my Lord, what if there are no more than twenty?" "I will not destroy it," he answered, "for the sake of the twenty." But he still persisted: "Please, let not my Lord grow angry if I speak up this last time. What if there are at least ten there?" "For the sake of those ten," he replied, "I will not destroy it."

Set aside the fact that Sodom and Gomorrah ended up being destroyed anyway because, according to the story, only Lot and his family were righteous. Set aside, too, the fact that our concepts of God have matured in the four millenia since Abraham struck this bargaining pose with the Almighty.

There is still something quite admirable in Abraham's intercessory persistence. A similar merciful winsomeness adheres to the persistent friend in today's gospel parable (Luke 11:1-13). Jesus commends his persitence in asking for help:

"I tell you, if he does not get up to give him the loaves because of their friendship, he will get up to give him whatever he needs because of his persistence. "

Thank heaven that God NEVER gives up on us. And thank God that there are these kinds of people, ...irksome, troubling, nagginhg intercessors who continue to pray for faithless relatives and friends when everyone else has folded up their tents and gone home.

They are like dripping water faucets, like recurring taps on the divine Shoulder. But they get the job done. I know at least two families who are facing this type of situation with family members right now.... dealing with those who are recalcitrant in regard to self-care, and in regard to their responsibilities to God and others. But my friends keep on praying and hoping that somehow, some way God will intervene and change their family members' lives.

These hapless, hopeful intercessors are reflections of the Divine Mercy, which never asks whether it should persist in love. He only asks that we continue to respond, both on our own and on behalf of others, "for us and for the whole world."

Weeds and Wheat

2007-07-28T14:33:00.000-07:00

Another small but (to me) amazing triple confluence in the river of Life.

I went to Mass this morning and listened to the parable of the wheat and the tares.

Mt 13,24-30. He proposed another parable to them. "The kingdom of heaven may be likened to a man who sowed good seed in his field. While everyone was asleep his enemy came and sowed weeds all through the wheat, and then went off. When the crop grew and bore fruit, the weeds appeared as well.

The slaves of the householder came to him and said, 'Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? Where have the weeds come from?' He answered, 'An enemy has done this.' His slaves said to him, 'Do you want us to go and pull them up?'

He replied, 'No, if you pull up the weeds you might uproot the wheat along with them. Let them grow together until harvest; then at harvest time I will say to the harvesters, "First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles for burning; but gather the wheat into my barn."'"

Then I went home to tackle my appointed semi-annual task- the pulling of weeds from the cracks in the gutter on the street in front of my house.

A few minutes ago I also read the July 28th reading from the Rule of Benedict: Chapter 48- On the Daily Manual Labor. It reads in part:

And if the circumstances of the place or their poverty
should require that they themselves
do the work of gathering the harvest,
let them not be discontented;
for then are they truly monastics
when they live by the labor of their hands,
as did our Fathers and the Apostles.
Let all things be done with moderation, however,
for the sake of the faint-hearted.

Ok, so weed pulling isn't exactly harvest gathering.

But it IS hard, back-breaking and sweaty work. Labora with a capital L. However, even if I could afford it I'm not sure I would pay someone to do this particular piece of yardwork for me. There is something very salutary about working hard, and then looking back down the road and seeing the clean and visible seams of asphalt which until this morning had been spotted over with weeds in various stages of ugly development.

But as good as the labora of weeding feels to the gardening soul, we still hear a Gospel warning about our weeding work in the Kingdom.

In a word. Don't do it.

The householder says 'No, if you pull up the weeds you might uproot the wheat along with them. Let them grow together until harvest; then at harvest time I will say to the harvesters, "First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles for burning; but gather the wheat into my barn."'"

It's not ours to try and practice unnatural selection either in the Church or out in the world, not even in the garden plot of our own lives.

Why is that?

The householder of the parable is simply reflecting the Divine Father's merciful heart. We are told over and over again in Scripture that God wants us, has a passion for our souls, and will go to almost any length to help us return to Him. He loved us so much that sent His Son to die for us.

Therefore, it behooves us who are called into His presence to act like him. Yes, we need to call sin a sin and let people know when they are sowing bad seed in their own lives and in the world (to extend the metaphor a bit).

But, steadfastly Christ chose not to judge another person's state before God. That was part of the Divine winsomeness of His ministry. He didn't. We aren't supposed to either.

Judge not, lest ye be judged. Period. End of story.

But not really the end. Because Christians can sometimes be even harder on themselves than they are on other people. So God is telling us again here, don't even judge yourself. "Let me do that," the Father says "in my kind and stern yet merciful way. Let me bring you home. Let me weed your garden. Let me bring you life."

Sometimes we get so down on ourselves that we can't even hear the Dvinie Mercy calling out to us. We might be like Groucho Marx who claimed that he wouldn't join any club which would have him as a member. So, if you aren't supposed to ride herd on others, and not even on yourself, then what are you left with? A listening heart, and a willing spirit, which only God can give.

I love Pope Pius XII (1939-1958). He's always so practical, if a little pompous in his language.

He addressed this issue of the holiness of the visible Church in his encyclical Mystici Corporis Christi (On the Mystical Body of Christ), 1943. Read it here if you get time. The writing style is a little foreign, but the concepts in this letter led directly into some of the most profound insights of Vatican II.

“Let them grow together until harvest”

"Nor must one imagine that the Body of the Church, just because it bears the name of Christ, is made up during the days of its earthly pilgrimage only of members conspicuous for their holiness, or that it consists only of those whom God has predestined to eternal happiness.

It is owing to the Savior's infinite mercy that place is allowed in His Mystical Body here below for those whom, of old, He did not exclude from the banquet (cf Mt 9:11). For not every sin, however grave it may be, is such as of its own nature to sever a man from the Body of the Church, as does schism or heresy or apostasy.

Men may lose charity and divine grace through sin, thus becoming incapable of supernatural merit, and yet not be deprived of all life if they hold fast to faith and Christian hope, and if, illumined from above, they are spurred on by the interior promptings of the Holy Spirit to salutary fear and are moved to prayer and penance for their sins.

Let every one then abhor sin, which defiles the mystical members of our Redeemer; but if anyone unhappily falls and his obstinacy has not made him unworthy of communion with the faithful, let him be received with great love, and let eager charity see in him a weak member of Jesus Christ.

For, as[Augustine] the Bishop of Hippo remarks, it is better "to be cured within the Church's community than to be cut off from its body as incurable members." "As long as a member still forms part of the body there is no reason to despair of its cure; once it has been cut off, it can be neither cured nor healed."

Listening

2007-07-27T06:17:00.000-07:00

From Zenit, B-16 on listening to God:

AURONZO DI CADORE, Italy, JULY 26, 2007 (Zenit.org).-

The task of the Church is to develop the human person's God-given ability to listen to the voice of truth, says Benedict XVI. The Pope said this Tuesday during a question-and-answer session with 400 priests of the dioceses of Belluno-Feltre and Treviso, in the Church of St. Justina Martyr in Auronzo di Cadore, near Lorenzago di Cadore, where he is nearing the end of his vacation.

A priest asked the Holy Father about dealing with widespread misconceptions about good and evil, saying that these moral concepts are confused with merely feeling good or feeling bad.The Pontiff responded that a "world without God becomes a world of arbitrariness and egoism. But where there is God, there is light and hope. Our life has a meaning that we cannot give it, but which precedes us, and guides us."

He recommended a path of "patient education," guiding people along the paths that "even a secularized conscience today can easily find." And from there, the Pope said, "let us try to guide people toward more profound voices, the true voice of the conscience, which can be heard in the great tradition of prayer, the moral life of the Church."

Benedict XVI acknowledged that today morality and religion "are almost replaced by reason," and "the only criterion of morality and religion is the subject, the subjective conscience.""In the end, only the subject, and his feelings, his experiences and the other criteria he has found, are deciding factors," the Pope said. "

In this way, however, the subject becomes an isolated reality, and the parameters change day after day."But, he explained: "In the Christian tradition 'conscience' means 'with-knowledge.' That is to say us, our being is open, it can listen to the voice of being itself, the voice of God."

The voice, therefore, of great values is written in our being. And the majesty of man is found in the fact that he is not closed within himself; he is not reduced to material things; he is not able to be measured.
Instead he has an interior openness to essential things, the possibility to listen."

In the depth of our being we can listen not only to the needs of the moment, not only to material things, but to the voice of the Creator himself, and in this way we recognize what is good and what is evil."

"Naturally," Benedict XVI affirmed, "this ability to listen must be learned and developed. This is our task in the Church -- to develop this high ability given by God to man to listen to the voice of the truth, the voice of values."

Open the Eyes of Our Heart, Lord.

2007-07-26T08:02:00.000-07:00

From John Tauler (around 1300-1361), Dominican Sermon 53

“Blest are your eyes because they see”

"Our Lord said: “Many a prophet and many a saint longed to see what you see but did not see it.” We must understand the prophets as being the great, subtle and reasoning minds who hold to the sublety of their natural reason and draw from it emptiness. Those eyes are not happy.

We must understand the kings as being men who are naturally dominant, with strong and powerful energy, who are masters over themselves, their words, their works, their language, and who can do whatever they want when it comes to fasting, vigils and prayers. But they make a big thing of it, as if this were something extraordinary, and they despise the others. These are also not the eyes that see the things that make them happy.

All those people wanted to see and did not see. They wanted to see, and they held on to their own will. Evil resides in the will… Our own will covers our interior eyes like a membrane or a film covers the exterior eye and prevents it from seeing… So long as you stay within your own will, you will be deprived of the joy of seeing with your interior eye.

For all true happiness comes from real abandonment, from being detached from our own will. All that is born in the depth of humility… The more a person is small and humble, the less does he have his own will. When all has been calmed, the soul sees its own essence and all its faculties; it recognizes itself as the rational image of Him from whom it came.

The eyes… that look this far can rightly be called blest because of what they see. What a person discovers then is the marvel of marvels, what is most pure, most sure… May we be able to follow this path and to see in such a way that our eyes might be blest. And may God help us in that!"

Dense Cloud of Love

2007-07-26T06:55:00.000-07:00

In today's First Reading (Ex. 19,1-2.9-11.16-20) God tells Moses, "I am coming to you in a dense cloud, so that when the people hear me speaking with you, they may always have faith in you also."

I sat at Mass this morning thinking about other signs of God's presence in our lives. I considered the lives of SS. Anne and Joachim, Mary's parents, whom we remember today. I thought about their loving household.

Love for others is the sure sign that we are in the presence of God. It is the singular way in which we ourselves and those around us can have faith that God exists and that He has spoken to and acted through men.

Anne and Joachim's family must have been enveloped in such a cloud of love. After all, they gave birth to Mary, the model of perfect Love and Faith.

Such nuclear families are ordained by God as the privileged place where we first learn what love is from parents and also learn how to show love to others. Anyone who has ever borne children or been a child knows in their own hearts that this is true. Love for a child takes many forms, changes, develops, matures, gets disappointed. But it never fails.

However, there are larger arenas here where love is at work and play.

In religious communities, parishes, and the workplace we are to be surrounded by a dense cloud of love. Here we also experience the love of God and in turn show our concern by loving service to others. The nuclear family is to be the birthplace of such love, but it dare not become its endpoint. That is why a stable family life is so important to our churches, our neighborhoods, our society.

Here is a novena prayer to Anne and Joachim. They are powerful intercessors to bring this kind of love into our lives, in the family and wherever we find ourselves.

The Novena Prayer:

Good parents of the Blessed Virgin Mary,

grandparents of our Savior, Jesus Christ,
When life seems barren,

help us to trust in God's mercy.
When we are confused,

help us to find the way to God.
When we are lost in the desert,

lead us to those whom God has called us to love.
When our marriage seems lifeless,

show us the eternal youth of the Lord.

When we are selfish,

teach us to cling only to that which lasts.
When we are afraid,

help us to trust in God.
When we are ashamed,

remind us that we are God's children.
When we sin,

lead us to do God's will.

You who know God's will for husband and wife,

help us to live chastely.
You who know God's will for the family,

keep all families close to you.
You who suffered without children,

intercede for all infertile couples.
You who trusted in God's will,

help us to respect God's gift of fertility.
You who gave birth to the Blessed Mother,

inspire couples to be co-creators with God.

You who taught the Mother of God,

teach us to nurture children in holy instruction.
You whose hearts trusted in God, hear our prayers for ...

(mention your requests here).

Pray with us for the ministry of Catholic family life.
Pray with us for the ministry of Natural Family Planning.
Pray with us for all who give their time, talent and treasure to this good work.

Hail Mary... Our Father... Glory be...

God of our fathers,

you gave Saints Anne and Joachim the privilege of being the parents of Mary,

the mother of your incarnate Son.

May their prayers help us to attain the salvation

you have promised to your people.
We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.

What's So Great about James? Lots!

2007-07-25T08:47:00.000-07:00

This is the Feast of St James the Greater, as opposed to that other James, the Less (aka, son of Alphaeus- and there is a THIRD James, Jesus' brother, and perhaps a fourth, but we won't go there. )

Calling this one "the Greater" is kind of ironic in light of today's gospel reading, which indicates that both James and his brother John had "issues" with pride and leadership.

B-16 had some good words to say last year about James the Greater during a General Audience. The Holy Father points us to the school of glory and suffering in which this future Apostle was enrolled. Once taught, James responded generously to God, even to laying down his life. Have you and I been to this school?

Pope Benedict XVI General Audience, 21 June 2006

"My cup you will indeed drink”

"This James belongs, together with Peter and John, to the group of the three privileged disciples whom Jesus admitted to important moments in his life. Since it is very hot today, I want to be brief and to mention here only two of these occasions.

James was able to take part, together with Peter and John, in Jesus' Agony in the Garden of Gethsemane and in the event of Jesus' Transfiguration. Thus, it is a question of situations very different from each other: in one case, James, together with the other two Apostles, experiences the Lord's glory and sees him talking to Moses and Elijah, he sees the divine splendour shining out in Jesus.

On the other occasion, he finds himself face to face with suffering and humiliation, he sees with his own eyes how the Son of God humbles himself, making himself obedient unto death. The latter experience was certainly an opportunity for him to grow in faith, to adjust the unilateral, triumphalist interpretation of the former experience: he had to discern that the Messiah, whom the Jewish people were awaiting as a victor, was in fact not only surrounded by honour and glory, but also by suffering and weakness. Christ's glory was fulfilled precisely on the Cross, in his sharing in our sufferings.

This growth in faith was brought to completion by the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, so that James, when the moment of supreme witness came, would not draw back. Early in the first century, in the 40s, King Herod Agrippa, the grandson of Herod the Great, as Luke tells us, "laid violent hands upon some who belonged to the Church. He had James, the brother of John, killed by the sword" (Ac 12: 1-2)...

Consequently, we can learn much from St James: promptness in accepting the Lord's call even when he asks us to leave the "boat" of our human securities (Mt 4:21), enthusiasm in following him on the paths that he indicates to us over and above any deceptive presumption of our own, readiness to witness to him with courage, if necessary to the point of making the supreme sacrifice of life.

Thus James the Greater stands before us as an eloquent example of generous adherence to Christ. He, who initially had requested, through his mother, to be seated with his brother next to the Master in his Kingdom, was precisely the first to drink the chalice of the passion and to share martyrdom with the Apostles."

It seems that I have been asleep...

2007-07-24T13:28:00.000-07:00

Today the Church looks East and awakes again to the deeply felt Maronite tradition of Lebanon and surrounding areas.

Deep suffering and deep faith co-exist here, as exemplified in the life of St Sharbel Makhluf. He lived and died in the nineteenth century, was canonized by Paul VI in 1977, and his holiness has proved a blessing by way of example and miracle to thousands.

Father Sharbel displayed a strong devotion to the Eucharist, celebrating Mass at noon each day so that he could spend the morning in preparation for it and the afternoon in thanksgiving. He died a hermit, in poverty and in relative obscurity. He truly is a modern exemplar for the truth of the ancient monastic way of life.

In St. Sharbel the Incarnation had its full effect, redeeming him and those whose lives he touched, both before and after death.

About him Thomas Merton journaled....

"Sharbel lived as a hermit in Lebanon — he was a Maronite. He died. Everyone forgot about him. Fifty years later, his body was discovered incorrupt and in a short time he worked over 600 miracles. He is my new companion. My road has taken a new turning. It seems to me that I have been asleep for 9 years — and before that I was dead.”

Especially in these dark days of Middle Eastern conflict and dispair, may St Sharbel light the way for all people to live in peace, with our God, with each other, and with His creation.

Dare to go without everything

2007-07-24T07:04:00.000-07:00

A gem from Meister Eckhart (around 1260-1327), Dominican theologian

“Whoever does the will of my heavenly Father is brother and sister and mother to me.”

"Many people say: “We are of good will.” But they don’t have God’s will. They want to have their own will. They want to tell our Lord that things have to be done in this or that way … In all things, it is God’s plan that we give up our own will.

Saint Paul talked a lot with the Lord and the Lord with him, but none of that was of any use so long as he could not say to him: “What is it I must do, sir?” (Acts 22:10) For our Lord knew very well what he would do with Paul.

It was the same when the angel appeared to the Virgin Mary. Everything that each of them had said would never have made of her the Mother of God, but from the moment she gave up her own will, she immediately became the true Mother of the eternal Word. She immediately conceived God, who became her natural son.

Nothing in the world makes true human beings of us like giving up our own will before God... If we succeed in abandoning our own will, if, for love of God, we dare to go without everything, both what is interior and what is exterior, then we will have realized our profound being.

Thus, you have to abandon yourself entirely to God, with all that you are, and no longer worry about what he will then do with what belongs to him… The more we advance on this path, the more we are truly in God."