Knowing Him Intuitively
April 19, 2012
Father Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalene, O.C.D. wrote in #150 of Divine Intimacy:
When we love a person, we come to know him intuitively, and thus, better and more easily than those who might study him more minutely, but without love.
How many books have been written about God by those who are merely academic and intellectual in their approach? Do those books draw us closer to God or make us want to have an intimate relationship with Him? Do they reveal His love for man? Do they motivate us to love Him and live according to the Gospel?
Father Gabriel goes on to write:
…It can well be said that there is no divine mystery or truth of faith which does not, in some way, speak of the excessive love of the Lord. The more we are convinced of this love, the more profound will be our “loving knowledge” of God; and at the same time, we shall feel an ever increasing impulse to return love to Him who has first loved us so greatly.
Through prayer we love God more and come to know Him intuitively. We learn to recognize Him speaking to us and working in our lives, even when He uses earthly agents to help us conform ourselves to His will and to distribute to us His blessings.
St. Catherine of Sienna prayed:
O eternal God, You are eternal and infinite Goodness; no one can understand You or know You wholly, except insofar as You give him the grace to do so. And You give as much of this knowledge as we prepare our souls to receive.
Today let’s stop awhile in someplace quiet. Let’s still the thousands of concerns swirling through our minds and the incessant running here and there of our bodies. Let’s ask God to enter our hearts and give us the grace to know Him intuitively. Let today be a new conversion for each of us.
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Sunday Snippets – A Catholic Carnival
April 15, 2012
This post is linked to RAnn at This That and the Other Thing who is our great hostess for this weekly meme.
Whenever a Catholic church is dedicated, somewhere along the line the bells must be blessed. I grew up hearing church bells (real ones, not the carillons used by some churches today) ringing the Angelus and for Masses, but I had no idea the rich ceremony of the blessing of the bells until I wrote the story of the St. Rose Philippine Duchesne Latin Mass Community in Kansas City, Kansas. From now on, when I hear the Catholic church bells, their ringing will have an entirely new meaning.
How Recited (Vocal) Prayer Leads to Contemplation contains lessons from the great Doctor of the Church, St. Teresa of Avila.
At Sabbath Moments I wrote about St. Benedict’s fourth step of humility.
Io: Moon Over Jupiter: Read the story by clicking on this image
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Sabbath Moments
April 14, 2012
Awareness of God
Colleen at Thoughts on Grace hosts this Saturday meme. How about joining us over at her place to enjoy other bloggers’ moments of peace this week?
Easter peace
Since a week ago Friday I’ve had all sorts of frustrating health issues pop up that have kept me from functioning well, writing blog posts, and attending Holy Week services, but a real blessing has been the repetition of the Easter Sunday antiphons in the Divine Office every day. This repetition places the Resurrection of the Lord front and center for me no matter what is going on health-wise.
“Jesus stood in the midst of the disciples and said to them: Peace be to you, alleluia, alleluia.” This antiphon introduces the Benedictus (Luke 1:68-79) every day, which has made me think a lot about the peace of Christ.
No matter how disagreeable or difficult things may be at various times in our lives, if we have that interior peace, that “resting in the Lord”, that confidence in the power of Christ who vanquished death, we can surrender and let Him be in charge. What a relief! And how great of the Church to keep us focused on that all this week during Lauds.
The fourth step of humility
Sabbath Moments seems like a good place to keep writing about St. Benedict’s 12 steps of humility. I’ve covered the first steps in previous Sabbath Moments posts. Today we learn of his fourth step in Chapter 7 of his rule:
The fourth step of humility is that in this obedience under difficult, unfavorable, and even unjust conditions, his heart quietly embraces suffering and endures it without weakening or seeking escape.
Father Gerard Ellspermann, O.S.B. remarks:
Things are getting rougher, but still the humble hold up under difficulties, unfavorable circumstances, even unjust conditions. Not only does the humble hold out, but there is a quietness in his suffering, and an endurance that shows no weakening nor cowardice by seeking escape. [I don't think we can do this without the grace of God. Human nature just is not strong enough, which is why we see escapism in so many broken families, abused children, lost religious vocations, and drug, alcohol, and pornography addictions. We keep trying to force getting what we want, or what we think we want, from everybody and everything but God, who always gives us what we need. The more humble we are, the more easily we recognize God's will and accept it without running away or griping to anybody who will listen.]
St. Benedict now envisages cases when obedience becomes hard and painful. Sometimes we are tempted to cry out and complain that this is too much, too illogical, too unbearable. Personalities are involved, state of health is not considered. Can you push yourself to ascend this step of humility? Can you do so without murmuring, without recrimination? Of such stuff are saints made. “They could do it, so why not I?” (Augustine said that.)
The keynote of this fourth degree is endurance. The spirit of this degree is expressed in two expressive phrases “quietly” and “embraces patience.” The Latin of St. Benedict suggests “in silent serenity” and “a being wrapped in patience” as in a garment.
Here, then, is another virtue linked with humility and obedience. It is patience. This patience, which means putting up with suffering in this instance, the oblate also needs in life, for it helps to unite himself to Jesus Crucified. Each one’s life has much of the Cross of Christ.
Here too, is the opportunity for interior mortifications which become the hard things that lead to God. We need to remind ourselves that Our Lady said to Bernadette of Lourdes that He “did not promise to make you happy in this world!“ [Lent is not the only time to mortify our senses. In reading the lives of the saints we learn that they all practiced some form of self-denial every day for the love of God, even in the midst of great seasons like Easter. The critical or snarky remarks held back, the extra effort to make a spouse smile, the giving up of personal time to help someone in need - these are all occasions for mortification and make us spiritual athletes by the grace of God.]
“If I keep my wits about me I can so use this present discipline as to provide me with the best possible preparation for eternal life: I can unite my afflictions with those endured by Christ,” says Don Hubert van Zeller in his notes on the Holy Rule.
Fighting obedience and straining against the will of God is very tiring. If we’re lucky, one day we’ll wake up and realize that surrender is the best option. Then the fourth step of humility becomes habitual and the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” (Hamlet, Act III) become so much more bearable.
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How Recited (Vocal) Prayer Leads to Contemplation
April 12, 2012
Bernini's sculpture of St. Teresa of Avila
Nobody explains the kinds of prayer better than St. Teresa of Avila. It seems very appropriate to me that Pope John Paul II declared her a Doctor of the Church in a century where rampant secularism would have us say, “Our Father who art in heaven, STAY THERE!”
In her book, The Way of Perfection (Dover Thrift Editions)
St. Teresa tells us it is up to God to invite us, as He wills, to whatever degree of contemplation is best for us. But the worst thing we can do is rattle though our vocal prayer thoughtlessly and lazily giving in to distractions, because it is, for a large number of us, through faithfully practicing vocal prayers that we are brought by God to contemplation.
Vocal prayers are those we recite, such as the Our Father, Hail Mary, the Creed, etc. St. Teresa says we should not repeat the words without understanding.
…when I say the Creed, it seems to me right, and indeed obligatory, that I should understand and know what it is that I believe; and when I repeat the “Our Father”, my love should make me want to understand Who this Father of ours is and Who the Master is that taught us this prayer….
…it is impossible to speak to God and to the world at the same time; yet this is just what we are trying to do when we are saying our prayers and at the same time listening to the conversation of others or letting our thoughts wander on any matter that occurs to us, without making an effort to control them.
…if you are to recite the Paternoster well, one thing is needful: you must not leave the side of the Master Who has taught it you….
…You are right to say that what we have described is mental prayer; but I assure you that I cannot distinguish it from vocal prayer faithfully recited with a realization of Who it is that we are addressing. Further, we are under the obligation of trying to pray attentively: may God grant that, by using these means, we may learn to say the Paternoster well and not find ourselves thinking of something irrelevant.
I have sometimes experienced this myself, and the best remedy I have found for it is to try to fix my mind on the Person by Whom the words were first spoken. Have patience, then, and try to make this necessary practice into a habit, for necessary it is, in my opinion, for those who would be nuns, and indeed for all who would pray like good Christians.
I think many people have trouble praying the rosary because they don’t know it’s OK to just do what St. Teresa says: think of the Father, think of the Son, think of the meaning of the prayers we are saying and who first spoke them and not get caught up in worrying whether we are doing it right or not. With the right heart of seeking union with God, our vocal prayer will lead us to contemplation because God doesn’t want to keep Himself a secret from the seeking heart.
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Blessing of Church Bells
April 10, 2012
In early March the Latin Mass parish of St. Rose Philippine Duchesne in Kansas City, Kansas had the bell of their new parish church blessed by Bishop Emeritus James Patrick Keleher. Quite a lot goes into the blessing of a church bell which becomes a sacramental once the ceremony is completed. The prayers take us back to our Jewish roots in the Old Testament. To read more about why Catholics bless their church bells and the event in Kansas City, click on this link for April’s Una Voce Arkansas Ozarks Regional Newsletter.
If the newsletter comes up blank, click on the green “download” button in the upper right.
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Finding the Lord
April 8, 2012
Today being the feast of the Resurrection, I wanted to share with readers what Father Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalene, OCD, wrote in Divine Intimacy about how we are all looking for the Lord as the apostles and the holy women did at the tomb.
Looking and finding are two different things. By God’s grace we discover Him when we gain the simplicity and purity of heart that children have. And, as in the Gospel, obedience precedes the finding of the Lord.
…They enter the tomb and find an Angel who greets them with the glad announcement: “He is risen; He is not here.” At this time, Jesus does not let Himself be found or seen; but a little later when, in obedience to the command of the Angel, the women leave the tomb to bring the news to the disciples, He will appear before them saying “All hail!” (Mt. 28:9), and their joy will be overwhelming.
We, too, have a keen desire to find the Lord; perhaps we have been seeking Him for many long years. Further, this desire may have been accompanied by serious preoccupation with the question of how we might rid ourselves of the obstacles and roll away from our souls the stone which has prevented us thus far from finding the Lord, from giving ourselves entirely to Him, and from letting Him triumph in us.
Precisely because we want to find the Lord, we have already overcome many obstacles, sustained by His grace; Divine Providence has helped us roll away many stones, overcome many difficulties. nevertheless, the search for God is progressive, and must be maintained during our whole life. For this reason, following the example of the holy women, we must always have a holy preoccupation about finding the Lord, a preoccupation which will make us industrious and diligent in seeking Him, and at the same time confident of the divine aid, since the Lord will certainly take care that we arrive where our own strength could never bring us, because He will do for us what we cannot do for ourselves.
Every year Easter marks a time of renewal in our spiritual life, in our search for God; every year we reascend the path toward Him in novitate vitae, in newness of life (Rom. 6:4).
This post is linked to Saints and Scripture Sunday and Sunday Snippets.
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Sunday Snippets – A Catholic Carnival
April 1, 2012
Today is April Fool’s day, but I’ve never been one for pranks and jokes that make people feel foolish. So here’s my usual straightforward offering for the week. Please join us all at RAnn’s This That and the Other Thing to visit other Catholic bloggers and their contributions to this meme.
I broke the subject of the spiritual sickness behind contraception into two posts:
The Spiritual Malaise Behind Contraception and Changing Hearts on Contraception. At Sabbath Moments I wrote about what St. Benedict calls the “third degree of humility.”
My laptop, from which I do most of my work, is in the shop waiting for a new screen to arrive. I can hardly wait to get it back because working on this blog from the desktop has many drawbacks. I hope not to have any other expensive computer repairs this year. Anyone willing to offer a prayer or two for this intention?
Have a most blessed Holy Week.
Sabbath Moments
March 31, 2012
Awareness of God
Welcome to Sabbath Moments, the meme hosted by Colleen at Thoughts on Grace. Please join us and share your encounters with God this week.
Springing up
This week continues the warm spring weather that has gotten everything blooming early. I was amazed to see some really large stalks of iris already forming buds. The dogwoods are in gorgeous bloom, too, and the lilacs halfway through their season. Hubby has already had to mow the lawn twice. When I see this energy I am reminded that the creative energy of God is boundless.
Yesterday I finally got myself together and planted some of the heirloom tomato seeds I got from Park Seed. Also I planted asparagus bean seeds, cantaloupe, and zucchini seeds in my dome planter that keeps the seeds moist and warm for sprouting. Set in partial sun, they should do well. If we get an ice storm I can move everything into the garage for safety. Yes, we’ve had ice storms here in late April so nothing is really “safe” until after the first of May. It feels good to get a jump start on the veggie season and I’m looking forward to sharing with the neighbors.
The third degree of humility
If you’ve been following my blog you’ll have noticed that I’m quoting the Rule of St. Benedict on his 12 degrees or steps of humility starting with the Ascending and Descending post. Whenever I’m contemplating the Holy Rule, I am engulfed in Sabbath Moments. Today we are instructed by St. Benedict in chapter 7:
The third degree of humility is that a man submits to his superior in all obedience for the love of God, imitating the Lord of whom the Apostle says: He became obedient even unto death” (Phil. 2:8).
Lent and Holy Week seem just perfect for considering this degree of humility. Father Gerard Ellspermann, O.S.B. notes in his commentary:
…a monk looks upon the Abbot as Christ. After all, he truly believes that the Abbot holds the place of Christ for him (Chapter 63). His obedience, then, is not forced, not a natural instinct, not given to obtain a natural reward, but is lovingly given for the love of God, for the sake of Christ.
Oblates, too, can make this degree of humility their own. They do not have the vow, but this spirit of humble obedience will make their Christian life outstanding. He or she must make the will give way totally to God, to observe the Commandments to their full extent and to obey the voice of the Church. There is obedience needed everywhere. The child must obey its parents, husbands and wives one another. In the domain of conscience every Christian needs to submit to the teaching of the Church. Let the oblate, then, have the desire to obey, to be directed where this direction is necessary, especially where authority and subordination take on a character which is necessarily supernatural.
Perhaps this may run too much against the modern spirit of independence. All the more, then, is this humble obedience needed in the world of today. What the oblate should aim at is not merely external obedience, but one which comes from the inmost soul and inspired by the love of God. Otherwise it may become galling subservience to another, deeply resented.
Whether or not a person is a Benedictine oblate we are all bound, as Catholics, to submit to the teaching of the Church, no matter how difficult that teaching may seem to be. In fact, it is by grace that we can live our lives in a humble state of obedience, grow closer to God, and receive enlightenment from the Holy Spirit as to His will.
I think many people don’t understand that every time we use our free will to conform ourselves to the will of God, we are exercising our independence, and that this is the only real independence we have. It’s only when we want to hang on to sinning that we start objecting strenuously and pridefully to what God says is wrong, such as on the issue of contraception, and at that moment we are enslaved. We are, indeed, “a stiff-necked people” (Ex. 32:9, Acts 7:51), but practicing St. Benedict’s third degree of humility frees us.
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Changing Hearts on Contraception
March 29, 2012
Yesterday I opened the subject of The Spiritual Malaise Behind Contraception. Sandro Magister called the dichotomy between Church teaching and behavior of observant Catholics proof of “the relentless advance of secularization.” We have always been told that temptations come from the world, the flesh and the devil. In the case of contraception all three are at work, but the enormous pressure from the world (secularization) can’t be withstood by Catholics who have either lost or never had that profound connection with devout spiritual practices that gave us so many saints throughout the centuries.
Signs of estrangement
Language is powerful. The words we use say a lot about us and where we are in our relationship with God. Let’s take a look at some typical statements I’ve seen on the internet from Catholics regarding contraception to illustrate what I mean:
- I don’t want the Church telling me what to do.
- The Catholic Church is wrong and should get with the times.
- I’ll quit contracepting when the Pope pays for my children’s education.
- The bishop should stay out of my bedroom.
Now, for every italicized word, substitute the word “God”. A tenet of the Catholic Faith is that Sacred Scripture is truth, the Word of God, and Catholic Tradition which finds its roots in Sacred Scripture comes from God. When the Pope and the bishops in union with him teach the truth God revealed, they speak with the authority of God. So people are really saying, “I don’t want God telling me what to do; God is wrong and should get with the times; I’ll quit contracepting when God pays for my children’s education; God should stay out of my bedroom.”
As to the third statement, it is a fact that everything, including money, belongs to God who dispenses it through whatever means He sees fit, so God indeed provides for children’s education and all else that parents may need. For the rest, very, very scary is the spirit of the world. It wants NO relationship with God. These statements are indicative of the spiritual blindness afflicting us.
The role of the Capital Sins
If I had to pick among the Seven Capital Sins that facilitate our fascination with the world to the point that we contracept, they would be:
- Greed
- Lust
- Pride
Greed makes us willing to trade children for status and things. It makes us decide that a certain standard of living is more important that accepting what God wants us to have. It drives us to “keep up with the Joneses.” It’s behind us “needing” to have the latest electronic gadget, entertainment center, dinner at the most upscale restaurant around, a lot of fine jewelry, etc.
The politics of scarcity feeds greed to the point that the United Nations and the U.S. government are trying to force birth control on as many nations as possible. The Malthusians have already been proven wrong, yet nations still try to bully other lesser powers into stunting their population growth, the greater powers eying the natural resources lesser powers have. Greed seeks to deny nations their greatest natural resource, their children.
Lust turns others into objects to be used for our pleasure with no responsibility or respect for the dignity of the person. What is more demeaning to the person than to become an object for someone else’s pleasure?
Pride hides behind the quotes above, and behind lust, placing our opinions and ideas above anyone else’s, especially God’s. Pride cares about what others think, not about what God thinks. And if we don’t care what God thinks, then what kind of relationship do we have with Him in the first place?
These sins are in service to secularization. The more we give in to them the blinder we become. We slowly forget God. We arrive at the point where we believe all that we have and accomplish are through our own intelligence and talent. We are just plain full of ourselves with no room for God.
The antidote to secularization
In recent weeks a number of priests have either written or commented on how hard it is to speak on the subject of contraception. They want to teach the truth and have a genuine fear of turning people off or incurring the wrath of the harpies in the parish. If I may be so bold, I offer to them my insight: Church teaching on contraception will fail to ignite the hearts of the faithful unless it becomes part of the whole of developing the virtues of humility and trust in God. This is our starting point and goes for overcoming addiction to any mortal sin. Unless we get to this most basic level of relationship with God, we can forget about getting people to accept anything except what they want to – the “cafeteria Catholic.”
St. Michael Defeats Satan
Humility and trust in God are nothing more than pretty and useless words, though, without sound spiritual practice. What can we do beyond what the Church requires (the precepts of the Church) to develop humility and trust in God? I’ll offer a couple of things here that have taken me a long way:
- Commit to examining our consciences every day and go to Confession more than once a month. Once a month just isn’t enough for people addicted to mortal sin. Really, if we are trying to strengthen our relationship with God, we need to be thinking about what to do that pleases Him and not what we do that pleases ourselves. The end of the day before going to sleep is the best time to do examine our conscience, accompanied by an act of contrition. Confession – Its Fruitful Practice (With an Examination of Conscience)
is a handy booklet to help us face our sins and amend our lives.
- Make a habit of practicing awareness of the presence of God. It becomes more and more difficult to sin if we habitually recall the presence of God. Ignatian spirituality calls for stopping what we’re doing a couple of times a day to reflect on how we have encountered God that day, praying about what He wants from us here and now, and thanking Him for His graces. With today’s wristwatches being capable of setting off an alarm, it’s easy to set a time to do this, and the time involved is only about 10 minutes. How complicated is that?
- Pray the Traditional Morning Offering from The Apostleship of Prayer. Offering everything of our day to God starts us out on the right foot and combats sinful intentions as we go about our business.
These three simple spiritual practices will lead to others and draw a person slowly but surely into putting God first. Combating secularization gets easier as we seek God’s will in our lives and look to why the Church teaches what she does. We will find ourselves seeking more “God time” daily and find ourselves becoming more humble and trustful of God. We will develop a profound sense of who we really are as children of God. After awhile, the attraction to sins like contraception become weaker and weaker.
Is it easy? No, because it requires firm commitment and a willingness to conform ourselves to the will of God. Is it simple? Yes. What do we have to lose? Hell.
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R. Now and forever!
(Click on the link above to read why I end my posts this way.)
The Spiritual Malaise Behind Contraception
March 28, 2012
In recent weeks the HHS mandate has brought to the fore our First Amendment rights as Americans. Since the mandate is about forcing the provision of “free” contraception on all sorts of entities, and since the Catholic bishops of the United States seem to have finally woken up to the real agenda of the Obama administration, quite a lot of hooey concerning Catholics and contraception has been bruited about in the media. The religious liberty issue, has opened the door to frank discussions on contraception, an extremely touchy topic in the Church, and one we just can’t ignore if we care about our faith and co-incidentally, the future of our country.
I’m one of those introverts Colleen Spiro wrote about in her funny post, Thinking Out Loud. When I’m faced with something as monumentally shattering as the blocking of my first amendment rights of religious liberty, and as monumentally rebellious as the tone of contracepting Catholics in the opinion-sphere, I have to take weeks to chew on the whole thing to sort out my feelings before I jump into the fray. Most of what has been written to uphold Church teaching on contraception lately has been good and truthful, but, in my opinion, unsatisfactory in changing the hearts of so many Catholics who are rebelling against it.
You can learn a lot from Father Mitch Pacwa’s good article in the National Catholic Register, Abortion, Contraception, and the Church Fathers. And our Catholic sacred Tradition comes from the Apostles and Christ who were Jews, so we can go back to the Old Testament to find out how God felt about contraception in Genesis 38:9-10 where He slew Onan for practicing coitus interruptus, calling contraception “detestable.” However, Father Pacwa’s article, quoting the Bible, and reading blog posts about what Pope Paul VI wrote in Humanae Vitae pretty much amounts to spitting in the wind where committed Catholic contraceptors are concerned. That’s because of the deep spiritual sickness behind the practice which makes a person blind and deaf to God’s will.
How the contraceptive mentality grew in the Church
Although the battle against contraception is ages old as we see from the sources cited above, the bishops of the Church have a lot of damage to undo regarding their failure to teach unequivocally throughout the 20th century until now the whys and wherefores regarding the evils of contraception. The shocking open rebellion against Pope Paul VI’s Humanae Vitae was a blatant sign of how fatally divorced Catholics at large, theologians, and those in religious life had become from seeking God’s will in their own lives and a humble assent to the truths of the Catholic faith. This rebellion could not have happened if so many Catholics were not already well on their way to spiritual blindness.
Sandro Magister of Chiesa takes us closer to one aspect of how the contraceptive mentality began to grow in the 20th century Church when he writes “Ego te absolvo.” The Catholic Route to Birth Control on September 8, 2010, and gives us more insight into how the whole “follow your conscience” thing got promoted without qualification or education on what a rightly formed conscience is.
In A Case of Conscience. Confessors and Contraception from September 15, 2010, he writes:
But then the guidelines of the hierarchy became more strict. Beginning with the 1931 encyclical by Pius XI Casti Connubii, confessors began to be told not to rely on “good faith” anymore, but to instruct the penitent on the gravity of the sin that he was committing…
…In contemporary practice, however, many priests continued to give absolution without inquiring too much into the behavior of spouses, counting on their “good faith.”
I recommend reading both articles because they point us in the right direction – a problem of the heart. In “Ego te absolvo” Magister’s illuminating introductory paragraph gets right to it:
“It is believed to be one of the most reliable proofs of the relentless advance of secularization: the contrast thought to have been created between Church teaching on contraception and the actual behavior of the population, including observant Catholics.”
I spent many years not practicing my Faith at all, pretending God didn’t exist, living as a secular humanist stuck on stupid. As I look into my own heart for the answer to why Catholics contracept and why many fight giving it up, I see the “diabolical disorientation” Sister Lucy of Fatima wrote about in numerous letters to priests and fellow religious and in books she has written.
Getting back to basics
To be a good Catholic one must assent to the teachings of the Church (CCC #892) which come from Sacred Scripture and Tradition whether or not we understand the whys behind a teaching. A corollary obligation is that we must study and learn our Faith, which is a life-long effort. As Father John Hardon, S.J. (RIP) said so often, “Catholics who just come to Church once a week and do nothing else will not be saved.”
After much prayer and consideration, I believe I finally got what he was saying. Accompanying the assent to and study of the Faith is adhering to the laws of God and the Church while simultaneously developing an ever closer relationship with God. I don’t think the two can be separated – assent and adherence on the one hand, and relationship with God on the other. I also don’t think that priests and bishops can even get to first base with Catholic contraceptors without framing the subject within one of the most basic foundation stones of relationship with God: trust in Him.
Tomorrow in Changing Hearts on Contraception I’ll take up what I believe to be the solution to counteracting the contraceptive mentality. It’s not easy, is a long and arduous journey back from darkness, and requires the right use of our free will, but it is simple.
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R. Now and forever!
(Click on the link above to read why I end my posts this way.)
Sunday Snippets – A Catholic Carnival
March 25, 2012
This post is linked to RAnn at This That and the Other Thing, our wonderful hostess for this meme.
My laptop screen has gone black. After two tries at rebooting and some ignorant tinkering I’m afraid it won’t return. It’ll be Monday before I can do anything about it, so from my trusty desktop come the links for my posts this week. I’ll try to visit the other participants of the Snippets meme as much as I can, but sitting at the desktop for a time gets to my back. Anyway, welcome and I hope you enjoy what I’ve written this week.
St. Joseph, Fatima, and Fatherhood is about all three. You might find some things you didn’t know about Fatima and St. Joseph here.
The Things That are Caesar’s is about true citizenship.
Sabbath Moments mentions a Lenten meditation book I recommend, and the second degree of humility from the Holy Rule of St. Benedict. Also, a little bit of Shakespeare is thrown in to the mix.
God bless all of you and thanks for stopping by.
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R. Now and forever!
(Click on the link above to read why I end my posts this way.)
Sabbath Moments
March 24, 2012
Awareness of God
This post is linked to Colleen, hostess of the meme, at Thoughts on Grace.
Rain
After last summer’s dry, scorching heat, a mild fall and winter that has been, for the most part dry, we have gotten many days of blessed rain. It’s the kind of rain that is a mercy to end drought. I thought of Portia’s words from Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice:
The quality of mercy is not strain’d,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.
Today, after the week’s rains, all is a lovely, fresh green and the air is clean. Everything is blooming early because of the mild winter, and soon it will be time to transfer seedlings to their permanent place in the Earthboxes and along the fence. God has surely blessed us and answered our prayers for rain.
Visit to the Blessed Sacrament
I’m back to my Lenten schedule of visiting the local parish church on Friday mornings to spend time with Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. I took with me my new book, Meditation on the Passion, edited by Father Reginald Walsh, O.P. It’s newly republished by Preserving Christian Publications and is the first book I’ve had using the Ignatian approach to meditation – one reason I bought it. The book is hardcover with 305 pages, originally published in England in 1922 from a collection of meditations a nun had written, but edited for lay use. I highly recommend it as a Lenten companion.
Since my approach to meditation has always been more in the Carmelite mode, it will be broadening to use the Ignatian method to contemplate the scriptures on our Lord’s passion.
As I rested in prayer I was conscious of the peace only Christ can give. It’s really good to get away from our daily places of work and living and go to the quiet of the church where Jesus waits for us so patiently.
St. Benedict’s second step of humility
From chapter 7 of the Holy Rule:
The second step of humility is that a man loves not his own will nor takes pleasure in the satisfaction of his own desires; rather he shall imitate by his actions that saying of the Lord: I have come not to do my own will, but the will of Him Who sent Me (Jn. 6:38).
Father Gerard Ellspermann, O.S.B. comments:
…If we are able to submit our will to God, then it will not be so difficult to attain to the third degree of humility, i.e., subject our will to a superior, or to the fourth, i.e., to oppressors and persecutors. If you don’t strive after the will of God in your life, then forget about attaining the third and fourth degree….
…For the oblate this practice of obedience in humility presents itself in various ways, but in concrete forms. As children of the Church we are under obedience to the Pope, our Bishop, our Pastor. There are other fields of obedience open to the oblate — obedience to parents, to employers, to political leaders, to civil laws. We cannot, in fact, do not want to escape obedience. If we wish to be truly Benedictine, we need to emphasize a humble obedience in all phases of our lives. Be it so!
Speaking as a stubborn, self-willed person, obedience is hard. Becoming docile to the will of God can be difficult, but it is also very freeing. Humility is the basis for trust in God, our starting point for the virtue of obedience.
It seems counter-intuitive, but true humility doing the will of God takes us very far in life. Not being rich and famous necessarily, but in showing God’s love to our neighbor – spreading the wealth of inexhaustible grace and bringing others to Christ. Grumpy, stingy obedience – that is, obedience lacking humility, makes us stingy and grumpy with our neighbor. In that mood, the light of Christ is blocked and our neighbor is poorer for it.
Christ gave His all to the Father, completely humiliated in His passion and death on the cross. Can we do any less and call ourselves Christian?
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R. Now and forever!
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The Things That Are Caesar’s
March 22, 2012
The Tribute Money, c. 1640, Mattia Preti (1613-1699),Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan
As protests for and against the fundamentally fatally flawed and unjust HHS mandate issued by the Obama administration continue to bubble and boil in the public sphere, we Christians have to look hard at our rights, duties, and obligations with regard to the way our government is behaving.
As I wrote in On Being Faithfully Catholic and American, our God-given natural rights are being violated and The Common Good thwarted. Any thinking person knows that there is no such thing as a free lunch, so there is no such thing as “free contraception.” Somebody somewhere will have to pay for it, regardless of how the Obama administration tap dances around the mandate. That somebody is the total citizenry via our taxes, no matter how convoluted the path is into the coffers of the pharmaceutical companies.
Our society has become confused as to what is Caesar’s and what is God’s. A large percentage of society, in fact, doesn’t believe in God and therefore doesn’t believe that anything belongs to Him. And so we have the fallacious law of behavior: what’s mine is mine and what’s yours is mine. And I’ll pay Caesar with your money to get the free stuff that Caesar “owes me”.
Denial of the existence of God doesn’t change the fundamental truth that He is, was, and always will be; and that all power, as Jesus told Pilate in John 19:11 comes from above. Caesar’s power comes from God, even if he denies that it does.
With the help of philosophy professor D.Q. McInerny of Our Lady of Guadalupe Seminary in Denton, Nebraska, we can take a closer look at how to separate Caesar’s things and God’s things and what Caesar has a right to claim, and what we are obliged to give him.
In reflecting on the words of Christ in Mark 12:17, Luke 20:25, and Mt. 22:21, McInerny says:
…it should be immediately clear to us what it is that we ought to be rendering to God, what it is that we owe to Him. In a word, everything–our whole heart, soul, strength, and mind. “Caesar,” for us, could be said to represent whatever duly established civil government we happen to be subject to. The question then becomes, What is it that we owe to Caesar? What kind of obligations do we have toward the political community to which we belong and the government that guides and directs it?
We are dealing here with a fundamental question of justice which is rendering to others what is due them. Justice is a social virtue. As McInerny says, “It is the virtue which, faithfully practiced, binds human communities together, making them coherent wholes.”
From this we can see that Caesar owes us and we owe him. It’s a two way street that I’ll let Dr. McInerny explain:
Next we recall the three principal divisions of justice, called respectively distributive justice, commutative justice, and social justice. Distributive justice applies to those whom St. Thomas Aquinas describes as “having the care of the community,” which is to say, those who are part of the government in one capacity or another. They have many obligations towards those whom they govern, but the most basic of which, according to St. Augustine, is to establish and maintain a society that is marked by “the tranquility of order,” which is St. Augustine’s definition of peace. But the peace in question must be true peace, that is, peace based on justice.
Those who govern must govern justly, which means that they must foster the common good.
Commutative justice is the justice which the citizens of a political community display toward one another. And social justice — sometimes called legal justice — is the just behavior of the citizenry as directed toward those who govern them.
Social justice directly deals with the question of what it is that we should render to Caesar. It means more than obeying just laws. McInerny says:
…the city in which we now find ourselves is a temporal one, but so long as we ourselves are in time it is the city in which we have been appointed to dwell, and within which, to the best of our abilities given the circumstances, we have to work out our salvation. We cannot, then, shirk the responsibilities we have, in justice, towards those who govern us in the political order.
Nonetheless, we have to admit that we are often confronted with onerous difficulties when it comes to showing an active fidelity toward a government, by freely meeting the obligations we have toward it as citizens, and that is because, we can honestly say, the government, such as it is, is not worthy of our fidelity.
The most important obligation of any government, in justice, is to promote a true common good for its citizens, that is to say, to create a cultural atmosphere in which moral virtue is fostered and protected.
So how does mandating contraceptive coverage foster moral virtue and protect it? How does killing babies in the womb do that? How does hiding the truth of the health dangers of the pill promote moral virtue? How does the promiscuity enabled by contraceptives help society? Where is the natural right to life, liberty, and property here when the government facilitates the breaking of the Ten Commandments? And if the government can mandate universal contraceptive coverage, what’s to keep it from mandating who should die, when they shall die, and how they shall die, just like prisoners on death row?
McInerny tells us:
St. John Chrysostom, in commenting on the response Our Lord gave to the Herodians and Pharisees, wrote the following: “But when you hear the command to render to Caesar the things of Caesar, know that such things only are intended which in no way are opposed to religion; if such there be, it is no longer Caesar’s but the Devil’s tribute.”
Our obligations toward a government do not cease if the government is not what it should be — e.g., if it disregards the common good, if it enacts laws which, because they are contrary to the natural law (the universal moral law) do not even have the status of law and therefore cannot command obedience — but in circumstances such as these the manner in which we meet those obligations takes a new form.
We are confronted with a situation where the government is behaving unjustly because it is not meeting its own obligations toward the citizenry. That being the case, the citizens must do everything in their power to return the government to its senses, so that it acknowledges its obligations in justice, and lives up to them. Practically speaking, this would entail effecting a thoroughgoing reform of the government, or, if that fails, bringing about a change in government.
In the end, the most valuable tribute we can render to Caesar is the coin of justice.
Some of us are past the point where we can physically participate in the reform of government. We can always pray, though, for all of our elected officials. We can do penance and make voluntary sacrifices. We can fast and abstain from pleasures for the sake of their souls. Parents can raise their children to have a solid relationship with God and teach them how to think straight. What’s more, God accepts the pleas of the few to save the many. Just ask Moses. He plead God not to destroy the Israelites for worshiping the golden calf and God listened to him.
With the Light of the World in our hearts, we can shine into the darkness and show the way of salvation. The worst thing we can do is nothing.
St. Joseph, Fatima, and Fatherhood
March 19, 2012
The title of this post is the same as the title of a pamphlet by Msgr. Joseph A. Cirrincione: St. Joseph, Fatima and Fatherhood
Many people are unaware of what the children saw just before the miracle of the sun at Fatima that fall day of 1917. First they saw the Blessed Virgin dressed in white with a blue mantle to the right of the sun. To the left of the sun they saw St. Joseph holding the Child Jesus in his arms and both were blessing the world. Only Lucy saw the subsequent two apparitions, all three of which symbolize, among other things, the Joyful, Sorrowful, and Glorious mysteries of the Rosary. This makes sense, of course, because after this Our Lady revealed the name under which she was appearing: Our Lady of the Rosary.
Msgr. Cirrincione tells us at the beginning of this booklet a little of the history of devotion to St. Joseph:
As far as we have any record of this devotion, it was non-existent in the early Church. It was not until the fourteenth century that reasons for honoring him began to be mentioned in scholarly treatises. From then on, development of devotion to St. Joseph was gradual but definite, until it received the great ihttp://www.sufferingwithjoy.com/wp-admin/post-new.phpmpetus given it by St. Teresa of Avila. After than, we can speak of popular devotion to this great saint as growing and attracting favorably the attention of the sovereign Pontiffs, who one after another until our own time, enriched it with official tributes of honor….
…it is noteworthy that Our Lady does not mention her own presence when she tells the children during the fourth apparition that St. Joseph will appear with the Child Jesus on October 13, 1917….
Pope John XXIII added St. Joseph to the canon of the Mass in 1962 after getting input from bishops all around the world. The sensus fidelium brought this about. In most countries of the world, today is a Holy Day of Obligation, but not in the United States.
In these days when the sacrament of Matrimony and the importance of the family is being ground to dust by various groups with ungodly agendas, we can look to the example St. Joseph gave us in his care for the Holy Family. We can meditate on his virtues and refresh our intentions of sacrifice and self-denial in this season of Lent.
St. Joseph was a manly man. I can’t think of a better model for the fathers of today who should hold him in their hearts.
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R. Now and forever!
(Click on the link above to read why I end my posts this way.)
Sunday Snippets – A Catholic Carnival
March 18, 2012
To join this meme and enjoy other Catholic writers’ posts, visit RAnn, our hostess, at This That and the Other Thing.
- This week I wrote about
- Being Faithfully Catholic and American,
- The Common Good,
- Sts. Abraham and Mary, Hermits,
- and some Sabbath Moments that include humility and the practice of the presence of God.
Anybody for the Mexican Hat Dance in space? To read about the Sombrero Galaxy click on the photo. The people who make these images deserve the highest kudos, and we can thank the USA for the mighty Spitzer telescope that brings them to us.
Sombrero Galaxy in Infrared
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(Click on the link above to read why I end my posts this way.)
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