December 2017

New Evangelists Monthly - December 2017

New Evangelists Monthly - December 2017

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...about this eBook

Is Jesus God?

Catholicism and Adventism by Stephen Korsman

"Progressive" Catholics Are Heterodox Catholics

BIG C CATHOLICS by Matthew Coffin

Psalm 67 ~ God's All-Inclusive Embrace

Pauca Verba by Fr. Stephen Morris

Talking to God

A Spiritual Journey by David Wong

Had I Really Forgiven the Bullies? Or Did I Have More Work to Do?

by Virginia Lieto

Introduction to Spiritual Starvation

The Mission of Saint Thorlak

Rosary for the Purification of the Church

The Shield of Faith by Frank Rega

Soup

With Us Still by John Schroeder

Digging Deeper, Growing in Virtue Through Fiction

Carolyn Astfalk, Author by Carolyn Astfalk

Dumping the Junk: A Lesson From Fitness to Faith

Martin Family Moments by Colleen Martin

Standing Firm in the Face of Suffering

Creo en Dios! by Susan Stabile

Brokenness and the Power of an Embrace

The Frank Friar by Fr. Nicholas Blackwell

Finding a New Beautiful in Postpartum

Under Thy Roof by Kirby Hoberg

St. Philip's: The Gift of Conversion

JOY Alive in our hearts by Nancy Ward

Defending Catholicism: Confession

by Scott Smith

Of Casablanca, Cinema, and Coming of Age

Clinging to Onions

Twelve Tips for a Holier Advent Season

Jean M. Heimann by Jean Heimann

10 Ways to Prepare During Advent

Lord, Make Me a Saint by Jamie Jo

The Power To Heal

Shifting My Perspective by Claire McGarry

America, One Last Chance, Revisited

Renew The Church! by Thomas and Deborah Richard

Living in a Connected World

by Tony Agnesi

God Willing

Sunflower Sojourn by Lianna Mueller

Good and Faithful Servant

Theologyisaverb by Elizabeth Reardon

On Being Conformed into Christ's Image

Bartimaeus' Quiet Place by Bartimaeus Timeo

Unfolding John 1:1-5 (Origin Stories)

Third Place Project by Mike Landry

Is Private Property an Evil?

Practical Distributism by David Cooney

Is Private Property an Evil?

Practical Distributism by David Cooney

We've Forgotten How Great It Is To Be a Catholic Woman

joy of nine9 by Melanie Jean Juneau

Risk-Takers versus Care-Takers: The Parable of the Talents

Christ's Faithful Witness by Lawrence and Susan Fox

Advent

Grace to Paint by Sister Maresa Lilley

Mystery of the Magi: The Quest to Identify the Three Wise Men

Plot Line and Sinker (Ellen Gable, Author) by Ellen Gable Hrkach

No Wives Allowed

On the Road to Damascus by Robert Collins

Understanding and discernment as well as LOVE versus LAW

In the Breaking of the Bread by Fr. Gilles Surprenant

Disorders, Decisions

A Catholic Citizen in America by Brian Gill

Going Back on my Promise / An Answer

Quiet Consecration by Leslie Klinger

The Problems of Misinterpretation

If I Might Interject

Will I in imitation of Francis Xavier keep on keeping on or will I give in and give up at the slightest sign of trouble?

A JESUIT'S BLOG by Fr. Errol Fernandes

Persevere

The Contemplative Catholic Convert by Rich Maffeo

From Toy Town With Love

by David Torkington

Crosses or Toothpicks

Harvesting The Fruits of Contemplation by Michael Seagriff

Entirely Catholic

Walking the Path by Christian Miraglia

Christ the King and Sins of Omission

Real Life Rosary by Jim Hahn

OPINION: The Pope and His Audiences on the Mass Re: Pictures At Mass

Servimus unum Deum by Julian Barkin

St. Teresa of Calcutta and The Miraculous Medal

by Tom Perna

That's Not How It Works

casual theology by Tom Ponchak

What's Deepest in Us: Three for All Souls Day

Mere Observations by Jeff Walker

When A Jigsaw Puzzle Teaches Much about Life

A Moment From De Sales by Fr. Richard DeLillio

Always Thankful

by Kim Padan

Prayer Matters: Praying for the Dead

From the Pulpit of my Life by Ruth Ann Pilney

I watched in awe as the priest stepped into the sandals of Christ.

It Makes Sense to Me by Larry Peterson

Advent -- a Time of Sacrifice and Fasting?

Catholic Conundrum by Christina Nagy

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New Evangelists Monthly is an informal, dynamic, crowd-sourced “meta-magazine” showcasing the best posts faithful Catholic bloggers publish each month. Here you will find many different, but faithfully Catholic viewpoints, insights and perspectives.

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Is Jesus God? [at Catholicism and Adventism]

Russian Jewelled Icon of Christ Pantocrator

Adventists believe some strange things. Some Adventists believe even stranger things. There’s a small but vocal group within Adventism that denies the divinity of Jesus Christ, a core teaching of biblical Christianity. Some other groups like the Jehovah’s Witnesses and Christadelphians teach this too.

Some of the early Adventists were Trinitarians, while others were Arians. Ellen White was in the former camp, but she made a few strange statements:

“The man Christ Jesus was not the Lord God Almighty, yet Christ and the Father are one.”
– Lift Him Up, p. 235.3
– SDA Bible Commentary, vol. 5, p. 1129.7
– Ms 140, 1903 (September 27, 1903) par. 28

A few sentences before, context indicates that this is a mistake on Ellen’s part:

“Equal with the Father, honored and adored by the angels, in our behalf Christ humbled Himself …”
– ibid

She clearly fell in the Trinitarian camp:

“Sin could be resisted and overcome only through the mighty agency of the Third Person of the Godhead”
– The Desire of Ages, p. 671.2

“This Saviour was the brightness of His Father’s glory and the express image of His person. He possessed divine majesty, perfection, and excellence. He was equal with God.”
– Testimonies for the Church, vol. 2, p. 200.1

“Another dangerous error, is the doctrine that denies the divinity of Christ …”
– The Great Controversy 1888, p. 524.2

Some Adventists, such as Ellen White and Doug Batchelor, even think that the Trinity could have been destroyed if Jesus had sinned.  See the Armchair Theologian for more on that.

But some Adventists think otherwise, and ignore some of her “inspired” teachings.

So, in this post series, we’re going to look at the biblical evidence that Jesus Christ is indeed fully God, just as God the Father is God.

The evidence falls into three main categories:

1. That Jesus is God
2. That Jesus is the God of the Old Testament
3. That Jesus can be prayed to and worshipped as God

Category 1 will be discussed in this post, category 2 in the second post, and category 3 in the last post.

Before we begin, I should point out that in many places, the Bible appears to speak of Jesus as subordinate to the Father. Those who try to deny Jesus’ divinity use these passages to prove that he cannot be equal to the Father. Don’t confuse verses that address Jesus as a human with those that address his divinity, and pit them against each other. I am not going to try to show that Jesus was human – that he was is obvious. Through this and the subsequent post, I will show that Jesus is God. The only way to make sense of both is to fully accept both Jesus’ humanity and his divinity, and interpret the apparently conflicting passages in this context, in the context of the Incarnation, in the context of what must by necessity happen if an infinite God takes on a limited human form.

All passages from the Bible are quoted from the King James Version, unless otherwise stated.

My Lord and my God

John 20:28 is one of the clearest and most undeniable verses calling Jesus God.

John 20:27-28 – Then saith he to Thomas, Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side: and be not faithless, but believing. And Thomas answered and said unto him, My Lord and my God.

Thomas called Jesus “My Lord and my God“.

One of the best arguments against this being a proof of Jesus’ divinity is the claim that Thomas wasn’t addressing Jesus with these words, but was rather just exclaiming something like “Oh my God!” as if to say in amazement, “Wow” or “Holy cow!” or “Well tickle me pink!”

This, however, falls apart when one looks at the precise grammar and wording used, which actually provides a double emphasis on the fact that Thomas was saying this to Jesus, and that he was addressing Jesus with these words.

Look closely at this screen capture from BibleHub.com:

John 20:28Two things tell us that Thomas was calling Jesus his Lord and God. First, Thomas replies TO HIM. Thomas is addressing Jesus. He’s not just saying something out loud – he’s talking TO Jesus.

Second, the word “the” (ho) is a vocative article that isn’t translated into English because it can’t be translated into English. We don’t have vocative articles in English, but in Greek they exist. We don’t even have special endings for nouns when we address someone in English, but in Latin and Greek they exist. “The” here is addressing Jesus – Jesus is the “the” being spoken of. The word is omitted in English because we don’t use “the” in that context – we don’t say “the my Lord and my God“, and we certainly don’t have the ability to make the word “the” in “the my Lord and my God” refer to the person being addressed. But the Greek can, and does so here. “Ho” in this phrase therefore bests translates into English as “YOU WHO” or “YOU THE“.

Thomas isn’t just saying “OMG!” in the way modern people do. That’s an anachronism – they didn’t speak like that then. Thomas is addressing Jesus. And Thomas uses a vocative article that proves that he’s calling Jesus God – “YOU THE my Lord and my God“.

And so, just as Thomas said TO JESUS, I say TO JESUS: “YOU, my Lord and my God.”

In the beginning?

John 1:1 – In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

Jesus is the Word. The Word was God. Therefore Jesus is God.

Worth noting here is the Jehovah’s Witness rendition of the Bible (New World Translation) and the Joseph Smith Translation (of some interest to Mormons), and how it has been altered to suit the teachings of the groups that issued them:

New World Translation (2013 revision) – In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was a god.

New World Translation (1984 edition) – In [the] beginning the Word was, and the Word was with God, and the Word was a god.

Joseph Smith Translation – In the beginning was the gospel preached through the Son. And the gospel was the word, and the word was with the Son, and the Son was with God, and the Son was of God.

Further Scriptures

1 John 1:1 – That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life

Isaiah 9:6 – For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.

Jesus is the Counsellor, the Mighty God, the everlasting Father. (Don’t read modalism into this; Jesus is distinct from the Father and the Holy Spirit. The literal Hebrew here is “Father of eternity“, which can apply equally to both God the Son and God the Father.)

Phil 2:5-6 – Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God

For Jesus to be God, he would have to steal nothing from the Father, as he was already God.

Acts 20:28 – Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood.

God purchased the Church with his own blood. That God must be Jesus.

Heb 1:8 – But unto the Son he saith, Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever: a sceptre of righteousness is the sceptre of thy kingdom.

God here addresses the Son as God, saying that his throne is forever.

Titus 2:13 – Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ

The grammar here needs addressing, as it proves that the “great God” and “our Saviour Jesus Christ” are the same grammatical entity, and should properly be translated as “our great God and Savior Jesus Christ“. In short, Granville Sharp’s rule states that if the Greek word kai (and) joins two nouns of the same case, and only one article (ho) is present before the first noun but not the second, the two nouns refer to the same thing.

Titus 2:13 – the (ho) great God and (kai) our Saviour Jesus Christ = God and Saviour are the same being.

Some other translations:

MKJV: looking for the blessed hope, and the glorious appearance of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ

NIV: while we wait for the blessed hope – the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ

NLT: while we look forward with hope to that wonderful day when the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, will be revealed.

YLT: waiting for the blessed hope and manifestation of the glory of our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ

BBE: Looking for the glad hope, the revelation of the glory of our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ

NASB: looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus

Other versions can be seen in parallel here.

And read this article for a grammatical explanation: Our Great God and Savior Jesus Christ!

2 Peter 1:1 – Simon Peter, a servant and an apostle of Jesus Christ, to them that have obtained like precious faith with us through the righteousness of God and our Saviour Jesus Christ

See the same reference above for the same grammatical explanation of why this joins God and Jesus Christ as one grammatical entity.

Parallel translations can be seen here.

What did early Christians believe?

And so, the teaching of the Apostles continued into the early Church:

Ignatius and Polycarp, the disciples of the Apostle John, taught that Jesus was God.

For our God, Jesus Christ, was, according to the appointment of God, conceived in the womb by Mary, of the seed of David, but by the Holy Ghost.
– Ignatius to the Ephesians, chapter 18

God Himself being manifested in human form for the renewal of eternal life.
– Ignatius to the Ephesians, chapter 19

For our God, Jesus Christ, now that He is with the Father, is all the more revealed
– Ignatius to the Romans, chapter 3

… may he give you lot and part with his saints, and to us with you, and to all under heaven who shall believe in our Lord and God Jesus Christ and in his Father who raised him from the dead.
– Polycarp to the Philippians, chapter 12

These were the early Christians, and they, like Christians today, believed that Jesus is God, and worshipped him as God.

So, to close, it’s clear that Jesus is God, that the Bible teaches this, and the earliest Christian records outside the Bible confirm that this was their teaching.

Part 2 … Part 3

Further reading:

50 Biblical Proofs That Jesus is God … by Dave Armstrong
Did Jesus claim to be God?
Our Great God and Savior Jesus Christ! … by Sam Shamoun
Jesus as Yahweh – Examining Paul’s use of Lord in reference to Christ … by Sam Shamoun
Jesus as God in the Second Century
The Nature of God … by the Armchair Theologian

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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"Progressive" Catholics Are Heterodox Catholics [at BIG C CATHOLICS]

To speak of the Church using political labels is a fatuous pursuit. You are either faithful to the teachings of the Church or you are unfaithful. Public opposition to the Magisterium is dissent. Then Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith observed, "These doctrines require the assent of theological faith by all members of the faithful." The quotes below show that being a disciple of Christ requires total fidelity to Christ and Christ's Church.

The teaching Church does not invent her doctrines; she is a witness, a custodian, an interpreter, a transmitter. As regards the truth...she can be called conservative, uncompromising. To those who would urge her to make her faith easier, more in keeping with the tastes of the changing mentality of the times, she answers with the apostles, we cannot do so.

— Pope Paul VI, General Audience, January 12, 1972

It is sometimes reported that a large number of Catholics today do not adhere to the teaching of the Catholic Church on a number of questions...It has to be noted that there is a tendency on the part of some Catholics to be selective in their adherence to the Church’s moral teaching. It is sometimes claimed that dissent from the Magisterium is totally compatible with being a 'good Catholic,' and poses no obstacle to the reception of the Sacraments. This is a grave error.

— St. John Paul II meeting with U.S. Bishops, Sept 16, 1987

Here we come in contact with the really critical issue of the modern age. The concept of truth has been virtually given up and replaced by the concept of progress. Progress itself 'is' truth. But through this seeming exaltation, progress loses its direction and becomes nullified. For if no direction exists, everything can just as well be regress as progress. 

— From Truth and Conscience, by Cardinal Jospeph Ratzinger

Every believer, therefore, is required to give firm and definitive assent to these truths, based on faith in the Holy Spirit's assistance to the Church's Magisterium, and on the Catholic doctrine of the infallibility of the Magisterium in these matters. Whoever denies these truths would be in a position of rejecting a truth of Catholic doctrine and would therefore no longer be in full communion with the Catholic Church.

— Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith on Professio Fidei, June 29, 1998

"Basing itself on Scripture and Tradition, the Council teaches that the Church, a pilgrim now on earth, is necessary for salvation: the one Christ is the mediator and the way of salvation; he is present to us in his body which is the Church. He himself explicitly asserted the necessity of faith and Baptism, and thereby affirmed at the same time the necessity of the Church which men enter through Baptism as through a door. Hence they could not be saved who, knowing that the Catholic Church was founded as necessary by God through Christ, would refuse either to enter it or to remain in it." 

Catechism of the Catholic Church

[846]

This contribution is available at http://www.bigccatholics.com/2017/11/progressive-catholics-are-heterodox.html
Copyright is retained by the contributing author (follow above link for info on this piece).

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Psalm 67 ~ God's All-Inclusive Embrace [at Pauca Verba]

Psalm 67 is a harvest time song-prayer. But we'll see that the psalmist has more on his mind than just the gathering in of wheat and barley. 

Verse 1: May God be merciful to us. God's mercy is right up front in the psalmist's mind. It is God's kindness. And in the next line we're told in a poetic way what God's mercy-kindness means: that God would be close to us, so close we can stand in the light of God's face. 

Verse 2: The psalmist asks that God's saving health would be shared over the whole world - all the nations - and not only among his own people. No strident populist nationalism here! We could memorize this verse and pray it often throughout the day, as an antidote to the voices of the haters and division makers on the loose. 

Verse 3: When we've got a good idea, we tend to repeat it. Here the psalmist invites everyone to the praise of God: not just the Catholics, not just the Americans and the white people, not just the straight, right-partied, law-abiding, wealthy, credentialed, famous people - but all the peoples. That's called inclusion.

Verses 4 and 5: God judges with equity. Maybe the Jewish People - the chosen  people - have as their mission to be a kind of symbol or microcosmic sign of what God feels for all people. It is as if God has put them under a spotlight, not because God has in mind something for them that God doesn't have for all, but quite the opposite. The spotlight would seem to say, "Look here, this is how I feel about you too."

Verse 6: The earth has brought forth her increase. The earth is soil and water, which we all have in common. No human person or nation stands on a cloud. And what blessings might the psalmist be asking for? Maybe we've been given the answer back in verse 4: that we would be glad and sing for joy. Don't we need that? Not the idiotic kind of "joy" promised by the products sold on TV, but God's own gladness and joy.

Of course, we must be mindful of those places on earth where there is famine and the horrors that leave people suffering want - where the earth brings forth NO increase. We might begin by dispelling from among us any spirit of greed, hoarding, gluttony and waste.

Verse 7: May the ends of the earth stand in awe of God. Sometimes a nation or a religion can get so turned in on itself, its divisions, bickering and shallow distractions, it loses its true spiritual sense of the things that matter most - like taking care of people. Imagine if a nation which calls itself God-fearing, or a religion which thinks itself to be God-Loving, found itself utterly speechless by the all-embracing kindness of God who has gone to such trouble to be with us. Awe: to have our breath taken away!

This contribution is available at http://paucaverba.blogspot.com/2017/11/psalm-67-gods-all-inclusive-embrace.html
Copyright is retained by the contributing author (follow above link for info on this piece).

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Talking to God [at A Spiritual Journey]

        We ought to be in awe of and worship our God, but since he is love, we can also talk to him about anything from our heart freely to develop the most intimate friendship with him. You see, love simply removes all barriers between God and us. This is our extraordinary, wondrous God, our Father, brother, and counselor. So even if you don't know him, start talking to him can lead you to living the most wonderful life on earth. 

This contribution is available at http://journeyofimperfectsaint.blogspot.com/2017/11/talking-to-god.html
Copyright is retained by the contributing author (follow above link for info on this piece).

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Forgiven the Bullies Forgiveness can take seventy times just to get it right! I thought I had forgiven the bullies who verbally abused me in grade school, until one recent Sunday, when I heard the Gospel from Matthew where it states,

Then Peter approaching Him asked, ‘Lord, if my brother sins against me, how often must I forgive him? As many as seven times’? Jesus answered, ‘I say to you, not seven times but seventy times’ (Matt 18:21-22).

I realized that although I had forgiven the bullies, and therefore, hoped that they would be granted admission to heaven one day, I also thought that I wouldn’t mind if I never crossed paths with them in Heaven. This was because I was still holding tightly to the pain. Had I really forgiven the bullies fully, if I felt this way?

I didn’t want to hold on to the pain any longer. That day, I gave the pain to Jesus – literally! After receiving Communion, I went back to my seat to kneel and give thanks. As I closed my eyes, I saw Jesus sitting in front of me, motioning to me to hand over what was in my arms. I looked down and saw a large, heavy, granite boulder. I reluctantly gave it to Jesus, and in one fell swoop, He tossed it over His left shoulder into oblivion. I couldn’t get it back if I wanted it! Then, up walks two people dressed in bright white robes and they stand behind Jesus’ left and right shoulders. It was the two bullies who verbally abused me in grade school. But now, they were smiling at me – genuine smiles, graced with love.

Today, I see a similar verse to Matthew’s Gospel, found in Luke’s Gospel:

And if he wrongs you seven times in one day and returns to you seven times saying, ‘I am sorry,’ you should forgive him (Luke 17: 4).

When I read these words, I can honestly say for the first time with a full heart, that I have truly forgiven my two bullies. It has taken me over 50 years to do so, but I am finally there!

Have You Forgiven the Bullies in Your Life?

If you have been trying to forgive someone for an injustice, but continue to feel the pain, then there is more work for you to do. You need to give the pain to Jesus. For as long as you hold on to the pain, you withhold the mercy and forgiveness that your injurer needs to heal. By you releasing the pain and showering the person with mercy and forgiveness, you too will heal. Trust me. I am living proof that it works. Trust in Jesus too – He’s got an awesome throwing arm!

If you would like to purchase an autographed copy of my book, Adventures of Faith, Hope and Charity: Finding Patience, then click here.

This contribution is available at http://virginialieto.com/really-forgiven-bullies/
Copyright is retained by the contributing author (follow above link for info on this piece).

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Introduction to Spiritual Starvation [at The Mission of Saint Thorlak]

As we frequently say, our primary focus as Missionaries of Saint Thorlak is to combat spiritual starvation.  Yet, we do not screen at the outset for spiritually well-nourished people who can then go find and feed the hungry.  In fact, we want people who have seen what spiritual starvation looks like – or, better still, what spiritual starvation feels like – because these are the people who will be most fervently committed to the cause.  In truth, there is no person immune from spiritual hunger.  If you are fortunate enough to be spiritually well-nourished this day, you are valuable to our team for all the strength, support and balance you bring.  We encourage you to pay close attention as you mentor others, because it is always possible that circumstances may change and you find yourself on the other side of the coin for awhile.  Hopefully, your Missionary work will be a steady stream of nourishment when you need it yourself.

There are others among our ranks who, today, are not yet well nourished spiritually.  We invite you, if you feel this describes you, to feel free to apply this to yourself.  There is no reason we cannot benefit from our own teaching.  Quite the opposite – it is essential that we assimilate and experience all that which we hope to model and offer to others.

So, then: What is spiritual starvation?

This, of course, refers to physical starvation.  Spiritual starvation, its analog, would thus be the state of having no spiritual nourishment for a long period, often causing death.

We define spiritual nourishment as being meaningfully connected to our Source (God), either in direct relationship or through discovering the essence of God by meaningfully connecting with others.

(Here’s an easier shortcut: Connection.  Spiritual nourishment means connection.)

Does it seem drastic to assert that having no meaningful connection to God or others for a long period might lead to death?  Perhaps in the literal sense of cause and effect.  Being lonely, isolated or ostracized would only seem to cause death if it reverted back to the physical, with social deprivation coming as a result of physical deprivation, and the cause of death being a consequence of this physical starvation.  However, a compelling case can be made that meaningful connections protect against things such as substance abuse, suicidal ideation, addictions and criminal behavior.  Is it possible that lack of connection (i.e., spiritual starvation) contributes in many cases to unhealthy choices, even to the point of risking death?  Yes. 

Let us look back at physical starvation for a moment.  The four most common factors leading to physical malnutrition:

Lack or scarcity of food (such as in cases of famine, drought or inhumane torture)

Lack of nutritious food (where the available supply does not provide adequate nutrients)

Inability to eat (such as a physical condition impeding the mechanical process of eating)

Inability to absorb nutrients (for instance, having a medical condition where the body does not digest or absorb adequately what is eaten)

How would these translate into the analogs of spiritual starvation?

Lack of food = Lack of interactions (perhaps a person lives in a remote area, or is prohibitively busy, or lacks transportation to social gatherings)

Lack of nutritious food = Lack of quality interactions (the person could be surrounded by others but does not connect meaningfully with anyone, or makes frequent superficial contact without emotional depth)

Inability to eat = Inability to interact (perhaps the person has debilitating social anxiety to the point where social situations are unbearable)

Inability to absorb nutrients = Inability to emotionally participate (such as those whose affects are greatly limited by autism, or those who experience prolonged periods of depression)

These premises are the very foundation of our cause.  We believe that spiritual starvation can be defined, and therefore understood.  Once we do this, we can learn to recognize it by its signs and symptoms… and then, to address it using methods patterned after the life and ways of Saint Thorlak.  

After taking this pause to better understand (or review) the concept of spiritual starvation, you may more clearly recognize it in yourself or someone very close to you.  If so, take heart: you are very well qualified for this cause. 

Even though Saint Thorlak was severely impacted by speech impairments and overwhelming anxiety, he met success after success in the realms of public ministry, clerical reform, church administration and spiritual mentorship.  Wow.  This is an admirable résumé for anyone.  We boldly propose: If Saint Thorlak, with his known limitations, spiritually fed thousands in his lifetime… perhaps his methods could spiritually feed

hundreds

of thousands in ours. 

Let’s find out.

PRAY: Dear Father in Heaven, You revealed to us through the prophet Isaiah: “If you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness,  and your night will become like the noonday” [58:10].  Help us see how this applies to others… and then, to making sure our own souls are nourished with meaningful connections leading to You.

CONTEMPLATE: Call to mind the last time you remember fasting.  Dwell on the sensations and urges you recall.  Derive from that memory a parallel to how these would be experienced and expressed if it were spiritual hunger.

RELATE: Ask someone this week if they have ever been spiritually hungry.  If we were able to record everyone’s responses, we imagine a very wide variety of richly thought-provoking responses.

This contribution is available at http://mission-of-saint-thorlak.weebly.com/mission-activities/missionary-thought-for-the-week-of-november-6-2017-introduction-to-spiritual-starvation
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Rosary for the Purification of the Church [at The Shield of Faith]

Update - 

The "Rosary to the Interior: For the Purification of the Church," scheduled to occur throughout our nation in parishes on February 2, 2018, now has its own website at:

   The following plea for a Rosary for the purification of the Church was recently emailed to me.  The author wishes to remain anonymous.  Taking its cue from Poland's "Rosary on the Borders," this Rosary is to be a prayer for the purification of the interior of the Church. The hundreds of thousands of Catholics of Poland coupled their collective praying of the Rosary with the fate of their nation.  Similarly, the Rosary for the purification of the Church applies secondarily to the interior of our country, the United States of America, which has been a source of many of the evils which beset the entire world.

Rosary To The Interior:

For the Purification of the Church

(Feast of the Purification and Presentation, Friday, Feb 2, 2018)

   There are two truths that must now be understood: that the Church must be purified if the world is to receive the saving Light of Christ; and that the means which God has given us to effect this purification is the Rosary. The following proposal, I believe, is essential to this purification.  
   What is now called The Feast of the Presentation, celebrated on February 2, is actually a double Feast: that of the Purification of Mary, and the Presentation of Our Lord in the Temple. I would like to suggest that Catholics throughout our country journey to their churches on this day in order to pray the Rosary for the expressed intention of the Purification of the Church. If access is denied to the interior of the Church, the Rosary might be prayed at its entrance.

   The Presentation celebrates the coming of Jesus Christ, the Light of the World, into His Temple. It is, in fact, the premier Feast of Light¸ and the Triumph of Light over the Darkness of Evil. Traditionally called Candlemass, it signifies the “success” and triumph of the Incarnation, has been traditionally celebrated with triumphal candlelight processions, and is the liturgical day designated for the blessing of candles.

   The Purification is the Feast of Our Lady considered to be the oldest Marian liturgical Feast in the Church (having its beginnings in the liturgical life of the Church in Jerusalem) which, while exteriorly signifying an act which fulfilled the prescription of the Old Law, interiorly represents a whole new reality. The purification prescribed in the Old Law was in consequence of original sin and the pain and “sorrow” which now accompanied all childbirth. Mary, conceived without sin, was free from this sorrow. The Purification of the New Testament, therefore, is to be identified with the interior sorrow and suffering of Mary and the Church which has to be undergone in order to usher Christ’s Light into His Temple the Church, and from there into the world:

“

And Simeon blessed them, and said to Mary his mother: Behold this child is set for the fall, and for the resurrection of many in Israel, and for a sign which shall be contradicted; And thy own soul a sword shall pierce, that, out of many hearts, thoughts may be revealed

.”

   The Church has now been penetrated by a darkness greater than at any time in its history – not only the darkness of sexual sins and other moral “filth”, but that which consists of every conceivable form of error masking itself as truth, and of darkness masquerading as light. The task of unmasking these “thoughts”, and thus paving the way to the Triumph of the Truth of Christ, has been entrusted to Mary. Most specifically, it has been entrusted to Our Lady of the Rosary. St. Paul writes, “The night is passed, and the day is at hand. Let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light.” The Rosary, as revealed in the messages of Our Lady of Fatima, is this armor of light possessing the power from God to cast off the works of darkness which now pervade the Church, the world, and especially the minds and hearts of individual Catholics.

   We need to be immensely grateful to Poland for beginning this militant crusade with its “Rosary on the Borders”, and for Catholics in Italy and Ireland who have followed suit. I believe that the title “Rosary to the Interior” is singularly appropriate to such an effort in the United States, since we are a primary source of the evils that have permeated the modern world: abortion, contraception, the destruction of the family, pornography, homosexuality, materialism and consumerism, all the evils of the media which destroy the intelligence and morality of young and old alike, denial of the Kingship of Christ over all nations, and manifold heresies in regard to the Truths of Christ.

   We also need to recognize that Polish Catholics were right in coupling this collective praying of the Rosary to the fate of their nation. St. James the Apostle declares: “the friendship of this world is the enemy of God”. (James 4:4). In the United States this “friendship of the world” has taken the form of constant compromise with American culture and politics, which has produced all those evil “fruits” mentioned above. The campaign of the Enemy within the Church is now taking the form of declaring an end to this “enmity” between Christ and the world, and of promoting inclusiveness towards every conceivable form of evil. The Rosary must therefore be embraced not only as a form of armor protecting us from personal evil, but as a militant weapon in order to defeat the deceits of those who work in darkness, from within, to overthrow Christ and His Church. It must now, first and foremost, be directed in intention towards the Interior of the Church.

   Finally, it would seem especially necessary, given the profound lack of unity which exists among various apostolates and agendas operating within the United States, that this effort not be taken over by any one organization. I pray that it will rise from the hearts of many, be promoted by every form of organization and media, and be subsumed by none. I personally, along with family, friends, and any other Catholics we might influence, will be there. Let it thus proceed as a united effort to purify the Church and convert our nation.

Note: Any of the above may be used without crediting the author. As long as the intention remains the same – “Rosary to the Interior: For the Purification of the Church” – it may also be amended to suit individual circumstances. I suggest that parish priests and bishops be asked for permission to use their Church, and even to promote this endeavor from the pulpit and the church bulletin. Finally, I would ask all those interested in participating in this Rosary to the Interior to consider what contacts they might make in order to promote this effort towards the purification of their Church. Its power and effectiveness, with the aid of God’s grace, is designed to begin in the heart of each individual believer and multiply to unity with all the faithful in a cry for God’s mercy and assistance.

– The author does not desire recognition.

Below is a shorter version of the above for possible use in the pulpit or in bulletins:

Rosary To The Interior:

For the Purification of the Church

(Feast of the Purification and Presentation, Friday, Feb 2, 2018)

   There are two truths that must now be understood: that the Church must be purified if the world is to receive the saving Light of Christ; and that the means which God has given us to effect this purification is the Rosary. The following proposal, I believe, is essential to this purification.

   What is now called The Feast of the Presentation, celebrated on February 2, is actually a double Feast: that of the Purification of Mary, and the Presentation of Our Lord in the Temple

.

I would like to suggest that all our faithful journey to Churches on this day in order to pray the Rosary for the expressed intention of the Purification of the Church.

   The Purification is the Feast of Our Lady considered to be the oldest Marian liturgical Feast in the Church (having its beginnings in the liturgical life of the Church in Jerusalem) which, while exteriorly signifying an act which fulfilled the prescription of the Old Law, interiorly represents a whole new reality. The purification prescribed in the Old Law was in consequence of original sin and the pain and “sorrow” which now accompanied all childbirth. Mary, conceived without sin, was free from this sorrow. The Purification of the New Testament, therefore, is to be identified with the interior sorrow and suffering of Mary and the Church which has to be undergone in order to usher Christ’s Light into His Temple the Church, and from there into the world:

“And Simeon blessed them, and said to Mary his mother: Behold this child is set for the fall, and for the resurrection of many in Israel, and for a sign which shall be contradicted; And thy own soul a sword shall pierce, that, out of many hearts, thoughts may be revealed.” (Luke 2: 35).

   To Mary has been entrusted the mission from God to carry the light of Christ into His Church in order that it might then become a beacon of light to free the world from darkness and sin. As revealed through the messages of Fatima, this is especially to be accomplished through the Rosary.

I would ask all the Catholics of this parish, if it is at all possible, to journey here on Friday, February 2 (a specific time might here be appropriate) for the praying of the Rosary for the Purification of the Church and the Triumph of Christ’s Light over the darkness that now appears to be descending at an accelerating pace over our world, and especially over our nation. The Church will be open all day, and into the evening, for this purpose.

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Soup [at With Us Still]

Encountered a little hiccup on the path toward the savory pot of turkey soup I had envisioned.

When I pulled open the produce drawer, it was practically empty: No celery. No carrots. And only the lame remnants of a Vidalia sweet onion. (It had seen better days.)

Somthing’s missing here…

So the succulence I anticipated descended quickly into a far different reality—something that would more closely resemble gruel…unless I got busy and went to the grocery store.

The situation was easily rectified, and before long I found myself back at the kitchen counter, chopping…cutting…slicing…and stirring to my heart’s content. It was a beautiful thing to see it all come together…a bubbly brew that served as yet another reminder of all that I have to be thankful for in this season of Ordinary time.

Soup doesn’t happen quickly, though—so I had time to contemplate, too. To think about the feast we celebrate on Sunday—Christ the King. To marvel at the image we are given in Scripture, describing precisely how this kingdom comes…how it exerts its sovereignty on an otherwise indifferent world:

Essential ingredients, one and all…

‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father.
Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.
For I was hungry and you gave me food,
I was thirsty and you gave me drink,
a stranger and you welcomed me,
naked and you clothed me,
ill and you cared for me,
in prison and you visited me.’

The Kingdom is not a solitary affair, we learn. It requires a pantry or ‘fridge full of ingredients—a people who are gracious and generous in feeding and slaking and welcoming and clothing and caring and visiting.

That’s quite an ingredient list–too daunting perhaps for any one Kingdom person to accomplish alone. But notice what happens when items are overlooked: You wind up with a broth that’s far less tasty and nutritious than it could have been.

In Christ’s kingdom, we each make a difference. Whether we add a pinch of this…or a cup of that…we help turn gruel into soup. And when it all comes together? Well,  it’s simply M’mm…m’mm, good!

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

IHS

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Digging Deeper, Growing in Virtue Through Fiction [at Carolyn Astfalk, Author]

Contemporary authors, particularly independently-published authors or ones published by small presses, face seemingly unlimited obstacles to finding readers for their books.

Some are as simple and as critical as quality. Some fall under personal taste or prejudice. Readers have many valid reasons for rejecting a book.

For authors, it is a multifaceted  problem including everything from marketing to the widespread availability of free entertainment.

Writers in my Catholic fiction niche have additional obstacles. The secularization of society, the predominance of Evangelical Christianity in American publishing, the hunger for Catholic catechesis following what author Mara Faro calls “the Felt Banner Years,” and, finally, what I’ll call the Tolkein/O’Connor factor. (The belief that everything contemporary falls short of these Catholic literary greats and is therefore not worth reading.)

There is one objection, however, that has increasingly become a burr under my saddle, as they say.

That despite the fact that Jesus taught using parables, fiction is a waste of time. That, at best it’s frivolous and at worst, it’s harmful. Of course individual books may be both or neither of those things, but let’s just take fiction as a whole.

Why do people consider stories to be a waste of time?

Is it because they are not “productive?”

I can’t close the cover on a novel and scribble out a to-do list or a self-help prescription for what ails me, as author Erin McCole Cupp has said.

(In the monthly video chats she hosts, Erin McCole Cupp is using fiction of various genres and for different ages to highlight fiction’s unique humanizing quality. Sabbath Rest Book Talk highlights stories that enrich by moving our hearts in ways that nonfiction, be design, cannot.)

Is it because they are mere entertainment?

In a society with more competing sources of entertainment than in all of history, we haven’t satiated our need or desire to be entertained.

Fiction can and should be both productive and entertaining, but not in the same way that nonfiction is.

Good nonfiction affects the mind. The best of it (the kind that is written like fiction, I’d contend), affects the heart as well.

Good fiction affects the soul. It builds empathy in a way that nonfiction cannot by putting the reader in the place of another, allowing the reader to think and feel what another thinks and feels. To see the world through another’s eyes if only for the space of 300 pages.

I’m not saying that nonfiction has no value. It is, of course, important – from textbooks to biographies to histories to spiritual treatises and more. But it is not by its nature morally superior to fiction.

Fiction is not inherently morally inferior to nonfiction.

Fiction can enrich our lives in myriad ways. That’s why I’m so pleased to see that Virtue Works Media has introduced its Totally Feminine Genius Generations Book Club.

Totally Feminine Genius Generations Book Club “celebrates the feminine side of VIRTUE with women in every season of life: MOTHERS, daughters, SISTERS, aunts, GRANDMOTHERS, grand-daughters, COUSINS, in-laws, NEIGHBORS & friends.”

Take a topic near and dear to my heart: St. John Paul II’s Theology of the Body. You can hand your teen daughter the original text of the Pope’s weekday audiences on the topic for her to digest. Better yet, you can hand her a copy of several excellent books that help simplify the theology. Better still, hand her one that is aimed at teens. Best of all, pair it with a story that illustrates the principles, humanizing them through experience.

Let her get inside of the head of the young woman whose ideas about femininity and sexuality were distorted by repressive ideology. Allow her to experience the consequences of sexual sin without having to live them herself. Let her see what chaste relationships look like in comparison to unchaste ones and the challenges of both.

Fill her head with facts, yes, but fill her heart with empathy, humility, and understanding.

And most powerful of all, SHARE that experience with her. You’ll both be better for it.

This contribution is available at http://www.carolynastfalk.com/2017/11/22/digging-deeper-growing-virtue-fiction/
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Dumping the Junk: A Lesson From Fitness to Faith [at Martin Family Moments]

Back when I read

Born to Run

(and loved it!) one of the most important lessons I learned was just one sentence in the book where the author is ready to start eating better in order to run better.  He has been carrying around some extra weight and his trainer tells him that as he keeps increasing his miles, his diet will work itself out, but the author wants to start making dietary changes now.  He decides to start eating salads for breakfast as a first step in his transformation.  He writes:  

"I have a cyclist friend who dumps his water bottles before riding uphill; if twelve ounces slowed him down, it wasn't hard to calculate what thirty pounds of spare tire were doing to me."

12 ounces!  Such a tiny amount and something that a less skilled cyclist wouldn't even worry about.  And salads for breakfast!  That sounds extreme to my eggy ways.  But he was determined to make a change, and he did.  I think about this little lesson all the time when I'm running.  How much easier would it be to run without carrying around this baby weight (can I still call it that even though my baby is 15 months old?) It's not that I'm berating myself, I really wonder what it would feel like to run at 10 to 15 pounds lighter.  I think I could go much longer and faster and I want to be in that body already!  But, what am I doing about it?  I'm not eating salads for breakfast.  I'm not denying myself that third dessert on Thanksgiving.  How badly do I really want it?

I was telling all of this to Phil and he (because he is the best) pointed out that it is exactly the same with our spiritual life.  We can desire to become holier, kinder, more generous and loving people who end up as saints in Heaven one day, but what are we doing about it?  Are we taking the baby steps required to move forward or just sitting with our bag of sinfully delicious Doritos wishing for a change?  Are we willing to dump even the smallest conveniences from our life to earn the next?  

I think this Advent is a great time to look inward and truly ask myself if I'm on the right track in ALL areas of my life.  And then instead of wishing for a different outcome, actually make the changes to get there.  There's a reason we are called practicing Catholics, because much like elite athletes, it takes a whole life time of practice and training to make it to the glorious finish line.

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Standing Firm in the Face of Suffering [at Creo en Dios!]

Today’s first Mass reading from the Second Book of Maccabees tells the story of the strength of Eleazar, described as one of the leading teachers of the law.

Upon the persecution of the Jewish people by King Antiochus IV, Eleazar refused to eat pork as part of a ritual sacrifice.  The consequence of doing so was  death and torture.  Because those in charge of dealing with the Jews who refused to eat the ritual meal thought well of Eleazar, they urged him to bring his own meat and pretend to be eating some of the meat of the sacrifice prescribed by the king.  He refused to do so saying

At our age it would be unbecoming to make such a pretense; many young people would think that 90 year old Eleazar had gone over to an alien religions.  Should I thus pretend for the sake of a brief moment of life, they would be led astray by me, while I would bring shame and dishonor on my old age.

Eleazar was immediately, we are told, put to torture and death.

In thinking of his stand, I am reminded of something Mahatma Gandhi said:

Nonviolence in its dynamic condition means conscious suffering.  It does not mean meek submission to the will of the evildoer, but it means the pitting of one’s whole soul against the will of the tyrant.  Working under the law of our being, it is possible for a single being to defy the whole might of an unjust empire to save his honor, his religion, his soul and lay the foundation for that empire’s fall or regeneration.

The question for us is: Will we follow Eleazar’s model of perseverance in the face of suffering?  Will we hold fast to God’s plan in the face of temptation to do otherwise?

This contribution is available at http://susanjoan.wordpress.com/2017/11/21/standing-firm-in-the-face-of-suffering/
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Brokenness and the Power of an Embrace [at The Frank Friar]

An Encounter

Normally, after a school day I like to see the students out of the school and make sure they connect with their parents well, so they get how safely.  Recently, one day after school a woman from a local house, which is known as a place of drinkers, came up to me.  She was drunk.  She was short.  She was slender.  She had red and leathery skin.  Her words spoken to me were rough to understand, but they were filled with sadness.  Her eyes were clear and deep.  She uttered to me “Father, I need a hug.”  Mind you, I always wear my Carmelite habit when I do ministry.  Before I could respond she wrapped her arms around me.  She smelled terrible.  Her hair was filthy.  I was taken aback and repulsed at first.  Yet, seeing her eyes and sensing the need to be seen within them, I released my disgust and leaned into the hug.  The exchange took a few seconds, but felt like minutes.  She whispered to me, “Father, Thank you, I’m just ya, *sniff*…… Thank you.”  She shook her head at me and acknowledged me and walked away to that house I mentioned early.

To Be Seen

I believe this woman went back to drinking after this encounter.  Admitting that reality pains my heart greatly, but that is the reality.  Yet, for a moment, only if it be a second, she wanted to be seen by another.  Are we any better?  How often does the desire to be seen and acknowledge drive our actions?  I feel in general that there is a fear and dread that whispers to us about the vastness and shallowness of the reality around us, and the meaninglessness of our place in it.  That fear and dread feeds a sense of nothingness of existence, which is a modern plague that consumes all it touches.  I believe that this whispering presence of fear and nothingness that seeks to chew away at our minds and hearts, is telling us lies, but those lies do impact us none the less.  The drive to be seen and acknowledge, among such a whisper of despair, points to the need for the human heart for love.

To Be Loved

“Jesus looked at him and loved him […].”  Mark 10: 21a

The above verse points to the look of Jesus upon the rich young man.  Jesus looked upon him with love.   The rich young man brought all his attachments and the burdens that comes from these whisper presence of despair. However, even among that despair Jesus still looked upon him with love.  Those eyes of love that Jesus offered that man, He continues to offer us in our states here and now!  Jesus, is always offering us transformation, if we are willing to say yes to his invitation.

Jesus sees you and loves you my brothers and sisters, because of who you are not for what you do.  I hope your eyes can meet His, so that His love may fill your heart.  I pray that, through His gaze, our eyes may become like Jesus!

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Finding a New Beautiful in Postpartum [at Under Thy Roof]

Life with three kids - it's a turning point. Three is when there are more kids than adults, more needs than time, and the list of "shoulds" ("I should be getting dinner ready by now." "I should be reading more with the big kids.") reaches heights never before seen as a family of four.

I am a type A person. An overdoer. A constant planner. But even my hat juggling skills are being put to the test.

The temptation to hide in my house and pretend I got this is STRONG. Because I DO "got this" to some extent.

I can get the laundry done (even with all the cloth diaper laundry).

I can manage to feed everyone (even with their insistence that three meals a day are necessary).

I can even manage to homeschool since it directs the energy and attention of the big kids.

....but I can do it a lot better, and as a less stressed mom, if I let people help.

For the past weeks since Matt went back to work, we have been blessed to have postpartum doulas with our family once or twice a week. For someone with my personality, it is a helpful and a humbling experience to have the postpartum doulas here. It means allowing someone to step and and do tasks as good, or better, than I.

It also lets me see that, even with the extra set of hands, the list of tasks does not run out. In some odd way it is freeing to know that even if I had two of me it STILL would not be all done. That list of shoulds would be just as long, and no amount of efficiency would allow me to plow through them all to my satisfaction.

Ultimately the postpartum doulas are my scaffold while we come out of postpartum survival mode and continue to move forward into the beauty of being a family of five. Earlier this year I wrote about the need to

value myself enough to move out of survival mode and into the beautiful

.

The beauty of friendship.

The beauty of faith.

The beauty of art.

The beauty of connection.

Postpartum is an opportunity to find a new beautiful. 

This is the sixth postpartum week for me. These past weeks I have been preparing to return to the arts I love and activity I crave.

But auditioning postpartum is tough.

Returning to an exercise routine and ballet is tough.

The temptation to just let it go and not put myself out there to be rejected over and over again is high. I don't LIKE being rejected, but rejection is necessary to have the opportunity to perform the art I love. I will be more authentically myself if I am vulnerable enough to go through the (likely) rejections.

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The Gift of Conversion presentation for Women’s Guild of St. Philip the Apostle Catholic Church, Dallas, Texas (Photo by Carmen Julia Marroquin)

How many of you are converts?

How many of you are cradle Catholics?

Who has experienced a renewal of their faith?

With these questions, I opened my presentation to the Women’s Guild of St. Philip the Apostle Catholic Church in Dallas, Texas. The women were gracious and became intent listeners due to the noisy refrigeration unit nearby. With no microphone, I almost shouted my talk, which claimed their attentiveness.

A shaky music stand had to do because no podium was available. In the middle of my presentation, the music stand began to collapse. I held onto it like a long Popsicle stick so my iPad with my notes wouldn’t go flying! The Holy Spirit and my guardian Angel did double duty that evening.     

Conversion defined

“What do we mean by the word conversion?” I asked them rhetorically.

“Conversion,” writes Saint John Paul II, “is a gift of God, a work of the Blessed Trinity. It is the Spirit who opens people’s hearts so that they can believe in Christ. . . From the outset, conversion is expressed in faith which is total and radical and which neither limits nor hinders God’s gift.” (Pope John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Mission of the Redeemer (1990) 46.)

The total and radical faith of conversion is defined in terms of leaving atheism or a non-Catholic denomination to embrace Catholicism.

Reversion or returning to the Church is another path of conversion, another way to receive this gift.

Renewal of our faith is a conversion of heart when our faith is invigorated, and we renew our commitment.

Every one of us needs to make an adult commitment to God so we can live the abundant life that God intends for us to enjoy.

Pressure cooker or slow cooker?

Although conversion can come to a point gradually, a conversion moment of decision defines it. More than insight or inspiration, a conversion event involves poignant memories in which we can see the scene, hear the voices, and feel the emotions decades later as clearly as the first time.

A conversion can happen in many ways, but the timing usually happens in one of two ways: A pressure cooker, where the work of the Holy Spirit comes to a boiling point quickly, and love explodes. Or a slow cooker in which the realization of the love of God for us individually takes longer to come to the surface. Conversion comes like a thunderbolt of love or a gradual awareness of the love of God for us.

God’s only way

As a Protestant, I committed my life to the Lord when I was a shy teenager. I loved my church family. As a young mother, I came to realize I belonged in the Catholic Church with my husband and children.

I’m sure that falling in love with my Catholic boyfriend in college was the only way God the Father could ever get me into the Catholic Church. He goes to any extreme to guide us into the joy he has for us. And I find great joy in belonging to the Catholic Church.

He gives us what we need and gift-wraps it in what we want. I wanted a strong Christian marriage. God wanted that for me—in the Catholic Church. So he wrapped it in an irresistible package. I might have been happy as a Protestant married to a Catholic but what joy to share the Eucharist and many ministries with my husband and children.

Our unique conversion story

The beautiful, attentive women of St. Philip the Apostle Catholic Church. (Photo by Carmen Julia Marroquin)

Each of us has a unique conversion story that only we can tell. It is meant for those the Holy Spirit has prepared to receive it. Now, that shy young Protestant I once was gives seminars to Catholics on how to share your faith story through your personal witness. Yes, conversion is a gift. And I thank God he gave it to me and inspired me to use that gift to evangelize.

The evening started as strangers (except for one new acquaintance) shared a lovely dinner with me. After my presentation on the Gift of Conversion, two women shared a little of their conversion stories. Another woman is planning to write her story to publish on JOYAlive.net. Yes, conversion is a gift – and one that is contagious among women of faith.

The meeting ended with a book signing among many new friends.

Are you a convert or a cradle Catholic with a renewal story that you would like to publish on JOYAlive.net?

(© 2017 Nancy HC Ward)

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Defending Catholicism: Confession

One of the greatest treasures of the Church, her ability to heal people of their sins, is constantly under attack. This world obviously craves the miraculous release offered in this Sacrament - look no further than the sudden proliferation of psychologists and psychiatrists over the last fifty years and the corresponding increase in prescriptions for psychotropic medications. Mankind replaces with drugs what God offers for free! Instead of accepting God's release from our addictions, we discover all new ones. 

Nonreligious people seem to have long ago dismissed the idea of sin, so what would they be confessing? Confession - even contrition - has become incomprehensible to them. That is,  apart from the historically aberrant need for psychotropic medications described above. 

More often than not, the Sacrament of Confession is attacked by Protestants and such on Biblical grounds. This is somewhat strange given the strong foundation for the Sacrament - all Sacraments for that matter - in Scripture. While it is true that the Sacraments were not fully formed during Jesus' ministry, their elements, foreshadowing, and trajectory are nevertheless obvious from the text. 

Scriptural Basis for Confession - Where is Confession in the Bible?

Below, I'll list the common Biblical arguments against Confession and show you how they can be easily dismissed with Scripture. But first, here's one of the strongest Biblical foundations for the Sacrament of Confession, John 20:21-23:

(21) Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I send you.” (22) And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. (23) If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”

Here we see that Jesus is giving his disciples the power to forgive (and retain) sins to his ministers, the disciples. Boom! Pretty straightforward. 
Protestants will argue (as here) that the tense of the verb in "they are forgiven" indicates that Jesus' ministers are not doing the forgiving, but merely pronouncing the fact that God has already forgiven the sins. This argument acts as a diversion: focus on God's role; ignore the minister's role. It is true that God does the forgiving. It is not true that the role of the priest or minister is irrelevant - this would mean Jesus is just wasting his words. Are Jesus' instructions just meaningless? And what about the "retaining" of sins part? Jesus' ministers are given the keys to unlock and lock.
This is not the only time Jesus speaks about forgiving/retaining and binding/loosing. This power to bind and loose is also specifically reserved to the Church, through the office of the papacy, at Matthew 16:18-19:

(18) And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the powers of death shall not prevail against it. (19) I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”

There are plenty more Biblical foundations for Confession, too! These are provided below as responses to common Protestant objections. Also, these are all just the references from the New Testament. There are a lot more passages about Confession in the Old Testament, cf. Lev 19:20-22, as well as the writings of the Apostolic Fathers, cf. Didache 4:14, 14:1 - we're just getting started! 

For more on the Sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation, also check out the Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraphs 1422-1498.

Now, here's a list of common Protestant objections:

Objection #1: Only God can forgive sin. 

Here's the objection as stated in "The Cripplegate," an evangelical blog site:

The Pharisees hated the fact that Jesus forgave sin (Matt 9:3). They knew that it was something only the creator of the universe was allowed to do. When Jesus healed the paralitic [sic] man the Pharisees were ready to lynch him for saying that he forgave him of his sin. It’s incredible that the Pope could think that he has the power to absolve someone of sin, give them some work to do and send them on their way absolved of sin. The only one with the power to forgive sin is God himself (1 John 1:9), and thankfully he does not leave it up to us to be the judges of whether someone deserves forgiveness or not.

So is this truly what the Bible says? Is God the only One with the power to forgive sins, and no one can forgive sin in God's name? Cripplegate cites 1 John 1:9, above, to support this claim, so what does 1 John 1:9 say? Here's the passage from the RSV-CE Bible (I'll always give you the surrounding verses, because citing verses without context, i.e. "proof-texting", is irresponsible):

(8) If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. (9) If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just, and will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. (10) If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.

Hmmm ... this verse actually encourages us to "confess our sins." No where does this verse refute that Jesus' priests have been empowered to forgive sins in Jesus' name.  

Objection 1A: Do I have to confess my sins to a priest? A priest is just a man - what power does he have to forgive sin?

First off, it's true. It's not the priest who forgives sins. The priest forgives sins in Christ's name, in persona Christi. As it is written at John 20:21-23, Jesus empowered the disciples to forgive sins in His name. Jesus hands over his authority to the new priesthood of the Twelve which he ordained at the Last Supper, cf. John 13. 
Jesus gave his Apostles power to heal the sick, cleanse lepers, raise the dead, and cast out devils (Matthew 10:7-8). In the same way, He also gave them power to absolve sins. That is, they healed people who were spiritually sick, spiritually lepers, and spiritually dead. 
Listen to what Jesus says after healing the paralytic in Matthew 9:

(6) But that you may know that the Son of man has authority on earth to forgive sins”—he then said to the paralytic—“Rise, take up your bed and go home.” (7) And he rose and went home. (8) When the crowds saw it, they were afraid, and they glorified God, who had given such authority to men.

Does it say God gave "such authority to A MAN"? Is it Jesus alone who exercises this authority? No. The crowds glorified God because He had given such authority to MEN, namely the Twelve. 

Objection #2. The Bible says that if I believe that Jesus is Lord, I’ll be saved. Doesn’t the need for Confession mean Christ’s work was lacking in some way? 

The passage referred to here is Acts 16:31, which reads, "Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved." Sounds pretty simple, right? It does, if you just take that one verse out of context. Check out the verse in context. Acts 16 describes how Paul and Silas were released from prison by God's power and by the jailer:

(29) ... trembling with fear [the jailer] fell down before Paul and Silas, (30) and brought them out and said, “Men, what must I do to be saved?” (31) And they said, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.” (32) And they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all that were in his house. (33) And he took them the same hour of the night, and washed their wounds, and he was baptized at once, with all his family. (34) Then he brought them up into his house, and set food before them; and he rejoiced with all his household that he had believed in God.

The Bible has quite a lot to say about salvation and forgiveness of sin. Even in this passage, the jailer does a lot more than just believe in the Lord Jesus. Not only is the jailer's whole family baptized, the jailer (a) washes their wounds, (b) brings them to his house, (c) gives them food ... oh, and (d) visits the imprisoned. Sound familiar? These are 4/7 of the Corporal Works of Mercy described at Matthew 25:34-40:

And, the jailer as well as his whole family is BAPTIZED. Not only is this a basis for Infant Baptism if there were any infants in the jailer's household, it shows the necessity for the jailer's sins to be forgiven in order to receive salvation. Why? Because all sins are forgiven in Baptism, both personal sin and Original Sin.
"Just believe" and it will set you on the right path, one which includes Baptism, forgiveness of sins, and doing the works of Jesus. But Saints Paul and Silas didn't say "believe and you are saved," they said "believe and you will be saved."

Objection #3: Why do I have to go to a priest for confession instead of going straight to God? After all, the Bible says that "there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus" (1 Tim. 2:5).

St. Paul says the following in his second letter to the Corinthians:

(18) All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; (19) that is, God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. (20) So we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We beseech you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. (21) For our sake he made him to be sin[d] who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (5:18-21)

Wow. That's a pretty strong voice defending the Sacrament of Reconciliation, no less than Saint Paul, himself! The apostles and their successors, i.e. bishops and priests, are merely ambassadors for Christ, on a mission from Jesus to forgive sins in Jesus' name. "All this is from God" - therefore, it is God's own choice to send sinners into the world to forgive sins in His Name. There may be other ways to accomplish this, but God chose this way. Maybe He's on to something? Maybe He who designed human nature has some special insight into how to heal it?

Objection #4: Confession is nothing more than a permission slip to keep sinning. Since people keep sinning even after going to Confession, doesn't that mean it doesn't work?

There is a bit of a false premise to this objection. The grace of Confession helps us avoid future sin - it's not a guarantee against future sin.
Of course, whose teaching is truly the "permission slip to keep sinning"? There are many  Protestant denominations that believe that no amount of sins can interfere with our salvation. Here are some of Martin Luther's own statements on this:

No sin can separate us from Him, even if we were to kill or commit adultery thousands of times each day (Saemmtliche Schriften, Letter No. 99, 1521).
A person that is baptized cannot, thou he would, lose his salvation by any sins however grievous, unless he refuses to believe. For no sins can damn him but unbelief alone (On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church, "Concerning the Sacrament of Baptism," 1520).

Not even committing murder can put us on the path of damnation?? You can see where Protestant teaching drastically differs from Catholic teaching. When Protestants say "once saved, always saved," they really mean it! Wouldn't this teaching be the true "permission slip to keep sinning"? Can this teaching be true? Of course not. The Apostle John says: "If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us" (1 John 1:8). And the Lord himself taught us to pray: "Forgive us our trespasses," cf. Luke 11:4, Matthew 6:12.

Have you heard any objections to the Sacrament of Confession/Reconciliation not listed above? Please comment below with these and I'll add them to the list. Let's see if we can get ALL the objections addressed in one place! Please help me with this.

Thanks for reading! Please remembers to comment below and share!

Also, a blessed feast of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary!   

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Of Casablanca, Cinema, and Coming of Age [at Clinging to Onions]

But now we have a new art, luminous, vivid, simple, stirring,
persuasive, direct, universal, illimitable – the animated picture.

The fact is I am quite happy in a movie, even a bad movie.

In college I thought I’d reached the height of cinematic sophistication

when I went to see

My Dinner with Andre

(1981). My brother and I drove over to an art house in Seattle’s bohemian quarter and sat through the bewildering dialogue along with all the other aesthetes. It felt very grown up and intellectual to leave the theater in a quandary: What just happened? What was that all about? It was exciting and new – a hint of soul-searching maturation that went beyond mere textbooks and Bible studies. The film sparked questions that I didn’t know what to do with, and it seemed like a watershed moment – a revelation of sorts, an interior marker. We followed up the revelation with a visit to the art house’s coffee shop. We discussed big thoughts. We sipped our espressos.

But I was wrong about the watershed stuff and the sophistication. The raw urgency I associate with watching

My Dinner with Andre

was fleeting, and probably more a reflection of my desire to be cool (like the bohemians) than anything authentic in my own interior flourishing. It certainly wasn't the film's fault; I simply wasn't ready for it. I returned to my dorm, and life went on as before.

Andre

didn’t inspire any grand gestures – no extravagant flights of fancy followed, nothing radical or outlandish. Just back to the books and ticking off more courses for my GPA and bachelor’s degree.

Then I graduated, moved down to Eugene, and commenced becoming an adult. I lived in a

converted sorority

with other adult wannabes, worked at a bookstore, and bummed around on my days and evenings off – often ending up in more bookstores. I had no TV, no electronics to distract me from my post-undergraduate melancholy. Instead, I read widely and wandered, both literally and intellectually. I fed my angst. I drank more coffee.

One night, I decided to go see Casablanca (1942) at the University of Oregon.

I’d seen the flyer in the student center where I often read and hung out. I think admission was listed as 75 cents, and I made up my mind to go. It was a movie I’d always heard about, but somehow missed growing up.

It was early in the fall I’m pretty sure – maybe the screening was associated with freshman orientation – so it was warm, shirtsleeve weather. I strolled down to the student center, took my seat with the students in the stuffy auditorium, and settled in for the ride. I even bought popcorn.

There were no revelations in

Casablanca,

no new questions, nothing viscerally challenging. It was all romance and adventure mixed together in a confusing melodramatic narrative. I got the jilted lover bit, and I pretty much followed the suspense surrounding those trans

it papers signed by De Gaulle – a quasi-

McGuffin

of sorts – and the heroic Victor Laszlo's quest for freedom.

Plus, I enjoyed the snappy repartee between Bogart’s Rick and everyone else, especially Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman), and I recognized the classic lines that now pepper our common parlance – “Play it (again), Sam” and “Here’s looking at you, kid” and the rest.

I watched and munched.

After the closing credits, the lights came up and we all filed out. It was cooler out and quiet, and I walked home slowly along University Street, I wasn’t plagued by existential questions or pseudo-philosophical agonies. Instead, there was a prickly sensation of pleasure. It was the movie equivalent of reading Dostoevsky or

Don Quixote

because you feel like you should, and then actually enjoying it. I might’ve been motivated by a desire to fill a gap in my cultural formation, but I ended up reveling in it – a bonus!

Today I have a DVD copy of Casablanca at home,

and not too long ago, Katharine, my 11-year-old, requested it on a family movie night – which meant that she’d already seen it at least once and she was choosing it over

Princess Diaries

and

High School Musical II.

With all the hubbub associated with the film’s

75th anniversary today

, I was inspired to seek out Kath with a question: “What do you like about

Casablanca?”

“I don’t know,” she replied. “I just like it.”

Me, too. It’s all of a piece, and it’s hard to tease out anything in particular that makes it so appealing.

Casablanca

is a story well told – no big thoughts, no propositional posturing. Like a painting or a poem, it inspires by means of images; like a

good

painting or poem, it bears revisiting over and over.

“Let’s watch it again,” I suggested to Kath in a Sam kinda’ way.

She didn’t hesitate. “Sure!”

Dinners with Andre may come in time – let 'em. For now, I'm glad to see my young daughter soaking up this superb celluloid yarn just because she likes it. As Rick might say, it appears to be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

________________________________

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Twelve Tips for a Holier Advent Season [at Jean M. Heimann]

The liturgical season of Advent begins on the first Sunday in Advent, opening a new year in our Church’s Calendar. Advent is from the Latin adventus, which means “coming” and is associated with the four weeks of preparation for Christmas.

Advent blends together a penitential spirit, very similar to Lent, a liturgical theme of preparation for the Second and Final Coming of the Lord, called the Parousia, and a joyful theme of getting ready for the birth of Christ.

During Advent, we are called upon to:

Prepare ourselves to worthily to celebrate the anniversary of the Lord’s coming into the world as the incarnate God of love,
Make our souls fitting abodes for the Redeemer coming in Holy Communion and through grace
Make ourselves ready for His final coming as judge, at death and at the end of the world.
Advent is a season of waiting, a season filled with hope.

Here are twelve tips that will help you and your family keep this season holy:

Use an Advent calendar and/or a wreath to mark this time of preparation. Pray Advent prayers with the family and the rosary when you light up the candle on the wreath. Sing ‘O Come, O Come, Emmanuel’ throughout Advent.

Keep outdoor lights and decorations simple, using religious CHRISTmas scenes like the Nativity or a star.

Use a Jesse tree or an Advent tree.

Have your Christmas tree blessed. Remind your children that the tree is a Christian symbol and relates to many aspects of our faith.

Let your children know that “Santa Claus” is another name for the real St. Nicholas and tell them his story. Celebrate the day. Encourage your children to leave their shoes outside their bedroom doors on Dec. 5. When they awaken, they will find small gifts like candy or fruit if they’ve been good.

Participate in the Giving Tree in your parish. Have your children buy a gift to donate to children in need or perform some service for the poor or elderly.

Put a Nativity set in a prominent place in your home, but only put out some of the animals. You can put the other statues out, but in another place in your home. Each week, read a little from the Christmas story in Luke’s Gospel, and move the statues a little closer.

Have the children place a piece of straw in the manger for each good deed they do during Advent as a gift to the baby Jesus.

Take the entire family, when possible, to daily Mass, Eucharistic Adoration, and to the sacrament of Reconciliation.

Light a candle before the Blessed Mother when visiting the Blessed Sacrament.
The Mary candle: Some families have the custom of decorating the Christ candle with a blue veil on December 8th, the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception. On this great feast, others place a candle with a blue ribbon before a statue or picture of the Blessed Virgin, whose “yes” to God enabled our Lord’s coming at Christmas. The candle is lit during meal times to serve as a delightful reminder of Mary’s eager expectation of the “Light of the World.”

Pray the St. Andrew Christmas novena. Have each member of the family pray it for the intentions of someone else.

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10 Ways to Prepare During Advent [at Lord, Make Me a Saint]

Advent is a word with Latin roots meaning "approach" or "coming". Advent is just 3 weeks away. It always begins on the Sunday closest to November 30th, the Feast of St Andrew the Apostle. It is also the beginning of the new liturgical year for the Roman Catholic Church. Our church always gets new Missiles in the pews and decorates with purple. Why purple? Purple is for Royalty. Jesus is King and we are preparing for His birth. Purple (Violet) is also the color of penance, sacrifice and prayer. I always tell my children, "Advent is a time of waiting, it's a time to prepare our hearts and souls for Jesus." Easy to say, but how is that

lived and acted out?   

Inspired during Adoration last week, I wrote down 10 ways to prepare our hearts and souls during Advent. Read through these, but please keep in mind, this time of Advent, of preparing, is also meant to be a time of peace and not a time of rushing around trying to do every possible thing you can. Start slow, pick one or two things for yourself and one or two things for your family. My hope is that you are able to feel PEACE in the waiting and JOY in Christmas. Remember those 12 days of Christmas? Yeah, they don't even start until Christmas day!

Pray More If you don't pray now, or struggle with this area, this is the perfect time to start! Decide what you are going to do to add prayer this Advent. Set a time each day, maybe mornings work best for you, for me, even before I get out of bed works. I have my prayers right by my bedside ready for me to pick up. St Andrew's Novena might be a great way to add prayer. It is a novena that starts on November 30th and goes each day during Advent until Christmas Day. These are the cards we have and use each year: HERE Another way might be to pray the rosary each day, set time each day to pray this beautiful prayer that focuses on the life of Jesus.  You can order these beautiful cards HERE 

Stay Close to the Sacraments Go to Confession! If it's been a long time, go! Prepare your soul by cleaning out, so to speak, tell the priest when you go, that it's been a long time and he'll help you through it. Now is a good time to go to Confession to empty the sin on our souls and fill it with Grace! I know at our Parishes in our Cluster, there are extra opportunities to go as the priests offer many more times. 

Go to Daily Mass Going to daily Mass during Advent is a great way to prepare your heart and soul for Christmas. If going every day is too hard, try adding just one day each week. Like choose Monday for example, to start your week. Or choose Friday to end your week. Try it. I know you will yearn to go more. 

Advent Wreath  The lighting of the Advent wreath (and the distinguishing of the candle) is always a highlight of our supper time during Advent. Someone is picked each day to light the candle and someone is picked to read the family prayer. Every Advent there are free pamphlets at the entrances of church. These pamphlets have Advent activities and prayers for each day. Pick just one and stick with it. Pray from it each day as you light the candle. We leave our candles burn all during our meal then someone gets to extinguish the candle. Wreaths do not have to be expensive. I made ours by picking up supplies at the local craft store, I spend under $20, candles and all!  There's something special about lighting a candle and watching it, the peace it brings our hearts as we focus on our prayers. 

Advent Calendar We have tried many versions of this over the years. My mother-in-law made us a cloth calendar with pockets and room to put notes in each pocket. Each note for each day give us something to do. We also buy the chocolate candy calendars each year, I've yet to find a cheap religious one, we just buy the cheap ones found at the grocery store or craft store. It's kind of a fun way for kids to countdown the days to Jesus's birthday.We've done coloring countdowns too. I have a friend that made this great countdown, HERE. My all-time favorite countdown has been making cards for each day during Advent and we hang them over our patio doors in our dining room. Each day we open a card and it gives us something special to do.  Some suggestions could be: (starting with December 1 here but you would start with whatever day each year Advent starts) 

Read in the Bible, Luke Chapter 1 &2, the birth of Jesus, first day of Advent, light first candle!

 Write 20 things that you are thankful for!

Donate toys and books to charity (hospital?)

Light a candle and say a prayer for someone

Make Christmas Crafts with Mom (set out shoes for St Nicholas!)

Celebrate the Feast of St Nicholas!

Make a mini stocking and fill with goodies for a friend or neighbor

Today is the Feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin--make Mary Muffins and go to Mass!

Set up play tent with Christmas lights!

Open new ornament!  Gotta find it first!

Bake Christmas cookies and treats!

Today is the feast of Our Lady of Guadaulupe!  Let's do Mexican food!

Feast of St Lucy!  Celebrate!

Unwrap new book! Have a family movie night-watch Elf with popcorn!

Have a hot cocoa tea party with cookies!

Wrap presents!

Sing and dance to Christmas music!

Fill out Christmas cards today

Look at Christmas lights

Mom and Dad's Anniversary--make them love cards!

Open new Christmas book! Bring food to the food shelf!

Simeon's b-day Let's party He's going to be 6!!

Bake a cake for Jesus's birthday!

It's Christmas Eve!!  Celebrate and go to Mass! 

  6.  Advent Angels On Thanksgiving day we always draw names and each child gets to be the person's name they draw angel. They get to pray for that person, do special things each day, like doing their job or giving them special things, coloring pictures, writing them notes, leaving candies, you name it. On Christmas Even they get to give a gift to their person they were an angel to. Usually within a few days they have it all figured out but are not always sure so it's still fun to sneak and do nice things for their person. We also talk about how this spreads the love of Jesus and helps us to prepare for HIM. 

  7. 

Books

  We have a ton of Christmas books for children so one year we wrapped up all the Christmas books (in purple) and opened one each day. We usually only read these during Advent, so it was fun to open "new" old treasures each day. It gave us time to enjoy each book in a special way too. One very special Advent book we've read on and off through the years has been Jotham's Journey.

You can order this book

HERE

. You read a few pages each day and each day leaves you with a little cliffhanger making you excited for the next day. If you look further down on that link, there are other stories, Tabitha's Travels, and Bartholomew's Passage are books about children you encounter in Jotham's Journey giving you their side of the story.

For yourself, I'd suggest this book,

Rooted in Hope, by Elizabeth Foss

. I've done a couple of her bible studies and have loved them. It's a great bible study for busy mamas! This one is written for Advent and has some really awesome ways to help you grow closer to our Lord.

  8. 

Bake a Birthday Cake for Jesus

--as simple as it sounds, it can be a very rich tradition that you and your children will love and cherish! We bake a cake called "Midnight Bliss" because it is believed that Jesus was born at midnight. We make this delicious, rich, chocolate cake for Christmas Eve to celebrate the birth of Jesus every year. We put on a candle for each of us, to symbolize the light of Christ inside of us.

Midnight Bliss Cake

1 pkg chocolate cake mix, any variety (we picked chocolate fudge)

1 pkg (4 serving size) chocolate instant pudding

4 eggs

1 container 8 oz sour cream

1/2 cup flavored coffee, prepared (I use International Foods French Vanilla)

1/2 cup oil

1/2 cup water

1 pkg 8 squares semi-sweet baking chocolate, chopped.

Heat oven to 350 degrees and lightly grease and flour a tube pan (bundt cake)

Beat all ingredients except chopped chocolate in large bowl with mixer, until well blended and smooth. Stir in chopped chocolate and pour into prepared pan.

Bake 50-60 minutes until toothpick inserted near center comes out clean. Cool and sprinkle with powdered sugar.

 No need for frosting with this cake, it's rich and that good!

  9.  Give to Others--Clean out your closet and donate to local thrift shops. We have a thrift shop called "Treasure Chest" and all proceeds go to help our local crisis pregnancy center. (Birthline). Empty your cupboards and donate to your local foodshelf. Make some goodies and deliver to your neighbors, to the homeless on the street corners, to the lonely person you saw at Mass the other day. Another way to give to others is to give your time. Go visit someone you haven't seen in a long time. 

  10.  Write Your To-Do list!  Plan out your Advent. What do you want to finish before Christmas comes? Remember not to list too much. Do what needs to get done. Try to spread it out all through Advent. This will help you not to have to rush around. This will help you to enjoy it much more. When Christmas comes, you will feel as though your time was spent well, you'll have peace in your heart which is God's gift to us and our gift to Him. 

I hope you pick a couple of these things to help you this Advent. I hope these things bring you closer to our Lord and that you feel the PEACE and JOY only the Christ Child can give.

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The Power To Heal [at Shifting My Perspective]

Their fruit is used for food, and their leaves for healing. Ezekiel 47:12

11 16 17 blurred with word overlayJocelyn broke down crying one day, a few weeks ago. An outsider would have seen that there was no specific event that triggered it. They would have presumed she were crying for no reason. I knew better.

When life gets busy, I’m less available to my kids. In this case, we had just lost power for three days, after a windstorm had brought down the electrical lines. I was up to my eyeballs in all the things I had to catch up on: laundry, housework, more laundry, email, grocery shopping, sleep, rescheduled class parties and meetings, etc.

Although she’s in second grade now, Jocelyn still needs a lot of love and cuddling. With all the craziness from the power outage, she wasn’t getting what she needed. Her meltdown was my cue to drop what I was doing, and just hold her. So I did.

I sat on the hallway steps and pulled her onto my lap. She cried, and I just held her. Neither one of us talked, or rocked back and forth. It was just a simple embrace, for as long as she needed it.

After about five or six minutes, she pulled away and smiled. I asked her if she was okay. She said yes. Then she wiped her eyes, got up, and went her merry way.

It was as if the hug hit her “reset” button, like when we reboot our computers or other devices. It took her back to center, and cleared away the buildup of neglect.

It was so crystal clear to me because I’m the same way. I cruise along, neglecting downtime and prayer, in an attempt to get it all done. Then I hit a wall, and have my own meltdown. The only way I can reset is if I step away, and step into God’s arms.

Like I am for Jocelyn, God is my Healer. It’s time just sitting quietly in His embrace that I am reset, taken back to center, and the buildup of chaos is cleared away.

Questions For Reflection:

     * Can I identify when my kids need a “reset?”

     * What techniques do I use to heal them when they need it?

     * Can I identify when I need a “reset?”

     * Do I turn to God to heal me when I need it?

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America, One Last Chance, Revisited [at Renew The Church!]

One year ago after the surprising, stunning upset of the presidential election of Donald Trump, I wrote a blog post of my thoughts. I was grateful to God, to the point of tears in my praise and relief and thanksgiving! I had seen much of the America I grew up in, slipping away under increasingly “progressive” godless and man-centered secular ideology – that is, Big Government take-over of more and more of America, leaving less and less of all that had made this nation good in the past, and thus in many senses “great.”

Many Americans in that election cycle knew, in their hearts, that something deep and fundamental had become wrong in America – and needed to be set right. Politicians on both sides of our two-party, three-branch system of government had found ways to deadlock true governance of the country while at the same time assuring their re-elections and self-advancing careers. It had become a “swamp” – and “Drain the Swamp” became a rallying cry for this non-politician, questionably a Republican, ignore-the-rules candidate for President – and he won.

I wrote one year ago, in the blog America: Is This One Last Chance?, and it is true now as then: “Yes I believe it was a miracle! I believe God intervened because of the prayers of His faithful ones.” The following is from that blog post:

Do you know how close we came to losing this nation – to putting this nation of laws, with a Constitution to protect us and our human rights, into the hands of lawless Judges who feel free to make up laws and rights as they see fit? Do you know how close we still are to falling so far from “One nation under God” to a fragmented, shattered confederation of hostile tribes and identity groups under an all-powerful federal rule by whim and imperial fiat? The Lord has been very patient with us, His Church, as the darkness of the world around us continued to grow only darker.

I believe this, however, concerning the Church: He is giving His Church one more chance. He is God and I am not, and I don’t know that I personally would have given us another chance, so prodigal have we been with our blessings. But He is God and He has given us this one more chance to be who we are, and to be what we are sent to be: Light! We are sent to be His holy light in this dark world.

Where has the Church been, through the decades when this nation was in such grave moral decline? The nation morphed from a culture of life to a culture of death – from a predominantly Judeo-Christian nation to a predominantly materialistic and godless one. The light of revealed truth – even the light of the natural moral law – has been receding, dimming, fading into the horizon while an amoral darkness has begun to envelop the country. Barbarism, cruelty, animal-like inhumanity has crept in. And where has the Church been, as this enemy of souls was infiltrating every facet and corner of America?

What has the Church been doing, instead of her holy mission? Whom has she been serving, when she was not serving her Lord and God? What have our parishes and pulpits been occupied with, when they were not occupied with the upbuilding of her people in holiness, and nurturing them toward the fulness and the maturity of Christ?

Has the Church learned anything, this past year? Has the Church changed her sleepy lukewarmness, her unnatural treaty with the world and the loves of the world, her shameless counterfeiting and compromising of her mission to “make disciples, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you”? I see no evidence. I see rearranging the furniture and lowering the shades, lest too much light come in. I hear no wailing with grief at the interior ruination of His Holy City, the hunger of His people abandoned, the CEO bishops, the manager-priests, the preachers reading their mail-order homilies, the shameful excuses for adult formation if and where any at all even exists. Church, will you dare to tempt God, even after He has given you this time to repent?

Isaiah heard this from the Lord, many years ago. It seems relevant to us now:

Isa 66:1  Thus says the LORD: “Heaven is my throne and the earth is my footstool; what is the house which you would build for me, and what is the place of my rest?
Isa 66:2  All these things my hand has made, and so all these things are mine, says the LORD. But this is the man to whom I will look, he that is humble and contrite in spirit, and trembles at my word.
Isa 66:3  “He who slaughters an ox is like him who kills a man; he who sacrifices a lamb, like him who breaks a dog’s neck; he who presents a cereal offering, like him who offers swine’s blood; he who makes a memorial offering of frankincense, like him who blesses an idol. These have chosen their own ways, and their soul delights in their abominations;
Isa 66:4  I also will choose affliction for them, and bring their fears upon them; because, when I called, no one answered, when I spoke they did not listen; but they did what was evil in my eyes, and chose that in which I did not delight.”

I will close this post, with the same paragraph I closed with, one year ago:

The more pressing question is, what will we do now? Will we seek holiness, as is our vocation? Will we be light, as is our mission? Will we be witnesses, as we are sent to be, of His life-giving Spirit? Will we see the one door open before us – the door that may be the last chance we will have – to seek His will and do it? Will we pray with all our hearts to do His will no matter the cost? Will we offer Him all that He has entrusted to us, in hope that He may use it, and us, for the glory of His work in this His creation? Thy Kingdom come, Father! Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven! Hallowed be Thy name.

Amen.

This contribution is available at http://renewthechurch.com/2017/11/24/america-one-last-chance-revisited/
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Living in a Connected World

“Rejoice always. Pray without ceasing. In all circumstances give thanks, for this is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus”  –1Thessalonians 5:16-18

We are living in a connected world.  Smart phones have put instant communications in the hands of everyone.

We read articles about the connected car, home and workplace. It seems the world is a text message or tweet away.

Young people will text message their friends 20 or 30 times a day.  Many will take their smart phones to bed with them in case they get a late night text.

I’ve even seen a businessman wearing his Bluetooth headset while swimming with his kids! We have a NEED to connect.

Wouldn’t it be great if we could have the same instant communication with God?  Have a moral dilemma? Send a text to God.  Have a problem with your love life?  God is a text message away.

Well you can! And you don’t even need to spend $1000 dollars on the new iPhone X.  It’s free!

Here are a few ways to stay connected to God in the same way:

Include God in your daily thoughts. If we text our friends 20-30 times a day why not send a mental message to God several times a day. It is what Saint Paul (in 1 Thessalonians 5:17) meant when he said we should pray without ceasing:

“Thank you God for the sunshine!”

“God, please help me get through this argument with my spouse.”

“God, calm my anxiety about the presentation I am about to give at work.”

It’s easy! And you can do it in a few seconds.

2. Take God along when you go to bed instead of keeping your smart phone under your pillow. Try bringing the Lord along with night prayer, a bible reading or reflection from a good book.

3. Stay connected to God in the car. Try praying a Rosary of Chaplet of Divine Mercy on the way home from work. I find that it helps me to relax and leave the pressures of work behind and be more attentive to my wife and family.

4. Use social media to say connected. There are many great Facebook pages and groups that you can join. The Catholic Bloggers Network, Inspire Me Please, True Catholicism help you stay connected.

5. There’s an App for that. Try adding some great Catholic and Christian apps to your smart phone and use them daily. Some of my favorites are, IBrevary HD, Catholic Mega, Prayer Chain to name a few.

Living in a connected world is great, but let’s not forget to stay connected to God!  It’s easy if you make it a priority.

This contribution is available at http://tonyagnesi.com/2017/11/living-in-a-connected-world/
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God Willing [at Sunflower Sojourn]

“Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.  Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.” James 4:13-15

There is a saying in the Arabic language that is often said: “Inshallah” (God willing). I like how this saying is so often said, because it places recognition in God’s omnipotence and in the fact that humans only know so much. Sure, we can plan all we want. But ultimately, we don’t know. Our humanity gives us a very limited picture of our own lives and of the world. We don’t know about natural disasters or airline shutdowns that can derail travel plans.  We don’t know that we’re going to fall so sick that we can’t get out of bed on the day we have an important presentation. We don’t know that we’re going to unexpectedly meet the person that changes our life and our entire life plans. Or, that we don’t meet the special person we always dreamed of. The list goes on.

I have often gotten caught up in my own plans, determined to follow through with them no matter what. How many of you are the same way? Yet we read the Scripture at the beginning of this post and see: it is all according to God’s will. We are not in control! It’s not about our plans or our timing. I was supposed to attend a historic event today. However, I have been struggling with sickness for the past week. I woke up fatigued. My cough is unpredictable and my voice is barely there. After praying about it, I had the sense that it was a “no.” The plans I had made with others months ago were not going to happen. I was to stay home and rest.

I can’t explain why this is the week I got so sick. However, I do know that this day of rest has been immensely healing to my body. It has also been a great time to reconnect with God. It’s just another lesson in learning to let go of my plans and dreams in order for whatever else my Jesus has in store. It’s all “God willing.”

(Note: I’m not against planning! We need to make plans, to a certain extent. However, our plans are often very different than THE plan the Creator accomplishes! We need not to be so set on our plans that we are closed off to His different plans.)

Image courtesy of Unsplash.com

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Good and Faithful Servant [at Theologyisaverb]

“A man going on a journey
called in his servants and entrusted his possessions to them.
To one he gave five talents; to another, two; to a third, one–
to each according to his ability…” Mt 25: 14-30

 Today’s Gospel reading, if only taken on its surface, can leave us with a challenging understanding of God and his expectations of us. After all, didn’t the servant with one talent return his loan in full? And why were some given more to start with? Perhaps the servant with one talent might have invested some if had the security of a reserve. Yet, as per usual, Jesus is revealing more about what is possible with God than what we could ever do on our own.

First, we see that each servant was given talents “according to his ability”. Our Father who knows both our strengths and limitations isn’t going to give us more than we can handle. Rather, he recognizes where each of us are in our journey and gives us the tools and support to do the work ahead. So, the servant with one talent did have the ability, but lacked the trust in God to go any further. Not only could he not advance the kingdom, but he was unable to grow in relationship with his master.

But what about the other two servants, what can be learned from them? Each had been given a portion to use, and both in trusting in God’s provision had doubled the gift. I am reminded here of 2 Kings, in Elijah’s utmost desire to inherit a double portion of the gift of the Holy Spirit which Elisha had. Elijah wasn’t seeking a talent for his own purpose, nor was he asking for simply a change in leadership responsibility. In asking for a double portion, he was asking to be given more responsibility and expressing his conviction in God and dedication to the task. This is what the other servants did and their reward was God’s recognition of their faithfulness and confidence that they were now ready to accept more.

‘Well done, my good and faithful servant.
Since you were faithful in small matters,
I will give you great responsibilities.
Come, share your master’s joy.’

Do we yearn to hear these words in our journey as disciples? Or are we content to simply return the gift unopened for fear of failure in the tasks ahead? Much of my work as director of ministries, is to help those I encounter to discover just how their gifts can be used in the work of the kingdom. And to date, I have yet to find anyone who is without a talent.. though perhaps a bit unused.

Reflection:

Are there unused talents that I am failing to recognize or use today? How might I better trust in God that he will use my gifts to build his church in the world around me?

Peace,

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On Being Conformed into Christ's Image [at Bartimaeus' Quiet Place]

Being Conformed into Christ’s Image —  is how we come to Spiritual Maturity in our Walk with Christ

“Now before faith came, we were confined under the law, kept under restraint until faith should be revealed. So that the law was our custodian until Christ came, that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a custodian; for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise.” (Gal. 3:23-29)

“And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “abba! Father! (Gal. 4:6)

”My little children, of whom I am again in travail until Christ be formed in you… (Gal. 4 :19)

“For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters.” (Rom. 8:29)

My Dear Brothers and sisters in Christ,

The Apostle Paul, in writing to the Galatian community begins with the statement indicating that, “ … in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God”, yet in the next part of his letter he indicates he is perplexed by their current behavior and that because of that behavior they indicate to him that, although sons, they are not yet fully formed into Christ. So much so that he is still in travailing prayer for them – for they are essentially still in the womb as far as understanding the graces, freedom and responsibility we have in Christ Jesus.

About the Transformation Process

This problem of a delay in maturing in Christ is still with us today. I know because was just like the Galatians. I was a baptized, confirmed and a compliant cradle Christian. But like the Galatians, was still in the spiritual womb of “mother” Church. I had not yet awakened to who I, as a person, was in Jesus Christ and had not yet come out of the womb crying “daddy” or “abba” to my Father in Heaven. And, I had not yet met with my brother, Jesus, although I knew about Him. I also did not know that it was the Father’s purpose in conceiving me in Christ to conform me into His image! It was just beyond my imagination!

Are you being Conformed to Christ’s Image?

I now, by His Grace, understand it is the Father’s clearly stated purpose that all those who are baptized into Christ be conformed to the image of His Son (Rom. 8:29). I now believe, in consequence, that our maturity in Christ and subsequent spiritual growth also needs be assessed in accordance to the progress we are making, after submitting our will to His, and in cooperating with His Transforming Spirit in us.

It should be expressly noted that our transformation is the work of the Holy Spirit in us – as Jesus says, “It is the spirit that gives life, the flesh is of no avail; the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life” (John 6:63). Our only contribution to God’s work in us and through us is our cooperation, in faith, for He will not violate our free will. The Father always gives us the opportunity to yield ourselves to His will and purpose before He initiates any creative work of the Spirit in us.

Listen to how the Virgin Mary responded to the Angel Gabriel when told that she had been selected to conceive and bear a son by the Holy Spirit – a son that was to be the Father’s anointed Messiah, not only for Israel but also for the all humankind!

”And Mary said, Behold, the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word.” And the angel departed from her. (Luke 1: 38)

That, my brothers and sisters is the manner in which He expects us to respond when the Good News of salvation is presented to us. The Good News that the Father not only wishes to save us but that He also wishes to birth His Son in us and conform us to His image us so that He might be the firstborn of many brethren. (Rom. 8:29)

Yes, the appropriate response, is an act of our will, inspired by faith, to repent, believe, and to open the door to our heart to His Person as Our Lord and Savior saying to Him, “Lord save me, let your Spirit, be born in me … be it done to me according to your Word”. It is only such a response that will bring us to a true spiritual birth in Jesus and subsequent transformation into His Image. Praised be His Holy Name!

With this said, let us, then, discuss this transforming process for this Conformation. For, indeed, it is through that process which we have initiated with our declaration whereby we begin to grow in spiritual maturity by the power of the Holy Spirit in us.

We are all aware of the demarcation points in our physical lives in this world, namely, our birth, our entering school, our graduations, our military service (if any), our wedding day, the birth of our children, our profession, etc. . As important as these events in our earthly lives are in indicating our maturity and progress in our earthly lives, we need to ask ourselves: what are the similar key events in our religious/spiritual lives and what is their value to us in assessing our growth and maturity in living for God?

Of course, our first attempt at listing these stages in our religious lives these events could possibly be like this: our birth, our baptism and confirmation, our first communion, our marriage, our ordination, our entry into service to the church, etc.

Today I am proposing that we take a distinct and more mystical view at assessing our progress in the spiritual life. I am thinking that maybe we should look at the metaphors used in the New Testament used by Jesus and the writers of the New Testament as a more spiritual way of understanding the stages of our spiritual growth to maturity in Christ Jesus. Some of these metaphors include, spiritual travail, spiritual rebirth, being as babes in Christ, and the subsequent process in coming to maturity in spiritual wisdom an knowledge in Him.

From Conception to a New Life

Let us consider, for instance, that when we are spiritually conceived in Christ at baptism we are held within a spiritual womb, within our parents and the church. While in this womb we are taught, nurtured and fed spiritual milk from the Word and Sacraments. Eventually, as our spiritual fetus matures on the Word, we act on that Word declaring Jesus as our Savior and thus reach out to the eternal life and relationship with Jesus that He offers us as a gift.

This act of cooperation with God’s grace brings us out of the womb and into a new awareness, a spiritual awareness of the presence on the Holy Spirit and the Spirit of Jesus in us! An awareness that tells us that we are out of the womb and that we are now Living Children of the Living God here in this world and we KNOW it, not theologically, but experientially, because the Holy Spirit confirms it in our spirits. This, being an awareness that we are a new Creation or, a re-born man as the Apostle Peter expresses it when he states:

“Forasmuch as ye KNOW that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers; But with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot: Who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you, Who by him do believe in God, that raised him up from the dead, and gave him glory; that your faith and hope might be in God. Seeing ye have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren, see that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently: Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which lives and abides for ever.“   (1 Peter 1:18-23)

Some call our coming to this stage where we know, that we know that we have a “daddy’ and have personally encountered our brother, Jesus, as an “encounter” with the Divine or as a “conversion”. The terms are somewhat irrelevant to those of us who enter into a new spiritual awareness of life in Christ, because, for us, there is NO DOUBT in our souls that we have entered into a new stage in our spiritual lives and it doesn’t matter to us what you call it! Now, we are able to live in this new life and are made aware by the Holy Spirit that we are, indeed, Sons of the Most High and able to commune with Him in the Spirit! Praised Be His Holy Name!

From Conversion to Putting On the New Man

After this first stage in our transformation, the Holy Spirit leads us deeper into the Word, teaching us , Not in our minds but in our spirits, so that we might be led of the Spirit as Jesus was led. The events and circumstances of each day being provided our hearts and our spirits are brought into alignment with the thoughts and desires of Jesus Himself. We learn to pray as Jesus prayed, to Love as Jesus Loved, to as a means of testing the principles and spirit of faith that the Holy Spirit is infusing in us as we grow more and more closer to Christ!

We also pass through a phase of growth where we are essentially babes in Christ. Paul refers to this phase when writing to some of his early communities, such as the Corinthians to whom he exhorts as follows …” Brothers, I couldn’t speak to you as to spiritual, but as to fleshly, as to babies in Christ. I fed you with milk, not with meat; for you weren’t yet ready. Indeed, not even now are you ready, for you are still fleshly. For insofar as there is jealousy, strife, and factions among you, aren’t you fleshly, and don’t you walk in the ways of men? For when one says, ‘I follow Paul’, and another, ‘I follow Apollos’, aren’t you fleshly? (1 Cor. 3:1-4)

In this phase of growth we can barely find evidence of spiritual growth, yet with continued persistence and teaching from the word we begin to produce fruit, and it is by this fruit that others will assess your progress. In his epistle to the Galatians Paul lists the characteristic fruit of living in divine, “agape”, Love. He clearly says … “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law” (Gal. 5:22-23). Our growth in this area is gradual but constant as long as we maintain our fellowship with Christ.

If we do stumble and fall (as we all do), the results will also be plainly evident. “Now the works of the flesh are plain: fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, selfishness, dissension, party spirit, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and the like. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God”. (Gal. 5:19-21)

In exhorting the Galatians on this matter, Paul tells them “…. [Although,] you were called to freedom, brethren; … do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love be servants of one another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” But if you bite and devour one another take heed that you are not consumed by one another. But I say, walk by the Spirit, and do not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh; for these are opposed to each other, to prevent you from doing what you would. But if you are led by the Spirit you are not under the law.” (Gal.5: 13-18)

Remember, that acknowledging and repenting of our sin is extremely important in maintaining our fellowship with Him, and, as the Apostle John tells us:

“This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light and in him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not live according to the truth; but if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just, and will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.”

“… write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous: And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.”     

( 1 John 1:5-10; 2:1-2)

In entering the more mature stage, the Holy Spirit uses the circumstances of our lives to bring us the point where we dedicate ourselves to the Lord totally, renouncing the flesh and seeking only that God’s will and purpose be accomplished in our lives through the “New Man”, that is the “New Spiritual Nature” we have in Christ.

By faith, man completely submits his intellect and his will to God. With his whole being man gives his assent to God the revealer. Sacred Scripture calls this human response to God, the author of revelation, ‘the obedience of faith’ (CCC 143).” Obedience of faith is a willed act of love for God who loved us first.

Paul puts it in this way:

“If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ who is our life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of these the wrath of God is coming. In these you once walked, when you lived in them. But now put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and foul talk from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old nature with its practices and have put on the new nature, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator”

(Col. 3:1-10).

Putting on the New Man Until our Conformance to Christ Is Complete

Now, putting to death our Old Man, that is, our old nature, is not something we accomplish by ourselves. Again, it is something we must do in cooperation with God’s Grace and the Holy Spirit. It begins when we place our old self on the altar as a living sacrifice. Here again we turn to Paul to explain it to us…

“I appeal to you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may prove what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. For by the grace given to me I bid every one among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith which God has assigned him.”

(Rom 12:1-3)

Yes, brethren, when we make a decision to dedicate ourselves totally to the service of God and we present our old self a s a sacrifice, the Lord Himself will work in our lives to burn out the old nature and begin the renewal of our minds so that all that we say, and do, and think will be renewed by the Spirit of Christ in us.

Do not think this will be easy. It will be painful because we are, in fact crucifying our old nature and severing our old attachments and desires will be difficult. But the Lord will help us in our weakness so that the nature of his Son may be manifested in us – not for our glory, but for His. Praised be His Holy Name!

This process will last a lifetime and will not be completed until we receive our new spiritual bodies at the Second Coming of our Lord and Savior, Jesus, our King! Again, Paul summarizes this process with Spirit-inspired words …

“I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of him who subjected it in hope; because the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God.

We know that the whole creation has been groaning in travail together until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.

Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words. And he who searches the hearts of men knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.

 We know that in everything God works for good with those who love him, who are called according to his purpose [i.e., to become His adopted Sons]. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the first-born among many brethren. And those whom he predestined he also called; and those whom he called he also justified; and those whom he justified he also glorified”

(Rom. 8:18-29).

Our “glorification” comes at Jesus’ Return when we receive our glorified bodies as the concluding act of God in conforming us to the image of His Son.

But even while we are here in this world, as incomplete as our conformation may be we still share in the inheritance of Christ and in the anointing He received to accomplish His appointed Role in bringing forth the Kingdom. For, after all we are not only His brethren, but also His chosen disciples to carry on His work.

What I am saying, brethren, is that our conformance to Christ also includes our share in His empowerment with the anointing of the Holy Spirit. For Just as we are baptized in water as He was, so also we need to be anointed with the spiritual gifts of the Holy Spirit, just as He was. For, in order to be like Him and minister the Gifts like Him, we also need to have the Holy Spirit come upon us so we can truly minister to the body of Christ in His Name.

Listen to what Jesus said about His empowerment …

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord.”

(Luke 4: 18-19)

In like manner it must be understood that we cannot truly carry out our roles of the “Great Commission” to “proclaim the gospel to the whole world” and “make disciples” without a commensurate anointing of God’s Spirit on us who believe.

That is why he said to his disciples to wait at Jerusalem before going out minster so they would also be anointed by the Holy Spirit, whom He termed … “The Promise” of the Father”. This “promise” is the baptism of the Holy Spirit that Peter also preached to the crowds at Pentecost saying …

“Then Peter said unto them, repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and [then] ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. For [this] the “promise” is [also] unto you, and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the LORD our God shall call.”

(Acts 2:38-39)

In continuing our walk to maturity in Christ in this world it is important that we also receive the “baptism in the Holy Spirit”. If we are to take our part in building up the body of Christ we need to be empowered by the Spirit because this is the way He has chosen to manifest himself through us is in spiritual service to His Body the Church. In the wisdom of God that come with your maturity, therefore, ask for the impartation of the Gifts that you need to partner with Him in bringing forth His Kingdom.

As we go forth to serve the Lord, my brothers and sisters, let us take to heart the words that St. Ignatius of Loyola gave to his disciples, namely ….

“There are very few people who realize what God would make of them if they abandoned themselves into his hands, and let themselves be formed by his grace”.

St. Ignatius’ Prayer Yielding Himself to the Lord 

(from Spiritual Exercises No. 234)

Take, Lord, and receive all my liberty,

my memory,

my understanding,

and my entire will,

all that I have and possess.

You gave it all to me;

to you, Lord, I give it all back.

All is yours,

dispose of it entirely according to your will.

Give me the grace to love you,

for that is enough for me.

May the Lord, in His Name, work in you and through you as you proceed onward to spiritual maturity, so that all that you think and say and do in this world may be for His Glory and NOT for yours. Amen

Your brother in Christ … Bartimaeus

© B.R.Timeo and Bartimaeus’ Quiet Place, [2008-2017])

This contribution is available at http://quietplace4prayer.wordpress.com/2017/12/01/§-on-being-conformed-into-christs-image/
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Unfolding John 1:1-5 (Origin Stories) [at Third Place Project]

Knowing a hero’s backstory tells you not only how they got to be heroes, but what motivates them to do what they do. It helps to know that Bruce Wayne lost his parents & fell down an old well, inspiring him to become Batman, or that Superman is actually an alien from another planet.  Spiderman Homecoming represents the third series of movies portraying the web-slinging superhero released since 2002.  By now, you’re likely familiar with Spiderman’s origin story: Peter Parker, an awkward teenager, was bitten by a radioactive spider, and woke up with his superpowers.  Because he comes from humble beginnings, Spiderman always has a soft spot for those who are weak and vulnerable (although he does enjoy kicking butt alongside the Avengers from time to time.)

The fact is that we, too, each come with our own origin stories.  Each of us is born into a family and circumstances beyond our control, and our lived experiences (moving, illnesses, divorce, etc) also represent who we are and what motivates us.

What’s true for superheroes and for each of us is also true for what we believe: our faith also has an origin story.  More than one, actually.  Quite often we look to the opening chapters from the book of Genesis to find three parts of our origin story: 1) the seven days of creation found in Genesis 1; 2) the story of Adam, Adam’s rib, and Eve as the masterpiece of all creation found Genesis 2; and 3) the whole serpent-fruit incident found in Genesis 3.  On the one hand, we’re right to do so, because each of these stories enlighten us on where it is that we’ve come from. We learn from these stories both that God didn’t create us by accident and that we are part of an ordered ‘whole’ of the universe around us.  We learn a little about what we are and are not for – a reality which becomes clearer once Jesus comes along.  It helps introduce basic answers to the questions of evil and dying as being a consequence of our sin (but not a part of God’s original plan for us.)

Ultimately, these early chapters help set the stage for a more definitive Christian creation story – a story which is is actually found in the New Testament, at the beginning of the Gospel of John:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.  -John 1:1-5

This passage not only echoes the first words of Genesis (“In the beginning…”) – it also later answers the reason why we are here: to become children of God (John 1:18).  It, too, acknowledges the reality of evil in our lives – but looks further.  There are evils we experience which do not appear to be the direct result of human sin (natural disasters, illnesses, etc) – but here the answer is different.  Instead of doing explaining why these evils exist (as was the case in Genesis 3), we are instead given a basic reminder that although there is darkness in the world, the light will always endure.  It’s as simple and clear a message of hope as we could ask for.

While the Bible’s origin story isn’t as cut and dry as you might find in a comic book or a Hollywood movie, reading what scripture has to offer on how we got to be here and why we do what we do – looking to Genesis and to John – helps us even more to understand the story we are living.  And it’s perhaps here that we can look to the words of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger – Pope Benedict XVI – when he was reflecting on our origin stories:

Holy Scripture in its entirety was not written from beginning to end like a novel or a textbook… (the Bible is) the story of God’s struggle with human beings to make Himself understandable to them over the course of time, but it is also the story of their struggle to seize hold of God over the course of time.

(This is the first part of a Bible study I’m hosting with students at St. Peter the Apostle CHS in Spruce Grove during the 2017-18 school year.)

This contribution is available at http://www.thirdplaceproject.com/unfolding-john-origin-stories/
Copyright is retained by the contributing author (follow above link for info on this piece).

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Is Private Property an Evil? [at Practical Distributism]

Roque Dalton, the Salvadoran Marxist poet and journalist (died 1975), wrote a poem, called in Spanish "Acta," rendered in English as "Act," which is a powerful indictment of economic injustice. The poem runs in part (as translated by Jack Hirschman):

In the name of those washing others' clothes

(and cleansing others' filth from the whiteness)

...

In the name of those living on others' land

(the houses and factories and shops

streets, cities and towns

rivers lakes volcanoes and mountains

always belong to others

and that's why the cops and the guards are there

guarding them against us)

In the name of those who have nothing but

hunger exploitation disease

a thirst for justice and water

persecutions and condemnations

loneliness abandonment oppression and death

I accuse private property

of depriving us of everything.

It is easy to understand why someone contemplating the immense discrepancy between the mansions of the rich and the hovels of the poor would consider private property itself as at the root of these injustices. "Capital," as Pope Pius XI wrote, "was long able to appropriate to itself excessive advantages. It claimed all the products and profits and left to the laborer the barest minimum necessary to repair his strength and to ensure the continuation of his class"

(Quadragesimo Anno, no. 54)

. And such an unjust distribution of wealth persists in many places in the world - or even grows worse. In the United States, where a relatively more fair distribution of wealth and income was achieved in the 1950s and 60s, since the late 70s the percentage of income obtained by the richest 10% or even 1% has increased dramatically. As the same pontiff wrote, "not every kind of distribution of wealth and property among men is such that it can satisfactorily, still less adequately, attain the end intended by God..."

(ibid., no. 57)

.

If the institution of private property exists for a purpose, "the end intended by God," then unjust concentrations of property on the part of the rich violate justice, harm the common good, distort the political process, and, in truth, are a powerful near occasion of sin to the wealthy themselves. But what remedy should we seek for this situation? To abolish private property? To "accuse private property of depriving us of everything"? That would be a bit like arguing that since some people have too many clothes and others not enough, we should abolish the private possession of clothing. No, there is a better way.

Distributists seek a more equitable distribution of property, not, as some of our critics appear to think, an absolutely equal distribution, which is neither desirable nor attainable. But a relatively more equal distribution, one that helps rather than hinders the purposes of property. For surely the purpose of private property is to facilitate the orderly fulfillment of the economic needs of the human race, not the amassing of wealth beyond anyone's reasonable needs. Private property must be subordinate to the common good of society, and our laws ought to favor the division of property and its acquisition by the poor.

Some of the ways that a more fair distribution of property could be achieved were sketched by Hilaire Belloc in his 1936 book, The Restoration of Property, and depending on circumstances, these methods are still valid. Another method important today is to equalize the economic power between those who wash others' clothes and cook others' meals and collect others' garbage, on the one hand, and on the other, those who control or hire them, those Pope Leo XIII characterized as "the party which holds the power because it holds the wealth; which has in its grasp all labor and all trade; which manipulates for its own benefit and its own purposes all the sources of supply, and which is powerfully represented in the councils of the State itself"

(Rerum Novarum, no. 47)

.

Defenders of the economic status quo like to imagine that economic outcomes, such as vastly unequal distributions of wealth and income, are simply dictates of the so-called laws of economics. But this is not the case. It is not primarily such economic laws that have given some people control of wealth and labor and trade. Economic laws, which are reflections of certain more or less constant tendencies or proclivities of human beings, are real, certainly, but they always operate within a legal and a cultural framework, they are subject to manipulation by those who hold power, and rarely are they the most important factor at play in any given economic result. Those who wash clothes and clean hotel rooms generally work hard, but their hard work does not bring them riches, even after a lifetime of working. Why? Because they hold no economic power. Those who have economic power, their employers, essentially hold all the cards in determining wages. They are "the party which holds the power because it holds the wealth [and]...which manipulates for its own benefit and its own purposes all the sources of supply...." Pope Leo was well aware that power was one of the chief determinants of economic outcomes. That is why labor organization is such an important means for achieving something like equity in economic bargaining power as a means toward achieving a more just distribution of property, and why Leo lamented, at the beginning of Rerum Novarum, the destruction of the "ancient workmen's Guilds"

(no. 3)

. The claim that labor distorts market processes misses the point, because any market always operates under some rules. Rules against force and fraud, for example, are no more natural or less arbitrary than are rules giving a voice to organized labor. The economy is not a self-existent entity that serves its own ends in isolation. It is part of the social order and must be subjected to the common good of the social order.

While the injustices that all too often are associated with private property are real and are to be deplored and eliminated, the remedy is not to abolish private ownership. If private property were abolished "the working man himself would be among the first to suffer" wrote Leo XIII in Rerum Novarum

(no. 4)

. It is not private property that is the enemy of justice or of the common good. It is the inequitable distribution of that property. Against such a distribution Catholic social doctrine proposes remedies, and distributists seek means to make these remedies more specific and to apply them to current conditions.

Of course, this is not to say that absolutely everything must be privately owned. Pope Pius XI justified state ownership in the following words. "For it is rightly contended that certain forms of property must be reserved to the State, since they carry with them an opportunity of domination too great to be left to private individuals without injury to the community at large"

(Quadragesimo Anno, no. 114)

. Even more to the point is ownership by cooperative groups, such as worker-owned companies. In the Middle Ages most manorial farmland was cooperatively worked and was not the individual property of its cultivator. In fact, there have been many different systems of private property. To quote Pius XI once more:

History proves that the right of ownership, like other elements of social life, is not absolutely rigid, and this doctrine We Ourselves have given utterance to on a previous occasion in the following terms: "How varied are the forms which the right of property has assumed! First, a primitive form in use among untutored and backward peoples, which still exists in certain localities even in our own day; then, that of the patriarchal age; later came various tyrannical types (We use the word in its classical meaning); finally the feudal and monarchic systems down to the varieties of more recent times."

(ibid., no. 49)

Let us not confuse Enlightenment notions of absolute ownership, such as can be found in John Locke, with Catholic teaching on private property. The seventh commandment is not a bulwark for the Lockean social order.

No one, no Catholic especially, should be unmoved by the cry against injustice that Roque Dalton makes. But let us not jettison what is good in order to guard against the abuse of that good. Private ownership, yes; injustice, no. Let that be our motto and cry against oppression.

This contribution is available at http://practicaldistributism.blogspot.com/2017/11/is-private-property-evil.html
Copyright is retained by the contributing author (follow above link for info on this piece).

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Is Private Property an Evil? [at Practical Distributism]

Hilaire Belloc’s

Essay on the Restoration of Property

is a remarkably well-written book.  Put aside the question of whether Belloc is right or wrong about any of his contentions: the book is thoroughly lucid.  It’s also organic—you really can’t dip into it at random, you need to get ahold of the ideas as a whole.  This feature of the book, I think, leads to confusion among critics.  Well, there’s also the fact that despite its lucidity, the book covers far more territory than it could exhaustively treat, so there are some ideas that aren’t fully fleshed out.  One of those ideas, at least in my experience, is economic freedom.  It’s one of the central notions of the book, and one of the most fundamental principles upon which Distributism stands, and I’ve had a difficult time coming to grips with it. 

It seems to me others have, too, including some prominent opponents of Distributism.  In particular, there seems to be a tendency to conflate economic freedom and self-sufficience.  This has serious consequences.

As I say, the book is an organic whole, so I can’t just pick up ‘economic freedom’ on its own.  I need to back up a little.  Belloc begins with the Production of Wealth.  This is, as he puts it, the transformation of man’s environment from a state that is less useful to a state that is more useful.  ‘Wealth,’ here, doesn’t mean large sacks of cash (at least, not generally).  It means all the things we need to have in order to live conformably to our nature: things like food and drink and clothes and shelter. 

The transformation of our environment—the Production of Wealth—occurs only through the use of the Means of Production:

The wealth can only come into existence through the manipulating of natural forces by certain instruments; and there must also be an existing store of food and clothing and housing and the rest of it [e.g. clothing and fuel: or, in other words, wealth] so that human beings may carry on during the process of production.  These stores of wealth, these instruments and these natural forces are the Means of Production.

Note that last sentence carefully.  The means of production include such things as food and clothing, tools (“certain instruments”), and the natural forces with which we work.  It follows immediately that “whoever controls the means of production controls the supply of wealth.”  It also follows immediately that if the family does not control the means of production, then it will not be economically free.  That is: economic freedom

requires

control over the means of production.  Without control over the means of production, you are economically dependent upon others.  If you are economically free, you are not economically dependent upon others.  But of course this all comes in degrees.  To attain

ideal

economic freedom, one must attain full control over all the means of production required for the production of the sorts of wealth called for by one’s life. 

Now, a quick review of that last paragraph brings to light why it’s so easy to confuse economic freedom with self-sufficiency.  But hold on to that for a minute.  First, we need to get clear on this notion of ideal economic freedom.  It’s not what you think.

The ideal, Belloc says, is

inhuman

.  In other words, do not read Belloc’s use of the term ‘ideal’ as meaning “a goal to be strived for even though we are sure to fall short,” or as “that which would be most appropriate for us, should we,

per impossibile

, attain it.”  That is definitely not the way to take it.  He uses the term in the sense of being an idealization, which is to say, a

falsification

.  Man is a social animal.  He is not made for the kind of isolation implied in such an ideal.  Again—and this can’t be stressed enough—ideal economic freedom is

not

a desideratum.  It must come with limitations. 

So Belloc posits two restraints upon economic freedom.  First, there is the Difference of Occupation: some will mainly raise grain, some will mainly mill grain, some will mainly make millstones, some will mainly fix grain planting equipment, etc.  Second, there is the Principle of Unity, namely, the State, which helps maintain justice and order internally, and helps arrange for defense against aggression from without.  The resulting dually-limited economic freedom “satisfies the nature of man.”  So these limitations are not unfortunate constraints that bar our way to Utopia.  There is no Utopia—the “ideal” is eschewed from the outset as not proper to our nature.  

What is to be pursued is not an inhuman ideal, but rather the wide distribution of control over the means of production, which is to say, private property.  And the family must control the means of production, or else it will not be economically free.  One can, of course, reject economic freedom as a goal (and Belloc deals with some arguments intended to do that).  But if one accepts economic freedom as a goal, then it is hard to see how Belloc’s conclusions to this point can be gainsaid. 

At any rate, my task for today is not to argue in defense of economic freedom.  It is, rather, to clarify the relation between economic freedom and self-sufficiency.  I’ll take an old article from Thomas Woods as an example of the confusion of those two notions, and of its consequences for understanding Distributism.  But let’s start with the distinction. 

I doubt there’s an authoritative account of exactly what self-sufficiency is, so let’s just make it easy on ourselves and go straight to

Wikipedia

. 

Self-sufficiency (also called self-containment) is the state of not requiring any aid, support, or interaction for survival; it is a type of personal or collective autonomy…  Self-sufficiency is a type of sustainable living in which nothing is consumed other than what is produced by the self-sufficient individuals.

Obviously there’s an ideal form of self-sufficiency, just as there’s an ideal form of economic freedom, and I suspect that the ideal of self-sufficiency is equally unattainable and undesirable.  So self-sufficiency comes in degrees like economic freedom.  But are they the same thing?

If so, then any increase in the one is an increase in the other, and the having of a large amount of the one entails the having a large amount of the other (and vice versa).  But that’s not how the relationship between the two really works. 

Imagine a person who buys a small farm on the outskirts of a major city.  The value of the property is, say, one million dollars.  The farmer desires to be self-sufficient.  He wants to raise all of his food and fiber and fuel.  So he manages, over the course of some years, to grow large amounts of cotton and wool (and, correspondingly, mutton and lamb and even some sheep’s milk), along with maintaining a wood lot for firewood and a large garden, together with a laying flock and fruit trees and brambles and so forth.  The farm allows the farmer to become remarkably self-sufficient. 

Does that mean the farmer is remarkably economically free?  Well, no, not necessarily.  Suppose the farmer, in addition to his farm work, holds a fulltime job as a high school science teacher.  His extreme degree of self-sufficiency is a pretty good thing, because the mortgage payment on the farm eats up virtually his whole income.  If he should lose his job, he would within a very short time lose his farm.  The truth is that he does

not

own the means of production, and hence he is not economically free.  (Objection: he’s not really self-sufficient, because his farm depends upon inputs from outside the system: namely, money.  Reply: first, even if it were granted that he’s not perfectly self-sufficient, nevertheless, if the term ‘self-sufficient’ has any meaning at all, it can be applied to this person.  For comparison, just think of the high school science teacher who produces none of his own food, fuel, fiber, etc.  That person is not at all self-sufficient, but the farmer teacher is far more self-sufficient.  But second, the objection equivocates on self-sufficiency, essentially by conflating self-sufficiency with economic freedom, or in other words it begs the question here.  That it doesn’t justifiably do so can be shown by considering the distinction between economic freedom and self-sufficiency from the opposite direction…a task to which I now turn.)

Looking at the question from the opposite direction, we can easily imagine someone who has inherited a large plumbing firm, and is able to live on the income from that firm, but who does exactly zero productive labor.  Economically free, but not at all self-sufficient. 

In short, self-sufficiency and economic freedom are quite distinct.  That’s not to say they’re wholly disconnected. 

Other things equal

, the more self-sufficient you are, the more economically free you are.  (I do not think the entailment runs in the other direction, as the latter example above shows.)  But the point is that if you don’t carefully distinguish between the two concepts, you’ll start making mistakes about them.  Now I turn, as promised, to Woods.  Forgive the long quotation: I need it all here so you can see what I mean about making mistakes.  Note the way that economic freedom and self-sufficiency—together with in/dependence and security (I’ll put the terms in bold in order to obnoxiously belabor the point)—get mixed together in

what follows

:

For Belloc, then, the great advantage of distributism is that it gives the household a significant measure of independence. A new introduction to his Essay on the Restoration of Property describes his view of “economic freedom” as something that “comes from the possession of sufficient productive property, such that a man need not depend upon his employer for a wage, but has rather to depend upon himself and his land, craft, tools, and trade for his sustenance.”  Belloc acknowledges in passing that of course anyone selling to others is in some way dependent on those others, thereby conceding that risk and uncertainty are unavoidable aspects of life rather than unique to a system of economic freedom. If the price and quality of his goods do not remain sufficiently competitive, he is surely bound to lose business. However, Belloc points out, the family can nevertheless live on its own, even if buyers refuse to purchase its surplus goods. They can live on what they themselves produce. At heart, then, Belloc’s promise of security amounts to the distributist family’s ability in the last resort to retreat altogether from the division of labor and live in a condition of self-sufficiency.

I take it I don’t need to spend too much time pointing out that Woods is attributing to Belloc the

ideal

version of economic freedom, rather than the desirable or real one that Belloc actually defends.  If Belloc’s “promise of security” comes down to saying, hey, at least you can live altogether in isolation—which is to say, in an undesirable and unnatural state—then it’s not much of a promise. 

I would have thought the point was obvious enough: if I’m entirely dependent on my employer for all my wealth, then I am not economically free.  At any moment, my employer could elect to end my employment.  If, on the other hand, I own the means of production (not simply a farm, but a plumbing business or a bakery or a law office) then while

of course

I am “dependent” on my customers or clients (just exactly as my employer is dependent upon his customers or clients—there’s

no difference

there), I am not

also

dependent on my employer.  A whole layer of dependence has been removed.  In no case am I wholly secure in this world: just for one example, a terrible economic crash can hurt an independent plumber just as badly as it can hurt an employee of a large plumbing firm.  (Although I suspect that even here there is nuance.  An employee of a suffering plumbing firm may simply be let go, and wind up with no income at all.  [Leaving aside unemployment benefits or what have you, which of course Belloc is strongly opposed to.]  But an independent plumber, while his business may be seriously cut back, will likely retain some income, through doing a few jobs here and there.  Leave this aside.)  Notice that economic freedom as such has absolutely nothing to do with retreating to the hills and becoming wholly self-sufficient.  It has to do with

owning the means of production!

  Now to see how this confusion continues to undermine Woods’s attempts to deal with Belloc, let me continue the long quotation:

Yet the advantages of the division of labor are so clear that relatively few people have found Belloc’s proposal attractive enough to have actually attempted to adopt it. Practically anyone in the United States today who possesses the requisite knowledge and modest capital can acquire farmland and chase after the kind of self-sufficiency Belloc advocated. Producing their own necessities and in possession of the means of production, so to speak, such a family would be utterly independent of employers or anyone else. They would probably also enjoy a standard of living so depressed and intolerable as to throw the rationality of the entire enterprise into question. This certain outcome probably accounts for why the overwhelming majority of people choose to take their chances within the division of labor, balancing the risks from which this earthly life is never entirely secure against the unparalleled wealth and comfort they can enjoy by not retreating into semi-autarky.

So the upshot, says Woods, is: people don’t want “economic freedom”!  It’s miserable. 

But is this at all reasonable?  Take the second sentence in the above quotation: “Practically anyone in the US today who possesses the requisite knowledge and modest capital can acquire farmland and chase after the kind of self-sufficiency that Belloc advocated.”  We’ve already seen that Belloc does not advocate that kind of self-sufficiency.  But note how confused Woods is regarding what economic freedom really requires.  What kind of modest capital does Woods think is required to own one’s own farmland and the tools required to farm it self-sufficiently?  You’re not economically free, as we saw above, if

the bank

owns your farm.  Woods is casually tossing out the idea that “practically anyone” could go ahead and become “economically free” by buying a farm and successfully living off it, because he’s confusing self-sufficiency with economic freedom.  (Ignore the fact that Woods seems to underestimate—egregiously underestimate—the amount of knowledge that would be required to become self-sufficient anyway.)

Worse, once again, the “utter independence” that Woods talks about is entirely inconsistent with Belloc’s actual desires.  It would be unnatural.  It’s not the way for humans to live.  It’s no good.

Of course, the notion that Belloc is somehow against the division of labor is clearly false, too.  As we saw above, Difference of Occupation is one of the two principal limitations on ideal economic freedom.  It’s part of the natural human way.  It’s not an evil to be shunned, but a good to be preserved. 

Last, there’s a kind of strange confusion in the whole construction of the case.  Woods sets the thing up by imagining a

bad

situation for the Distributist family—one wherein a family can’t sell any of its goods, and hence retreats to its own devices.  Then he compares that to a

good

outcome in a capitalist economy.  Namely, one from which we can view the “self-sufficient” family’s lifestyle as depressed and intolerable.  So, not from the standpoint of an unemployed mill worker who is at the end of his rope, unemployment benefits over, no jobs in sight, no idea what to do next.  But from the standpoint of the happy-go-lucky, fully employed, financially flush, free person.  But if we’re comparing a failure of the Distributist economy—one where the family in question literally can’t find

anyone

to trade with!—then shouldn’t we compare it to a failure of the capitalist economy?  That is, to that unemployed mill worker?  What would one prefer?  To be the unemployed mill worker, wholly dependent for his sustenance on an employer who no longer needs him, and so has turned him out?  Or to be the self-sufficient though lonely and isolated and indeed impoverished farm family that nevertheless has plenty to eat, has a place to sleep, and has them securely?  I’d have to go with the latter. 

But my point, again, isn’t to try to argue for the desirability of Bellocian economic freedom, simply to try to explain how it differs from self-sufficiency.  Both are good, understood properly, but they’re not the same thing.

This contribution is available at http://practicaldistributism.blogspot.com/2017/11/self-sufficiency-and-economic-freedom.html
Copyright is retained by the contributing author (follow above link for info on this piece).

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We've Forgotten How Great It Is To Be a Catholic Woman [at joy of nine9]

It is difficult to be a woman today, especially a Christian woman. It’s no wonder Catholics are confused about who they are. The Church boldly declares feminine traits are part of a woman’s core identity, deeply rooted in their souls, not just apparent in their physical appearance. Saint John Paul II, in his letter On the Dignity and Vocation of Women, explains God created women to be different but equal to men as complementary partners, be it as married or religious/consecrated or single women.

Our contemporary culture opposes this view as misogynistic. Some feminists promote the idea that women are born as blank slates with exactly the same traits as men, dismissing femininity as simply learned behaviour. If this were not confusing enough, society now toys with the idea of a blending of genders. We have somehow lost the truth about how great being a woman actually is.

Nature Versus Nurture

As for this whole nature versus nurture controversy, I tried to raise my children without imposing gender stereotypes on them. However, as almost every mother will tell you, even as babies, little boys are intrinsically different than little girls. Since I grew up with only one sister, my son’s behaviour constantly surprised me.  I remember stopping in mid-stride, frozen with my mouth hanging open when I observed my twelve-month-old son pushing a toy car back and forth on the Chesterfield while he studied the rolling wheels. My boys were boisterous and physical. Even though I tried to hide the existence of guns from them, they made their own swords and guns out of sticks. Their spatial thinking was amazing and their obsession with Lego equally baffling.

Don’t get me wrong; I put effort into drawing out the feminine side of my sons. One day when Mark was about four, he asked for his sister’s waterproof doll while in the bathtub. I was so please, I almost raised a fist in triumph as I thought,“Yes! I have raised a son with nurturing instincts!” When I came back into the bathroom, the head was off the doll and he was holding the rubber tubing connecting the doll’s mouth to its bottom. Mark was making loud machine noises as he lowered the head into the water, filled it, then lifted the swinging head to pour water into a plastic pail. Rather than mothering this plastic baby, my son had transformed it into a piece of machinery.

I started to laugh at my son, laugh in the face of the whole nature versus nurture controversy, and laugh at my failure to change nature.  Children are not born as a blank slate.

It’s Great To Be A Woman

Our universal vocation as women is to love because “love is the fundamental and innate vocation of every human being” (CCC 2392). Our secondary vocation is our job and our primary vocation is our specific state in life be it as a  married, religious or single person. Just the idea God has a plan for each of us should be thrilling but modern Catholic women struggle with exactly how to live faithfully the teachings of the Church while remaining true to themselves as members of contemporary society.

Youth are especially turned off by old-fashioned reflections on vocations which romanticize mothers and deify nuns while managing to leave them feeling patronized at the same time. Any vocational decision a woman considers clashes with contemporary concepts of feminism and success. Life as a religious is a laughable waste of time if one views a nun as someone retreating from the world. A celibate single woman faces even more derision from a culture obsessed with sex. Women whose heartfelt desire is to become mothers, feel dismissed and ridiculed for wanting to embrace this most sacred, natural role of women as nurturing mothers.

Many feminists choose to develop masculine behaviours, thinking they must act like men if they want to succeed. They try to free themselves from the constraints of pregnancy and childcare. A woman’s inner life often crumbles to ashes, sacrificed on the altar of success. Motherhood, religious and a single state are choices women should feel free to make without feeling ostracized by a society which is building a false narrative by looking down on women’s unique gifts. If women want to discover what it really means to be a woman, they must look deeper than answers provided by our ever vacillating culture. If women settle for passive submission to current whims, they will end up playing a role in a play written by modern society simply by default. This is hardly an attractive alternative.

Edith Stein (St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross) was a Jewish German philosopher who converted to Catholicism, became a Discalced Carmelite nun, and died in the gas chambers of Auschwitz.  She grappled with the nature of women but instead of denying her gender, she looked to her body as the image of her soul. Katharina Westerhorstmann discusses Stein’s view of women in  On the Nature and Vocation of Women: Edith Stein’s Concept against the Background of a Radically Deconstructive Position. Although Stein understood every woman was an individual, she believed women’s bodies and souls share a basic nature designed to give and receive love, the “forming principle of the female soul.” According to Stein, the entire being of a woman seeks to be filled with love. This tendency can only become stable when she is connected to the “external sources”.

Be it in the home, office or on a mission field, women have a gift of knowing when another person needs to be loved. “It is her gift and her happiness to share the life of another human being, namely by taking part in everything that concerns him: in big and small matters, in joy and suffering, and also in tasks and problems”. Women can be fulfilled in a myriad of vocations as long as they are free to develop this gift of being there for others by serving and loving.

“Each vocation is a vocation, to maternity: physical, spiritual, moral maternity,

because God has placed in us the instinct of life”.- Saint Gianna

People of faith who want to understand their identity as men and women must look deeper than answers provided by our ever vacillating culture because we want to live in eternal truth and in reality, not play roles written for us by a society which will only change their opinion in a few years. Let’s celebrate the natural, inborn differences between men and women and say with joy,” Vive la différence”.

connecting with theology is a verb

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Risk-Takers versus Care-Takers: The Parable of the Talents [at Christ's Faithful Witness]

Sermon by Fr. Joseph Mungai, FMH

33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Nov. 19, 2017

St. Francis Hospital, Long Island, New York, U.S.A.

A man got mad with God. “God,” he said, "I have been praying daily for three years that I should win the state lottery.

You told us to ask and we shall receive. How come I never received all these three years I have been asking?” Then he heard the voice of God, loud and clear. “My dear son,” says God. “Please do me a favour and buy a lottery ticket.”

This is not supposed to be a promotional for state lotteries. Rather it illustrates the saying: “If you wanna win, you got to play.” There are two kinds of people in our churches today: risk-takers and care-takers. The problem with care-takers is that they might show up at the undertaker’s with little to show for their lives. Jesus warns us against this in today’s gospel on the Parable of the Talents. (Matthew 18:21-35)

In the parable we hear about “a man going on a journey who summoned his slaves and entrusted his property to them; to one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability” (Matt 25:15). From the beginning of the story we are told that the servant who received just one talent is a man of little ability. He is not a genius. Yet it is interesting to note that the master has a talent even for his relatively disabled servant. All God’s children have got their talents, even those who appear to have very minimal abilities in comparison with the more gifted ones.

The master departs and the first two servants “went off at once and traded” with their talents. The third servant, on the other hand, digs a hole in the ground and buries his one talent. Why does he do that? Because he is afraid

he is going to lose it if he trades with it. He must have reasoned like this: “Well, those with more talents can afford to take a risk. If they lost a talent, they could make it up later. But me, I have only one talent. If I lose it, end of story! So I better play it safe and just take care of it.” 

Many of us in the church are like this third servant. Because we do not see ourselves as possessing outstanding gifts and talents, we conclude that there is nothing that we can do. Do you know a woman who loves to sing but who would not join the choir because she is afraid she is not gifted with a golden voice?

Do you know a young man who would like to spread the gospel but is afraid he does not know enough Bible and theology? When people like this end up doing nothing, they are following in the footsteps of the third servant who buried his one talent in the ground.

The surprise in the story comes when the master returns and demands an account from the servants. First, we discover that even though the first servant with five talents had made five more talents and the second servant with two talents had made two more talents, both of them receive exactly the same compliments: “Well done, good and trustworthy slave; you have been trustworthy in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.” They are rewarded not in proportion to how many talents each has made but in proportion to how many talents each of them started off with. Booker T. Washington was right on target when he said, 

“Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles that one has overcome while trying to succeed.”

There are more reasons than one why the third servant decided to hide his talent. Maybe he compared himself to the other servants with more talents, saw himself at the bottom rung of the ladder, and became discouraged. He did not realise that with his one talent, if he made just one more talent,

he would be rewarded equally as the servant with five talents who made five more. We are not all measured by the same rule. To whom much is given, much is required.

All of us in the church today have received at least one talent. We have received the gift of faith. Our responsibility as men and women of faith is not just to preserve and “keep” the faith. We need to trade with it. We need to sell it to the men and women of our times. We need to promote and add value to faith. This is a venture that brings with it much risk and inconvenience. But, unless we do this, we stand in danger of losing the faith just as the third servant lost his talent.

The way to preserve the faith, or any other talent that God has given us, is to put it to work and make it bear fruit.

*Fr. Joe Mungai, FMH, is a Franciscan Missionary of Hope, a relatively new congregation started in Nairobi, Kenya in 1993. He was ordained June 7, 2014. He is moving from his parish in St. John the Apostle Awasi Catholic Church, Kisumu Archdiocese, Kenya to hospital ministry in New York. Keep him in your prayers. 

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Advent [at Grace to Paint]

6×8″ oil paint on primed canvas sheet; use ‘comment’ below to inquire.

Mt. 25: 1-13. From the lips of Jesus came the story of the Bridegroom arriving to meet the 10 virgins who would accompany him into the wedding feast. However five were prepared for him with lamps burning bright; five were without oil and unprepared. Let us be awake and ready, for we do not know the hour of his coming. A blessed Advent to you.

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Mystery of the Magi: The Quest to Identify the Three Wise Men [at Plot Line and Sinker (Ellen Gable, Author)]

Christmas pageants have been taking place in similar fashion for the past 50 or so years. Children dress up as Mary, Joseph, the shepherds and the Three Wise Men. In fact, the three Wise Men “from the East” are part of most Christmas pageants and readings of the Christmas story. But are the Magi fictional characters based on legends, or did they really exist?

Fr. Dwight Longenecker, author of Mystery of the Magi: The Quest to Identify the Three Wise Men, asserts that they really did exist. But he goes several steps further and identifies them as historical figures. Of course, modern biblical scholars tend to dismiss the story of the Three Wise Men as legend. Since Matthew’s gospel offers sparse details, imaginative Christians began embellishing the story early on, giving us the “three kings guided by a magical star who join the adoring shepherds in every Christmas crèche.”

Because of the legends, many scholars don’t take the story of the Wise Men seriously. In fascinating detective work, Fr. Longenecker contends that the Three Wise Men were actual historical figures and that the visit to the Child Jesus really happened. Using evidence from scriptural studies, history, archeology and astronomy, he also discovers where they came from, the reasons for their visit and what may have happened to them after their visit.

The evidence shows that the mysterious Magi from the East were in all likelihood “astrologers and counselors from the court of the Nabatean king at Petra, where the Hebrew messianic prophecies were well known.” And that “the ‘star’ that inspired their journey was a particular planetary alignment ― confirmed by computer models ― that in the astrological lore of the time portended the birth of a Jewish king.”

Like any good detective and using a variety of resources and documents as well as Scripture passages, Fr. Longenecker distinguishes historical facts from legends and gives us the most detailed description of who these men were. The author recognizes that not everyone will be as enthusiastic as he is about the true identities of the Magi, but those are interested in history and historical figures will find this a fascinating read.

The magi may not have been the oriental kings in turbans, but they were real, and by showing that the wise men were historical figures, Mystery of the Magi demands a new level of respect for the historical claims of the gospel.

Why does it matter whether there were Wise Men? Why does it even matter where they came from? Because, Longenecker says, “the story of history matters.” It matters because “history matters and history matters because truth matters.” It matters because the events of “the life, ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ are the most history-shattering events of all time. If the gospel is historical then it is true, and if it is true, then we must confront the reality of Jesus Christ. And if we encounter Jesus Christ as a historical figure, then we must also deal with the question of who he is and what he accomplished.”

If we dismiss the story of the Wise Men as legends, then we must also dismiss the other Gospel stories. The tale of the Wise Men is not fiction. The author contends these men were historical figures, taking part in historical events.

At the end of the book, the author takes the reader through a summary of his findings (not unlike the summation done at trials)  and he uses Matthew’s Gospel and other scriptural readings and intersperses the historical facts as we know them (rather than the legends).

This isn’t a light read, but it is a fascinating and detailed account of the Wise Men who brought gifts to the newborn King. I highly recommend to all scriptural scholars and anyone who enjoys a good historical mystery.  I was given a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

Copyright 2017 Ellen Gable Hrkach

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No Wives Allowed [at On the Road to Damascus]

I love each and every one of you reading this blog right now. I would like to have a personal relationship with each of you. I would like to hang out with you and be BFFs. The issue is that I can’t stand your spouse. They are flawed. One has an attitude problem. One isn’t a good house keeper. One has really bad halitosis. We can hang out and do things together but they are not invited.

How good of a relationship do you think we will have if this is how I truly felt? I can tell you from personal experience that we won’t. I have destroyed some of the closest, dearest relationships in my life because I couldn’t accept my friend’s spouse. When you attack a person’s spouse you attack that person.

Yet, this is exactly what millions of Christians do to Jesus each and every day. One of the most used metaphors to describe Christ and his Church is that of the bride groom and bride. The Church founded by Jesus is his bride and he is her groom. The entire book of Revelation is about the wedding feast in heaven.

So many people today have turned their backs on the Church. The Church has no relevance in their lives. They don’t need the Church. All they need is a personal relationship with Jesus. They have Jesus and they have the bible. They have no need for the Church. The Church is flawed. The Church makes mistakes. The Church is human. Jesus is God. Jesus is perfect. Jesus loves me, the bible tells me so.

When we attack the Church we attack Jesus himself. When we cast the Church away we tell Jesus that we love him but want nothing to do with his bride. There are some who believe that Jesus is all sweet and gentle and full of love. They conveniently ignore the passages that talk about justice and wrath. That’s the Old Testament God. He has mellowed through the years. The First commandment tells us that God is a jealous God. He is a God of love, and although he loves all of creation, his bride holds a special place in his heart. So does his mother, but that is another blog entry.

So is just any church the bride of Christ? Is the Lutheran church? Is the Presbyterian church? How about the Jehovah Witness church? I have heard them all make claim to be that church. They are all part of the universal church and therefore it doesn’t matter which church you are part of. Even the people who only want a personal relationship with Jesus are a church. They are just a church with one member.

But scripture is pretty clear that Jesus is referring to the Church he created. That can’t be the Lutheran church. That church was created by Martin Luther in the year 1517. He created this church because he disagreed with the Church Jesus created. He felt that Church had fallen into error so the best thing to do was to cast her aside and begin again in a church of his making. Sorry Jesus, your bride is messed up so we are going with her second cousin.

It can’t be the Presbyterian church. John Knox started that church in Scotland in 1560 for much the same reason that Luther started his church. John didn’t like Christ’s bride either and replaced her with one more to his liking.

And then there is Charles Taze Russell, a Restorationist minister, who founded the Jehovah Witness church in 1931. He believed that the mainstream Protestant religions of the day had also fallen into error and that only he knew the way.

The buzz word of the day is Ecumenism. Ecumenism is recognizing that all Christians belong to the body of Christ and finds a way that we can pray and celebrate Jesus together. Ecumenism is everyone looking for a way to become more unified and grow closer together no matter how far we grow apart. In the end it really comes down to the great mercy of God towards those who have attacked and maligned his bride. I know how I would respond to someone who has attacked my bride in the vicious way the world has attacked Christ’s. But then again, I am a fallen, sinful human. His ways are so much greater than my ways.

If you love God and live your life the best you can trying to love, honor, and serve him we have some common ground to stand on. Faith is a personal journey we each have to walk on our own. We are all on different parts of this Road to Damascus but we all are trying to reach the same destination. This is where ecumenism starts.

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A recent CNA (Catholic News Agency) headline reads:

Understanding and discernment as well as LOVE versus LAW [at In the Breaking of the Bread]

It is not the first time that controversy erupts over Pope Francis and what he says or does. Confusion often results from controversy, and it usually involves disputes over content, i.e., what Pope Francis says or does. There could be many reasons for such controversy and confusion, but I would like to explore only a few that may not often be even considered.

When we react to something, our reactions say as much if not more about us 

than about that to which we are reacting. 

Saint Thomas Aquinas

 was a brilliant Medieval philosopher who wrote that when we receive or know something, we receive or know it

according to the mode

by which we receive or know it. To illustrate with a ridiculous example, if I wear pink colored glasses, then everything I see will look pink.

There are many factors which have an important influence on how we perceive and come to know the reality around us, other people, and what others say and do.

(1) UNDERSTANDING - See

Kohlberg's six stages of moral development

It is not difficult to understand how differently people interpret what they perceive when we consider what stage of moral and personality development they have achieved. To return to our subject, Pope Francis will be understood differently by people at different stages of moral development.

1. At the lowest level, someone whose primary preoccupation in life is avoiding punishment will want to know how Pope Francis' words and actions will help them avoid punishment or not. They may not find his appeals to conscience reassuring and would prefer him to be much more categorical and dispell any doubt about outcomes they may expect in various situations.

2. At a little higher moral development, a person will want to know "What's in it for me?" They could be encouraged by Pope Francis' warmth, understanding, and hospitality, but then they could also find discouraging his emphasis on paying attention to the needs of others.

3. As people enter into more conventional behavior, they want to be accepted by others; so they want to be sure that by following Pope Francis they will be accepted by others, but they could be unsettled by signs of resistance or opposition to Pope Francis' words or actions and the apparent disunity.

4. With further moral development people show concern for law and order. For this reason, they may be disturbed by any impression that Pope Francis misses opportunities to lay down the law or leaves any room for disagreement with the law or for other interpretations.

5. Beyond simple convention, people come to understand and embrace the notion of joint responsibility, and they adopt as their orientation "the social contract". At this point, they may more easily understand that Pope Francis is trying to inspire people to take responsibility for themselves and for others, and act for the common good. On the other hand, they can also go the other way and be confused when Pope Francis appears to give people too much latitude.

6. Finally, people who continue to develop their conscience enter into the realm of universal ethical principles, and at this point they discover and defend the sovereignty of the individual moral conscience. They recognize that the individual conscience becomes more enlightened as it adopts universal principles that bring it into solidarity with all of humanity. 

Perhaps this is the perspective that can best help one understand Pope Francis and what he is trying to do. Human beings need time to understand their place in the world, their relationship with others, with God, and with the world around them. Experiencing the love of God is the most powerful motivator drawing people to show love to others in return. Service motivated by love that is selfless is manifestly more authentic and its fruits are more likely to last longer.

People who have experienced less moral conscience development show the greatest need for clarity. They want everything to be clearly spelled out in black and white. People with more developed conscience have come to understand that life is complex and usually involves many factors.

By this time more attention to detail is required, and they recognize that in each individual case and situation people must have the freedom as well as the responsibility to gather information so as to more fully understand the situation and apply to it the full understanding of their conscience, which by now takes into consideration the good of the individual as well as the common good, and particular circumstances as well as universal principles.

We can understand how people could be unhappy with Pope Francis' open attitudes and declarations. Some want everything to be fully spelled out and are very uncomfortable when they are not. Pope Francis knows that people who want clear and simple answers can find them in the Catechism of the Catholic Church; so he doesn't need to repeat those texts and takes them for granted. He prefers to address the requirements of love and mercy beyond the simple demands of justice, much as Jesus set himself to do during his short time of ministry.

When Pope Francis is talking with real people in real situations, he trusts everyone to observe and be informed, to pray for God's guidance, and to come to the best decision they can. When they make mistakes, he is confident that as they remain open to God, then God will guide them to more and more understanding of the whole truth. In reality, none of us - or at least very few of us - are fully capable of embracing the whole truth about everything, especially about ourselves, and rarely all at once. It is rather over time that we can come into the full knowledge of the truth.

God's "economy of salvation" takes our human condition into consideration and by his divine mercy provides us with sufficient time to embrace more and more of the truth moment by moment and day by day until we come into the full knowledge of the truth in Jesus his only begotten Son.

(2) DISCERNMENT - Is ours a healthy or an unhealthy human condition?

Even such simple notions as "dying to self" or "mortification" can be understood or misunderstood according to a person's condition of health. A

scrupulous person

can be almost incapable of really understanding spiritual realities because their scrupulous turn of mind acts like a shield blocking any light from penetrating their spirit. For some people their

obsession with detail

can lead to unhealthy feelings of guilt that have no foundation in reality but are rather conjured up in their misguided conscience. The attendant anxiety has nothing to do with God and

actually hinders people

from being open and receptive to what God is doing and the loving relationship He offers.

When such a person tries to put into practice what they hear in the church about doing penance, they set out to put various actions into practice. However, their practices don't set them free to become more loving to neighbor and enemy alike; instead, their scrupulosity causes their new practices to make them even more self-obsessed.

Before an unhealthy person can truly navigate successfully deeper spiritual paths, they must first apply everything they hear to their unhealthy condition. If they are to renounce anything in order to "die to themselves", the very first thing they need to renounce is their scrupulosity. Once they become healthy again, they will enjoy clearer vision and be more likely to correctly understand what they hear about spiritual things.

This factor could also explain why some people react so differently to Pope Francis.

(3) The Law of LOVE versus the Law of punishable offenses

Saint Paul spent most of his apostolic ministry trying to help people differentiate between the Torah and the Jewish observance of God's laws, on the one hand, and on the other hand, Jesus' teaching about the Law of Love, i.e., the "Great Commandment".

The issue revolves around the question: "

How are we justified?

" or "How do we become pleasing to God?" or "How are we to be saved?" and an almost infinite variation of perspective on this question.

The Law - the Decalogue (10 words) which God gave to his people through Moses - and the infinity of  developing interpretations and applications of this Law in the lives of real people were intended by God to develop his people's consciences, because they had turned away from Him, just as Adam and Eve had turned away from Him in the garden of Eden.

There can be no reconciliation between God and human beings until people begin to recognize the ways in which they are offending God's love or turning away from him by turning inwards on themselves and ignoring their neighbor.

God is a selfless, loving, merciful, and life-giving, self-bestowing Being, and as long as we remain self-centered; then we can have little to do with God, let alone any kind of relationship.

However, the fault and failure happens when human beings get the notion that by following the Law they can be saved or acquire advantage from God or even exercise some measure of control over God and his behaviour towards them. In such a case, we observe the Law in order to "extract" from God the benefits we want. God becomes a vending machine and all I have to do is put in the coins of following the Law and He has to give me....

God knows that if He allows us to manipulate Him, we will self-destruct and will never enter into any kind of relationship with Him, which is the purpose for which He created us in the first place.

Enter Jesus on the human stage. Jesus insists on initiating a personal relationship and on personal responsibility. Jesus shows unheard of respect for the individual's conscience. He shows Love in person and patiently waits for people to respond to Love feely and willingly. In the end, Jesus lays down his life in order to demonstrate the true quality of God's love for human beings. God loves the person and is willing to overlook and forgive the faults.

This means that God the Father's offer of salvation - the restoration of our relationship of communion with God that was lost by Adam and Eve - is a priceless gift freely offered. To accept his gift implies and entails a change of mind, heart, soul, and life.

To accept to be saved by Jesus

means to enter into a new way of living, to live as He lived and showed us how to live, in communion with God and in solidarity with human beings and all of humanity.

The Pharisees, Sadducees, Scribes, and Priests were the different classes among the religious elite and authorities in Jesus' day. They insisted on literal observance of the Law and for the most part showed little or no patience, understanding, or compassion to individual people in the face of the difficulties they had in observing the whole Law all of the time under every circumstance.

Their hard and fast attitude permanently estranged from the Temple large segments of the population who did not have sufficient revenue or domestic help in order to fulfill the complex requirements of the Law in all of the religious establishment's interpretations and applications for everyday life. Jesus was most interested to reach out to all those who were in such ways excluded to bring them the good news that God was not excluding them but inviting them to enter in.

Today we have such "extremely religious" people in the Church who show the same hardness of heart and unrelenting insistence on external observance of the law and have little patience for real people.

The religious leaders of Jesus' day were not capable of understanding the divine mercy offered by God and embodied in Jesus to bring forgiveness, healing, and life to all his children. Similarly, in our day there are so many people who show themselves incapable of understanding the divine mercy for which Pope Francis has been given to us by God as a new witness. Pope Francis strives to be faithful to Jesus and to proclaim in fresh ways for our times the new life Jesus brought to Earth.

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Disorders, Decisions [at A Catholic Citizen in America]

Whether you call it mental illness, lunacy, or insanity, being crazy isn’t fun. It’s not a lifestyle choice either. Not for most. Certainly not in my case. I’ll get back to that.

Folks started talking about “mental hygiene” after William Sweetser coined the phrase in the mid-1800s.

Folks promoting mental hygiene rubbed elbows with social hygiene advocates.

I figure many folks had basically good motives for supporting those ideas. I hope so, anyway.

But some of their methods were — dubious.

Eugenics and sterilization of the unfit developed serious image problems in the 20th century. That’s another topic, for another post.

Somewhere along the line “mental hygiene” got repackaged as “mental health.” I think it wasn’t just a new coat of paint on old ideas. We were learning more about how minds work, and sometimes don’t.

We were also learning what we can do: and what we shouldn’t.¹

Solutions: Bedlam, Louis XIV, and the French Revolution

Crazy people have been part of societies for a very long time. Folks in different eras tried various approaches.

Some were better than others, I think.

Bedlam started as a priory in 1247. It had a different name and wasn’t a clinic or asylum of any sort.

One of its functions was to house the poor. The city of London got involved in managing the priory’s finances in the 1300s. Two centuries later, Henry VIII owned the place.

There’s probably quite a story behind the Lord Mayor of London asking for, and getting, control of Bedlam, its occupants and revenues. That deal was finalized in 1547.

Somewhere between 1377 and the 1700s, Bedlam started specializing in folks with mental problems.

Hogarth’s final installment of “A Rake’s Progress” isn’t entirely fanciful.

Friends and family could visit inmates — and were expected to bring food and other needed items.

I’m not sure why Bedlam’s management let the general public in. I’ve run into speculation that putting inmates on display helped them make money.

English sensibilities eventually changed, and using lunatics for public entertainment became unfashionable.

As I keep saying, we do learn. Slowly.

Meanwhile, in France, the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital has a shorter, but similar, story.

Louis XIV remodeled a Parisian gunpowder factory in 1656, making a hospice for the city’s poor. Part of the hospice was later used as a prison for prostitutes.

The mentally disabled, criminally insane and epileptics got housed there, too.

Given what folks knew at the time, and how European society worked, it may have been the best a secular leader could do.

Orders like the Brothers Hospitallers are another matter. I’ve discussed them, Bedlam, and good intentions, before. Briefly. (May 12, 2017)

The French Revolution wasn’t going smoothly in 1792. There was even talk of Royalists and foreigners invading Paris.

Journalist Jean-Paul Marat and others decided something had to be done.

So a bunch of French National Guardsmen and some fédérés forcibly removed folks from the old gunpowder factory and similar institutions, and killed them.

It made sense at the time, sort of. Marat and company figured the lunatics and other prisoners might support royalists. Killing them removed the perceived threat.

These days we call what happened the September Massacres. When we mention it at all.

France got Napoleon next, which may have been an improvement.

Some folks took another look at how their mentally ill neighbors were treated in the early 19th century. We’ve learned quite a bit since then.² Including, I hope, a little wisdom.

Natural Causes

Hippocrates of Kos talked about diseases and other disorders folks deal with around the time Sophocles was writing his plays.

Talking about diseases isn’t why Hippocrates is famous — among history buffs, anyway. He gets credit for being the first in Western civilization to say diseases have natural causes.

The accepted belief then was that folks get sick or crazy because they’d offended some spirit, or run into a grumpy god.

Quite a few folks believed pretty much the same thing after Hippocrates wrote his medical texts.

Some still do, about two dozen centuries later. I see precious little difference between Zeus and the ‘angry God’ intermittently invoked after disasters. That’s yet another topic. (September 10, 2017; August 27, 2017)

Hippocrates was on the right track.

Not leaving milk out for the nisse isn’t why I get a cold. They’re more into practical jokes, now that I think of it. Sort of like kobolds or leprechauns. One of these days I’ll get back to European folklore and myth, but not today. (May 19, 2017)

Some Christians, Catholics included, act like they put their culture’s pre-Christian beliefs and new ideas into a blender.

Make that our culture’s. I strongly suspect that some of American Christianity’s weirder fringes are syncretic religions, and that’s yet again another topic.

I enjoy folklore, but I don’t ‘believe in’ it. Not in a religious sense. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2111–2114)

And I sure don’t try to cure a cold by exorcising ‘demon mucous.’

Maybe that needs explanation. Recognizing natural causes doesn’t require ignoring other realities. But trying to exorcise my depression would be an exercise in futility, at best.

Satan, Insanity, and Murder

Thinking that Satan and demons are real is one thing. Seeing direct Satanic involvement in illnesses is another.

That’s why natural causes are ruled out before calling in an exorcist. (Catechism, 391–395, 1237, 1673)

About exorcisms and exorcists — what’s in the movies is ‘Hollywood.’

The Church authorizes exorcisms, occasionally. It’s a well-established procedure, involving specialists. It’s emphatically not a do-it-yourself job, and that’s still another topic.

My depression and assorted psychiatric problems did not start when someone hexed me.

I’ve got glitchy neurochemistry to thank for that sort of thing. Also, almost certainly for the depression, triggering events. With a very different history I might have avoided decades of undiagnosed issues.

On the other hand, maybe it’s just as well that my depression and autism spectrum disorder(s) weren’t caught early. Lobotomies hadn’t quite gone out of fashion, for starters. Still, it wasn’t all bad news in the mid-20th century.

Quite a few folks had gotten past terms like “soulless mass of flesh possessed by the devil” by then. Some psychologists were discussing Asperger’s paper on “autistic psychopaths.” (April 9, 2017)

I’m taking medications that didn’t exist until recently. They don’t ‘cure’ my odd neurochemistry. But taking them makes dealing with it easier.

I didn’t enjoy learning that I have psychiatric/personality problems. But pretending they weren’t there didn’t make sense, and wouldn’t help. Taking reasonable steps to deal with the issues did. And does.

Since I think life and health are “precious gifts,” I have no qualms about taking my meds. (Catechism, 2288, 2278)

Mass Murders

I’ve seen a few op-ed pieces discussing a common factor in recent mass murders. It’s not the technology involved, or who the victims were.

Folks who decided to start killing had mental health problems.

Some of that may be 20-20 hindsight. But I think strictly sane people don’t wake up one morning and start the day by murdering folks in a church or school. Not generally.

Mass murder is hardly a new phenomenon. Separating fact, folklore, and rumor isn’t easy. Particularly for the days before Elizabeth Báthory. More about her later.

Quite a few Roman citizens died in 331 BC: apparently from disease. Maybe they did.

That’s what Livy hoped was the case. But he knew enough about his culture to record an another account of what happened. The apparently-unofficial story was that a servant with access to poison killed the citizens.

Then she made what we’d call a plea bargain, telling how she killed them in exchange for immunity. (“The History of Rome, Book 8,” Titus Livius, (B. O. Foster, Ph.D., Ed.))

I’m not convinced that the servant was a mass murderer in today’s sense. In that era and culture, her actions seem more like an assassin’s. Locusta’s career ended when her last patron, Nero, committed suicide.

Elizabeth Báthory killed several hundred young women before Hungarian authorities took notice. I suspect too many folks started talking about a shortage of peasant’s daughters in her area.

We’ve got pretty good documentation of her trial, thanks to her wealth and social position. That’s helped sort out reality and slightly more lurid details that got added later.

She was convicted, imprisoned, and died in 1614.

Fast-forwarding to December, 2012.

After killing his mother, a young man killed 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Then he killed himself.

I saw many opinions, and a few facts, in the news over the next few months.

Some folks focused on the weapon used. Others on video games he’d played.

He’d been home schooled, which prompted predictable responses. That’s a can of worms I’ll open another day.

Some news and opinion pieces focused on the impressive catalog of mental, emotional, and developmental problems the young man had.³

I don’t feel sorry for him: even though we both have autism spectrum disorder in our medical records. I don’t think that excuses bad behavior. But understanding what he was dealing with may help us understand what happened.

Decisions

I’m a mess. Far from “normal,” at any rate.

I spent my adolescence and decades of my adult life dealing with major depression. I still do. But very strong antidepressants let me think without fighting the machinery.

It’s a wonderful change of pace.

My other neural quirks — plural — quite likely started as soon as I had a central nervous system.

Two of my kids have very similar abilities and limitations. So did my father. I very strongly suspect that whatever it is, it’s genetic. At least in part.

I’m not entirely convinced that my non-depression glitches are autism spectrum disorder. But that’s the closest anyone’s come to finding a name for whatever it is.

It gives me and professionals something to work with, so I’m content.

We’ve learned a great deal since my birth. Infants and children who respond as I did are caught early. On the whole, I think that’s a good thing. I also think we’re still learning. And have a very great deal left to learn.

Getting back to antisocial behavior, I don’t think I’m a time bomb about to go off.

For one thing, I started cooperating with treatment immediately after being diagnosed. That was over 11 years ago.

Chucking everything I know about what’s right and wrong is possible, of course. In principle. So is deciding that I’ll ignore what I’m learning about how my brain works. I’ve got free will. (Catechism, 1730–1738)

But I know that would be a very bad idea. (Catechism, 1021–1022)

Perhaps just as important, I don’t want to ignore what I know is right. And that’s — more topics:

¹ We’re learning, sometimes from our mistakes:

² Dealing with disease and disorders:

³ Autism, assumptions, and attitudes:

This contribution is available at http://brendans-island.com/catholic-citizen/disorders-decisions/
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Going Back on my Promise / An Answer [at Quiet Consecration]

I had stated in a previous blog post that I cannot write about another sexual scandal and I mean to hold to that promise.  I am about uptohear with continued 'outings' and reports and scandals and sometimes I just want to stand in the middle of Oakdale Road at High Noon and scream, "ARE YOU KIDDING ME? STOP PRETENDING YOU DIDN'T KNOW!".

So I want to make myself very clear.  This blog post is not about the latest celebrity to be called on the carpet for being a Class A Jerk. This blogpost is about my morning, a morning that began like most of my mornings these days.

I wake up, make coffee, let the dog out and the cat inside, go outside to pick up my hometown newspaper and start to read it (after letting Robbie the Rescue Scotty back inside).   I sip my wonderful Bulletproof Coffee (shameless plug) and I peruse the various national, international and local information provided by the Modesto Bee.  I turn to the Letters to the Editor and I read this:

http://www.modbee.com/opinion/letters-to-the-editor/article187070438.html

It is a letter from someone named Lindsey Barth - gender undetermined - and I am once more hit with the one of the biggest problems we face today in society.

Ignorance.

Lindsey Barth states in this letter that, in order for a man to be successful in the workplace, he should

"Talk to women only about workplace issues. Keep it all business. Talk to her only when necessary. Do not try to become friends or friendly with women at work. Do not compliment a woman on her clothes, weight, hair or any other physical features."

The letter goes on to purport to give men tips and rules on how to treat a woman at work so that he cannot be accused of anything inappropriate.

Lindsey Barth's letter did not happen in a vacuum.  The writer seems to be very sarcastic and angry.  The writer is concerned, rightly or wrongly, that a genuine problem could exist by which a man is accused of inappropriate behavior by a woman in the workplace and that the accusation could be false. Lindsey is concerned that an innocent compliment could lead to a man being accused of something illegal.

The tone of the letter is condescending and demeaning to women, stating that we "are extremely sensitive, emotional and are looking for something (we) consider sexual harassment."  Lindsey goes on to state " If you don’t have to look at them, then look the other way." 

Lindsey may be trying to be sarcastically funny - it is impossible to tell.  I, however, am going to take Lindsey at Lindsey's word and believe that Lindsey sees all this stuff as stupid and childish and that men need to be protected against the horrors of my gender being allowed access to the halls of power, even if all we get to do is clean them.

I was flabbergasted at first but after reflection I understand Lindsey.  I imagine that Lindsey was not raised by a strong father, probably has no Faith Tradition to fall back on and was never exposed to common sense while growing up.  Lindsey cannot imagine that a woman knows the difference between a compliment and harassment because, in Lindsey's world, they are one and the same.

I am unable to speak for all women, but I can certainly speak for myself.  I was raised by women who broke barriers in quiet and effectual ways.  My mother, a first generation American from an Italian family, went to business college out of high school during a time when women like her got married at 18.  She entered the work force with Bank of America as a key punch operator before WW2 and moved into operations when the war began because those positions became available to women (the men had been drafted).

My mother was not unusual for my family - all three of her sisters furthered their educations after High School and only one married young.  All of them worked while raising families and they worked in the business world - for school systems and attorneys and financial institutions.  My mother retired the first time in her 70's as an executive vice president for a savings and loan.  Because she was bored she went back to work part time as a customer service representative for two different banks and did not officially retire until 78 years old.  Today she is 96 years old, fully competent and drinking Bone Broth every day to help her arthritis (another shameless plug).

Mama and I have been having some lively conversations regarding the wave of sexual harassment accusations and when I read her Lindsey Barth's Letter to the Editor this morning, her response borrowed from one of her favorite comedians:

"Leslie, you cannot fix stupid".

Lindsey presupposes that women, emotional and fragile, will overreact to a simple "Hey, you look nice today!" and cannot differentiate that from a disrespectful comment like "OOOO baby, baby bring that over here and sit on daddy's lap".

Lindsey believes that women, unable to use critical thinking skills of any type, cannot participate in a working lunch with a male colleague because they will mix that up in their foggy emotional brains with having the door of an office locked preventing their escape while their boss drops his pants and exposes his genitals to them.

Lindsey is pretty darn sure that this is all because women are unable to properly function in the workplace and has nothing to do with the fact that sexual predators come in all genders, sexes and sexual preference.  Lindsey cannot fathom that there are women bosses who have pulled this on male underlings, homosexual bosses who have made unwanted passes at employees of the same gender or that people in the workplace behave badly and must be stopped.

Yes, Lindsey, some women (and men) will make false accusations.  Yes, Lindsey, people need to reevaluate their behavior in terms of good solid moral behavior and Yes, Lindsey, we have as a society become far too open and vulgar in our speech and behavior in the workplace. 

Lindsey, this is just a suggestion, but perhaps you might consider pushing Proper Etiquette as opposed to calling women emotional and sensitive (as though that description is a bad thing).  Perhaps, Lindsey (and again, this is just a suggestion), if men and women, regardless of the sexual proclivities, treated each other with respect there would not be problems of sexual harassment in the workplace.

This morning I showed up at work with a new hairstyle.  My boss, a well known Catholic theologian and a man married to the Love of His Life (and father to a passel of adorable children), said, "HEY LOOK AT YOUR HAIR!  That looks GREAT!".

My response?

"Thank you".

Boy, Lindsey, that was so difficult for me.  I am a woman, sensitive and emotional.  I was frozen with indecision.  What did he mean?  What was happening? 

You know something, Lindsey?

Mama is right.

Read more here: http://www.modbee.com/opinion/letters-to-the-editor/article187070438.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.modbee.com/opinion/letters-to-the-editor/article187070438.html#storylink=cpy

This contribution is available at http://quietconsecration.blogspot.com/2017/12/going-back-on-my-promise-answer.html
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The Problems of Misinterpretation [at If I Might Interject]

In my past few articles, I’ve discussed the problems of Catholic critics who confuse their interpretation of Church Teaching with what the Church actually intends. Whether they start out with false premises, or whether they use fallacious reasoning with true premises, or (sadly, very common) using both false premises and fallacious reasoning, they wind up claiming that Church teaching justifies something that is actually contrary to what the Church teaches.

Some do this to claim that a sin is not a sin, and that they are therefore not guilty of choosing an intrinsic evil. Others do this to discredit a Church teaching they dislike, arguing that we must return to their idealized view of when the Church was right and abandon or restore disciplines to match their idealized concept—the teaching they dislike is considered “proof” of heresy or political bias.

This is not the sole provenance of one faction. I’ve seen some Catholics claim that Jesus wanted a Church of love and mercy—denying that He ever intended condemning acts that they think shouldn’t be sins. I’ve seen other Catholics balk when the Church has changed disciplines when the magisterium determined they no longer serve the intended purpose, claiming the Church has fallen into “heresy.” But both groups are confusing what they want with what best serves keeping God’s commandments and evangelizing the world.

These critics judge the actions of Pope and bishops based on what they want (and, therefore, what they think God must want). If the Pope and bishops do not take that stand, it is considered a betrayal of either Christ or His Church. So, the liberal Catholic applies their assumptions to St. John XXIII, Vatican II and Pope Francis and think they are “correcting” the former “errors” of other Popes, Councils, and Bishops. Conservative Catholics think they are “committing errors” contradicting previous teaching.

But, their conclusions are based on false assumptions. They assume that the Church they conceive of is the way the Church is supposed to be. But if the assumption is false, they cannot prove the conclusion. If their conclusion is not proven, we cannot use their arguments as the basis of enacting teachings in the Church.

It’s important to realize that such false assumptions need not be malicious. The person can be quite sincere. It’s quite possible that the person is assuming that the simplified explanation Sr. Mary X gave them in Catholic grade school was doctrine and either embraced or rebelled against it, thinking it was a doctrinal teaching. The individual can fail to realize that the possibility that the explanation was oversimplified, or that they misunderstood it.

I think this lack of realization is the real problem in the Church. If we do not grow in our understanding of the actual Church teaching, we can easily be led astray. If we don’t understand that the style of Church teaching may sound more forceful in one age than in another, we might be confused over what is doctrine, what is discipline, and what is governance. Doctrine does not change from X to not X. But it can develop with a deeper understanding over time. Discipline and acts of governance can change if the magisterium deems it beneficial to do so.

Yes, it is possible that a Pope can be a notorious sinner, or that a bishop can be unjust. But it does not follow from the fact that we have had such Popes and bishops in the past, that the current ones fit in that category. That’s the point to be proven. If we simply assume the point to be proven, we commit the begging the question fallacy. The “evidence” we provide that is based on that assumption proves nothing.

If one wants to argue that St. John Paul II “betrayed” Vatican II (as liberals like to allege) or that Pope Francis “teaches heresy (as some conservatives like to allege), the obligation is for the individual to investigate whether they have gone wrong themselves—not for the teaching authority of the Church to prove them false.

The problem is, it quickly becomes apparent that the critic has often either not read or has only superficially read the relevant materials. Instead they tend to rely on summaries from biased sources, assuming that the Church has always understood the teaching in the way they think it means. Therefore, the Church is “proved” to be doing wrong—not in fact, but in their mind

Such misunderstanding cannot lead to a proper understanding of the Church. Instead, it leads to obstinacy. Ironically, though the liberal and the conservative disagree with each other about what this fictitious ideal is, they wind up using the same arguments, and ultimately denying the authority of the Church—all the while condemning the other side for their dissent.

The only way to escape that trap is to recognize who has the authority to interpret the past Church teachings and apply them to the present. That authority is the current Pope and bishops who are successors to the Apostles. We believe that Our Lord protects His Church from teaching error in matters where she must be given assent. Without that promise, we could never know when the Church was teaching error.

If we would be authentically Catholic, we must trust Our Lord to protect His Church. When Our Lord has sent authentic reformers from outside the magisterium, they were always respectful and obedient to those chosen to be the shepherds. Those who became heretics and/or schismatics refused to give that respect and obedience.

Yes, we have had a few bad Popes in the history of the Church. But they have never taught error despite doing wrong, or rarely thinking wrong in private thought. The current critics of the Church, by alleging the teaching of error, are de facto denying God’s protection exists.

But once you deny that, you cease to be a witness to the truth of the Church and instead become a stumbling block that causes scandal to potential members. If you deny the Church has authority on issue Z, you lead person to question why the Church has authority on issues A-Y. 

So instead of dogmatizing our errors, we have to realize that since the Church is protected from teaching error, we must consider how the Church can teach differently from our expectations on what she should teach. Yes, there will be people obstinately in error out there. Yes, Catholics who don’t like to follow them will look for lax or rigorist spiritual guides telling them what they want to hear. But these Catholics and their blind guides do not take away from the actual teaching authority of the Church under the current Pope. 

We must remember that, when we encounter a teaching from the Magisterium today that runs counter to what we expect, we have the obligation to seek understanding and not assume the difference means error on the part of the Church.

This contribution is available at http://www.ifimightinterject.com/2017/11/the-problems-of-misinterpretation.html
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Will I in imitation of Francis Xavier keep on keeping on or will I give in and give up at the slightest sign of trouble? [at A JESUIT'S BLOG]

Francisco  de  Jaso  y  Azpilicueta  (Francis  Xavier) was born on April 7, 1506 in Javier (Xavier), Kingdom of Navarre (present day Spain). In 1525, having completed a preliminary course of studies in his own country, he went to Paris, where he entered the Collège de Sainte-Barbe. Here he met the Savoyard, Pierre Favre (Peter Faber), and a warm personal friendship sprang up between them.

It was at this same college that Ignatius Loyola, who was already planning the foundation of the Society of Jesus, resided for a time as a guest in 1529. Ignatius soon won the confidence of both Favre first and later Xavier.  They offered themselves with him in the formation of the Society. Four others, Lainez, Salmerón, Rodríguez, and Bobadilla, having joined them, the seven made the famous vow of Montmartre, on August 15, 1534.

After completing his studies in Paris and filling the post of teacher there for some time, Xavier left the city with his companions on November 15, 1536, and turned his steps to Venice, where he displayed zeal and charity in attending the sick in the hospitals. On June 24, 1537, he was ordained priest along with Ignatius. The following year he went to Rome, and after doing apostolic work there for appointed, at the earnest solicitation of the John III, King of Portugal, to evangelize the people of the East Indies. He left Rome on March 16, 1540, and reached Lisbon about June. He remained there for nine months, and was noted for his apostolic zeal.

On April 7, 1541, he embarked in a sailing vessel for India, and after a tedious and dangerous voyage landed at Goa on May 6, 1542. The first five months were spent in preaching and ministering to the sick in the hospitals. He would go through the streets ringing a little bell and inviting the children to hear the word of God. When he had gathered a number, he would take them to a certain church and would there explain the catechism to them. About October, 1542, he started for the pearl fisheries of the extreme southern coast of the peninsula, desirous of restoring Christianity which, although introduced years before,  had  almost  disappeared  on  account  of  the  lack of priests. He devoted almost three years to the work of preaching to the people of Western India, converting many, and reaching in his journeys even the Island of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka).

Many were the difficulties and hardships which Xavier had to encounter at this time; yet he persevered and never gave up. In the spring of 1545 Xavier started for Malacca. He worked there for the last months of that year, and although he was successful, he was not as successful as he would have liked to be. About January 1546, Xavier left Malacca and went to Molucca Islands, where the Portuguese had some settlements, and for a year and a half he preached the Gospel to the inhabitants of Amboyna, Ternate, Baranura, and other islands in that area. It is claimed by some that during this expedition he landed on the island of Mindanao, and for this reason St. Francis Xavier has been called the first Apostle of the Philippines.

By July, 1547, he was again in Malacca. Here he met a Japanese called Anger (Han-Sir), from whom he obtained much information about Japan. His zeal was at once aroused by the idea of introducing Christianity into Japan, but for the time being the affairs of the Society of Jesus demanded his presence at Goa, and so he went there taking Anger with him. During the six years that Xavier had been working among the people, other Jesuit missionaries had arrived at Goa, sent from Europe by St. Ignatius; moreover some who had been born in India had been received into the Society.

In 1548 Xavier sent these Jesuits to the principal centres of India, where he had established missions, so that the work might be preserved and continued. He also established a novitiate and house of studies.

He started with Cosme de Torres, a Spanish priest whom he had met in the Maluccaand Brother Juan Fernández for Japan towards the end of June, 1549. The Japanese Anger, who had been baptized at Goa and given the name of Pablo de Santa Fe, accompanied them. They landed at the city of Kagoshima in Japan, on August 15, 1549. The entire first year was devoted to learning the Japanese language and translating into Japanese, with the help of Pablo de Santa Fe, the principal articles of faith and short treatises which were to be employed in preaching and catechizing. When he was able to express himself, Xavier began preaching and made some converts, but these aroused the ill will of the Bonzes, who had him banished from the city. Leaving Kagoshima  about  August,  1550,  he  penetrated  to  the centre of Japan, and preached the Gospel in some of the cities of southern Japan. Towards the end of that year he reached Meaco, then the principal city of Japan, but he was unable to make any headway here. He retraced his steps to the centre of Japan, and during 1551 preached in some important cities, forming the nucleus of several Christian communities, which in time increased with extraordinary rapidity.

After working about two years and a half in Japan he left this mission in charge of Cosme de Torres and Juan Fernández, and returned to Goa, arriving there at the beginning of 1552. He then turned his thoughts to China, and began to plan an expedition there. During his stay in Japan he had heard much of the Celestial Empire, and was anxious to spread the Gospel there. In the autumn of 1552, he arrived in a Portuguese vessel at the small island of Sancian near the coast of China. While planning the best means for reaching the mainland, he was taken ill, and as the movement of the vessel seemed to aggravate his condition, he was removed to the land, where a hut had been built to shelter him. In these poor surroundings he breathed his last.

One can only wonder at the apostolic zeal of Francis Xavier who in the short span of ten years traversed so many seas and visited so many countries to preach the Gospel. He is regarded as the Patron of Missions primarily for these reasons. He was beatified in 1619 and canonized with St. Ignatius in 1622.

The Gospel text from Matthew is from the last chapter and verses of the Gospel. They contain an appearance of the risen Jesus to the eleven disciples on a mountain in Galilee. The disciples are obedient to Jesus’ instructions because at the start of the text they are already at the mountain. The mountain is not named, but is a theological topos in Matthew. The mountain brings to mind the mountain of the temptation of Jesus (4:8) of the Sermon of the Mount (5:1) and of his transfiguration (17:1). In the first of these incidents, Jesus was offered all power and authority by the Devil, but refused to accept it. Now, God has given all power to Jesus. In the second, Jesus taught authoritatively (7:29) from the mountain, here he commands his disciples to teach as he taught. In the third, Jesus gave the three disciples only a glimpse of his future glory, now he reveals himself as totally glorified.

Matthew does not focus on the external appearance of Jesus because he wants the focus to be on Jesus’ words. The words of Jesus may be seen to be divided into three parts. They contain a Christological, an Ecclesiological and an Eschatological statement.

The Christological statement is that Jesus’ power and authority are now unbounded. The same Jesus, who was for a while mistreated by all, crucified on the cross, abandoned by God even at the point of his death, died and was buried, is now the Jesus in whose hands everything rests.

This statement leads to the Mission command to the disciples and explicates what ’Church’ means. The authority of the ‘Church’ has its foundation in the authority of Jesus. The ‘Church’ goes out to all nations with the authority of Jesus. No one or place is excluded. This Church is called to ‘make disciples’ primarily not by baptising people but by teaching them to observe the commands of Jesus. These commands may be summed up in the command to love (22:36-39). When one loves one’s neighbour as one loves oneself, then Church becomes present and visible.

The final verse of the Gospel is a promise of the abiding presence of the Lord with his disciples. Jesus, who fulfilled the “Emmanuel” prophecy in his life time, is the risen Lord who assures the disciples of his constant and ever abiding presence.

The manner in which Xavier lived his life and did Mission was one which shows that he had understood the Mission command of Jesus as it was meant to be understood. Through this person he touched the lives of all he came in contact with and revealed God as a God of love. Through his writings, he reached out far beyond the boundaries of his own country, indeed to the whole world.

This contribution is available at http://errolsj.blogspot.in/2017/12/december-3-2017-st-francis-xavier-sj.html
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Persevere [at The Contemplative Catholic Convert]

“Prone to wander, Lord I feel it, Prone to leave the God I love.

O to grace how great a debtor, Daily I'm constrained to be!

Let they goodness, like a fetter, Bind my wandering heart to thee.

Prone to wander, Lord I feel it, Prone to leave the God I love.

Here's my heart. O take and seal it; Seal it for thy courts above.”

(From the hymn, Come Thou Font)

I just finished Hebrews again. This time a verse in chapter 10 caught my eye. “Therefore, do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward. For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God, you may receive what was promised.”

Have you ever noticed, as you read the Bible for yourself, how often the Holy Spirit encourages us toward endurance? The synonym ‘Perseverance’ is also often used throughout both testaments. If you do a word-search for the two words in any concordance, I think you might be as surprised as I to discover how often those words appear in context with our relationship with God.

And I thought, as I put the Bible down for a moment, there’s a reason God repeatedly urges us toward that character trait. It’s because we – you and I – are so easily tempted to quit doing what we know is right.

God knows us far better than any of us know ourselves. He knows of the frustrations that assail from time to time. He knows the powerful pull of worldly philosophies, the alluring seductions of a variety of temptations. He knows the anger that surges in our gut when we face situations we cannot control and which we rightly believe unjust. He knows our fears, our loneliness, our illnesses that impel us toward depression and melancholy.

No wonder, God tells us so often: “Call on Me. I haven’t left you. I haven’t forsaken you.”

No wonder He says it so often: "Persevere!"

But His exhortation does not, of course, stop there. God knows our frame. He is quite mindful that we are but dust.

And when we fall – no matter for how long, or how many times, the Father continues watching for His Prodigal Son or Daughter to repent. To return home. And start again.

Remember this: saints are simply sinners who, as often as they fall down – they get up.

Christian! You are not alone in your frustrations, your loneliness, your sadness, your temptations.

Our God – our ‘Emmanuel’ – is always with us.

This contribution is available at http://thecontemplativecatholicconvert.blogspot.com/2017/11/persevere.html
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From Toy Town With Love

When I was a boy I used to call people by what they did. My older brothers used to laugh when I said I had seen Mr Postman, Mr Builder, Mr Plumber or Mr Dustman. I suppose  the idea came from my favourite radio program ‘Toy Town’. Everybody was called by what they did. It was Mr Mayor, Mr Policeman, Mr Inventor, Mr Magician and even Mr Grouser! When the Parish priest visited and pointed to the picture of the Sacred Heart, he asked me who he was. I answered,  “Mr Loving.” Once again my older brothers laughed, but the parish priest didn’t laugh. He said that  I was absolutely right . However, when he asked me who had told me, I said nothing, because I knew my bothers would laugh at me again if I said it was from my favourite radio program, ‘Toy Town’.

Although pictures or statues of the Sacred Heart depict Christ dressed as he might have been while he was on earth, a closer look reveals that he is actually depicted as he is now in heaven. For instance, you can see the marks on his hands made when he was crucified, the crown of thorns around his heart, which is now flaming with a love fully ignited after being reunited with his Father. I say ‘after he had been reunited with his Father’, because for a whole eternity before he came to earth he had been locked into a loving relationship with  his Father that had no beginning and would have no end.

When human beings love their love is both physical and spiritual at the same time. However, God has no body, so when he loves his loving is purely spiritual. Out of respect we have learnt to refer to God’s Love as his Holy Spirit. This is the love that, after Jesus had returned to heaven, embraced him as before, but with a difference. Because now he has a human body that was also locked into the same loving embrace that bonded the Three in One together from all eternity. This meant that the human but glorified body of Jesus could now be used to transmit the love of God to other human beings – all other human beings. Now the Risen Lord has been raised outside of space and time he can transmit the love that now filled him, to every other human being who would receive him, in the space and time world that he once inhabited himself.

On the day after our primary school had enjoyed a day at the seaside, Mary Walsh had a question for our teacher. “Why is the sea so salty?” In those days teachers used to tell stories, sometime fairy stories, to  answer difficult questions that would later be explained in the science class. So Miss Holt told the story of Prince charming who was given a golden goblet for his twenty-first birthday. It was a magic goblet that once filled would never cease to pour out its contents to the end of time. At first Prince charming wanted to fill it with gold, until his fairy god-mother told him to fill it with something far more precious than gold. In those days salt was more precious than gold because it could, not only make things taste nicer, but it could preserve food and make it possible to eat well and live through the longest winters. It could also treat many illnesses particularly of the skin and help heal wounds received in battle and keep infection away. It was far more precious than gold. However, when Prince charming was on his was to  meet his bride his ship was wrecked and his golden goblet was lost in the ocean, where to this day it pours out its contents to make the  sea salty to the end of time.

“It is just like Jesus!” said Mary Walsh, pointing at the picture of the Sacred Heart on the classroom wall. “You are so right,” said Miss Holt, who had just learnt a lesson from the youngest girl in her class. But it wasn’t salt, but love that poured out from his loving heart and would pour out of it to the end of time.

Unlike the sea however, that cannot help receiving the salt that is continually being poured out, love is different. Love cannot be forced on anyone, and if that is true of our love, it is the same with God’s love that is at all times being poured out from the loving heart of the Risen Christ. That is why the first question asked from the very beginning by all the great saints, mystics and spiritual leaders is  not, “How do we love God?” but, “What must we do to  receive the love of God that Jesus offers us.” The answer might be simple, but it takes a lifetime and more to practise it. You have to turn, no, keep turning to God’s love, while at the same time trying to make room for it in a heart that is full of self-love. The more self-love is moved out then the more God’s love moves in to make his home within us, as Jesus promised at the Last Supper. Gradually, in years rather than months, his love begins to suffuse our love with his love in such a way that it can rise, as it were, to take us up and into the Risen Lord through whom God’s love has been reaching out to us. It is here that we enter into a new world where love reigns supreme and unites together all who pass through death into eternal life.

Remember, when St Paul, or should I say Saul, first came to realise this profound truth. It was when he was thrown to the ground by a blinding light on the road to Damascus  and heard the words of the Risen Lord speaking to him. “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” The blindness that now affected him was a sign of his spiritual blindness. Long before he reached Damascus he had begun to realise that the Christians whom he had been persecuting, were  part of the Jesus he thought had been put to death. They were in fact alive and part of the Risen One, and so also were those whom he had put to death. Later he would be told of the words Jesus had spoken before his death, “When you do it one of these the least of my brethren, you do it to me.” They were all within the body of Christ, that later came to be called the Mystical Body. All together in him they shared in the love that he received from his Father from eternity. Nor had they come to the end of their spiritual journey, because  the more they received love then the more they became their true selves as the  selfishness that had corrupted them before was stripped away.

The French Jesuit mystic, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin once said, “Love differentiates.” This means that, as we journey on into the fullness of love we all become our true selves, and in becoming our true selves we all become different from one another. The more we become different, the more perfectly we become unrepeatable masterpieces created by the love of God to manifest his glory in as many different ways as possible. This has been God’s plan for us from the beginning. It is what St Paul called God’s secret plan, or to use the Greek word that he chose to use, the Mysterion. As this plan is being brought to fulfilment our differences make us, not separate, but complimentary to each other, as the different pieces of a jig-saw. As this happens we see the whole picture as never before; in short, God’s secret plan for us from the beginning, the Mysterion. So the love that draws us on, in, with and through Christ, simultaneously draws us all together as one  as we contemplate the God who sent his Son to redeem us. The Sacred Heart is a reminder to us of the supra-cosmic pull of supernatural gravity, that comes, not from something physical, but from Someone spiritual, who transcends space and time, where we are to find our ultimate destiny in the All who is in all. Our hearts may well be yearning for this our completion, but without beginning now to respond to the One who stands at the door and knocks, then we are going nowhere!

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Crosses or Toothpicks [at Harvesting The Fruits of Contemplation]

[The end of the Church's liturgical year seems like a good time to revisit an earlier post which also is a chapter in my book,

Fleeting Glimpses of the Silly, Sentimental and Sublime

.]

Let me repeat some obvious truths. God is more powerful than any of us. He draws each of us to Himself. He wants to excite our hearts. He longs to fill our minds and souls with the Truth. He desires that we yield ourselves totally to His will. We are often reluctant to do so because we know we may be mocked, laughed at and persecuted. 
In truth, our fidelity to God and His Word may bring us pain and suffering. It is so difficult to follow Him. At times we don’t want to do as He asks. What He wants from us sometimes seems too painful, too difficult, and too burdensome. We want to flee and hide from Him.  But we can’t. He is everywhere. He has given us Himself.  Our salvation and that of others hinges on our sharing and living this Truth. So we must go on - imperfectly and inconstantly no doubt - but we must go on, trusting that God will be at our side.

One of the reasons we don’t always trust Him is our failure to understand the necessity and value of the suffering He asks of us.  In our current world, many of us do everything we can to avoid suffering. We see little meaning in it. Like Peter’s initial reaction in Matthew 16:21-23 to Jesus announcing His pending suffering and death, we often scold or mock those who talk of or seek suffering. We look at suffering as men do not as God does. What reluctant and unwilling cross bearers many of us have been! But Jesus lets us know in Matthew’s Gospel (16:24-27) that we can not be His followers if we do not take up our crosses and follow Him.

So what are we reluctant cross bearers to do? Perhaps these words of St. Francis de Sales will help:

“The Everlasting God has in His wisdom foreseen from eternity the cross that He now presents to you as a gift from His innermost heart. This cross He now sends you is considered with His all-knowing eyes, understood with His divine mind, tested with His wise justice, warmed with loving arms and weighed with His own hands, to see that it be not one inch too large and not one ounce too heavy for you. He has blessed it with His Holy Name, anointed it with His grace, perfumed it with His consolation, taken one last look at you and your courage, and then sent it to you from heaven, a special greeting from God to you, an alms of the all-merciful love of God. ”

By taking these words to heart, we might recognize some of the crosses we most dread to carry are no more than toothpicks and, by God’s grace, no cross He sends will ever be too heavy.

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Entirely Catholic [at Walking the Path]

CARRYING ON THE FAITH

What a gift to see the young communicants being presented at Mass today and taking their vows. My first thought though is we will see them after First Communion with their families. Anecdotally speaking there seems to be a decline in commitment to continue with the sacraments or at least Mass attendance. Our church today was burgeoning at the seams as the missals were taken up and communion line was exceptionally long.  The question remains will the parents continue with their duty to raise their children with the teachings of the Mother Church? But what about today's Gospel message? Will we as individual Catholics be identified more than in just name, but by our actions?

FAITH AT ALL COSTS

Today our celebrant spoke of people who lived out their faith despite the costs. He mentioned those who died during the Spanish Civil War who are up for

beatification

.  His reference was to the of the Holy Order of Vincentians but also those citizens who died during the conflict, some as young as a year old. The postulator, Sr Angeles Infante stated in the article published by the

Catholic World Report

,

“It‘s not a violent death that makes you a martyr, but the cause you die for, which is Christ. They gave their lives for God, embodying the faith through their witness, forgiving and asking their families to forgive.” 

This week I heard another heartwarming story of a priest is truly is living out his faith. The story coming from the Seize the Day show hosted by Gus Lloyd on the Catholic Channel of Sirius XM radio highlighted a priest who would frequent a food court in a local mall and approach people asking them if he could pray for a particular petition as he carried his Rosary. If the person allowed for him, he then would pray a Hail Mary in their presence. 

LIVING THE FAITH DAILY

All of this provoked me to think, "Can I be truly identified as a Catholic, more than in just name?" In another words am I entirely Catholic? Initially, the answer is yes. I attend Sunday Mass and at times if I am able to daily Mass. I make sure I attend Mass on Holy Days of Obligation. I go to confession four times a year and make an effort to complete an examination of conscience nightly.  I have a prayer and meditation time early every morning. These are things that visible for those people close to me, that is the easy part. I can't rest on my identity as a Catholic like the scribes and the Pharisees (MT 23:1). My actions must extend beyond my label.

Here is the real challenge for me. Am I Catholic as I navigate the congested freeways of Southern California on my daily commute to work? Of course the answer is yes as I listen to Catholic Channel. But wait a minute I approach a driver who is on their cell phone moving across the divided line that divides the lanes. Or a car that is exceeding the speed limit rapidly approaches behind me than suddenly swerves into the lane next to me as the driver seemingly clueless hurdles down the freeway. What is my response? Well, put it this way I won't put it into words. However a prayer for the safety of these drivers might be the right approach.

Arriving at work I need to make copies for my classes and our every so reliable copy machine is down on a Monday again. This is only the 50th time in the last three years that this has happened. What is my first response? Catholic or not? Once again no words need to be mentioned. As my co-workers come by and see me on my knees (no I am not praying) pulling out the innards of the machine to retrieve a crumbled up paper do they hear silence or do they hear the copy machine litany which cannot be printed here? 
I am challenged daily by interactions with people both young and old as well. Is my reaction Catholic? Do I pray for patience with difficult situations or do I force my will? This is all so quite difficult especially when it relates to Church teaching on controversial issues.  My hope is that I have the courage to voice my beliefs no matter what the cost even when it is not convenient. How I approach the poor, marginalized and powerless as well is another daily challenge. 

THE CHALLENGE

But I am asked to truly live out my faith. I am not perfect, but knowing that is quite liberating as long as am connected to God. So here is my readers challenge. Take one day and see how you are able to live out your faith. You might surprise yourself and find that you are living example of true Catholic and at the same time you might find that you have some areas that need some work. I know that I have and will continue to do so.  I am reassured that many who have gone before me have done the same. As our celebrant reminded us today as he told the congregation about the sparse crowd during All Saints Day Mass due to the Dodgers playing in the World Series, we are called to be saints and to put our faith first and the rest will follow. 

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Christ the King and Sins of Omission [at Real Life Rosary]

November 26, 2017 • Matthew • Meditations • Scripture

Sunday November 26th, 2017
Feast of Christ the King
Isn't it interesting that the Gospel doesn't read like this....

"Then the king will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my Father. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For you gave in the collection basket and you helped with the festival, and you were on a committee and you never missed Mass, you didn't kill anyone and you didn't drink too much, and you didn't do drugs and didn't commit adultery, and you were pretty nice to your family, friends and neighbors" and "Then he will say to those on his left,'Depart from me, you accursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. You were in a gang and you murdered, gambled your family's savings and drank your inheritance, committed adultery and stole from work, used drugs, gossiped, cheated, lied, and you did all sorts of evil." No, the Gospel doesn't read like that today. Rather, its message is far more challenging than simply avoiding what we ought not. do and being a good person.
In fact, believe today's Gospel passage completely destroys my "but I'm a good person" argument. I often like to compare myself with others and say, "well, at least I'm not like this person. At least I'm not - murdering, stealing, committing adultery (insert potential mortal sin here)." However, this passage mentions none of those sinful things and yet I still see folks cast into "the eternal fire prepared for the Devil and his angels."
Most of us grow up learning about the sins we shouldn't commit. We are taught to follow the Ten Commandments and avoid doing evil things. Unfortunately, we are not catechized on the very troubling "sins of omission" which are apparently just as, if not more, deadly to the soul. In today's Gospel Jesus separates the sheep from the goats, the good from the bad. His criteria is not based on the sinful things that were or were not done. Instead, the deciding factor is whether one did or did not do the good things that should have been done. 
Those who are rewarded with the blessedness of Heaven are rewarded for the good that they did in this life out of love for Christ. They saw Jesus in each and every person. They did not judge as to whether they were worthy of their love. Rather, they loved them because God loved them. They loved them because they saw God in them. We need not think further than Saint Mother Theresa of Calcutta for a striking example of this in our day. Likewise, those who are punished are punished because of the good that they could have done but failed to do because of their inordinate love for self and disdain for others. They saw the need and passed it by. They saw Christ in others but turned away. They judged, "I wonder what he did to end up naked, thirsty, hungry, homeless, or imprisoned?", and in doing so brought about their own judgement. Those who are rewarded are rewarded for following that law which is above all other laws, the law of charity. Those who are punished are punished for their disregard of that law.
This is, unfortunately, a frightening revelation to me. I have always focused on avoiding sin yet here I find that a life of holiness is not based solely on avoiding sin but also on doing good. The "goats" were cast into the fire not because they had done some evil thing directly but because they avoided doing the good they could have done. Their sin is one of omission.
I also have to be careful not to make this into a social justice Gospel. What I chose to do for my brothers and sisters must come from the heart, a heart full of love for God. As Saint Paul says, "If I give away everything I own, and if I hand my body over so that I may boast but do not have love, I gain nothing."(1 Cor 13:3) I must learn to see Christ in each one of them just as God sees Christ in me. If He can look upon me, wretched as I am, as His own son, surely I can look upon the least of these as my brother or sister. 
Lord, as I approach this time of Advent, a time of prayer, penance, and preparation, help me to see You not only in the Christ child but in everyone. Help me to see You in the least of my brothers and sisters and reach out to their needs. Help me to reach out to them as though I were reaching out to You in the crib or on the Cross. Lord, reveal to me this week an opportunity to serve the least of my brothers. Open my eyes to the needs of others around me and give me the grace to respond willingly and lovingly to those needs.
FROM THE SAINTS - "We will be judged on the degree and quality of our love." - Saint John of the Cross, Spiritual Sentences and Maxims, 57

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OPINION: The Pope and His Audiences on the Mass Re: Pictures At Mass [at Servimus unum Deum]

Hello Everyone.

Forgive the tardiness, but married life with full time work including 1/5 hrs travel to and fro on the weekdays each way, plus domestic duties and whatnot, gives me such limited time for blogging these days. Still, I wanted to release this regardless as a not-as-once-youngish, but still "Church young" at 34 years old, Latin Mass server and male in the Church.

Back some weeks ago, as part of his new series of Wednesday General Audiences on the Eucharist, Pope Francis has done it again, striking hard at something (finally!) that affects everything at all spheres of the Church, with tie-ins to secular culture: Photos at Mass/social media.

His first general audience in November as part of the series, dealt with the Holy Mass, connected to catechesis on the Eucharist. The link from the Vatican's website is here for the first audience:

http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/audiences/2017/documents/papa-francesco_20171108 _udienza-generale.html The Pope's Message

In the audience, the Holy Father states: "....

He does not say: “Lift up your cell phones to take a photo!”

 No, that’s bad! I tell you, it makes me sad when I am celebrating here in Saint Peter’s Square or in the Basilica to see many cell phones lifted up, not only by the faithful but also by some priests and even bishops! But please!

Mass is not a spectacle: it is going to encounter the Passion and Resurrection of the Lord

. This is why the priest says: “Lift up our hearts”. What does this mean? Remember: no cell phones."

In terms, of the Pope's take on this, I truly think that he is applying this to the WHOLE CHURCH.  I must start by saying this audience is

NOT HYPOCRISY NOR HATE OF THE TLM

. Yes, he has given numerous statements in the past in audiences/fervorinos that do not favour those in the Latin Mass/Traditional Catholicism (e.g. the "breeding like rabits" statement, the "rigid" youth in the TLM comment in an interview that was 

without clarification or a general broad statement that most aren't crazy,

) but I do not think that in this instance, our holy father is specifically targeting blogs, such as New Liturgical Movement, or even the Radical Misrepresenting Traditionalist (RMT) blog, Rorate Caeli, with regard to these pictures at Mass.

Because of society being "wired" and the majority of youth and young adults in the world, including older tech-savvy adults , this is a common problem for people in all forms of liturgy in the world, to be attached to their cell phones w/cameras. Furthermore, most developed nations, sadly, share a sense of the notion of "celebrity," which is not limited to music pop-idols and movie actors. Dare I say it, even in Catholic media circles, even some priests and laymen indulge in this notion with the invention of the Internet, on both sides of the spectrum, (Radical) Trad and Liberal. It has even spreads to the Holy Father indirectly and directly, such as the Holy Father doing selfies. Sorry Papa, but selfie taking isn't exactly strengthening the power of your message to the audience of the hostile, anti-Catholic world ... but at least you do not command it AT MASS.

What is clear as day in this Papal audience, is he is trying to convey that main message:

The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is not an entertainment spectacle or a concert, it IS the highest form of prayer in the world, the re-presentation of Christ's passion, death, and resurrection, with which He freed us from the binding of Adam's Original sin that prevented us the opportunity (not de-facto admittance) to be in paradise with God in Heaven

. (You have my full permission to copy/paste this quote, just acknowledge my blog.)  Sadly, phone photos take away from this reverence and make the events more like a concert. The Pope is saying, the Mass is not such a venue.

My Opinion (My Two Canadian Dollars)

Now, while I agree with the Pope's main message in full, I am disagreeing with his outright ban of cell phones/pictures in the Mass for a specific purpose: The promotion of the Sacred Liturgy, especially the Latin Mass in the current theological-political climate of the Church, is VITAL, particularly online and in social media platforms (e.g. Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat) where the young adult generations and younger are gravitating to as part of their lives.

Most, if they were part of the Church, only received a non-reverent, "watered down" Novus Ordo, with variance in quality in terms of homiletics (most being "Jesus loves everyone"/human sentimental garbage, mercy ad nauseam, extreme focus on social justice excluding the rest of the faith) as well as Praise and Worship/childish music that despite the ideas and egos of clergy and music ministers, is NOT the be-all and end all of worship. While I am not partial to a certain Mass being set aside for that and even praise and worship in Eucharistic Adoration (unlike other Radicals Misrepresenting Traditionalism, who hate on their Novus Ordo berthen and desire complete decimation of the Novus Ordo in their minds and hearts, and its "music" and even "Novus Ordo" ministries in the everyday Church,) most youth aren't thinking of heaven and angels and the afterlife when they hear that "Rainbow" song for the hundreth time on Sunday.

Further, might I also add that while it has been 10 years since Summorum Pontificum, and worldwide the number of new holding of the TLM, and priests/seminarians, and even

permanent

deacons are picking up this noble form,

as a whole, there is still a need for HIGHER NUMBERS

of Masses, and competent clergy/laymen to instruct even more clergy/lay people in how to carry out the solemn and sacred Latin Mass (though women could assist in areas of expertise such as choir, altar preparation and textiles/vestment creation, and administrative roles in the case of lay organizations e.g. F.I.U.V., local EF/TLM societies.)

How better to promote the Holy Mass, in the Extraordinary Form, than with pictures on social/media, the internet. As the expression says, "a picture is worth a 1000 words," and to the majority of people, they would not be repulsed, but actually drawn in by what is going on at the altar. When one sees images such as the solemn Latin Mass with the numerous servers on their knees at the consecration, and 3 sacred ministers at the altar, does not that invoke an image of angels all around our Lord as King? Now, tie that in with the fact that our youth are "glued" to their internet phones and social media, and you can see that

pictures, taken in proper parts of the Mass and posted, IS actually a form of evangelization to youth, and even an indirect invitation to say "Come, see what our Faith is about ... come, and experience eternal salvation, and Heaven on Earth ... Come ..."

 Might I also add that for all of Pope Francis' talk about getting dirty with the sheep, making "Hagan Lio" and going out to the peripheries, those youth and adults struggling with their faith and lives, and/or have departed from the Church but are around social media,

ARE PART OF THE PERIPHERIES!  Conclusion

So, if I must counter the Holy Father, then I counter him on this point by saying in summary: I get it. Yes the

Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is NOT an entertainment venue and we should not be taking constant pictures and idolizing the Holy Father as a pop star

. However, one cannot "throw out the baby with the bathwater" in regards to the promotion of our faith, when many of our lost youth and even adults, who are trapped in the "world of the net," are not going to daily Mass and/or have anyone, even their parents, guiding them remotely, in anyway to the life of the Church. Further, because there is still a need for an increase in the Latin Mass, with the

institutional Church including Pope Francis,

PURPOSELY NOT promoting the Latin Mass and/or ignoring it in the Life/Culture of the Church (alongside a pure hatred of pre-Vatican II anything by the 65'-late 80's ordained generation of clergy,) it is being left up to the lay body and future/current younger clergy to promote and expand the Latin Mass, and the taking of photography and public promotion of it on the web is a necessary tool for advancing the TLM itself, and evangelizing to those who desire that deeper faith in Christ in the liturgy of the Holy Mass.

And that is my two Canadian dollars on this issue. Unless he makes this audience a part of the Acta of the Church to bind it as Magisterial, I'm sticking to my guns here.

Pax, Julian.

P. S. Love this gem in the audience: "...

 “But what are you saying, that the Lord is dull?” — “No, no. Not the Mass, the priests” — “Ah, may the priests convert, but it is the Lord who is there!” Do you understand? Do not forget it. “Participating in Mass is living again the redemptive passion and death of Our Lord.”

Notice that for all the venom that RMTs spew at our Holy Father,

he DID NOT in that sentence consider the Mass a "meal,"

the usual thing that is said by priests and laity thanks to shoddy post-Vatican II catechesis.

He even did it before in 2014 (see the reference earlier in the same paragraph I took this snippet from in the link above.) Please read the full address for other gems including Martyrdom for the sake of the Holy Mass, the definition of "Eucharist" etc.

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St. Teresa of Calcutta and The Miraculous Medal

Famously known as Mother Teresa, St. Teresa of Calcutta in her many years of worldwide missionary work with the poor was often seen with a Miraculous Medal in her hands. At times, she would pass out handfuls to priests who would meet with her. It didn’t matter who you were – young, old, dying, or healthy, if you came into a contact with Mother Teresa, there is a chance you received a medal.

During one of her last public appearances, just three months before her death in 1997 while visiting the South Bronx in New York, she held tightly to a basket full of these medals on her lap. As she gave large sums of them away, her sisters just kept on replenishing the basket. She loved this tiny sacramental. She said it’s one of the best tools to spread the Gospel message of love to the world.

She was so devoted to the Miraculous Medal that St. Teresa of Calcutta could be seen as the primary advocate during the second half of 20th century for this medal (St. Maximillian Kolbe is the first half).  Just like Kolbe, St. Teresa understand that the medal was more than just an object. It was sign of the Gospel’s message of love because the medal taught about Jesus Christ, His Church, Redemption, the Eucharist, Divine Mercy, original sin, grace, Mary, and the Last Things.

The Saint of Calcutta knew the importance of having Mary as Our Mother. She would often pray with the sick while holding this medal as well as press it against the person who was sick showing the importance of acknowledging Mary as Mother. Often, she would press the medal on the person’s body where the pain originated. The Miraculous Medal for St. Teresa of Calcutta was a medal of charity – a symbol of God’s love for all people, most especially the every now moment of our lives.

The Miraculous Medal or the Medal of the Immaculate Conception begins with the Apparitions of Rue du Bac in Paris, France at the motherhouse of the Sisters of Charity. In the year 1830, St. Catherine Laboure received three apparitions –

The “Virgin of the Chair” (July 18, 1830)

the “Virgin of the Globe” (November 27, 1830);

“Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal” (November 27, 1830)

On the night of July 18, 1830, St. Catherine was awakened by an angel disguised as a small child and was led to the chapel where the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to her. Catherine would recollect hearing the rustling of a silk dress just before seeing the Blessed Virgin seating in the director’s chair in the sanctuary. As Catherine approached the Blessed Virgin, after a time of hesitation, the Virgin said to her: “My child, the good God wishes to charge you with a mission.”

The Virgin Mary would explain to her all the things that would occur to her personally, the events and suffering that would happen in France, and the major events that were coming to the entire world. The Virgin Mary said,

“You will be in anguish until you have told them who is charged with directing you…tell it with simplicity. Have Confidence. Do not be afraid. The times are very evil. Sorrows will come to France…the whole world will be upset by miseries of every kind…graces will be especially shed upon those who ask for them.”

The Virgin Mary also told Catherine that the Vincentian Fathers and Daughters of Charity were in need of much reform. She said that a new community would develop from the Daughters of Charity. This came to fruition when St. Elizabeth Ann Seton’s Sisters in Emmitsburg, Maryland would eventually join the Paris community.

As she wept, the Virgin Mary told Catherine of the great dangers that would come to France and the world. Nine days after this first apparition, there was a revolution in Paris by Charles X to reestablish the “divine right” to the Bourbon monarchy. However, he was trampled upon in the “Three Glorious Days” where monarchists, merchants, and radical anarchists attacked the Church by beating, killing, and imprisoning priests and religious. They burned churches and pulled down statues and crosses. The Archbishop was force to flee for his life. The apparition prophecy of nine days earlier came to pass.

On November 27, 1830, the visions of the “Virgin of the Globe” and the “Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal” both occurred. The “Virgin of the Globe” is where the Virgin Mary is holding a golden ball in her hands and offering it up to God. This golden ball represents the Earth, but especially France and all people. After this vision, St. Catherine then saw another vision.

At this moment in the apparition, an oval frame formed around the Blessed Virgin. Surrounding the oval frame were the words – “O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee.”

The Virgin then said, “Have a medal struck after this model. All who wear it will receive great graces; they should wear it around the neck. Graces will abound for persons who wear it with confidence.”

The vision then turned around and Catherine viewed the back of the medal. This image was shown to her seven times before the medal was struck.

These symbols from the vision are enriched with deep Marian theology and importance. On the front of the medal, we see Our Lady outstretched and rays coming from her hands. She is also crushing the head of the serpent. The crushing of the head of the serpent is the image we have from Genesis 3:15 (known as the Protoevangelium – first gospel) – “She will crush your head.”

The rays of light flowing from her hands represent her as Mediatrix of all graces. In prayer, she is our universal Advocate – “pray for us who have recourse to thee.” She offers our prayers to the Heavenly Father (as Queen Mother brings the petitions to the King).

The doctrine (and eventual dogma – December 8, 1854 by Bl. Pius IX) of the Immaculate Conception is revealed here – “O Mary, conceived without sin…” The medal was known first as the “Medal of the Immaculate Conception” but because it invoked so many miracles, it became known as the “Miraculous Medal.”

On the backside of the medal, we see the “M” connected to the cross with the crossbeam. This represents Mary’s Co-Redemption with her son and her role as Co-Redemptrix but always subordinate to Him (Jn 19:25-27). Mary is able to crush the head of the serpent by the power of Our Lord, not with her own power.

The two hearts on the bottom of the medal (Immaculate Heart of Mary and Sacred Heart of Jesus) define the whole age of Mary and the motif of the Marian messages to the modern world. The hearts of Mary and Jesus would be developed in the message of Fatima. The triumph of the Immaculate Heart leads to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

The twelve stars on the back of the medal represent Mary’s universal Queenship (Rev 12:1), she is also the mother of the male child (Rev 12:5), and the mother of the “rest of her offspring” (Rev 12:7). She is our Queen Mother (1 Kings 2:19-21). The twelve stars also represent the twelve apostles who fulfill the twelve tribes of Israel. Mary is also known in the Tradition of the Church as the Queen of the Apostles.

The first medals were struck in 1832 under the permission of the Archbishop of Paris, Monsignor de Quelen. In 1836, the Church investigated the apparition as well as the miracles attributed to the medal and said that there was a supernatural authenticity. In 1842, due to the conversion of a famous European Jewish figure, the Church declared the Miraculous Medal devotion approved. It is believed that the Miraculous Medal was the defining factor in promulgation of the Immaculate Conception being declared dogmatic on December 8, 1854 by Bl. Pius IX.

Sr. Catherine Laboure passed into Eternal Glory in 1876. Fifty-seven years after her death, while her cause for Canonization was occurring, her body was exhumed and was found incorrupt. On July 27, 1947, Pope Pius XII canonized St. Catherine of Laboure a Saint of the Catholic Church. The Miraculous Medal is worn by thousands of Catholics on a daily basis.

Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal…Pray for Us

St. Catherine Laboure…Pray for Us

Source: 

McCurry , Fr. James. “Mother Teresa and the Miraculous Medal.” Mother of All Peoples, 21 Feb. 2012, http://www.motherofallpeoples.com/2004/09/mother-teresa-and-the-miraculous-medal/.

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That's Not How It Works [at casual theology]

I received a flyer in the mail from a local non-denominational church advertising their services for the holiday season. These mass mailings aren’t all that unique, many churches, Protestant and Catholic, send them out around Christmas and Easter as a way of reaching out to people who may be looking for a place to worship. But this flyer was a little different than others that I’ve seen and it got me thinking.

Here’s part of the text from the flyer (I changed the name of the church):

Go ahead. Sleep in on Sunday.

Whether you like the idea of sleeping in, want to free up some extra weekend time for that family gathering at the in-laws, or are just heading out of town on the weekends. Whatever the reason, find some extra peace from the holiday hustle with us on Thursdays at our Early Weekend Service. 

We’ll have the same great kids environments, same great coffee, same great music and teaching you’ve come to expect from Relevant Church…Now on Thursdays, too. 

Relevant Church. Where you’ll find friendly folks, great coffee, dim lights and easy exits if you change your mind.

Obviously this particular faith community is trying to make themselves accessible and non-threatening—they have “easy exits” after all. They’re trying to be sensitive to the fact that many people are incredibly busy between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Still, I can’t help but wonder about the message they’re sending, which is basically you can have Jesus on your terms alone.

The Catholic Church celebrated the solemnity of Christ the King on Sunday. It’s a day to remember that Jesus is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. A day to recall that he has invited me to enter into his Kingdom, the realm where his will is done “on earth as it is in heaven”. It is a time to reflect on the reality that I am a servant of the King and I serve Him on His terms, not mine. When Jesus called the disciples it was not at their convenience, but at the cost of their lives. They dropped their nets, walked away from their livelihoods and followed.

Dietrich Bonheoffer wrote about the idea of cheap grace versus costly grace. He said, “Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession...Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.” Cheap grace is God on my terms. It is safe and controllable. Non-threatening.

Of the alternative, costly grace, Bonheoffer wrote, “It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of his Son: “ye were bought at a price,” and what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us. Above all, it is grace because God did not reckon his Son too dear a price to pay for our life, but delivered him up for us. Costly grace is the Incarnation of God.”

We are living in a time of great upheaval, confusion, and uncertainty. More and more people are abandoning faith in God than ever before. Scandals and scandalous behaviors dominate the headlines. I don’t think that good coffee and a hipster Jesus who won’t ask too much of us are the answers to these problems, and neither did St. John Paul II who said, “The Church needs saints. All are called to holiness, and holy people alone can renew humanity.”

To quote John Paul II’s friend, Ronald Reagan, we need to raise “a banner of no pale pastels, but bold colors which make it unmistakably clear where we stand on all of the issues troubling the people.” The problem with trying so much to look like the world to attract the world is that you don’t stand out enough for the world to see you. We do not have the luxury of accepting Jesus on our terms. We are called to holiness, love, and sacrifice.

As I pondered how this church flyer was trying to make it easier on people I was struck by the contrast to my Catholic faith which throws in a holy day of obligation, December 8th for the Immaculate Conception of Mary, right in the middle of this busy time of the year. The Advent season itself is a challenge to be different from the world. It is supposed to be like a little Lent, a time of penance and self-examination. A time to slow down and ponder in our hearts the mystery of the Incarnation and to look forward with expectation to Christ’s return. My God does not ask a lot of me, He asks for all of me. To be a disciple is to leave my nets—my desires, my plans, my will—and follow after Him.

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After watching Game 7 of an exciting 2017 World Series and a few post-game interviews I shut off the TV. It was just after midnight and since November 2 is All Souls Day I decided to pray Matins from the Divine Office. I began:

Open my mouth, Lord, to bless Your holy name; cleanse my heart from all vain, perverse and distracting thoughts; enlighten my understanding, inflame my affections, that I may be able to recite this Office worthily, attentively and devoutly, and may deserve to be heard in the presence of Your divine Majesty. Amen.

For the next 45 minutes I did my best though I’m sure I slurred and nodded off at some point.

I have written on the subject of All Souls Day before, both in 2011 and 2014. When I learned of that this morning I wasn’t sure I felt the need to write about it again. In fact I think both of those entries hold up well. But I read a few things this morning while browsing Twitter over breakfast that I wanted to share on the occasion.

20 Ways

The first is a commentary written by Gretchen Filz called 20 Ways to Pray for the Holy Souls in Purgatory. Now before my non-Catholic readers roll their eyes Ms. Filz includes a section called “Church Teaching on Purgatory” at the beginning of her piece. It’s only four short paragraphs long, and includes just one link, but serves as a tidy introduction for those who are open to learning about something before casually dismissing it.

Moving on, she then lists her “20 Ways.” I usually perform number 11, 13, and always 16. I’m going to also do #5, the Holy Souls Rosary, tonight for the first time.

“Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord. And let the perpetual light shine upon them. And may the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen.”

All Souls Story

Next I read a story written by Fr. Dwight Longenecker back in 2008. It begins:

I was living in England as a young Anglican priest when my younger brother came to live with me. Some weeks after his arrival he learned about the death in a plane crash of a young friend of his we shall call Tom.

Tom was about 5’2″ with a shock of blond hair, a round tanned face with freckles. He was brought up as a Baptist, but had never been baptized and he was in a state of rebellion against the faith when he died unprepared.

My brother Daryl told a priest named Fr. Philip about Tom and the priest said, “We must have a requiem Mass for Tom.” So the two of them got together with another priest named Fr. Roger. Fr Roger agreed to celebrate Mass for Tom’s soul. They decided that it would be best if the Mass were a semi-private celebration, so they went into church and locked the door and proceeded to say Mass for Tom.

Fr. Philip was an extraordinary man with a gift of second sight and the ability to read souls. This spiritual or psychic gift was a benefit to him in an active healing ministry. As the Mass proceeded my brother was overcome with emotion, and at the point of kneeling to receive Holy Communion he felt that Tom was actually there with them and that he was disturbed and confused by what was going on. Daryl (my brother) said that he felt as if Tom was there next to him at communion and he re-assured Tom that everything would be alright and urged him (in his mind) to simply accept the gift he was being given.

After Mass Daryl recounted his feelings to the two priests. “It was like Tom was actually there!”

“Oh he was there.” said Fr. Philip, “I saw him.”

I encourage you to read the rest.

In his homily for All Saint’s Day yesterday at my parish, Fr. Eckrich talked about what Catholics believe regarding those present at each and every Mass on earth and the communion of all saints, not just those formally recognized as those canonized by the Church. I once had it described to me in the following beautiful and simple manner: the Mass is when the Church Militant on earth gets together with the Church Triumphant in Heaven to pray for the Church Penitent in Purgatory (more on that here).

“There it is.”

Some of you are sitting back with arms folded and muttering “Jeff, Jeff…enough with the supernatural hocus-pocus.” Ok, I’ll close with this.

“The lack of transcendence in secularism is its greatest weakness, alongside its carnality and its hubris of man-as-god. It fails to satisfy what’s deepest in us.” – Fr. Arne Panula

I read that quote this morning in an article commemorating Fr. Panula who had died this past July. I’ve had many a conversation with those who are Catholic, Protestant, liberal or conservative about the loss of the sacred and the transcendental in our modern age and the destructiveness it is having on our society. “But Jeff, that was a softball. You quoted a Catholic priest.” Fair point. So I’ll close with these words from Paul Kingsworth, former environmental and conservation activist. I read them on Rod Dreher’s blog this morning via Twitter as well. Kingsworth is not a religious man, but he has a religious sensibility. In his essay “In The Black Chamber” (which I recommend as a good read) he writes:

I wonder if there has been a society in history so uninterested in the sacred as ours; so little concerned with the life of the spirit, so contemptuous of the immeasurable, so dismissive of those who feel that these things are essential to human life. The rationalist vanguard would have us believe that this represents progress: that we are heading for a new Jerusalem, a real one this time, having sloughed off ‘superstition’. I am not so sure. I think we are missing something big. Most cultures in human history have maintained, or tried to maintain, some kind of balance between the material and the immaterial; between the temple and the marketplace. Ours is converting the temples into luxury apartments and worshipping in the marketplace instead. We are allergic to learning from the past, but I think we could learn something here.

The rationalist delusion has a strong grip on our culture, and that grip has been getting stronger during my lifetime. Every year, it seems, the areas of life that remain uncolonised by scientific or economic language or assumptions grow fewer. The success that science has had in explaining what can be explained has apparently convinced many people that it can explain everything, or will one day be able to do so. The success that economics has had in monetising the things which science can explain has convinced many that everything of significance can be monetised.

Environmentalists and conservationists are as vulnerable to these literalist trends as anyone else, and many of them have persuaded themselves that, in order to be taken seriously by those with the power to save or destroy, they must speak this language too. But this has been a Faustian bargain. Argue that a forest should be protected because of its economic value as a ‘carbon sink’, and you have nothing to say when gold or oil of much greater value are discovered beneath it.

Speaking the language of the dominant culture, the culture of human empire which measures everything it sees and demands a return, is not a clever trick but a clever trap. Omit that sense of the sacred in nature – play it down, diminish it, laugh nervously when it is mentioned – and you are lost, and so is the world that moved you to save it for reasons you are never quite able to explain.

I’ll say it plainly, because I’ve worked myself up to it: in ‘nature’ I see something divine, and when I see it, it moves me to humility, not grandiosity, and that is good for me and good for those I come into contact with. I don’t want to be a god, even if I can. I want to be a servant of god, if by god we mean nature, life, the world. I want to be small in the world, belong to it, help it along, protect myself from its storms and try to cause none myself.

I know there are others who feel like this, and I know there are others who don’t. It is not a position to be argued from. I don’t want to try and convince you if you’re not already convinced. If you don’t feel it, you don’t feel it. I do, and I can’t argue it away. There it is.

(Feast of All Souls Day, 2017)

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When A Jigsaw Puzzle Teaches Much about Life [at A Moment From De Sales]

The jigsaw puzzle sat in the recreation room of an inner-city school for boys.  It was a Colorado mountain scene depicted in blazing colors on the box cover.  This was not what was important.  What was important was how the students gradually took notice, completed the puzzle, and what it taught them.

The students began to solve the puzzle, slowly selecting a piece while chatting with other students looking on.  They searched to find the place where the piece would fit amidst the many empty spaces.  They tried one way, forcing it a bit, then another, until it fit.  At that point, they selected another piece, and so on.  However, when they had trouble locating where a new piece would fit best, they simply walked away frustrated.  Once they learned to be patient and use the box-cover as a guide, the student sleuths realized that they found whole sections more quickly.

As the puzzle came to resemble the scene on the box cover, the students’ excitement heightened with more and more students participating.  After it was finally completed, some weeks later, they beamed with pride.  The young artists celebrated with high-fives, back-pats and big smiles.  They did complete the task, it looked great, and they savored the satisfaction of their accomplishment.

What did this exercise do for these inner-city students?  Well, it taught them some valuable life lessons. Such as, by putting in the effort and working together they had the ability to complete the puzzle.   They also learned that discipline, patience, and teamwork are great assets in getting a task completed.

We are all like pieces in the great puzzle of life.  We fit in somewhere and on some days, it's easy to find our space and some days it isn’t.  But it is there!  

We don't have to knock others over or bully them to find our particular space.  We can do it patiently, by searching, and using outside assistance like the box cover to get the job done.  It's there for us to keep trying.

We believe that God our Creator doesn’t make mistakes. He made us to fit nicely into our place and when we succeed in discovering where that place is, we know we did it honestly and fairly.

Christ preached that everyone lives in the world with other people, like pieces of a gigantic puzzle.  God sent the Holy Spirit to help us discover our place.  And to realize that we are all different, not better than the person next to us, just different. In God’s eyes, we all count equally. God doesn’t make mistakes!

 These are great lessons for all of us to learn and to live by!

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Always Thankful

Remember when I said I was going to do one of these posts every Wednesday this month?  Oh well… this turned into something different than originally planned, and is finally being completed.  But hopefully, it will touch you in some way.

In the spirit of Thanksgiving, I am continuing to keep myself focused on the many blessings I have in my life.   I recall reading a portion of Introduction to the Devout Life by St. Francis de Sales about 10 years ago for a private retreat.  I was trying to discern whether or not I would stay in my position as Executive Director at Women’s Care Clinic.  (I stayed for another 7 years.)  In the book, St Francis invites the reader to ponder all “Benefits of God” – bodily advantages (health and material things,) gifts of mind (intellect, creativity,) and spiritual graces (Sacramental life, mercy,) and I filled many pages of my journal.  Once I started writing, I couldn’t stop until my hands were fatigued.  So. Many. Blessings!   It can be easy to take things for granted, especially in our comfy life here in the U.S.  When was the last time any of us said “Thank you, God, for this toothpaste and toothbrush”?  Believe me, I didn’t utter that prayer this morning, either.  Perhaps tonight, it will be on my lips!  So here are some gifts, some “Benefits of God,” which for which I am grateful:

Bodily Advantages ~

While I have numerous health issues, I do have insurance through my husband’s employer, so I can see doctors and get prescriptions when needed.

My house is a beautiful, safe house that Bruce and I bought together, filled with more clothing than we need.  Food is in the pantry and refrigerator.  I am typing on a laptop which I own.  Every inch of ribbon, drop of ink, and sheet of card stock in my craft room is a treasure.

Bruce has a very good job with good pay and benefits that make all of this “stuff” possible to own.  He is healthy (overall) and can enjoy his very physical work.  He is also healthy enough to help me with more and more personal tasks as I grow older.  God sent me a very good man!

Gifts of Mind ~ 

Even on my weakest days, I have the ability to express my thoughts and needs to others.  Whether spoken or written, I can share both serious and silly ideas.  I can engage in dialogue and debate.

My mind is often filled with creative ideas, like a special design for a Christmas card or a subject for a new post.  I often get lost in my thoughts; I am a daydreamer…something I truly enjoy!

 I have the ability to read, and I enjoy books of many varieties.  I am always in the middle of at least three different books.

Spiritual Graces ~

I love my Catholic faith and the blessings of Sacramental life.  I live in a part of the world where several parishes are within a short drive.  I know the priests here, and could call any of them if I needed Anointing or Reconciliation.

While my knowledge of Sacred Scripture is limited, I have access to the Word of God every day to grow in that knowledge.  Whether in print, in an online reflection, or on my smart phone, I can ponder God’s messages of mercy and love throughout the day.

I have a call to ministry and prayer for others.  My role has changed over the years, but I know my joy comes in serving God by serving others.

I could go on and on and on.  Sometimes, I am amazed when I ponder these blessings.  By taking time out of my day to say “Thank you Lord,” my mood is lifted.  Simply speaking, gratitude feels a lot better than grumpiness!  Regardless of how much time I spend in prayers of thanksgiving, I must remember Who is the source of every good thing.  All of these blessings are ultimately from God.  He is that loving…and more.  More than I can ever express.

To Him be all thanksgiving, all honor, all praise forever and ever…Amen!

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Prayer Matters: Praying for the Dead [at From the Pulpit of my Life]

We Catholics remember and pray for the Faithful Departed, especially during the month of November. These are the Holy Souls who have died in grace; that is, in friendship with God, but who still are not quite ready to enter into God’s presence in heaven. They are in a special state of purification we call Purgatory.

Msgr. Charles Pope wrote an essay about the value of praying for others, whether living or deceased. He says that such prayer “is a great and wondrous spiritual work of mercy.” According to Msgr. Pope, prayer for the deceased has declined. People, whose loved ones have died, often presume they are in heaven and don’t need prayer. But before going to heaven, hell, or purgatory, first they must go before the judgment seat of God. Here are the Biblical citations:

It is appointed for men to die once and after this comes judgment (Heb 9:27). St. Paul writes, For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each of us may receive what is due us for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad (2 Cor 5:10).

At the very least, our loved ones need our prayers during the time between their death and their judgment.

You can read Msgr. Charles Pope’s inspiring blog article here: Community in Mission blog

Another Blogger, Sister Anne Flanagan, at Nun Blog, relates a personal story about her devotion to the Holy Souls. She considers All Souls Day a consolation.

Sister Kathleen Glavich also wrote beautifully and personally about the Holy Souls as well as the Saints! Be sure to read her article at The Catholic Faith Corner.

Each day I pray for my own deceased friends and relatives. This is one prayer that I use:

Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and let the perpetual light shine upon them. May their souls, and all the souls of the Faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace.

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I watched in awe as the priest stepped into the sandals of Christ. [at It Makes Sense to Me]

By Larry Peterson

What follows is about a priest in a crowd, a famous poem, and a moment in time. The moment was like seeing a tiny flower growing out of a crack in a concrete sidewalk. That tiny flower is another example of God's creative beauty that surrounds us yet is barely noticed by anyone. The fate of that tiny flower is ominous. Even though no person anywhere at any time could ever create that fragile, work of living beauty, it more than likely will be ignored, stepped upon or sprayed with weed killer to get rid of it. Ah well, we "smarties" have no time for such trivialities and petty annoyances.

The poem I refer to is, "Trees" by Joyce Kilmer. Written in 1913, it has a timely message. There is a line in the poem that reads, "A tree that looks at God all day, And lifts her leafy arms to pray: the tiny flower in the concrete is a smaller version, is it not? So what about the priest in the crowd?

I was at a parish event the other evening which featured as speakers our Bishop, an author, a radio station personality, and our pastor. The Knights of Columbus (which included me) were the ones who prepared and served the free dinner to over 300 guests. The parish center was packed and when the final speaker had finished we began to serve the dessert.  I sensed something special was going on nearby. I do not know if anyone else but me was paying attention but I was about to witness one of those special moments in time.

There were a number of local parish priests in attendance and one of them was the chaplain at the local VA hospital. I was working in the kitchen assisting getting the cake plates on trays and handing the trays to those serving the guests. Outside the kitchen and to my left against the wall was the drink table where coffee, tea, cold drinks etc were available. At any given time there were at least ten people standing in line. Five feet away from the drink table was the first row of dinner tables. Father was sitting at the end of the first table talking to a woman.

At this point, the chatter was quite loud and people were up and moving about visiting other tables saying "HI" to other folks they knew. I noticed Father looking at the young lady very intently and purposefully. I knew this priest had put his Jesus' sandals on.

I kept working and watching the two of them. They were at least twenty feet away from me and, with all the activity and noise and people milling about and all around them, they had managed to be alone. The priest listened and listened and listened some more.  I watched as best I could because this was so awe-inspiring. I was witnessing Christ do His thing through His priest. This happens every time we attend Mass but how many of us think about what actually IS happening? We hear of this happening in other places but how often do we get to watch it happen? Hardly ever.

After a while, Father leaned his head to the right a bit and rested his chin on his upraised fist. He was not looking directly at the woman he was now sort of looking downward. He inconspicuously blessed her and, I assume, she was being given absolution. I was not positive because  I had heard nothing and never even saw her face. But it did not matter. Whatever was happening between them was spiritual and beautiful.

Like the tiny flower popping its little lavender petal through a crack in concrete or Kilmer's magnificent tree looking at God all day lifting its "leafy arms to pray" this moment was those moments. Few people notice the stunning Oak tree standing majestically alongside a roadway or a blade of grass pushing its way through a hairline crack in a slab of cement. Sadly, more and more people are losing sight of Christ in our midst and the hand of the Creator smiling down on His creations. I was blessed. I caught a glimpse the other night.

Joyce Kilmer's poem finishes up with the poignant words: "Poems are made by fools like me, But only God can make a tree."  We need to remember that.

Artwork from SimpleMassingPriest.com

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Advent -- a Time of Sacrifice and Fasting? [at Catholic Conundrum]

"Only two more days until Advent!" my daughter announced, enthusiastically.

"But who's counting?"  I chuckled beneath my breath.

"What, Mom?"  my daughter questioned.

"Oh, nothing!  I mean, that's great!" I replied and flashed her a smile.

Despite being insanely busy over the last few weeks due to taking on a temporary video editing job, I couldn't help but acknowledge the fact that it was somehow impossible not to get caught up with my daughter's excitement about the approaching Advent season.  Still, even in excitement's contagious wake, I found myself sobering a bit as something I had recently read popped into my mind.

Apparently, I may have approaching my Advent prep. season incorrectly for most of my life.  As with most Christians, I have certainly always been aware that Advent is a season of waiting and preparing oneself for the coming of Christ's birth.  And, of course, this preparation needed to occur both interiorly and exteriorly. 

What I hadn't realized, however, is that the Church encourages a similar approach to that of the Lenten season, emphasizing deeper prayer, sacrifice and even fasting.  Although there are no strict rules regarding fasting during Advent, the idea that we must continually work to die to ourselves to make ourselves completely open to Christ and what He longs to do in us is still maintained.  

Considering this, I realized quickly what a challenge it could be to fast during Advent, since so much of it is heavily packed with joyous traditions and the all-important Christmas baking.  Thankfully, I remembered that this time of year also provides countless opportunities to serve, an act that at its very essence requires sacrifice in some form.  Armed with this new knowledge, I have been inspired to look for more opportunities to serve and weave fasting in and out between the festive moments.  And, hopefully, I will remember to apply a Lenten mindset, ensuring that I will be more deeply preparing myself for the greatest birth in the history of life.

As we come across these opportunities during this upcoming Advent season, may our hearts realign with His, experiencing a humility that will draw us nearer to the most perfect example of humility the world has ever seen.

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