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All articles

- Pope Francis -- Jesus' failure on the cross?

- Model of Obedience: Our Blessed Mother

- It's All About Timing

- 5 things you didn't know about St. Therese

- Beckoning

- Papa Rocks The Garden!

- The Birthday Parties that Never Were

- The Four Mini-Gospels

- Reinventing the wheel

- The Passion of Saint Therese

- Reflection: September 11

- Images of Mary Expecting : Our Lady of the Unborn

- A Tale of Two Josephs

- Beneath the Cover of Your Kindle, How Hot Is Too Hot?

- Is gossiping beneath the concerns of a pope?

- Marriage: Its Strength Lies in Grace

- From Attempted Suicide to Christian Evangelist

- The Pope's Visit

- Who were the Nicolaitans? A Mystery Decoded

- Worldwide Abortion Protest Reignites Ancient Battle

- The Double Portion Anointing

- There's a Saint for That

- Paradox

- The Places He Puts Us

- Love is Our Mission - World Meeting of Families and the Papal Visit

- Plain as Day

- Fountain of Grace

- When Words Fail: Comforting the Grieving

- Imperfection Accepted

- October is here and so is 40DFL and Respect Life month

- Sometimes Our God Is Like a Cheering Grandfather!

- Why We're Not Raising Our Kids Gender Neutral

- Keyboards and Atheists

- Will the poor forgive me?

- Looked Hard at Him and Loved Him

- Getting to Know Jesus: 10 Ways to Grow Closer to our Lord and Savior

- My God, my God, why have thou forsaken me?

- The Trouble with Works

- Prayer To End Terrorism

- Intercessions ~ Twenty Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time

- Overwhelmed

- Your Presence Makes A Difference

- Avoiding the Error of the Pharisees

- How Should We Respond?

- Understanding Catholic Teaching on the Blessed Virgin Mary

- Myth of Quality Time

- Faith like a child

- Us and Them

- The whole world is a Friary

- From a Child of Divorce: What I Wish They Would Have Told Me

- Fessing up on my 47th: I will disappoint you

- Watching the Pope's Mass in Philadelphia from the comfort of our domestic church

- I Live in a Factory

- The Rights of Evil

- True dialogue on moral issues for developing public policy in a democracy like Canada

- Pope Francis in America: Hope Amidst Crisis

- Basic Training with St. Vianney

- Annulment reform and the Kasper proposal

- "For I Hate Divorce, Says the Lord."

- Meeting Families at the World Meeting of Families

- Hate People? Not an Option

- Praying Psalm 145

- Distributism or Capitalism: Two Ways to Work

- Prayer of Gratitude for His Extravagant Love

- Surely They Don't Know: the Ugly Truth of Abortion

- St. Therese, We're Counting on You

- Zeal is More Necessary Today than Ever - True Zeal, That Is, Not a Mere Human Imitation of It

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Pope Francis -- Jesus' failure on the cross? [at Catholicism and Adventism]

The anti-Catholics have again latched onto Pope Francis’ words and taken them out of context. Here, for example, at the He is coming blog. And here, at Christian Reformed Theology.

In a sermon at Vespers at St Patrick’s Cathedral in New York, he used the words “cross” and “failure” in the same sentence. Now anti-Catholics who can’t read context are spreading the idea that the Pope called Jesus and the Cross a failure.

Pope Francis

Let’s look at Pope Francis’ words:

We can get caught up measuring the value of our apostolic works by the standards of efficiency, good management and outward success which govern the business world. Not that these things are unimportant! We have been entrusted with a great responsibility, and God’s people rightly expect accountability from us. But the true worth of our apostolate is measured by the value it has in God’s eyes. To see and evaluate things from God’s perspective calls for constant conversion in the first days and years of our vocation and, need I say, great humility. The cross shows us a different way of measuring success. Ours is to plant the seeds: God sees to the fruits of our labors. And if at times our efforts and works seem to fail and produce no fruit, we need to remember that we are followers of Jesus… and his life, humanly speaking, ended in failure, the failure of the cross.

He starts off saying that our apostolic works are often judged (by us) by the definitions of success found in the business world.

He goes on to say that their true worth is measured by their value in God’s eyes.

We feel that our efforts produce no fruit. But he’s arguing that they DO produce fruit, in God’s eyes. We may not see that fruit, but God does.

He compares that feeling about our human experience with Jesus.

In human terms – “humanly speaking” – Jesus died, and wasn’t a conquering Messiah who would lead Israel against her enemies as a literal king.

We DO need to remember that – humanly speaking – Jesus, the cross, love, mercy … these are all failures. But not to God. Not in God’s eyes. And that is what Pope Francis is saying.

Donkey, Boston Public Library

The wolves (or donkeys, depicted on the right) cannot read, or don’t want to read. They see the words “failure of the cross” and abandon context and honesty in order to promote their nasty agenda. I don’t see how any honest person can read the entire paragraph, notice the words “humanly speaking“, and misunderstand. The wolves bear false witness. It’s what they do.

True Christians see otherwise.

“These words ring so true coming from this man who so obviously cares not a whit for the attractions the world has to offer and who is, instead, content to life the simplicity the Gospel demands of its ministers.” – Michael Winters at NCROnline

Full text of the sermon here at the NY Times and here at the Vatican Radio website.

Further reading:

Pope Francis at St. Patrick’s … by Michael Sean Winters at the National Catholic Register

Did Pope Francis Really Say Jesus Was a Failure? … by Jimmy Akin

This contribution is available at http://blog.theotokos.co.za/

Copyright is retained by the contributing author (follow above link for info on this piece).

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Model of Obedience: Our Blessed Mother

Obedience, what does it really entail? Everyone always wants to know just how much we can get away with before we are deemed disobedient. Instead, how about giving some thought to what it means to truly obey God, with our free will fully exercised? Does that concept sound daunting? Well, Peter Kreeft offers an excellent definition of obedience to God while fully exercising our free will, and this quote gives me hope that I can be obedient to God:

Since our highest freedom means freedom to be ourselves, we are most free when we are most obedient to God’s will, which expresses His idea of us. Thus freedom and obedience coincide. To obey God is to be free in the most radical sense: free to be me, free from in-authenticity, free from false being, free from the alien within, not just free from the alien without, the oppressor. The answer to our question, then, is that “freedom to sin” is a self-contradictory concept. Sin is in-authenticity and freedom is authenticity; sin is our false self and freedom is our true self. Sin is part of Hell and freedom is part of Heaven. 1

This quote should give us cause to disband with the desire to see how much we can get away with; instead, shed our false selves, move away from sin, and become authentic and obedient children of God. Embrace freedom!

Mary, our Blessed Mother, exercised her free will to be who God desired her to be; her true self, ever holy, authentic and sinless. She is our model for obedience, depicted from the moment of her ‘fiat’, her yes, to becoming the Mother of God, to standing at the foot of the cross at her Son’s crucifixion, to the witness of her faith in assisting her Son in establishing His church. Mary is our model of obedience to God.

Yet, there is someone even more obedient than Mary, and we’ll discuss “Him” in our next reflection. Don’t miss it!

Footnote:

1 Kreeft, Peter. “Fourteen Questions About Heaven.” (Response to Question #7). Catholic Education Resource Center. 2010. Web. 30 July, 2015.

This contribution is available at http://virginialieto.com/model-of-obedience-our-blessed-mother/

Copyright is retained by the contributing author (follow above link for info on this piece).

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It's All About Timing [at FranciscanMom]

This morning I read an article on Catholic Stand: The 18-Minute Mass.

Though I can’t get behind every statment or suggestion in this article, author Kevin Aldrich makes a good point: it’s not that hard to set things up so that the option of daily Mass is open to more Catholics.

It’s something I’d love to see happen around here.

My parish used to have an 11:45 Mass. People from several neighboring parishes (and others from farther afield who worked in the area) would come to this Mass during their lunch breaks.

When the parish merged, we switched to a 9-AM daily Mass time slot–like nearly every other parish in the area.

A quick check of MassTimes.org shows that within a 5-mile radius of my home, on any given weekday, I can attend daily Mass at these times:

8 AM – at 2 different parishes

9 AM – at 5 different parishes

We have a total of 7 parishes in a 5-mile radius and everyone’s praying at the exact same time.

Why not spread it out–and publicize it? Why not have Parish A schedule an early-morning Mass (6:30 or 7?) Why not have Parish B take a noon time slot? Why not have Parish C celebrate an evening Mass?

Allowing more options for daily-Mass time slots, it stands to reason, will allow more people the opportunity to attend daily Mass. If neighboring parishes worked together to spread out the Mass times and to get the word out, attendance should increase.

It’s like that line from Field of Dreams: “If you build it, they will come.”

This contribution is available at http://franciscanmom.com/2015/09/30/its-all-about-timing/

Copyright is retained by the contributing author (follow above link for info on this piece).

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5 things you didn't know about St. Therese [at Contemplative Homeschool]

St. Therese of Lisieux (St. Peter Catholic Church, Millersburg, Ohio; photo by Nheyob, Wikimedia Commons).

1. She almost died as an infant.

Before Therese was even born, her mother, Blessed Zelie Martin, was already suffering from the breast cancer that would eventually kill her. She was unable to nurse Therese properly, but did not want to turn her over to a wet-nurse. A previous daughter had died in a nurse’s care, and daughter Celine had not fared well with a nurse either. Eventually, when Therese was nearly starved, Zelie did find a nurse for her. Therese lived with the nurse for over a year. Afterwards, she had trouble re-attaching to her own mother.

2. She dreamed of posing as a penitent.

Therese and her father, Blessed Louis Martin, used to bring fish to an order of nuns that cared for penitent girls. Some of the girls would join the order. Therese, in her humility, dreamed of hiding among them, letting no one know that she was not a penitent herself. Eventually, of course, she found her real vocation in the Carmelite cloister.

3. She believed perfect trust substituted for Purgatory.

Therese chided her cousin Marie Geurin for thinking she would go to Purgatory. “When we love, we can’t go there,” she said. She taught the novices under her direction that if they completely trusted in God and gave away all their merits to others, God would not betray their trust. He would take them to His side immediately after death.

4. She was a prolific letter writer.

A two-volume set of letters between the Martin family and others contains over 1200 epistles. Many were written by Zelie, giving us a glimpse into the years that Therese could not remember. Others were written by Therese to Celine, after Therese entered Carmel. Therese also had two priests with whom she corresponded. Some of the most beautiful and startling words she ever wrote were contained in the letters to these priests.

5. She painted a self-portrait that still exists.

One of Therese’s tasks in the cloister was painting religious paintings. In 1893 she painted a fresco in the Invalids’ Oratory. A sleeping child above the tabernacle to the left represents herself. She was struggling at this period to stay awake in prayer.

And if you knew all five of those things, you must have read Trusting God with St. Therese!

I’m holding my annual sale to mark her feast day. From now through the early morning hours of October 2, the ebook of Trusting God with St. Therese is only $.99 (regular $4.99). You can buy a signed paperback directly from me for $14, including shipping. As always, you can buy 5 paperbacks from me at the regular price ($15.95) and get a sixth free, shipping included. Email me at crossini4774 at comcast dot net for details of both paperback deals. Online the price is $15.95 each.

And if you’d like to win a free audiobook, please enter the contest here:

Happy feast of St. Therese!

Connie Rossini

This contribution is available at http://contemplativehomeschool.com/2015/09/28/5-things-you-didnt-know-about-st-therese/

Copyright is retained by the contributing author (follow above link for info on this piece).

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Beckoning [at With Us Still]

Another season of the Golf League drew to a close this week, and as I drove away from our home course for the final time in 2015, I realized that my heart was full of joy.

But here’s the thing: The heart-vibe had nothing to do with my score. In fact, I’d been struggling with the game all season – and my play during the final round turned into a microcosm of the many weeks that had gone just before: Frightening ineptitude early on, particularly with the driver; a few shots that were exquisitely executed; and many mediocre efforts in between.

Trouble lurking in them-thar weeds…

In short, the golf I played that day was nothing to blog about. But the passing season…that was something altogether different.

It unfolded like a love letter of sorts from God. A reminder of the 15 years I’ve spent in the league: The trophies won. The camaraderie shared. The lamp that the game (and the league) had been unto my feet.

This lamp beckoned me mostly through people. They would become the Light of Christ, piercing through my personal darkness…and a beacon shining through the dry, theoretical Christianity of my youth.

One such light was Vic. I vividly recall the welcome he extended when I was a “newbie” in the league back in 1999 – how he made me feel like one of the gang…and in the process, opened my heart – just a smidge – to the gift of community.

Vic was an instrument of God’s grace on that day. And in the ensuing years, our friendship has blossomed into something much more profound – a bond of brotherhood that runs much deeper than any of the water hazards I encounter out on the course. I did not expect to be blessed in such a way back when I joined the League…but there it is: Proof that God can (and does) re-create me in my recreation.

Companions for the round…and the journey…

A few weeks after that first encounter, another Golf League companion took advantage of our scheduled round…to invite me to become an RCIA sponsor. And another ‘community’ door was opened: I was given the chance walk alongside some pretty remarkable people in the years that followed…to see the Holy Spirit alive in the hearts of many of my fellow parishioners. This RCIA work would play no small role in sparking other key parts of my spiritual awakening as well.

The light fades on another season…and my heart soars…

So when I connect the dots on my journey…when I recall the incredible blessings I have experienced in the past 15 years…they all lead back in one way or another to Golf League.

A remarkable thing, I thought…as I headed home from the course after our final round last week.

Remarkable, how God knows me well enough…to want to pursue me there – out on the links.

*  *  *

Or perhaps it’s not so remarkable after all, when I consider the divine promise revealed in Psalm 16:

You will show me the path to life,

Fullness of joys in Your presence,

The delights at Your right hand forever.

I am ever so grateful, Lord, for this gift: To find a bit of You…in the things that delight me.

And to realize that You’ve been there all along, beckoning.

A beacon…for a restless heart…

Let us pause now…to recall that we are in the presence of the Holy One.

IHS

This contribution is available at http://withusstill.wordpress.com/2015/09/13/todays-find-beckoning/

Copyright is retained by the contributing author (follow above link for info on this piece).

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Papa Rocks The Garden! [at Campfires and Cleats]

Unparalleled. Divine. Lucky. Teary-Eyed. Blessed. And oh yeah, crowded.  I'm thrilled to relive the historic Papal visit to our city with you, my friends! Thank you for stopping by to share our journey of faith as well as  the fun,  the fervor and even the crazy.... And boy was it crazy.  But never unpleasant.  Because despite the throng, the waiting, the disorder,  these were God's beautiful people congregated in one place, for one reason.  And unabashedly excited to be in His presence and professing the faith.  As you know,  we were extremely blessed to be  chosen in our diocesan lottery to attend the papal mass at Madison Square Garden  in NYC on Friday....!!!! yay! :

As promised, I took all your intentions and a few religious items of local friends and fam along to receive a rare Papal blessing. Well, we were, of course, thrilled to  share the richness with those of you who could not personally  attend the events in the three east coast cities!

Now, many of my friends and readers are Catholic and are reading this  with the knowledge of our Church's traditions   and the nostalgia and their lifelong faith experiences.  I know quite a few  of you are not and  yet  are still swept up in the  excitement of our Pontiff's historic  first visit to North America..... You might be interested in the significance of the Papacy,   the leader of the worldwide Catholic Church,  who we believe to be the  infallible successor of St. Peter, the first Pope. When Jesus says to Peter in the Gospel of St Matthew,   "I will give to thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven"  and "Upon this rock I will build my church," He was choosing Peter to carry on His work, to further "build" His church, to act as his earthly representative.

This is, of course, the heart of Vatican City,

St Peter's Basilica in Rome and

that obelisk in the center of St Peter's Square

commemorates the spot where our first Pontiff was martyred.

More on the papacy today and throughout the ages can be found in the archives at this site.

Now, let me take you with us on Pope Day in The Big Apple,  or as I  (native and  lifelong NYer) boldly like to say, The Greatest City in the World... Yes, I know that's decidedly elitist and unCatholic of me....ahem..... I LOVE YOU even if you're not a New Yawka!

Okay, well, we  now live about sixty miles east of the city ( sadly!)  So that morning found us driving to the train station in~~

my old neighborhood !!! Because I'd rather drive an hour and spend thirty minutes on the train than drive thirty minutes to the  closest station and then ninety minutes on the train. We're not really near a station, as you can see. After what should have been a quick train ride to Penn, but included  a forty minute wait on the platform due to signal troubles on the line, we finally arrived in the city, along with a multitude bearing A Golden Ticket to  a papal event and  unticketed individuals hoping to at least catch a glimpse or just be in the same vicinity as The Vicar of Christ. It was a happy, packed  trainload of the populace, indeed! Once we arrived at Penn and ascended to street level,  we snapped a few shots of the crowds positioning to get a good  view of Papa as he made numerous stops all over  midtown, downtown and uptown...... wow, that man made tracks on Friday! Of course, what makes The Empire State what it is----- our landmark building on 34th and 5th:

Lotsa wacky touristy shops.....

.....and do ya love this? English may not be the first language for this t shirt creator, but love certainly is:

...and they wanted 25 bucks for this! Ha

We finally reached MSG through a maze of police barricades for the  papal motorcade  to see ~~~~ "FRANCIS OUR POPE" is splashed  all over billboards around the midtown area and on MSG itself!

...and then an awesome NYPD officer offered to take my son's pic  with his very own uniform cap! Blue Bloods, here we come! Now, for those uninitiated to NYC venues,  MSG and Penn are "connected" and one does not have to even go outside to reach the other.  But in the case of crowd control for Friday's events, this was not to be. Sooooooooo, that pre mass concert? That warm welcome Papa gave the crown at The Garden, riding in on a golf cart? Well, despite getting to the city with a cushion of five and a half hours  prior to the mass.......we missed both! You know those infernal zig zag lines at Disney World?  Picture that draped across NYC back and forth between 7th and 8th Avenues, going north-south and from 34 Street ( where The Garden is) allllll the way down to 20 Street. Yes, to get into the venue connected to Penn,  we walked about 40 blocks just to find the end of the line.... and there was cheering when all ticket holders found the end,  I'll tell ya! On the way and during the five hour wait,  the Lord treated us to this gorgeous site on 28th and 7th:

Then, there was, well, lots of standing on line winding back toward 7th and 34th to go through homeland security.... who, by the way, does not care if your wallet, your precious papal mass ticket, your car keys or your camera bag  winds up heaped on top of the belongings  of the party behind you...and behind them..... and behind them...and...... well you get the point.

So yes, we finally made it! WooHoo!

Once in, we discovered that the ticket windows' red velvet rope separators created makeshift confession "booths!"  Cool right? I so wanted to take pictures, but.....how rude, right? Snapping  shots of people receiving absolution? So, no pictures. Honestly, I would have walked right past it all to just get to our seats, but my kids had other ideas. I. Am. So. Happy. that they  insisted  suggested we receive absolution in the sacrament of reconciliation.  Receiving the Holy Eucharist at the papal mass with a thoroughly clean slate was indeed a blessing. Yes, talk about grace.....that was it.

Upon receiving mercy, we finally..... oh heavens...finally headed to our seats. Two broken escalators and a family who were in our seats, well, guess what? We were JUST IN TIME for the processional! The Lord was looking out for all His children because no one arrived late, despite the...well........the disorder of the day. Sigh. Deep breath and here we go........ We were swept up in the beauty and the chillingly familiar, yet still humbling ritual of the mass but celebrated by Our Papa!! The Bishop of Rome...on our soil.... in our city.....discussing  social justice and our issues... where we've rocked to The Boss and Billy Joel  and watched The Knicks sink baskets. Here....wow. Tears.

Tons of our pictures.........>>>>>>

and HERE he is.......

Ok, did we have great seats or what???

And here is our Papa delivering the homily~~ Our city, our people, our issues... and He knew it all.

Courtesy of the Holy See Press Office. and reprinted at catholicmom... here's the full text of The Holy Father's homily Friday 9/25/15~~

We are in Madison Square Garden, a place synonymous with this city. This is the site of important athletic, artistic and musical events attracting people not only from this city, but from the whole world. In this place, which represents both the variety and the common interests of so many different people, we have listened to the words: “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light” (Is 9:1).

The people who walked – caught up in their activities and routines, amid their successes and failures, their worries and expectations – have seen a great light. The people who walked – with all their joys and hopes, their disappointments and regrets – have seen a great light.

In every age, the People of God are called to contemplate this light. A light for the nations, as the elderly Simeon joyfully expressed it. A light meant to shine on every corner of this city, on our fellow citizens, on every part of our lives.

“The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light”. One special quality of God’s people is their ability to see, to contemplate, even in “moments of darkness”, the light which Christ brings. God’s faithful people can see, discern and contemplate his living presence in the midst of life, in the midst of the city. Together with the prophet Isaiah, we can say: The people who walk, breathe and live in the midst of smog, have seen a great light, have experienced a breath of fresh air.

Living in a big city is not always easy. A multicultural context presents many complex challenges. Yet big cities are a reminder of the hidden riches present in our world: in the diversity of its cultures, traditions and historical experiences. In the variety of its languages, costumes and cuisine. Big cities bring together all the different ways which we human beings have discovered to express the meaning of life, wherever we may be.

But big cities also conceal the faces of all those people who don’t appear to belong, or are second-class citizens. In big cities, beneath the roar of traffic, beneath “the rapid pace of change”, so many faces pass by unnoticed because they have no “right” to be there, no right to be part of the city. They are the foreigners, the children who go without schooling, those deprived of medical insurance, the homeless, the forgotten elderly. These people stand at the edges of our great avenues, in our streets, in deafening anonymity. They become part of an urban landscape which is more and more taken for granted, in our eyes, and especially in our hearts.

Knowing that Jesus still walks our streets, that he is part of the lives of his people, that he is involved with us in one vast history of salvation, fills us with hope. A hope which liberates us from the forces pushing us to isolation and lack of concern for the lives of others, for the life of our city. A hope which frees us from empty “connections”, from abstract analyses, or sensationalist routines. A hope which is unafraid of involvement, which acts as a leaven wherever we happen to live and work. A hope which makes us see, even in the midst of smog, the presence of God as he continues to walk the streets of our city.

What is it like, this light travelling through our streets? How do we encounter God, who lives with us amid the smog of our cities? How do we encounter Jesus, alive and at work in the daily life of our multicultural cities?

The prophet Isaiah can guide us in this process of “learning to see”. He presents Jesus to us as “Wonderful Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace”. In this way, he introduces us to the life of the Son, so that his life can be our life.

Wonderful Counselor. The Gospels tell us how many people came up to Jesus to ask: “Master, what must we do?” The first thing that Jesus does in response is to propose, to encourage, to motivate. He keeps telling his disciples to go, to go out. He urges them to go out and meet others where they really are, not where we think they should be.  Go out, again and again, go out without fear, without hesitation. Go out and proclaim this joy which is for all the people.

The Mighty God.  n Jesus, God himself became Emmanuel, God-with-us, the God who walks alongside us, who gets involved in our lives, in our homes, in the midst of our “pots and pans”, as Saint Teresa of Jesus liked to say.

The Everlasting Father. No one or anything can separate us from his Love. Go out and proclaim, go out and show that God is in your midst as a merciful Father who himself goes out, morning and evening, to see if his son has returned home and, as soon as he sees him coming, runs out to embrace him. An embrace which wants to take up, purify and elevate the dignity of his children. A Father who, in his embrace, is “glad tidings to the poor, healing to the afflicted, liberty to captives, comfort to those who mourn” (Is 61:1-2).

Prince of Peace. Go out to others and share the good news that God, our Father, walks at our side. He frees us from anonymity, from a life of emptiness and selfishness, and brings us to the school of encounter. He removes us from the fray of competition and self-absorption, and he opens before us the path of peace. That peace which is born of accepting others, that peace which fills our hearts whenever we look upon those in need as our brothers and sisters. God is living in our cities. The Church is living in our cities, and she wants to be like yeast in the dough. She wants to relate to everyone, to stand at everyone’s side, as she proclaims the marvels of the Wonderful Counselor, the Mighty God, the Eternal Father, the Prince of Peace.“The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light”. And we ourselves are witnesses of that light.

We need you Papa....we're invigorated by you.....we love you...

The mass continues>>>>>

The Transubstantiation:

..

...and then receiving The Holy Eucharist... what grace. What a blessing. Archbishop Timothy Dolan lavishes praise on our Holy Father, thanking him for his blessings on us all:

Preparing for the final blessing:

.......and my son holds his precious home made wooden cross as well as my mom's rosaries and my husband's mom's rosaries!

The recessional~~

Not sure what I was doing here with the AIMING of the video camera.....

but nonetheless......  we were THIS close!

Yes!

As we all filed out, there was quiet and peace and kindness flowing.

Really......

Quiet in New York.

The impact of the blessings, I think, were paramount on all our minds.

All 20,000 of us.

So after the mass, we had no real time constraints

and an hour to spend in the city until our train

pulled out of Penn and headed east.

We decided to wander and enjoy the GORGEOUS night....

This involved, of course, authentic NY pizza.....

and The Freedom Tower...

and viewing  The Garden lit up....

...and landmark skyscrapers.....

By the way, my older son was with us, of course, but prefers not to be included

in pictures on the  blog, a request I'm happy to honor....

but I do miss him here.

On the way home, my younger son quietly said as we reflected on the day, "Mom, Francis is my JPII!" And it dawned on me that my kids will love and  admire our 260th Pontiff the way I did my beloved John Paul II. You do know that my older son took our Papa's given name, KAROL, as his confirmation name? My  post with lots of details on the day, the decor, the dinner and the cake is all here....I can't resist sharing.... Here's a peek at the cake:

For more  reflections on the Pope’s visit from members of the  Mid-Atlantic Conference of the Catholic Women Bloggers Network (yes, I am a member of this awesome group of bloggers, lucky me!!)  please visit Julie's blog at These Walls~~

Every Papal event during the past week in DC, Philly and NY are represented...! Amazing, right? Brew yourself a cup of tea and go check  out first hand coverage from some of the finest authors in the land!  ALSO~  my friend, Roxane, of Peace Garden Writer, traveled from her home in North Dakota to World Meeting of Families events in Philly and kept us all posted every step of the way.  So please go enjoy Rox's updates and posts as well!

Did you know, by the way, that I'm a Compassion Blogger?

Wait til you see these adorable faces!

Friends, as always,

thank you for stopping over and

spending some of your precious time

here at my home on the web! And hey:

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The Birthday Parties that Never Were [at It Makes Sense to Me]

IT MAKES SENSE TO ME

By Larry Peterson

September 6, 1978, our daughter, Theresa Mary, was born and died. Once again I am posting about our fourth child and how she touched our lives. If she had lived this would have been her 37th birthday. She might have had children like her older sister, Mary Dymphna. Maybe Mary and her little sister would have been best friends and confidants. Their kids would have been cousins. We probably would have all gotten together and had a party with cake and ice-cream and sang "Happy Birthday" like we and all of you do on these occasions. However, like so many other families, we have those empty days of birthday parties that never were.

I am writing about this again because of the incredible disregard for life that now exists in our society.

Planned Parenthood

, marketed and promoted as the bastion of women's health in America, performs more abortions than any other organization in the country. It receives over one-half billion dollars a year in government funding and recently it has come to light that it is nothing more than a "chop-shop" for human body parts. Theresa Mary was in her sixth month of development and could have fit their criteria for body parts perfectly.

At the beginning of Loretta's sixth month of pregnancy she unexpectedly went into labor. Bleeding profusely she was rushed by ambulance to the hospital and our fourth child, a daughter, was born. She also lived and died very quickly, within minutes.  I had called ahead to Holy Trinity Catholic Church and a priest, Father Murray, was waiting for our arrival. Our baby was baptized and buried with my parents. She was our child, she was real and was a gift from God.

Theresa was not simply a "fetus".  She was not "products of conception". She was not an "annoyance", or an extra pair of shoes to worry about or another potentially "sleepless night". She did not mean  less money in the bank.  No, Theresa Mary was worth far more than any of that multiplied a thousand times over.  Nothing can change the fact that she did exist. In God's world there is no "time" as we know it. HE lives in the "Eternal Now".  Theresa Mary now lives there with HIM. (I like to think she is close friends with her namesake, St. Therese)

So, as I contemplate what might have been in my own family's life, I wonder what might have been in millions upon millions of other families. How many millions of birthday parties have never been celebrated? How many doctors, scientists, priests, nuns, teachers, baseball players, carpenters and astronauts, surgeons, auto-mechanics, hair-dressers, waitresses,  pharmacists and even trash collectors and hot dog vendors never made it past life in the womb? How many  living children in-vitro, with their own DNA and their own legs, arms, hands and feet, kidneys and livers and hearts and lungs, have been destroyed out of convenience or maybe just for those body parts?  Roe v Wade has been protecting this heinous behavior since 1973. Whatever have we wrought?

So I say "Happy Birthday" to Theresa Mary. You lived and died and the world will always know it You were NOT a "product of conception" or a piece of "tissue". You were a living person. So many more like you were never given that recognition. It is a sad, sad, thing.

©2015 Larry Peterson All Rights Reserved

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The Four Mini-Gospels [at The Shield of Faith]

I.

The Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit (Is 11:2,3).

1  Fear of the Lord

2  Piety

3  Knowledge

4  Fortitude

5  Counsel

6  Understanding

7  Wisdom

II.

The Seven Beatitudes (Mt 5: 1-9).

1  Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.

2  Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth.

3  Blessed are they that mourn for they shall be comforted.

4  Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after justice for they shall have their fill.

5  Blessed are the merciful for they shall obtain mercy.

6  Blessed are the clean of heart for they shall see God.

7  Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called Children of God.

III.

The Seven Petitions of the Lord's Prayer (Mt. 6: 9-13; Lk 11: 2-4).

1  Our Father who art in heaven hallowed by thy name

2  Thy kingdom come,

3  Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven

4  Give us this day our daily bread

5  And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us

6  And lead us not into temptation

7  But deliver us from evil

IV.

The Seven Words of Our Lord on the Holy Cross.

1  "Father, forgive them for they know not what they do." (Lk 23:34)

2  "Amen, I say to thee: this day thou shalt be with me in paradise." (Lk 23:43)

3  “Woman, behold thy son.” To the disciple, “Behold your mother.” (Jn 19:26-27)

4  "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" (Mk 15:34)

5  “I thirst.” (Jn 19:28)

6  “It is consummated.”  (Jn 19:30)

7  “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.”  (Lk 23:46)

Here is the key to meditating upon them:  The four Mini-Gospels correspond to each other in the order in which they are numbered one through seven.  St. Augustine and St. Thomas established the correspondence for the first three Mini-Gospels, and Bishop Fulton Sheen incorporated the fourth.

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Reinventing the wheel

When I was a kid I did gymnastics for many years. As with most of my athletic endeavors, I wasn’t very good and I never got much better. I was young enough not to care, my parents were wise enough not to care, and I really liked flopping around on the trampoline.

When I started doing yoga a few years ago I was surprised to find my body easing back into some poses that resembled the old gymnastics tricks of my youth. After about a year of strengthening my arms and loosening up my low back I shocked myself by popping into wheel pose one day.

I dropped that from my practice last summer when I was so brutally sick. Even though I was still pretty gummy I had virtually no strength. I would get lightheaded merely standing up, so making myself dizzier upside-down seemed like a bad idea.

All through that battle I was so proud of myself for still practicing, and it was devastating when, after my bowel resection, I had to take a break. In fact, I took a break from just about everything, since resting one’s abdominal muscles basically means not moving at all. (The one stretch of brutal pain, which almost made me have to cancel my bridal shower, was likely brought on by sweeping the kitchen floor.)

The first time I went back to the mat was about a week after my ostomy reversal. The teacher was such a Mean Girl about my modifications that I nearly laughed (though what I actually did was whip my shirt up above my midriff to show her my nasty bandage to get her to back off). As I got back into activity I was in crazy amounts of pain. My knees, which had started to hurt after about six weeks of inactivity, couldn’t handle child’s pose. The soles of my feet screamed.

So I went to the doctor and asked for a referral to physical therapy, and I worked all summer to get things back in order, still fretting that I had developed another chronic pain condition (because if there is anything I have learned in the last few years, it’s that you should assume the worst about every ache or pain). This damn body, I would think, that never really worked right to begin with, that couldn’t do sports or gymnastics or running or half the things I wanted it to, betraying me again.

I worked with my PT, and got back into running and lifting and yoga and simply being an active human alive in the world. There is still plenty of pain, but it has decreased, and I am able to find just a bit of ease in my activity.

So yesterday when our yoga teacher invited us into wheel pose I thought “why not try?” I placed my hands and feet in position and pushed myself up. My legs felt strong and supportive, my arms and shoulders were open and sturdy, my abs and the huge scar from my ostomy stretched long, my back was free and my heart shone out to the back of the room. I felt better in that pose than I ever had before, and I breathed in and out deeply while marveling at where I was, and who I was.

I lowered myself to the mat and barely heard the teacher suggest we go into happy baby pose. In a daze I lifted my legs and rested like a happy baby, which was appropriate because I was crying like one.

This contribution is available at http://margaretfelice.com/2015/09/05/reinventing-the-wheel/

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The Passion of Saint Therese [at Fountain of Elias]

In June of 1895, two years before her death,

St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face

made an "

Act of Oblation to Merciful Love

." She expressed her gratitude to God for the grace of suffering: "Since you deigned to give me a share in this very precious Cross, I hope in heaven to resemble You and to see shining in my glorified body the sacred stigmata of Your Passion." (

The Story of a Soul

, trans. by Fr. John Clarke, OCD, p.277)

In the mental and physical sufferings that St. Thérèse experienced in the weeks preceding her early demise, she came to resemble her Crucified Spouse very much. As the tuberculosis consumed her body, a trial of faith and hope, in which heaven and eternity seemed closed to her, tortured her soul. The coughing of blood and persistent sore throat led to a treatment of painful cauterization with silver nitrate. Eventually, "gangrene ate away her intestines and she lost blood two or three times a day. Drinking only intensified her burning thirst. She had a terrible feeling of suffocation which could not be eliminated by the administration of ether. Finally, her bones protruded through her flesh to such an extent that, when she was made to sit upright to get some relief, it seemed to her that she was seated on iron spikes." (

Complete Spiritual Doctrine of St. Therese of Lisieux

by Rev. Francois Jamart, pp. 187-188) She confided to her sister, Mother Agnes of Jesus, that her pain was so intense that at times she was tempted to commit suicide: "What a grace it is to have faith! If I had no faith I would have inflicted death on myself without hesitating a moment!" (

The Story of a Soul

, p. 264)

On the afternoon of September 30, 1897, she entered into her agony. "Everything I have written about my desires for suffering," she gasped. "Oh, it is true just the same. I am not sorry for having surrendered myself to love. Oh, I am not sorry, on the contrary!" (

The Story of a Life

by Bishop Guy Gaucher, p. 204)

Nevertheless, Mother Agnes was so distressed by her sister's ordeal that she knelt before a statue of the Sacred Heart and begged for the grace of final perseverance for her little Thérèse. When the other nuns of the Carmel were summoned to the infirmary to support their sister with prayers in her dying moments, they saw her purplish hands holding her profession crucifix. Shortly after seven o'clock in the evening, the saint looked at the crucifix and breathed forth her last words: "My God, I love You!" After gazing a few moments with an expression of ecstatic joy at the statue of Our Lady, the beloved "Virgin of the Smile," brought from her childhood home, she died peacefully, her own face transfigured and smiling. On October 4, she was buried in the cemetery of the town of Lisieux. Only a few relatives and friends were present at the burial of the twenty-four year old nun. No one guessed that a storm of glory, a shower of miracles, was about to break forth.

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Reflection: September 11 [at Quidquid Est, Est!]

The following reflection is an adaption of one that I composed five years ago on the anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.  I have kept much of what I said five years ago, adjusting some phrases here, adding some thoughts there.  For the most part, however, I have mostly the same thoughts.  It isn’t typical of my reflections, but I feel that readers here will get a lot out of it.

Fourteen years ago.  Fourteen long years ago, an entire lifetime away.  Literally a lifetime.  I teach freshmen in high school, some of whom were not alive fourteen years ago.  I think, often enough, that 2001 was only a short time ago.  Then I think of today’s date, and what happened fourteen years ago, and realize that it was an eternity.

Fourteen years ago.

I was a sophomore in high school, Bishop O’Connell High School in Arlington, VA, where I currently teach (cool, right?).  Arlington is just outside of Washington DC, and a lot of the students in my school lived close to the city.  I lived in Maryland and would ride a bus every day, cutting through the city to get to school.

I remember where I was when I first heard the news.  I was sitting in Theology class.  I don’t remember much from that Theology class, but I do remember that it was during second period.  During second period, a voice came over the loud speaker and said, in a very serious voice, that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center in New York.  That was all they told us.

Oh, I thought, that’s sad for that pilot.  At that point, I thought a personal plane had crashed into the building.  Why are they announcing it?  Maybe it was a relative of a student.  We said a prayer.  I moved on.  I wished I had paid more attention, so that I could remember better what happened that day.  Even though it was only been a short time ago, everything about that day is a blur.  The events that day from second period to the end of school are mixed up and unclear.

Warren H. Carroll said that historians are “the guardians of memory.”  I fancy myself a historian, but when it comes to my own life, I’m a failed one.

All that said, I will try to remember.

By third period, we had confirmation that it was an airliner, not some personal plane, that had crashed, and that there were two reported crashes.  By fourth period, we were watching the news in class, catching a glimpse of endless smoke pouring out of the buildings.  I had never heard of the World Trade Center before that day, and now it was everything.  My little world now seemed to revolve around it.  Every so often, a child was called to go home.  One by one, the classes dwindled.  Schoolwork?  Some of the teachers thought about it, but gave in, and turned on the TVs.  We were slaves to the news reports.  We soon heard about the attack on the Pentagon.  That added a new level of disturbance because we were about eight miles away, not hundreds of miles away in another state.  We sat in class and watched the screen.  Down the first tower fell.  Down it went, as if it were nothing more than a stack of cards.  It fell so quick, so effortlessly.

Through all of this, I had only a vague understanding of what was happening.  I couldn’t shake Pearl Harbor out of my mind.  I knew now how my grandparents had felt, hearing the reports of that attack.  I knew what it was like to witness an America tragedy, to experience the unsure horror of it all.

I remained at school the entire day, then traveled home on the school bus, weaving our way through the chaotic traffic. When I finally got home, I hugged my mom and little sister (it was, after all, her birthday).  We left the news on the rest of the day.  By evening we saw the bombs dropping, we heard President George W. Bush address the nation, and we hoped that everything would be better soon.

And here we are today.  My generation has been defined by that day.  The so-called “Millennium Generation includes all those who were born between the end of the 1970s and the beginning of the 1990s, old enough to witness the 9/11 attacks first hand.  That is our legacy.  I am defined by that day of horror.  And it is true.  Look at the world around us; look at popular culture, at politics, at religion, at international relations.  The events of 9/11 have scared these realms.  Nowhere is safe.  Men have made careers based on the events which unfolded that day.  I’m not referring to our soldiers, though anyone in the military since 9/11 in some way owes their career to the attacks.  I am referring to more vocal men.

Look at the world of Pop Culture.  In movies, we see the career of Michael Moore, director of quite possibly the most influential documentary in recent years, 2002’s Bowling for Columbine.  More has revitalized his career because of the 9/11 attacks. Bowling for Columbine briefly connects the violence that day with the violence in this country’s recent history.  Moore’s follow up film, Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004), focuses on the attacks and the subsequent invasion of Iraq, particularly by connecting President Bush’s family and Osama bin Laden’s family. It became the highest grossing documentary ever, and has cemented Moore as the documentary filmmaker for the liberal world.  He is loved by some, hated by many, but unless he completely bombs at the box office (his most recently released film, Capitalism: A Love Story (2009), grossed over $14 million domestically), he will continue his rather successful career.

Likewise, the music world has become saturated with anti-President Bush songs, as well as pro-America soldier songs (the latter mostly found on country music stations).  The human struggle in Iraq and Afghanistan following the 9/11 attacks bled into the natural disaster which was Hurricane Katrina.  Both were blamed on President Bush and his policies.  One need only listen to the American Idiot album by Green Day or Minutes to Midnight by Linkin Park, to give two examples, to see such anger against the former president.  Would such hatred have arisen without the attacks on the Towers?

Many books and countless news articles have appeared, all because of the attacks and the history afterwards.  It has become the standard, it seems, to hold Bush’s policies following the attacks as wrong, and indeed one should not praise everything he did.  But the anger, the outrage which has persisted these last fourteen years paints America as a country against herself.  Having traveled to Europe, I know that, like us, Europeans get the vast majority of their view of America from popular culture.  Who are Americans?  We are the violent, pill popping, sex crazed monsters which infect movie and television screens.  We are closer to Hell than anyone in Heaven.  This is our national portrait.

But that is not us.  As the true history of our country these last fourteen years shows us, in the soldiers who have fought and died in the Middle East, in the men who have seriously taken charge when the road became rough, in those who remained faithful despite having seen their faith despised, we are not those monsters who inhabit our movies and TVs.  We are better than that.  We are the country that stood against our attackers and fought back.  We are the country that said NO to another force of evil.  We are the country that turned the tragedy of 9/11 into a glimmer of hope.  While we may not have done it as gracefully as one could, we did it.

So it does seem appropriate, then, that such an important event, my generation’s Vietnam, would define us as a nation.  We are strong, we are brave, and we are charitable.  As much as men deny Christ, He informs us, making us the nation we are today.

We run the risk, as any devout Christian can see, of ruining our country.  Many hold it is already ruined, and maybe they are right.  I’m more optimistic.  I think we can have a cultural revolution, a transformation away from the cancer of sin which plagues our country.  It will not happen in a day, nor even in a year.  It will not happen without prayer and fasting, without rejecting that which has become a hallmark of American in the media.  We must seek to fix the broken, rather than setting the broken up as the new normal.  When we are forced to profess our Faith in the shadows, we must produce more spiritual light.  When we are shouted down by hatred, we must sing of Christ love that much louder.  A war wages for America, but it isn’t one of bullets and soldiers, but one of hearts and minds, one of the soul rather than the body.  This blog, in all humility, is my attempt to join that fight for souls.

I am of the Millennium Generation.  I proclaim Christ crucified to a world shaped from the ashes of New York City and Washington D.C.  I use the tools of this world, of my generation, and turn to my brothers and sisters, stretch out my hands and beg for their help.  No man fights alone.  To quote the Christian song “In Christ Alone,”

In Christ alone my hope is found,

He is my light, my strength, my song;

This Cornerstone, this solid Ground,

Firm through the fiercest drought and storm.

What heights of love, what depths of peace,

When fears are stilled, when strivings cease!

My Comforter, my All in All,

Here in the love of Christ I stand.

May those who died fourteen years ago today rest in peace.  Amen.

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Images of Mary Expecting : Our Lady of the Unborn [at joy of nine9]

We tend to forget how young Mary actually was,  perhaps thirteen or fourteen years old.  Yes, she was a young unwed mother, the perfect, powerful intercessor for the vulnerable, the unborn.

She, more than any of us understands the mystery, the sanctity of life in every womb.

The Mother of God, under one of the titles given her by the Church, is called Ark of the Covenant because she carries within her the Messiah, the fulfillment of the promises of the Old Testament.

Through the fiat of a teenager, the Word became flesh. Jn. 1: 14

The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

Above is a photo of a garden dedicated to the unborn with a large statue of Mary holding three tiny babies on her lap, a modern Pieta. Our Lady of Guadalupe, pray for us. The View From Camp Kreitzer.

A 17th-century engraving of an image of Mary pregnant in the Augustinian church in Prague, Czech Republic. In English, this type of image is usually referred to as Our Lady of Expectation.

The Church of ‘Our Lady of Expectations’ is located in San Thome (St Thomas Mount) in Chennai. India.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church

Mary gave her consent in faith at the Annunciation and maintained it without hesitation at the foot of the Cross. Ever since, her motherhood has extended to the brothers and sisters of her Son “who still journey on earth surrounded by dangers and difficulties.”28 Jesus, the only mediator, is the way of our prayer; Mary, his mother and ours, is wholly transparent to him: she “shows the way” (hodigitria), and is herself “the Sign” of the way, according to the traditional iconography of East and West.

“Our Lady of the Sign — Ark of Mercy,” was carved from wood by Stefan Niedorezo. Malgorzata Sawczuk did the gold gilding and served as conservator.

Our Lady of Guadalupe-Patron of the Unborn

a pregnant Mary with Elizabeth

Our Lady of the Sign

The annunciation

Memorial for the unborn – at the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in LaCrosse Wi.

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A Tale of Two Josephs [at Podcast]

The Bible is an amazing book; actually an amazing collection of books. Compiled nearly two thousand years ago, it contains History, Poetry, Prophecy and lessons for life that remain pertinent no matter the year on the calendar.

Many of the stories of the Bible contain meanings on top of meanings on top of more meanings. A person can read the same passage repeatedly over ensuing decades and still discover, for the first time, deeper insights that reveal truths directly applicable to them. When you realize that different human authors, over a span of centuries, took part in its assembly, you cannot help but be astounded.

The Christian sees in this continuity the Hand of God as He inspired the mortal writers. But not only did God inspire the writers as they put quill to parchment, He also inspired the people about whose lives are revealed.

The Bible consists of the Old Testament and the New Testament. The Old Testament points to the Coming of the Messiah while the New Testament proclaims that Jesus is the Messiah. Like the overture of a musical, the Old Testament presents in small parts what will be revealed in full later on.

While Jesus the Messiah, or Savior, is the person around whom the whole story revolves, there are others, call them supporting actors, who play a key part in the tale. Two, in particular, deserve attention, and they are both named Joseph.

Joseph of the Old Testament was the son of Jacob. He experienced dreams that foretold his father and his brothers would one day bow down to him.

Joseph of the New Testament also had a father whose name was Jacob. God spoke to him in dreams directing his actions toward Jesus and Mary. He became the head of the Holy Family and Mary and Jesus were obedient to him.

The brothers of the Old Testament Joseph first plotted to kill him but then sold him into slavery to some Midianites. He was taken to Egypt where he was again sold, this time to Potiphar, the Pharaoh’s chief steward. God blessed Joseph in all the duties he was given and Potiphar’s house prospered. Potiphar gave control to Joseph over all matters of his house. Potiphar’s wife lusted after Joseph and when he denied her advances, she falsely accused him of a sexual assault and he was thrown into jail.

The New Testament Joseph served God the Father’s purpose by becoming the foster-father of Jesus and the chaste guardian of the Virgin Mary.

Joseph of the Old Testament came to dwell in the House of Pharaoh and serve a man who was the ruler of much of the world. Joseph of the New Testament brought the King of Heaven and Earth to dwell in his home. He served God by teaching and directing Jesus when he was a child.

Joseph of the Old Testament had the ability to interpret the dreams of others. God the Father spoke directly to Joseph of the New Testament in dreams. It was clearly revealed to him that he should take Mary as his wife and that the child she carried was conceived by the Holy Spirit. He was clearly warned in a dream to flee Herod’s wrath and later in a dream informed when it was safe to return home.

The family of the Old Testament Joseph sought relief in Egypt from the famine. Joseph stored up grain during the plush years that kept his family and others alive during the famine.

Joseph of the New Testament is the savior of the Savior. He appeared as the natural father of Jesus to the people, shielding Mary from the law and sheltering the helpless baby. He, with Mary and Jesus, sought sanctuary in Egypt. Because of Joseph’s obedience, the Infant Savior grew to manhood. With Jesus’ death and resurrection, millions have been eternally rescued.

The ancient Joseph was especially loved by his father and given a glorious many-colored coat as a symbol of this love. The New Testament Joseph was much beloved by God the Father, so much so that he was given as his bride the most precious creature in all Creation, Mary the Mother of God.

The ancient Patriarch is a precursor to the New Testament Joseph. Joseph of the Old Testament showed mercy to his brothers who sold him into slavery. Our New Testament Joseph so attuned his desires to those of God that he, above all others, is called a Just Man.

For the modern reader, separated by millennia from the authors of the Bible, guidance for life is abundant in its pages. For those who aspire to greatness, modeling their lives on the two Josephs is an excellent place to start.

This contribution is available at http://warriorsworlddad.com/

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Beneath the Cover of Your Kindle, How Hot Is Too Hot?

Sometime during high school, I read Nathaniel by John Saul. Roughly twenty-five years later, I can tell you nothing about the plot. Nothing. Not. A. Thing. However, the book contained a single sex scene, observed by a teen from a barn with a bedroom view. I can recall that scene in detail.

I’ve heard of people who can skim and skip explicit scenes in novels. The vast majority of times, such details can be passed over without diminishing the reader’s knowledge of the plot. In other words, they are gratuitous.

I skim news articles, blog posts, email messages, newsletters, and magazines. But not books. In order for me to skim or skip a part of a book, it must be horribly written. And in that case, I’m not skipping, I’m just setting the book aside. It’s likely my personality type that requires me to read from beginning to end with no skips or detours. Whatever the reason, it means if there’s an explicit scene in the book I’m reading, I’m going to read it. And most times it will live on in my imagination long after the book itself is forgotten.

Why skip those scenes in the first place? Aren’t they fun? Is it wrong to sneak a peek in a fictional character’s bed?

Assuming the explicit nature of the scenes are gratuitous, meaning their detailed description is intended not to inform but to arouse, here’s why I choose to avoid them:

Unlike in video pornography, no actual humans are portrayed in mere fictional words, yet these scenes still remove the intimacy of sex from loving partners. They can distract me from real-life intimacy and cause me to objectify persons and actions by removing them from the context in which they are meant to be enjoyed. (See Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2354)

Each of us has different proclivities, temptations, and tolerance levels. I speak here of my own weaknesses, which I know well.  My intention is not to insinuate that if you read novels with explicit sex scenes you are an evil, sex-crazed monster bound for Hell.

But, if you profess a faith, particularly Christianity, and this has been niggling your conscience or you have witnessed detrimental effects to your real-life romantic relationships, then perhaps reading such fare is something to reconsider.

Practically speaking, if you enjoy reading, particularly romance, how can you be sure you’re getting a “clean read”? (You can be a romance lover without becoming a porn aficionado. I wonder sometimes if people know that’s true.)

A cover is often the best indicator of what type of romance you’re going to get, from sweet to sexy. These days, however, you can read your Bible or erotica behind the cover of your ereader, and no one but you will know the difference.

My go-to method for determining whether a romance is the kind I want to read is to search the reviews on Amazon.com using keywords such as “sex,” “steamy,” “clean,” or “sweet.” Most times, I generate results that enable me to make a quick decision.

Keisha Page, who writes hotter than I read, put together a helpful guide in discerning “Heat Levels in Romance Novels” and was gracious enough to share it with me.

You can also look for recommendations from sources you know and trust. Earlier in the year, I posted some of my own recommendations for good, clean reads.I enjoy reading and writing on the edgy end of inspirational fiction, but that may not suit every reader.

Christian author Tricia Goyer shares a lovely reflection on the spiritual implications of what we read in the post “Spiritual Life of a Reader.” I especially love her Reader’s Prayer at the end. Here’s a snippet:

” . . . help me to realize even more that the stories I choose to read impact my heart and my soul. Today and tomorrow, as I pick up a novel, help me to choose wisely.”

Amen.

Can you skip scenes – sexual or otherwise – that bother or offend you? Do you have any tips for determining a book’s heat level?

This contribution is available at http://carolynastfalk.com/2015/09/14/beneath-the-cover-of-your-kindle-how-hot-is-too-hot/

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Is gossiping beneath the concerns of a pope? [at Kitchen table chats]

My

latest article is up at Catholic Stand

and I am a bit surprised by the reaction. I explored why Pope Francis has addressed the sin of gossiping on so many occasions. The first response was a diatribe on the "liberal" takeover of the Church and how the discouragement of gossiping is an effort to quash dissent. The next response complained that the Pope's frequent use of hyperbole makes it impossible to take him seriously.

Neither of these commenters addressed my analysis or the spiritual lessons I gleaned from Pope Francis. Rather, because my starting point was a homily by Pope Francis they ignored my words and attacked their inspiration.

Pope Francis is very different in style from both Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI. Yet I have heard nothing that he has actually said that is a departure from Catholic teaching. I have seen many headlines written in the secular press that attribute meanings to his words that are just not there. I have seen many articles written in the Catholic press that claim his words support this controversial positions but when I go back and read the actual address I just don't see the controversy.

Pope Francis declaring a Year of Mercy is very consistent with his inclusive approach. This is not an approach of syncretism that puts equal value to disparate ideas. This is the approach that says we are all sinners and the Church welcomes all sinners to find salvation in Jesus Christ and His Church. We do not say repent and be saved over there and then you can sit by us in the pews. We say come sit by us now and feel the healing mercy of Christ.

Which I believe is why the Pope is talking about gossiping. No one feels welcomed when they face a gauntlet of disapproving looks and wagging tongues. If our snark, biting sarcasm, and snide criticisms drive people away from the Church and away from their potential salvation then we have contributed to the demise of their souls as well as our own. This is not a petty parish problem that is beneath the concerns of the Holy Father. This is an obstacle to effective evangelization and the Pope is right to take it on.

This contribution is available at http://catholic-mom.blogspot.com/2015/09/is-gossiping-beneath-concerns-of-pope.html

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Marriage: Its Strength Lies in Grace [at Designs by Birgit]

I posted a funny little meme on my Facebook wall today. It said,

"I don't believe in Divorce...

once we're Married, you're mine to annoy Forever!"

Since marriage is being mercilessly maligned by secular society, this was a cute way of stating the obvious - marriage isn't perfect, but with grace, love, and humor it will survive.

Case in point: we were 17 and 18 when we married. Forty plus years later, we're still together - despite some

rough spots

. This is due partly to the inspirational example I observed from my mother during her

struggles

- including many years of anticipating an annulment. We also understand the order of priority in our marriage -

God First, Spouse Second, Children Third

.

Of course, copious amounts of grace played the most important role.

So it came as a total shock to see the comments elicited by the humorous and innocuous sentiment the meme in question inspired. Hurtful, ugly, shameful comment after comment was made - and liked by dozens of admirers.

On the other side of the coin is fellow blogger Annie. In honor of her own anniversary, she has compiled

blog posts

from our Catholic Bloggers Facebook group. Her aim is to show marriage for what it truly is. A sacramental union of a man and a woman - bound together by their common love and God's grace.

In times such as these - with the upheaval concerning same sex 'marriage', rampant cohabitation, high divorce rates, and general disdain for the nuclear family - it's refreshing to see a young bride's efforts to show the world how to do it right.

Dozens of our fellow bloggers have shared their links with Annie. She will need to share them in several installments throughout the next day or so. Reading through these memories might be just the uplifting message you (or someone you know) need at this time. Be sure to check out

Catholic Wife, Catholic Life

to be inspired.

As the Synod on the Family quickly approaches, may we gain strength from our mutual goal of living a grace-filled married life. God bless the family - the foundation of society.

As the family goes, so goes the world. May we strive to be a part of the solution!

NOTE (Sept. 11, 2015): Go check out our

mention

in Annie's anniversary blog post at Catholic Wife, Catholic Life. It's in the final installment, published today.

This contribution is available at http://designsbybirgit.blogspot.com/2015/09/marriage-its-strength-lies-in-grace.html

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From Attempted Suicide to Christian Evangelist [at I am Proud to be Catholic!]

Can you please introduce yourself to our readers?

I’m a guy who encountered the most unlikely person at the most unlikely time. In my 20’s and early 30’s I was a very Anti-Christian Deist leaning Agnostic who completely regarded Jesus and the New Testament as a work of fiction. I believed that religion merely was a crutch for weak-minded people who were not strong enough to stand up on their own and control their own destiny. Then when I believed that I had lost everything that mattered to me, I decided to end my life, and in the process of trying to suffocate myself I heard an audible voice that said to me, “I love you. I am here.” When I asked the question in my head, ‘Who is that,’ the answer that immediately came back to me was ‘Jesus Christ’.

I still find it utterly incomprehensible that Jesus would step into that singular moment in time to save a person like me who not only deserved Hell, but who had completely rejected Him and persecuted His people. Having heard the voice of Jesus absolutely resolved my denial of Him. I couldn’t logically pretend that I didn’t hear His voice. So, at that moment I decided to believe that He was a real person who was interested in my life. I also decided to follow Him, because He voluntarily saved my life. He didn’t have to do it. I felt I owed Him at least that much to find out what other good He wanted for my life.  After a couple of years of following Jesus I ended up at the Catholic Church, because when you truly follow Jesus that’s precisely where it takes you before you arrive in Heaven.  It was on August 8, 2006 when I was Confirmed as Saint Joseph in the Catholic Church.

Can you give a summary of what our Holy Catholic faith really is?

I studied Islam informally over a period of about ten years, and until I became a Catholic I accepted what Muhammad had written about Jews and Christians in Qur’an; that they are a people of the Book. Even during those couple of years when I was a Protestant, I still believed this and didn’t have any qualms with the fact that I was a person of the Book (the Bible). Then after I became a Catholic I accepted the reality that this was yet another example that Muhammad was completely clueless.

To the contrary, as faith is the highest knowledge (though still imperfect) that a human mind can have on earth, the faith that was handed down by Jesus Christ Himself to His Apostles and remains to be the treasure of the historically homogenous, universal, divinely creedal, and Peterine Church fully empowers all those who are called to be a Covenantal People of the Triune God. The Holy Catholic faith is the fullness of faith, because it promises and presents the fullness of God on earth who is able to be known (though imperfectly) by all who have received the gift of faith.

Is the Catholic Church relevant in this age of Information Technology?

I think because what, rather who, the Catholic Church promises and presents is true, it will always be relevant, but what makes this a great question is that it points to the historic difficulty the Church has had in reminding people what She has to offer the world.  Whether it was when the printing press revolutionized the speed of how we communicated, or the Golden Age of Television, or the Age of Information Technology, the Catholic Church has consistently been late to enter and slow to keep up. If men were still drawing on stones, the Catholic Church would be behind the curve.

The institutional Catholic Church may always be slow to adapt what is good, and there is some measure of relief in that the Vatican, the Diocesan Chanceries, and the Parishes are this way. The great news is that we have so many competent and faithful Catholic lay and religious ministries that are doing a really good job on throughout the internet letting the world know what the Catholic Church has to offer.

Are guns needed in a Christian home?

I don’t believe they are needed, but a Christian ought to take whatever moral precautions and safeguards they need in defense of their own life and the lives of their family and community. I love the martyrs whose only weapon was a set of Rosary beads, but I also love the fact that even Peter and the Apostles brought two swords on the night Jesus was arrested.

Is Politics and the Catholic faith friends or foes?

Because the Catholic faith contains the fullness of truth, whenever politics offers what is true, it and the Catholic faith are friends, but whenever the politics offers something less than what is true, it and the Catholic faith are definitely at odds with each other.

This is a good question as well, because sometimes a Catholic cleric will make a statement or publish a document that might suggest that the Church and the government are at odds, but it may very well be the case that the area in which the cleric has decided to engage politicians is an area that doesn’t require an assent of faith by all Catholics; that is, an area that isn’t Church dogma. This isn’t to say that what the cleric is saying isn’t true, but we have to distinguish between dogma, non-dogmatic doctrine, and opinion.

Is Democracy the best form of governance and is it needed in every country?

I think the constitutional Democratic and Republic forms of governance are wonderful ideas. They represent, perhaps, the most inclusive and responsible form of governance available at this time. Nevertheless, like all forms of government they equally are bound to fail, simply because all systems that have some other highest authority than the Triune God will always fail and collapse on itself. The nature of man prevents him from ever creating anything perfect. The only thing that Jesus promised the gates of Hell would not prevail against was His Church established through Apostles. Therefore, the government is completely vulnerable to the wiles of Satan; even more so wherever faithful Catholics do not participate in it.

Is prolife all about anti-abortion or are there other realities within the prolife movement?

It’s always been my belief; ever since I became a Catholic that the only consistent, reasonable, and logical pro-life position is the one that embraces the potential of life from the womb to the tomb. It does seem to be the case that the most visible pro-life groups are those that are fighting for the babies in the womb. Many Bishops in the United States, as well as Pope Francis have been championing the cause of life for those whose sins have caused juries and judges to sentence them to death.

I believe that the most critical pro-life cause we have before us right now is this attack on the family and marriage. Never be surprised the same people who are in favor of legal abortion, birth control, and euthanasia, are the very same people who are for homosexual marriage. It’s all about population control through the use of eugenics for them, and the promotion of homosexual activity is a population control strategy, because same genders will never be able to reproduce with each other. Therefore, the fight to defend the sanctity and dignity of all human life and potential human life includes the fight for opposite gender monogamous marriage and family.

I often read about various Catholic groups in America that disagree vehemently with the Pope on many issues. What is happening in the Catholic Church in USA?

Pope Francis has ruffled some feathers. He’s ruffled mine on several occasions. We can break down the issue of the apparent or real ‘disagreement’ some Catholics have with Pope Francis on two fronts.

The first has to do with his pastoral style. Pope Francis is not a philosopher or an academic theologian. He is a pastor that has a shepherd’s concern for the flock of which he has been charged to tend, feed, and guide. We had so long be used to the clear philosophy of Saint Pope John Paul II and the academic rigor of Pope Benedict XVI that we were disappointed to hear Pope Francis when he weighed in on matters of theology. He doesn’t speak very clearly, he’s confusing at times, he speaks off the cuff too much to the ‘wrong people’, he seems to contradict himself, he seems more interested in expressing his personal faith and encounter with Jesus (in the poor) than he is with proclaiming what the Church teaches about Jesus.

For a paper I wrote for grad school I decided to clear my own conscience on whether my critiques of Pope Francis’ theology was just or unjust.  In this paper entitled, ‘The Homiletic Christology of Pope Francis Regarding the Ongoing Mission of Christ Jesus,’ I examined his Christology since he’s been our Holy Father. I went into the research expecting to undercover a deep seated heresy, but I came out having found a true Catholic.  In this regard, I invite everyone to go beyond the cursory and sound bites and read for themselves all of Pope Francis homilies and discover the Christology of Pope Francis. It is very interesting.

Now, the second issue may have more merit, because it has to do with the Reform of Pope Francis. This is also an area that I’ve written about to some length (LINK TO SERIES). Pope Francis has long believed that the institutional Catholic Church is too distant from the people who it needs to serve. He went into his Pontificate believing that he had received a mandate from God to fix this problem – this is the central philosophy and core tenet of the Reform of Pope Francis. This is why he took the name of the Saint who also believed he had a mandate from God to rebuild the Church.  Pope Francis is guilty of attempting to remake the Catholic Church in his own image, but at the same time this is a man who trusts God more than most people. He is bringing many clerics  to the table to engage in this discussion about how can we move the Catholic Church closer to the people, who some Catholics consider to be borderline heretics; clerics who sympathize or condone sexual impurity; clerics who refuse to enforce the law; clerics who they consider to be social liberals, politicians, and bad theologians.  Again, I believe Pope Francis trusts God to sift the wheat. He’s just being as inclusive as he can. This is not the Church of Pope Benedict XVI who only brought people to the table who thought like him. Pope Francis has many of those people at the table still; many of whom are from Africa which is the hope of our faith.

What I like about the upcoming Synod on the Family is that it will either prove that God is still with his Church or it will start the next great schism in the Catholic Church, because Pope Francis has stacked the deck against the truth with the people he has invited to the table there. If the truth does prevails, then it was only because of the Holy Spirit is still protecting His Church. Many American Catholics are worried that the schism is coming.

Is Christianity and morality dying out in the West?

They say that the arc of the law is liberal. That is to say, that as time goes on more and more is allowed, more and more excess is permitted. If the arc of law is liberal, then it, therefore, follows that the correction of the law is conservative. Yet, inasmuch as a horse can be reigned back in, that moment of freedom will forever be set in his heart. It is natural and as Christ Jesus prophesized that the world will become substantially worse until He perfectly heals it. Because the Church is in the world, it will also be composed of the penitent and the perishing, and there will be fewer penitents as we move forward. It is necessary that grain of wheat falls to the ground and die, so that it might be born again.

Do you believe we are in the end times as some people often suggest?

Perhaps on some scale of time we are closer now than we have ever been to the moment when God will reconcile all to Himself, but being that I don’t and can’t know the day or the hour myself, it’s not something I concern myself about.

How can Christians reclaim the culture for Christ in their day-to-day activities?

Each of us as individuals and as a gathering of God’s people have to make a commitment to faithfully respond to the call of holiness through the Sacraments and the sacramentals of the Catholic Church. Each of our lives should closely relect The Mass. That is, it should be a life in which the Word of God is with us; a life in which the Word of God is Proclaimed; a life that is Sacrificial, prayerful, songful, thankful; a life that respects that fact that God has sent us.  These are things each of us can do throughout the day if we are attentive to the call of holiness in all that we do.

Do you have any book recommendations for all Christians to read before leaving this earthly life?

If I would recommend any book other than the Catholic Bible and the Catechism of the Catholic Church it would be Benedictus: Day by Day with Pope Benedict XVI. This is the best book I’ve ever found that promote the cause of what I mentioned immediately above.

What are your favorite quotes?

“The Word of the God is a Person name Jesus Christ.” I think first heard Father Corapi say that.  It changed my understanding of things as someone who had been a Protestant who thought that the Word of God was a Book.

Are there some life lessons you will love to share for our edification?

I’d like to return to what you asked me at the opening of this interview. The most important life lesson I’ve ever learned is that Jesus Christ, My Lord and God, is more interested in the good of my life than I am myself. He wants more good for each of us than we could ever want for ourselves. For this reason alone, He is most trustworthy and worthy of belief.

Do you have any final thoughts?

I’d like to thank you Gadel for this interview. It was fun and I hope I wasn’t too loquacious. I am a teacher after all. I have a tendency to go on and on. I’d also like to thank you for all that you do for God and for Mary. Your devotion to our Blessed Mother is inspiring. You’re a friend of our Mother and a friend of Saint Dominic. You’re my friend as well. Blessings and Shalom to you and yours, and to all those who have read this interview.

Thank you for your time, patience and wisdom.

Your brother and friend GADEL.

This contribution is available at http://iamproudtobecatholic.com/2015/09/25/from-attempted-suicide-to-christian-evangelist/

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The Pope's Visit

During his wonderful visit, Pope Francis made it possible to step away from our hyper-politicized and divided public culture, and man, did that feel good. How nice to turn on NPR or pick up the paper and find so many people, Catholic and non-Catholic, talking about the Pope together with joy, mutual trust, and honesty. The fog of cynicism and fear we’ve been living in cleared enough to remember what it might be like to live without it.

More than anything else, the Pope’s visit made me realize how so very tired I am of political wrangling and posturing. I’m tired of political considerations, worries, disappointments, and even political hopes being such a large part of the experience of Christian life. Yes, we live in a messed up culture. The horribleness of it is always around us, and it’s easy to get lost in pondering the exact roots of its messed-upedness, imagining what exactly one could say or write to cut through the confusion and the lies and regain precious ground for Truth. The problem is that focusing on the culture like this makes me feel like God and the Church are on the defense. It feels like our team is losing and it’s up to people like me to come up with the perfect play.

Pope Francis’s example has helped me to realize the ridiculous smallness and absurdity of this way of thinking. God is not losing, and the Church is not a team. These are the categories of sport and politics, the twin American past-times. They have nothing to do with the Kingdom of God. We are the Body of Christ, not the Jesus Team.

I have to admit, I was slow to warm up to Pope Francis. I love his focus on the poor, but I can’t connect easily with the often vague, lofty way he speaks of social justice, which tends to remind me of uninspiring and uninspired secular bureaucracies rather than the Gospel. Sometimes I, like so many Catholic conservatives, yearn for him to lay it out there straight, in clear biblical language, for all to hear.

But if I am yearning for the Pope to speak a truth that I already know to the powerful, perhaps I am not yearning for the truth so much as I am yearning for the Pope to signal that he’s fighting for my team.

Today I taught second graders the story of the prodigal son, and I saw something of myself in the older son, the one who resents his father’s mercy toward his profligate younger brother. “Here I’ve been, the whole time,” he complains, “working in your fields, the very picture of obedience, and you didn’t so much as give me a goat, but here he comes back and you slaughter a calf?” Jesus gives us repeated warnings about the spiritual dangers of feeling like God owes the faithful, observant, and obedient something more that shouldn’t be offered to others. We want to feel like we are on God’s team, but there is no such thing. The battle is over and is won. Anyone who seeks finds the same treasure, which we did not win and which we could never deserve.

Pope Francis doesn’t waste a second maintaining the self-concept of the older brothers among us. He astutely avoids making politics a stumbling block between his audience and the love of God. Instead of diagnosing our cultural ills, he brings Jesus directly to the sick.

There is freedom in his example. Pope Francis told the bishops that “the brother or sister we wish to reach and redeem, with the power and the closeness of love, counts more than their positions, distant as they may be from what we hold as true and certain.” When I associate faith too closely to cultural politics, I can forget that I serve people, not ideas. I can forget that God doesn’t ever call me to defend Him against sinners, but to be brave and faithful enough to love my fellow sinners with the love of Christ, which is more powerful and transformative than I know.

Thank you, Pope Francis.

This contribution is available at http://www.mollyoshatz.com/the-popes-visit/

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by Lawrence Fox

“Where Your Treasure is, There is Your Mind” (Gnostic Teaching)

Frequently when listening to Christian radio, I hear an exuberant preacher reveal, “The teaching and practices of the Nicolaitans (Nikolaiton) were hated by Jesus Christ. Their beliefs are synonymous with Catholicism.”

It is an audacious claim which is not supported by Sacred Scripture, Sacred Tradition, nor certainly Church History. As such, the intent of this publication is to prudently unveil the spiritual movement behind the teaching and practices of the Nicolaitans - using Sacred Scripture, Sacred Tradition, and Church History – in order encourage believers to overcome ignorance.

A person conversant with the Book of Revelation would recognize the term Nicolaitans. The fact that Jesus identifies the Nicolaitans by name in the Book of Revelation continues to stoke the imagination of believers. A healthy response to Jesus’ words would be, “If Jesus is against them, it would be prudent for the Christian to objectively identify their teaching and practices and avoid them.”

But over-excited co-religionists prefer to play Scrabble in order to excoriate the Roman Catholic Church. They say, “The Greek word Niko means ‘victory’ and the Greek word laon means ‘the people’ and when strung together the word Nikolaiton, means ‘victory over the people.’" They scramble and reassemble the term to mean "victory over the laity" or "hierarchy ruling over the laity." And using their incredible imaginations, they assert it means, "Jesus hates the Catholic system of celibate popes, bishops, priests, deacons, and nuns ruling over the Christian laity."

I am not certain how many Christians bother to investigate the above claim. Maybe it is easier to simply accept as prima fascia that the Bishop of Rome is the Anti-Christ and the Roman Catholic Church is the whore of Babylon riding the beast. Let us begin this journey by re-reading what is written in Sacred Scripture.

Who were the Nicolaitans?

In the 2nd and 3rd chapters of Revelation, Jesus commands the apostle John to write letters to the angels of the seven churches planted in Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea. Tradition suggests that the apostle John had oversight of these seven Churches within Asia Minor. Jesus commands John to write to the Church in Ephesus, “But you have this in your favor; you hate the practices of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate.” (Rev. 2: 6)

Jesus also commands John to write to the Church in Pergamum, “Nevertheless there are a few things which I hold against you. You have people in your midst who hold to the

teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to entice the Israelites to sin by eating foods sacrificed to idols and committing sexual immorality. Likewise you also have those who hold to the teachings of the Nicolaitans. Therefore repent.”

Jesus lumps the teaching and practices of the Nicolaitans with those who entice members of the Body of Christ to “eat foods sacrificed to idols and committing sexual immorality.” It is difficult to imagine how adherence to Church authority compliments the eating of foods sacrificed to idols since it was Church authority which commanded Gentiles to abstain from eating foods sacrificed to idols and from committing sexual immorality.

It's in the Scripture: the apostles and elders of the Church gathered in Jerusalem to discuss the issue of Gentile circumcision. The apostles and presbyters professed that Jews and Gentiles are saved by grace and faith in Jesus Christ and not by the keeping of Mosaic Kosher Laws. Tragically, many Christians misrepresent the Grace of God and suggest the Moral Law of Moses (10 commandments) are ancillary to “justification by faith.” After explaining that the works of the law and kosher laws do not save an individual, the Council advised the members of Christ’s body to, “Abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals, and from sexual immorality.” (Acts 15: 20,  29)

Jesus is literally quoting the Council in Jerusalem and reminding the Church in Ephesus and Pergamum that the decision of the apostles and presbyters represents the mind of God: “Those who hear you hear me. And those who reject you reject me and not only me but my Father in heaven.”(Lk. 10:16) And again, “What you bind on earth (speaking to Peter and later to all the apostles) shall be bound in heaven and what you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”(Matt. 16: 19-20, 18:17-20)

It is difficult to imagine how the promotion of celibacy (virginity) requires the same level of repentance as sexual immorality. At this point, an argument dealing with a hierarchy of celibates or non-celibates ruling the laity is extremely tenuous. Let us take a look and see if Sacred Scripture says anything about people following a man named Nicolas.

Nicolas and Nicolaitans

The idiom Nicolaitans -- taken in an unbiased manner -- simply means “followers of Nicolas.” It is similar to the expression Christians which was first coined in the city of Antioch to single out the apostles and their disciples as “followers of Christ.” Luke writes in the Acts of the Apostles, “Then Barnabas went to Tarsus to look for Saul, and when he found him, he brought him to Antioch. So for a whole year Barnabas and Saul met with the church and taught great numbers of people. The disciples were call Christians first at Antioch.” (Acts 11:25-26)

Prior to being identified as Christians, the disciples of Jesus were identified as “followers of the Way” (Acts 22:4) since Jesus identified himself as “the way, the truth, and the life.” (Jn. 14:6) Nicolas (Nikolaon) was the name of a specific person in the New Testament. Luke in his Acts of the Apostles, singles out Nicolas as a convert to Judaism and one of seven deacons ordained in the Church. Luke writes that disciples were increasing in number and the apostles recognized they were not able to minister equitably to Jesus’ growing flock. Members of the Church grumbled that their widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution of food. So the 12 apostles gathered the disciples in Jerusalem together and told them that it would be better for the life of the Church and the health of the apostles if men filled with the Holy Spirit were ordained to support their ministry. Luke writes: “This proposal pleased the whole group. They chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit; also Philip, Procorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, and Nicolas from Antioch, a convert to Judaism."  So there exists in the New Testament a reference to a deacon of the Church named Nicolas. The New Testament says nothing more about Nicolas but does say a few things about the role of the ordained deacon in the Church. Paul in his letter to Timothy writes: “Deacons are to be like bishops, firm and not double tongued, worthy of respect, not indulging in much wine and not pursuing dishonest gain. They are to hold to the truths of the faith with a clear conscience. They must be first tested and if there is nothing against them they are to become deacons." (1Tim. 3:8-11)

It must be remembered that Nicolas and the other six men were chosen because they were “full of the Holy Spirit.” It is hard to imagine that men full of the Holy Spirit would entertain teaching and practices hated by Jesus. Sacred Scripture states that a deacon must be the husband of but one wife and must manage his children and household well. (1 Tim. 3:8-12)

The Church Father Clement of Alexandria (150-215 AD) writes that Nicolas the deacon had one wife and like Philip the deacon, he had daughters who remained virgins (celibate). At this point it can be said for certain that Luke identifies a deacon named Nicolas and Jesus identifies a movement in Ephesus and Pergamum as the “followers of Nicolas.” Is there a connection between the deacon Nicolas and the teaching and practices of the Nicolaitans? Scripture interpreting Scripture is not able answer this question with certainty. In order to unravel the mystery, it is necessary to tug from the earliest Church Fathers their witness to Church History and the Deposit of Faith. This journey turns out to be quite simple and fruitful.

Church Fathers Identify the Nicolaitans

The Church Father, Apologist, and Teacher Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons in Gaul (130-202 AD) identifies the Nicolaitans as one of many emerging Gnostic movements that attempted to establish themselves as an alternative authority within the Catholic Church. Irenaeus wrote a treatise comprised of five books titled, “Against Heresies.”

Irenaeus wrote his treatise for the purpose of first exposing the various Gnostic movements which were drawing disciples away from the Church. Secondly, he wished to  identify their teaching, and thirdly to refute them, using Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition.

In his treatise he writes, “John, the disciple of the Lord, proclaimed this faith and desired by the proclamation of the Gospel to destroy the error which had been planted among men by Cerinthus and much earlier by those who are called Nicolaitans, who are an offshoot of the knowledge which is falsely so called.” (Richardson page 324) A characteristic of Gnosticism is its offer of secret knowledge or gnōsis, a knowledge superior to and independent of faith. This expression “knowledge which is falsely so called,” is taken from Paul's letter to his disciple Timothy. Paul encourages Timothy to guard what has been entrusted to his care and turn away from godless chatter and the opposing ideas of what is falsely called knowledge. (1 Tim 6:20) So Irenaeus is equating the movement located in Ephesus and Pergamum with a movement which Paul is concerned with -- a movement which teaches false knowledge. While Paul was in prison, he writes to Timothy urging him to stay in Ephesus and to command certain men not to teach false doctrines anymore nor to devote themselves to “myths and endless genealogies.” (Eph. 1:3-4) So there exists a movement clothed in false knowledge, myths, and endless genealogies and attempting to pervert the Gospel of Jesus Christ as preached by the apostles. Irenaeus following in the footsteps of the apostles John and Paul seeks to take the offensive against false knowledge or Gnosticism.

Witness of Irenaeus

Before explaining the term Gnostic or Gnosticism, I would like to provide a little background about Irenaeus and why his identification of the movement is reasonable and reliable. Irenaeus has been identified as the most important Christian theologian in the second century due to the breadth of his writings. (Quasten page 287) Irenaeus was born in Asia Minor and relocated to Gaul (modern day France). He was contemporary with the apologist Justin the Martyr (100-165 AD) and knew Polycarp, the famous Bishop of Smyrna (69-155 AD). Polycarp was ordained Bishop of Smyrna by John the apostle; which means that Polycarp was a witness to the oral sayings of John. Polycarp, while Bishop of Smyrna, wrote one letter to the Church in Philadelphia. Both Smyrna and Philadelphia are mentioned in the Book of Revelation. Polycarp’s proximity to John would have been greatly treasured within the Church which prior to 110 AD was identified as Catholic (Katolikos) to distinguish the visible Church established by Jesus Christ upon Peter the Rock (Matt. 16:6) from the various sects pretending to be Christian; such as the Nicolaitans. According to Irenaeus, the Nicolaitans were a Gnostic sect promoting “a false knowledge,” which Paul the apostle warned his disciple Timothy to preach against; as stated before. The Gnostics were guilty of promoting what Paul identifies as “myths and endless genealogies," “godless chatter” and the obscure notion that “the resurrection of the dead already took place.” (1Tim. 1:4, 18-20, 1Tim. 3:1, 1Tim. 4: 3, 1Tim. 6:20-21, and 2Tim. 2:16:20) By the middle of the 2nd Century AD there were several Gnostic Gospels being disseminated which Irenaeus read first hand including: the Gospel of Valentinus, the Gospel of Basilides, the Gospel of Cerinthus, and a version of the Gospel of Luke mutilated by the Gnostic Marcion. All of these Gnostic Gospels were piecemeal adaptations of the synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke) promoting their own mythological and hidden doctrines. Cerinthus – who Irenaeus identifies as coming after the Nicolaitans - was a Gnostic and Ebionite (Jewish-Christian) who taught that there was an earthly Jesus and a divine Jesus (or Christ). Cerinthus denied the Virgin Birth of Jesus and taught that “Christ” descended upon “Jesus” during his baptism in the River Jordan and left him again at his crucifixion. These various Gnostic notions will be revisited later in this discussion. Irenaeus mentions that John the apostle formed his writings in order to combat the teaching and practices of Cerinthus and the Nicolaitans.

Church History and Sacred Scripture

Irenaeus stated that John the apostle -- through his writings -- set out to destroy the error planted among men by Cerinthus and the Nicolaitans. By knowing what Cerinthus and the Nicolaitans taught, a reasonable person should be able to apply a historical meaning to Jesus' reference to the Nicolaitans in the Book of Revelation, to what John is addressing in the Gospel and Epistles, and especially the content of Paul’s warning to his disciple Timothy.

For example if Gnosticism maintained that created matter, the drinking of wine, marriage, and the begetting of children is evil, then a person reading John’s story of the Wedding Feast at Cana, in which Jesus attended with His disciples

and  performed his first public miracle (changing water into wine in response to Mary's intercession),  the reader should conclude that Jesus Christ and His disciples were not Gnostics. If Jesus was not a Gnostic then Jesus was affirming marriage, the drinking of wine, and respect for women (especially His mother) as good. I leave it to the reader to muse upon what has just been demonstrated. Irenaeus states the Nicolaitans were planting errors among men earlier than Cerinthus.

Was Nicolas an Apostate Deacon leading a Band of Merry Gnostic Men?

In my opinion, it is unlikely the Nicolaitans were literally the followers of the deacon Nicolas identified in the Acts of the Apostles. The 3rd century Christian theologian, Titus Flavius Clemens of Alexandria (150 – 215 AD) in his Miscellanies notes that some people speculated Nicolas to be the founder of a Gnostic sect which held flesh in contempt and practiced utter promiscuity similar to what is identified in the Book of Revelation. Clement of Alexandria on the other hand maintained – based upon information he received -- that Nicolas lived a very chaste life with his wife and children, that his daughters remained virgins - just like the deacon Philip’s four daughters who were virgins and prophetesses - and that Nicolaus son’s chastity was never in doubt. (Eusebius Church History page 139)

Gnostics had the very bad habit of justifying their various movements by borrowing the names of well-known Christians. By the end of the first century, Gnostic proselytizing against the Catholic Church was quite prolific as evidenced by the following Gnostic-Christian texts: Gospel of Thomas, Gospel of Phillip, Gospel of Mary, the Apochryphon of James, Apochryphon of John, Act of Peter, the Apocalypse of Paul, the Book of Thomas the Contender, the Wisdom of Jesus Christ, Letter from Peter to Philip, and more. This collage of Gnostic-Christian works were written between the end of the first century and the fifth century AD. When Gnostics began to appropriate Christian themes and names into their system of myth and hidden knowledge, the movement was later identified by Church scholars as Gnostic-Christianity (always Gnostic and never Christian). It is my contention that in the very early and formative years of the Church, the name Nicolas was obscure enough such that Gnostics thought they could self-identify with him and receive little pushback. Once a person understands Gnostic teaching and their practices it is not hard to recognize nestled within the writings of Paul, John, and Jude their warnings against the teaching and practices of “so called” Gnostic-Christians.

So what is Gnosticism?

Gnosticism is the name given to a pre-Christian dualistic system of myth and hidden knowledge which enables the spiritual man (the elect) to escape the bondage of material existence. It is speculated that Gnosticism was systematically developed when the mystery religions of the Orient (Persia) mingled with Hellenism as a result of Alexander the Great conquering Persia.

Myth can be many things: allegory, parable, fiction, illusion, or a figment of one’s imagination. Aristotle identified myth as the beginning of wonder. In other words, myth is an attempt to explain reality. But the reality that Gnostic myth attempted to portray was diametrically opposed to Divine Revelation as narrated in the Old Testament and taught by the Apostles within the Church established by Jesus Christ upon Peter the Rock. (Matt. 16:12) It probably needs to be re-iterated that Christian Divine Revelation is not myth and that myth is not Divine Inspiration.

Hellenism impressed upon the Oriental believers in myth the notion that knowledge (gnosis) was superior to faith. As a result, myth and knowledge commingled creating a false knowledge, as Paul tells Timothy. The reason Gnostic myth is false knowledge is because it is dualistic. It split creation:   identified the spirit as good and matter as evil. It said that the  souls of men existed prior to taking flesh. And contrary to what God said in the Book of Genesis, Gnostics taught that creation was the result of tragedy and not something good.

A sadistic worldview emerges when there is adherence to myth, dualism, and false knowledge. Gnosticism’s pursuit of hidden knowledge is counter to the Christian theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity as nurtured within the life of Church. Sacred Scripture states, “That without faith, it is impossible to please God.” (Heb. 11:6) It also states, “But whoever has doubts is condemned if they eat, because their eating is not from faith; and everything that does not come from faith is sin.” (Rom. 14:23) In other words, without the grace of faith, a person cannot grow in the virtues of hope and charity. A spiritual life rooted solely in knowledge may have an appearance of godliness but at the same time does not possess holiness. (2Tim. 3:5)

Many of the themes Paul is writing about to Timothy are directed against Gnostic teaching and practices. With the emergence of the Catholic Canon of Sacred Scripture, Gnosticism generated a plethora of pseudo-canonical texts as a means of perpetuating the myth that Jesus and His Apostles were Gnostics and that the members of the “Authentic Church” were robbed of “hidden knowledge” by that horrible system of Catholic bishops, presbyters, deacons, and nuns. Tragically, the gist of this Gnostic argument is no different from the squabble proposed by exuberant preachers mentioned at the beginning of this post.

Origins of Gnosticism

Gnosticism comes out of the mystery religions of the ancient Orient; more specifically Persia. During the age of the apostles, the system of gnosis was fundamentally a synthesis of Oriental myth, dualism, Hellenistic Idealism, and elements of Jewish oral traditions. When Judaism encountered Hellenism; such literature as the Wisdom Books were written. Jewish authors wrote that Wisdom with was God in the beginning as He created all things. The book of Wisdom – found in the Septuagint Greek Translation of the Old Testament – personified Wisdom, “With you (God) is wisdom who knows you works and was present when you made the world, and who understands what is pleasing in your sight. Send her forth from the holy heavens and from the throne of your glory send her.” (Wis. 9:1-6, 9-11) When Gnosticism got a hold of Jewish writings in Greek, it made Wisdom (Sophia) into one of many demigods (demiurges) within its system of myth and dualism.

Gnostic Dualism

Gnostic dualism imbibes the notion that spirit is good and flesh and material creation are evil. Things associated with creation such as the human body as well as faith, sacraments, relics, sacramental(s), liturgy, marriage, begetting of children, drinking of wine, and especially the doctrine of the Incarnation of Jesus Christ are all evil and misguided. Paul writes to Timothy about certain spiritual (Gnostic) movements that “Forbid people to marry and order them to abstain from certain foods, which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and who know the truth.” (1Tim. 4:3) Paul also -- as had been shown -- is discusses the Church’s encounter with Gnosticism.

Centuries later the Church encountered the same anti-life notions promoted by the prophets Mani and Faustus who taught that there was a good spirit and an equally evil spirit governing all of creation. It should be noted that men and women choosing a life of celibacy in response to Jesus' invitation to become “Eunuchs for the Kingdom of God” (Mt. 19:12) is not what Paul is writing about. Gnosticism forbids marriage since they considered marriage and the begetting of children as participating in evil.

The 2nd Century Gnostic movement identified as the Encratites (the abstainers), forbad the drinking of wine, the eating of meat, and marriage. A well-known convert from Christianity to Encratite teaching was a man named Tatian (120-180 AD). He was the author of the Diatessaron (harmonizing of the four gospels written side by side). Tatian’s original Diatessaron excluded Jesus’ human genealogies as recorded in Matthew and Luke. These genealogies were included in later editions by the Syrian Church. Their exclusion was deliberate and therefore demonstrated that Tatian adopted the Gnostic view that matter and marriage were evil. Irenaeus recognized that the  Encratites began with the preaching of the Gnostics Saturninus (the founder of Syrian Gnosis) and Marcion of Sinope (85 – 166 AD), who established his own Church. As a means of understanding “what Jesus hated about teaching of the Nicolaitans,” I want to repeat several of the themes mentioned above.

Gnostic Potpourri: Why did Jesus Hate their Beliefs?

When Oriental myth merged with Hellenistic idealism, “knowledge” was emphasized over “faith.” The Greek word for knowledge is gnosis. The Greeks also used the word epistēmē to mean "knowledge or understanding.” Faith was relegated to inferior souls (psyche) while knowledge was possessed by the superior spiritual (pneumatic) souls. Within the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas, Jesus tells his disciples, “Where your treasure is there is your mind.” The same expression is found in the Gnostic Gospel of Mary. Jesus says to Mary Magdalene, “Blessed are you that you did not waver (unlike the apostles who doubted) at the sight of me. For where the mind is there is your treasure.” (Robinson page 472) Both expressions twists the words of Jesus as captured in the Gospel of Matthew, “For where your treasure is there your heart will be also.” (Matt. 6:21) It is important to note the Gnostic emphasis of mind over heart. Christianity teaches that man’s treasure is found within the heart of Jesus who is the way to the Father. Jesus also identifies this treasure as the Kingdom of God; where the will of God is lived and loved on “earth as it is in heaven.” Within Gnosticism, Jesus is not the center of devotion and God is not the final cause of man’s being. The Gnostic reason for stressing the mind is because the heart is the residence of passion and the place where faith, hope, and charity unite. Throughout Sacred Scripture the heart is predominately identified as the source of prayer and the place where God dwells and the place of decision. The other reason for stressing the mind is because to the Gnostic, the mind represents the spirit and the heart represents the body. Again within a dualistic and Hellenistic framework, faith is inferior to knowledge; they are always searching and never reaching the truth. (2Tim. 3:7) Actually, it was not the finding of truth that is important but the pursuit which is important. As long as the person is a seeker of knowledge then the journey both begins and ends together. Paul on the other hand teaches that what is most important is faith working through love. Paul writes, “Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge (gnosis), it will pass away… And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.” (1Cor. 13:8-13) Both modernism, (a rejection of universal truths)  and post-modernism (a rejection of all truth) embrace Gnostic ideals. In Gnosticism, the pneumatics were the highest order of beings on earth. The two lower orders of being were the psychics (people of faith) and hylics or sometime called somatics (people with no knowledge and no faith). Modernists often categorize people this way. They will say a person of faith is primitive, or they are not spiritual, i.e. predestined for heaven.

I have a Hindu friend who is still impressed when someone says, “I am a Brahmin.” A Brahmin is the highest caste in the Hindu religions short of a cow. They are presumed to have

special privilege in the universe. The alleged Gnostic possession of hidden knowledge -- evidence of being a superior spirit --  was gravely tempting to many Christians, who lost their faith. Paul writes to Timothy warning him to avoid “godless chatter” because those who are engaged in it will become more and more ungodly. Their teaching will spread like gangrene. “Among them are Hymenaus and Philetus who have wandered away from the truth. They say the resurrection has already taken place and they destroyed the faith of some.” (2 Tim. 2:16-19).

Gnosticism Meets Judaism

When Jews were forcibly taken from Judea into Babylon (Orient), Gnostics encountered Jewish oral traditions and mixed them within their system of teaching. As such by the time the apostles began to bring Good News to various nations, she encountered various forms of Gnosticism. The apostles' encounter with Simon Magnus is the first recorded  between the apostles and Gnostic teachers in the New Testament. Irenaeus writes: “Cerdon, who took his start from the followers of Simon Magnus later settled in Rome…he taught that the God preached by the Law and the Prophets was not the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Justin the Martyr wrote that Simon Magnus was a Samaritan from the village of Gitta and through the arts of the demons worked magic. It is interesting that Jesus when speaking to the Church in Thyatira encourages those who do not hold to the teaching of Jezebel (advancing sexual immorality and the eating of foods sacrificed to idols) and have not learned Satan’s deep secrets. (Rev. 2: 24) It seems that Simon Magnus’ influence reached beyond Samaria. The next encounter with Gnosticism was in the form of Gnostic-Judaism. One of the warnings given by Paul to the Church in Colossae (Col. 2:16-18) was to avoid Jewish Myths (i.e. Gnostic-Judaism). A poignant example of Gnosticism abusing Judaism can be observed in the following long quoted Gnostic text, On the Origin of the World: “After the day of rest, Sophia (taken from Jewish Wisdom Literature) sent Zoe her daughter which is called Eve (taken from Genesis) as an instructor (imparter of knowledge) to raise up Adam (taken from Genesis) in whom there was no soul. So that those whom he would beget might become vessels of the light. When Eve saw her co-likeness cast down she pitied him and she said, ‘Adam live’ and rise up on the earth.’ Immediately her word became a deed. For when Adam rose up, immediately he opened his eyes. When he saw her, he said, ‘You will be called the mother of the living because you are the one who gave me life.’ Then the ten Authorities (reference Ephesians 6:12) were informed that their molded body (Adam formed by the clay of the earth) was alive and risen. As such, they sent seven archangels to see what had happened. They came to Adam. When they saw Eve speaking with him they said to one another, ‘What is this (female) light being? For truly she was like the likeness which appeared to us in the light. Now come let us seize her and let us cast our seed on her, so that when she is polluted she will not be able to ascend to her light but those whom she will beget will serve us. But let us not tell Adam that she is not derived from us but let us bring a stupor upon him and let us teach him in his sleep that she came into being from his rib that the woman will serve us and he will rule over her.’ Then Eve since she existed as a power laughed at their false intention. She darkened their eyes and left her likeness there stealthily beside Adam. She entered into the Tree of Knowledge and remained there. Afterward when they (the seven archangels) saw the likeness of the woman with Adam there were troubled thinking that this was the true Eve. And they acted recklessly and came to her and seized her and cast their seed upon her…. She conceived Abel the first from the prime ruler, and then she bore the rest of her sons from the seven authorities and their angels…The first Adam of the light is spiritual. The second Adam is soul endowed. He appeared on the sixth day as a hermaphrodite. The third Adam is earthly “man of law” who appeared on the eight day.” (Robinson page 172-173) I am certain the reader recognizes that Gnostic myth turns God’s creation of man - male and female and in His own image and likeness - upside down. Other Gnostic bastardizations of the Creation Narration in the Book of Genesis include: · Nowhere is “good” associated with creation, male and female, marriage, family, and human sexuality (everything is confusion, deception, power, and lust). · God is not the source of human life; a female spirit deceptively speaks life into Adam. · Adam does not know his origins and Eve is only the appearance of a pre-existing Eve. · Eve - the substitute mother of all living things - is molested by angelic beings raising the specter that the elect and non-elect are the result of divine and non-divine conceptions (in other words Gnosticism provides a theological foundation for Eugenics). · The spirit of the pre-existing Eve resides within the “Tree of Knowledge” and therefore the serpent in the garden was correct; the Old Testament god knew that once Adam and Eve put their hand to the “Tree of the Knowledge” they would become like gods “knowing good and evil.” · God’s promise that the seed (Jesus) of the woman (Mary) would crush the head of the serpent is detached from Revelation by the actions of the seven archangels. As such there is no Messianic fulfillment resulting from the generation of the “son of man” by the “woman in the fullness of time.” (Gal 4:4) It is my hope by this time that the reader recognizes that Gnosticism is the antithesis to Divine Revelation. And the Church established by Jesus Christ is the One Paul called the pillar and foundation of truth. “In case I am delayed, so that you may know how to behave in God's household, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and foundation of the truth." (1Tim, 3:15)

Seven Archangels and Gnostic-Judaism

The identification of seven archangels abusing creation is a theme shared between Gnosticism and Gnostic-Jewish movements. The Ebionites were Gnostic-Jews who converted to Christianity and maintained absolute adherence to Mosaic Kosher Laws (Sabbath, Circumcision, Eating of kosher foods). They taught that God created seven archangels prior to creating all other things. They identified Michael as the Word of God and Gabriel as the Holy Spirit. The other archangels included Raphael (as identified in Book of Tobit), Renel, Uriel, Ichtys, and Azeal. Paul writing to the Church in Colossae warns the disciples to avoid the practice of false humility and the worship of angels. (Col. 2:16-18)

Paul’s warning does not make sense unless the reader understands that some Christians were becoming impressed by Gnostic-Jewish (Ebionite) practices which Paul said was possessed by a false spirit of humility. Humility is rooted in the truth of one’s own being before God. Paul writes in the Letter to the Church that in Jesus “All things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him.” (Co. 1:16) Movements which identified Jesus as a created being or lesser demiurge are  not rooted in reality and are not the source of humility. If a person identifies God as an evil demiurge who creates evil matter and pre-existing human souls – some superior to the creator of matter -- then humility would be an impossibility. Gnosticism is not only a system of false knowledge it is a tool of the anti-Christ. And we wonder why Jesus said, “the teaching of the Nicolaitans I also hate.”

Myths and Endless Genealogies

Paul warns Timothy about this movement of “knowledge so falsely called” based upon “myth and endless genealogies.” (1Tim. 1:3) Paul’s identification of “endless genealogies” to Timothy is not a contradiction to the genealogies of Jesus, the son of Mary as recorded in Matthew and Luke. Paul makes it clear that Jesus is the descendant of David according to the flesh. (Romans 1:3) This knowledge of Jesus’ human ancestry is based upon narrated Jewish history; beginning with Adam and Eve and completing in the fullness of time with the power of the Holy Spirit overshadowing the Virgin Mary of Nazareth. The endless genealogies Paul is warning about is rooted in the Gnostic myth which teaches that the “Unknowable Father” is separated from material creation by infinite levels of emanations of powers, authorities, angels, and co-horts (syzygies) and finally a maleficent demiurge who brings material creation into existence. Irenaeus gives an example of Gnostic myths and endless genealogies by presenting the teaching of the Gnostic Valentinus: “He (Valentinus) adapted the principles of the so-called Gnostic heresy to the individual character of his school, thus expounded it, defining that there is an unnamable Dyad, of which one is called Ineffable and the other Silence. Then from this Dyad a second Dyad was produced, of which he calls one part Father and the other Truth. From the Tetrad were produced Logos and Zoë, Anthropos and Ecclesia, and this is the first Ogdoad. From Logos and Zoë he says that ten Powers were produced, as I said before, but from Anthropos and Ecclesia twelve, one of which, falling away and suffering a lack, brought about the rest of the business.” (Richardson, page 311)

Gnostics Myth, Hidden Knowledge, and Divine Revelation

When Gnosticism encountered Divine Revelation as something publicly profess by word of mouth and letter and preserved by the succession of bishops, presbyters, and deacons, it began to produce “Hidden Revelations” as a means of leading disciples astray. Paul writes, “For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.” (2Tim. 4:3) Paul was prescient since the missionary work of so many Gnostic teachers was prodigious. Gnostic Gospels – which are no gospels at all –  soon were everywhere professing hidden (apochryphon) revelations. The word apochryphon – which means hidden or secret - is frequently used as “code” within Gnostic writing. The Gnostic Gospel of Thomas begins with the expression, “These are the secret sayings which the living Jesus spoke and which Didymos, Judas Thomas wrote down.” (Robinson page 118) The Gnostic text, Book of Thomas the Contender begins with the words: “The secret words that the Savior spoke to Judas Thomas, which I Matthias wrote down …” (Robinson page 188 ) The Gnostic text Gospel of Mary includes the reference to hidden message: “Mary answered and said to them, ‘What is hidden from you I will proclaim to you.’” (Robinson page 472) The Gnostic Apocrypha of James includes the language: “Since you asked, that I send you’re a secret book which was revealed to me and Peter by the Lord…I also sent you ten months ago another secret book…” (Robinson page 30) The opposite to hidden is the term apocalypse (apocalypsis) which means “the unveiling” or “to remove what is hidden.” The word apocalypse is translated into English as “revelation.” It makes sense that John would by inspired to counter the hidden messages of Gnosticism by writing, “The apocalypse of Jesus Christ, which God gave Him to show His servants what must soon take place.” (Rev 1:1). If I am not mistaken, the Nicolaitans are the only movement literally identified by name within the Book of Revelation. In my opinion, this gives credence to Irenaeus’ argument that John set forth in his writings (Gospel, Letters, and Apocalypse) to defend the Deposit of Faith against Gnostics such as Cerinthus, Cerdon, and the so-called followers of Nicolas. Unlike the Church which is the fulfillment of Judaism, Gnosticism eschewed the God of the Old Testament.

Gnosticism Hates the God of the Old Testament

Gnosticism -- unable to shed it mythical and dualistic origins from the mystery religions of the Orient -- developed a bitter hatred for the Old Testament. It portrays the god of Israel as an impious being full of madness, who does not know His place. “For he said, ‘I am God and there is no other God beside me,’ for he is ignorant of this strength and the place from which he has come.” (Apocryphon of John, Robinson page 105) The Gnostic Hypostasis of the Archons also identifies the Lord God of Israel as blind and ignorant, “Their ruler (God of Israel) is blind because of his power and his ignorance and in his arrogance said with his power, ‘it is I who am God; there is none apart from me.’” (Robinson page 153) The Origin of the World writes: “The heaven has been consolidated along with the earth by means of Sophia (Wisdom) of Yaldabaoth (the god of Israel) the one which is beneath them all.” Yaldabaoth is the Gnostic title given to the god of Israel, also called the "First Father" -- the demiurge responsible for the fashioning and maintenance of the physical universe, but he lost his way. The author continues, “But after the heavens and their Power and all their Authority set themselves aright, the First Father exalted himself and was glorified as the whole army of angels gave him praise and glory. And he rejoiced in his heart and he boasted continually saying to them, ‘I do not need anything.’ He said, ‘I am god and no other one exists except me.’ But when he said these things he sinned against all of the immortal imperishable ones and they protect him.” (Robinson page 165) Each of the above Gnostic texts are meant to repudiate the words spoken by the Lord God of Israel through the Prophet Isaiah: “I am the LORD, and there is no other; apart from me there is no God.” (Isaiah 45:5) Gnosticism is diametrically opposed to the Old Testament and its teachings influenced Christians who strayed from the faith. One of these was a man named Marcion.

Marcion - Gnostic Founder of Another Church

Marcion (85-160AD) of Sinope near Pontus -- excommunicated from the Church by his own father due to his adherence to Gnostic dualism -- established his own church with its own canon of Scripture, rituals, and teachings. Marcion taught that the god of the Old Testament was an evil demiurge and not the father of Jesus Christ. Jesus represented the “unknowable Father” and appeared amongst men. Since matter was evil, Jesus was not conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit nor born of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Marcion further taught that the purity of the Gospels were lost by the Catholic Church’s mingling of Judaism with Christianity. Irenaeus writes that Marcion “mutilated the Gospel according to Luke, removing everything about the birth of the Lord, and much of the teaching of the words of the Lord, in which the Lord is recorded as clearly confessing the creator of this universe as his Father. He persuaded his disciples that he was more veracious than the apostles who handed down the gospel, giving them not a gospel but a mere fragment of a gospel. He also similarly cut up the Epistles of Paul, removing whatever the apostle said clearly about the God who made the world, that he is the Father of Our Lord Jesus Christ, and whatever the apostle teaches by referring to the prophetic writings that predict the coming of the Lord.” (Richardson pages 315-316)

John the Apostle Identifies Gnostic Jesus

as the Anti-Christ

Irenaeus writes that while Bishop Polycarp of Smyrna was in Rome, he was instrumental in converting many disciples of Marcion and the Gnostic Valentinus to orthodoxy, by his personal testimony to the apostolic faith that he had received from disciples of the Lord. It was during this Roman visit that Polycarp had his famous encounter with Marcion and called him "the first-born of Satan." (Richardson page 109) Gnosticism’s teaching that Jesus did not come in the flesh and that Jesus was not the Son of the God moved the apostle John to writes in his 1st Epistle, “This is how you can recognize that the Spirit of God. Every Spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, but every Spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the anti-Christ which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world.” (1 Jn. 4: 2-4) John identified the spirit of Gnosticism as the spirit of the Anti-Christ. Again if the Nicolaitans are one of many Gnostic movements in the early Church, then Jesus’ hatred for the teaching and practices of the Nicolaitans has nothing to do with Catholicism. John also writes, “If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in Him and He in God.” (1 Jn. 4:13) When John writes that the anti-Christ is the one who says “Jesus is not the Son of God,” he is placing two movements under one umbrella, the Sanhedrin who condemned Jesus to death and Gnostics who deny that Jesus is the Son of the One True God of Israel. Since Gnosticism taught that Jesus did not take flesh from the Virgin Mary, what kind of Jesus walked on planet earth?

Gnostic Jesus of History

and Jesus of Faith

In the Gnostic text Testimony of Truth, the author writes, “But the son of man came from imperishability and an alien to defilement. He came to the world by the river Jordan and immediately the Jordan turned back. And John bore witness to the descent of Jesus. For he is the one who saw the power which came down at the Jordan River.” (Robinson page 407) Gnostic dualism taught that there was a heavenly and substitute (fleshly) Jesus and the heavenly Jesus only appeared to have taken flesh. Since the heavenly Jesus did not really take flesh, he never really died nor rose from the dead. Basilides (120 – 145 AD) a prominent Gnostic taught that Jesus was not crucified. Instead he was made to look like Simon of Cyrene – who was forced to carry the cross of Jesus. And Simon took Jesus' place on the cross: “Wherefore he himself did not himself suffer death, but

Simon, a certain man from Cyrene, being compelled, bore the cross in his stead; so that this latter being transfigured by him (Jesus) that he might be thought to be Jesus, was crucified through ignorance and error while Jesus himself received the form of Simon and standing by laughed at them.” Another version of the same idea is found in the Gnostic text identified as the Apocalypse of Peter: “The Savior said to me, ‘He who you saw on the tree glad and laughing, this is the living Jesus. But the one into whose hands and feet they drive the nails is his fleshly part which is the substitute being put to shame. The one who came into being in his likeness. But look at him and me.” (Robinson page 344) In other words, the heavenly Jesus’ substitute died on the cross. Since Jesus did not actually offer his whole life and death to the Father on behalf of humanity, there is no salvation in the person of Jesus. In fact according to Gnosticism, Jesus is one thing and Christ is another thing; a notion shared by modernism.

The modernist viewpoint is that the “Jesus of History” is Jesus of Nazareth, a simple human carpenter, and not divine. But the “Jesus of Faith” -- the Messiah -- is Christian mythology. These ideas derive from  Gnosticism. This splitting and separation of Jesus from Divine Revelation compelled John the apostle to write: “Who is the liar? It is the man who denies that Jesus is the Christ. Such a man is the antichrist – he denies the Father and the Son.”(1Jn. 2:22) John writes in his 1st Letter that they the apostles looked upon Jesus, heard him speak, touched him with their own hands, ate with Him, watched him die, and rise again. John is clearly arguing the apostles knowledge of Jesus Christ is rooted in lived experience as well as faith and reason. Peter writes, “We did not follow cleverly invented stories when we told you about the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty.” (2Pt. 1: 16) I am speculating that one of the reasons, Jesus is so often identified as Jesus Christ is to combat Gnostic dualistic teaching about Jesus by men like Cerinthus who maintained there was a heavenly Jesus and a substitute (fleshly) Jesus.

Gnostic Practices – No Flesh therefore No Eucharist

The Gnostic belief that Jesus just suddenly appeared at the River Jordan (not born of a Woman, not Son of God)  shaped their religious practices. Bishop Ignatius (? - 110 AD )of Antioch -- while being paraded to Rome for martyrdom -- wrote seven letters to Churches along the journey including one to Polycarp. Within his seven letters he warned the various Churches to fight against the teachings and practices of the Gnostics. In his letter to the Church at Smyrna he writes: “Regarding our Lord, you are absolutely convinced that on the human side he was actually sprung from David's line, Son of God according to God's will and power, actually born of a virgin, baptized by John, that ‘all righteousness might be fulfilled by him,’ and actually crucified for us in the flesh, under Pontius Pilate and Herod the Tetrarch…Pay close attention to those who have wrong notions about the grace of Jesus Christ…They hold aloof from the Eucharist (Lord’s Supper) and from services of prayer, because they refuse to admit that the Eucharist is the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ, who suffered for our sins and which, in his goodness, the Father raised from the dead.” Since Jesus did not take flesh, Gnostics would not openly share in a Eucharist celebration that was unambiguously administered and professed by the Catholic Church to be a literal participation in the body and blood of Jesus Christ. In the Gnostic Gospel of Philip the author clearly symbolizes the Eucharist by identifying the flesh of Jesus as His word and his blood as the Holy Spirit. It all sounds so pious (flesh = word and blood = spirit) but the piety is rooted in dualism -- a spirituality scandalized by the Incarnation of Jesus Christ -- and not something rooted in the Deposit of Faith. (Robinson page 134) The Gnostic knowledge of the Eucharist is

opposed to the Faith of the Catholic Church rooted in Divine Revelation. Paul teaches the Church in Corinth: “The cup of thanksgiving (Eucharist) that we bless, is it not the partaking (communion) of the blood of the Messiah? And is not our breaking of bread the participation (communion) in body of the Messiah?” (1Cor. 10:16, 17) While Gnostics taught that knowledge brought immortality, Ignatius in his letter to the Church in Ephesus writes that the “Eucharist is the Medicine of Immortality and the antidote which wards off death but yields continuous life in union with Jesus Christ.” (Richardson Page 82) As a means of preserving unity and purity of faith, Ignatius writes in his letter to the Church in Smyrna, “Make certain therefore that you all observe one common Eucharist, for there is one Body of our Lord Jesus Christ, and but one cup of union with His Blood, and one single altar of sacrifice – even also is there one Bishop with his clergy (presbyters), and my own fellow servers the deacons. This will ensure that all your actions are in full accord with God.” (Richardson Page 100)

Gnostic Myth and Symbolism

The Gnostics -- rooted in myth and symbolism -- considered the Eucharist  (the actual Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ, which is celebrated by Catholics and Orthodox) to be  simply too much to take, “This language is too hard to bear who can take this.” (Jn. 6:16). It seems that when the Lord’s Supper was mingled with the primitive expression known as the “love feast” or “agape meals,” Gnostic-Christians attended them while at the same time rejecting Church teaching. The apostle Paul observed this confusion while writing to the Church in Corinth reiterating the living tradition he received from the Lord and then passed onto them, “The Lord Jesus on the night he was betrayed took bread and when he had given thanks broke it and said, ‘This is my body which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.’ In the same way, after supper he took the cup saying, ‘this cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this whenever your drink in remembrance of me.’ For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.” (1 Cor. 11: 23-27) Paul reminds the Church in Corinth that a number of them were sick and weak because they approached the Lord’s Table in an unworthy manner; not discerning the body and blood of Christ. (1 Cor. 11:27-31) Paul is not the only one who gives warning. Jude the apostle writes: “These men are blemishes at your “love feasts” without the slightest qualm – shepherds who only feed only themselves…rushing into Balaam’s error.” (Jude 1:12) It is interesting that Jude identifies certain men participating in the “love feasts” as also “rushing into Balaam’s error.” This is the same warning that Jesus gave to the Churches in Ephesus and Pergamum.  As the practice of the “love feasts” faded and the Church celebrated the “Eucharist” as the source and summit of collective Christian prayer to God the Father,according to Ignatius' letter,  the Gnostics openly separated themselves from the Catholics. They consoled themselves by celebrating the Lord’s Supper as a symbol.

Gnostic Syncretism

Gnosticism was successful in drawing un-Catechized disciples away from the Church since it was syncretistic and filled with “godless chatter.” Paul warns Timothy against

“godless chatter” because those who are engaged in it will become more and more ungodly.

“Among them are Hymenaus and Philetus who have wandered away from the truth. They say the resurrection has already taken place and they destroyed the faith of some.” (2 Tim. 2:16-19). What does it mean to believe, “The resurrection has already taken place?” In the Gnostic Gospel of Philip, the author professes that Jesus did not die on the cross. “Those who say that the Lord died first and then rose up are in error for he rose up first (resurrection) and then died. If one does not first attain resurrection will he not die? As God lives he would be already dead.” (Robinson page 134) In the Gnostic Treatise on Resurrection, the author seemingly gives defense of the doctrine of the resurrection quoting Ephesians 2:6 “We suffered with him and we rose with him and we went to heaven with him.” This sounds Christian except Gnosticism – remaining dualistic to its core -- taught there was a spirit Jesus and a flesh Jesus (two separate realities). In the Gnostic text Testimony of Truth, the author writes, “But the son of man came from imperishability and an alien to defilement. He came to the world by the river Jordan and immediately the Jordan turned back. And John bore witness to the descent of Jesus. For he is the one who saw the power which came down at the Jordan River.” (Robinson page 407)

Gnostic Syncretism: An Excuse for Immorality

Paul’s letter to Timothy describing the teaching of Hymenaus and Philetus makes little sense without knowing the language and spirit of Gnosticism. The notion of being resurrected prior to physical death gives credence to Gnosticism’s dualistic nature. According the Christian Gnosticism, the “spirit filled elect” were already resurrected with the “spirit Jesus” while the body was already a dead thing along with the fleshly Jesus. If the spirit is already resurrected then what animates the body? And if the spirit is not one with the body, does it matter what takes place in the body? These two questions get to the heart of the matter Jesus was warning against in the Book of Revelation: “Nevertheless there are a few things which I hold against you. You have people in your midst who hold to the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to entice the Israelites to sin by eating foods sacrificed idols and committing sexual immorality." What Jesus is therefore identifying in the Book of Revelation is the logical consequence of Gnostic dualism being promoted in the Church by men like Hymenaus and Philetus – who evidently were caught up in the system of “false knowledge.”

If the divine spirit of man is already a resurrected thing and man is that divine spirit, then what is done in the body does not matter since it is already dead in sin. As such to ease the conscience of Christians struggling with the temptation of pagan practices, Gnosticism comes as a false comforter stating, “To the pure all things are pure and what goes into the body has no effect on the spiritual man.” In other words, “the elect Christian” is able to eat foods sacrificed to idols and able to commit sexual immorality regardless of what the Council of Jerusalem pontificates since “the person possessing knowledge is already resurrected.” Paul said such teaching was gangrene and Christians infected with such “godless chatter” were not able to resist the result of such infection. Hymenaus and Alexander (possibly the same person as Philetus) were participating in Gnostic syncretism and broke communion with the mystical Body of Christ and risked condemnation by participating in the sacraments of the Church and inviting others to share in their sin of rebellion. That is why Paul writes, “I have handed them over to Satan.”(1 Tim. 1:20) In other words, Paul excommunicated them both.

Gnostic Congregationalism

Gnosticism was not a hierarchical movement. No one person or group of persons adjudicated Gnostic orthodoxy. Gnosticism was the original expression of Congregationalism. Each proponent of Gnosticism developed his own school of teaching and practices and each school was its own authority. The various Gnostic schools recorded in Church History include those established by Simon Magnus, Cerdon, Valentinus, Basilides, Marcion, Flores, Isidore, Ptolemy, Hearacleon, Florinus, Bardesanas, Harmonius, Theodotus, Marcus, Carpocrates, Epiphanes, Apelles, Tatian, and Julius Cassianis. (Quasten Pages 255-274) What bonded these Gnostic schools was their adherence to myth, dualism, Hellenistic idealism, hidden knowledge, and a tremendous opposition to the Catholic Church which was hierarchical, liturgical, sacramental, and creedal. Without being pejorative, the cacophony of Gnostic movements in the first four centuries of the church resemble the condition of Christianity in the Modern World, a divided church with no visible central authority. Jesus prayed, "that they may all be one; even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us, so that the world may believe that You sent Me." (John 17:21)

Paul warned the presbyters in Ephesus, “Keep watch over

yourselves and the flock of which the Holy Spirit made you bishops and shepherds of the Church of God which He purchased with His own blood.” (Acts 20:28) While the apostles were alive and shepherding the Mystical Body of Christ, the various localities were governed by ordained presbyters who collectively functioned as bishops. Near the end of Paul’s earthly life (around 65 AD), he commands Titus and Timothy to ordain adult males to function as presbyters, bishops, and deacons in the various localities. (Titus 1:4-9, 1Tim. 3:1—12, 1Tim. 5:17) Under the inspiration and guidance of the Holy Spirit – as evidenced even within Scripture Alone -- the collective ministry of apostles, prophets, evangelists, teachers, and shepherds (as identified in 1 Cor. 12:28, Eph. 4: 11) coalesced into a formed succession of bishops, presbyters, and deacons working with and supported by consecrated widows, virgins (male and female), deaconesses (wives of deacons), and a robust lay apostolate. The Gnostic form of congregationalism is contrary to Divine Revelation.

Gnostic Anti-Catholicism

The Gnostic Apocalypse of Peter was written to demonstrate that Gnosticism is the pure interpreter of the sayings of Jesus. It showed that Gnostics are persecuted by blind and ignorant Catholic Christians -- just as Jesus was persecuted by blind and ignorant Jews, “There shall be others of those who are outside our numbers who name themselves bishop and deacons as if they received their authority from God. They (the laity) bend themselves under the judgement of their leaders. Those people are dry canals. The Savior said, ‘For a time determined for them in proportion to their error they will rule over their little ones.’” (Robinson page 343) In a strange and yet predictable manner, the argument that the “Nicolaitans” is synonymous with the Catholic system of popes, bishops, priests, deacons, and nuns ruling over the Christian laity is identical with the tenor of the Gnostic Apocalypse of Peter. Since Gnosticism was radically

opposed to a Catholic Christian hierarchy of apostles, bishops, presbyters (priests) and deacons, it is no wonder the earliest of Church Fathers emphasized in their letters the importance of apostolic succession, the episcopacy, the clergy, and the deacons. Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch and Martyr (A.D. 110) writes in his letter to the Church in Tralles that without these three orders, a church does not have a right to that name: “Let everyone revere the deacons as Jesus Christ, the bishop as the image of the Father, and the presbyters as the senate of God and the assembly of the apostles. For without them one cannot speak of the Church.”

Many Christians profess that authority (if any) in the Church arises from the individual or from the congregation apart from the ministry within the apostolic Churches as established by the apostles. I am still pouring through the New Testament searching for an example of an individual ordaining himself or herself and establishing his or her own “Church” -- apart from the Apostles and the institutions which they established. Marcion the Gnostic is the nearest example of such an individual in the New Testament. The pattern of individuals establishing his or her own “Church” is splendid with Gnostic movements but does not exist within the Churches established by the Apostles. Bishop Clement of Rome (from 92 Ad to 99 AD)  writes to the Church in Corinth: “Now our apostles, thanks to our Lord Jesus Christ, knew that there was going to be strife over the title of bishop. It was for this reason and because they had been given an accurate knowledge of the future, that they appointed the officers we have mentioned. Furthermore, they later added instructions to the effect that, should these die, other approved men should succeed to their ministry.” This letter is complimented by Irenaeus seminal treatise, “Against Heresies” noting that the names of bishops and presbyters succeeding the ministries established by the apostles in all the apostolic Church are well known and documented: “We can enumerate those who were established by the apostles as bishops in the churches, and their successors down to our time, none of whom taught or thought of anything like their mad ideas (Gnostics)… But since it would be very long in such a volume as this to enumerate the successions of all the churches, I can by pointing out the tradition which that very great, oldest, and well-known Church, founded and established at Rome by those two most glorious apostles Peter and Paul, received from the apostles, and its faith known among men, which comes down to us through the successions of bishops...”

Gnostic Anti-Deposit of Faith (Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition)

Gnosticism was radically opposed to a Christian canon of scripture and tradition as being authoritative and binding throughout the universal Church. This is evident by the plethora of pseudo Gospels and Letters listed above attempting to “confirm or correct” the contents of the New Testament. Irenaeus in his defense of the Church writes: “But when they (Gnostics) are refuted from the Scripture they turn around and attack the Scripture themselves, saying that they are not correct, or authoritative, and that the truth cannot be found from them by those who are not acquainted with the tradition. For this [they say] was not handed down in writing, but orally (Gnostic teachings), which is why Paul said, ‘We speak wisdom among the perfect, but not the wisdom of this world.’ Each of them utters a wisdom which he has made up, or rather a fiction, so that according to them the truth was once to be found in Valentinus, then at another time in Marcion, at another time in Cerinthus, then later in Basilides, or was also in that opponent, who has no saving message to utter. Each one of them is wholly perverse, and is not ashamed to preach himself, corrupting the rule of faith. But when we appeal again to that tradition which has come down from the apostles and is guarded by the successions of presbyters in the churches, they oppose the tradition, saying that they are wiser not only than the presbyters, but even than the apostles, and have found the genuine truth. For the apostles [they say] mixed matters of the Law (Old Testament) with the words of the Savior, and not only the apostles, but even the Lord himself, spoke sometimes from the Demiurge (God of the Old Testament), sometimes from the middle power, sometimes from the highest, while they know the hidden mystery without doubt or corruption, and in its purity. This is in nothing less than shameless blasphemy against their Maker. What it comes to is that they will not agree with either Scripture or tradition. It is such people, my dear friend, that we have to fight with, who like slippery snakes are always trying to escape us.” (Robertson pages 317- 318) There is one more thing to be identified as flowing from Gnosticism before wrapping up this topic and it has to do with the good news of human life.

Gnosticism versus the Gospel of Life

Part and parcel with Gnosticism’s dualism and rejection of the God of the Old Testament was the rejection of the sacrament of marriage, femininity, and procreation of children as something good. At the very end of the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas the following discourse takes place between Jesus and Peter: “Simon Peter said to them, ‘Let Mary (Magdalene) leave us for women are not worthy of life.’ Jesus said, ‘I myself shall lead her in order to make her masculine (male) so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every women who will make herself male will enter the Kingdom of Heaven.’” (Robinson page 130)

In the Pre-Christian Gnostic text, a man names Zostrianos – the supposed founder of Zoroastrianism - learns how matter came into being by deception and tragedy among the lower divine beings. He learns how the female was taken from the androgynous male. Zostrianos is taken on a journey through the various spiritual heavens - much like Mohammed’s Night Journey. While ascending, Zostrianos gains a knowledge from each level so that he can instruct the spiritual man (elect) below on how to escape matter and re-ascend to his rightful place among the divine. Zostrianos on returning from his heavenly journey writes down his series of revelations on three tablets and presents their message of salvation of light and knowledge, and the salvation of masculinity to those who will listen. (Robinson page 368)

Gnosticism is fundamentally misogynistic. Modern society which has become intoxicated with the spirit of Gnosticism has on many levels convinced women that power requires

becoming male including becoming chemically sterile in order to avoid and abandon motherhood. Modernist feminism is shaped in no small part by this spirit of sterility and the adornment of masculinity. Gnosticism actually provides a spiritual argument for contraception, abortion, homosexuality, lesbianism, and trans-gendering. Tragically, many Christians participate in such Gnostic ideology (the antithesis to the Catholic Gospel of Life) and consider it as being compatible with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Summary

I opened this topic mentioning that exuberant preachers reveal as matter of fact, “The teaching and practices of the Nicolaitans (Nikolaiton) - hated by Jesus Christ - are synonymous with Catholicism.” I mentioned that was an audacious claim not supported by Sacred Scripture, Sacred Tradition, nor certainly Church History which identifies the Nicolaitans as a Gnostic movement. I showed that Gnosticism is the antithesis to Catholicism on so many levels: anti-incarnation, anti-monotheism, anti-redemption, anti-hierarchical, anti-sacramental, anti-tradition, anti-scripture, anti-woman, anti-marriage, anti-children, and as such theologically the promoter of a culture of death. It is very tragic that so many believers choose to omit the reading of Church History or Sacred Tradition as part of their study of Sacred Scripture. It is my hope that this document enables to believers to overcome grave ignorance on this matter.

Harris, M.H.

Hebraic Literature, Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim, and Kabbala

, Translated by M.H. Harris. New York: Tudor Publishing Co. 1943

Robinson, James M.

The Nag Hammadi Library in English.

Translated by Members of the Coptic Gnostic Library Project of the Institute for Antiquity and Christianity. San Francisco. Harper & Row Publishers 1981.

Quasten, Johannes.

Patrology, The Beginning of Patristic Literature. Vol. 1 of 4.

Westminster MD: Christian Classics, Inc. 1990.

Richardson, Cyril C.,

Early Christian Fathers

, Grand Rapids, MI: Christian Classics Ethereal Library, 1909-1976.

Eusebius,

The History of the Church from Christ to Constantine

, Translated by Williamson G. A., New York: Dorset Press., 1965.

If you enjoyed this piece, you might like to read the humorous version of it: Just Discovered! The Gospel of Symbols

This contribution is available at http://christsfaithfulwitness.blogspot.com/2015/09/who-were-nicolaitans-mystery-decoded.html

Copyright is retained by the contributing author (follow above link for info on this piece).

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Worldwide Abortion Protest Reignites Ancient Battle [at Christ's Faithful Witness]

Decades ago, I had a dream.  I walked into a very special “grocery store.” The case of refrigerated milk was illuminated with red tinted lights that looked like burning candles in a church, and inside the refrigerator case was row after row of Blessed Virgin

Mary milk! The ordinary milk cartons were labeled with sweet pictures of Our Lady holding the Infant Christ. Not only that, but there was churned butter with the same drawing on the label. Unknown to me, I was just introduced to the "Milk of the Apostles!" (Interesting Stories from Susan Fox)

It is a question of milk.

What has a pro-life protest got to do with satanists dumping milk over the heads of enslaved women at a Planned Parenthood protest in downtown Detroit?

On Aug. 22, 2015, more than 78,590 people demonstrated against Planned Parenthood at 354 locations in the U.S. and in six foreign countries -- the single largest protest day in the history of the pro-life movement. But in some places, the peaceful pro-life challenge was interrupted by some, who favored child murder instead of adoption. Thirty-six couples wait for every one baby who is adopted.

There is no shortage of adoptive families; no reason to imagine that anyone is forced into motherhood because they can’t get an abortion. I write this now while Kentucky clerk Kim Davis is in jail for refusing to issue marriage licenses to same sex couples. Satan’s thinking has taken over the U.S. courts, medical establishments as well as many of our citizens.

In Detroit, the pro-abortion protestors were satanists. The Satanic Temple unveiled a one-ton bronze statue of goat-headed Baphomet on July 25 as a means of fund-raising for abortion. On Aug. 22, in front of the downtown Detroit Planned Parenthood, the same group – dressed as Catholic priests --- dumped gallon after gallon of milk over two struggling women, while shouting “Hail satan!” It was a curse, but the intended message was that people who do not support abortion force women to give birth, and produce milk for the child (i.e. breast feed.) Nonsense, consider the number of people waiting to adopt a baby.

Unwittingly, the satanists resurrected an ancient struggle. Just when the Serpent in the Garden of Eden gloated, thinking he had destroyed God’s creation by causing Adam and Eve to sin, God snatches victory from his hands:

“I will put enmity between you and the woman,

your offspring and her offspring,

and you will strike her heel.”

God tells us there is war between children, and a war about children. Some are children of the Serpent who tempted Adam and Eve, leading to the first original sin. Some are children of the Woman...and her Seed. And some are victims of abortion – these last are the child sacrifice demanded by the evil god Moloch, another face of the devil. For as Christ said, satan is a liar and a murderer from the beginning (John 8:44)

Ah, let us unpack these images. The Seed is Christ. The Woman is His Mother, Mary. She is a human being, a creature like you or I. He is True God and True Man.  He was not born out of “urge of the flesh, nor will of man, but of God himself.” (John 1:13) The power comes from the Seed, but the humble Virgin Mary shares Her Son’s battle with the snake that demands child sacrifice.  That’s why the pregnant Lady of Guadalupe was so immediately effective at ending Aztec human sacrifice by converting the Mexican people to her Son, Jesus, in 1531.

Some people have told me they think Catholics worship Mary. They went to a Catholic wedding and watched the bride and groom kneel at the feet of a statue of Mary, and they assumed the young couple was worshipping a goddess.

I always say, “How dare you judge us? If I went into your house and saw you kiss a picture of your grandmother, I would never assume that you were worshipping your grandmother!” In fact, the young couple was consecrating their marriage to Jesus through Mary. The Catholic Church teaches that all true devotion has Christ as its end. And anyone who makes Mary a goddess is an idolater.

Now comes the same person and asks how can we pray to Mary since she is not God, and Christ is the only Mediator. Well, my friend, if I ask you to pray for me, are you not participating in the One Mediation of Christ? Is He not permitting you to participate in His One Mediation? And if you can do it, why can’t His Mother?

But it is Big Intercession when it involves the Mother of God. For from the throne of the instrument of torture itself – the holy cross, Jesus said, “Behold your Mother!”  (John 19:27) And if you are so myopic as to think, “He was speaking to John! Not me,” ask yourself, do you not want to be Jesus’ beloved disciple? Are we all not Jesus’ beloved disciples, who love Him, stay near to Him, and witness to His Love?

Yes, Genesis prophesized that a cosmic struggle would ensue throughout history between the devil and his children, and Mary and her children – with the Firstborn among those children being Jesus Christ Himself!

Who are the children of Mary? They are those who live like good brothers and sisters to Christ. They keep His commandments and bear witness to His Life, according to Rev. 12:17 “And the

dragon was angry against the woman: and went to make war with the rest of her seed, who keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ.”

A woman in the crowd cried out "Happy the womb that bore you and the breasts you sucked!” She spoke truly! But Jesus replied “Still happier those who hear the word of God and keep it.” (Luke 11:27-28) But both statements described the Mother of God. For at the Wedding Feast of Cana, she reminded us, “Do whatever He tells you.” I always respond, “Mother, help me to do just that.”

So the satanists threw down a gauntlet to the Christian pro-lifers in Detroit, and reminded them of the cosmic battle of Genesis 3:15. They used milk -- an image they perverted, an image they stole, for that image rightfully belongs to Christ and His Church. "Milk is a metaphor for the love that flows from one Person of the Trinity to the next, for the love that created the universe and maintains it in being.  And even as God created the universe from nothing, just so was He able to become incarnate of a Virgin and receive nourishment from her virginal breast," according to Medieval scholar Phoebe Wise.

"As I mentioned  in my piece on Knock, the ancient and medieval Christians loved to meditate on the Virgin’s womb.  They saw it as the literal Gate of Heaven.  If Mary is the Mother of God, her womb is the portal through which God entered the world.  We must take her as our mother so that we may be born into heaven. Likewise, the ancient and Medieval Christians loved to meditate on the breasts of the Virgin, which nourished God-made-man.  Since they were steeped in scripture, all the passages about milk and breasts and nursing sprang to their minds and helped further their understanding of salvation history, and helped foster their love of the Holy Family," Wise added.

On speaking of the vocation of virginity, fourth century bishop St. Ambrose identified Christ as the Virgin who was married to the Church. Mary’s Son is a Virgin! It was He who bore us, who fed us with the Virgin’s milk, and He of Whom we read, “How great things has the virgin of Jerusalem done! The teats shall not fail from the rock, nor snow from Lebanon, nor the water which is borne by the strong wind.”

Ambrose comments, “Who is this virgin that is watered with the streams of the Trinity, from whose rock waters flow, whose teats fail not, and whose honey is poured forth? Now, according to the Apostle (St. Paul), the rock is Christ. (1Corinthians 10:4) Therefore, from Christ the teats fail not, nor brightness from God, nor the river from the Spirit. This is the Trinity, which waters their Church, the Father, Christ, and the Spirit.” St. Ambrose is using the image of the rock that followed the Israelites through the desert in the Exodus and provided them with water.

That is the Source of Mary’s milk, God Himself. Nuestra Señora de la Leche is

actually the first shrine dedicated to Our Blessed Mother in the United States. And it’s located in St. Augustine, Florida. It’s a devotion to Christ through the simple love of His Nursing Mother, a 4th Century tradition in the Church.

It is a devotion to the first nourishment that Our Lord Jesus Christ received in this world. We should all be grateful for that nourishment.  For we read “He came to his own domain and his own people did not accept him.” (John 1:11)

But on behalf of the whole human race, the Woman received Him. The Woman wrapped Him in swaddling clothes. The Woman kissed Him. And then she gave Him His first nourishment on this earth. Oh yes, disparage her role if you wish by misunderstanding Christ’s words “Still happier those who hear the word of God and keep it.”

But think on this. She heard the Word of God. She kept the Word of God. She kept it to such a degree that she conceived the Word of God in her womb! Has anyone else ever done that?

“She saw her Son in the crib of Bethlehem, and believed Him the Creator of the world...She heard Him weep, and believed Him the joy of Paradise. In fine, she saw, Him in death, despised and crucified, and, although faith wavered in others, Mary remained firm in the belief that He was God.” (Glories of Mary by Saint Alphonsus Liguori)

She stayed faithful even to the foot of the cross, the one place where all the apostles but John were afraid to stand.  And so Mary is rightly called the Terror of Demons. “Who is she who comes forth as the morning rising, fair as the moon, bright as the sun, and terrible (to satan and his followers) as an army in battle array?” (Legion of Mary prayers) Satan and his hoards are afraid of a little Jewish virgin who lived 2,000 years ago because they know the prophecy – She will crush your head! Mary wears army boots!

What is the means she uses for the Serpent’s destruction? Her humility. Does that seem odd to you? Think of St. Michael battling God’s Light Bearer Lucifer. We think in terms of armor and swords, but Michael -- a lowly archangel up against the greatest Seraphim God created -- won the battle with a simple question, “Who is like God?” That is what Michael’s name means.  And so satan and his hoards fell into the pits of hell through one angel’s humility.

How much more fearful to the demons is the humble Virgin Mother of Christ?

And so Mary’s heel has the power to crush all resistance to God. With her powerful intercession – her army boots -- every man is able to overcome his own stubborn intransigence. That’s why the Catholic Church teaches true (Christ-centered) devotion to Mary is a sure, easy and firm approach to Jesus Christ Himself.

The “Milk of the Apostles” -- that is what St. Ambrose called the virgin’s milk. Like the Virgin Mary, Holy Mother Church is “ignorant of wedlock, a virgin, yet a mother of offspring. The Church bears

her children not by a human father but by the Holy Spirit. She bears us not with pain, but with the rejoicings of the angels. The Church, a virgin, feeds us, not with the milk of her body, but with the milk of the Apostles.”

And that milk makes apostles, disciples, evangelists, catechists and martyrs strong. And so the Woman was also present at the Birth of the Church on Pentecost. Her powerful intercession brought her Holy Spouse on the Infant Church. Mary was an evangelist, being the only source from which the apostles could have learned of Christ’s Incarnation, Birth and Infancy. After the death of Christ, she was the only living witness to those details that appear in the Gospel of Luke.

Of the Blessed Virgin Mary, St. Ambrose says, “The first thing that inspires enthusiasm in learning is the greatness of the teacher. Who is greater than the Mother of God? Who is more glorious than the one whom Glory itself chose? Who is more chaste than the one who bore a body without contact with another body?”

“But how can this come about, since I am a virgin?” Mary asks the angel Gabriel, who brought the news that she would conceive and bear a Son, and name Him Jesus. (Luke 1:35)

“‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you,’ the angel answered ‘and the power of the Most High will cover you with its shadow. And so the child will be holy and will be called Son of God.’” (Luke 1:35-36)

What is the Virgin’s response to God?  “Yes, yes, yes!”  “I am the handmaid of the Lord. Let it be done to me according to your word.” (Luke 1:38) With those words, she ushered in the salvation of the world.

Would that today men and women would respond with the same courage when they find themselves facing an unplanned pregnancy. The devil is a lying-thief stealing the lives of our very children from our nation’s arms.

"Human beings are meant to be a perfect union of body and soul, but the Fall caused us to feel alienated from Creation -- even and especially alienated from our own bodies. People, who are male, “identify” as female, and vice-versa, despite the evidence of their own bodies. I can remember being horrified by the changes of puberty in my body, and wishing to return to my child’s body. My grandmother was disgusted by the thought of breast feeding my mother, and she refused to do it, so my mother had nothing to eat for a few days, until my grandmother finally gave into my grandfather’s wishes and reluctantly nourished her child with the milk God had provided. When I was born, in 1951, most mothers in America had been convinced by heartless and ignorant doctors that breast feeding was hopelessly old-fashioned and primitive; they gave women shots to stop the flow of milk. I never tasted a drop of mother’s milk. When my daughter was born and I had difficulty nursing, my grandmother and mother both hounded me to give up on nursing and go to the "good old bottle.". They never understood why I wanted to breastfeed my children," Wise said, adding, "If even mothers can be so alienated from the raison d’être of their own body parts, namely their breasts, it is no wonder that women experience pregnancy as the growth of a parasite or invader inside them, and want that “alien” to be removed, i.e., aborted. The Fall, and its warping of the intellect and the will, have alienated us from our bodies, our sexuality, and our children. The unity of the family was Satan’s target in the Garden, because it is the image of the Holy Trinity."

So many good families are waiting for a child to welcome into their home. No one need be forced into an abortion, nor forced into parenthood that they are not ready to accept. Every abortion clinic I’ve encountered had a pregnancy crisis center nearby where willing people stand ready to provide access to medical care, housing and help in finding a job.

Ultimately, the satanists pouring milk outside a Planned Parenthood facility on Aug. 22 remind us that Christ and His Church will triumph. The serpent will lie in wait for her heel, knowing in the end all his resistance will be crushed. The Virgin Christ, Son of a Virgin Mother, nourishes his people with the River of Life that proceeds from the throne of God and the Lamb (Rev. 22:1) God has the teat that never fails in whatever distress we find ourselves. And He gave us a Virgin Mother, who will feed us the same nourishment Her Son enjoyed. She will help us live the life of virtue so necessary for our own happiness.

And we must ask then, who are we? Who are we that the Mother of the Virgin Christ should come to us?

“But is Mary the Mother of Christ only? Nay, what is most joyful, she is not only the Mother of Christ, but also the Mother of all the faithful. St. Ambrose saith: ‘If Christ is the brother of all

believers, is not she, who brought forth Christ, the mother of all believers?’" (Mirror Of The Blessed Virgin Mary by Saint Bonaventure, 13th century) She is Mother of all the Faithful. She is Our Mother.

From Phoebe Wise: "I am sending you a link to a famous painting called the Virgin and Child before a fire screen.  The focal point of the  painting is Mary’s exposed nipple, which she is offering to the Child, but also to everyone who views the painting, since the nipple is pointing straight out, not toward the Child.  Little Jesus is also facing out to the world and almost waving, as if to say, 'Come, all of you, nurse with delight at her abundant breasts.  Drink the milk of my mother, and become my adopted brothers and sisters.'  Modern people probably find this notion shocking, or silly.  We have sexualized and objectified women’s breasts to the point that they no longer have any connotation of nourishment.  Few people nowadays can understand an exposed nipple as a metaphorical invitation to grow in holiness."

"There are so many things going on in this painting which a Medieval person would have understood instantly, but which are invisible to moderns.  I’ll mention just a few.  The Blessed Virgin Mary is seated before a roaring fire in the fireplace, but she is being shielded from its heat by a fire screen made of woven rushes.  The firescreen is behind her head and looks like a halo.  Just one bit of flame from the fire appears at the top, and it reminds one of the tongue of fire that rested on her head on the day of Pentecost.  The fire screen is a metaphor for the Blessed Virgin Mary.  The human flesh she gave to Jesus shields us from the heat of the infinite flame of love that is the Trinity, and gives us the ability to look upon it with human eyes.  Charity has always been depicted as a nursing mother, and Mary is the embodiment of this virtue -- Charity -- the greatest of virtues.  She gave Jesus flesh in her womb, and now she sustains Him with her milk.  What greater image of love exists on earth than the nursing mother?  But there is an even greater mystery here.  After raising her Child to maturity, Mary will witness His sacrifice on the cross, and then He will give us His Flesh to eat and Blood to drink.  We see all of this in the painting.   Mary is not only offering us her milk, her spiritual wisdom; she is offering us the Eucharist, the Flesh and Blood of her Son.  The book on her right reminds us of the Word made Flesh, and the chalice on her left reminds us of His Blood."

"People have always understood milk as analogous to blood and somehow linked to it.  Scientists tell us the truth of this:  they call milk "white blood."  The breast miraculously takes in blood, strains out corpuscles and other components, and transforms it to milk.  Milk is a powerful metaphor, and more than a metaphor:  it is self-sacrifice, true charity, the gift of the self to the other.  The child whose mother lovingly pours out her milk for him experiences the irreplaceable gift of security and well-being; he feels himself at home in the heaven of his mother’s breasts," Wise continued.

"Our society has lost the ability to value the child in the womb, and to honor motherhood; no wonder it has also lost all respect for the breast and the mystery and beauty of a mother’s gift of milk to her child," she concluded.

Enjoy this piece? Maybe you'd like to read Confessions of a Scrupulous Devotee to Mary

This contribution is available at http://christsfaithfulwitness.blogspot.com/2015/09/an-ancient-battle-resurrected-out-of.html

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The Double Portion Anointing [at Bartimaeus' Quiet Place]

The Holy Spirit and The Double Portion Anointing

My fellow pilgrims,

Come Holy Spirit! Come!

In a previous post, which I titled “Releasing the Spirit”, I mentioned that The Father’s purpose for us in this world is to conform us to the image of His Son (Rom. 8:29) so that we may be an extension of His Kingdom of Love here, in this world. I also stated that in order to do this He sent the Holy Spirit to enlighten us, bring us to life in Christ (Eph. 3:13-19), and to empower us (Acts 1:8) to send us forth to minister the Good News of His Love to the Christian community and the world.

This posting is intended to clarify the distinction between the “Indwelling” of the Holy Spirit in us and an “Anointing” by the Holy Spirit. The distinction needs to be made because many of us mistakenly consider the terms to be synonymous. This misunderstanding hinders many of us from coming to a full awareness of the power of the Spirit in us and, thus a barrier to entering fully into the Father’s purpose for our lives.

Under this fairly common misconception we assume that since the Spirit of God dwells in us, no response on our part is required for the graces of the Spirit to manifest themselves in and through our lives.  After all if grace is to be grace why is there a need for us to do anything?

In response to this attitude we point out that St. Luke in his Gospel tells us that, “If you then being human know how to give good things to your children, how much more will your Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?” (Luke 11:13). Since Luke was writing to Christians in whom the Spirit already dwelt we must conclude that what the Father desires is for us to freely and willingly ask for the gifts of the indwelling Spirit to be made manifest in us and through us to address the circumstances and challenges we face in each of our lives.

You see the Father sees us as His children and in bringing us in conformity to His Son, He desires that we be His willing partners in bringing forth His Kingdom in this world. By permitting us to ask, we not only are drawn into further intimacy with Him but we now have a part to play in the flow of His Love to this world.

Of Course, all this hinges on the atoning work of Jesus and His resurrection. You see, the Lord sent His Son not only to die for our sins so that we could have access to heaven, but also so that He, Jesus, would be the firstborn of many brethren.  We believers, His body, the church, are then the next-born and we are now here on earth to continue Jesus’ ministry to the world through the empowerment of the Holy Spirit.

The Indwelling Spirit and the Inner Anointing

“And as for you, the anointing which you received from Him abides in you, and you have no need for anyone to teach you; but as His anointing teaches you about all things, and is true and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, you abide in Him.“ (1John 2:27)

When we are converted and baptized we receive the Holy Spirit to dwell in us and begin the work of conforming us to Jesus.  The indwelling Spirit then works through and in us by what the scriptures call an anointing. An anointing is the infusion of Divine Power for manifestation either in our “inner man” or through our “outer man”. Each anointing is manifested through a set of spiritual gifts that permit us to partner with the divine in bringing forth his Kingdom. In this way the Father Himself works through us as He worked through Jesus when He was on Earth.

The gifts associated with the inner anointing relate to the gifts accorded the Messiah in Isaiah Chapter 11, they are often referred to as the sanctifying gifts. When we become new creations in Christ, these gifts operate in our inner being to bring us into conformity with the image of the Son. When activated in our lives through faith, these gifts lead us to an intimate life of holiness, communion with the Father, and worship through prayer and the sacraments.

Now, for myself, the gifts associated with this inner anointing (see Isaiah 11: 1-6) are mainly activated in me through intimate prayer and reception of the Body and Blood of Christ in the Eucharist. Then, as I live out the Word of God each day of my life, I have the inner assurance that my Helper, the Holy Spirit is there to infuse his Grace into my human attempts to communicate His Love to others. As I grow in loving obedience to His Word so I grow in being conformed to the Spirit of Christ in me.

Being human, I often stumble of course, but the Spirit is right there at my side to hold me up and lead me to repentance, confession, and restoration to the Walk of Love with my Jesus.  All this is in accord with the teaching of the Apostle John, who tells us,

“If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word has no place in our lives.” (1 John 1:8-10)

“My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have one who speaks to the Father in our defense — Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.” (1 John 2:1-2)

Baptism of the Spirit and the Outer Anointing

Just as the Spirit anoints our inner man for our sanctification and enlightenment, so also our outer man needs the anointing of the Spirit to empower us for ministry (service) to the community and the world thus bringing us into total conformity to Jesus.

Jesus himself, in whom the fullness of the Godhead dwells, set the example for us when received the anointing of the Holy Spirit in order to fulfill His calling as Messiah (Luke 3:21-22).  Then, as He initiated His ministry under the anointing of the Spirit, Jesus declared that:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,

because he has anointed me

to bring good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives

and recovery of sight to the blind,

to let the oppressed go free,

to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” (Luke 4:18-19)

Just as Jesus received the Spirit’s anointing to minister the Father’s Love to the world so to we the members of His Body, the church, receive the anointing of the Dove of Pentecost at confirmation to empower us to minister to the community and to the world the Divine love of the Father through the Spiritual Gifts described in the Book of Acts, Chapters 2, and in 1st Corinthians, Chapter 12. In anointing the outer man with the Power of the Spirit we become the extension of Jesus’ ministry in this world for building up the church and for the propagation of His Kingdom in the world.

This anointing of the Spirit is termed the “Baptism of the Spirit” because this is the term Jesus used to describe it. Remember what he said to his disciples just before his Ascension:

“And gathering them together, He commanded them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait for what the Father had promised,  “Which,” He said,  “you heard of from Me; for John baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.” ( Acts 1:4-5)

The Anointing of the Spirit on the outer man is conferred on every baptized Christian at Confirmation. The Spirit Baptism is our is our legacy and all that we need to do is to activate the gifts which correspond to this anointing is by yielding to the Holy Spirit and releasing Him into our lives, asking Him to work through us and in us so that the will of the Father may be accomplished and so that He and He alone may receive the Glory for His works in us.

The  Double Portion Anointing

St. Thomas Aquinas in His  Summa Theologica (Summa Theologica, Vol XI, Nature and Grace, 12ae, Q111, Art.1, Par. 3) affirms the dichotomy of grace just stated above when he states that the graces we receive as Christians may be categorized into two main classes or types: Sanctifying Grace, which is intended to sanctify the individual who receives this type of grace and Actual or Free Grace which is not intended for the individual who receives this type of grace but rather for the community and the individuals to whom the individual ministers. The grace we receive in Baptism is the former type while the grace we receive at Confirmation is the latter. The Indwelling Spirit is above all graces, indeed, He is the source of all graces and divine power.

The Holy Spirit gives us these two types of graces with the intent that they be manifested in tandem in our lives. They are like the two seals on a coin. A coin to be authentic and of value must exhibit the appropriate seal on both of its facets. Likewise, in order for our lives to be fully authentic in Christ, have been sealed by the Holy Spirit on Both of our facets – the inner man and the outer man so that we can be His instruments to the fullest extent.

If we wish to truly enter into discipleship we cannot ignore the seal we carry on either of our facets for it is only with these seals fully active that we can truly represent the Image of the Son in this world. Without the sanctifying gifts our lives will soon be separated from God by sin. And without the empowerment gifts we deny the Holy Spirit the channels He need to bring forth  the Kingdom of the Father in this world. The choice is ours but He provides the Graces if we but accede to the leadings of His Love in us.

To conclude let me make you aware that Elisha’s receipt of Elijah’s mantle as he was taken to heaven by a fiery chariot (2 Kings 2:1,6-14) was a prefiguring of the church of God receiving Jesus’ mantle at Pentecost. And just as Elisha requested a double portion anointing from Elijah so we believers, the church that Jesus founded, have also received the double portion anointing that was on Jesus.

That is why Jesus told the apostles the night before He was crucified that:

“Now I am going to the one who sent me,

and not one of you asks me, ‘Where are you going?’

But because I told you this, grief has filled your hearts.

But I tell you the truth, it is better for you that I go.

For if I do not go, the Advocate will not come to you.

But if I go, I will send him to you.” (Jn 16:5-&)

When he appeared to them after His resurrection he promised them his mantle, telling them that:

“… you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” (Acts 1:8)

On the day of Pentecost the disciples received that mantle and then passed that mantle to the new converts as when the Apostle Peter proclaims to the astonished crowd  …

“Fellow Jews and all of you who live in Jerusalem, let me explain this to you; listen carefully to what I say. These men are not drunk, as you suppose. It’s only nine in the morning! No, this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel:  “‘In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams. Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days, and they will prophesy. I will show wonders in the heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood and fire and billows of smoke. The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the great and glorious day of the Lord. And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.’” (Acts 2:14-21)

Then after preaching the Good News to them and calling for them to repent He further states,

… “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And [then] you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is [also] for you and your children and for all who are far off — for all whom the Lord our God will call.” (Acts 2:38-39)

Since the promise applies to us who have been called even though we are far off, we believers, the church of God, are thus also the receptors of the mantle of Jesus.  Let us then with all urgency take up the mantle with the  double portion anointing, and, by the grace it accords, fulfill our calling to the fullest by releasing the Holy Spirit to do His work in us and through us!

May the Spirit of God be with you and may The Father and the Son be glorified as you release your lives to Him! Amen and Amen!

Bartimaeus

PS: I highly recommend your accessing the following links to receive further encouragement:

Prayer to the Holy Spirit: Come, Holy Spirit!

What Makes A Christian Charismatic?

http://www.holyspiritinteractive.net/features/charismaticrenewal/cr_john.asp

The Catholic Experience of Renewal

https://quietplace4prayer.wordpress.com/conversion-and-empowerment/charismatic-renewal/

“Understanding The Promise of the Father” (a pdf  doc.) – Click here to go to our download section

Prayer to Receive The Holy Spirit

Related Scripture for Meditation :   Acts Chapter 2, 1 Corinthians Chapter 12

© B.R.Timeo and Bartimaeus’ Quiet Place, [2008-2009].

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There's a Saint for That [at The Koala Mom]

When my husband and I were planning our wedding, the deacon who would be presiding asked us if we had any favourite saints to include in the Litany of Saints. As a new Catholic, I was still getting used to the idea that I could ask the saints in heaven for help here on earth. My husband had a few saints to suggest for the list, but otherwise we gave our deacon the go-ahead to pick saints for us.

Three years later, we were browsing a list of baby names given to us by the church where we were doing baptismal prep for our second daughter, Lily. My husband began looking up some of the names on the list, wondering who the saints were. He soon called me over to read more about St. Bridget of Sweden, patron saint of midwives.

At the time, I was very frustrated with my care providers and worried about Lily’s birth, so asking the patron of midwives to pray for me seemed like a great idea. (Maybe her intercession was the reason that Lily was born a week late—on the weekend that the doctor I didn’t like was away, so I was assisted at Lily’s birth by a nurse and another doctor, who were much more willing to listen to my requests.)

I’d been drawing closer to Mary since my first pregnancy with Sunshine. I felt like I could count on her prayers because she too had been a mom who was pregnant under difficult circumstances and could understand the fear and worry that surround pregnancy. As a woman, she knew what I was going through and could carry my requests much more eloquently before God.

When I was expecting Jade, I wondered what other saints could intercede for me during this time. That’s when I found St. Gerard, and used an image and prayer to him during my pregnancy and labour with Jade. I later made a list of other Patron Saints of Pregnancy and Childbirth.

Since then, I’ve often found myself thinking, “There’s a saint for that.” When Lily wakes up in the middle of the night crying because her legs ache, I find myself asking Mary (a mother) and St. Luke (the physician) to pray for her, and telling myself I must look up other saints of aching legs. When we travel, we ask Our Lady of the Way to pray for our safe journey (my husband loves the pun with her name and ours). When Sunshine doesn’t want to practice violin, I ask St. Cecilia (patron saint of marriage) to pray for us both. When we went through a tough season in our marriage, I looked for patron saints of marriage to intercede for us.

Before I joined the Catholic Church, I thought the stories of the saints were just that—stories. How could the lives of people who lived long ago (or even not so long ago) really affect me? Now, I think about the saints daily. Their lives inspire me to be a better mom, wife, and Christian. They were ordinary people like me who went through struggles, just as I have, and came out the other side with a stronger faith. And so they know what it’s like to go through that and can pray for me even when I don’t know what to pray for in the midst of struggle.

These days, I’m so glad there’s a saint for that.

This contribution is available at http://thekoalamom.com/2015/09/theres-a-saint-for-that/

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Paradox [at Bible Meditations]

…your light must shine before people, so that they will see the good things you do and praise your Father in heaven. Matthew 5: 16

So when you give something to a needy person, do not make a big show of it, as the hypocrites do…they do it so people will praise them…but when you help a needy person, do it in such a way that even your closest friend will not know about it. Matthew 6: 2-4

Which is it? Should we shine our good deeds before people or keep them secret? That depends.

The reason for “shining our lights” so others will see the good we’re doing is not so they’ll praise us, but so they’ll praise God. We don’t make our own light. It comes from Jesus, the light of the world. We just reflect it. When we’re God’s channels, He gets the praise, not us.

On the other hand, as Jesus warned, the hypocrites make sure other people know when they are helping the needy to get praise for themselves. They’re hogging the spotlight for themselves, not reflecting God’s light. It’s human nature to want credit and recognition. There’s nothing wrong with that. A healthy sense of self-esteem develops as we receive validation, but the truth is we have worth just because God loved us into existence. Although we may feel good about ourselves when we are of service to others, our self-esteem is inherent in our being children of God, not in accumulating brownie points.

There is no room for love in a do-gooder’s contest where people are caught up in themselves. It doesn’t really help others when we’re “helpful” but never let them forget it. The word self-righteousness was invented for a reason. We want to make ourselves right, instead of knowing that, apart from God, we can do nothing.

So when should we let our lights shine? Probably when we’re most afraid to. Maybe God gave us a nudge to serve in a certain way and we’re afraid what we have to offer won’t be good enough. We can trust that if God wants us to shine our light, it will help others and we’ll be reflecting His goodness and love. It’s not about us. There is no ego involved in using our gifts when we thank the Giver. We shine whenever we’re reflecting the Light of the world.

Prayer: Lord, make me a channel of Your light.

Reflection: How can you shine your light today?

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The Places He Puts Us [at Sunflower Sojourn]

“From one man he made every nation of humanity to live all over the earth, fixing the seasons of the year and the national boundaries within which they live.”~Acts 17:26

Hearing the stories of how people end up in a certain place is always interesting. I mean, why would someone choose to move from California to Alaska? Or how did your friend from Beijing end up in your little town that has barely anything in it? Or the Syrian-born person that ends up a refugee and makes a home in Boston? It’s pretty amazing to think about how people ended up in one place when they could have stayed where they were or ended up somewhere very different. God has a way of bringing us where He wants us to be.

courtesy of unsplash.com

I’ve moved to my current city not once, not twice, but three times! It’s like a magnet always draws me back. Awhile back I ran into a woman I know, and she smiled to see that I was back in town. “Lianna, do you think that maybe God wants you to be here?” We both laughed. It’s pretty clear that God has placed me here for some reason. Some of those reasons have become clear to me. My heart is at peace here, and I’ve grown and found myself in ways I never could have imagined. I intercede for my city, that there may be peace, redemption, and an end to the turmoil. I’ve also had the opportunity to meet many other people on their journeys and serve them in very tangible ways through my career. However, I cannot see the big picture. Only God knows exactly why I am here.

Trust that you also are where God intends for you to be. Maybe it’s only for a season. It could be for the rest of your life. It may not always be comfortable. We are asked to bloom where we are planted. There are people who need you, right where you are. They need your love and your prayer. You are called to be an intercessor for your city as well, and your country. If you’re challenged by where you live, God is calling you to grow through that experience. And sometimes, we end up somewhere for a short chapter, for reasons that we may not know, and then are called to move on. Other times we are asked to leave a place that we loved. God has a reason for placing you within the boundaries where you live, as the verse from Acts above reminds us.

Here’s a very succinct prayer if you are struggling with your place: God, put me where you need me! And trust me: He will do it!

(As you think about where you are, please also remember to pray for the numerous refugees and displaced people throughout the world. They are adrift and seeking where their next home will be. Ask God to bring them to a place of safety, acceptance, and welcome. Importantly, also welcome them and do whatever you can to show hospitality to those in your area.)

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Love is Our Mission - World Meeting of Families and the Papal Visit [at Plot Line and Sinker]

The World Meeting of Families was a once-in-a-lifetime experience and I am grateful to have been a part of it. I was there as an exhibitor, but I also attended some of the keynote presentations as well as the daily Masses. Over 17,000 attended the huge event in Philadelphia, which ended with the Festival of Families on Saturday and the Papal Mass on Sunday. Worshipping, interacting and networking with fellow Catholics was edifying and inspiring. I made many new friends and connected with old ones!

High points:

Papal Mass

We got up early and were fortunate to be in the first section behind the seats. Security was tight on both the train and at the security checkpoints in Philly (they even carefully checked the religious sisters behind us). It was the first time I ever saw the Ben Franklin Bridge with no cars on it!

This wasn’t my first Papal Mass. My family and I attended the World Youth Day Mass with John Paul II in 2002 in Toronto. Attending an outside Mass with nearly a million others is wonderfully exhilarating!

This year, we had a pretty good view of the altar (until they put a tent up! Evidently, the organizers thought it might rain so they put a tent over the instruments…they also didn’t realize it would obstruct the crowd’s view of the altar. Thankfully, after the crowd chanted “Move that tent” loudly several times, they eventually took the tent down!)

photo copyright James Hrkach. Please do not use without permission.

My husband got this wonderful photo of Pope Francis in his Popemobile.

copyright James Hrkach. Please do not use without permission.

Meeting (or seeing again):

Christopher West, author and speaker (Theology of the Body Explained, Good News About Sex and Marriage)

Jason Evert, popular author and chastity speaker,  (who also recorded a message for my 26 year old son!)

With Dr. Janet Smith, author and speaker. Years ago, I gave her copies of my first two novels, Emily’s Hope and In Name Only. This year, I gave her a copy of Stealing Jenny, as well as four other FQP books!

Our diocese’s former bishop, Archbishop Richard Smith (third from left, back row), was sitting behind our group at Mass on Friday!

So many priests and religious on fire for their faith!

With Sisters of Jesus Our Hope!

Imagine my surprise when I found out that one of them was Sr. Ellen (from Ottawa!)

I gave Sr. Ellen a copy of Emily’s Hope for her and all the sisters!

Catholics from all over the world!

We met this wonderful priest and another man from Nigeria!

A fellow CCL teaching couple from India!

Valy and Anna Coelho from India

Courage International Team

(I’ve talked to the wonderful team of Courage International over the phone several times but have never met any of them!)

With the wonderful team at Courage International

I loved when attendees came up to my husband to tell him they recognize him from his cartoon!

Cartoon copyright James & Ellen Hrkach/Full Quiver Publishing. Please do NOT use without permission

I met four adult women shorter than me and one adult man!

(Sorry, no photos. You’ll have to take my word for it!)

I loved seeing so many people I already know!

With our friend, Michel McDonald (whose courtship story was included in Come My Beloved!)

With Brother Joshua, an author and fellow member of the Catholic Writers Guild

Each Daily Mass was trilingual:

English, Spanish and Vietnamese. With the Mass booklet, I could actually follow along in other languages.

I enjoyed attending Mass with 17,000 fellow Catholics

Catholic Writers Guild Booth

I was at the World Meeting of Families representing the Catholic Writers Guild. I spoke to many people who were either interested in writing or knew other Catholic writers who might want to join. I gave away many brochures, booklets and business cards and I think CWG gained nearly 20 members!

Cool architecture and artwork!

This contribution is available at http://ellengable.wordpress.com/2015/09/30/love-is-our-mission-world-meeting-of-families-and-the-papal-visit-wmf2015/

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Plain as Day [at Blogging For A Better Life]

It is a simple statement, it makes total sense, and it has been put in writing, which should clear up any unheard-of confusion anyone could have whatsoever.

“If you forgive others the wrongs they have done to you, your Father in heaven will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others, then your Father will not forgive the wrongs you have done.”

(Matthew 6:14-15)

There it is . . . plain as day.

I just wish it were as easy to carry out, as it is to comprehend. I totally get it, but I don’t totally live it.

I don’t want the reason I’m not allowed into the Pearly Gates to be because I’m not forgiven for my errors that I committed as a parent, a spouse, a child, a sibling, a friend and also as a living and breathing member of the human race.

Am I okay with not letting God forgive me of my guilt because I’m holding on to what

I think

are the wrongdoings of others? Seriously, who can claim to be perfectly perfect, to hold the record for never having made any mistakes, and who in life has not slipped up?

“If you forgive others the wrongs they have done to you, your Father in heaven will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others, then your Father will not forgive the wrongs you have done.”

(Matthew 6:14-15)

Letting the power of these words enter my heart, I close my eyes for a brief second and an obvious vision of Jesus appears. I see Him. I see Jesus, who hangs on a cross, looking down at me with utter kindness and pure love. He showers me with His grace, hands me undeserving mercy, no questions asked.

I can feel Him urging me to not just hear His words, but to live the message. To try it out, to keep His instructions in the forefront of my mind—since none of us will know when our hour shall come to pass.

Thank you so much for reading my blog posts. Wishing you much peace and happiness as you travel through your life journey.

Sincerely,

Rose

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Fountain of Grace [at God-Haunted Lunatic]

SMITH: I stick up for the thing every man has a right to. Perhaps the only thing that every man has a right to.

MORRIS: And what is that?

SMITH: The benefit of the doubt.

(G.K. Chesterton)

I have a short list of songs I’d love to play on the drums. There’s “Good Times Roll” by the Cars, and “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” by the Stones. “Take the Money and Run” by the Steve Miller Band makes the cut as well, but I don’t think I could ever duplicate drummer Gary Mallaber’s syncopated hi-hat magic, even back in my high school heyday.

Then there’s Joe Walsh’s “Rocky Mountain Way,” his slow-churning paean to life in Colorado. For one thing, it’s straight-on rock, but with a bluesy tinge, giving it a measured pace – more my speed in other words. Plus, it came out when I was a young transplant to Boulder from New Jersey, so I readily identified with Walsh’s love of the mile-high state. “Couldn’t get much higher,” he sings. “The Rocky Mountain way is better than the way we had.” No offense to Jersey, but it’s hard to beat living at the foot of snowcapped peaks.

The song appears on Walsh’s 1973 album “The Smoker You Drink, the Player You Get,” and I wore it out on my stereo – even playing along on my Ludwig drum kit, much to my family’s dismay. It’s a happy, exuberant tune, and still fun to sing along with when it comes up on the classic rock station. But Walsh himself? Obviously he was a fine musician and songwriter – something that even a middle-class pop star wannabe like me could recognize, especially once Walsh joined forces with the Eagles during their “Hotel California” days. Otherwise, I never gave him much thought, I suppose, and if anything I probably assumed he was just another rowdy rock star – and, keeping with stereotype, a druggie to boot.

That changed this week.

A friend of mine sent me a link to an older news item in the Boulder Daily Camera. “Did you ever know about this sad and interesting connection between Boulder and Joe Walsh?” he asked. I read through the feature, and suddenly Joe Walsh went from generic rock star to real human being – an individual, with a story and a history, complete with the same emotional wrenchings up and down that life throws at all of us.

It turns out that about the time I was bingeing on his music in Boulder, Walsh was living there himself, recording at the Caribou Ranch up in Nederland, and enjoying a rich family life with his wife, Stefany Rhodes, and their young daughter, Emma. While Walsh toured, Rhodes would stay in Boulder, taking Emma to a park near their north side home, or bringing her to other homes for playgroups.

In 1974, just weeks shy of Emma’s third birthday, Rhodes was driving Emma to one of those playgroups when another driver ran a stop sign and crashed into them. Emma’s injuries were massive and she never recovered. Both Rhodes and Walsh, who was on his way home from a concert tour when the accident happened, were understandably devastated.

The story doesn’t end there, however. In addition to writing and recording a in honor of his beloved daughter, Walsh went about establishing a physical monument to her as well – a water fountain in the park she played at so often, along with a memorial plaque:

This fountain is given in loving memory of

Emma Walsh

April 29, 1971-April 1, 1974

“The fountain was all Joe’s doing, really,” said Emma’s mom, Stefany Rhodes. “Joe was a very romantic person.” The whole story moved me to tears, and I was frankly embarrassed by my surprise that a hard rocking mega-star could be so tender and vulnerable.

And Walsh’s depth of feeling after Emma’s death wasn’t a fluke borne of fleeting intense grief either. Like so many pop stars, he did have his struggles with substance abuse and serial marriage, but it’s evident that through it all, he still managed a fair amount of reflection and self-awareness. “One thing I found in the music business is if you pretend like you know what you’re doing, everybody thinks you know what you’re doing,” Walsh admitted to , “and I just never wanted anybody to find out that I didn’t have a clue.”

Clearly I was the one who didn’t have a clue. My surprise at Joe Walsh’s ordinary human frailty and profound grief belied assumptions and prejudices that made me ashamed. It brought to mind the famous “Who am I to judge?” rhetorical question posed by Pope Francis – especially since it had just come up in an NPR story last week. Journalist Paul Vallely revealed a detail about that controversial papal soundbite that I’d never heard before: That the Pope had been responding to questions about his efforts to reform the Vatican Bank and his selection of Monsignor Battista Ricca as his point man. “He was asked about Ricca [and] the man’s gay past – if he seeks the Lord and repents, who am I to judge – that was the context,” Vallely said. “It was interesting that he was not going to be steered away from his intent to radically reform the bank by people leaking things like this.”

When the Pope’s comment hit the headlines in 2013, I, like many others, had a knee-jerk moment: What does he mean? How am I going to explain this to my kids and non-Catholic friends? Is Church teaching going to change?!

Nothing of the sort. It was just Pope Francis being Pope Francis: pastoral, merciful, and unpredictable. Now I come to find out that it was also Pope Francis showing his managerial backbone by refusing to allow vicious rumormongers from derailing his radical reforms.

In other words, “Who am I to judge?” applies to my assumptions about the Pope as much as anything – or anyone – else.

Back to Joe Walsh. The more I read, the more I discovered that there was way more to the notorious partyer and rowdy rocker than I could’ve ever ever imagined. He’s sober now, and more settled, which allows him to channel his tremendous talents and sensitivity in a myriad flourishing directions. “I look around and the people are very happy,” he said of his latest concerts. “We can elevate everybody’s overall feeling of good will and everybody has a great time — including me.”

Sounds like grace to me — and who am I to judge?

For the Lamb…will guide them to springs of living water;

and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes (Rv 7.17).

__________________________

A version of this essay appeared on Catholic Exchange.

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When Words Fail: Comforting the Grieving [at Theologyisaverb]

“The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them.” Thomas Merton

In sitting down this morning to write about this, I hesitated. Such a difficult topic, and yet so needed. On more occasions than I could have thought possible, I have encountered grief. Not only though my own experience but through those expressing abandonment in their grief, and confusion on the part of those who love them. While not professing to have a perfect answer, I humbly offer the following as spiritual guidelines in beginning the journey.

1. Speak-but speak less. Do not underestimate the gift and consolation of listening. Your presence is still needed amidst the changes in the life of the one who mourns, though perhaps in a different way. Before speaking, pause, and allow the other the space to lead the conversation. In your listening, inwardly invite the Holy Spirit into the moment to guide the direction and breadth of discussion.

“Speak only if it improves the silence” Mahatma Gandhi

There are times when silence can speak volumes, and others where we are called to do more than talk but are called into the do-ing of life. When my brother, having committed suicide, left this world my own mother was left initially in a world of silence. The suddenness of his passing left her,for a short time, unable to cope with the everyday essentials of sleeping, eating and caring for herself. This I realized was something that I was being asked right then and there to take to doing. The roles had in one swift moment been reversed. For the many countless nights she had taken care of me, I felt privileged to return in kind, albeit in some small way. With a toddler in tow, I cleaned, cooked and took care of everything I could put my hands and feet to. Then I would sit beside her and let my son do his magic. Reaching up, smiling and looking into the eyes of his grandma he connected, drawing her out of herself and into the beauty of the life before her. Though slowly she came out of shell shock, it would really be months before she could truly speak to any of the pain that she had felt. This time of silence to the experience of grief was her a much needed time of healing and reflection, one that could not be rushed or anticipated.

“There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are messengers of overwhelming grief…and unspeakable love.” Washington Irving

2.  There is no perfect response- Perhaps the most common question that continually comes forward from those seeking to offer consolation is simply, “What do I say?” There is an honest seeking to meet the pain and loss that our loved ones are facing with some sage advice or uplifting heartfelt message to ease their suffering. And yet, our words often fall short of touching the profound pain in grief of the situation. The moment we release ourselves from the responsibility of saying just the right thing, we can embrace the other with authenticity. That is not to say, however, we should speak every word that comes to the forefront of our thoughts. Strive to avoid platitudes and clichés like, “Time heals all wounds”, “Your loved one is in a better place”, “God wanted him/her with him” or “I know how you feel”. To this day, three simple words seem to be a much needed balm when spoken truly from the heart..

Love begins at home, and it is not how much we do, but how much love we put in the action that we do. It is to God Almighty – how much we do it does not matter, because He is infinite, but how much love we put in that action. How much we do to Him in the person that we are serving.                                                –Mother Teresa

3. Love –but love more. The picture of someone that is deeply immersed in the grieving process isn’t a pretty one. It is messy, challenging, and calls forth from those that love them a willingness to get dirty in the process. It requires patience and understanding holding each death and each one who grieves in the uniqueness of the moment. Comparisons or preconceived notions of recovery fail to take this into consideration. So, for all those times when our desire to console is not well received or our small act of kindness feels unappreciated…love. When they reach for support from others, or seem to have no need for support from anyone…love. When we cannot understand what is holding them back , hold on to hope and…love.

Walking with someone in their brokenness is to recognize our own brokenness too. And in helping them to find their way, we discover both community and communion in the One who brings wholeness, love, peace, and joy in the journey.

Peace,

This contribution is available at http://theologyisaverb.com/2015/09/21/when-words-fail-comforting-the-grieving/

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Imperfection Accepted [at A Spiritual Journey]

Communion experience. Jesus revealed to me that he accepts our imperfections as long as our intention remains pure, for as humans we are naturally imperfect.

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October is here and so is 40DFL and Respect Life month [at Leaven For The Loaf]

Every day is a day to respect human life. Still, just as months are designated to bring attention to suicide prevention and human trafficking and child abuse prevention, October is Respect Life month. Coincidentally, this month comprises the bulk of the Fall 2015 40 Days for Life campaign. I offer the links for your consideration.

The post below is adapted from remarks I made at the opening of Manchester, New Hampshire’s Fall 2015 40 DFL campaign. There’s still plenty of time to sign up, for those who accept the statement of peace.

Speaking at 40DFL kickoff. Photo courtesy 40 Days for Life/Manchester NH.

“Be at the service of the frailty of your brothers and sisters.’ – Pope Francis in Cuba, 9/20/15

I’m  an ordinary New Hampshire neighbor of no particular courage or distinction, with real frailties. Yet I believe I have something in common with you: faith in God, and a commitment to protecting the lives He created in his image and likeness.

I learned about 40 Days for Life when many people did – when Abby Johnson wrote about it. I was deeply impressed by the Texans who spent years in peaceful prayer outside her place of work. To this day, Abby talks about the need for pro-life presence outside abortion facilities.  I am not comfortable out there. My knees knock together whenever I’m standing on that sidewalk. And still, we need to be there.

We are two days away from a 40 Days for Life campaign.  The fact that you’re here is tremendously encouraging. The fact that many of our sisters and brothers in faith aren’t here is sobering. This is a faith-based effort to end abortion, grounded in peaceful action and cooperation with lawful authority. What more could our sisters and brothers be waiting for? How can we connect?

Public events like this rally are important.  I think the Lord wants to use private, low-key things in this effort as well. And he’s looking to us to do them.

My principal pro-life work has been the same thing many of you spend your lives doing: caring for my husband and kids and parents, grinding through the little stuff and facing the big stuff together. Something author David Foster Wallace said captures this:

“The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day.”

Myriad petty little unsexy ways: that’s exactly what goes into the day-to-day business of being part of a family or a community. That’s the level where most pro-life work is done. So much of our service to the Lord is just like that. I wonder if reluctance by my sisters and brothers in faith to getting involved in pro-life work is that they associate pro-life with politics instead of with service to others.

It can be hard for me to keep political action in its proper place.  I’m steeped in it. I used to bring my kids to Concord when I testified, which is probably why none of my kids goes near politics these days. I’ve lobbied as a volunteer and as a pro. I’ve worked on political campaigns. That’s almost at odds with 40 Days for Life, which is avowedly nonpolitical.

Even so, politics and peaceful pro-life action can’t be separated completely. Andrew Breitbart said that politics is downstream from culture. A culture of life fosters public servants who want to affirm life – promote the general welfare, if you will – and who want to make it easier, not harder, for people to live out their faith in God without interference. A culture of death fosters cronyism between politicians and the abortion industry. It fosters an entitlement mentality among abortion providers who have their hands in our pockets.

A culture of death also fosters violence. Twenty-one years ago, December 30, 1994,  John Salvi of Hampton murdered abortion workers Lee Ann Nichols and Shannon Lowney.  Those of us who were in New Hampshire back then can remember the aftermath of those womens’  violent deaths.  I can remember the Cardinal in Boston cancelling a special pro-life Mass – the murders were committed just a few weeks before January 22 – lest it seem inflammatory. I was upset at that decision, by the way, until I realized that every Mass is a pro-life Mass.

Pro-lifers were  accused of creating an atmosphere of violence and hatred. We were “all alike” not only in the eyes of abortion defenders but I believe also in the eyes of women seeking abortion. And even today, to some of our neighbors in the pews, we are “all alike” in a negative sense.

And that is a huge factor in keeping many of our fellow believers home and away from the sidewalks: Politics. Noise.  Fear.

So how do we cut through all this to get back to the one-on-one care and attention and relationship that changes hearts?

It starts with prayer. Of the three aspects of 40DFL, “prayer and fasting” is listed first. When we  lift our hearts to God, we begin to shut out noise. When we pray and fast, we begin to detach ourselves from distractions. We turn away from the headlines. We enter a quieter place where voices that were drowned out are suddenly distinct: an uncertain mother, an ambivalent father, a helpless invisible child.

Most of my 40DFL hours in Manchester are early in the morning, despite the fact that I am not a morning person. The street is quiet, with more dogwalkers than cars. I notice the seasons changing.   I can’t NOT pray.  The very building PP occupies looks different to me when I’m there to pray.

Sure, in politics I can be an advocate. So often, I live and die by the latest roll call vote. But sometimes I have to slow down and remind myself who I’m advocating for.  Abby Johnson said something in Nashua the other day that cut right through me: “We have to be outside those clinics. Abortions aren’t taking place in the halls of Congress” (or Concord, for that matter).  On the sidewalk during 40DFL, my encounters are with people, not “issues.” That can mean a client or a worker or the fellow living across the street who yells out his window to tell me to go away. Prayer prepares me for those encounters, scared though I may be.

Our neighbor in the pew who’s put off by pro-life politics could find something very compelling in those quiet prayerful moments on the sidewalk.

Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote about the efforts he and other ministers made to create the highly disciplined organization that helped bring about an end to segregation in Birmingham, Alabama. Not all the volunteers were allowed to be on the front lines. Only those who signed a statement of peace – not unlike the one you sign with 40DFL – were sent out into the streets. The civil rights activists’  commitment included spiritual preparation for what they were doing. It included praying for those who opposed them. And that came before Dr. King and his followers took to the streets.

Prayer must precede  politics. The founders and participants in 40DFL recognize that prayer, not politics, is what prepares our hearts to meet the people who are hurting. Prayer prepares us to do the myriad petty unsexy sacrificial things.

A political pro-life commitment might be enough to make someone sign up for a vigil hour once, but it won’t be enough to make her sign up twice. Only the spiritual foundation can keep the effort going.  Private and communal prayer paves the way for the sidewalk prayer that’s the most obvious part of 40DFL.

When you’re out there praying on the quiet days without rallies or special events, particularly when it’s only one or two of you at a time, you’re living proof to a skeptical world that “noise” isn’t the defining trait of the pro-life movement. Your witness and service are going to touch more people than the ones entering the abortion facility. Those neighbors of ours who sit in the pews with us on Sunday and think pro-lifers are “all alike” will have reason to take another look.

Even in our own faith communities, there’s reluctance to embrace the fullness of a peaceful, ongoing project like 40 Days for Life. Overcoming and changing that attitude begins here. “Community outreach” is another basic part of 40DFL. In some states, that has meant door-to-door petition drives or widespread use of signs. Here, let’s make that outreach where it’s most needed: in our own churches. God bless the pastors who have a huge job. I’m grateful beyond measure for the ones here tonight. I’ve listened to pastors, good solid pro-life pastors, who have the same problem many of us have: they’re too busy to take on one more thing. We can assist our pastors – and I mean all of us, not just the organizing team. Ask our pastors what we can do to help them in pro-life ministry. Can you speak at a religious education class? May you create  a bulletin announcement about 40 Days for Life? Can three or five or ten of you from one church  get together and commit to an hour a week at a 40DFL campaign?

Politics doesn’t have to be a total loss in this effort. Is your representative pro-life? Ask if she’s willing to take a vigil hour – leave her legislative badge home, and pray for an hour, and maybe meet and listen to a client or a worker at the facility.

I recall an encounter I had more than twenty years ago with a young woman at the University of New Hampshire. I was with New Hampshire Right to Life at the time, and I was invited to join a NARAL spokeswoman to address a UNH freshman sociology class. The topic was abortion.  When I was only a couple of minutes into my opening statement, a young woman asked haltingly “but what about …?” She suddenly stood up and ran out of the room, crying. I was rattled – I certainly hadn’t intended to cause anything like that.  The professor signaled to me to keep going while she went out to tend to the student. The remainder of the hour seemed endless. All I could think about was that student. When the class ended, I hurried into the hallway to try to find her.

You know what it’s like in the hallways in a big school when classes change: crowded, noisy, hurried. I was ready to despair of ever finding the young woman, when suddenly she found me. She told me her name was Patty. She apologized for running out – although I quickly told her there was no need – and she said she wanted me to understand her reaction. This was her story:

When she was twelve, her parents called her and her brother together to announce that her mother was pregnant. It was happy, exciting news. The family was looking forward to the new baby. Then a month or so later, her parents called her and her brother together again, but this time in a much more solemn tone. Her parents told them that the baby was very sick, and that they had decided to abort the pregnancy. Imagine the devastation everyone in that family must have felt.

Patty finished the story by saying to me, “I love my mom, but I know I had a little brother or sister.”

Politics made no difference to Patty. What she needed was a listening ear.  If I had tried to make it a political moment, I’d have lost her twice. To tell you the truth, I don’t remember what I told her. I can only pray that it did no harm.

For Patty, for our reluctant neighbors in the pews, for the people living on Pennacook street, for all who are put off by noise and politics and who think pro-lifers are “all alike,” let’s turn to prayer. Let’s turn to those quiet little sacrificial things.  40 Days for Life lets us focus on that work.

Will you join me on the first hour Wednesday morning? Need a place to start? Let this be it. Thank you for all you do.

This contribution is available at http://leavenfortheloaf.com/2015/10/01/october-is-here-and-so-is-40dfl-and-respect-life-month/

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Sometimes Our God Is Like a Cheering Grandfather! [at A Moment From De Sales]

When we think about all the times we wait and get discouraged, we need only stop and consider the many times God waits for us and never gets discouraged. What is God waiting for, we may ask? God waits for each one of us to catch up to the expectations He has for each of us

After all, when God’s gaze falls upon us, He only sees what’s possible. More importantly, we are delighted to believe that nothing is impossible with God. Even in our most stubborn moments, God waits for us “to make His day“– that is by making the right decision.

When we realize how long God waits for this to happen, we need to promise Him not to give up on ourselves. This is especially true when we see we are not anywhere near the place where God desires us to be. Difficult as that may be for us, we have to try to remember that God, Our Father, still loves us as we are. We have to believe that He embraces the person we have become, even though He willingly waits for the person He wants eagerly to see.

With each step we take in that direction, Our God gleefully caresses us with the love and the compassion that a grandfather feels watching his five year old granddaughter doing her first ballet steps! God is delightfully pleased.

This is why we promise to keep moving forward with each step filled with hope and never with hopelessness–as God stands by our side cheering us to succeed. This poem from Thomas Merton sums up this journey best:

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going.

I do not see the road ahead of me.

I cannot know for certain where it will end.

Nor do I really know myself,

And the fact that I think I am following your will

Doesn’t mean that I am actually doing so.

But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you,

And I hope that I have that desire in all that I am doing.

I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.

And I know that if I do this, you will lead me by the right road,

Though I may know nothing about it.

Therefore I will trust you always

Though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death.

I will not fear, for you are ever with me,

And you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

This is why we need never fear, the Lord stands with us-always!

This contribution is available at http://livetodaywell.org/

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Why We're Not Raising Our Kids Gender Neutral [at Under Thy Roof]

I live in the SF Bay Area, home of some of the widest range of parenting practices around. About this time of year, start of school time, the issue of "gender neutral" comes back around.

Now I went to a women's college, took women's studies classes, I even TAed Intro to Women's Studies, but I'm calling shenanigans on this "raising gender neutral kids" thing.

Here's why we don't do that.

1. Our kids are not gender neutral beings

John will make anything into a weapon. Anything. Sticks are always referred to as swords, anything with a longish end and a thicker end is a rifle. He "plays cars" by smashing them together. He had not been shown car crashes, or smashing cars, or told how to play that way - he just did it. Like he had it as part of his DNA.

Those gender stereotypes didn't come from nowhere!

2. "Gender neutral" toys look an awful lot like you just picked a gender

Seriously, just search "gender neutral toys" on google images. There is one picture of a girl doing stereotypical boy play (weapons in this case). The rest are entirely focused on having boys do stereotypical girl play.

Now I believe all kids, including boys, should learn valuable life skills like cooking, cleaning, and laundry. But this tells me that boy-ness, the rough, running, and loud play of boys, is something gender neutral toys generally discourage.

I pretty much agree with Simcha on this one.

3. "Gender neutral" colors seem to mean "avoid pink at all costs!"

Colors seem to suffer from the opposite problem. Here is what happens when one searches for "gender neutral colors":

The closest we get to pink is coral.

Now if you think this is just splitting hairs, may I direct your attention to the multiple shades of straight up blue.

I'm not the biggest fan of pink (seriously, my name is Kirby.

This is a Kirby

.) but there really is not a big range of stereotypical girl colors. Pink is kind of it. I'm not cool with just eliminating it and calling it "gender neutral".

4. I'm not into anxious parenting

I think trying to be a "gender neutral parent" lends itself to creating an

un

healthy attitude toward gender. It puts a ton of extra pressure on the parent, and makes something innocent into something that is surrounded by a lot of anxiety. I'm not into anxious parenting, and I think it's high time we got let off the hook here.

I really don't want to have to think so hard about every clothing item, toy, and color that comes into this house. Because it ultimately doesn't matter that much.

I'm not going to entice my boy to play dolls, but I'm not going to flip out if he dresses up as a princess with the girl next door. My girl will probably get a lot of rough and tumble play keeping up with her brother, but I still put her in dresses 98% of the time because diaper changes are easier that way (and it's cute).

Perhaps the idea of gender neutral parenting started out from a more innocent and well meaning place, but that's not what it is in it's current incarnation. Therefore, it's not one of the parenting labels I'm interested in embracing.

This contribution is available at http://underthyroof.blogspot.com/2015/09/why-were-not-raising-our-kids-gender.html

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Keyboards and Atheists [at The Contemplative Catholic Convert]

A guy in one of my online communities boasts he is an atheist. I don’t ask him why he is an atheist. My discussions with such people in the past have always proven fruitless.

Anyway, so this guy types his arguments into a keyboard. I wonder if he has ever thought about the decades it took for mathematicians, physicists and other highly skilled men and women to design, develop, and program the current computer keyboard (not to even mention the computer itself).

But complex mechanical creations aside, I also wonder if he has ever considered the complexity of his well-designed body. Without giving it so much as a thought, the atheist sits at his desk tapping keys of a complex combination of metal and plastic and wire; Meanwhile, within his own body a bazillion multifaceted processes are occurring simultaneously that permit him to tap on that keyboard.

For example, his eighth cranial nerve continuously monitors his spatial position relative to the floor and the sides of the room. (Click here for a more detailed bit of information https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vestibulocochlear_nerve). Without that nerve he’d be gripping the carpet because he’d sense the entire room spinning out of control. That’s not all the eighth nerve does, but for now, I hope I made a point about special design.

The atheist also moves his fingers and wrists in a very controlled pattern. He could not do so without the precise design of specialized motor and sensory nerves exiting his cervical and upper thoracic spine. In fact, while he is typing, more than 200,000 (yes, two hundred thousand) neurons permit him to do what he is doing because they are specifically designed to permit him to move his fingers and wrists.  You can read more about that here: http://www.innerbody.com/anatomy/nervous/arm-hand#full-description

As the atheist watches the screen above his keyboard, his eyes move with finely tuned and coordinated movements to the left or right or up or down (specially designed cranial nerves 3, 4, and 6) depending on what he wants to see on the screen. His pupils (specially designed cranial nerve 2) dilate or constrict depending on the amount of light his intricately designed eye needs to focus a clear and sharp image onto the retina at the back of his eye. That image is then converted into electrical impulses and sent along the optic nerve to a location at the back of his brain designed specifically for that purpose. It is there those electrical impulses are organized to allow the cognitive portion of his brain to interpret what he sees.

I mentioned neurons a moment ago. I wonder if the atheist has ever considered the phenomenal complexity of those neurons that run every specially designed function of his marvelous and intricate body. For example, each neuron needs a precise and coordinated flow of specific electrolytes into and out of the cell membrane – potassium, sodium, calcium, chloride (to name few)  -- AND at the correct levels until they reach a specifically designed threshold to produce an electric current along the neuron.  If this does not happen, our atheist will not be able to move his fingers . . . or anything else.

I hate to belabor the point, but let me include one more bit of information about our extraordinarily designed body.

We all require an elaborate, perfectly sequenced set of hormones to function. For example, when we get angry, our adrenal glands release a hormone called adrenalin (or, epinephrine). Circulating along our ten bazillion miles of expertly designed blood vessels, adrenalin attaches itself to very specific cell receptor sites throughout our body. Once attached to those sites our heart rate increases, our blood vessels constrict, our liver converts glycogen into glucose, our pupils dilate . . .  I could go on, but you get the point. (By the way, what I just described is the well-studied and well-known ‘Fight or Flight’ syndrome – a protective measure built into our bodies for self-preservation).

We today know so much about the human body that I have for many years defied atheists to read through even a high school biology text book and then tell me our bodies are not clearly designed and programmed to an exponentially greater degree than the computer keyboard.

So, if the keyboard would not exist without a creator, why does any honest person actually believe our body just happened to come into existence by accident and without the design of a Designer?

In 43 years of talking with atheists, I have never met one whose disbelief was rooted in ‘intellectual’ reasons. When I dug deeply enough, his disbelief was always rooted in moral reasons. The person had made a conscious choice to turn from God so he or she could live as they pleased.

The Creator of all I just mentioned about the human body is the same Person who designed it – every part of it. Organs, blood, electrolytes, neurons, cells, hormones – every part of it.

But there is more. Much more. This Creator – many know Him as the Heavenly Father – knows our name, where we live, and what are our most secret needs. It is this same Creator who, because of His great love for us, designed and implemented a flawless plan to reconcile sinners with Himself and live with Him forever.

He bundled that plan in the life, death, and resurrection of His Son. We call Him Jesus.

Oh, Lord, our Lord, how excellent is your Name in all the earth.

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Will the poor forgive me? [at walk the way]

Pope Francis in his trip to the United States has given us an example of God’s love for and identification with the poor and the marginalized – visiting places where the poor are fed and where the marginalized are put into prison.

He often speaks of the culture of encounter. We are not only called to be on the side of the poor, we are called to be with them in person – in the manner in which we can do this, meeting them as persons.

It is easy to love the poor as a group and to advocate for them. It is not so easy to be with them. It can be threatening – we don’t know what to expect.

But to accompany the poor means that we let ourselves be challenged by the poor, to learn from them, and to be with them without a sense of superiority.

Otherwise our charity becomes a way of proving ourselves superior to the poor or to those who do not “help” the poor as we do.

How ought we to practice charity? With gratitude, with love, with respect, with openness to the other.

But this is not easy.

As Dostoevsky wrote, “Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing, compared to love in dreams.

St. Vincent Depaul, who died on September 27, 1660, and whose feast is celebrated today, once wrote, in a similar vein:

You will find out that Charity is a heavy burden to carry, heavier than the kettle of soup and the full basket. But you will keep your gentleness and your smile. It is not enough to give soup and bread. This the rich can do. You are the servant of the poor, always smiling and good-humored. They are your masters, terribly sensitive and exacting master you will see. And the uglier and the dirtier they will be, the more unjust and insulting, the more love you must give them. It is only for your love alone that the poor will forgive you the bread you give to them.

Will the poor forgive me as I live here? Will they recognize their dignity and their capacities in my presence? Will they recognize how they are truly children of God and my sisters and brothers? Will they forgive me?

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Looked Hard at Him and Loved Him [at Grace to Paint]

by Maresa Lilley, SND on September 25, 2015 · 0 comments

in Paintings

8×8″ oil paint on primed artist board; use “comment” below to inquire.

When the “rich young man” came to Jesus, asking what more he could do to serve the Lord, the gospel tells us that “Jesus looked hard at him and loved him.” (Mk. 10: 21) Jesus then tells the man what more he could do, and we do not know the end of the story. We only know that the man walked away sad. (Newer translations leave out the word, “hard,” or “steadily,” but I think it adds greatly to the personal encounter!)

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Getting to Know Jesus: 10 Ways to Grow Closer to our Lord and Savior [at A Catholic Newbie]

A few excerpts from The Poem of the Man-God (Maria Valtorta):

About ten years ago, over the course of about 6 months, I read all five volumes of “The Poem of the Man-God”. Since then, I have re-read certain parts a number of times. I cannot even begin to explain the spiritual impact that this work made upon me. What an extraordinary grace it was to have read them! One is literally “transported” to the time of Jesus, walking along with Him and the apostles through the roads and towns of Israel. Not only does one get to know Jesus in a most intimate way, but also one gets to know and see the personality of each Apostle, along with some of the other disciples. And then, there is our Blessed Mother and St Joseph! What an extraordinary grace it is to get to know them! And then also Mary Magdelene, Lazarus, Martha and the other women disciples, the shepherds…one can go on and on! But suffice it to say, The Poem of the Man-God is a most extraordinary work. Of course, it is not intended to supplant or replace the Holy Scriptures, but it does supplement them in a most wonderful way.

And so, here are a few excerpts of “The Poem of the Man-God” to give an idea of the spiritual treasure of this work:

Cure of a paralytic child

[Jesus has just finished speaking to a crowd] “….The crowd that had gathered utters cries of joy and applause for the Messiah. Then they become quiet and open out to let pass a mother, who is carrying in her arms a paralytic child, child, about ten years old. At the foot of the staircase, she holds him out, as if she were offering him to Jesus.

«She is one of my servants. Her boy last year fell from the terrace and broke his back. He will lie on his back all his life» explains the landlord.

«She has been hoping in You all these months … » adds the landlady.

«Tell her to come to Me.»

But the poor woman is so excited, that she seems to be paralyzed.

She trembles all over and trips on her long dress while climbing up the high steps with her son in her arms.

Mary, compassionate, stands up and goes down to meet her. «Come. Do not be afraid. My Son loves you. Give Me your child. It will be easier for you to climb up. Come, My daughter. I am a Mother, too» and She takes the child, smiling kindly at him, and then goes up with Her piteous load weighing on Her arms. The boy’s mother follows Her crying.

Mary is now before Jesus. She kneels down and says: «Son! For the sake of this mother!» Nothing else.

Jesus does not .even ask the usual question: «What do you want Me to do for you? Do you believe that I can do it?» No. Today He smiles and says: «Woman, come here.»

The woman goes beside Mary. Jesus lays His hand on her head and says only: «Be happy», and He has not yet finished saying the words, when the boy, who so far had been lying heavily on Mary’s arms, with his legs hanging loose, sits up all of a sudden and with a cry of joy: «Mummy!», he runs to take refuge in his mother’s lap.

The shouts of hosanna seem to be penetrating the sky now all red at sunset.

The woman, clasping her son to heart, does not know what to say and she asks: «What must I do to tell You that I am so grateful?» And Jesus, caressing her once again: «You must be good and love God and your neighbour and bring your son up in this love.» But the woman is not yet content. She would like to … she would like to … and at last she asks: «A kiss of Yours and of Your Mother’s to my child.»

Jesus bends down and kisses him and Mary does likewise. And while the woman is going away happy, surrounded by cheering friends, Jesus explains to the landlord: «Nothing else was needed. He was in My Mother’s arms. Even without any word I would have cured him, because She is happy when She can relieve distress and I want to make Her happy.»

And Jesus and Mary exchange one of those glances that only one who has seen them can understand, so deeply meaningful are they.”

Maria Valtorta

Cure of a blind man at Capernaum

The poor man is coming forward between James and John. He is holding a walking stick in his hand, but is not using it at present. He walks better, supported by the two men. «Here, man, the Master is in front of you.»

The blind man kneels down: «My Lord! Have mercy on me!

«Do you want to see? Stand up. How long have you been blind?

The four apostles gather round the other two.

«Seven years, Lord. Before, when I could see well, I worked. I was a blacksmith at Caesarea on Sea. I was doing well. The harbour, the good trading, they always needed me for one job or another.

But while striking a piece of iron to make an anchor, and You can imagine how red hot it was to be pliable, a splinter came off it, and burnt my eye. My eyes were already sore because of the heat of the forge. I lost the wounded eye, and also the other one became blind after three months. I have finished all my savings, and now I live on charity … »

«Are you alone?»

«I am married with three little children … I have not even seen the face of one of them … and I have an old mother. And yet she and my wife earn a little bread, and with what they earn and the alms! take home, we manage not to starve. If I were cured! … I would go back to work. All I ask for is to be able to work like a good Israelite and thus feed those I love.»

«And you came to Me? Who told you?»

«A leper who was cured by You at the foot of Mount Tabor, when You were coming back to the lake after that beautiful speech of Yours.»

«What did he tell you?»

«That You can do everything. That You are the health of bodies and of souls. That You are a light for souls and bodies, because You are the Light of God. He, although a leper, had dared to mingle with the crowd, at the risk of being stoned, all enveloped in his mantle, because he had seen You passing by on the way to the mountain, and Your face had kindled hope in his heart. He said to me: “I saw something in that face that whispered to me: ‘There is health there. Go!’ And I went. Then he repeated Your speech to me and he told me that You cured him, touching him with Your hand, without any disgust. He was coming back from the priest after his purification. I knew him. I had done some work for him when he had a store at Caesarea. I came, asking for You in every town and village. Now I have found You! … Have mercy on me!»

«Come. The light is still too bright for one coming out of darkness»

«Are you going to cure me, then?»

Jesus takes him to Peter’s house, in the dim light of the kitchen garden, he places him in front of Himself, in such a position that his cured eyes may not see, as first sight, the lake still sparkling with light. The man looks like a very docile child, he obeys without asking questions.

«Father! Your Light to this son of Yours!» Jesus has stretched His hands over the head of the kneeling man. He remains in that attitude for a moment. He then moistens the tips of His fingers with saliva and with His right hand He touches lightly the open, but lifeless eyes.

A moment. Then the man blinks, rubs his eyelids as if he were awakening from sleep, and his eyes were dimmed.

«What do you see?»

«Oh!. .. oh! … oh!. .. Eternal God! I think … I think … oh! that I can see … I see Your mantle … it’s red, isn’t it? And a white hand … and a woollen belt… oh! Good Jesus … I can see better and better, the more I get used to seeing … There is the grass of the earth … and that is certainly a well … and there is a vine … »

«Stand up, My friend.»

The man who is crying and laughing, stands up, and after a moment’s hesitation between respect and desire, he lifts his face and meets Jesus’ eyes: Jesus is smiling full of merciful love. It must be beautiful to recover your sight and see that face as the first thing! The man gives a scream and stretches his arms. It is an instinctive action. But he controls himself.

But Jesus opens His arms and draws to Himself the man who is much lower than He. «Go home, now, and be happy and just. Go with My peace.»

«Master, Master! Lord! Jesus! Holy! Blessed! The light… I see … I see everything! … There is the blue lake, the clear sky, the setting sun, and then the horns of the waxing moon … But it is in Your eyes that I see the most beautiful and clear blue, and in You I see the beauty of the most real sun, and the pure light of the blessed moon. You are the Star of those who suffer, the Light of the blind, the living, active Mercy!»

«I am the Light of souls. Be a son of the Light.»

«Yes, Jesus, always. Every time I close my re-born eyes, I will renew my oath. May You and the Most High be blessed.»

«Blessed be the Most High Father! Go!»

And the man goes away, happy, sure of himself, while Jesus and His dumbfounded apostles get into two boats and begin their navigation manoeuvres.

And the vision ends. – See more at: http://www.mysticsofthechurch.com/2009/11/maria-valtorta-and-poem-of-man-god.html#sthash.tkGYmhbJ.dpuf

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My God, my God, why have thou forsaken me? [at On the Road to Damascus]

Reading sacred scripture without a guide is the equivalent of touring a foreign country you have never been to before in your life alone. You can hit the main attractions just fine but you will always miss the hidden gems only the locals know about. Reading the scriptures without knowing who wrote them, to whom they were written, the style of writing, and the reason they were written leaves the reader to interpret the actual meaning of the writing for themselves. More often than not this will lead one to an improper or wrong interpretation and a misunderstanding of what the passage was meant to convey.

There are many people who believe that they do not need any instruction when they read sacred scripture. They believe that the Holy Spirit will inspire them to the correct and intended meaning. While this can happen if it happened in every occasion we would have only one Church unified in the meaning of scripture. Instead, we have over 40,000 different flavors of Christianity all divided based upon their interpretation of scripture and the doctrine it teaches.

Most sacred scripture is polyvalent, meaning it is deep with meaning and has a number of different aspects or principles that can be learned by it. There are some that, for a Catholic, only has one specific meaning or interpretation. We rely on the magisterium to teach us the true meaning of sacred scripture so that all Catholics everywhere hold the same meaning and truth in their hearts. We are the Universal Church. The word catholic comes from the Latin word catholicus which comes from the Greek word καθολικός (katholikos), which means “Universal”. This comes from the Greek phrase καθόλου (katholou), which combines the words “about” and “whole” and means “according to the whole”. This is straight out of sacred scripture, but that is a discussion for another day.

When one does not know the author, the reason, and the culture behind the text the real meaning of the scripture is often missed or misunderstood. Take for example sacred scripture readings about Jesus’ crucifixion. There is a common belief that Jesus, in a moment of his full human nature, felt totally abandoned by our Father because he utters the words, “My God, my God, why have thou forsaken me?” If all you knew were the words of this text you would naturally come to this conclusion. You could not be further from the truth behind this scripture with that conclusion.

Jesus was a rabbi (a word that actually means “doctor” when translated to Latin). He was a devout Jew who both obeyed and fulfilled the Law. Jews of Jesus’ time (and many still today) prayed the Psalms. Indeed, they had them memorized to the point of knowing them forwards and backwards without thought. If you are Christian and I started, “Our Father, who art in heaven…” you could join in and continue the prayer with me without thinking about it. If you belong to any of the main stream Christian religions and I started with, “I believe in one God….” You could join in and finish the creed with me without thought. This is how the Psalms were and are to the Jews.

Like with our Liturgy of the Hours Jews prayed these Psalms at set periods throughout the day. One of these set periods was the ninth hour or 3:00 in the afternoon. Sacred scripture tells us that at about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken me?” Jesus was not crying out from abandonment. As a devout Jew he was crying out in prayer. What did the Jews pray at the set points in the day? They prayed the Psalms.

Psalm 22

1 My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

Why are you so far from saving me,

so far from my cries of anguish?

2 My God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer,

by night, but I find no rest.

3 Yet you are enthroned as the Holy One;

you are the one Israel praises.

4 In you our ancestors put their trust;

they trusted and you delivered them.

5 To you they cried out and were saved;

in you they trusted and were not put to shame.

6 But I am a worm and not a man,

scorned by everyone, despised by the people.

7 All who see me mock me;

they hurl insults, shaking their heads.

8 “He trusts in the Lord,” they say,

“let the Lord rescue him.

Let him deliver him,

since he delights in him.”

9 Yet you brought me out of the womb;

you made me trust in you, even at my mother’s breast.

10 From birth I was cast on you;

from my mother’s womb you have been my God.

11 Do not be far from me,

for trouble is near

and there is no one to help.

12 Many bulls surround me;

strong bulls of Bashan encircle me.

13 Roaring lions that tear their prey

open their mouths wide against me.

14 I am poured out like water,

and all my bones are out of joint.

My heart has turned to wax;

it has melted within me.

15 My mouth is dried up like a potsherd,

and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth;

you lay me in the dust of death.

16 Dogs surround me,

a pack of villains encircles me;

they pierce my hands and my feet.

17 All my bones are on display;

people stare and gloat over me.

18 They divide my clothes among them

and cast lots for my garment.

19 But you, Lord, do not be far from me.

You are my strength; come quickly to help me.

20 Deliver me from the sword,

my precious life from the power of the dogs.

21 Rescue me from the mouth of the lions;

save me from the horns of the wild oxen.

22 I will declare your name to my people;

in the assembly I will praise you.

23 You who fear the Lord, praise him!

All you descendants of Jacob, honor him!

Revere him, all you descendants of Israel!

24 For he has not despised or scorned

the suffering of the afflicted one;

he has not hidden his face from him

but has listened to his cry for help.

25 From you comes the theme of my praise in the great assembly;

before those who fear you I will fulfill my vows.

26 The poor will eat and be satisfied;

those who seek the Lord will praise him—

may your hearts live forever!

27 All the ends of the earth

will remember and turn to the Lord,

and all the families of the nations

will bow down before him,

28 for dominion belongs to the Lord

and he rules over the nations.

29 All the rich of the earth will feast and worship;

all who go down to the dust will kneel before him—

those who cannot keep themselves alive.

30 Posterity will serve him;

future generations will be told about the Lord.

31 They will proclaim his righteousness,

declaring to a people yet unborn:

He has done it

Jesus was not only praying at the ninth hour but he was praying the Psalm that foretold of the crucifixion and resurrection. For the Jews present they would have immediately recognized this Psalm and had been able to recite it with him. And then, while looking up at him on the cross and reciting the words of the Psalm they would have seen the Psalm fulfilled as they prayed and many of them would have realized then and there exactly what they had just done.

I believe the word of this would have spread like wild fire and was the driving factor behind the conversion of thousands at a time after the Church was established at Pentecost.

But if you just read this passage in scripture with no instruction on the background on the culture at the time it was written you would have come away seeing a broken Jesus feeling left and abandon by the very person who asked him to go through with this to begin with. How can anyone be filled with anything but sadness when left with this interpretation? How can anyone be anything but profoundly moved and filled with love and hope when you learn the true meaning behind the text?

Ignorance of scripture is ignorance of Christ – Saint Jerome.

Knowing scripture means knowing more than just the text as it is written. To know scripture is to know the world behind the text, the world of the text, and the world in front of the text. Any less and scripture is nothing more than a great collection of stories.

This contribution is available at http://damascusroadsojourner.blogspot.com/2015/09/my-god-my-god-why-have-thou-forsaken-me.html

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The Trouble with Works [at In Caritas Christiana]

24th Sunday of Ordinary Time

This Sunday, the second reading will be from

James 2:14-18

(the link goes to a bit more). I’d strongly encourage you to read the

other readings

as well. It’s lectionary #131, if you’re reading from a hard copy.

I don’t think there is another issue that is as contentious between Catholics and most Protestants as that of the role of works in salvation.

On the one hand, Protestants have one strong point in their favor. We cannot earn our Salvation. Not by doing good works, not by study, not by any means. And any Catholic who is worth their salt will tell you the same thing.

Faith is both a gift and an act of the will. Salvation, on the other hand, is a gift, given to you by Christ, not because you did anything to earn it, but because you, acknowledging your own weakness, asked for it. So, if you claim that you cannot earn your salvation, you’re right. You can’t.

However, there is more to the story than that. James reminds the faithful that if, “you believe that God is one. You do well. Even the demons believe that and tremble.” (2:19) So, faith alone isn’t enough. We do only as well as the demons if we believe in God and that he is one.

Something else is required. A response of some kind, right? Some will tell you that the response is to “repent and believe”, but I’m assuming that if you have faith, you already believe.

No, “repent and believe” is not quite enough. You have to respond in some way - not just sit back on your laurels, confident that your salvation has been won already.

God acted with love toward you

, and the only appropriate response is

to act with love in return

.

This response of love logically demands action, as one of the elders in Daniel’s church pointed out in a sermon, “When you love someone, you want to spend time with them, and you want to make them happy.” You don’t make someone happy by sitting there and admiring them. You talk to them, you do things that will please them.

This is what Catholics (really) mean when we say that good works are necessary unto salvation. Good works are an expected fruit of the kind of faith that will save you.

And even with works, we mere mortals are unable to tell the quality of your faith itself. That only God can know with certainty. I point this out because many people have misconstrued the Catholic faith as a religion of works, where salvation is earned by the faithful, and that isn’t the case at all.

All the works in the world won’t save you, but without works, we can infer that your faith won’t save you because it is only as good as the faith of the demons… and we can see how much good their faith in God did them without a right response.

Loving Father,

Thank you for the great work of love you have done for us in sending Jesus to save us from ourselves. Help us to respond to the love you have shown to us with everything we have. Help us to you with the same, perfect love, that you give to us.

Amen

*Note: This is all based on my understanding of the Catholic teaching on faith and works. If I do not have a correct understanding, please let me know! This is a nuanced subject that I want to get right!

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Prayer To End Terrorism [at Pauca Verba]

Prayer To The Merciful Lady, Guadalupe,

For An End to Global Terrorism

Radiant Lady in the golden mist,

Compassionate Mother of all who weep,

End the terrorism which afflicts our weary world.

Make gentle the murderous hearts.

Take from my own the weapons of hate,

and escort me to Jesus ~

the bearer of light.

Author: Father Stephen P. Morris

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Intercessions ~ Twenty Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time [at Pauca Verba]

At Ground Zero/ Pope Francis said the deep fountains of flowing water reflect the tears shed on September 11, 2001,/ but also the tears people cry around the world each day,/ caused by terrorism,/ war and destruction./ For those who weep/ to be comforted./ We pray to the Lord.

Today is the Feast of Saint Francis of Assisi./ We ask for a new willingness to love and protect the earth/ and every living thing,/ God's great gift to us./ We pray to the Lord.

Our political climate is characterized by bitter divisions./ And if we cannot hope to work together well for the common good,/ can we at least hope by prayer to stop demonizing each other./We pray to the Lord.

We ask blessings for the peace-making work of the United Nations as it celebrates its seventieth anniversary./ We pray too for the healing of any part of our own lives where we feel disturbed,/ troubled or despairing./ We pray to the Lord.

We pray for the reform of prisoners around the world./ For the enlightening of consciences,/ the turning of hearts/ and growth in goodness./ We pray too for the healing of those who have been victimized by violence and crimes./ We pray to the Lord.

We pray for the many who are injured in wars: soldiers and civilians./ For the conversion of those who plan and execute terrorist attacks./ For refugees,/ the sick,/ the elderly and all the world's children./ We pray to the Lord.

And we pray for those who have died to enter God's promised life of light and peace/ where saints live in joy./ We pray to the Lord.

This contribution is available at http://www.paucaverba.blogspot.com/2015/10/intercessions-twenty-seventh-sunday-in.html

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Overwhelmed [at CruceSignatiBlog]

Feeling extremely overwhelmed stinks, doesn’t it?

Really, feeling overwhelmed can happen to anyone, whether they’re single or married, two kids or twelve kids, student or employee. It’s all in perspective (mostly). And there is the good kind of almost-overwhelmed-ness that makes life feel wonderfully full and satisfying. Kari Curran over at Catholic Stand talks about that brilliantly in an article here. However, I would like to talk about the darker, more depressing overwhelmed-ness that I am all too familiar with.

When you feel that everything is closing in on you and there is no escape, life can be miserable. Prayer becomes difficult, if not impossible. Communication with others can become unclear. Anxiety can come and hinder you from carrying out even the most regular of household jobs. Depression can darken the doorway too, if it goes far enough.

Yesterday I was feeling quite overwhelmed. The laundry room was a mess; the kitchen counters were covered in papers, mason jars for canning, fresh produce, and dirty dishes; the kids had only sort of done schoolwork; I almost missed an online course in the morning (due to being very overtired and mentally foggy); and both parents were gone for most of the day. It all seemed like too much: juggling laundry, dishes, housecleaning, teaching the kids, music practice, additional music subjects (harmony and history, both necessary for my music exams), my school subjects, my social life, learning and practicing the Faith, exercising and getting fresh air, making meals. . . .

I usually have a few ways of dealing with feeling overwhelmed:

- Make a list. Or two or ten.

I find that if I make lists/plans for dealing with different things, then coping with it all becomes easier. I often make lists of things I need to do that day, that week, and things with no deadline. I usually aim to complete at least 70% of the items on a to-do list for the day. If I don’t get it done, oh well. It’ll get done the next day.

Make an effort to smile. Apparently it releases feel-good endorphins that improve mood and brain activity, which we all need at some point, right?

Even if prayer gets hard, keep at it. If you have no time for long prayers, pray short aspirations, like “Jesus, I love you,” “Jesus, I trust in You,” “All for you, Jesus,” or “My God, I believe, I adore, I trust, and I love Thee!” Repeating these prayers many times a day has gotten me through all sorts of days

Instead of being annoyed that the kitchen counters were covered in stuff, I decided to be thankful for our kitchen and how handy it is. Rather than be mad that the kids aren’t grasping certain concepts in schoolwork, I looked back at last year and saw how far they have come since then. Looking at the bright side can be a big helper if you’re feeling discouraged in any situation.

How do you deal with feeling overwhelmed? What are your suggestions?

This contribution is available at http://crucesignatiblog.wordpress.com/2015/09/30/overwhelmed/

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Your Presence Makes A Difference [at Harvesting The Fruits of Contemplation]

[As 40 Days for Life prepares to kick off its Fall campaign in a few weeks and as we struggle with the barbaric revelations from the mouths of Planned Parenthood's own staff, the  following post from September of 2011 seemed a timely one to re-share]

Your Presence Makes a Difference

My wife, I and four strangers spent an hour outside the local Planned Parenthood center witnessing to and praying for all those entering that building – staff and client alike. This was only the fourth time over the past two years that I participated in the Forty Days for Life prayer vigil in front of this place of deception and death.

The majority of the cars entering the facility’s driveway while we were there sped up immediately when they saw the signs and leaflets we carried and the rosaries in our hands. Most avoided having any eye contact with us, perhaps in a last ditch effort to prevent their consciences from awakening them to the horror of what they were about to do. It was like we were lepers.

We continued to pray. We sang softly and sometimes off key. We listened to God’s Word. We encouraged each other and prayed that these women, their escorts and the facility’s staff would know that we were there out of love for them and as instruments of a loving and merciful Lord. We trusted God would use our presence to make a difference in someone’s life today.

We also watched as cars pulled out, driver and passengers again refusing for the most part to glance at us, anxious to get away from this place – that is with the exception of an obviously distraught young woman in the front passenger seat of a jeep. She used a crumpled tissue to capture the slow trickle of tears flowing from her eyes, receiving no apparent comfort or solace from her male companion.

She turned and looked right at me. I was drawn to her watery eyes and immediately saw in them the anguish and pain I suspect I would have seen in the eyes of my crucified and suffering Lord had I been at the foot of His cross. Silently and earnestly I starred deeply into her eyes, hoping that God would allow her to see in us, even now, the image of her forgiving, healing, loving and merciful Lord and His desire to give her new life.

Your presence makes a difference. Come. Pray. Be the eyes of Christ.

This contribution is available at http://harvestingthefruitsofcontemplation.blogspot.com/2015/09/its-worth-revisiting-wednesday-your.html

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Avoiding the Error of the Pharisees [at Arnobius of Sicca]

In my opinion, the Pharisees are important to consider in this day and age in the Church. I don’t say that to use the group as an epithet, nor to use an ad hominem to target bloggers I disagree with. I think we need to consider them because they did have an attitude towards religion that seemed right from a human perspective, but ultimately that attitude fell short in the eyes of God.

Briefly, the view of the Pharisee was (seeking to avoid pejorative terms) that one was faithful to God by keeping His laws. In doing so, they offered their interpretation of how the Law was best followed. People who did not follow that interpretation were considered sinners. In contrast, because they followed the Law in accordance with their interpretation, they believed they were holy. It strikes me as being an “either-or” fallacy. Either one followed their interpretation of the Law and were holy, or they did not follow their interpretation of the Law, and were corrupted. The problem is, the either-or fallacy overlooks the possibility of there being more than two options—in this case, the fact that it was not enough to follow the observance of the Law. Jesus did not fault the Pharisees for keeping the Law. He faulted them for failing to love God and neighbor while keeping the law (Matthew 23:23).

The historic Pharisees were, of course, something that emerged from Jewish culture. But we should not think that the attitude of the Pharisee is limited to Judaism. it seems to me that the mindset which motivated the Pharisee can exist in Christianity in general. This includes existing in the Catholic faith. The either-or fallacy can be found among members of the faith as well. As Catholics, we believe that if we would love God, we must keep His commandments (John 14:15, Matthew 7:21, 1 John 5:2-3). However, a Catholic who only kept the commandments and did not love His brother, would be just as in the wrong (see 1 John 4:20-21) as the individual who thought one could ignore God’s commands so long as they showed love for the unfortunate. The Catholic teaching recognizes that we must both act rightly and love rightly.

The historical Pharisees were right in recognizing that some actions done against the Law were sins. Likewise, the Pharisee mindset in the Church rightly recognizes that if people refuse to follow the moral teachings of the Church, they do wrong. Where this mindset goes wrong is in assuming that since they do not behave that way, they stand before God holy and righteous. But Jesus called the Pharisees “Whitewashed tombs,” (Mathew 23:27) because their internal attitudes were wrong, regardless of how rigorously they kept the law.

Today, I see the Pharisee mindset most flagrantly in the opposition to Pope Francis. This opposition stems from an interpretation from a certain group of Catholics on how one is to be faithfully Catholic. This interpretation includes an implied mindset of thinking that sinners should be cast off from the Church. Yet the Pope makes an effort to reach out to these people where they are. Whether it is the washing the feet of a Muslim girl in a youth prison on Holy Thursday, whether it is praising a single mother for choosing life, or dialoging with atheists and non-believers, or reaching out to the divorced and remarried and the person with same-sex attraction, he is reaching out to the sinners and calling them to the love of God. As he said in a September, 2013 interview:

“I see clearly, that the thing the church needs most today is the ability to heal wounds and to warm the hearts of the faithful; it needs nearness, proximity. I see the church as a field hospital after battle. It is useless to ask a seriously injured person if he has high cholesterol and about the level of his blood sugars! You have to heal his wounds. Then we can talk about everything else. Heal the wounds, heal the wounds.... And you have to start from the ground up.

What he does is laudable. But some people look at this approach, and challenge his supporters with words very similar to the words the Pharisees addressed to the Apostles, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” (Matthew 9:11). The Pharisees were scandalized with Our Lord. Today, many are scandalized with Pope Francis, even though he is not doing anything contrary to the Church teaching—only contrary to a personal (and non-authoritative) interpretation of the Church teaching.

So, how do we avoid the error of the Pharisees? It is imperative that we do avoid it, because Our Lord saw fit to condemn it. We must avoid it by changing our attitudes:

- We must stop thinking that our keeping the commandments is enough before God.

- We must stop thinking that those who failed to keep the commandments are to be cast away.

Or, as Jesus said:

34 When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, 35 and one of them [a scholar of the law]* tested him by asking, 36 “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” 37 He said to him, “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. 38 This is the greatest and the first commandment. 39 The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. 40 The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.” (Matthew 22:34-40)

If we forget this, we are not keeping His commandments—a requirement of loving Him. Each individual will have to look into their own heart, knowing God is their judge, and ask whether they have fallen into the error of the Pharisee, thinking only about keeping the commandments and lacking the love that goes with it. It is an easy thing to do today with such hostility towards the Church and some Catholics flagrantly defying the Church teaching and seeming to get away with it.

Yes, we need to speak out against sin—but not in the mindset of “The Church needs to put those bastards in their place!” It needs to be done out of love, with concern for the fate of the individual who falls into sin. We need to love the person with same sex attraction, the woman who has an abortion and the Catholic politician who flagrantly votes against Catholic teaching, and our approach to their sins should be one of bringing them back to God and reconciled with His Church. Otherwise, we may have to face the final judgment with the reality of “the measure with which you measure will be measured out to you” (Matthew 7:1b)

This contribution is available at http://arnobius-of-sicca.blogspot.com/2015/09/avoiding-error-of-pharisees.html

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How Should We Respond? [at Quiet Consecration]

In all honesty I believe there are certain types of people who take great pleasure in making someone else feel small.  I have my personal stereotype of them.  If they are a woman they are, most likely, a former Small Group Big Shot.  If they are a man, they spent their formative years sleeping with as many girls as they could in order to hide the fact that they lack the capacity to create a home of their own.

This stereotype is not fair - I know it.  I just can't help but think of those movies from the 1980's when people go back to their High School Reunion and the same mean people are still mean, only wearing different hair styles.

Social Media Sites offer the bullies a chance to continue to do what they started when they were in middle school - do their best to make someone else feel small.

I know, I know...no one can 'make' you feel anything.  At least that is the mantra we chant in our Tuesday Self-Esteem Class down at the Women's Center.  We write that on Post-It Notes and put it on our refrigerators and we write it in lipstick on our bathroom mirrors.  We almost believe it, too.  Then one of these semi-professional human destroyers takes aim at us out of nowhere and subtweets about something they know is near and dear to our hearts and we feel a little sick to our stomach.  They have given us a cyber-punch for no reason and we suspect (and are probably right) that if we were to call them on it they would widen their eyes and say, "What do you mean?  I didn't mean YOU!", thereby shifting the responsibility for their childish and ridiculous behavior squarely onto our shoulders.  They make you doubt your own strong instincts.  Suddenly, not only are you hurt because you have been punched out of nowhere you are wrong for asking them about it.

So what do you do?

I know what I do...I get angry.  I also know what I want to do....I want to hurt them back.

Is that the right response?

Not for a Catholic, it isn't.

One of the most difficult character defects I fight is the one that tells me it is okay to punch back, to hurt as you have hurt me.  My experience has been that when I do that those people that widen their eyes and manage to look surprised when someone merely stands up to their bullying tactics now have a legitimate complaint.  They also have a chance to call me a hypocrite (though most of them have no idea what the correct use of that term is) because I have fallen short of the standards set by Jesus' Church.  "Ah HA!" they can exclaim, as they flip their hair.  "SEE!  I TOLD you she wasn't REALLY a Christian!".

Therefore, not only have I hurt myself by falling into their little sandbox I have inflicted harm on the Body of Christ, which is (of course) one of the characteristics of sin.  Sin does not just hurt the sinner.  Sin hurts us all.

My life so far has been one long learning curve and lest you think this is a lesson I have always known, let me say "Oh no, no, no".  Most of the time I have stepped right square into the fray only to wish I had just stood still, allowing the Self Satisfied Groovy People Parade pass me by without a flicker of recognition.  Nowadays I can usually just take the appropriate action (like hide or delete the post on social media) without responding.  Those days I respond before thinking it through, I can make good use of my OWN delete button.

Restraint of Tongue and Pen....a tougher principle to follow than you would believe.

I am saddened today when I see the jabs we take at each other on Social Media.  I am saddened even more when I engage in some sort of weirdly disconnected running battle with a former friend or someone I knew in high school.  I try really hard not to do that today, though at times I fall prey to my own need for perfect justice on this earth.  I have to stop, take a deep breath, remember that I am dealing with a wounded soul and then keep on going.

I can pray for them and for me.  I can ask The Holy Spirit to fill me with the Love that I need to love them in spite of myself.  I can beg God to remove from me those defects of character that stand between me and my chance to be useful in the world.  I can throw myself on the mercy of Jesus and admit, "I am a sinner.  Please help me to be kind where there is no kindness, patience where there is no patience and calm in the midst of a raging emotional tempest".

I always hope for the best.  I know how much I have grown in the past 20 years and I know how far I need to go in terms of being a good woman.  I am not there yet....I am a fairly okay woman.....but I have a long, long way to go before I can hit 'good'.

Pray for me - that I do not add to the mess.  Pray for me - that I be able to be the woman God wants me to be no matter what anyone's emails or messages me today.

Pray for me - as I pray for you.

This contribution is available at http://quietconsecration.blogspot.com/2015/09/how-should-we-respond.html

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One year ago, I sent in the first manuscript I had ever written to Emmaus Road Publishing (now part of the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology) on the Four Marian Dogmas of Blessed Virgin Mary. It has been a long time coming, but I am happy to announce that the book, part of the Faith Basics Series, is now published and in print, and on the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The title is Understanding Catholic Teaching on the Blessed Virgin Mary.

For me this is an exciting day, but also a day filled with many emotions, since it was my Dad (passed away 4 months ago) who first really encouraged me to start writing. When I was in graduate school at Franciscan University of Steubenville for my Masters in Theology, Dad asked me a few times if he could read my papers. After reading some of them, he said (a biased opinion maybe) that he thought my writing was just as good as the books he read daily (historical and political). I will never forget it – he asked me if there was an avenue where I could distribute my writings. I said through developing a blog I could post my writings. So while living in Austin, Texas, on January 30, 2012, TomPerna.org was born.

This news ranks up there with the accomplishments that have paved the way to get to this point: acceptance into the St. Ignatius Institute at USF, graduating from college in 1997, and receiving my Masters in Theology from Franciscan in 2010.

First, I would like to give Praise and Thanksgiving to Jesus Christ, who has given me the ability to write and proclaim His Gospel message as part of the lay faithful in the Catholic Church. Also, I give thanksgiving to His Blessed Mother who I write about weekly, and the Saints of the Church, who are perpetual examples of human frailty mixed with Holiness. I ask for their help many times when I am writing.

I would also like to thank my family, Dad (who is watching from a different plain in eternity), my Mom, and my sister, for their constant support and encouragement.

A huge thank you goes out to Kevin Knight, Editor of New Advent, who first started posting my blog posts to that site.

A big thanks goes out to Greg Lamatrice, who brought attention to my “Mondays with Mary” series to the editors at Emmaus Road Publishing.

Another big thanks goes out to Chris Erikson at the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology for staying in contact with me and sending emails during the whole process.

Thank you to all my friends and followers on my blog and through the social media sites where my writing is published.

Thank you to my pastor, boss, and friend, Fr. Will Schmid, who allows me to work for him at the parish, but also work on this manuscript (and others I am working on now). Fr. Will – it’s time for the Cadillac Cigars.

To purchase my book, click on the title link above or here and you will be directed to the Emmaus Road Publishing website.

This contribution is available at http://tomperna.org/2015/09/08/my-first-published-book-understanding-catholic-teaching-on-the-blessed-virgin-mary/

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Myth of Quality Time

You hear about quality time a lot but I really think that quantity time with a person is really what strengthens a relationship. That’s when you really get to know somebody. You get to know their strengths and their weaknesses and that brings you closer. That’s what ‘Time Is Love’ is all about. –Josh Turner

What is more important, the quality of time with your family or quantity of time? We have spent the last 40 years trying to convince ourselves that quality time is what is important. But is it?

In the today’s time-famine culture, business comes first. Two working parents are the norm and finding time for anything is difficult. And so we rationalize that quality trumps quality and we give lip service to the relationships we have with our spouse and kids. We promise to spend some “quality time” with our kids, but rarely do.

A survey a few years ago said that the average child spends 30 minutes a week with his mom and 15 minutes with his dad, hardly quality or quantity time.

Twenty five hundred 5th graders were asked, “What is the one thing you want to have more of?” Their answer was “more time with my Mom and Dad!” And, it’s not the once a year trip to the zoo or amusement park they want, but just time hanging out, being together, being close.

“There’s no such thing as quality time; there’s only quantity time.” –Steve Schirripa

Has the myth of quality time become a self-serving rationalization for not spending time with family? Is it a way of diluting ourselves into shortchanging our children and spouses?

Do you want good kids? Then, spend some time with them. Real parenting takes place when we are together. Real parenting is spontaneous, and opportunities to teach life lessons happen when we are least expecting it. It’s something that can’t be planned and scheduled on your calendar like any other appointment. You can’t say, “I think I’ll give my family a little quality time Wednesday from 2 until 3.” Sorry, it doesn’t work that way.

So, what can we do to have more time with our families, spouses and kids? How can we give them the time that they deserve? Here are a few ideas to try:

1. Sit down and have dinner together. In my family everyone would agree that sitting down to dinner as often as possible, every night if you can, is one of our favorite times. It has become a valuable family tradition. It gives family members a time to talk, share, ask questions and feel part of something bigger than them. And, it connects you to each others lives.

“He said to them, “Come away by yourselves to a deserted place and rest a while.” People were coming and going in great numbers, and they had no opportunity even to eat.” –Mark 6:31

2. Leave the smart phone at the door. Like most people, I am tethered to my smart phone all day. But, when I walk into the house at the end of the day, I leave my smart phone at the door. Being connected 24 hours a day makes every call, text, email and Facebook notification more important than your family. Recently, I saw a guy at a hotel pool vacationing with his family. He was splashing around in the pool with his kids but he was wearing a Bluetooth headset in case some important call came in. Really? Stop it!

3. Cut out the non-essential activities. Poker nights, Monday Night Football at the local pub with friends, girl’s night out and that extra Zumba class are great, but don’t make them an excuse for not spending more time with the kids. Some nights might be better spent at home playing games, eating pizza and watching TV as a family. Plan that special date night with your husband or wife this week, then next week take the same amount of time to plan an activity with your family.

4. Make some time for prayer. Grace before meals, a bedtime prayer before lights out, and thanking God for the time we have together binds us as a family and give us a sense of gratitude for our blessings.

I often say that I have never met anyone who on their death bed said, “I wish I would have spent more time at work.” But, I have heard many people say that their greatest regret was not spending more time with their spouse and kids.

Time flies, kids grow fast. In the blink of an eye they will be young adults. Don’t miss the opportunities to spend some time together. Remember, there is no real “quality time” unless you have some “quantity time.”

If you enjoyed this reflection, you can have them emailed to you every Monday morning, and not miss a single one.  Subscribe by clicking here. You will be sent an e-mail to verify your subscription.  Just click on the link and you’re all set.

Did you know that there is a Finding God’s Grace podcast too?  A new episode is posted every Wednesday.  They are less than three minutes long and a great way to start your day.   If you would like to subscribe to his podcast, delivered every Thursday morning at 7AM to your e-mail, simply click here.

I love it when you share my stories with your family and friends.  Below are links to share on your social media sites. Thanks for sharing!

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2015 Tony Agnesi

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Faith like a child [at Gingerlocity]

This morning the Gospel speaks about those who come to Christ with faith like a child, for the kingdom of God belongs to those who approach God and Christ in full confidence and trust….as children do.  Somewhere along the way we grow away from that.  Perhaps some fortunate few never experience this distance from Christ, but most of us will at some point; a broken heart, a  person we love dearly who disappoints or even hurts us, justice seemingly neglected, doubts, hypocrisy, what have you…..a  million different ways.  The good news is when we return to Christ we are that much richer in our relationship with him as we look back and see exactly where His hand was mightily present in our lives during our time away from Him.

We have a son in that time away from God right now.  Doing his own thing.  It is a painful season to be in, I won’t lie.  We’ve second guessed ourselves and had pointless arguments that go nowhere and leave us all frustrated.  We are at the point where he will attend Mass when we request and we have let go to let God do His thing.  As painful as it is, I have every assurance that we have planted that seed and watered it.  That seed has benefited from Christ in action through friends and family.  We continue to pray for him and each and every Mass is offered up in our hearts for the faith of our son and all our children.  God’s timing is perfect and I trust fully that He has this situation entirely in His hands.  Faith of a child.

A friend of ours at church asked us to join in an anointing of the sick in the chapel after Mass for a woman at church.  She is a Eucharistic minister and her boys are similar in age to our own.  She has a tumor and our retired priest was going to be doing the anointing.  We don’t know her personally, but the parallels in their marriage and family to ours are similar and there was every reason to be present.  About 40 people were present, every person connected by a hand, all leading to her throughout the prayers and the anointing.  It was incredibly powerful and touching.  All these people, together, in total trust and faith that God has this situation in his hands.  Not a dry eye.  I spoke to her briefly after the anointing and she stated it was the first time she had been pain free during the anointing. Faith of a child.

God is present.  Every day.  Everywhere.  When we approach him in the same mannerism and trust as a child, we, too can experience the tangibility of the Holy Spirit.  Let us all aspire to live with faith like a child, especially in times of adversity.

Mark 10: 13-16

And people were bringing children to him that he might touch them,

but the disciples rebuked them.

When Jesus saw this he became indignant and said to them,

“Let the children come to me;

do not prevent them, for the kingdom of God belongs to

such as these.

Amen, I say to you,

whoever does not accept the kingdom of God like a child

will not enter it.”

Then he embraced them and blessed them,

placing his hands on them.

This contribution is available at http://gingerlocity.wordpress.com/2015/10/04/faith-like-a-child/

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Us and Them [at bukas palad]

Year B / Ordinary Time / Twenty-sixth Sunday

Readings: Numbers 11.25-29 / Psalm 18.8-10, 12-13, 14(R/v 9a) / James 5.1-6 / Mark 9.38-43, 45, 47-48

Have you ever watched boys play football at recess time? They begin by dividing themselves into teams. I often see our secondary boys selecting their teams whenever I look out onto the green field at St Joseph’s Institution. Each team has a strong sense of togetherness, that sense of “us” versus “them” when the match begins.

“Us” and “them”. This is what we hear at the beginning of today’s gospel reading. John is complaining to Jesus of one who drives out demons but is not one of them, one of Jesus’ followers. This man is one of those.

John’s use of “us” and “them” echoes a very human way we all interact with others. Think of how we express ourselves towards one another: you, me; men, women; Asian, not American; straight, not gay; professional and blue collared; long time parishioners and newbies. And as Pope Francis reminds us in his recent homily in New York City, city dwellers and the faceless migrants in their midst.

This divide between “us” and “them” has also marked how humankind has fought to relate to God. It is as old as the story of the Israelites claiming Yahweh as their God against the Egyptians and the Caanites, and it is as contemporary as the actions of Islamic fundamentalists like ISIS who persecute Assyrian Christians.

Sadly, human beings don’t usually think of the common things we share; we are quicker to highlight our differences. We don’t need to look very far for this evidence. How many times have you and I welcomed those like us to receive communion but harshly turned others away from communion because he is divorced, she has remarried, they are homosexual. We judge those others on the basis of who’s better than and who’s worse than in our eyes, not in God’s. Sadly, I sometimes do this; may be you do too.

Our first reading challenges us to examine if this human way of judging and dividing is our way of living. We hear of how God blesses seventy elders for them to help Moses govern the wandering Israelites and prophesize about God. Two of them are however not present at this blessing. Yet God’s spirit comes to rest on them and they begin to prophesy in the camp. Moses receives a complaint against them and a call to stop them. He does not. Instead, he wishes for God’s Spirit to embrace everyone else. Moses responds as he does because he recognizes what is common between the elders who were present at the blessing and those who were not: God’s spirit is in them all.

Are we like Moses in our everyday life, striving to see God’s spirit present in another?  Do we understand how God’s spirit is common between us and them because all are created in God’s image? Or, are we simply distracted by differences?

Our gospel reading challenges us even more. It asks us to reflect on “Who can do the works of grace in the name of Jesus?” and “Who belongs and who does not?” These questions force us to reflect honestly on how our ways of judging and dividing prevent us from accomplishing our baptismal call to mission.

Our answers to these questions will either cripple us from cooperating with those God places in our lives for the mission or free us to partner them. I believe that whether we work in the world or minister in the church, whether we are lay, religious or ordained, whether we are charismatically gifted or spiritually poor for the mission, God never calls us to mission alone but in community.

Jesus teaches this in the first section of today’s Gospel passage when he answers John’s complaint. He says: those who do good work do so with and in his name; and they should not be prevented from doing so. For Jesus, these people are the collaborators God wants us to reach out to and include in our mission. Why? Because their good works come from and lead back to God.

Indeed, God’s goodness can be fuel for our mission when we draw on the life-giving experience of inclusiveness. This is possible when we welcome another into our Christian life, faith and work as our partner and collaborator, and not as a competitor or enemy. For example, children complain about parents, as much as parents complain about children. Each however needs the other for the mission of loving each other into that communion and commonwealth we call “the family”.  Their mission would be poorer if one didn’t have the other.

Christian discipleship is about following Jesus’ way of bringing about inclusion and unity, not exclusion and division. Hence, “us” and “them” cannot be on our lips, nor can it be the fruit of our labors. This is why Jesus’ teaching is important: it answers the question about who belongs and who does not, who is in and who is out, who is with us and who is against us.

Jesus shows us two ways to be inclusive and to build community in the second section of today’s gospel passage.

First, Jesus teaches generosity toward others. We cannot be generous unless we learn to be less selfish and self-centered. Doing this better transforms us for mission. This is why being generous is how we are blessed for mission. This is the lesson behind Jesus’ words about generosity towards others of goodwill when we offer them a cup of water.

Second, Jesus cautions against division by leading others into sin. When he teaches about ridding a community of those who lead others into sin, he is challenging us to consider how our actions can divide and break up.  We know how painful this action is because we squirm when we hear Jesus’ analogy of removing body parts that make the soul sinful. Jesus’ warning is wisdom for our mission: we are to foster the one body of many parts that God’s kingdom must be on earth, not divide it.

The purpose of Christian life is to lovingly reconcile differences into union with God and communion with all. If you agree with me about this, then, Jesus’ teaching today is not about being better than others. It is really about being better for them. Jesus himself did this for the disciples, as he still does this for us: he meets us in every moment of our lives to inspire us to become better disciples. Then, he sends us out to do the same for someone else. It seems that you and I are better for each other because Jesus has made us better than we judge ourselves to be.

The teams on the SJI football field dribble and back-pass, they defend and strike, they kick and rush and score. When the end of recess bell sounds, they give each other a high-five. Some give one another a slap on the back, while others give a thumbs up saying, “good game” to one another. Then, they return to class, sweaty and smelly, but together to continue learning.

Their coming together again reminds me of the kind of unity our Christian communities can enjoy when you and I remember who we really are with Jesus. We are not just his students, nor is he just our teacher. Rather, Jesus and you and I are one in God.

Now, whom else should each of us invite to join us in our oneness?

Preached at St Ignatius Church

Photo from imgkid.com

This contribution is available at http://bukas-palad.blogspot.sg/2015/09/homily-us-and-them.html

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The whole world is a Friary

When St Francis of Assisi had rebuilt a tumbledown little church given to him by the Benedictines, he called it St Mary of the Angels. It was here, over eight hundred years ago, that he heard God speaking to him through the Gospels while attending Mass. The message was simple – now that your time living as a hermit is over, you and your disciples must go out, preaching the Gospel to all as Jesus had done with his disciples. Francis so loved this little church that he said it would always be the hub and the home of his Franciscan Family for ever. When the first friars landed in America they immediately built a church and called it after that little church that St Francis had rebuilt with his own hands. Naturally they called it after their spiritual home, St Mary of the Angels or in the Spanish language that they spoke: – Santa Maria de los Ángeles. The town that grew up around it took the same name, until it came to be known simply as Los Angeles, as it is still known today.

Whilst living the life of a hermit the Holy Spirit had been purifying St Francis of sin and selfishness, enabling him to experience Jesus, as he was being brought to birth again within him. This profound spiritual birth was brought about by the same Holy Spirit who had first brought Jesus to birth in Mary’s womb. He was aware of it too, not just through a new conviction that had been implanted into his head, but through a deeply felt experience that enveloped and suffused every fibre of his being. The man he came to call Brother Jesus was now as close to him as he was to himself, and in him, and through him, he came to experience something of the vortex of life and love that endlessly flows between the Father and the Son, which is the Holy Spirit. Everywhere St Francis went, people rushed out to meet him, because in meeting him they met the man who had been brought to birth within him. The more his fame spread the more people ‘worshipped’ the very ground he walked on. No wonder they called him ‘The Second Christ’ for that’s what he was for all who came to meet him.

What is known in the mystic way as the ‘Transforming Union’ takes place the very moment purification comes to an end, as, in and through Jesus they are united with the love of God more fully than ever before. It is instantaneous. The very moment a person is sufficiently purified of the selfishness that keeps the pure love of God out, is the very moment when that love comes flooding in, not just into the mind, where it had already been partially experienced before, but into every part of the personality. The receiver swoons with the sheer delight of experiencing what Jesus Christ had experienced throughout his life on earth. Before, mystical experiences had come and gone, but now in the ‘Transforming Union’ the experience of being in Christ where they are possessed by the love of God, is all but permanent. It would be impossible to pinpoint the exact moment when this happened to St Francis. However the sources enable us to see quite clearly the immediate effects of this profound transformation within him. Whenever a person experiences the delight of being totally possessed by the Holy Spirit, they just want to revel in that experience. Understandably they are tempted to do nothing else, but relish what they have received, to the exclusion of all else.

This is precisely what happened to St Francis. Only a short time before, God had called him to become an itinerant preacher, but now he experienced a desire to stay at home to bathe in the glory of what he had received. Did this mean that he should forsake that calling? He didn’t trust himself to decide, so he sent Brother Masseo to Sister Clare at the convent of San Damiano, and to her cousin Brother Sylvester at the hermitage of ‘Le Carceri’ to pray to God for enlightenment. The reply from both of them was in complete accord. “God did not call you for yourself, but for others.” The moment he heard the reply from Brother Masseo he took to the road again, taking Masseo with him and Brother Angelo, a young knight he had recruited into the brotherhood at Rieti. But now it was a different Francis who took the road to Rome by way of Montefalco.

This incident, not only had a life changing significance for St Francis, but for the Church too in his day, and, if we only reflect on it, for us too in our day. In short, we undoubtedly need to come to know and experience the love of God at work within us, but if when such experiences come, we want to do no more in life than revel in them or spend the rest of our life hankering after them, we have missed the point. They are given not just for us, but, like all charismatic gifts, for others too, that we may love and serve them as Jesus always did. If, as we try to love God in prayer, such experiences are given to us, thank God for them, but remember they are given for others too. If we do not realise this and continually fail to use them for this purpose then such profound mystical experiences will simply disappear. Our love for God will turn sour if we only seek it for ourselves and not to enable us to share it with others through the otherworldly kindness and compassion that was embodied in all that Jesus said and did. As St John would have put it – ‘Saying you love God while at the same time you fail to love your neighbour, simply means that your love of him is illusory.’ It’s all a matter of balance. However it must be said that today the greatest danger is not of lingering too long in prayer, but of lingering too long in trying to serve others without the profound God-given love that make this possible. The balance must be redressed in this era of frenetic busyness.

The love that St Francis received through the Holy Spirit, not only filled him with love to share with others, but with wisdom too, that enabled him to see God’s plan as never before. If all things were created in Brother Jesus, then all things are brothers and sisters to each other. The Philosopher Plato  said that the whole world was a prison and the men and women were merely prisoners. Shakespeare  said that all the world is a stage and the men and women merely players. The President of the United State said that the whole world is a market place, and men and women buyers and sellers. But St Francis of Assisi said that the whole world is a Friary and the men and women are brothers and sisters to each other, and so were all things, created by the love of God. It is not just Brother Francis and Sister Clare then, but Brother Sun and Sister Moon, Brother Wolf and Sister Lamb, Brother Fire and Sister Water, for the whole of creation is a brotherhood and sisterhood with a common Father in whose Son we were created from the beginning. Furthermore, if the whole world is a friary then the highways and the byways of that world must be the cloisters of this friary. So from now on, whenever Francis walks through these cloisters with his brothers, he orchestrates the whole of creation around him to give praise and thanks with him to their common Father, through Jesus their eldest brother, beginning with the birds of Cannara and Bevagna, to whom he preached on his way to Montefalco.

As the story of Francis further unfolds then, it is full of his love for his brothers and sisters, the birds, the animals, the trees and the plants and even inanimate things that listened to him and obeyed him without question when some of his own brethren didn’t! When he tells the swallows to remain silent at Alviano so that his listeners can hear what he is saying, they obey him. When he asks the falcon to wake him in the night for prayer, it does so, and when he orders the man-eating wolf to stop attacking the villagers of Gubbio, it obeys. But most of all, the story of St Francis is full of his love for Brother Jesus, who emptied himself of everything to enter into the world that was created through him and in him, just so that he could enter into us. He in whom all things have been created then chose to enter into us. For St Francis this was the ultimate expression of the poverty that Brother Jesus chose to embrace, and he wished to imitate him. It was not just that he abandoned a home of absolute bliss to make his home amongst us, but that he finally humbled himself to enter into our common food and drink, bread and wine, to make his home within us, as he had promised at the Last Supper, to lead us into the ultimate mystical union. That’s why St Francis wrote in the very first of his admonitions:-

“Every day He humbles himself as he did when he came down from His heavenly throne into the Virgin’s womb. Every day He comes to us and lets us see his abjection when He descends from the bosom of the Father into the hands of the priest at the altar. In this way our Lord remains continually with His followers, as he promised- ‘Behold I am with you all days even unto the consummation of the world.’”(Admonition 1)

The vortex of supernatural life and love that endlessly revolves between the Father and the Son is the Holy Spirit, who Francis wanted to be the inner dynamism that animated and ruled the brotherhood and the sisterhood that he founded. Indeed he wanted it to be written into his rule that the real superior, who loves and binds together all his brothers and sisters, is the Holy Spirit. What he wanted for them was what he wanted for the whole Church. He wanted it to be a friary too, a place where everyone was bound together in love on their way to the Father, in and together with the One he called Brother Jesus, in whom we all live and move and have our being. St Francis loved St John’s Gospel more than any other, because it begins with all things being created by God in his only Son, the perfect expression of Himself, who he therefore calls the Word. Then it continues with that Word being made flesh in the world that was created in him, as a helpless baby in a wooden crib, and then dying for us as a helpless man on a wooden cross. But then he rises to glory. The Son in whom the whole world was created now rules over this world as Christ the King. But as promised at the Last Supper, this King continues to humble himself to enter into our world, this time through simple bread and wine transformed into himself. Now he rules from ‘above’ and from ‘within’ by the same love that made St Francis into the man that those who came to know him called him ‘The Second Christ’.

This contribution is available at http://blog.davidtorkington.com/the-whole-world-is-a-friary/

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From a Child of Divorce: What I Wish They Would Have Told Me [at Blossoming Joy]

As the Catholic discussions on divorce, remarriage, etc. increase as a result of the upcoming Vatican Summit on the Family, I throw in my unsolicited pennies and beg Catholics to avoid one thing during those discussions: Never, even under the generous umbrella of mercy, allow adult pastoral considerations to divert attention from the great needs of the suffering children of divorce. A faster annulment process (or other changes) may or may not be good for the Church... But it doesn't fundamentally change the crushing blow that divorce is to the family. Even when it is necessary, it is still a great suffering.

When we minimize the language of what divorce really is, we also minimize the real affect on human beings... and we unfortunately communicate lies to kids: "There must be something wrong with YOU to feel so bad and broken over something that isn't really a big deal."  It makes kids (and abandoned spouses) feel isolated and crazy. My own experience was that it caused me to bear an unwieldy burden of guilt even as a very young child. Over and over again I heard variations on the following...

"It's for the best."

"It's good for your parents... you should be glad that they can live happier lives."

"Don't you want them to be happy?"

"It is better this way."

"They did a brave thing."

"Nobody should have to live with someone they don't love."

"You'll understand when you're older."

"You are not being fair to them."

"Children do not understand what makes adults happy."

"Be grateful you didn't have to grow up in an unhappy household."

"You will learn to think and feel differently with time."

"Do you want to make your mom cry?"

"You were too young to be affected by it... you're just trying to get attention now."

"You are being ungrateful."

"God does not want your parents to be unhappy."

And over and over again I was pierced by the pain of isolation and brokenness that seemed to only have it's roots in MY guilty stupid soul. If divorce was "good" "better" and "best" and my parents were wholly justified and excellent decision makers, than I must have been a worthless person for all the sadness, grief, and anger I carried. While my own parents were lifted up and extolled for their courage by the long list of counselors, friends, and priests I sought out for help with my runaway grief, I was crushed under the knowledge that my grief (which I was helpless to) was standing in the way of their happiness.

In spite of the fact that I was very young when my parents divorced (and who received a declaration of nullity), I still had to process the loss through each developmental stage. Understanding does not come all at once. Grief progresses through the journey of understanding. That included not only my own developmental stages but theirs as well, as they entered into new relationships, changed jobs and homes, and progressed through their relationship with each other. Divorce isn't a one time event like getting a tooth pulled. It is a dramatic, traumatic, and ongoing change in human relationships.  (In my parents' defense, I do not think they understood those complexities in my life and did the best they could under the circumstances.)

I repeated the lies told to me by others for years because I thought my real feelings were wrong. I stuck to the party line: "Yeah... my folks split. It's for the best. I'm glad they're happier." The truth is that the best for any child is a loving intact family. While I know that it isn't always possible and that separation is sometimes necessary, I maintain that the tragedy and dysfunction should be acknowledged so that the child is fully free to grieve... and to heal.

I caution those reading against telling children that divorce is a "good" thing. It might be a necessary thing, but that is a different matter entirely from good, better, or best. If it is a necessity, it is a *tragic* necessity. It is tragic that there is some kind of danger that would necessarily break a family apart. Recognition of that truth allows plenty of room for gratitude for safety and health and whatever respite comes from a necessary separation. But my caution is against speaking of the division as a good in itself. It doesn't compute in a child's mind... to say that it is "good" that their family is broken. Tell them you are sorry. And then allow them to grieve and heal. I am not a mental health professional and I don't know what every child needs...  but I know I would have given a lot to hear these words:

"What happened between your mom and dad was bad. Families are designed to love each other forever and that didn't happen in yours. Your family was dismantled without your consent. And now you are left with an anger and sorrow that are justified. Everything you are feeling is NORMAL. And you will grow through it... and thrive. God will bring joy out of suffering. And I will walk with you."

That wouldn't have fixed everything but it would have taken a burden off of my soul and freed my heart and mind to begin healing much earlier. But the counselors, teachers, priests and professionals in my K-12 years didn't say it. Not in Catholic grade schools, not in the first grade when I made an appointment with my pastor, not family friends, not the high school professionals; not even in the junior high and teen divorce support groups I joined in school desperately seeking a balm for my ongoing guilt and grief. Those groups focused instead on affirming my right to feel in general, but then attempted to change those feelings as if they were disordered and out of place. They were not. I was normal. But I didn't know.

I live a good and happy life and the Lord has healed up so many of my childhood wounds and relationships. But I regret to see that the conversations in the Church still center around the feelings of adults to the detriment of the grieving children. If I had a dime for every time I heard a parent tell me his or her kid was "fine" after their divorce, I might not be rich but I'd be able to have a nice steak dinner for two! "Kids are resilient." Yes, they are. But they are not made of stone. And they are deeply impacted by division in the home. It becomes a part of their soul formation.

It is very difficult to speak truth in love to people in a divorced situation. We worry it will damage relationships or make friends or family angry with us or cause the child to think poorly of their parents. But the alternative is letting a child believe destructive lies about themselves. The injury already exists and our acknowledging it does not make it appear where it wasn't before. So let's all just get over ourselves and speak life to children...

"Some things hurt because they are fundamentally disordered."

It's okay to tell that to kids. And... it's okay to tell that to their parents.

To all my readers who have been touched by divorce... this post is not a judgment on your situation. I assume the best of you and am so sorry that this sorrow has come into your lives. I write only to draw attention to those children who are suffering while adults are preoccupied with adult needs. It is my great hope that conversations like this will help Catholics bring the needs of those young people into greater focus. You are invited to share your (charitable) stories and comments below.

P.S. Some people ask if I would choose not to have my stepmom in my life. Would I erase all of that good to live in an unhappy household with married bio parents? That's not a fruitful question. God allows free will. He allows us to choose to hurt and to divide. He also brings tremendously beautiful fruits from the seed of suffering. I am grateful.

This contribution is available at http://www.blossomingjoy.com/blog/2015/8/14/divorce

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Fessing up on my 47th: I will disappoint you [at Peace Garden Passage]

From my own count, I have about 37 candles on the cake pictured above. Give or take a few I suppose. Either way, I’m thinking that was the last year anyone tried to actually find enough candles and enough cake to actually make it accurate. I mean, my heavens, it took two cakes then!

Flash forward to today, my 47th birthday. Where did the time go? How did those babies in that picture there become a fifth and seventh-grader? How did the blonde boy you can barely see off to the right became a man?

I thought I was old at 37. Now I know I am. I’ve got gray hairs creeping in, and skin is looking a little saggy. But those are just cosmetic kinds of things. I also have pain in my feet and knees when I walk too long and bursitis in my shoulders, which limits my ability to do everything I’d like to do.

I promised myself years ago that when I reached this stage I would not write incessantly about my aches and pains. I do not want to become THAT woman. But…it’s inevitable that as age encroaches upon us, we are going to need to vent a little about it. I just don’t want it to rob me of my joy nor anyone else of theirs. So I am going to try to hold back. But there, it’s out there. I’m old.

Just this past year, I had to buy readers for the first time. After going my whole life with perfect vision, it finally caught up to me. I have to giggle because in second grade when my sister and a lot of my peers discovered they needed glasses, I was so envious. Now, finally the day has come when I need glasses, for some things anyway. Readers come pretty stylish these days, though, and I kind of like to wear them. It’s really not so bad after all.

In fact, I have reminders all around me that I am living a privileged life, simply because I am still living. Each year is a gift, not a sentence. So even if life isn’t as comfortable as we might like, as long as we are here, we have a chance to make a difference. And that’s what I want to focus on more than anything else.

By the time this posts, my mama will be here for what has become an annual birthday visit. We’ll have enjoyed a quiet lunch together downtown Fargo. I will have been out to the sidewalk even before that to pray for the women who feel hopeless about their situation, with the hope they might see a way out of the darkness they’re in. Then, for a while, I’ll be in a dentist’s chair for an annual cleaning (glad to have all my teeth still!), and after that, will do some after-school running, all leading to a family birthday meal somewhere pleasant and yummy, hopefully.

I’m looking forward to celebrating my life, which leads me to the point of this post, and my cryptic title. At 47, I want to share with you some of the best advice I’ve ever gotten. Something that, at a certain point in my life, was a huge, eye-opening, Aha! moment. The wisdom imparted to me, and that I have carried with me ever since, is simply this: I am going to disappoint you.

Let me go further. Not only will I disappoint you at some point — maybe by something I’ve said or done or the way I’ve said it or done it — but you’ll be disappointed by others, too. If you’re a parent, your child is going to disappoint you. If a child, both your parents will disappoint you at some point. Your cousins will let you down. Your grandparents will prove themselves human in your eyes. Your aunt or uncle may well bring you down in ways you couldn’t have imagined back when you thought they were the cool version of your parents. Your best friend? Not so much. She’s going to rock your world with something that is going to bum you out. And your neighbor? It’s a done deal; disappointment is already on its way.

When I first was faced with this truth, it stunned me, and then, ever so slowly, I woke from the fog and realized, this is the best piece of news I could have heard, today and maybe most days.

Here’s the thing. Along with this very…er…disappointing revelation comes some very good news. There is one being in the entire universe who will never, ever, ever, not a chance, not even possible, forget it it’s not going to happen…disappoint you. And that being is God. Just God, and no other. Everyone else? Will bring you down at one point or another, in ways large or small.

This news is freeing on several different levels — I hope you will soon see it, too.

First, recognizing that we are going to disappoint people is humbling, but in a way that puts things in perspective. It’s not a license to go and disappoint people. It’s a gift that helps us be aware of our and others’ limitations, so when the disappointment goes down, we won’t be surprised, by either our own failings or theirs. We won’t think, “Now wait a minute, that person was perfect, so they weren’t supposed to disappoint me!” Or worse, “How could I have let them down?” No human being is perfect, so yes, disappointment on both the giving and receiving ends is inevitable. It just is.

Two, when someone disappoints you, you realize you have two choices: 1) wallow in the disappointment or 2), realize, “Well, I knew it was going to happen eventually. After all, they’re human. And human beings mess up. Now that we’ve got that out of the way, perhaps we can move on.”

See what I mean? It’s a GOOD thing.

Third, whether it’s us disappointing someone else, or others disappointing us, we have the constant assurance that there is one being who is above all of the disappointment stuff, who will never, if we are seeing God rightly, let us down. Never. Isn’t possible. Don’t even try to contrive such an absurdity. God is all good. God cannot, in truth, do anything that would not be in our best interest, nor bring us to a better, more fulfilling place than where we began.

Fourth, when we are disappointed, God can be the place for us to fall upon and be comforted. Then, realizing our human propensity to disappoint or be disappointed, we can fill ourselves up in God’s love and then off we go, out into the world, no worse for wear.

It’s a wonderful revelation to know that we are imperfect, but God is not. It frees us to not get too hung up on our imperfections and to stay fixated on the one who is truly perfect, and always loving, and never prone to disappointment.

Now, I have to give a shout-out to my dear friend and spiritual mentor, Linda, who gave me this insight years ago; wisdom that has stayed with me all these years and helped me get through some of my toughest moments. Thank you, Linda. I am so grateful for how you have shown Christ and His love for me to me. Thanks for being there during so many of my disappointments, too, whether self-inflicted or those others have caused me, and for helping me see it rightly.

Q4U: How does this idea surrounding disappointment sit with you? What bothers you about it? What about it brings you hope?

This contribution is available at http://roxanesalonen.com/2015/09/fessing-up-on-my-47th-i-will-disappoint-you/

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Watching the Pope's Mass in Philadelphia from the comfort of our domestic church [at Catholic Review]

We don’t tend to watch much TV. You’re probably thinking that’s because we’re all reading War and Peace or reciting Robert Louis Stevenson poems. Actually, it’s because if the TV is on, it’s usually Netflix.

But a Papal Mass on a Sunday afternoon? That’s the perfect chance for a family to gather around the TV. And, although we have talked quite a bit about the fact that Pope Francis is visiting our country, and our kindergartener has even been learning about him in school—yay for Catholic school!—we hadn’t watched any of the papal visit as a family.

To make it fun, I told our boys we would have a little party. They spread towels out in front of the TV and waited. And waited. And waited. Mass couldn’t start soon enough.

We ate hot dogs (Franks in honor of Pope Francis), “pope-aroni,” “Vatican Veggies,” bags of “pope-corn” (leftover from the ones we gave to

Loyola

students at our campus

9/27/2015 10:50:28 PM

By

This contribution is available at http://catholicreview.org/blogs/open-window/2015/09/27/watching-the-popes-mass-in-philadelphia-from-the-comfort-of-our-domestic-church

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I Live in a Factory [at Saints 365]

Last week was a rough one. Our homeschool was just two weeks into the back to school

torture

, ahem, routine that occurs every September and already I found myself out of patience, out of energy, and out of gas...literally.  Turning the ignition key of my car early one morning as my kids loaded their backpacks for our once-a-week co-op, I glanced at the dashboard and saw the following sad sight:

EMPTY... Beyond empty....Well beyond empty....

Empty, as in no gas left.  Empty, as in you are goin' nowhere fast sister. Empty, as in yes, you need to sheepishly creep up the stairs and ask your freshly showered hubby to attempt to locate some gas in the garage and fill it up.

A funny thing happened, though.  Instead of the reaction I was expecting from my husband (think something akin to complete exasperation plus a dash of "How many times have I told you..." thrown in for good measure), what I received was a cheerful "I'll be right there" followed by my knight in shining armor track shorts filling up my car without a word of complaint.  No snarky remarks, no "I warned you", no sarcasm, no nothing.  Just kindness and love.

I have to be honest - I was a little bit shocked.  Not that my husband is some sort of an ogre.  He most certainly is not.  It is just that this was not my first go-around with the empty gas thing, and I fully expected to be reminded of that.  His "lack of exasperation" left me a little bewildered - until one of my fellow co-op Moms suggested that maybe he was aiming for a holy reaction - instead of a fleshy one.

The gas thing wasn't the only drama that last week brought.  There was the sibling squabble that landed my kids separated and in their rooms for four hours.  And the Mommy meltdown when I discovered the disastrous state of the school room after I left it for five mere minutes.

I supposed that these things shouldn't surprise me.  After all, I live in a factory.

And life in a factories can be messy, imperfect and downright hard work.

The factory I live in aims to construct one of the most challenging things ever attempted - a family.  More specifically, a holy family.

This factory, Pope Francis explained in his address to the Festival of Families, is a "factory of hope....a factory of resurrection."  The family is a factory where the Holy Father acknowledges "there are difficulties. But those difficulties are overcome with love." Pope Francis has clearly spent some time in this factory. He accurately describes some of the struggles families face, some of the struggles my own family faces, saying: "Families, we quarrel, and sometimes plates can fly. And children bring headaches. I won’t speak about mother-in-laws."

My husband's reaction to the no-gas debacle was a demonstration of life in my factory of hope.  My children's sincere apologies to each other, and generous forgiveness of my own failings were evidence of the love that overcomes difficulties.  The smiles that greet me each morning, no matter how rough the previous day was, are a testimony that my family truly lives in a factory of resurrection.

We have a lifetime of work ahead of us in our factory, but we undertake the effort relying on the love of the Lord for each of us and the love that we have for each other.

Read Related Posts Here: The Angelus: Domestic Church Style Mortification, The Heroic Minute and Love

This contribution is available at http://saints365.blogspot.com/2015/09/i-live-in-factory.html

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The Rights of Evil [at WordPress.com]

Redefinition of Our Society

In order for this experiment to succeed, man has found the necessity to redefine those traditions and absolute truths into new concepts for the use of the future society.  And why is this?

Before there was the invention of man’s application of his mind into the real world – technology – he lived as a species who thrived due to his genetic predisposition to the formation of a society, and the nucleus of that society was the genetic family of the parents, a man and a woman, their children, sired through the heterosexual union of the parents, and the extended relationships brought about as a result of such focus.  Society was a relationship between related people who shared a common cause; their security in a world that demanded their eventual death.  Living together as a unit simply means common genetics, physical appearance and abilities, practices, and beliefs.

In such a world as this, each individual relied upon the acknowledged grace of the other.  Their commonalities exceeded their separations.  Each person, within their enclave of family, could experience their own form of humanity and not find exclusion due to their unique natures, personalities, and flaws.  This genetic form of love between family members was a buffer against the inaccurate prejudices and judgments natural to the character of man, and thus they all, within the broad scope of the family, could be themselves; flaws and all.  This was not by choice, but by man’s very genetic structure in association with the dogmatic world about him.

The modern world is quite a different place.  Genetics, posited as a confinement, is being dissolved by the liberation of technology, and so it is all about choice now; at least a choice as defined by the power of desire and not necessity.  Genetics stand in the way of technology and its freedom of human choice, and so it must go.  But it can’t, for it is the absolute nature of mankind, and his technology has not yet created a way for man to control the pace or direction of his own evolution as a species.  In this new model for humanity, there is no necessity for family structure, and without the family structure there is no genetic predisposition to familial love, and therefore no necessity to conform in genetics, physical appearances and abilities, practices, and beliefs.

But for common ground to be found between humans, so they may survive as a society, there must be that quality we call love simply because it is the only quality of man that prevents him from murdering the person standing next to him simply to eat his sandwich.  Law has proven completely insufficient to the purpose.  Just take a body count of the prisoners in American penal institutions in the past fifty years.  So the secularist must redefine that which he cannot kill in fear that he will kill himself, love and all of the institutions that spin from it.  If the secular man does not redefine love to his personal ambitions, then he will suffer the prejudice and judgment of his unique character that was once secured by the family.  He knows this.

Flash Player

Recently, in starting up my computer, a window opened on my desktop suggesting I download the latest version of Flash Player.  It’s rationale for me to do so was based in its declaration that the top ten video games all run better with Flash Player.  Well, I do not play video games, and so I was left in a quandary as to why I should download this update.  What is it doing for me?  Flash Player had no pithy “one liner” that gave me any clue as to what I should do.  What was lacking here?  Doesn’t Flash Player know there are a lot of people who do not play video games and use computers?

Either they don’t know that or they don’t care.  In either case, what we do have is an impersonal invitation to their way of thinking and commerce.  I call it impersonal because it is neither directed to me, nor is it a personal, second-person communication that takes into consideration the obvious transformative effect of direct human-to-human contact.  Again, we have that messy, genetic thing entering into the room of play of the secular world.  The impersonal world of secularism – a mandatory condition of secularism – cannot replace the genetic interaction between individuals with a superior model that can transform the human mind as the genetic model can.  Secularism is stuck and yet stubborn.

Secularism has constructed an impersonal world where addictive, first-person appetites for “things” and virtual, third-person communications between individuals and groups have become the normal state of man in society.  In so doing we have subjugated ourselves to the “thing”.  We talk of our desires for possessions more than anything else in this impersonal world, and speak of personal desires – like a good marriage and strong family – only where it serves our impersonal desires.  This is why we fail so at personal endeavors; why divorce is so high despite good intentions, and why children are led to dysfunctional personalities despite all of our educational and psychological masturbation.

In subjugation to “things”, what were once many, co-existing forms of the person that existed in the true, genetic family, has now become the singular form of the impersonal, causal family.  In our call to inclusion we have created a model that perpetuates stereotypes and increases divisive “isms” through the removal of second-person experience.  You see this played out in our current twitter world.  Each of us have access to people on a level never seen before.  Our ability to touch through our technology is astounding, but we lack the ability for true compassion in our touch because we act in the third-person, and in so doing we are frequently judged for our apparent first-person ego.  Claim and counter claim is made, sides are drawn, and evil is the result.  Andy Warhol, I suspect, knew that one’s fifteen minutes of fame was not a good thing.

Only in second-person experience does there lie the transformative capability of personal, human preference and any opportunity for a lasting, true unity of choice between individuals.  Only in second-person experience can one find the practical use of their physical body, in the service of others, to be satisfied with the humility of the service.  Pride resides in first-person and third-person thoughts and activities, and can only be held in check through second-person relationships.

By the way, the most important actions a person engages in, that leads to the very real existence of one’s life, are all second-person in nature, and it starts with the conception of one’s life through the most sacred of second-person actions.  When a man and a woman choose to create life, they are committing themselves, by their very act together, to a life-long sacrifice of the self.  And while the secular adult sees his or her options to that commitment as possible and viable, just ask a child if it agrees that the pleasures of his or her parents trumps its own life potential.

When one has lost their personal identification in a society and is left with only their impersonal identification, their importance in the society is limited to their ability to define their preferences as good and therefore normative.  We know that we have subjugated our personal lives to the “things” of this world, and in our frustrations of such a committed loss we attempt to redefine the singular, impersonal form to our own viewpoint.  Innately we know that the loss of the second-person experience leaves us in a position of insecurity within the impersonal society.  With the loss of those personal, real conditions of family cohesion, inter-family relationships, and the sharing of like opinion, beliefs, and facts, we are left with a struggle to justify those conditions that separate us from the whole.  We end up trying to justify our weaknesses – those conditions that separate us in an impersonal society – because it is those weaknesses that become the only remaining essence of our personal nature.  So with the identification of those weaknesses, those “isms”, we then must redefine them into virtual strengths because the personal mind requires such for the existence of the personal body.

We know this, and perhaps we would return to the more comfortable surroundings of our past.  Unfortunately, we have built our secular philosophy into a physical reality through our technology, and that greatly impedes our ability to repent and reform.

The Architecture of Deception

I was recently in conversation with a woman who had just returned from Germany.  Knowing that I had just been in Spain for several weeks, she asked an odd question.

“Did you see many people on their cell phones?”

I was caught a bit off guard.  The tone of her voice told me her observations of German people entailed seeing few people obsessed with their cell phones.  My first thought was a mental image of all of the pilgrims who had their cell phones with them, and had little reservation in gabbing away with some friend back home while walking out a day’s journey across the mesa of Castile & Leon.  Somehow they believed that the intensity of their pilgrimage could not be harmed by the constant withdrawal from the intent for the sublime enjoyment of discussing the latest American Idol episode.  Getting my mind past that peeve of mine, I realized that my answer to her question was in agreement.

“No.”

I saw few people who live in the towns and cities that I walked through obsessed with their cell phones.  It was not a cultural imperative.  But why should they be?  The region of Spain I had walked through is remote from the aggressive pulse of the secular vision, and as such it still retains a few characteristics that promote personal relationships.

First, the architecture promoted personal interaction.  Buildings are of human proportion and manageability.  Residences and businesses are arranged in human scale for minimal inconvenience and expenditure of energies; whether they be human, animal, or mechanical.

Second, the automobile has been isolated from the architectural considerations and goals.  One of the most interesting of conditions in the “old cities”, like Burgos, Leon, and Santiago de Compostela, were the frequent barrier posts that prevented automobiles to penetrate into particular zones.  These barriers typically included a retracting post that, through the use of a code or card, one could enter information that would retract that post into the ground so a delivery truck or some other authorized vehicle could enter.

Third, residences within these towns and cities are not constructed to ameliorate life for its owners, but rather to ensure their engagement with the culture beyond the front door.

In such a setting, where the advantages of the transformative value of second-person relationships outweighs the desire for self-gratification through virtual relationships, cell phones are only a secondary option for communication, and not considered the equal to sitting down in a café with your friends and family to discuss the day’s events, and hopes of a good future for all.   Automobiles are fine for distances, but insufficient for second-person interaction where architecture encourages second-person experience.  Architecture that separates us from one another can be an excellent pastime, but in separating one from another, it degrades the opportunity for second-person relationships to create results that promote cohesion within any society.

In 1905, G. K. Chesterton put this way:

“It is not fashionable to say much nowadays of the advantages of the small community.  We are told that we must go in for large empires and large ideas. There is one advantage, however, in the small state, the city, or the village, which only the wilfully blind can overlook.  The man who lives in a small community lives in a much larger world. He knows much more of the fierce varieties and uncompromising divergences of men.  The reason is obvious.  In a large community we can choose our companions. In a small community our companions are chosen for us.  Thus in all extensive and highly civilized societies groups come into existence founded upon what is called sympathy, and shut out the real world more sharply than the gates of a monastery.  There is nothing really narrow about the clan; the thing which is really narrow is the clique.  The men of the clan live together because they all wear the same tartan or are all descended from the same sacred cow; but in their souls, by the divine luck of things, there will always be more colours than in any tartan.  But the men of the clique live together because they have the same kind of soul, and their narrowness is a narrowness of spiritual coherence and contentment, like that which exists in hell.  A big society exists in order to form cliques.  A big society is a society for the promotion of narrowness.  It is a machinery for the purpose of guarding the solitary and sensitive individual from all experience of the bitter and bracing human compromises.  It is, in the most literal sense of the words, a society for the prevention of Christian knowledge.”

I am beginning to understand of the colours that G.K. Chesterton speaks of above, and I am beginning to understand the nature and ultimate outcome of the secular society.  So, I believe it time to let God enter into this argument.

PART 5 – To come.

God Bless and Buen Camino – Reese

This contribution is available at http://travelsofanewchristian.com/2013/09/21/the-rights-of-evil-part-4/

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True dialogue on moral issues for developing public policy in a democracy like Canada [at In the Breaking of the Bread]

There are many issues and considerations driving election campaigns. May I put a suggestion for more open and respectful dialogue among citizens and politicians, among political parties and in government, and also for a more effective development of policies for the common good?

Over the years on several occasions I would have liked to vote for one party or another but at times I didn't because on certain ethical issues I could not find in that party's platform sufficient distinction between policy and ideology. Whenever I tried to communicate with party representatives it turned out that significant dialogue was not to be had. Perhaps everyone was too busy. I am referring to various elements of life in society that touch on moral issues. Please allow me to be specific.

I grant that in a democracy each citizen, each person has the right to their own view on moral issues and both social and personal matters, but for the sake of democracy and effective dialogue in view of striving together for the common good, we need to be able to get beyond ideology to a level of policy, where dialogue and even compromise are more possible than with ideology alone. Ideology has value because without clarity about what we think and believe true dialogue becomes impossible. However, when we are driven by ideology alone it is difficult when not impossible to remain open to different points of view. At worst, we end up with dictatorships, fascism, marxism, communism, and other forms of totalitarianism where only the authorized view is permitted.

I and most Roman Catholics today readily admit that even our own Church went through periods when ideology so dominated public order that there resulted a form of totalitarianism wherein lives were snuffed out in the interest of defending the truth, without realizing at the time that the greatest damage was being done to freedom of conscience. As difficult as it is for us moderns to understand such a divergent point of view, the expressed motivation of the Church at the height of repression known today as the Spanish Inquisition, the institutional motivation was the salvation of souls. Yes, that's right. There was such a fear of eternal damnation that when someone was discovered to hold a belief or manifest a behavior that was perceived to be evil or a perversion of all that is good and held to be true, all means were deemed acceptable to try to persuade that person to reform their beliefs and behavior and embrace the truth as it was to be found in Sacred Scripture and Church commandments.

Tragically, what was lacking to officials of the Church at that time, as in other times and in other public institutions, was a deeper understanding of God and the "ways of the Lord". In God is to be found perfect justice, that is true, but also perfect mercy. Christians believe that in God we find both divine justice and divine mercy and a perfect balance in their application. Another biblical principle is that judgement belongs to God alone and that Jesus is given God's authority to judge.

God is the judge: "There is only one Lawgiver and Judge, the one who is able to save and destroy. But you--who are you to judge your neighbor?" James 4:12

. Jesus shows He has God's authority to judge: “Do not be amazed at this, for a time is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice and come out—those who have done what is good will rise to live, and those who have done what is evil will rise to be condemned. By myself I can do nothing; I judge only as I hear, and my judgment is just, for I seek not to please myself but him who sent me." Matthew 5:28-30. See other references in Deuteronomy 32:39; Psalm 75:7; and Hebrews 10:30.

Jesus commanded us not to judge, for we are incompetent to judge. Unlike God, we are necessarily biased and lack the full knowledge and wisdom which God alone possesses. Jesus gave a teaching about how we are to avoid judging one another in Matthew 7:1-6. In 1 Corinthians 5:9-13 Paul advised the Corinthians "not to associate with immoral people" which requires a form of judgement or at least observation of behavior. He declares that "outsiders" come under God's judgement but that the faith community must "put outside" the evil doer from within their midst. In other words, those who believe in Jesus and try to be his disciples must love and support one another and, regarding those who insist on doing what is declared evil by God, those who are unrepentant are to be put out of the assembly of believers and not to be associated with.

This is a form of judgement oriented to preservation of self and of the common good; yet it actually respects the choices of those who disagree or want to behave in ways that are unacceptable. This is a form of respect for the freedom of conscience. When the bishops of the universal Roman Catholic Church met in Rome from 1962-65 four years in a row for a month or so in October at the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, they robustly declared the universal right to freedom of conscience with the obligation to inform and form well one's conscience (sections 1776-1802) as well as the freedom and responsibility to hold, practice, and live in accord with one's own faith or beliefs (1730-1748).

The extreme measures of the Spanish Inquisition are no longer possible in the contemporary Church given that those practices arose in the context of a medieval society where they understood public order to include all that could impinge on the eternal destiny of individuals and they believed they were under the obligation to impose right order and right belief by force. Throughout the world there remain cultures, civilizations, peoples, and nations where the rule of force is still employed. We have only to watch the evening news to verify how true this is.In a sense, many societies and pockets of societies are still locked into medieval outlooks by which rule can only be maintained by force.

In contrast to those individuals and societies that mistakenly think that it is up to them to impose public order and belief, when the followers of Jesus as individuals and as institutions are well aligned with Jesus' teaching and example, they fearlessly proclaim Him and the truth He taught and conduct themselves as Jesus did. They do so fearlessly even to the point of laying down their lives as so many countless thousands and millions have done throughout the centuries down to our own day. Christ and his followers are bold to give witness to the truth but leave those who hear them free to embrace that truth or not; they don't impose anything.

As a Roman Catholic Christian it is true that I am committed to promoting by my words and actions the value of human life, from conception to natural death. However, I can still respect the right of others to hold different views. I also entertain the hope that through open and respectful dialogue we can progress together in our understanding of the issues and develop ever better policies that truly serve the common good as well as allowing for individual differences. The irritating thing about freedom of conscience is that life lived under this principle is not monolithic, with whole populations walking in locked steps.

The human conscience is ever in a process of being formed as it considers ever more widely and deeply the various elements that need to enter into any moral consideration. The human person needs to have access to ever more complete information as well as to ever better understand itself and to discern what importance to give to various considerations. The links between facts and views need to be ever updated so that our views remain firmly anchored in the facts.

In addition, there are other sources of truth beside the visible and manifest facts. The human sciences may not be able to measure interior or spiritual human experience; yet that experience remains no less real and its impact on human life and society is undeniable and great. All who acknowledge the existence of God, the Creator of the universe, come to understand more about reality through the truths revealed by God to people who have received such communication and recorded it for general distribution. One truth held by adherents to the Judeo-Christian religious traditions relates to the inalienable value of a human life. Because God is the giver of life, only He has authority over it, as it is set down in the "ten commandments" in the Torah or first five books of the Jewish Scriptures.

It is evident to everyone that belief in God contributes to the differences of view on moral issues, given that those who don't believe in God would tend to dismiss God as a viable and legitimate source of knowledge about the full truth regarding human life and all life in general. In the absence of God, any given human being can then lay claim to superiority of view and policy on moral matters, with the result that policy is set in such a godless universe by courts, legislatures, and any other authority with the conviction it has the power to impose its view on the general population. We are not strangers to such dictations of moral policy from above throughout human history, including from church authorities. The difference today is that church authorities appeal to consciences rather than attempt to impose by any show of whatever force.

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For example, on the issue of abortion and the right of people, women in particular, to exercise freedom of choice, I support those people admittedly pro-life who try to offer thoughts in favor of life to the prospective clients of abortion clinics simply in the hope that their presence there might open up more options for those who, in going to an abortion clinic, often are oppressed by the fatalistic impression that they "have no other choice".

It is ironic that many who claim to be PRO CHOICE actually seem not to want to allow people in such desperate straights to even know about all their practical options, to truly be able to make a well-informed choice. In addition, many women who have abortions suffer all manner of painful consequences that either manifest themselves immediately or only later in various forms of guilt. For that reason alone it makes perfect sense that those contemplating an abortion should take the possible consequences into consideration. Alas, all too often the abortion procedure is promoted quite intensively as a "consequence-free procedure" through such statements as "the abortion will solve your problems" and "you'll be able to go back to the way you were before getting pregnant".

Those who identify themselves as PRO-CHOICE tend to believe that there is no guilt associated with the abortion procedure but that, if there is any guilt following the abortion, that feeling of guilt is entirely and exclusively caused by the repressive and dictatorial declarations of people whom they consider against choice and against abortion. In this view, all those who identify themselves as PRO-LIFE are actually ANTI-CHOICE. Nothing could be further from the truth. Pro-lifers recognize from personal experience that far too many women who get an abortion are under duress and pressure from their entourage and actually feel like they have no choice, that there are no other options.

Not all guilty feelings are artificially provoked by other people and ideologies. An abortion actually does kill an unborn infant human being and when guilt feelings manifest themselves, these feelings follow directly upon the action that has been taken independently of whatever others may say about it.

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Dear fellow citizen, there are other moral issues - such as palliative care and euthanasia - that similarly touch on complex human life situations that require on our part and certainly on the part of government to remain open to dialogue, to the complete findings from scientific and medical research, and that seek above all in the interests of the common good to promote open and honest dialogue and that also allow elected members of Parliament to vote in accord with their own conscience as well as in dialogue with their own constituents.

This contribution is available at http://fathergilles.blogspot.ca/2015/09/true-dialogue-on-moral-issues-for.html

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Pope Francis in America: Hope Amidst Crisis [at Justin's Corner]

by Justin Soutar

The long-anticipated visit of Pope Francis to the United States takes place at a critical juncture in the history of our nation. America is in profound crisis in many respects, and the symptoms of this crisis are painfully evident throughout our society and culture.

We have a crisis of leadership in Washington, where corrupt politicians continue to sacrifice the common good to the interests of a greedy few while threatening and bullying their principled colleagues into submission. We have a crisis of personal responsibility, in which people make excuses for their faults, rationalize away their sins and evil habits, and blame other people and circumstances for their problems. We have a socioeconomic crisis characterized by a yawning gap between rich and poor Americans, a high poverty rate and the near-total disappearance of a healthy middle class. We have a fiscal crisis with ever-increasing government spending fueling a runaway national debt, aided and abetted by a highly secretive and largely unaccountable Federal Reserve. We have a crisis of education, in which growing numbers of American citizens know little or nothing about the early history and development of our nation, the religious and moral values of the Founders, or the principles and philosophy undergirding our Constitution. We have a crisis of human life, in which abortion remains legal and subsidized by federal tax dollars while assisted suicide and euthanasia are being pushed at the state level. We have a crisis of religious liberty and moral conscience rights, in which millions of Americans are being forbidden to publicly practice their religion and compelled by federal mandate or judicial fiat to do what they know is wrong under penalty of heavy fines or jail time. We have a crisis of marriage and family life characterized by low marriage and birth rates and high divorce rates, widespread addiction to pornography, millions of out-of-wedlock pregnancies and single-parent households, and immoral homosexual relationships legally glorified as "marriages". We have a crisis of truth in which the public is deliberately misinformed about critical domestic, foreign, and environmental issues by a consumerist-driven mainstream media in order to advance the private interests of a handful of Fortune 500 business executives, while personal opinion and virtual reality have become substitutes for objective truth. And we have a crisis of love, in which many people relentlessly pursue their own interests and follow their own selfish desires in the name of "love" with little or no concern for the good of the other person or the wider community.

All of these various crises our nation is experiencing can be said to flow from two in particular: a crisis of faith in God and a crisis of moral values. America is losing her way because she has tossed her religious and moral compass overboard, recklessly abandoning faith and trust in God and foolishly refusing the sure guidance of His Law. She is being gradually transformed from a Christian country into a radically secularist one, with moral relativism replacing traditional Judeo-Christian moral norms grounded in natural law. Religion and morality, the two great pillars of the foundation on which our nation was built, are crumbling. Thanks to her own insanity and stupidity, America is now drifting into dangerous waters and risking the possibility of shipwreck.

It is in this dark and uncertain time in our nation's history that God, in His infinite mercy, sends us the brilliant light of His humble servant Pope Francis with the challenging and prophetic message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ--a message of truth and love, a message of faith and hope, a message of repentance and conversion, a message of mercy and forgiveness, a message of personal responsibility, of respect for human rights, of peace and justice, of care for the common good, of the beauty of marriage and family life according to God's plan. The word of this Gospel message, conveyed by both word and example, will carry within it the power to revive our dying nation and restore our former greatness--but this power will only be activated if we the people of the United States listen carefully to the message, accept it in its fullness, take it to heart, and follow it faithfully in our daily lives. Let us pray that America will be receptive to this powerful, life-giving message and take it to heart so that it can rescue her from the path of self-destruction and lead her on towards a better future.

Copyright 2015 Justin D. Soutar. All rights reserved.

This contribution is available at http://justins-corner.blogspot.com/2015/09/pope-francis-in-america-hope-amidst.html

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Basic Training with St. Vianney [at Mere Observations]

[Note: This could probably be considered a Catholic “political insider” sort of post and not of much interest to non-Catholics. I get that. However, it also contains some of the most basic beliefs of the Catholic faith and things often misunderstood, misquoted or simply dismissed by those of a more anti-Catholic nature. Therefore if you are slightly interested in informing yourself this would be a good piece to glance over. Keep in mind St. Vianney uses a more direct form of 19th century speech that our 21st century ears may blanche at, but to be honest I prefer a more direct speech than trying to soften the issue when it comes to my soul and the souls of those I love and for whom I am responsible.]

Yesterday I touched upon my opinion and desire for more “meat” in the homilies I hear at Mass. You can read it here. Today I’m going to give an example of what I mean, using a sermon I found by St. Vianney in the book The Sermons of the Curé of Ars. For the purposes of this post I’m going to focus on his answer to the second question he posed in his sermon outline on the principal reasons why a priest may withhold Absolution during Confession. As I was reading this a week ago I realized that within his text he had laid out some of the most very basic tenets of our faith. They may seem so basic as to be boring and met with a roll of the eyes, yet I found myself wondering: If you were to quiz the average pew-sitter at a Sunday Mass would they know these basics? And why shouldn’t there be refresher sermons on the basics of Catholicism? I’m willing to bet more Mass-goers know the Nebraska Cornhusker football team’s schedule and depth chart than they do about what is contained in the sermon below. I love the Huskers as much as the next Nebraskan, but they are not responsible for the eternal salvation of my soul even if they break the drought and finally win a conference championship.

So I’m going to keep his text without changes, but arrange the sentences as an outline in parts to better illustrate just how much meat Vianney was able to get into a sermon. Also, any italics or boldface were added by me, and comments made by me are in red boldface.

*****

THIRTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

ABSOLUTION

“Whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them; and whose sins you shall retain, they are retained.” – John 20:23.

SYNOPSIS—The sacrifice of our Lord on the Cross made these words efficacious. The priest the dispenser of graces by giving Absolution. He is bound by laws, and must give or withhold Absolution according to these laws. The confessor’s position one of greatest responsibility. He must, therefore, proceed with the greatest care.

Among the reasons which oblige the priest sometimes to refuse or postpone absolution are, for instance

1. insufficient preparation,

2. absence of true contrition,

3. refusal to make restitution, etc.

But there is another reason which I will make the chief object of our meditation today, and that is a neglect of the Christian to inform himself of the essential truths of his Holy Religion. [personal responsibility to educate oneself about your faith.]

St. Charles Borromeo tells us explicitly that “absolution cannot be given to persons who do not know the principal fats of the Christian Religion, and the duties of their state of life; particularly when their ignorance arises from their indifference concerning their salvation.” The laws of the Church in this connection also forbid absolution to be given to fathers or mothers who do not teach their children or have them taught, in everything that is necessary for their salvation. [It’s on you, mom and dad.]

What, then, are the essentials of our holy Religion? Listen and I will tell you what every Catholic must necessarily know.

A Christian should know

1. the Our Father,

2. the Hail Mary,

3. the Creed,

4. the Confiteor,

5. the three acts of Faith, Hope and Charity,

6. the commandments of God and the Church and an act of contrition.

By this, I do not mean that you must know the words only, but you must be able to give an explanation of each article in particular and say what they mean. This is what is expected of you and not simply to know the words.

You must know that

- the Our Father was composed by God Himself;

- that the Hail Mary was composted partly by the angel who came to announce the Mystery of the Incarnation to the Blessed Virgin, and partly by the Church;

- you must know that the creed was composed by the apostles after the descent of the Holy Ghost, before they went out into the world; so that since the first beginning, the same Religion and the same Mysteries are taught in all parts of the world.

- The creed contains the sum and substance of our entire Holy Religion, the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity, which is one God in three Persons, namely,

- God the Father, who created us,

- God the Son who redeemed us by His death and passion,

- and God the Holy Ghost, who sanctified us in Baptism.

When you say:

- I believe in God the Father Almighty, Creator, etc.,

- you must mean, I believe, that the eternal Father created everything, our bodies and our souls, that the world was not always in existence, that it will not always be, that it will one day be destroyed.

- I believe in Jesus Christ, the second Person of the Blessed Trinity, became man, that He suffered and died to redeem us, to merit heaven for us, of which we were deprived by the sin of Adam.

- I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Holy Catholic Church,

- means: I believe that there is one Church, which is the one that Jesus Christ Himself founded, that in her He has deposited all His graces, and that this Church will endure until the end of the world.

- When you say: I believe in the Communion of Saints,

- you must mean: I believe that all Christians take part in one another’s prayers and good works, I believe that the Saints, who are in heaven, pray to God for us, and that we can pray for those who are in purgatory.

- When you say: I believe in the forgiveness of sins,

- you mean, I believe that in the Church of Jesus Christ there are Sacraments which remit all sin, and that there are no sins which the Church of Jesus Christ cannot remit.

- If we say: The resurrection of the body,

- that means that the very same bodies which we now have, will one day rise again, that our souls will return to them to accompany them to heaven, or to hell, as we shall have deserved.

- When we say, I believe in the life everlasting,

- that means: I believe that the next life will have no end, that our souls will last as long as God Himself, who is without end.

- When you say, from whence He shall come to judge both the living and the dead,

- means, I believe, that Jesus Christ is in heaven, body and soul, and that He Himself will come to judge us, and to reward those who have been good, and to punish those who have been bad.

We must know, furthermore, that the Commandments of God were given to Adam at his creation; that is to say, that God wrote them in his heart, and that afterwards, God gave them to Moses written upon tablets of stone, upon Mount Sinai. They are the same which our Lord renewed when He came down upon earth to save us.

I say that you must know the acts of Faith, Hope and Charity. I repeat, not the words only, but the meaning of them.

1. Faith enables us to believe all that the Church teaches. Although we may not be able to comprehend some of the mysteries, it teaches us to believe that God sees us, and that He watches over us; that He will either reward or punish us according to our acts of good or evil; that there is a heaven for the good, and a hell for the wicked; that our Lord suffered and died for us.

2. Hope teaches us to do all our actions with the intention of pleasing God, and that they will be rewarded through all eternity.

3. In this world the Love of God consists in our loving God above all created things, and preferring Him above all things, even our own life.

This, my dear brethren, is what is meant when we say that you must know the Our Father, the Hail Mary, the Creed, the Confiteor, the one only God, and your three acts. If you do not know this, then you know nothing that is necessary for you to be saved; you should be able when you asked about these things to explain them:

But this is not all:

1. you should also know what the mystery of the Incarnation is, and

2. what the word Incarnation means.

You must know that this Mystery means, that the second Person of the Blessed Trinity took upon Himself a body like ours, in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary, by the operation of the Holy Ghost. We celebrate this mystery upon the 25th of March, the feast of the Annunciation; for on this day the Son of God united His divinity with our humanity; He took a body like ours, but without sin, and He took all our sins upon Himself, to satisfy His Father’s justice. You must know that Jesus Christ died, that He died as man, and not as God, because as God He could not die;–that He rose again upon Easter day, when He united His soul again to His body, and that after remaining upon earth for forty days, He ascended into Heaven upon Ascension day. That the Holy Ghost descended upon the Apostles on the day of Pentecost.

You should be able to tell the Sacraments. If you are asked by whom they were instituted you must answer that they could only be instituted by Jesus Christ, not the Blessed Virgin or the Apostles. You should know what are the effects of each Sacrament, and what is the disposition which we must have to receive them properly; you should know

- that Baptism wipes out original sin, which was the sin of Adam, and which we all have when we come into the world;

- that the Sacrament of Confirmation is conferred upon us by the Bishop, and that by it we receive the Holy Ghost with the abundance of His graces;

- that we partake of the Sacrament of Penance when we confess our sins to the priest, and that if we confess them properly, all our sins are effaced by the absolution of the priest. [Confession]

- In the Holy Eucharist we believe that there is really and truly present the adorable body and the most precious blood of Jesus Christ. [Holy Communion]

- The Sacrament of Extreme Unction helps us to die well, and it was instituted to cleanse us from the sins which we have committed by all the different senses. [Anointing of the Sick]

- Holy Orders confer upon man the power which Jesus Christ gave to His Apostles.

- The Sacrament of Matrimony sanctifies the union of husband and wife if they are united according to the laws of the Church.

Now, my dear brethren, if I had asked you about these things, would you have been able to answer all these questions rightly?

*****

So…how would any of us do in answering those questions? Could this sermon be given today? Why not?

It looks overwhelming because of how I changed it into an outline form versus St. Vianney’s original paragraph structure. It may also be overwhelming because you’re used to sitting back and nodding off during Father’s latest story. That’s on us as much as it is on Father, and I’m not happy to admit that more times than not that is what I find myself doing. So maybe it is just me. Or maybe I’ve grown conditioned. All I know is all of these evangelization programs being created, published and sold all emphasize that we evangelize, and that to do this we must know our faith. “Go forth, the Mass is ended.”

“Go out into the world, two by two…”

Would it hurt to talk about the basics of our faith at Mass before we “go forth”?

We need a boot camp. We need basic training.

I’ll say it again: Fathers, feed your sheep.

This contribution is available at http://jeffwalker.wordpress.com/2015/09/01/basic-training-with-st-vianney/

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Annulment reform and the Kasper proposal [at LMS Chairman]

Back in the innocent days we had discussing Cardinal Kasper's proposals, the suggestion was that people be allowed to receive Holy Communion

despite

living in uncanonical situations. He said, in an interview, that he thought reform of the process of annulment wouldn't make a difference to all that many people. Instead, we had to take a different view of the new, adulterous, unions, which people who had left perfectly valid first marriages had contracted. (

My post about it

.) He said:

And the second is not a marriage in the same sense, but there are elements of it—the partners take care of one another, they are exclusively bound to one another, there is an intention of permanence, they care of children, they lead a life of prayer, and so on. It’s not the best situation. It’s the best possible situation. Realistically, we should respect such situations, as we do with Protestants. We recognize them as Christians. We pray with them.

Part of the motivation for this was, no doubt, a naive belief that the annulment process could only be twisted so far, but another, and perhaps a more powerful one, is the observation that many of the couples in illicit second unions

do not want an annulment

.

This may seem surprising, but it is true. I've encountered this attitude myself;

here

is Mgr Basil Loftus about it (criticising '

the often negative and harmful purported 'solution' of marriage nullity.

'), and

here

is Cristina Odone (angered by '

the practice of annulment, where you could effectively buy the Church’s collusion in untying the marital knot.

')

It will be interesting (no, actually it will be both boring and depressing) to see how these people respond to the reform of the annulment procedure. A step in the right direction, or in the wrong direction? Cristina Odone has rejected seeking an annulment to straighten out her own, personal, marital situation. She may be mollified a little by the hope to reduce or eliminate the financial cost, but the cheapening of the first marriage is exactly what she is against. She, and others like her, want to affirm the reality of the first marriage, not deny it. She wants the Church to act like the state, and allow not the recognition of invalid marriages as invalid, but the divorce of valid marriages which were great at first but then, you know, we moved on, we drifted apart, there was an affair, there was

luuurve...

Does Mgr Pio Vito Pinto, the architect of the reform, understand this? He wants the new procedure to be used by

lots and lots of people

, but in fact the expense and time involved, and the possibility of rejection, were not the only factors stopping people seeking annulments up to now.

One way of looking at the reform is as a way of avoiding a Kasper-like solution, either in theory (through an official loosening of discipline) or in practice (through an unofficial loosening of discipline). People have already written that by bringing out the reform before the Family Synod, the Pope has removed the issue from the agenda. This may be part of the intention, but I'm not so sure it will work, at least in the medium and long terms. Pressure to allow non-annulled second-marriage couples to receive Communion will not be eliminated by allowing quickie annulments. Odone and others already think that annulments are make-believe, and beneath their dignity. Is the reform going to make them change their minds? No; at least if they are consistent, it will confirm the view that annulments are make-believe, and render impossible any remotely convincing response from faithful Catholics on the subject. These couples will say that since annulments can be had for any and no reason for those willing to go through a sham process, it is utterly unjust to stop couples who have

not

been through a sham process receiving Holy Communion.

Again, Kasper spoke of couples who felt convinced in themselves that their first marriages were invalid, but couldn't get a annulment for some technical reason (perhaps the Church didn't share their views of what was an obstacle to validity), or who didn't want to go through the process. If the process of getting an annulment is made vastly easier, will there be fewer such couples, or more? Obviously, more, because it will be vastly easier to convince oneself that, if one went to the trouble, one could get an annulment. If one is convinced in conscience that the first marriage was null, why bother going through the process?

There might be reasons: a desire to marry in church, for example, or to be in 'good standing' for the purposes of involvement in the huge bureaucracy of the German Church. Ultimately, however, I expect that many people will be very impatient of the demand that they go through a process perceived as essentially meaningless, and perhaps demeaning as well.

I don't think the Kasper proposal avoided this problem either, as a matter of fact, because he proposed a 'penitential path' which I can't see many couples in second marriages undertaking with much enthusiasm.

(I wonder, in passing, if all these ideas are trying to tackle a problem in a highly specific form which only exists in certain influential countries, like Germany and Argentina, and don't address the form of the problem in the English-speaking world and elsewhere.)

What we have the annulment reform as presented is a plan which, I predict, will not solve the pastoral problem of couples lacking the correct paperwork, but will weaken marriage as perceived and as practised. The pressure on priests to give Communion to those in illicit unions will not go away, but a new problem will arise: pressure on conscientious bishops to grant annulments on slender or non-existent grounds. It could be in diocesan chanceries, rather than an the Communion rail, that the sparks begin to fly.

This contribution is available at http://www.lmschairman.org/2015/09/annulment-reform-and-kasper-proposal.html

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"For I Hate Divorce, Says the Lord." [at Journey to Wisdom]

Sunday October 4, 2015

A Reflection on Mark 10:2-16 N.A.B.

By: Larry T

Jesus’ teachings on marriage and divorce must be understood in the context of first-century Palestinian Judaism where marriage was a legal agreement between the groom and the bride’s father. In the male-controlled culture of Jesus’ day, wives were regarded as the husband's property.

Joseph Martos wrote in Doors to the Sacred:

“Though there were local variations, the usual custom was that on the wedding day the father handed over his daughter to the groom in her own family’s house, after which the bridal party walked in procession to her new husband’s house for concluding ceremonies and a wedding feast. The principal part of the ceremony was the handing over of the bride, during which her right hand was placed in the groom’s, and the draping of a garland of flowers over the couple to symbolize their happy union. There were no official words that had to be spoken, and there was no ecclesiastical blessing that had to be given to make the marriage legal and binding.”

Divorce was uncomplicated. The husband simply presented the wife a certificate of divorce. In it, he would testify that he had divorced her and that she was free to marry someone else; then, he would send her away. Although the Romans had a legal practice where wives could initiate divorce proceedings, Jewish wives were not permitted to divorce their husbands.

Divorce itself was taken for granted and tolerated as an ancient custom. The regulations written by Moses in Deuteronomy demanded sufficient cause, established certain legal formalities, and set rules concerning remarriage. So, it could be correctly stated that Moses permitted divorce. But what was sufficient cause? Great Jewish teachers had debated the exact meaning of sufficient cause for centuries. The school of Shammai gave the only permitted reason for divorce as sexual misconduct on the woman’s part, whereas the school of Hillel said “Even if she spoiled a dish for him”, and Rabbi Aquiba said, “Even if he found another more beautiful than she is.”

Still yet, Moses permitted divorce. It was against this background that the Pharisees accosted Jesus hoping to trap him into contradicting what they regarded as clear teaching of the Torah permitting divorce.

2 The Pharisees approached and asked, “Is it lawful for a husband to divorce his wife?” They were testing him.

3 He said to them in reply, “What did Moses command you?”

4 They replied, “Moses permitted him to write a bill of divorce and dismiss her.”

5 But Jesus told them, “Because of the hardness of your hearts he wrote you this commandment.

6 But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.

7 For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother (and be joined to his wife),

8 and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two but one flesh.

9 Therefore what God has joined together, no human being must separate.”

10 In the house the disciples again questioned him about this.

11 He said to them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her;

12 and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.”

13 And people were bringing children to him that he might touch them, but the disciples rebuked them.

14 When Jesus saw this he became indignant and said to them, “Let the children come to me; do not prevent them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.

15 Amen, I say to you, whoever does not accept the kingdom of God like a child will not enter it.”

16 Then he embraced them and blessed them, placing his hands on them.

First, Jesus dismissed the permissive text from Deuteronomy as Moses’ concession to human weakness; then he drew on two texts from Genesis to show that God’s original plan for men and women was that they would no longer be two, but one flesh. From this divine ideal Jesus told them (v.10:9) that divorce is contrary to God’s plan: “What God has joined together, no human being must separate.”

Around 445 B.C., the Old Testament prophet Malachi wrote:

says the LORD, the God of Israel,

And covering one’s garment with injustice,

You must then safeguard life that is your own,

and not break faith. – Malachi 2:16 N.A.B.

Portrayed against the background of first-century Palestinian Judaism, Jesus’ positive ideal of marriage as becoming “one flesh”; and therefore, that there can be “no divorce” was regarded as extreme since most Jews in Jesus’ time took divorce for granted. In verse 12, Jesus also extended his teaching on marriage and divorce to include those Roman legal procedures whereby a wife could initiate divorce proceedings.

That early Christians, too, had considerable difficulty coming to terms with Jesus’ “no divorce” teaching in the Gospel of Mark (the first written gospel) is evidenced by Paul’s advice to new Christians who found themselves in mixed marriages (1 Corinthians 7:12-16), and by the addition of “unless the marriage is unlawful” in Matthew 5:32 and 19:9.

It is hard to know exactly what Jesus intended in his teaching on marriage and divorce, and how we should take it. Is it an ideal to strive for, a challenge to be faced, an extreme example, or divine law? And which part of the New Testament evidence is more important – Jesus’ absolute prohibition of divorce in the Gospel of Mark or the exceptions introduced by Paul and the Gospel of Matthew?

Within Christian churches of all denominations there is a wide range of approaches to marriage, divorce, and remarriage. For church leaders and believers alike it remains a complex and difficult issue. No matter how Jesus’ teaching on divorce might be interpreted and applied, the devastation of divorce is undeniable – we see the wreckage on a daily basis, especially in the children of divorced parents. Children of failed marriages bear psychological wounds that in one way or another remain with them for the duration of their lives. In the face of this, there is an element in our culture that endorses putting aside family values for the sake of personal motives without regard to the damage done to children or society. Contrary to their claims, the well-being of society has always rested on the family.

In addressing the World Youth Day volunteers Pope Francis said:

“God calls you to make definitive choices, and he has a plan for each of you: to discover that plan and to respond to your vocation is to move forward toward personal fulfillment. God calls each of us to be holy, to live his life, but he has a particular path for each one of us. Some are called to holiness through family life in the sacrament of Marriage. Today, there are those who say that marriage is out of fashion. Is it out of fashion? In a culture of relativism and the ephemeral, many preach the importance of ‘enjoying’ the moment. They say that it is not worth making a life-long commitment, making a definitive decision, ‘forever’, because we do not know what tomorrow will bring. I ask you, instead, to be revolutionaries, I ask you to swim against the tide; yes, I am asking you to rebel against this culture that sees everything as temporary and that ultimately believes you are incapable of responsibility, which believes you are incapable of true love. I have confidence in you and I pray for you. Have the courage ‘to swim against the tide’. And also have the courage to be happy.”

This contribution is available at http://journeytowisdom-ocbs.blogspot.com/2015/10/for-i-hate-divorce-says-lord.html

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I’m finally getting the chance to reflect on our big road trip last week to the World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia. Arma Dei: Equipping Catholic Families was a vendor in the Expo Hall, sharing a booth with our awesome new friends, the Little Douglings!

With three of our five kids in high school or University(!), we decided to take only the two youngest…and we had a great time!

While we thoroughly enjoyed tracking Pope Francis and getting to know him better through his translated talks and homilies…and eagerly watching the news coverage of him kissing babies and meeting so many people,

I think my favorite part of #WorldMeetingofFamilies

…was meeting families!

We were so thankful to meet up with wonderful Catholic families…being hosted by them, sharing a booth with them, meeting them in our booth and getting reacquainted with them in our travels!

It was a pleasure meeting up with Xhonane of Familia Católica. She graciously hosted us and took us to Mass with her family!

She even sent us a picture of her family playing the Super Saints…because we forgot to take pictures of our families playing the Super Saints while we were visiting!

We then met up with another one of our favorite families! Paola and Larry of Emmanuel Books hosted us, helped us and encouraged us as we began setting up at the World Meeting of Families!

Incidentally…we played the Super Saints with their awesome family as well! Yes, I think Bridget won again.

We were delighted to get to know the Douglas family… as we shared a booth in the Expo Hall of #WorldMeetingofFamilies. Their awesome family with 10 kids 12 and under joyfully inspires everyone they meet!

Did you see their awesome books?

I look forward to getting our families together. They live only 40 minutes away…up here in Canada!

Here are some great people we met in our booth at the World Meeting of Families…

and here’s a picture of Bill and the kids acting goofy behind our booth at the World Meeting of Families.

On our way home, we managed to catch the Denz family before they left to attend the Papal Mass with St Gemma’s Catholic Pilgrimages! They are wearing the shirts Kelly and I designed…featuring Kelly’s Pope Francis!  Close to 180 people were wearing these shirts at the Papal Mass!

So nice to see Mike and Sue and Maria…first time since Rome a year ago!

While we were disappointed that the World Meeting of Families Expo was closed a day early…and we were also unable to stick around for the Festival of Families and the Papal Mass…we were delighted to watch the coverage on TV!

The closest we got to Pope Francis on this trip was this awesome booth banner…but I feel blessed to relive the special Papal Audience I attended last year while on my Rome Pilgrimage!

This contribution is available at http://www.equippingcatholicfamilies.com/2015/10/meeting-families-at-worldmeetingoffamilies-2015.html

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Hate People? Not an Option [at A Catholic Citizen in America]

I ran into a familiar sentiment on Twitter:

"Sometimes I wish I was religious so I could have an excuse for hating people."

Instead of

seething

with anger, I did a quick Google search.

The phrase, with exactly those words, showed up about 60 times. The earliest example I found was posted by a bot on

reddit.com

, December 28, 2011.

Without the quotes, I got roughly 35,200,000 matches.

That's a lot of folks talking about religion and hate. Some agreed with the "excuse for hating people" quote, some didn't, and some were talking about something completely different.

The "excuse for hating" quote hadn't been directed at me, and came from an account that Tweets a lot of platitudes and quotations. Instead of firing back a response, I started writing this post. That was on Monday of this week.

I sympathize, a little, with folks who assume that religion and hate are inseparable — or that faith is for the

addlepated

.

As a teen, I tried listening to 'Christian' radio. Rants against commies and rock music, and the steady drip feed of guilt, drove me to an all-rock station.

I haven't run into quite the same weird mix of divination, numerology, and Bible trivia, since the 1960s: but 'End Times Bible Prophecies' are still part of American culture. (

April 19, 2015

;

January 25, 2015

)

I eventually

become a Catholic

, and that's another topic.

I suspect that the strident 'kill a commie for Christ' crowd helped make John Lennon's "Imagine" the best-selling single of his career:

"...Imagine there's no countries

It isn't hard to do

Nothing to kill or die for

And no religion too

Imagine all the people

Living life in peace...."

John Lennon, "Imagine" (1971)

(posted oldielyrics.com) (March 12, 2011)

Some Catholics sound and act like their 'agree with me or be damned' Protestant counterparts.

I can't do that, because I know what the Church has been teaching for two millennia.

Love: NO EXCEPTIONS

I'm "religious," in the sense that I take my faith seriously.

But when I noticed myself hating radio preachers, British musicians, or anyone else: my job is rooting out that hate,

not

expressing it.

I can't even let myself hate folks like the 'God Hates You' bunch out in

Kansas

. They're not typical Christians, by the way. They're not even typical American Protestants, and I've been over that before. (

October 28, 2011

)

God doesn't hate me, or you.

God loves us, and wants to adopt us.

All of us. (

John 1:12

-

14

,

3:17

;

Romans 8:14

-

17

;

Peter 1:3

-

4

; Catechism of the Catholic Church,

27

-

30

,

52

,

1825

,

1996

)

Since I take God's love seriously, I try to love God, love my neighbor, see everybody as my neighbor, and treat others as I'd like to be treated.

[1]

Our Lord said it is important:

"6 'Do to others whatever you would have them do to you. This is the law and the prophets."

(Matthew 7:12)

" 'Teacher, 21 which commandment in the law is the greatest?'

"He said to him, 22 'You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.

"This is the greatest and the first commandment.

"The second is like it: 23 You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

"24 The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.' " (Matthew 22:36-40)

Seeing everybody as my neighbor means

everybody.

No exceptions.

"10 There was a scholar of the law 11 who stood up to test him and said, 'Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?'

"Jesus said to him, 'What is written in the law? How do you read it?'

"He said in reply, 'You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your being, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.'

"He replied to him, 'You have answered correctly; do this and you will live.'

"But because he wished to justify himself, he said to Jesus, 'And who is my neighbor?' "

(Luke 10:25-29)

Our Lord's story about a Samaritan probably lost some shock value over the last two millennia. I've talked about that before, too. (

October 26, 2014

)

Faith, Works, and Bad Ideas

I'm not trying to 'work my way into Heaven:' but I'm not trying to believe my way in, either.

Taking

Romans 4:5

-

6

plus a few more carefully-selected Bible verses, I could decide that I'm so 'saved' that nothing I do will keep me out of Heaven.

Or I could do the same with

James 2:14

-

26

, and fear that God won't let me in unless I complete some set of tasks.

I'm a Catholic, though, so it's not faith or works: It's faith

and

works.

My salvation depends on God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — and God lets us help each other. (Catechism,

1987

-

2016

)

'Works' happen because of faith.

If I take God seriously, I'll act as if loving God and my neighbors matters; which will result in my treating other folks the way I'd like to be treated. (

Footnote 6

, James 2 (NAB))

I've talked about presumption, despair, and Holy Willie, before. (

March 22, 2015

;

March 15, 2015

;

November 9, 2014

)

Our Lord came into this world: not to condemn the world, but to save it. (

John 3:17

)

God loves sinners: and wants us to stop sinning. The 'punishments' we experience as the result of our actions are a consequence of our ignoring ethical realities — and opportunities for us to learn charity and detachment. (

Romans 5:8

; Catechism,

226

,

1424

,

1472

-

1473

,

2544

)

Sin and Forgiveness

Mainstream news services are pretty good at reporting some things: like sports events.

I've yet to read a discussion of the quality of this year's home runs compared to number of women employed by the NFL, or speculation about why jockeys in the Super Bowl weren't wearing feed bags. (

July 12, 2013

)

I'm not surprised, though, that folks who rely on Time, Newsweek, or The New York Times, are sometimes shocked by Pope Francis.

Recently, for example, headlines have stirred up angst over the Pope's 'changing stand on abortion.'

The Pope says sin can be forgiven. Specifically, a woman who has had an abortion may be forgiven:

[2]

"...The forgiveness of God cannot be denied to one who has repented, especially when that person approaches the Sacrament of Confession with a sincere heart in order to obtain reconciliation with the Father...."

(Letter of the Holy Father Francis to the President of the Pontifical Council for Promoting the New Evangelization (September 1, 2015))

THIS IS NOT A NEW IDEA.

The example I'll use involves a woman and another way folks can hurt themselves, so I'd better explain that men have responsibilities too:

"19 'You have heard that it was said, "You shall not commit adultery."

"But I say to you, everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart."

(Matthew 5:27-28)

John 8:3

-

11

ends with Jesus saying to the woman who would have been killed: "Neither do I condemn you. Go, (and) from now on do not sin any more." (

John 8:11

)

This may seem confusing to folks who feel that "sin" is doing something they either don't like, or can't do: and that "sinners" are disreputable folks who are thrown into Hell by a hypersensitive God. (

March 15, 2015

;

February 1, 2015

)

As a Catholic, I see sin as an offense against reason and truth: and God. (Catechism,

1849

-

1850

)

It's deciding that I'll do something I know is bad for myself, or others: or deciding to

not

do something I should. (Catechism,

1849

-

1864

)

Some things, like playing Bingo or drinking alcohol, are okay: in moderation. Getting drunk, or making Bingo more important than my family:

that

would be sinful. (Catechism,

1852

,

2413

)

Sin isn't a 'one strike and you're out' thing. As long as I'm alive, I can find forgiveness. (Catechism,

976

-

983

,

1442

-

1470

,

1021

,

1988

)

Forgiveness goes both ways, of course. It's in the Lord's prayer: "...as we forgive those who trespass against us...." (Catechism,

2840

-

2845

)

Forgiving, and being forgiven, are important. So is cleaning up the mess sin leaves. Let's say I hold up the local bank, then realize it was wrong, and say I'm sorry. Should I be forgiven?

As far as the Church is concerned, yes. I'd also be expected to give the money back, and cooperate with secular authorities in the trial and sentencing that follows. We call that sort of thing "reparation." (Catechism,

1459

-

1460

)

Someone who has killed an innocent person can't unkill the victim, of course. But

forgiveness for murder and other serious sins has always been possible:

what's changed over the last two millennia has been details in the procedure. (Catechism,

1447

)

Human Life

In a perfect society, what is legal would be right. But we don't have a perfect society: and haven't, since humanity began.

I've talked about

positive law

, rules we make up; and

natural law

,

[3]

ethical principles woven into reality; before.

Natural law hasn't changed, and won't.

Theft was wrong when

Ur-Nammu

and

Hammurabi

wrote their laws, and it will be when

Ur-Nammu

's

Sumer

, the

Roman Republic

, and

ASEAN

, seem roughly contemporary.

Positive law changes, and must change, as we adapt it to changing circumstances.

Circumstances have been changing a lot over the last few centuries. (

June 12, 2015

)

"Application of the natural law varies greatly; it can demand reflection that takes account of various conditions of life according to places, times, and circumstances. Nevertheless, in the diversity of cultures, the natural law remains as a rule that binds men among themselves and imposes on them, beyond the inevitable differences, common principles."

(Catechism, 1957)

When positive law wanders away from natural law, there's trouble: like the 'outmoded morality' some of my contemporaries didn't like. We can't go back to the 'good old days,' which is fine by me. (

August 23, 2015

;

August 31, 2014

;

August 29, 2014

)

If the United States Supreme Court had declared the law of gravity "unconstitutional," I'd be explaining why we need guardrails. (

July 12, 2015

)

Instead, I'll say why I think human beings are people: all human beings.

Genesis 1:27

says

[4]

we're made "in the divine image." We are rational and therefore like God, made in the image and likeness of God; created with free will, masters over our actions. (Catechism,

1730

-

1825

)

All

humans are people, with equal dignity: no matter where we are, who we are, or how we act. (Catechism,

360

,

1700

-

1706

,

1932

-

1933

,

1935

)

Murder, deliberately killing an innocent person, is wrong because human life is sacred. No matter how young, or how sick, someone is; that person's life is precious. (Catechism,

2258

,

2268

-

2283

)

Like I said last week, killing innocent people is legal in my country: provided the victim is young and/or sick enough. That's a bad idea, and we should stop doing it. (

August 30, 2015

)

But what about killing not-innocent people?

Death and Decisions

The rules are simple: love God, love my neighbor, see everybody as my neighbor.

Everybody:

the chap who took 'my' parking space, whoever stole the parish Gospel book,

everybody.

No exceptions.

"Love" isn't "approval," and I've said that before. (

March 15, 2015

)

For example, I don't approve — at all — of what Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev did. Killing Krystle Marie Campbell, Lu Lingzi (吕令子), Martin William Richard, and Sean A. Collier; and maiming many other folks; was wrong.

I am reasonably sure that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev should have been found guilty. I think I understand why an American court decided to poison him. But I do not think killing him is right. (

May 17, 2015

)

Quite a few folks who believe killing babies and sick people is wrong are eager to have murderers killed.

I'm not.

The Church says that killing people who have done something very bad is allowed —

if

that is the only way to protect other folks. (Catechism,

2267

)

I can imagine people on some remote island being forced to kill a serial murderer, because they do not have the resources to restrain and guard a killer. They would starve if

everyone

isn't out catching fish. I do not think the United States is that poverty-stricken and desperate.

Does Dzhokhar Tsarnaev deserve to die? Maybe. Can the United States restrain him? Yes. Some judge might reverse the verdict, and we do have the occasional escapee: but restraint is possible.

Will killing Tsarnaev restore his victims to life? No. Not even the United States Supreme Court can unkill someone.

Sometimes a murderer will, given time, decide that killing an innocent person was wrong.

St. Maria Goretti

's killer, Alessandro Serenelli, deserved the death penalty. If he'd been killed, some folks might have congratulated themselves on their civic virtue: and Alessandro would not have had an opportunity to think about what he'd done.

Alessandro Serenelli

eventually realized that he had done something very wrong. Later, after he was released from prison, he met Maria Goretti's mother: who forgave him. Her daughter had also done so before dying of her injuries. Allesandro later entered a monastery. (

July 6, 2009

)

State and Federal authorities want to kill

Dylan Roof

, the young man who killed nine folks at a Bible study in June.

His execution will, I think, be done legally: after a trial, and probably after appeals.

I think Dylan deserves the

death penalty

, but I also think that the state of North Carolina and the United States could protect citizens without killing this prisoner.

I hope that he gets time to think, as Alessandro Serenelli did.

What Dylan Roof did was very bad. Hanging on to anger, letting it build into a desire to harm or kill someone else, is a sin. So is murder. (Catechism,

1762

-

1775

,

2302

-

2303

,

2261

)

I'm angry about what Dylan Roof did.

But if I cherish that anger, letting it build into hate and a desire to see him killed — that would be very wrong. Maintaining justice is a responsibility. So is loving our enemies. (

Matthew 5:21

-

22

,

44

; Catechism,

2302

-

2306

)

Recap

I'm a Catholic, so I must believe that humanity is made in the image of the God. (

Genesis 1:27

)

I must love God, and my neighbor: and see everyone as my neighbor. (

Luke 10:25

-

27

,

29

-

37

; Catechism,

1789

)

Each of us is someone, not something; a person — able to reason, and decide how we act — and in these ways like God. (Catechism of the Catholic Church,

357

,

1700

-

1706

)

Our track record for using our reason and freedom is far from perfect. (Catechism,

1707

-

1709

)

And that's yet another topic.

Living in a world of neighbors:

1

Love God, love my neighbor, see everybody as my neighbor: it's simple, but not easy. (

Matthew 5:43

-

44

,

7:12

,

22:36

-

40

;

Mark 12:28

-

31

;

Luke 6:31 10:25

-

27

,

29

-

37

; Catechism,

1789

)

The principle of reciprocity we call the

Golden Rule

isn't, quite, unique to Christianity. I've written about that before:

2

Letter from Pope Francis to the Pontifical Council for Promoting the New Evangelization (September 1, 2015):

- Lettera del Santo Padre Francesco al Presidente del Pontificio Consiglio per la Promozione della Nuova Evangelizzazione all'approssimarsi del Giubileo Straordinario della Misericordia, 01.09.2015 — Testo in lingua italiana, francese, inglese, tedesca, spagnola, portoghese, polacca

(Letter of the Holy Father Francis to the President of the Pontifical Council for Promoting the New Evangelization at the approach of the Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy, September 1, 2015 — Text in Italian, French, English, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Polish)

(From press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/it/bollettino/pubblico/2015/09/01/0637/01386.html (September 5, 2015))

3

About natural law:

"...This ordination of reason is called law. In man's free will, therefore, or in the moral necessity of our voluntary acts being in accordance with reason, lies the very root of the necessity of law. Nothing more foolish can be uttered or conceived than the notion that, because man is free by nature, he is therefore exempt from law. Were this the case, it would follow that to become free we must be deprived of reason; whereas the truth is that we are bound to submit to law precisely because we are free by our very nature. For, law is the guide of man's actions; it turns him toward good by its rewards, and deters him from evil by its punishments.

"Foremost in this office comes the natural law, which is written and engraved in the mind of every man; and this is nothing but our reason, commanding us to do right and forbidding sin. Nevertheless, all prescriptions of human reason can have force of law only inasmuch as they are the voice and the interpreters of some higher power on which our reason and liberty necessarily depend...."

("Libertas," Pope Leo XIII (June 20, 1888))

And see:

4

I have to take the Bible, Sacred Scripture, seriously. (Catechism,

101

-

133

)

That's nowhere near the same as picking a few verses I like and warping them around my personal preferences, and that's — another topic. (

October 12, 2014

;

July 13, 2014

)

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Praying Psalm 145

I started this post last week with the intention of having it go live yesterday.  That way, it would coordinate with my Wednesday prayer posting on Facebook.  Alas, I forgot that I was going to be out of town both Tuesday and Wednesday; guess that means I need to coordinate my advance posting better!

Yesterday’s reading from Psalms is one of my favorites.  I’ll be honest; it’s a favorite because of some musical versions I have sung at church.  But it is also a favorite because of the overwhelmingly uplifting tone.  Every day I will bless God…not just good days, but every day!

I remember as a teen being taught about the importance of beginning any prayer time with praise and adoration.  Perhaps my Confirmation teacher realized how much teens like to ask for stuff, and so it would seem almost counter-intuitive to start with something like, “God You are so awesome!”  I believed I understood that praise should be first on our lips, but I was a lonely teen, desperately wanting acceptance from my peers and struggling with the limits of my disability.  Other than liturgical prayer, my words always seemed to be “Please God…” or “Why God?” or fortunately (sometimes) “Thank you God.”  I can’t imagine, at that age, being able to utter words such as St. Faustina’s prayer

“I believe, I adore, I trust, and I love Thee…”

So, when I look at this psalm proclaiming “EVERY day I will bless you,” it is a beautiful reminder.  Yes, some days are harder than others.  Arthritis bothers my hip, or Bruce has to work another long shift cutting into weekend plans, or the weather is awful…it is so easy to think of problems.  But blessing God in spite of those problems…my hip hurts, but at least I still have feeling in my body; Bruce has to work, but at least he has a very good job that he enjoys and that provides for us; the weather may be bad, but we live in a house that protects us from the elements.

I am trying to remember to utter words of blessing and praise before anything else when I wake up.  That’s tough for this 50-year-old body!  But even if I repeat someone else’s words…like David’s from the Psalms or St.Faustina’s…I am bound to have a day filled with more blessing than I can imagine!

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Distributism or Capitalism: Two Ways to Work [at Practical Distributism]

When human beings engage in economic activity they engage with other people. Even a gardener cultivating his own small plot has probably obtained his seeds and his tools from others and at least depends upon the larger society for the social stability that allows him to plant his garden with a reasonable expectation that he'll be able to harvest his crop later. But most often economic actors relate in many more obvious ways with others, with employees, with customers, with those we call competitors, and in a sense, with the general public or society itself. Each way of organizing economic activity, each economic system, necessitates or at least makes probable certain ways of interacting with these other persons and groups. Let us examine the contrast between how capitalism and distributism do this. But first, how do we define these two economic systems?

Capitalism, as I use the term here, refers to "that economic system in which were provided by different people the capital and labor jointly needed for production" (Pius XI, encyclical Quadragesimo Anno, #100). In other words, under capitalism, for the most part those who own the means of production hire others to do the actual work. Sometimes the capitalist owner manages the enterprise, but in its most extreme version, the corporation, the legal owners do nothing except collect their dividend checks or watch their stock prices rise or fall. They hire others to do the work of the corporation, including managing it. Many of these owners are not even real persons, but mutual funds or pension funds, and, in the back and forth of stock market transactions, they may own a particular stock for only a few minutes.

Distributism, on the other hand, is a way of organizing society's economic activity so that, as much as is feasible, the means of production are owned by those who actually do the work, whether that means small enterprises run by a single proprietor or larger ones that are employee-owned. In some small enterprises, it is true, younger workers during a period of apprenticeship may be paid a wage, but they work with the owner, not simply for him, and the expectation is that these apprentices will eventually be able to set up their own businesses or workshops, or be part owners of a larger employee-owned firm.

Let us now look at the contrasting effects these two economic systems have on the various persons and groups I mentioned above, and in the first place the workers. In a capitalist enterprise employees are always an expense, something in the balance sheet that takes away from profits. Thus there is an obvious incentive for owners to cut labor costs as much as possible, by keeping wages low, weakening or destroying unions, moving production to low-wage areas, weakening costly workplace safety measures, etc. Although in itself there is nothing unjust about a person hiring someone to work for him - provided a just wage is paid - the entire tendency of a capitalist enterprise and of a capitalist economy is to drive down labor costs. Even if an owner is determined to pay his employees a just wage, it can take heroic virtue to do so when all other firms are cutting wages, for as Pius XI also pointed out in Divini Redemptoris, often "under the salary system...individual employers are helpless to ensure justice" (#53). Sometimes even the continued existence of a firm can be endangered when an owner refuses to violate his duties toward his employees, since his own production costs will exceed those of other producers.

What is the case with distributism? Whether we are speaking of individual owners of farms or shops or small workshops, or of larger employee-owned entities, in a distributist enterprise the employer/employee divide hardly exists. In medieval distributism an owner usually employed others to assist with his work, but these others were in training as apprentices or journeymen and eventually would establish shops of their own. They were not expected to remain employees for their entire lives. Moreover, they were protected from exploitation by guild regulations. Today whenever an enterprise requires a number of workers greater than a handful, a better way is for the firm to be owned jointly by all the employees. This is equally distributist, and seems better suited for both modern technology and modern economic conditions. The point is, however, that whether the firm is owned and operated by one man or owned and operated by a larger number of employees, these individuals do not see their own compensation as an expense to be reduced as much as possible. Rather they are apt to see their salaries or wages as one of the reasons that the firm exists. There is no built-in conflict of interest as there is with capitalism, rather an identity of interests among all the members of the enterprise.

Next let us look now at the relations of the firm to its customers. Let me begin with a quotation from Hilaire Belloc.

But wealth obtained indirectly as profit out of other men's work, or by process of exchange, becomes a thing abstracted from the process of production. As the interest of a man in  things diminishes, his interest in abstract wealth - money - increases. The man who makes a table or grows a crop makes the success of the crop or the table a test of excellence. The intermediary who buys and sells the crop or the table is not concerned with the goodness of table or crop, but with the profit he makes between their purchase and sale. In a productive society the superiority of the things produced is the measure of success: in a Commercial society the amount of wealth accumulated by the dealer is the measure of success.[1]

Here we see one of the best accounts of what other writers have called the spirit of capitalism. Someone who views the enterprise as simply a means of making money, who has little personal interest in creating quality products for their own sake, tends to view customers or potential customers, not as persons for whom the enterprise provides a necessary service, whether that is providing bread or computers, but merely as sources of income. In other words, there is a shift from regarding customers as those in need of some necessary or beneficial good, and from whom certainly a fair exchange is to be expected, into simply someone to whom something can be sold, regardless of whether it is needed and regardless of the quality of the item sold.

It is true, of course, that a capitalist producer usually has some regard for the quality of his products, otherwise he often could not convince people to buy them. But his real concern is with "the profit he makes between their purchase [or manufacture] and sale." Thus the ubiquitous presence of advertising as a means of persuading people to buy products, whether needed or not, whether of good quality or not, even whether harmful or not.

In a distributist economy, on the other hand, producers or manufacturers generally have some personal or professional regard for the quality of the product itself. They are not interested simply in how much money they can make, regardless of whether the product is of poor quality or not. Of course a distributist producer could have the same sort of attitude that capitalism fosters, but this is much less likely. Not only is a distributist producer more intimately engaged with his product than his capitalist counterpart usually is, but distributism does not have the built-in incentive which encourages producers to concentrate simply on profits, with as little care for product quality as is compatible with revenue from sales. Under distributism producers tend to see themselves as supplying some need of the public for which, of course, they expect to be adequately compensated. But their aim is serving the public, not increasing their incomes by any possible means.

Continued in part 2

[1] An Essay on the Nature of Contemporary England (New York : Sheed & Ward, 1937) p. 67.

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Prayer of Gratitude for His Extravagant Love [at Little Steps Along the Way]

Prayer of Gratitude for His Extravagant Love [at Little Steps Along the Way]

Lord Jesus, You not only give yourself to me in Holy Communion,

but You have grafted me on to be part of Your very own body.

The mystery of it, the extravagant grandiosity of it stuns me.

It is more than I can comprehend.

Your Breath in my lungs,

Your Blood in my veins,

Your mercy ready to be expressed through me,

Your love longing to love through me.

As part of Your Body, Your Church, I have an urgent mission:

to be an expression of Your love and mercy,

to be an expression of Your goodness and truth,

to be an expression of Your compassion and justice.

How can I deny You joy by keeping Your mercy and love to myself?

Lord God, how can I resist responding to the great graces

You bestow so abundantly and generously?

You give me so much, yet I am so miserly,

selfishly keeping so much to myself,

as though to spend it would diminish my share of it.

In truth, sharing Your grace and love with others

inflames the spark of love not just in my own heart

but also in the world around me.

I can only begin to understand

what love is and what love isn’t.

Your love

Lord Jesus – Father God – Holy Spirit – Most Holy Trinity

is beyond anything I can imagine.

Thank you for planting Your love in my heart,

and inviting me to share in Your Most Precious Body and Blood.

Thank you for giving Yourself to me and for me.

Praise and glory to Your Most Holy Name!

Amen

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Surely They Don't Know: the Ugly Truth of Abortion [at Through the Eyes of the Faithful]

Unless you have just returned from a hermitage, you have heard of the recent and ongoing Planned Parenthood scandal.  A group of pro-life activists called the Center for Medical Progress(CMP) has begun releasing a series of undercover videos which demonstrate Planned Parenthood employees haggling over prices for the body parts of aborted children.  This, of course, has thrown fuel onto the fire of the abortion debate which has been raging since Roe vs. Wade.  Abortion supporters are tripping over themselves, offering everything from excuses to flat out denial.  But whether they are sticking their heads in the sand or reasoning that the babies are going to be aborted anyway so we might as well make good use of the scraps, it all misses the point by a mile.  The only people shocked by the revelation that Planned Parenthood sells the dismembered remains of the babies it kills are people who were convinced until now that abortion didn't actually kill babies.  Before being forced to look at a lab technician sifting through a bloody pile of arms, legs, liver, and brain some could snuggle up to the euphemism of "terminating a pregnancy" and continue parroting the nonsensical verbiage Planned Parenthood relies on for its existence.  Those of us in the pro-life camp have been busy dragging the truth out into the light of day while hoping and praying America will wake up from its coma.  The fact that Planned Parenthood sells baby parts is merely an opportunity to help people snap out of it.  Yes abortion is legal, and no, selling body parts is not, but again, this is not the point.  If anyone has broken the law, and anyone thinking clearly can see they have, they should be brought to justice of course.  But, the response to this scandal is not, "Planned Parenthood sells the body parts of the babies it aborts?  That's wrong!  Abortion is one thing, but selling the products of it is just going too far!"  No, America.  The response is, "Dear God!  Abortion is the murder of innocent children, and we have to stop it!"  So if you are one of the people waking up from your long slumber, I invite you to rub your eyes and read on before you start feeling sleepy again.  It's not going to be pretty, but it will be the truth.

Revelation of Truth

The first step in recovering from the comatose state of being pro-choice is to realize that unborn children are, in fact, human beings.  This statement may seem obvious, but it is apparently necessary and must be fully accepted before moving on.  You see, for decades Americans had their consciences lulled to sleep by the constant repetition of such utter nonsense as "It's not a baby, it's just a blob of tissue(clump of cells, etc)."  Quite often the pro-life camp is accused of being a bunch of anti-science, superstitious wackos.  If you want to see anti-science, you can watch this video of a Planned Parenthood representative telling a group of college students to ignore science, and calling scientific facts opinions.  Pardon me, but we have known for many, many years now that it is not a clump of cells.  Pick up any text book about fetal development and you will learn that by the time a woman even knows she is pregnant, the baby's heart is already beating.  Take a look at this video from The Endowment for Human Development.  Follow to the video if it does not work below.  Note that it is taken at 4 weeks and 4 days gestation, a few days before the average woman has even missed her period:

Blobs of tissue do not have beating hearts, folks.  Many people rationalize abortion by saying that the majority of abortions are performed in the first trimester(up to the thirteenth week of pregnancy).  Here is what a baby looks like at eight weeks:

In an effort to seem reasonable, many pro-choice people I speak to will tell me that while they think it's wrong to abort a baby at eight months, eight weeks is perfectly acceptable.  Look at that image.  You see eyes, ears, arms, legs, even tiny ribs.  This is not an amorphous blob, it is clearly a human being.  Now, if you truly have the strength of your convictions, follow this link to an image of the remains of a baby aborted at eight weeks.  Note there is even a medical authentication.  Still think this is okay?

The science is clear, unborn babies are human beings.  It is sad that I even have to offer proof and an argument for that, but there you go.  Abortion takes the life of a human being, and that is murder.

Justifying Murder

Fewer and fewer are those who try to claim babies are not actually people.  They are gradually being replaced by people who acknowledge the humanity unborn, but say it is okay to kill them.  I'm still not certain if I prefer this brazen honesty to delusion or not.  Lesser of evils aside, let's look at some of the justifications used and why they are pure fallacious nonsense.

"It's my body!"

No, no it's not.  That baby growing inside you is a completely separate body.  This really should go without saying.  To make it simple:

Got it?  Good, let's move on.

"Better Off Dead"

Next is what I call the "better off dead" argument, when people appeal to despair.  They site  hypothetical abuse, neglect and suffering as reasons to kill unborn children.  There are several issues with this argument.  The first is that nobody can predict with certainty that a mother will abuse her children.  When we think of this, we imagine some haggard, poor, miserable sot living in the ghetto and spending her money on drugs instead of formula and diapers.  Do we really think every mother in a difficult circumstance is going to abuse her child?  Do we really think every mother in comfortable circumstances won't?  Which is more anti-woman:  encouraging a woman in her struggles and lifting her up or telling her she can't possibly manage and her child is better off dead?  What we are striving for here seems altruistic.  We can't bear the thought of children abused and suffering.  Tell me, are only lives without suffering worth living?  I surely hope not because there is no such life.  Just because a child is born into poor circumstances does not mean his life will be hopeless or meaningless.  Just because a child is born into ideal circumstances is not a guarantee of no suffering.  Do we really think we can look around at one another and say whose life is worth living and whose isn't?  Surely we must see what folly that is.

Am I saying that I don't care about child abuse and the suffering of children?  Certainly not.  Think about it, when a person is already born, we consider there no greater abuse than to murder them.  Before they are born somehow abuse is worse than murder?  Imagine if we applied this logic elsewhere.  "Sir, I'm sorry, but you have cancer and we don't expect you to make it.  We don't want you to suffer so we're going to take you to the operating room and dismember you now."  Imagine a social worker showing up to remove children from an abusive home.  "I'm sorry your mom isn't very nice, Timmy.  We're going to rip your limbs off now so you don't have to suffer anymore.  Don't worry, there are fates worse than death."  Here it seems like madness, and madness it is.  But tell me, what is the difference?  I'll tell you.  When we kill unborn children, we don't have to look at them until they're already dead.  So long as there is life, there is hope, and either we all have a right to life or none of us do.

"They'll Do It Anyway": the Coathanger Defense

This is another ridiculous one.  People attempt to justify abortion being legal because if we make it illegal women will still get abortions.  It should go without saying that no matter the law, someone will break it.  If we used that as our go-to logic for lawmaking, everything would be legal.  People are going to do any number of terrible things they shouldn't.  The point is that we, as a society, declare certain actions unacceptable.

This defense is ridiculous for another reason.  The whole back-alley abortion myth is just that: a myth.  While I'm certain there were some cases of less-than-qualified individuals performing abortions in the days before it was legalized(as there are plenty of now too), the idea that this was pervasive is false.  The majority of illegal abortions were performed by doctors.  Take a look at this article.  But what is more important than dissolving the myth of the coathanger abortion, is opening eyes to the fact that legal abortion is no safer than illegal.  There are countless cases of filthy clinics with expired medication, dirty equipment or improper sterilization, unsafe conditions such as faulty elevators that delay emergency medical care, and patient neglect such as leaving a woman to hemorrhage for five hours before calling 911.  I could write a book, and in fact people have, about the horrific conditions found in abortion clinics.  None in recent history were quite so horrific of the case of Kermit Gosnell.  A movie is in the works about his "House of Horrors" as it has come to be called.  What is more disturbing than the facts of his case is knowing there are more out there like him who have yet to be caught.

Yet Planned Parenthood and their supporters are constantly fighting the adoption of regulations that would keep women safe, such as physicians being required to have admitting privileges at hospitals and banning webcam abortions or keeping their buildings up to code.  So who is really waging a war on women here?

Finally, we should adapt "They'll do it anyway" to "They'll do it anyway, and if they don't want to, we'll make them."  See, abortion is supposed to be all about choice.  Yet Planned Parenthood only offers their patients one choice: abortion.  As per the 2013/14 fiscal year report, Planned Parenthood performed 327,653 abortions and referred 1,880 women for adoptions.  This video has a lovely graphic of a non-pregnant uterus to illustrate the abortion procedure.  Planned Parenthood fights ultrasound laws that would require women to actually see their babies before they choose to kill them.  Heaven forbid we tell women the truth and let them actually choose.  This link contains many quotes from both patients and abortion providers on how women are given deceptive counseling and pressured to have abortions.  And here's another link to Planned Parenthood's website where they inform children that they may be able to circumvent parental consent laws:

In some states, you can be excused from involving a parent without going to a judge if you are the victim of abuse or neglect and you or your doctor report this to the appropriate authorities.  If you are facing a medical emergency and require an immediate abortion, most states will not impose their parental involvement requirements.

We wouldn't want those pesky parents getting involved!  After all, a child knows best right?  I imagine they have all sorts of "medical emergencies" that justify bypassing these laws.  Just as long as you don't have an actual emergency after or during your abortion or you might end up like Tonya Reeves, Jennifer Morbelli, Maria Santiago, Lakisha Wilson, Laura Hope Smith, or Alexandra Nunez.  All of those are cases from 2007 on, and specifically cases of negligence.  Where is the outcry for the deaths of these women?  Not a single news network covered their cases.  Where are the feminists screaming that this is not the safe abortion they fought for?  The silence is deafening.

Rape Exceptions and Life of the Mother

This is considered the silver bullet of the pro-choice argument.  This is the point no pro-lifer is supposed to be able to counter.  Along the lines of the "better off dead" argument, this again appeals to despair.  Nobody wants to think about the horrific crime of a woman being raped or the tragedy of something going terribly wrong during pregnancy.  But since when do we consider heaping more horror or more tragedy onto a problem, a solution?  In the case of rape, for what other crime do we execute a child for the crimes of his father?  Does killing a child un-rape a woman?  Abortion or rape taken by themselves are traumatizing, do we really thinking helping a woman kill her innocent child is going to maker her feel better?  Women who have been raped are violated and made to feel helpless and powerless.  Women who turn to abortion do so because they too feel helpless and powerless.  So how will abortion help a woman who has been raped recover her life?  It doesn't.  All of this is in addition to the fact that children conceived in rape are no less human than any other child.  When people want to support pro-life legislation with rape exceptions, they need to consider the following question:  would you support legislation that made exceptions for black babies?  That's discrimination you say?  Indeed it is, and rape exceptions are no different.

A final point to be made about abortion and rape is this.  People think abortion offers a solution to rape, but it doesn't.  Abortion enables rapists and sex traffickers.  Most people think of rape as a one-time, random offense.  That is not always the case.  Rape can often be an on-going case of abuse which is covered up thanks to abortion.  Here is a list of cases in which sexual predators used abortion to cover up their crimes.  Abortion clinics seem all too happy to assist in covering up these crimes; I suppose it's good for business.  See this case in Colorado, and this undercover investigation by Live Action which revealed eight Planned Parenthood clinics in five different states covering up sexual abuse.  There's also this investigation detailing seven clinics in four different states assisting child sex traffickers with confidential birth control, STD testing, and secret abortions for their victims.  Of course sometimes the abuser is the abortionist himself, as was the case here with a convicted sex offender running eight abortion clinics in New Jersey.  And naturally, Planned Parenthood fights legislation that would require all of its employees to report sexual abuse.

Lastly, the point needs to be made that abortion is never necessary to save the life of the mother.  Even as recently as the GOP debate, the question was raised as to whether a pro-life candidate would rather risk a mother's life than allow her to have an abortion.  People rarely seem to know how to respond to this, and it is astonishing how few people realize that abortion is completely unnecessary.  Partly, no doubt, this is because "life of the mother" must remain a talking point for abortion lobbyists.  For the rest of us, it is mere ignorance.  In the case of ectopic pregnancy(when the baby has implanted somewhere other than the uterus, most commonly the fallopian tube) the baby must be surgically removed.  This is not the same as an abortion.  If a woman is diagnosed with a disease such as cancer during her pregnancy, a doctor will not deny her treatment.  In fact, there is a growing list of chemotherapy drugs which do not cross the placenta so there isn't even a risk to the baby.  Plus, this study found that babies with in utero exposure to chemotherapy drugs are not at an increased risk for birth defects.  In any kind of emergent condition, doctors can induce labor or deliver via Cesarean section.  Is the baby guaranteed to live?  No, but it's better than a guaranteed death via dismemberment as with abortion.

Remember Savita Halappanavar?  Of course you don't.  She was the woman whose death was used by the media to spur mass hysteria and draw a world-wide attack on Ireland's abortion laws.  Reporters falsely claimed that she requested an abortion, was denied, and died as a result.  In reality, Savita never requested an abortion, nor would one have saved her life.  The final report, which no one was actually interested in, showed that hospital staff failed to follow protocol and as a result missed a fatal infection.  Nobody cares about that now, and certainly the media never came out and apologized for acting like a bunch of blood-thirsty lunatics.  They got what they wanted: abortion in Ireland.  Ironically enough, when Ireland was abortion-free, they were the safest nation in the world in which to have a baby.  It seems the standards are raised when doctors do what they are supposed to: preserve life.

"But we NEED Planned Parenthood!"

One thing is certain, we DO NOT need Planned Parenthood.  First of all, here is a map of Federally qualified health centers:

You can see there's a few to choose from.  All of these centers offer the same services as Planned Parenthood, minus abortion.  Just imagine what we could do if we added to them the more than $500,000 in tax dollars that goes to Planned Parenthood every year.

Now, the other point to be made is this.  Planned Parenthood likes to go on about how abortion only accounts for 3% of their services.  This is an absolute lie, but completely misses the point anyway.  Think about it.  Let's say I run a medical clinic and thousands of people come to me for medication, cancer screenings, and various other important services.  Now let's say I run this clinic with money paid to me by parents who have me kill their unwanted children.  Parents bring me their children, pay a fee, and I take them in a back room and kill them.  Am I still an asset to the community?  Are you still on CNN proclaiming that this country NEEDS me?  Dear God, I certainly hope not.  But this is exactly the reasoning we are using when we justify the existence of Planned Parenthood.  They make obscene amounts of money in profit every year killing unwanted children and we proclaim that the world would stop turning if we got rid of them.  "But, but...abortion is different!"  Really, how?  Mothers go in with unwanted children and Planned Parenthood kills them.  The bodies are smaller, the act is the same.  Conveniently, the murderers at Planned Parenthood don't have to look at their victims until they're already dead.

Final Thoughts

There's no mistaking we have lost our moral compass in America.  We no longer search for truth, but rather look for ways to justify what we want.  This reveals itself with astounding clarity with abortion.  We know abortion is murder - the intentional taking of an innocent human life.  We know this, and we know it is wrong, but it's what we want so we look for ways to justify it.  We make excuse after excuse, and resist every effort made at revealing the painful truth.  When I had my conversion, one of the first issues I had to reconsider was abortion.  I actually took the time to form an opinion rather than parroting the party lines I had learned so well.  When I looked abortion in the face, when I acknowledged what it truly is and looked at the bloody remains of what was once a tiny human being, I cried.  I cried for days and weeks, and felt a near constant pain in my heart for months on end.  "Surely they don't know!", I told myself.  I never stopped to think about abortion and what it really is before, and I thought that many others were probably the same.  We've been taught that women have a right to choose and that abortion is a necessary evil.  This is nothing more than a lie we tell ourselves to relieve ourselves of any obligation to actually dealing with responsibility, consequences of our actions, or facing tragic and painful situations.  But it is a two-fold lie because not only is abortion not necessary, it's not even a solution to any of these things.  If, as a society, we declare the killing of children a solution to anything then, my God, what are we?

I pray that this post will open the eyes of any abortion supporter who reads it.  I pray we will stop hiding from the painful truth of abortion.  I pray for the day the unborn are no longer considered a subclass of humanity.  Fight the temptation to go back to sleep.  Stay awake and fight for the defenseless, for the voiceless, for the least of these.  Until next time, may God bless you.

Resources

Want to learn more?  Below is a list a resources to learn more about the ugly truth of abortion, ways to take action, and programs for healing after abortion.

Silent No More(silentnomoreawareness.org):  a group that raises awareness about abortion through the testimonies of men and women who have lost children through abortion, as well as former abortion providers.  They also have information on healing programs for post abortive men and women.

Priests for Life(www.priestsforlife.org):  find ways to take action against abortion, see images and videos of actual abortions, and links to healing programs

Abby Johnson(www.abbyjohnson.org): a former abortion clinic manager turned pro-life advocate

And Then There Were None(abortionworker.com): an outreach run by Abby Johnson to help abortion workers leave the industry with everything from financial assistance to legal representation

Rachael's Vineyard(www.rachelsvineyard.org):  offers healing retreats for post abortive men and women

The Endowment for Human Development(www.ehd.org):  an astounding collection of in utero images and videos throughout all nine months of pregnancy

This contribution is available at http://eyesofthefaithful.blogspot.com/2015/08/surely-they-dont-know-ugly-truth-of.html

Copyright is retained by the contributing author (follow above link for info on this piece).

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St. Therese, We're Counting on You [at String of Pearls]

Back in the summer of 2012, I received a precious inheritance from my deceased maternal grandparents: an authentic relic of one of my most beloved saints, St. Therese of Lisieux.  I wrote

this post about it

not long after this heavenly gift, along with an authentic relic of St. Catherine Laboure, came into my life, if you're interested in reading it.

I keep St. Catherine on a shelf in our living room at home, and I stop by to visit her there often.  She is dear to me because of her association with the Miraculous Medal, which I wear always.  But I love St. Therese--she of the "Little Way"-- in a very special way, and she is always with me.  I keep her relic in a zippered cloth pouch that is embroidered with an icon of the Blessed Mother and the Baby Jesus (a souvenir from the time I tagged along on one of my husband's working trips to Athens).  That pouch is always in my purse, or in my carry-on bag when I fly.  It is especially comforting to me to have St. Therese along when I'm on an airplane, because I'm a recovering white knuckle flyer and she is the patron saint of aviators.  I figure she'll take care of those guys up front--whether that means so that the flight will land safely, or so that if it doesn't, the souls on board will suffer as little as possible and be ready to meet their Maker.

Yes, this is the way my brain operates.  This is the way I think every time I board an airplane (which happens A LOT these days--and you know this if you stop by String of Pearls very often).  So I thought it would be well nigh impossible for me to ever let that St. Therese relic out of my sight.

But I found someone who needs her more than I do right now.

I have a sister-in-law (who just so happens to have been named after Our Blessed Mother and St. Therese) whose husband was diagnosed with a particularly aggressive type of cancer some months back.  Today, he will undergo a grueling 13-hour surgical procedure on his lung, and if all goes well, his post-op recovery will take anywhere from 3 to 6 weeks.  This brother-in-law was raised a Lutheran; but because of my sister-in-law's quiet yet persuasive example, he is planning to convert to Catholicism as soon as he can schedule his RCIA classes. In fact, the first thing he said when he was diagnosed was that he didn't want to put it off any longer, because he didn't want to die before he became a Catholic.

Wow, how's that for inspiring?

Last week, I made a spur-of-the-moment decision and handed my brother-in-law that zippered pouch, with the precious cargo inside of it, and told him that I wanted him to have it with him while he's going through his surgery and recovery.

I am on a bus to Boston right now, to be there with my sister-in-law on this, the most difficult day of her life.  I got a text from her not too long ago saying that her husband was holding onto that relic while he was waiting to be taken down for surgery.  That childlike faith in St. Therese's intercession, coming from a man who wasn't raised to know her and hasn't even been sacramentally received into the Church yet, is so touching that it brings tears to my eyes.  I pray that she continues to provide him with comfort and solace in the weeks to come.

Please pray that my brother-in-law's surgery today will be a success.  And continue to pray for this wonderful couple, that they will have the strength to endure whatever trials they will face on his road to recovery.

This contribution is available at http://mumsie2five.blogspot.com/2015/09/st-therese-were-counting-on-you.html

Copyright is retained by the contributing author (follow above link for info on this piece).

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Zeal is More Necessary Today than Ever - True Zeal, That Is, Not a Mere Human Imitation of It [at Community in Mission]

One of the great virtues related to charity is zeal. Zeal is the ardor of charity; it is love burning brightly. It is a fiery love for God, for His gracious truth, and for the salvation of souls.

Because of human fear, sloth, and self-seeking, zeal is rare. It is especially difficult to find in our present age, when relativism and “tolerance” are so prevalent. Both relativism and excessive tolerance are really little more than sloth masquerading as something more benign. People consider truth to be relative and exalt tolerance more out of laziness than anything else. Seeking the truth and obeying it is just too much trouble for most moderns.

And thus zeal is quite hard to find today. Rare indeed are those fiery souls whose love for God and neighbor compels them to speak, teach, and suffer for souls and for the glory of God. Zeal once sent missionaries around the world, hungry for the salvation of souls, dedicating their whole lives to Christ and the glory of His vision.

Sadly, with notable exception, many once effective missionary orders slumber in a soporific universalism which presumes that most, if not all, will be saved without repentance and faith.

And more locally, a great somnolence is upon too many Church leaders, priestly and parental. Despite the horrific condition of our culture and of many, many souls, a kind of sleepiness consumes most Catholics. There are silent pulpits with sleepy priests. There are silent dinner tables with parents who should speak out but are distracted by less important things, rather than being awake and vigilant for the salvation of their children’s souls and the protection of their moral lives.

Meanwhile the secular and also the satanic are passionate and dedicated. For the sons of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the sons of light (Lk 16:8).  Oh, for the zealous—ablaze with love for God, love for souls, and joy in the truth; who spend themselves sacrificially and earnestly work for the Kingdom! They are among us, but they are too few.

Therefore, we should seek this gift of zeal. But we must be careful—for zeal, like anger, is difficult to master. Zeal admits of defect (as we have noted above) but also of excess. Zeal is not some wild sort of running about; it is not indiscriminate argumentation or a mere lashing out at evil. As with any gift of God, it must be rooted in and balanced by other virtues, natural and theological, such as charity, prudence, counsel, and meekness.

In this brief reflection I am drawing from Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, who himself draws from St. Thomas Aquinas. Because I am drawing from a more lengthy work and reordering some of its content, I am not presenting exact quotes but rather selecting and paraphrasing his material in substantial ways and interweaving my own commentary. Fr. Lagrange’s thoughts are recorded in The Three Ages of the Interior Life, Vol II, Tan Publications pp. 213-223.

Zeal is the ardor of charity, the burning fire of love, but one that is enlightened, patient, meek, and disinterested. We shall see that each of these words is important.

Consider first some motives or causes of zeal:

The first reason or motive of zeal is that God deserves to be loved above all things. Knowing this and experiencing His love and providence for us should light a fire of love in us for Him. He is worthy of our love and gratitude. Zeal’s first object is an increasingly bright and burning love for God.

The second motive for our zeal is the inestimable value of the immortal souls redeemed by Jesus Christ. We love them and their well-being is important to us. We zealously seek to reach them knowing that each of them is worth more than the entire physical universe. St. Paul wrote, “I most gladly will spend and be spent myself for your souls; although loving you more, I be loved less” (2 Corinthians 12:15). Wow, that means he will love and spend himself for them even if they do not return his love, even if they turn on him! This is a motivated zeal for souls!

Yet another motive of our zeal is the contrary zeal with which the enemies of Christ and His Body the Church dedicate themselves—working disorder, corruption, and death. Their work is indescribably perverse and influential; many are lost through them. We work against them even as we pray that they will turn back from the road to damnation along which they are dragging so many others with them.

While zeal should be ardent, it must also be free from all excessive human self-seeking. Thus, it should be enlightened, patient, meek, and disinterested.

Enlightened – Zeal should, first of all, be illumined by the light of faith. If zeal is only animated by our natural spirit it easily drifts from the task of converting souls to God and begins to imagine a worldly utopia. Utopianism is often envisioned by restless, angry, blundering, ambitious people and features what is impulsive, unreasonable, trendy, and ephemeral.

Thus Christian zeal must be illumined not only by the light of faith, but also a faith rooted in obedience to Christian prudence and the gift of wisdom and counsel. The goal is the glory of God, the triumph of His truth, and the salvation of souls. Zeal not enlightened by faith tends more to the tower of Babel than to the glory of God.

Patient and Meek – Zeal should also be patient and meek. We must learn to avoid the tendency to become uselessly irritated by evil, venting in unproductive indignation and indiscriminate sermonizing. Patience and meekness teach us to tolerate certain evils in order to avoid greater ones, and to not allow ourselves to become bitter in the great struggle that faces us.

Most of us know people who have been in the battle just a little too long; people who, though understandably aggrieved by the condition of our culture, have tended toward bitterness and harsh condemnation of others who do not have their exact priorities or just the right combination of views on issues.

If zeal becomes detached from charity it too easily becomes mere indignation. God mysteriously tolerates certain evils, often for lengthy periods. He does this for some greater good. And though He bids us to fight error, evil, and injustice, He does not always promise immediate victory. The cross must be endured, even the grave experienced. But in three days we rise with Him. Patience and meekness engage the battle, endure the Cross, and look to the vindication that will one day come.

Disinterested – True Christian zeal should also be disinterested. The glory of God is our goal, not the winning of an argument or a political victory. True zeal works for the Kingdom. It does not care who gets credit for the victory. We should not claim as our own what really belongs to God. The battle is the Lord’s and to Him is the victory and the spoils. Neither should we appropriate to ourselves what belongs to others. Never should we claim credit for what God or others have done; we should rejoice that God worked it through and through. Zeal for the Kingdom is our work. It is not about our glory; it is about God’s glory, His truth, and the salvation of souls.

So in the end, zeal is the ardor of charity: enlightened, patient, meek, and disinterested. While it is clear today that zeal is too often lacking, we should not presume that the solution is a kind of reckless zeal that indiscriminately and foolishly lashes out at everything and manifests more of a kind of bitterness or human anger.

Zeal is for God’s glory and the salvation of souls. Like anger, it is difficult to master. It is needed as never before, but it must be true zeal, not some human imitation of it.

Lord, give us true zeal! Give us the zeal such as your servant and prophet Jeremiah spoke of when he said, If I say, I will not mention the Lord, or speak any more in his name, there is in my heart as it were a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot. (Jer 20:9-10). Give us the zeal of St. Paul, who said, I will most gladly spend and be spent for your souls (2 Cor 12:15). Yes, Lord, give us fiery zeal; give us the ardor of charity for you, your people, and your truth. Let zeal for your house consume us, that we may be a fiery warmth and a purifying fire to all around us. In your grace we pray. Amen.

This song says, “Fire, fire, fire, fire fall on me. On the day of Pentecost, the fire fall on me.”

This contribution is available at http://blog.adw.org/2015/09/zeal-is-more-necessary-today-than-ever-true-zeal-that-is-not-a-mere-human-imitation-of-it/

Copyright is retained by the contributing author (follow above link for info on this piece).

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Table of Contents

New Evangelists Monthly #34 October 2015

All articles

Pope Francis -- Jesus' failure on the cross?

Model of Obedience: Our Blessed Mother

It's All About Timing

5 things you didn't know about St. Therese

Beckoning

Papa Rocks The Garden!

The Birthday Parties that Never Were

The Four Mini-Gospels

Reinventing the wheel

The Passion of Saint Therese

Reflection: September 11

Images of Mary Expecting : Our Lady of the Unborn

A Tale of Two Josephs

Beneath the Cover of Your Kindle, How Hot Is Too Hot?

Is gossiping beneath the concerns of a pope?

Marriage: Its Strength Lies in Grace

From Attempted Suicide to Christian Evangelist

The Pope's Visit

Who were the Nicolaitans? A Mystery Decoded

Worldwide Abortion Protest Reignites Ancient Battle

The Double Portion Anointing

There's a Saint for That

Paradox

The Places He Puts Us

Love is Our Mission - World Meeting of Families and the Papal Visit

Plain as Day

Fountain of Grace

When Words Fail: Comforting the Grieving

Imperfection Accepted

October is here and so is 40DFL and Respect Life month

Sometimes Our God Is Like a Cheering Grandfather!

Why We're Not Raising Our Kids Gender Neutral

Keyboards and Atheists

Will the poor forgive me?

Looked Hard at Him and Loved Him

Getting to Know Jesus: 10 Ways to Grow Closer to our Lord and Savior

My God, my God, why have thou forsaken me?

The Trouble with Works

Prayer To End Terrorism

Intercessions ~ Twenty Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time

Overwhelmed

Your Presence Makes A Difference

Avoiding the Error of the Pharisees

How Should We Respond?

Understanding Catholic Teaching on the Blessed Virgin Mary

Myth of Quality Time

Faith like a child

Us and Them

The whole world is a Friary

From a Child of Divorce: What I Wish They Would Have Told Me

Fessing up on my 47th: I will disappoint you

Watching the Pope's Mass in Philadelphia from the comfort of our domestic church

I Live in a Factory

The Rights of Evil

True dialogue on moral issues for developing public policy in a democracy like Canada

Pope Francis in America: Hope Amidst Crisis

Basic Training with St. Vianney

Annulment reform and the Kasper proposal

"For I Hate Divorce, Says the Lord."

Meeting Families at the World Meeting of Families

Hate People? Not an Option

Praying Psalm 145

Distributism or Capitalism: Two Ways to Work

Prayer of Gratitude for His Extravagant Love

Surely They Don't Know: the Ugly Truth of Abortion

St. Therese, We're Counting on You

Zeal is More Necessary Today than Ever - True Zeal, That Is, Not a Mere Human Imitation of It