The Food Which Endures: Living a Eucharistic Life

Union with God

2011-05-17T20:49:00.004-04:00

While I was singing at mass on Sunday, I began thinking about how we are united with God. Some people think of that union as a drop of water falling into an ocean. That image would seem to indicate an obliteration of the individual soul in God. I suppose there are aspects where we are no longer separated from God by our own will and ego. However, I was wondering if perhaps this union is not more like the singing of the congregation. In fact, perhaps Gregorian chant is a good metaphor (and we can only grasp with metaphors, with analogies and the like). Everyone singing in unison, the same melody, different voices and timbres. No one voice stands out, but they all create a beautiful, living, vibrant whole. I think of the new wording of the Nicene Creed which we will recite at mass beginning this Advent where we will speak of Jesus being "consubstantial with the Father." That is, the Son and the Father share one substance, yet they are separate persons. So even in the Trinity, the individual is not obliterated in the divine union.

I don't speak of these things from experience. I've been reading St. Teresa of Avila's Interior Castle, and it is clear to me how far I am from what she is talking about. However, God gives us reason, and he gives us desire, and these can inch us along to greater understanding and deeper experience.

Fr. Sieger Köder

2011-05-13T22:33:00.007-04:00

(Sieger Köder, Unexpected-The Closeness of God)

On Holy Saturday I included a painting by Fr. Sieger Köder. I was very taken by that painting.

Here are some places to find out more about Fr. Köder and his art.

Pauline Books has a large selection of posters of his paintings, as well as other media. There you will also find a book by Gemma Simmonds about Fr. Köder's art, Glimpses of the Divine: The Art and Inspiration of Sieger Köder.

Some blog entries about Fr. Köder include sites at Priya and Rev. Nick Helm.

There is an article about Fr. Köder in the November 2010 issue of Catholic Life (article not accessible through this link).

Art can truly help us to meditate on the deep mysteries of our faith, and Fr. Köder's art helps us to do that.

As We Forgive Those Who Trespass Against Us

2011-05-03T21:58:00.004-04:00

It is so hard to live the Lord's Prayer.

There is a place near my neighborhood where an off-ramp intersects with another ramp. The ramp I take has a yield sign; the other ramp has the right of way. However, often when I stop to yield for the other car or cars, a car behind me lays on the horn, trying to get me to go. This is how my day starts on my way to work. Fortunately, or unfortunately (depending on the day), this incident is immediately after morning mass. Fortunately, because hopefully I have had an infusion of grace to help me deal with this situation. Unfortunately, if I succumb to the urgent feeling of wanting to indicate to the driver behind me my irritation. This is such a minor thing, and yet it makes me very angry when it happens.

Jesus asked the Father to forgive his executioners for they did not know what they were doing. Jesus tells us to turn the other cheek and to pray for our enemies. Today was the feast of the apostles Philip and James, martyrs. They too, were to forgive their executioners. So I should at least be able to get over being honked at.

And then there is Osama bin Laden. It is truly difficult to pray for such a man to receive mercy from God. His hatred has cost so many lives. However, Jesus was crystal clear. He was not making a suggestion; he was commanding us. We must pray for our enemies, and bin Laden was Public Enemy Number One. This is where grace transcends our natural instincts. Despite our instincts, this forgiveness is for our own good. It just does not feel that way. However, that is why feelings are not our ultimate gauge for determining the rectitude of an action.

Ordination to Transitional Deacon

2011-04-30T20:43:00.005-04:00

(Ordination at Cathedral of St. Mary of the Assumption in Trenton, NJ in 2010; picture from http://www.nj.com/mercer/index.ssf/2010/06/five_ordained_into_priesthood.html)

Today is a happy day in our archdiocese. Four men were ordained to the transitional Diaconate by Archbishop Dennis Schnurr for the Archdiocese of Cincinnati: Jon-Paul Bevak from Old St. Mary’s Parish (Cincinnati); Dan Hunt from Old St. Mary’s Parish, Matt Robben from St. Joseph Parish (North Bend); Marc Soellner, St. Andrew Parish (Milford). May God richly bless these men, strengthen them, draw them close to Himself, and fill them with the love of Jesus' Sacred Heart so that they may serve His people faithfully throughout their earthly lives.

Spectacle vs. Sacrament

2011-04-29T23:07:00.008-04:00

I caught much of Prince William and Kate Middleton's actual wedding ceremony today. It was a beautiful ceremony, in both its visual beauty and its spiritual beauty. It struck me that the Anglican ceremony has a variety of elements quite similar to a Catholic wedding. The ceremony emphasizes that marriage is intended to be for life. We heard that marriage is intended to be an opportunity for bringing forth children. Furthermore, the ceremony reminds the bride and groom that the purpose of marriage is oriented towards their mutual salvation. Finally, we are told that human marriage reflects the union of Christ and His Church. All of these are critical aspects of what a marriage is.

Unfortunately, these values were utterly lost in the media coverage. All of the emphasis of the coverage was on spectacle. So much spilled ink and blather about "the dress." One would scarcely be aware that there was a religious ceremony involved. This is why the motto for Engaged Encounter is so powerful: "A wedding is for a day. A marriage is for a lifetime. The Nicene Creed calls us to be mindful "of all that is seen and unseen." These are things that William and Kate may very well understand. These are not things, however, that those covering their wedding understand. And unfortunately, they are not things that many couples understand upon entering marriage these days. Those involved in marriage preparation ministry have their work cut out for them.

The Bishop of London gave a beautiful sermon at the wedding. If only the media coverage had picked up on some of his themes. He began by quoting St. Catherine of Siena, whose feast day is today. Then the Bishop said something that no one in the media seemed to find noteworthy, perhaps because it was to them a "dog bites man" story: "As the reality of God has faded from so many lives in the West...." Yes, the sacrament was lost, and only the spectacle seen, like smoke seen from a distance too far to observe the fire itself.

Here is the full text of the Bishop of London's sermon:

"Be who God meant you to be and you will set the world on fire."

So said St Catherine of Siena whose festival day this is. Marriage is intended to be a way in which man and woman help each other to become what God meant each one to be, their deepest and truest selves.

Many people are fearful for the future of today’s world but the message of the celebrations in this country and far beyond its shores is the right one – this is a joyful day! It is good that people in every continent are able to share in these celebrations because this is, as every wedding day should be, a day of hope.

In a sense every wedding is a royal wedding with the bride and groom as king and queen of creation, making a new life together so that life can flow through them into the future.

William and Catherine, you have chosen to be married in the sight of a generous God who so loved the world that he gave himself to us in the person of Jesus Christ.

In the Spirit of this generous God, husband and wife are to give themselves to each other.

The spiritual life grows as love finds its centre beyond ourselves. Faithful and committed relationships offer a door into the mystery of spiritual life in which we discover this: the more we give of self, the richer we become in soul; the more we go beyond ourselves in love, the more we become our true selves and our spiritual beauty is more fully revealed. In marriage we are seeking to bring one another into fuller life.

It is of course very hard to wean ourselves away from self-centredness. People can dream of such a thing but that hope should not be fulfilled without a solemn decision that, whatever the difficulties, we are committed to the way of generous love.

You have both made your decision today – “I will” – and by making this new relationship, you have aligned yourselves with what we believe is the way in which life is spiritually evolving, and which will lead to a creative future for the human race.

We stand looking forward to a century which is full of promise and full of peril. Human beings are confronting the question of how to use wisely the power that has been given to us through the discoveries of the last century. We shall not be converted to the promise of the future by more knowledge, but rather by an increase of loving wisdom and reverence, for life, for the earth and for one another.
Marriage should transform, as husband and wife make one another their work of art. It is possible to transform so long as we do not harbour ambitions to reform our partner. There must be no coercion if the Spirit is to flow; each must give the other space and freedom. Chaucer, the London poet, sums it up in a pithy phrase:

"Whan maistrie [mastery] comth, the God of Love anon,
Beteth his wynges, and farewell, he is gon."

As the reality of God has faded from so many lives in the West, there has been a corresponding inflation of expectations that personal relations alone will supply meaning and happiness in life. This is to load our partner with too great a burden. We are all incomplete: we all need the love which is secure, rather than oppressive. We need mutual forgiveness in order to thrive.

As we move towards our partner in love, following the example of Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit is quickened within us and can increasingly fill our lives with light. This leads on to a family life which offers the best conditions in which the next generation can receive and exchange those gifts which can overcome fear and division and incubate the coming world of the Spirit, whose fruits are love and joy and peace.

I pray that all of us present and the many millions watching this ceremony and sharing in your joy today will do everything in their power to support and uphold you in your new life. I pray that God will bless you in the way of life you have chosen. That way which is expressed in the prayer that you have composed together in preparation for this day:

God our Father, we thank you for our families; for the love that we share and for the joy of our marriage.
In the busyness of each day keep our eyes fixed on what is real and important in life and help us to be generous with our time and love and energy.
Strengthened by our union help us to serve and comfort those who suffer.
We ask this in the Spirit of Jesus Christ. Amen.

I have to admit, I'm a sucker for a guy who quotes Chaucer in the original Middle English.

The beauty of Catholicism (and in this regard, Anglicanism, too), is that we do not need to choose between spectacle and sacrament. God made us bodily creatures, not incorporeal angels. He made us take in the natural world through the senses, and He makes the supernatural world present to us through the senses as well. That is why sacraments have form and matter, so that we could take in the unseen by way of the seen. That is why we cannot choose one without the other. Spectacle without sacrament is a shell without a nut; sacrament without spectacle is ascending a mountain so high that one suffocates at the summit from lack of oxygen.

This Is Not My Day

2011-04-26T23:28:00.002-04:00

Usually when we say "This is not my day" we mean that we are having a bad day. Things are not turning out as we had planned.

However, I have recently tried to say early in my day, "This is not my day" to remind myself that this is God's day, not mine. "This is the day which the LORD has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it" (Psalm 118:24). I should be seeking to fulfill His plans, not mine. The success or failure of my day should be benchmarked against how much my actions conform to His will.

Everything I have is God's, not mine. That includes my time. It is often the distractions and the obstacles that are where we are most closely encountering God in our day. When we appear to be most off course, most off track, it is precisely then that we are often most engaged in doing God's will.

Ironically, it is when I accept the fact that "This is not my day" that my day will be better, not worse.

Catholic Identity

2011-04-25T22:08:00.005-04:00

Tonight we watched a documentary film called Barnstorming. It is a wonderful story about two men who fly antique planes and in 1999 set down in a hayfield on a farm in Indiana. They form a friendship with the family who owns the farm, and year after year the pilots return to renew that friendship and spread the love of flight.

One of the interesting aspects of this film to me is the Dirksen family who own the farm. Matt and Paula Dirksen, along with their large family, portray their Catholicism in very quiet but visible ways. I first noticed the crucifix on a bedroom wall. Then there was the sweatshirt of one of the daughters, which read "Seton" (with a cross forming the "T" in the middle of the name). The family said grace at the table, using the common Catholic prayer of "Bless us, oh Lord, and these thy gifts...." There was the size of their family (six or eight children, I didn't get a certain count). And that was it. No more than that. But that was quite a bit. Quite a bit, indeed.

It's the little things that add up to big things.

I remember being at a faculty interview session a number of years ago where a candidate was facilitating an exercise. The exercise was geared to show how race is invisible for some and visible for others, but in this case it revealed something else to me that I never forgot. We were asked to describe ourselves with three words. I was thinking of words like "patient" (I forget the other two adjectives), focusing on descriptors that were pertinent to me and my individuality. However, one of the current faculty members included among his words "Catholic." That descriptor had never occurred to me. He said but a simple word, yet that example of faith and Catholic identity has stuck with me over the years, and I have tried, with varying degrees of success, to live up to his example.

Our Catholic identity is part of our responsibility to bring the Gospel to the world. It helps us to build a community that strengthens each other when challenged by a sometimes very hostile culture. It helps us to give witness to others that our faith permeates every aspect of our lives and is not a mere accessory. The resurrected Christ in His glorified body still bore the marks of the Cross. Those marks caused Thomas to believe. We, who are the Body of Christ, are marked through our baptism and confirmation. Those marks can be a source of faith for others if we just let them.

Easter Sunday

2011-04-24T10:57:00.010-04:00

(William Adolphe Bouguereau, The Holy Women at the Tomb, 1893)

But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they went to the tomb, taking the spices which they had prepared. And they found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in they did not find the body. While they were perplexed about this, behold, two men stood by them in dazzling apparel; and as they were frightened and bowed their faces to the ground, the men said to them, "Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen." (Luke 24:1-5)

So he went in to stay with them. When he was at table with them, he took the bread and blessed, and broke it, and gave it to them. And their eyes were opened and they recognized him; and he vanished out of their sight. They said to each other, "Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the scriptures?" (Luke 24:29-32)

And when he had said this, as they were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. And while they were gazing into heaven as he went, behold, two men stood by them in white robes, and said, "Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven." (Acts 1:9-11)

So often we are looking for Jesus in all the wrong places. The women went to the tomb looking for a dead man when the One they sought was alive. The two men travelling on the road to Emmaus did not recognize Jesus who was with them on the journey. They only recognized him in the breaking of the bread, in the Eucharist. At the Ascension, the apostles are looking at Jesus leaving them, but He is not really leaving them.

I am reminded of a story that a priest told during a homily about a little boy preparing for his first Communion. This boy knew where to look for Jesus. Another priest was not convinced that the little boy understood enough about the Eucharist to take his first Communion. However, in talking with the priest, the boy pointed to the crucifix in the church and said, "That looks like Jesus but is not Jesus." Then pointing to the tabernacle, the boy said, "That does not look like Jesus but is Jesus." Then, pointing to the priest himself, the boy said, "That does not look like Jesus but is Jesus. Only fatter." The boy understood the crucifix to be only an artistic portrayal of Jesus, the Eucharist to be the Real Presence of Jesus, and the priest when saying mass to be standing in persona Christi.

Echoing Matthew 25:31-46, Mother Teresa said: "I see God in every human being. When I wash the leper's wounds I feel I am nursing the Lord himself. Is it not a beautiful experience?" (Carol Kelly-Gangi, editor, Mother Teresa: Her Essential Wisdom, p. 19). As with the disciples on the road to Emmaus, Jesus is in front of us every day in the people we encounter. We merely need the eyes of the little boy or Mother Teresa to see them and Him.

Jesus is not hiding from us. Yet we seem to look for Him where He isn't and miss Him where He is. May this great Easter season we are embarking upon fill us with the grace we need to seek first the kingdom, and then we will find the King.

Holy Saturday

2011-04-23T09:06:00.007-04:00

Tomb by Sieger Köder, found at http://contemplativecottage.com/2010/04/02/holy-saturday/

For us today, Holy Saturday is a time of waiting, of expectation, of longing. For Mary, Mary Magdalene, the Twelve, and Jesus' other disciples, Holy Saturday was when time stood still. They had no expectation, no longing. They had only confusion and grief, disorientation and loss.

However, they also had hope. Their hope was a very different kind than ours. Their hope was that of Abraham's before offering his son, Isaac, as sacrifice. Their hope was that of Job when he had lost everything dear to him. Their hope was Daniel in the lion's den. Their hope was Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the furnace. Their hope was the psalmist's in Psalm 22, which begins with "My God, my God, why has thou forsaken me? (1) but ends with "Posterity shall serve him; men shall tell of the Lord to the coming generation, and proclaim his deliverance to a people yet unborn, that he has wrought it" (30-31).

This is the hope that holds out despite the temptation to despair, despite all empirical evidence pointing against hope, because this hope is rooted in trust in God's love for us.

For those of us on this side of the Resurrection, our hope is that of those who have heard the witness of the triumph of Love over Death. The seventeenth-century Carmelite, Brother Lawrence, had a profound epiphany of God's caring for us that led him to a radical trust in that care:

That in the winter, seeing a tree stripped of its leaves, and considering that within a little time the leaves would be renewed, and after that the flowers and fruit would appear, he received a high view of the providence and power of God, which has never since been effaced from his soul. That this view had perfectly set him loose from the world, and kindled in him such a love for God that he could not tell whether it had increased during the more than forty years he had lived since." (The Practice of the Presence of God with Spiritual Maxims, p. 15.)

It is because of the Resurrection that Brother Lawrence could see the return of Spring in terms of God's providence.

Perhaps those who loved Jesus and mourned his death remembered his words as Matthew tells us:

"Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you shall eat or what you shall drink, nor about your body, what you shall put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add one cubit to his span of life? and why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lillies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O men of little faith? Therefore do not be anxious, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' For the Gentiles seek all these things; and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things shall be yours as well. Therefore, do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Let the day's own trouble be sufficient for the day." (Mathew 6:25-34)

Through their hope, those who loved Jesus sought first the kingdom, although many no doubt wondered if that kingdom had been but a beautiful dream, a mirage, an illusion. Yet, they hoped anyway.

Let the day's own trouble be sufficient for the day. Let Holy Saturday be a time when we remember that heart-rending loss. However, let us also dwell in the luxury we have that they did not: we need not be anxious, because we know what tomorrow will bring: Life-giving Love.

Good Friday

2011-04-22T16:40:00.017-04:00

(Georges Rouault, Christ on the Cross, 1936)

Since Good Friday was the day I longed for even while I was away from the Church and did not believe in God, it is fitting that I get back to this blog on this most compelling day.

We went to our parish's Good Friday liturgy and veneration of the Cross. My son referred to it as "the strangest mass" he'd ever seen. I told him that was very perceptive. After explaining that it was not a mass, we talked about what had happened and what it meant, and that this liturgy was special because this day is special.

Venerating the Cross has always had a special place in my heart. There is something about that act of humility, of love, that is very physical, very tangible. This whole day is a dramatic reminder that ours is not a religion of the spirit only, but of the body, and that the two are not opposed but enmeshed.

The modern painter, Francis Bacon, was interviewed by David Sylvester, and when discussing Picasso, Bacon spoke of Picasso's "brutality of fact" (David Sylvester, The Brutality of Fact: Interviews with Francis Bacon, p. 182). The Crucifixion is all about the brutality of fact. That is what today is about: the brutality of fact. Sin is a fact that we attempt to rationalize away in the thick fog of ego, therapy, and relativism. Sin is a fact with brutal consequences. A most inconvenient fact, to re-frame Al Gore's famous title.

The late Fr. Richard John Neuhaus takes up a similar theme in his amazing book, Death on a Friday Afternoon: Meditations on the Last Words of Jesus from the Cross:

The gnostic impulse is still very much with us. We draw back from looking long and hard into the heart of darkness; we recoil from the brute facticity of the horror; we are scandalized by the truth that we worship a crucified God. As well we should be. (p. 120)

We see crucifixes every day. They hang in our bedrooms. But we do not truly see them. We do not truly see the dark event that these sanitized versions dimly reflect.

Bacon painted a triptych, Three Studies for a Crucifixion (1962). The right panel appears below:

This figure is so visceral (literally), so repugnant. It captures the emotion of what the Crucifixion actually was, actually is. The reading from Isaiah at today's liturgy points to this revulsion:

He was spurned and avoided by people, a man of suffering, accustomed to infirmity, one of those from whom the people hide their faces, spurned, and we held him in no esteem. (Isaiah 53:3)

As Fr. Neuhaus says in the quotation above, if we understand the Crucifixion, we should be scandalized.

Bacon was inspired by the medieval crucifix of Cimabue (1272-1274):

If you invert the Cimabue painting, you get something of the broad outline of Bacon's figure. The language that Bacon uses to describe Cimabue's portrayal of Christ is significant:

You know the great Cimabue Crucifixion? I always think of that as an image - as a worm crawling down the cross. I did try to make something of the feeling which I've sometimes had from that picture of this image just moving, undulating down the cross. (The Brutality of Fact, p. 14)

Bacon's words may seem distrubing at first. After all, he is comparing the Savior to a worm crawling down the cross; how repulsive! However, Bacon's words should remind us of two types of Christ from the Old Testament. One is from the great messianic Psalm 22:

But I am a worm, and no man; scorned by men, and despised by the people. (Psalm 22:6)

The other type is from Numbers:

And the LORD said to Moses, "Make a fiery serpent, and set it on a pole; and every one who is bitten, when he sees it, shall live." So Moses made a bronze serpent, and set it on a pole; and if a serpent bit any man, he would look at the bronze serpent and live. (Numbers 21:8-9)

In the Gospel of John, Jesus explicitly links himself to the bronze serpent:

"And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life." (John:3:14-15)

Perhaps Bacon's Crucifixion can help us see our crucifixes in a new light, one that helps us to encounter, however tenuously, the brutality of sin. Yet, we do not remain in that brutality. We know that brutality could not defeat love. Not the sentimental love we see in greeting cards or romance novels. This is a love that has a will of steel, because it is a will wholly consonant with the will of God.

Today is a good day to reflect on the line from the "Animus Christi": "Passion of Christ, strengthen us." Strengthen us to endure the pain of Good Friday and the loneliness of Holy Saturday, as we long for the resurrected joy of Easter.

Making Time for God

2010-08-29T21:24:00.003-04:00

I often complain about "not having enough time for God" in my day. Apparently, God got a bit weary of hearing that, so he made time in my day this week. Twice. On Friday, I dropped my kids off at school, which means I get to work early. Usually that means I simply start work earlier. But as I neared my usual exit to work off the interstate, there was a huge traffic jam on the off ramp. Annoyed, I decide to go up to the next exit instead. It is the long way around, but it was going to be far shorter than sitting in the long line on the highway. But then a thought came to me. By taking this other exit, I would go right past a nearby church. This church has a Eucharistic adoration chapel which I like to go to, but I usually cannot go there, because they close the chapel at noon during the week. However, at this time it would be open. So I went there for a brief but fruitful period of adoration.

The second instance was Saturday. I was attending a day-long workshop on marriage at our local seminary. It was supposed to end around 3:15 that afternoon. We have confession at our parish on Saturdays at 3:00, and it had been 2 1/2 months since my last confession, so I was far past due to go. However, my son had been at a sleep over at a friend's house, and I didn't want to take too long relieving the parents. To my surprise and delight, the workshop ended before 3:00, and I was able to get to confession and still pick up my son just about on time.

I think this week God was saying, "Ok, this time I'll make the time in your week. But from now on, it's up to you!"

I was reading Pope Benedict's Jesus of Nazareth today and came across the section where he talks about Jesus' temptation in the desert. The Holy Father writes:

At the heart of all temptations, as we see here, is the act of pushing God aside because we perceive him as secondary, if not actually superfluous and annoying, in comparison with all the apparently far more urgent matters that fill our lives (p. 51-Large Print edition).

This is in fact what I do, although I tell myself soothing rationalizations (lies) to make me believe that I am doing something far less grievous than this.

All of which ties in nicely with today's readings at mass. The first reading from Sirach and the Gospel reading from Luke focus on humility. Sirach tells us: "Humble yourself more, the greater you are, and you will find favor with God" (Sirach 3:18). Jesus is our example here. He, Who is God, humbled Himself to become a human and to suffer a death of derision and humiliation. Then in the Gospel, we hear: "For every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted" (Luke 14:11). Jesus, Who humbled Himself, was exalted in the resurrection. We are told that if we wish to participate in the "resurrection of the righteous" (Luke 14:14), then we must humble ourselves.

It is important for me to remember that pride--the opposite of humility--is making myself more important than God, more important than my neighbor. It is about exalting my time, my will, above the One Who humbled Himself unto death--for me. I pray that I will keep this in mind the next time I wish to sleep in instead of saying morning prayer or turn in at night without praying, even though found the time to watch television.

Quote of the Day - Mother Angelica

2010-06-27T22:51:00.002-04:00

"If you're not a thorn in somebody's side, you're not doing Christianity right."

Mother Angelica, Mother Angelica's Little Book of Life Lessons and Everyday Spirituality, edited by Raymond Arroyo, p. 18.

Children of Hope - Fostering Eucharistic Adoration among Children

2010-06-24T22:19:00.003-04:00

I was listening to Catholic Answers on the radio and heard Fr. Antoine Thomas of the Community of St. John. I've heard him a number of times, and he does a wonderful job of explaining the faith to young children. He is working on a new project, Children of Hope, which encourages young children to adore Christ in the Eucharist. There are many good things at the website: http://www.childrenofhope.org/index.html. I highly recommend checking out this website and using it to either promote adoration with groups of children, or at least among the children in your life.

Quote of the Day - C.S. Lewis

2010-06-24T21:44:00.002-04:00

Those who talk of reading the Bible "as literature" sometimes mean, I think, reading it without attending to the main thing it is about; like reading Burke with no interest in politics, or reading the Aeneid with no interest in Rome. That seems to me to be nonsense. But there is a saner sense in which the Bible, since it is after all literature, cannot properly be read except as literature; and the different parts of it as the different sorts of literature they are. Most emphatically, the Psalms must be read as poems; as lyrics, with all the licenses and all the formalities, the hyperboles, the emotional rather than logical connections, which are proper to lyric poetry.

C.S. Lewis, Reflection on the Psalms, p. 3.

Seeing with God's Eyes

2010-06-20T17:32:00.005-04:00

Jacopo Pontormo, Supper in Emmaus, 1525 (Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Italy)

(Note the "eye of God" above Jesus' head.)

What does today's second reading at mass and going to the pool have in common?

Let's start with the pool. My family and I went to a large public pool here in Cincinnati. We become very self-conscious about the bodies of others and our own bodies. We see others and we think that we don't measure up. It can be a blow to our self-esteem and our ego. We see others and we are tempted to turn them into objects for our pleasure. As I've been saying recently, bodies matter in Catholic theology. However, the pool can be a glaring example of how bodies should not be treated.

Our bodies are not for lust, but, unfortunately, going to the pool can be a test of "custody of the eyes." We corrupted sight early on. After the Father of Lies told Eve that God was a liar and that she would not die eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, we read: "So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, ... she took of its fruit and ate..." (Genesis 3:6). However, this is not the kind of sight to which God originally called us. We are instead to strive to live the words of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount: "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God" (Matthew 5:8). If we can see others with the eyes of God, not as something for our gratification, but as children of God, then we can see them with a pure heart. And when we see them as God sees them, then we see God for we are using His eyes.

There is also the flip side of that situation. We can objective ourselves. Walking around in public can be a very humbling experience. At the pool we see many people who are physically attractive as the world preaches it. I'm not exactly the model for a Greek statue, so it is easy to imagine being viewed by others as deficient physically (even if that is not how others actually view me). I was rather heavy when I was young, and it is hard to shed that perception of myself, even though I am not now overweight. But still, I'm rather flabby (which would be helped if I would just exercise like my doctor tells me to do). I was walking around feeling somewhat embarrassed by my appearance, when I went into the pool because my son called to me. It wasn't anything he said. It was how he looked at me. Children, especially young children, have a way of looking at you that just shouts how much they love you. The amazing thing is that they see you. They don't see how much you weigh or whether you have well defined abs. They don't see how much money you make or don't make. They don't see whether you are successful or unsuccessful in the eyes of the world. All they see is the parent who, with the power of God, created them and loves them as bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh. Or, if they are adopted, they see a parent who loved them so much that he or she chose them to be his or her own. They love us despite our flaws. They see us as God sees us. They see us as we are - we who yell at them, get impatient with them, don't always listen to them - and they love us anyway. They see us as we are - we who have the capacity to love, who have the desire to do what is right, who attempt to help others. And they see us as we want to be - heroes and saints.

So what does this have to do with today's second reading from the Letter of Paul to the Galatians (3:26-29):

Brothers and sisters: Through faith you are all children of God in Christ Jesus. For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free person, there is not male and female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s descendant, heirs according to the promise.

God does not make distinctions among people as the world makes distinctions. The things that divide us from each other do not divide us from God. We must seek to see as God sees, and then we will love as God loves.

Ask for Help

2010-06-13T18:47:00.005-04:00

Today's readings for mass speak to us of the tendency toward sin of human beings, the initiative of contrition, and the need for God's forgiveness.

The first reading comes from 2 Samuel 12:7-10,13:

Nathan said to David: “Thus says the LORD God of Israel: ‘I anointed you king of Israel. I rescued you from the hand of Saul. I gave you your lord’s house and your lord’s wives for your own. I gave you the house of Israel and of Judah. And if this were not enough, I could count up for you still more. Why have you spurned the Lord and done evil in his sight? You have cut down Uriah the Hittite with the sword; you took his wife as your own,and him you killed with the sword of the Ammonites. Now, therefore, the sword shall never depart from your house, because you have despised me and have taken the wife of Uriah to be your wife.’ Then David said to Nathan, “I have sinned against the LORD.” Nathan answered David: “The LORD on his part has forgiven your sin: you shall not die.”

The Gospel reading comes from Luke 7:36-50:

A Pharisee invited Jesus to dine with him, and he entered the Pharisee’s house and reclined at table. Now there was a sinful woman in the city who learned that he was at table in the house of the Pharisee. Bringing an alabaster flask of ointment, she stood behind him at his feet weeping and began to bathe his feet with her tears. Then she wiped them with her hair, kissed them, and anointed them with the ointment. When the Pharisee who had invited him saw this he said to himself, “If this man were a prophet, he would know who and what sort of woman this is who is touching him, that she is a sinner.” Jesus said to him in reply, “Simon, I have something to say to you.” “Tell me, teacher, ” he said. “Two people were in debt to a certain creditor; one owed five hundred days’ wages and the other owed fifty. Since they were unable to repay the debt, he forgave it for both. Which of them will love him more?” Simon said in reply, “The one, I suppose, whose larger debt was forgiven.” He said to him, “You have judged rightly.” Then he turned to the woman and said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? When I entered your house, you did not give me water for my feet, but she has bathed them with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You did not give me a kiss, but she has not ceased kissing my feet since the time I entered. You did not anoint my head with oil, but she anointed my feet with ointment. So I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven because she has shown great love. But the one to whom little is forgiven, loves little.” He said to her, “Your sins are forgiven.” The others at table said to themselves, “Who is this who even forgives sins?” But he said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.”

Yesterday my daughter and I were going to confession. Today at lunch, I talked about confession with my daughter and my son. I asked them, "Why do we need to go to confession once we've been baptized?" My son gave me a much more profound answer than I would have furnished. He ran over to the refrigerator and pulled off a sign we have there for the kids to remember when they are frustrated because they feel that they can't do things like homework or a game or a sport. My son pointed to the second item on the list: "Ask for help." How true. At confession we are asking God for help. We are saying, "God, I can't do this on my own." (We are acknowledging that we are not Pelagians.)

The only prayer that Jesus taught us (the Our Father) is composed of seven petitions. That is, we ask for God's help seven times.

Sometimes we don't go to confession because we are afraid. Sometimes we don't go to confession because we are proud. In both cases, we are unwilling to ask for God's help, either because we don't want to embarrass ourselves, or because we don't think we need confession. Either way, we are saying that we won't ask for God's help because we choose to elevate our embarrassment or our pride above God's mercy and grace.

Let us all ask God for His help and go to confession regularly.

The Immaculate Heart of Mary, or Sylvia Poggioli Explains It All To You

2010-06-12T11:42:00.006-04:00

Today is the Memorial of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Today's Gospel reading for mass is the finding of Jesus in the Temple when he was a boy:

Each year Jesus’ parents went to Jerusalem for the feast of Passover, and when he was twelve years old, they went up according to festival custom. After they had completed its days, as they were returning, the boy Jesus remained behind in Jerusalem, but his parents did not know it. Thinking that he was in the caravan, they journeyed for a day and looked for him among their relatives and acquaintances, but not finding him, they returned to Jerusalem to look for him. After three days they found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions, and all who heard him were astounded at his understanding and his answers. When his parents saw him, they were astonished, and his mother said to him, “Son, why have you done this to us? Your father and I have been looking for you with great anxiety.” And he said to them, “Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” But they did not understand what he said to them. He went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them; and his mother kept all these things in her heart. (Luke 2:41-51)

There are two aspects I want to focus on here regarding Mary. The first is that Mary did not understand what Jesus was telling her. She was at Ground Zero of salvation history, but as a human being, her understanding of what God was doing was limited. The second aspect is that despite (or because) she did not understand, she reflected on these events, on these words and "kept all these things in her heart." Lack of understanding provoked reflection to produce greater understanding.

With these ideas in mind, let us turn to the news reporting of National Public Radio's Sylvia Poggioli. In the last week she has had two reports about Catholicism. The first report was about adult women who had affairs with priests. Her report, "Letter from Priests' Lovers Reignites Celibacy Debate" is laughable as professional journalism. For a good critique, see the June 8, 2010 post at Get Religion. According to Poggioli:

In an unprecedented move, a group of Italian women who have had relationships with priests wrote an open letter to Pope Benedict XVI, saying that priests need to love and be loved.

What is this unprecedented move? A letter signed by...three women. An Italian woman, Stefania Salomone, claims that 40 women contacted her but want to remain anonymous. The Pope called celibacy "a sacred value," but Salomone told Poggioli: "And so we decided to tell people this is not a value, and this is not a sacred value, because sacred is the right of people to get married." This statement is illogical. All men have the ability to get married--instead of becoming a priest. The Catholic Church is not somehow denying anyone a right to be married. But no one has a right to be married and a priest (any more than anyone has a right to be a priest). The illogic continues when Poggioli says, "They [the women who have had affairs with priests] say a priest 'needs to live with his fellow human beings, experience feelings, love and be loved.'" The idea that priests do not live among their fellow human beings, do not experience feelings, do not love and are not loved is simply a denial of reality. I heard the other day about a priest who described his call to priesthood this way: one day he saw a very beautiful woman, and he thought, "I wonder what it would be like to be married to her Creator." Those don't sound like the words of a repressed or oppressed man.

Poggioli goes on to say: "But it's an open secret that priestly celibacy is often violated." The argument that celibacy should end because it is violated is utterly preposterous. With that kind of logic, one could argue with a straight face that marriage should be ended because it is often violated by adultery. Speaking of adultery, Salomone does not seem to grasp the adulterous nature of her relationship with the priest (adulterous on both sides). A vow to fidelity means that violating the vow is adulterous, whether we are talking about marriage or celibacy. Salomone told Poggioli, "'I think I represented a stain on his church dress,' Salomone says. 'He wanted to see me, but after seeing me he was not happy with his decision. He always tried to find a way to go away. I wasn't seen as a woman, I was seen as a danger, as a sin.'" This is always the way people act in an adulterous relationship, because adultery turns us from God, from others, and from ourselves.

Another of Poggioli's reports this week was on June 11, "Pope Begs Forgiveness Over Abuse Scandal." At the end of that report is an attempt to link the sex abuse scandal to celibacy:

Friday's Mass was preceded by a vigil service Thursday night in St. Peter's Square in which the pope responded to pre-selected questions from five priests.‬‪ In one query, Benedict was asked about "the beauty of celibacy."

Benedict called celibacy a great sign of faith and said it represents an act of transcendence that brings the priest closer to God.‬‪‬‪ The Catholic Church has denied that celibacy is one of the causes of child abuse in the priesthood — but even some leading cardinals have begun to question the requirement and are urging an open debate on the topic.‬‪

But the Vatican discouraged reporters from seeking the views of some of the thousands of priests who came to Rome — the Holy See police prevented even Vatican-accredited reporters from interviewing priests in St. Peter's Square.‬

One priest who was willing to speak on the sidelines of the ceremony was the Rev. Jose Vasco of Mozambique.‬‪

"The church first tried to resolve the cases on its own," Vasco said. "But now that they have become so grave, the church must seek the full truth, and to do that we need joint commissions with lay people, with civil society, especially at a time when there is the appearance that the church has protected the guilty ones."

Vasco said he would welcome the idea of a debate on celibacy to determine whether it could be one of the causes of the sex abuse crisis and if it should be mandatory.

Poggioli says: "The Catholic Church has denied that celibacy is one of the causes of child abuse in the priesthood — but even some leading cardinals have begun to question the requirement and are urging an open debate on the topic." The Church doesn't have to deny that celibacy is one of the causes of child abuse in the priesthood because there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that it is. This, despite remarks made in March by Cardinal Schonborn of Austria.

So what does all of this have to do with the Immaculate Heart of Mary? Let's go back to lack of understanding and reflection. Pope Benedict rightly speaks above about celibacy being "an act of transcendance." It is precisely this point that Poggioli, Salomone, and many others do not understand. Western culture is so saturated with a stunningly debased and reductionist notion of human sexuality that things like celibacy simply do not make sense. In fact, in secular culture, things like "transcendence" do not make sense.

Which brings me to reflection. When things do not make sense, one response is to examine them further, trying to learn what we don't understand, determining if there is more there than we initially thought. This is the kind of reflection that Mary did, the contemplation that keeps things in the heart. Then there is another response, a response that turns a blind eye to anything that does not fit one's own agenda or paradigm, that grinds axes to a sharp edge, that seeks to malign through implication when facts aren't available. This response closes the heart. We all have these two hearts at different times and different settings. This is how Mary differs from us. She has one heart, the first kind, the kind where lack of understanding provokes reflection to produce greater understanding.

Feast of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus

2010-06-11T22:41:00.004-04:00

Image from the Oblates of St. Francis de Sales (http://www.oblates.us/heart.htm)

As the Incarnation and the Resurrection teach, the body matters. Last Sunday's Feast of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ reinforced this message. And in case we did not get it through those reminders, today we celebrate the Sacred Heart of Jesus. We reflect that Jesus had a physical heart of flesh and blood. We reflect that he had a spiritual heart that encompasses love for every single human being, from the greatest saint to the most vile sinner. The image of his heart is pierced, reminding us that love requires sacrifice. There is a flame above the heart, showing us that warms us, consumes us, fires us up.

A year ago I was at a funeral mass on the Feast of the Sacred Heart. There I decided that I would receive communion on First Fridays in devotion to the Sacred Heart. I have done that for the next twelve months. I am only scratching the surface of this devotion. I pray that the next year brings me deeper into Jesus' Sacred Heart.

Feast of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ

2010-06-06T21:17:00.004-04:00

Joos van Wassenhove (active c.1460-80), The Institution of the Eucharist
c.1474; Oil on panel; Gallery of the Marches, Ducal Palace, Urbino, Italy

Today we celebrate the feast the focuses our attention on the Eucharist: The Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, or Corpus Christi. As my son sat next to me at mass today, periodically pressing his body up against mine or putting his hand on my arm, I thought about how in human experience, bodies matter. Children love to sleep with their parents or with their brothers and sisters for the sense of closeness and belonging. The marital act is all about emotional and physical bonding. In pregnancy, the mother is so close to the child that she carries the child physically within her. Fathers will never know that kind of closeness with their children.

All of this help us to understand the Incarnation and the Eucharist. In the Old Testament God dwelt in the Tabernacle and later in the Temple as the shekinah. God thought, How can I draw closer to these people? And of course, the answer was, By becoming one of them. Hence the Incarnation, where Mary carried Jesus for ten months. As the new English translation of the Nicene Creed will say, Christ "was incarnate of the Virgin Mary," for a man can be born of a woman, but only a god can be incarnate, that is, the divine spirit becomes enfleshed as a human. We remember the beginning of the Gospel of John through our prayers of the Angelus: "And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us." Matthew quotes Isaiah 7:14 using the term "Emmanuel," meaning, "God with us" (Matthew 1:23).

One might be tempted to think that incarnation was sufficient. However, God thought, How can I continue to live up to the name Emmanuel - "God with us"?

Lessons from the Garden - Coming Up from the Roots

2010-06-06T00:26:00.003-04:00

Gardening can teach us many lessons. One of those lessons is resilience. Many plants have the amazing property of coming back from their roots after significant damage. I remember when I was a junior in high school many years ago. One of our neighbors had a maple tree growing in their back yard. I took some of the many seeds from that tree that year and planted six of them in a dirt patch in our back yard. Two of them came up. While they were both quite small, my dad did not see them one weekend and mowed over them. I was quite upset (not thinking that I should have marked them off so dad would clearly see them), and I left them in the ground, despite an impulse to just pull them up. Much to my surprise, they came back from the roots. Both those trees are now in the front yard of my parents' house with double trunks, a visual reminder of that earlier trauma to them which they overcame by regenerating from their roots.

I recently had a repeat of that experience. I have a couple of bronze fennel plants in my garden, and a third one came up outside of the border, in the grass, by our porch. I never told my wife about this plant, never put some border or markings around it, and, sure enough, she mowed over it. I left it in the ground, and, sure enough, it came back from the roots.

These plants can teach us the importance of going back to our roots after a trauma, after a devastating loss. If we are rooted in God, if we go back to the roots of our faith in the Scripture and the teachings of the Church, then we can begin again with new life. I remember when I returned to the Church but still struggled with my faith (not that we ever fully complete struggling in our faith life until we no longer need faith in the company of God). I made my first confession in probably thirteen years, and my confession was that I didn't know if I believed in God. The priest, a wonderful Franciscan, asked me if I wanted to believe in God. I said I didn't know. He did not need to absolve me, but he did, sensing something moving in me that I didn't understand. We were going to mass the next day, and he asked me to really reflect on the Creed when we said it. I was thinking, "But this is my point, I don't believe everything in the Creed." However, he understood that reflecting on the Creed is about going back to our communal and personal roots. The Creed is the foundational statement of what we believe, or at least what we ought to believe. The Creed is what the godparents assent to for the infant at Baptism, and the Creed is what the congregation reaffirms when a child is baptized at a mass. When we struggle in our faith or morals in our lives, we go back to the grace of the Holy Spirit from our Baptism and Confirmation for the strength to overcome those struggles.

If we go back to our roots, we can find the resources to restore the life we had, or perhaps live life more abundantly than before.

Quote of the Day - Abba Poeman

2010-06-03T23:31:00.003-04:00

Abba Poeman was asked for whom this saying is suitable, "Do not be anxious about tomorrow." (Matt. 6.34) The old man said, "It is said for the man who is tempted and has not much strength, so that he should not be worried, saying to himself, "How long must I suffer this temptation?" He should rather say every day to himself, "Today."

The Sayings of the Desert Fathers by Benedicta Ward, SLG, p. 185, Poeman 126.

Pachomius and the Day of Remission

2010-05-28T21:56:00.004-04:00

I am currently reading a wonderful book by Fr. William Harmless, S.J. called Desert Christians: An Introduction to the Literature of Early Monasticism which focuses on Egyptian anchoritic (hermits) and cenobitic (communities) forms of monasticism. The person often credited being the father of cenobitic monasticism is Pachomius, who lived in the 4th century. Pachomius founded a series of monasteries in the upper Nile region of Egypt (southern Egypt). One of the practices of Pachomius' monasteries was the Day of Remission, when annually his monks all gathered at the main monastery in Pbow (in the month of August) to reconcile with each other. Here is how Pachomius describes the Day of Remission in a letter:

The time is coming near for us to assemble together, according to the custom of remission, following the early prescriptions to convene together in order to carry out the remission and pardon. Let then everyone pardon his brother according to the commandment of God and in conformity with the laws which were written for us by God. Let everyone totally open his heart to his brother. Let the brothers share their judgments with one another. Let their souls be cleansed in sanctification and fear of God. Let there not be any enmity in their hearts. Let them rather know how to act in truth with one another, for it is a commandment of the law of God to seek peace and to walk in it before God and men. (Pachomius, Epistle 7, quoted in Harmless, Desert Christians, p. 130)

Reconciliation is central to the Christian life. Christ's death on the cross reconciled human beings to God. The sacrament of Reconciliation is a complementary sacrament to the Eucharist. I have been praying through the Gospel of Matthew, and it is clear that that gospel is insistent on reconciliation, especially early on:

Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. (5:7).

But I say to you that every one who is angry with his brother shall be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother shall be liable to the council, and whoever says, 'You fool! shall be liable to the hell of fire. So if you are offering your gift at the altar, and there you remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift. (5:22-24)

But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. (5:44-45)

And forgive us our trespasses,
As we also forgive those who trespass against us (6:12)

Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get. (7:1-2)

Go and learn what this means, "I desire mercy, and not sacrifice." (9:13)

Inspiring words that are very, very difficult to live. Even if you were one of Pachomius' monks who had "renounced the world" and come to live an austere life of prayer and work in the Egyptian desert, you took the world of fallen human nature with you inside the monastery walls. Pachomius understood how central reconciliation is to the Christian life, and his Day of Remission was a wonderful way to remind his monks of that centrality, since it was only one of two days each year that all the monks gathered together. The other day was Easter.

Words of Wisdom Regarding Teaching from one of the Desert Mothers

2010-05-17T22:30:00.002-04:00

As a teacher, I greatly appreciate this saying from Amma Theodora, one of the Desert Fathers and Mothers:

The same Amma said that a teacher ought to be a stranger to the desire for domination, vain-glory, and pride; one should not be able to fool him by flattery, nor blind him by gifts, nor conquer him by the stomach, nor dominate him by anger; but he should be patient, gentle and humble as far as possible; he must be tested and without partisanship, full of concern and a lover of souls.

As teachers we think about things like subject matter expertise, rubrics, grades, learning styles, etc. What we do not think enough about - what I know I do not think enough about - is being full of concern and a lover of souls.

J.R.R. Tolkien on Scandal, Faith, and the Eucharist

2010-05-06T22:10:00.007-04:00

I was trawling the library the other day, and I came across The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by Humphrey Carpenter, with Christopher Tolkien (Houghton Mifflin, 1981). I happened by chance to open it up to a letter that Tolkien wrote to his son, Michael, on November 1 (All Saints Day), 1963 (pp. 337-339). It made me think of the clergy sex abuse scandal. It made me think about faith in light of such violations of trust by the predators, as well as the bishops and clergy who enabled them. It reminded me of how the Eucharist is where we should go to reflect, repent, and heal.

You speak of 'sagging faith', however. That is quite another matter. In the last resort faith is an act of will, inspired by love. Our love may be chilled and our will eroded by the spectacle of the shortcomings, folly, and even sins of the Church and its ministers, but I do not think that one who has once had faith goes back over the line for these reasons (least of all anyone with any historical knowledge). 'Scandal' at most is an occasion of temptation – as indecency is to lust, which it does not make but arouses. It is convenient because it tends to turn our eyes away from ourselves and our own faults to find a scapegoat. But the act of will of faith is not a single moment of final decision: it is a permanent indefinitely repeated act > state which must go on – so we pray for 'final perseverance'. The temptation to 'unbelief' (which really means rejection of Our Lord and His claims) is always there within us. Part of us longs to find an excuse for it outside us. The stronger the inner temptation the more readily and severely shall we be ‘scandalized’ by others. I think I am as sensitive as you (or any other Christian) to the scandals, both of clergy and laity. I have suffered grievously in my life from stupid, tired, dimmed, and even bad priests; but I now know enough about myself to be aware that I should not leave the church (which for me would mean leaving the allegiance of Our Lord) for any such reasons: I should leave because I did not believe, and should not believe anymore, even if I had never met anyone in orders who was not both wise and saintly. I should deny the Blessed Sacrament, that is: call our Lord a fraud to His face.

If He is a fraud and the Gospels fraudulent – that is: garbled accounts of a demented megalomaniac (which is the only alternative), then of course the spectacle exhibited by the Church (in the sense of clergy) in history and today is simply evidence of a gigantic fraud. If not, however, then this spectacle is alas! only what was to be expected: it began before the first Easter, and it does not affect faith at all – except that we may and should be deeply grieved. But we should grieve on our Lord's behalf and for Him, associating ourselves with the scandalized heirs not with the saints, not crying out that we cannot 'take' Judas Iscariot, or even the absurd & cowardly Simon Peter, or the silly women like James' mother, trying to push her sons.

It takes a fantastic will to unbelief to suppose that Jesus never really 'happened', and more to suppose that he did not say the things recorded all of him – so incapable of being ‘invented’ by anyone in the world at that time: such as ‘before Abraham came to be I am' (John viii). ‘He that hath seen me hath seen the Father’ (John ix); or the promulgation of the Blessed Sacrament in John v: ‘He that he eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath eternal life.’ We must therefore either believe in Him and in what he said and take the consequences; or reject him and take the consequences. I find it for myself difficult to believe that anyone who has ever been to Communion, even once, with at least a right intention, can ever again reject Him without grave blame. (However, He alone knows each unique soul and its circumstances.)

The only cure for sagging of fainting faith is Communion. Though always Itself, perfect and complete and inviolate, the Blessed Sacrament does not operate completely and once for all in any of us. Like the act of Faith it must be continuous and grow by exercise. Frequency is of the highest effect. Seven times a week is more nourishing than seven times at intervals. Also I can recommend this as an exercise (alas! only too easy to find opportunity for): make your communion in circumstances that affront your taste. Choose a snuffling or gabbling priest or a proud and vulgar friar; and a church full of the usual bourgeois crowd, ill-behaved children – from those who yell to those products of Catholic schools who the moment the tabernacle is opened sit back and yawn – open necked and dirty youths, women in trousers and often with hair both unkempt and uncovered. Go to Communion with them (and pray for them). It will be just the same (or better than that) as a Mass said beautifully by a visibly holy man, and shared by a few devout and decorous people (it could not be worse than the mess of the feeding of the 5000 – after which [Our] Lord propounding feeding that was to come.)

I myself am convinced by the Petrine claims, nor looking around the world does there seem much doubt which (if Christianity is true) is the True Church, the temple of the Spirit dying but living, corrupt but holy, self-reforming and a rearising. But for me that Church of which the Pope is the acknowledged head on earth has as chief claim that it is the one that has (and still does) ever defended the Blessed Sacrament, and given it most honor, and put it (as Christ plainly intended) in the prime place. ‘Feed my sheep’ was his last charge to St. Peter; and since his words are always first to be understood literally, I suppose them to refer primarily to the Bread of Life. It was against this that the W. European revolt (or Reformation) was really launched – the ‘blasphemous fable of the Mass’ – and faith/works a mere red herring. I suppose the greatest reform of our time was that carried out by St. Pius X: surpassing anything, however needed, that the Council will achieve. I wonder what state the church would now be but for it.

Tolkien's letter is a beautiful hymn to faith and the Eucharist, a sorrowful lament on scandal and sin. He reminds us that sin was present from the beginning of the Church, and it will remain with us until Christ's Second Coming. Just to be clear, the clergy sex abuse scandal has been a terrible, terrible scourge to the victims, and nothing, absolutely nothing can justify either the molestations or the cover-ups. When the media has spoken the truth (which, unfortunately, they have not always done), they have done a great service to the victims and to the Church. What Tolkien reminds us is that the Church is made up of sinners in need of redemption, reconciliation, and amendment; however, that does not negate the fact that the Church is Christ's church (not ours), His body, and that Who He is and what He said is truth itself. What these few but tremendously destructive priests did to the bodies of children and teenagers is a stark contrast to the body which Our Lord gave for us on the cross out of love--the body we receive in the Eucharist; the body which these same priests were ordained to act in the stead of, in persona Christi.

First Communion

2010-05-01T22:28:00.004-04:00

(Pablo Picasso, First Communion, 1895/1896)

Today was my daughter's First Communion. It was a beautiful liturgy. My daughter already has a very deep devotion to Christ in the Eucharist through adoration, so it was very moving to see her partake in the ultimate intimacy of receiving Him. There was the usual party, and it was wonderful to celebrate with family and friends. There was the cleaning of the house, the buying of the dress and gifts. All these things were enjoyable, but it was also good to remind ourselves that they were merely accessories. The reason for this day is Christ and His love for us. I had no anticipation about how moving I would find this day, but both my wife and I cried a number of times. It is my prayer that for the rest of her earthly life my daughter will continue to receive Jesus in the Eucharist and grow in love for Him and His Church.

Union with God

2010-04-28T22:31:00.006-04:00

Ignoring the imperfections of others, preserving silence and a continual communion with God will eradicate great imperfections from the soul and make it the possessor of great virtues. (St. John of the Cross, The Sayings of Light and Love, 118)

Someone asked Abba Anthony, 'What must one do in order to please God?' The old man replied, 'Pay attention to what I tell you: whoever you may be, always have God before your eyes; whatever you do, do it according to the testimony of the holy Scriptures; in whatever place you live, do not easily leave it. Keep these three precepts and you will be saved.' (Sayings of the Desert Fathers, Abba Anthony, 3)

That we should establish ourselves in a sense of God's presence by continually conversing with Him. That it was a shameful thing to quit His conversation to think of trifles and fooleries. (Brother Lawrence, The Practice of the Presence of God, First Conversation)

St. Francis de Sales

2010-04-24T19:03:00.004-04:00

A colleague of mine gave me a copy of St. Francis de Sales' Philothea, or An Introduction to the Devout Life. I have heard a little of St. Francis' work, but not much. I am enjoying The Devout Life. I'm trying to go through it slowly, prayerfully, but I am like a leashed dog who wants to run ahead of its owner.

There are many passages I have liked. Here is one:

Recount all the mercies He has bestowed upon you, and how you have in return abused them; above all how many inspirations you have despised, how many good impulses you have neglected. How many Sacraments have you received and where are their fruits? where are those precious jewels with which your Heavenly Spouse adorned you? with what preparation have you received them? Think over all this ingratitude, and how God has ceaselessly sought you to save you, whilst you have always fled from Him that you might lose yourself. (Part First, Chapter XII [Meditation IV - Sin])

So much wisdom in this short passage. St. Francis is big on gratitude (what saint was not?). Not only does he have us focus on our sins of comission, but he has us reflect on our sins of omission as well. Recall all the times God has been calling us to do something, and we didn't do it, either because we didn't want to, or because we were "too busy" to even hear the call in the first place? St. Francis' attention to how we approach the sacraments is critical. How many times have we gone up to receive our Savior's body and blood, soul and divinity as though we were in line at a cafeteria ordering fried fish! Do we prepare for the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass by praying over the readings of the Mass beforehand? Do we come to church early to pray before Mass begins? If we go to the Sacrament of Reconciliation at all, do we take time for a thorough examination of conscience, or do we just "get it over with"? The sacraments offer infinite grace to us, but we only receive as much grace as we are open to receive. Jesus warns us about false prophets, saying: "You will know them by their fruits" (Matthew 7:16). We can tell how little we have been open to the grace of the sacraments by our pitiful fruits. Do we think of the sacraments as "precious jewels from our heavenly spouse"? Most of all, do we think about how God is the "Hound of Heaven" and how we run from Him towards our own destruction, a destruction which we clothe in the guise of "freedom" or "self-actualization" or "free-thinking"? I know I have so often fallen short in these ways, and in many more.

So let us all pray for St. Francis de Sales' intercession that we will stop running from God, that we will open ourselves to His ocean of grace, that we will seek out His sacraments with humility, gratitude, and preparation. St. Francis, pray for us.

Mercy, Resurrection, and Reconciliation

2010-04-11T14:06:00.005-04:00

Today is Divine Mercy Sunday, the Second Sunday of Easter. We will pray the Divine Mercy Chaplet as a family for the first time. Today is a good day to reflect on mercy, on reconciliation, on resurrection.

Yesterday my daughter and I went to confession. I have been trying to get to confession more often - every 2 to 4 weeks or so. Going to confession more often has helped relieve the anxiety that I have long felt about confession ever since I was a child. Fortunately, my daughter has almost no anxiety about confession. As I was waiting in line for confession, I realized that the One who waits for me in the tabernacle to be with me is the same One who waits in the confessional to show me mercy. That connection between the Eucharist and Reconciliation helped me to both be less anxious about confession and to see more clearly the connection of the two sacraments.

We attend a couples Bible study each month which I lead. We have been studying the Acts of the Apostles since September. We read from Acts when Paul is before King Agrippa, testifying that he lived as a Pharisee, which was the sect of Judaism that believed in the resurrection of the dead, as opposed to other sects of Judaism, such as the Sadducees:

And now I stand here on trial for hope in the promise made by God to our fathers, to which our twelve tribes hope to attain, as they earnestly worship night and day. And for this hope I am accused by Jews, O king! Why is it thought incredible by any of you that God raises the dead? (Acts 26: 6-8).

Old Testament references to the hope to which Paul refers can be found in Ezekial 37:1-14 ("I will open your graves and have you rise from them") and Hosea 6:1-2 ("He will revive us after two days; on the third day he will raise us up, to live in his presence").

In his work, The Resurrection of the Dead (210 A.D.), Tertullian links resurrection and reconciliation:

Therefore, the flesh shall rise again; certainly of every man, certainly the same flesh, and certainly its entirety. Wherever it is, in the safekeeping with God through that most faithful agent between God and man, Jesus Christ, who shall reconcile both God to man and man to God, [and]the spirit of the flesh and the flesh to the spirit (63:1).

The resurrection reconciles the body with the soul. Confession reconciles people with God. On this Divine Mercy Sunday, let us remember that Jesus, who conquered Death, waits for us to go to the Sacrament of Reconciliation to receive His mercy so that we may be united with Him in the life of the Trinity through grace.

Quote of the Day

2010-04-08T23:46:00.002-04:00

The true sense of the teaching authority of the pope consists in his being the advocate of the Christian memory.

Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, "Conscience and Truth" in Catholic Conscience: Foundation and Formation (Braintree, MA: The Pope John XXIII Medical-Moral Research and Education Center, 1991), 22.

Holy Week and Vulnerability

2010-04-03T22:45:00.004-04:00

I was thinking about vulnerability during this Holy Week. A human being is usually vulnerable through power or intimacy (or both). The poor or the uneducated can be vulnerable to the power of those who exploit their situation. A spouse can be vulnerable to the words or actions of the other spouse in the most intimate of relationships. The word vulnerable comes from the Latin word vulnus, which means wound. It makes me think of Original Sin and our wounded human nature. Because of that wound, we needed a Savior, and because we needed a Savior, we needed a Sacrifice, since only love could save us, and real love is self-giving. Another meaning of vulnus is disaster, and it certainly seemed a disaster on that first Good Friday and Holy Saturday. However, what appeared to be a disaster became our salvation.

Even God makes Himself vulnerable. In the beginning, He gave us free will because love cannot be compelled. God allowed Himself to not be loved, so that we could know love. When He became a man, he made Himself a vulnerable baby: God needed the protection of a lowly carpenter and his teenage wife to protect Him from the murderous King Herod. Jesus made Himself vulnerable to betrayal from His closest friends. Judas turned Him over to the power of the the religious authorities. Peter denied knowing Him. All the apostles except John abandoned Him at the Crucifixion. Jesus subjected Himself to the power of the Roman Empire in His scourging, in the mocking, in His march with the cross, and in His crucifixion. There is speculation that He was naked on the cross, which is about as vulnerable as one can be. From the cross, Jesus voiced the great prayer of vulnerability, Psalm 22: "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me!" The five wounds of Christ are the marks of His vulnerability. The beautiful prayer, the Anima Christi, reminds us that Christ's vulnerability can be our stronghold: "Within your wounds, hide me."

From the vulnerability of the Crucifixion came the strength of the Resurrection. From Christ came two very intimate sacraments with great power: the Eucharist and Reconciliation. In the Eucharist, Jesus makes Himself vulnerable to us. He opens Himself to neglect, to sacrilege, and to indifference in exchange for giving us the opportunity for the intimacy of receiving Him into our bodies. In Reconciliation, we make ourselves vulnerable, exposing our most embarrassing, our most humiliating, and our most degrading sins in exchange for the the opportunity for the intimacy of receiving His vast mercy. From both of these sacraments we encounter the tremendous power of grace.

Vulnerability can lead to strength. Such a paradox. Holy Week is a time for contemplating paradox, for contemplating the contradiction of the cross.

The Master Has Need of It

2010-03-28T22:26:00.002-04:00

During the reading of the Gospel at the Procession from today's Palm Sunday mass, I was thinking of the passage about the untying of the colt. The owners of the colt ask the disciples why they are untying the colt, and Jesus has already told the disciples to respond, "The Master has need of it" (Luke 19:34). This line struck me as a wonderful reminder of how Jesus calls each of us to serve Him in small, unnoticed ways, because He has need of us to do so. Just as He rode the colt in His triumphant procession into Jerusalem, we, too, can be instruments for the Lord to carry out His work in humble ways. Sometimes we are tempted to say that we are not important, or that we have no purpose. However, Jesus tells us that the this is not true. Jesus chose that colt for that occasion. This Holy Week, let us humbly submit to the Lord, serving Him in whatever way He asks, no matter how small, no matter how seemingly insignificant, knowing that the task He selects for us is meant to move us closer to eternal life with Him. Let us trust Jesus when He tells us that He has need of us.

Some Thoughts on Fasting

2010-03-05T20:25:00.005-05:00

I don't like fasting. I'm of Italian heritage, and we like our food. This Lent I'm trying to fast on Fridays by skipping lunch. I have had some difficulty doing this. Last week I gave in and add some food (still not a whole lunch, but not what I had planned). Today I made it, with some help from the wisdom of others.

Fr. Mark, a Benedictine monk from the Tulsa, OK diocese has a wonderful blog, Vultus Christi. In his entry from February 23, he says that each Lent he chooses a saint (or actually, he asks the Lord each to choose a saint for him) to be his companion for the season. I thought that was an excellent idea. I am trying to walk with St. John of the Cross this Lent. Currently, I am reading his Sayings of Light and Love. Here are a couple of passages that are relevant for fasting:

If you make use of your reason, you are like one who eats substantial food; but if you are moved by the satisfaction of your will, you are like one who eats insipid fruit. (#46)

This way of life contains very little business and bustling, and demands mortification of the will more than knowledge. (#58)

Feed not your spirit on anything but God. Cast off concern about things, and bear peace and recollection in your heart. (#81)

I also thought about Philippians 3:19. Speaking of "enemies of the cross of Christ":

Their end is destruction, their god is the belly, and they glory in their shame.

Finally, I started taking a course in moral theology last night, and we discussed values. I thought to myself today, which do I value more, my God or my stomach?

When I am weak, I try to remember that I cannot do this (or any other thing) on my own. I need God's strength. I think of Habakkuk 1:11:

...guilty men whose own might is their god!

And so I will continue to try to learn the lessons of fasting, which Christian tradition highly values as a path towards God.

On the Prophets

2010-02-26T07:08:00.005-05:00

I was reading Habakkuk, one of the "minor" prophets, over the last couple of days. It got me thinking about prophets and what they do.

Prophets listen to God

Samuel says to God, ""Speak, for thy servant hears" (1 Samuel 3:10). Prophets are people who are open to God's call. They live lives of prayer. They listen for the still, small voice (such as Elijah in 1 Kings 19:11-12). Sometimes they are reluctant to accept the call (such as Jeremiah, Isaiah, and Jonah). But ultimately, they submit to God's will for them so they can be His instruments.

Prophets tell truth to power

This is why the prophets endured suffering and death. "Which of the prophets did not your fathers persecute?" (Acts 7:52). "Woe to you! for you build the tombs of the prophets whom your fathers killed" (Luke 11:47). One can understand the reluctance of prophets when receiving their call, because they knew that telling powerful people they are doing wrong is never popular. John the Baptist lost his head over telling Herod that his marriage was contrary to divine law. Jeremiah calls himself "a man of strife and contention to the whole land" (Jeremiah 15:10). This is not surprising, since God tells Jeremiah:

You shall say, "Hear the word of the Lord, O kings of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem. Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, Behold, I am bringing such evil upon this place that the ears of every one who hears of it will tingle" (Jeremiah 19:3).

Leaders of any kind don't like to hear things like this. But God often has hard truths to tell us.

Prophets call the people to conversion

The powerful are not the only ones asked to change. Jonah's message to the people of Nineveh causes them to repentance from the king on down. On Ash Wednesday we hear from the prophet Joel:

"Yet even now," says the Lord, "return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; and rend your hearts and not your garments." Return to the Lord, your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and repents of evil. (Joel 2:12-13)

Hosea, who uses spousal imagery to describe the covenantal relationship between God and His people, calls the people of Judah to conversion:

I will return again to my place, until they acknowledge their guilt and seek my face, and in their distress they seek me, saying, "Come, let us return to the Lord; for he has torn, that he may heal us; he has stricken, and he will bind us up." (Hosea 5:15-6:1)

When Judah's love proves false, God says, "I have hewn them by the prophets" (Hosea 6:5). The way a lumberjack would cut down a tree, the prophets cut down our defenses, our rationalizations, our self-deceptions. All falsehood falls before the prophets' words of truth.

Prophets know who is in charge

They do this through prayer: "Be still, and know that I am God" (Psalm 46:10). They come to know that they are prophets because of God, not because of themselves, in contrast to "guilty men, whose own might is their god" (Habakkuk 1:11).

Prophets are faithful

Despite the difficulty of their missions, they persevere. Even Jonah, who fights God every step of the way, fulfills his mission. Their faithful witness is an example to a faithless people.

All the baptized are called to be prophets

We often think of prophets as "other people," in the same way that we too often think of saints. We think that these are people we can never aspire to be. However, such a view is an abdication of our baptismal heritage. In Lumen Gentium from the Second Vatican Council, we are reminded that

...all the faithful, that is, who by Baptism are incorporated into Christ, are constituted the people of God, who have been made sharers in their own way in the priestly, prophetic and kingly office of Christ and play their part in carrying out the mission of the whole Christian people in the church and in the world. (31)

The prophets who came before us are our examples. God the Father Who gave us His Son is our love. Christ Who died for our salvation is our strength. The Holy Spirit who inspires us is our wisdom. We are called to be prophets. The key is to pray, listen, and follow.

Mother of Prophets

One of the titles of Mary in the Litany of Loretto is "Mother of Prophets." As the litany goes, "Mother of Prophets, pray for us."

Winter Thoughts of God

2010-02-14T16:03:00.003-05:00

We have had two snow storms in a week, with a third on its way tonight. Last night as I was praying through lectio divina, I came upon this passage in Isaiah:

Yes, as the rain and the snow come down from the heavens and do not return without watering the earth, making it yield and giving growth to provide see for the sower and bread for the eating, so the word that goes from my mouth does not return to me empty, without carrying out my will and succeeding in what it was sent to do. (Isaiah 55: 10-11)

There is also a passage from Daniel that is applicable to these dreary winter days:

Cold and heat! bless the Lord:
give glory and eternal praise to him.
Dews and sleet! bless the Lord:
give glory and eternal praise to him.
Frost and cold! bless the Lord:
give glory and eternal praise to him.
Ice and snow! bless the Lord:
give glory and eternal praise to him.
(Daniel 3:67-70)

Finally, I was thinking of the opening to Brother Lawrence's The Practice of the Presence of God:

That in the winter, seeing a tree stripped of its leaves, and considering that within a little time the leaves would be renewed, and after that the flowers and fruit appear, he received a high view of the providence and power of God, which has never since been effaced from his soul. That this view had perfectly set him loose from the world, and kindled in him such a love for God that he could not tell whether it had increased during the more than forty years he had lived since. (p. 15)

What I like so much about these passages is that they help us to keep in mind that the natural world can point us towards the supernatural world. Creation can orient our vision towards the Creator. The unpleasantness of winter can be transformed into a penitential experience: we can offer up our frustrations (such as waiting in traffic when it snows) and our discomforts (such as the bitter cold winds). The bare trees can make us think of the coming spring, which can enhance our Lenten preparation for Easter. As Brother Lawrence points out, God is watching out for us. Let us watch for God, in the falling snow, in the hanging icicles, in the wind that blows where it will.

Swindle and Salvation

2010-01-28T23:26:00.002-05:00

I'm reading through Anne Rice's novel, Angel Time. I came across this sentence that I thought was quite apt: "People swindle themselves out of Salvation with great regularity" (p. 58). How true. We've been doing it since Adam and Eve. The sad and troubling part of free will is that no one else but ourselves can swindle us out of salvation. We like to blame others (we've been doing that too since Adam and Eve) rather than accept responsibility for our own actions. Salvation is a gift that we either accept graciously or throw back in God's face. Fortunately, God gives us many opportunities to accept that gift. But we do not have an unlimited number of opportunities to accept that gift. So often we harden our hearts. Or else we become so distracted in our daily lives, that we simply overlook the gift. We are our own worst con men and women. May God's penetrating love turn our stony hearts into natural ones, and may we accept His gift of salvation which came at such a dear price.

Here Am I

2010-01-20T17:08:00.004-05:00

Today I went to the archdiocesan seminary in our neighborhood for Eucharistic adoration. While there, I thought of a passage I have been meditating on for the past few days:

I was ready to be sought by those who did not ask for me; I was ready to be found by those who did not seek me. I said, "Here am I, here am I," to a nation that did not call on my name. (Isaiah 65:1)

I thought about how Jesus substantially resides in the Eucharist, calling us, waiting for us, and how often we are deaf to that call, or ignore it. I thought, "How crazy is it that the God of the Universe is in that box up there? And yet, there He is."

After leaving the seminary chapel, I remembered a winter's scene from years ago when I was in graduate school at Rutgers University in New Jersey. I was an atheist then, so very far from God. And yet, somehow, I felt drawn toward what I did not understand. It was a cold evening, and snow had begun to fall. It was falling hard and accumulating fast. Around 11:00 PM I went for a walk on campus to enjoy the scene. Students were out, playing in the snow like children. I walked past where the students were and went to the chapel. I heard organ music being played inside. The organist did not seem to be playing hymns, but rather classical music (although it may have been sacred music composed by the likes of Bach, for all I knew). I stood on the portico, outside the front doors to the chapel. With a roof over my head, I was dry, but I still felt the fresh, cool weather, and I stood and soaked in the music as I watched the peaceful, falling snow. It was such a beautiful experience.

Looking back, I see it as the still, small voice calling to me. As the remnants of my shattered conscience calling to me. As the Holy Spirit, still there from my baptism and my confirmation, calling to me. And yet, all I could do was stand there outside the doors, unwilling to go in, unable to understand why I was there, and what that meant. However, God gave me the snow; God gave me the peace, as signs, as tokens. These were some of the bread crumbs that God left for me to lead me home. Fortunately, Satan, unlike Hansel and Gretel's hungry birds, could not take these crumbs away to keep me off the path that God was leading me on.

This memory coincides well with a book I am reading. I've started reading Anne Rice's novel, Angel Time. It is about an assassin who grew up Catholic but lost his faith. The description of this character resonates deeply with who I was once (without the assassin part). Here is a passage, where the narrator walks into the Serra Chapel at the San Juan Capistrano mission in California:

I loved the red sanctuary light burning to the left of the tabernacle. Sometimes I knelt right up there before the altar on one of the prie-dieux obviously intended for a bride and a groom.

Of course the golden retablo, or reredos, as it's often called, hadn't been there in the days of the early Franciscans. It had come later, during the restoration, but the chapel itself seemed to me to be very real. The Blessed Sacrament was in it. And the Blessed Sacrament, no matter what I believed, meant "real."

How can I explain this?

I always knelt in the semidarkness for a very long time, and I'd always light a candle before I left, though for whom or what I couldn't have said. Maybe I whispered, "This is in memory of you, Jacob, and you, Emily." But it wasn't a prayer. I didn't believe in prayer any more than I believed in actual memory.

I craved rituals and monuments, and maps of meaning. (p.7)

Like Francis Thompson's "Hound of Heaven," God seeks us even when we are not being sought. He is always here, whether we are aware of it or not, whether we believe it or not.

One of the ways in which He moves us to seek Him is through these impulses that are knit into our deepest selves that we do not understand. We crave rituals and meaning, and this craving leads us to God. If we are lapsed Catholics, then this sense of ritual and meaning has at least been somewhat nurtured in us. As Rice elaborates a couple of pages later:

Maybe when you're brought up Catholic, you hold to rituals all your life. You live in a theater of the mind because you can't get out of it. You're gripped all your life by a span of two thousand years because you grew up being conscious of belonging to that span. (p. 9)

I have always referred to what tugged at me during my apostasy as "ritual and repetition." I used to say "I believe in belief" even when I could not believe in God. Rice is doing a good job of laying out that dynamic interplay of belief and unbelief. "I believe; help my unbelief" (Mark 9:24).

Writing Our Own Prayers

2010-01-16T09:39:00.006-05:00

Sometimes we may feel that the only prayers worth praying are one written by other people. We certainly should feed on the treasury of prayer that has developed over the centuries by people who have diligently pursued closeness to God. The Psalms have been such a treasury for both Jewish and Christian believers for millennia. The Lord's Prayer has a special place, of course, because it came from the lips of Jesus. The Hail Mary is the foundational prayer of the Rosary. Prayers by such saints as St. Francis of Assisi, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Patrick, St. Ignatius of Loyola, St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, St. Teresa of Avila, and others can be tremendous helps to guide our thoughts towards God and deepen our relationship with and understanding of Him.

However, it is important that we learn to pray from our own hearts as well, to speak to God in our own words and through our own thoughts and feelings. We can even write our own prayers that we can pray again and again. Without any prompting, my daughter has written two prayers of her own in the last couple of days.

While the grammar and theology of these prayers may not always be precise (it is of course not possible for us to love God as much as He loves us), they are beautiful expressions of love for God.

Here is the translation into standard English:

God's Praying Prayer

Lord, let us praise you from our hearts. We love you as much as you love us. We promise to bow before you and worship you. I will show you love in the name of my heart. My family will praise you and so will I. Amen.

The Holy Prayer

Store up your minds with all your love. We will worship you as the holy king of heaven. I love you as Mary, your mother loved you. Your father God has been a friend to all people and so have you. We thank you for all your help and teaching. Amen.

My daughter is teaching me a great deal about a contemplative life saturated with the presence of God. Hopefully, I can store up my mind with such love.

Pokey, Protect Jesus from Darth Maul

2010-01-09T09:17:00.003-05:00

Children use their imagination in such entertaining and instructive ways. My kids were playing with a nativity scene, and they were incorporating some of their toys into it. My wife and I then overheard our son say, "Pokey, protect Jesus from Darth Maul." Howls of laughter from the parents ensued.

Once I got over the initial absurdity of that unlikely cast of characters, I began to think more about what was going on in my children's minds.

They were demonstrating that stories matter. Stories are how we communicate to others our deepest values, hopes, and fears. The infancy narratives of the New Testament resonate so much with us because they are stories that allow us to engage--not explain--profound mysteries. The Star Wars saga, from which Darth Maul comes, is a very different kind of story (with some interesting parallels, actually) from the infancy narratives, but it too is a story that resonates with people for a variety of reasons. That story invokes themes of good and evil, heroism and betrayal, and ultimately, redemption. I have no idea how Pokey figures into it. Perhaps he is simply hanging out in the manger looking for food, only to find himself impressed into service to defend the Christ Child.

Stories are a way to communicate truths and emotions that tracts and dissertations cannot do. Think of the different literary genres in the Bible. For instance, consider the difference between the Passion narratives and the letters of St. Paul. In certain respects, St. Paul's letters are often explanations of the meaning and impact of the suffering, death, and resurrection of Christ. As important as such elaborations are, the Passion narratives still convey meanings that no amount of exegesis, no amount of commentary, can ever convey.

I certainly am not saying that the infancy narratives are the same kind of story as the Star Wars saga. They most certainly are not. I do not believe that the infancy narratives are a poignant story of fiction that touches us on an emotional level but are only stories. Rather, they are history told as story, which is quite different than history told as a chronology of facts. History without story is dead to us, and story without history is moving but not saving.

With Pokey protecting Jesus from Darth Maul, I know that my children are getting at some fundamental and important ideas (whether they understand them or not) . Jesus was with farm animals, which is not the usual place for human babies. Jesus needed protecting, as we see with the slaughter of the Innocents and the flight to Egypt. There is evil in the world; there is darkness which seeks to extinguish the Light at every chance it gets. If my children come to more deeply understand only these truths, then they will come to appreciate the Lord's Nativity very deeply indeed.

Kings False and True

2010-01-03T16:53:00.007-05:00

Today in the United States we observe the Solemnity of the Epiphany of the Lord (which actually occurs on January 6). My son, who is in kindergarten, was one of the the Three Kings in the Christmas pageant, and today he got to reprise his role as one of the Kindergarten Kings (along with a Star-Bearer) who processed in at mass and then brought up the bread and wine for the Offertory.

So this week I've been thinking about kings, and what makes them true or false to their role, especially as compared to the King of Kings.

Let's start with today's gospel reading:

When Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, in the days of King Herod, behold, magi from the east arrived in Jerusalem, saying, "Where is the newborn king of the Jews? We saw his star at its rising and have come to do him homage." When King Herod heard this, he was greatly troubled, and all Jerusalem with him. Assembling all the chief priests and the scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Christ was to be born. They said to him, "In Bethlehem of Judea, for thus it has been written through the prophet: And you, Bethlehem, land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah, since from you shall come a ruler, who is to shepherd my people Israel." Then Herod called the magi secretly and ascertained from them the time of the star's appearance. He sent them to Bethlehem and said, "Go and search diligently for the child. When you have found him, bring me word, that I too may go and do him homage." After their audience with the king they set out. And behold, the star that they had seen at its rising preceded them, until it came and stopped over the place where the child was. They were overjoyed at seeing the star, and on entering the house they saw the child with Mary his mother. They prostrated themselves and did him homage. Then they opened their treasures and offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they departed for their country by another way. (Matthew 2:1-12)

We learn many things about true and false kings here. The King of Kings is born in poverty. He is called by the title that will appear on the placard that will hang above him on His cross during His crucifixion ("king of the Jews"). He is a shepherd-king, like his ancestor, David. The Magi are not said to be kings in the Gospel of Matthew, nor did the early Fathers indicate that they were kings (see the Catholic Encyclopedia). But they know how to treat a king, and they pay Jesus homage with gifts and, more importantly, prostrating themselves before Him. Today after mass, my daughter, who loves to prostrate herself in Eucharistic adoration, did so at the tabernacle, and she asked me to do the same. Usually, I save prostration for when I'm alone at the tabernacle, or there with only my family. But there were many people still around from mass. Yet, I took it as God asking me through my daughter to prostrate myself with her, so I did, and I was glad of it.

Herod, on the other hand, is our shining example of a false king. He lies about wanting to pay homage to the newborn king. He is only concerned about maintaining his own power. In the English medieval mystery plays, Herod was always portrayed as insanely angry all the time--the medieval version of someone in desperate need of anger management. As we know, Herod went on to slaughter male children under the age of two in Bethlehem--something no true king would do.

I think of the Third Sorrowful Mystery - the Crowning of Thorns. There, we have soldiers who serve an earthly king - Caesar - mocking Jesus by putting a crown of thorns on Him, giving him a reed for a scepter, and clothing Him with a purple robe, and then beating Him. The true king wears a crown of pain, unrecognized as king by those torturing Him. Then there is Jesus' encounter with Pilate. Pilate, an earthly ruler who condemns Jesus out of fear of the crowds and who contemptuously asks Jesus, "What is truth?" is a stark contrast to the true king before him, the king who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

Herod and Pilate are intimidating figures in their day, but St. Paul reminds us that they do not have the last say:

Yet among the mature we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to pass away. (1 Corinthians 2:6)

The Wise Men who sought the Child Jesus possess a very different wisdom than Herod. And the wisdom that St. Paul imparts is a lasting one, although it is mocked by the powerful of this age. Mary, in her Magnificat, reminds us that God "has put down the mighty from their thrones, and exalted those of low degree" (Luke 1:52). Mary is reiterating the same concept in Sirach: "The Lord has cast down the thrones of rulers, and has seated the lowly in their place" (Sirach 10:14). The writer of Sirach reminds us that "the king of today will die tomorrow" (Sirach 10:10).

I am reminded of the wonderful poem, "Ozymandias," by the English poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley, that reflects on a false king who let pride deform his kingship; his downfall serves as a reminder to us all of the limitations of power and self-interest and pride:

Ozymandias

I met a traveler from an antique land,
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert...Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings,
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

This false King of Kings, Ozymandias, came to nought. As the writer of Sirach says, "The Lord has overthrown the lands of the nations, and has destroyed them to the foundations of the earth. He has removed some of them and destroyed them, and has extinguished the memory of them from the earth" (Sirach 10:16-17). And why? Because "The beginning of man's pride is to depart from the Lord; his heart has forsaken his Maker. For the beginning of pride is sin, and the man who clings to it pours out abominations" (Sirach 10:12-13).

We need to realize that there is One true King, Jesus. But we also need to remember that as baptized Christians, we share in His kingship, as the Second Vatican Council reminded us in Lumen Gentium:

...all the faithful, that is, who by Baptism are incorporated into Christ, are constituted the people of God, who have been made sharers in their own way in the priestly, prophetic and kingly office of Christ and play their part in carrying out the mission of the whole Christian people in the church and in the world." (31)

Were we to fully understand our own participation in the Kingship of Christ, what an epiphany this would truly be.

Faith, Hope, and Charity

2010-01-01T11:11:00.009-05:00

I was at Eucharistic adoration this past week, reading the Bible, and I came across a passage that I had never read before. It is from Lamentations, attributed to Jeremiah, as he laments the destruction of Jerusalem by the Chaldeans in 586 B.C. Amidst the lamentation, there are moments of hope in God's love and faithfulness. The passage I have been reflecting on this week is Lamentations 3:21-23:

But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is thy faithfulness.

Verses 24-33 are also very meaningful to me, but I want to focus on 21-23, because I have been thinking about the theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity (love).

The Cathecism of the Catholic Church (CCC) tells us that "The theological virtues are the foundation of Christian moral activity" and that "They are the pledge of the presence and action of the Holy Spirit in the faculties of the human being" (paragraph 1813).

The CCC defines the theological virtues this way:

Faith is the theological virtue by which we believe in God and believe all that he has said and revealed to us, and that Holy Church proposes for our belief, because he is truth itself (1814).

Hope is the theological virtue by which we desire the kingdom of heaven and eternal life as our happiness, placing our trust in Christ's promises and relying not on our own strength, but on the help of the grace of the Holy Spirit" (1817).

Charity is the theological virtue by which we love God above all things for his own sake, and our neighbor as ourselves for love of God (1822).

The CCC is so helpful. We are reminded that faith is not simply believing in God (as has often been pointed out, Satan believes in God), but in doing what God asks us to do. How do we know what God asks us to do? Through prayer, and through the teaching of the magisterium. We need our own personal discernment and the discernment of 2,000 years of prayerful people listening to God.

Christian hope is not a vague, fuzzy optimism. Christian hope is about getting our priorities straight (making eternal life with God the most important goal of our lives), finding solace in the reliability of Jesus' word, and not placing our hope in ourselves or the world.

Charity is about discovering the Source of love, becoming like a torch, lit by that source, and going out to light the world with the fire of that love.

Here are some of my favorite passages from the New Testament related to the theological virtues:

On faith

As he [Jesus] entered Capernaum, a centurion came forward to him, beseeching him and saying, "Lord, my servant is lying paralyzed at home, in terrible distress." And he said to him, "I will come and heal him." But the centurion answered him, "Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof; but only say the word, and my servant will be healed. For I am a man under authority, with soldiers under me; and I say to one, 'Go,' and he goes, and to another, 'Come,' and he comes, and to my slave, 'Do this,' and he does it." When Jesus heard him, he marveled, and said to those who followed him, "Truly, I say to you, not even in Israel have I found such faith. I tell you, many will come from east and west and sit at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, while the sons of the kingdom will be thrown into the outer darkness; there men will weep and gnash their teeth." And to the centurion Jesus said, "Go; be it done for you as you have believed." And the servant was healed at that very moment. (Matthew 8:5-13)

This is a cautionary tale to Catholics that while "there is no salvation outside the Church," that does not mean that everyone who is a baptized Catholic will be saved, nor does it mean that all who are not baptized Catholics will not be saved. As Jesus reminds us, "Every one to whom much is given, of him will much be required" (Luke 12:48). In addition, this is where we get the prayer we say immediately before receiving Jesus in the Eucharist: "Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word, and I shall be healed." (In the U.S., the English translation we will be saying at mass in a few years will be closer to the Latin text, which is closer to the scriptural text.)

On hope

Always be prepared to make a defense to anyone who calls you to account for the hope that is in you, yet do it with gentleness and reverence. (1 Peter 3:15)

To have true Christian hope, we must understand our faith. And then, knowing what a tremendous treasure we have been given, we must share that wealth with others, always in a charitable manner.

On charity

"A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another." (John 13:34-35)

In his Farewell Discourse before his passion, Jesus orders us to love one another. But he is not talking about some sort of sentimental love, but rather a sacrificial love, because we are being told that we must love as He has loved us, and the way that He loved us was by laying down his life by being lifted up on a cross. This is why the way St. Paul tells husbands how to love their wives is so beautiful, and so daunting: "Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her" (Ephesians 5:25-26).

So in this new year, may we grow more deeply in the theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity.

God as Popster

2009-12-29T20:48:00.003-05:00

I'm a big fan of Fr. Larry Richards. I have listened many times to a couple of wonderful CDs by Fr. Richards: Confession and The Mass Explained. I am currently reading Fr. Richards' book, Be A Man: Becoming the Man God Created You to Be. It's a wonderful book so far. He talks about Jesus telling us to call God not merely our Father but "Abba," a child's term for "father" in Aramaic. In his darkest hour, in the garden of Gethsemane, Jesus prays: "Abba, Father, all things are possible to thee; remove this cup from me; yet not what I will, but what thou wilt" (Mark 14:36). St. Paul reiterates this intimate relationship in two different places. First in Romans: "When we cry, 'Abba! Father!' it is the Spirit himself bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him" (Romans 8:15-17). Then in Galatians: "And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, 'Abba! Father!' So through God you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son then an heir" (Galatians 4:6-7). Fr. Richards reminds us that in the Jewish culture of the first century (and among the Orthodox Jewish faithful today), one could not say aloud the name of God out of reverence for him. However, Jesus told people to call God by the same kind of name a small child would call his or her father. As Fr. Richards puts it, calling God Abba is "not something you decide to do. It's something that the Spirit of the Living God, which was given to you the day you were baptized, cries out to you for you to do" (p. 44).

My second-grade daughter has taken to calling me "poppy" or "popster," depending on her mood. I don't know where she heard these terms; from a cartoon most likely. But she has been calling me these for a while now, and it is very sweet when she does it. If she doesn't physically give me hug when she says it, the way she says it sounds like a vocal hug. As I was reading Fr. Richards, I thought of how my daughter addresses me as "poppy" or "popster," and thought of Jesus telling us how to talk with God. As I seek to take my prayer life to another level, I realize that I need to go down to go up, to become more simple to become more profound. I need to get to the point that Bob Dylan speaks of his in song, "My Back Pages," where he says: "I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now."

Holidays vs. Holy Days

2009-12-27T23:41:00.003-05:00

The phrase "Merry Christmas" seemed to make a comeback of sorts this season. That was good to see. Something that I think is important for religious folks to understand, as well as secular folks, is that "Happy Holidays" does not address what religious people observe during this time of year. For those for whom Christmas is Santa and nostalgic images, then Christmas is indeed a holiday, on par with President's Day, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, Memorial Day, Labor Day, etc. However, for those for whom Christmas is the birth of the Savior of the World, or for those for whom Hanukkah is the remembrance of the re-dedication of the Temple in Jerusalem by the Maccabees after the desecration of the Temple by the Seleucid Empire, then these are not "holidays" but "holy days." While semantically the words are related, the ideas they represent could not be more different. Holy Days represent opportunities to connect with the sacred, to grow closer to God, while holidays are a day off from work and an opportunity for stores to sell more products. People who are "cultural" or "nominal" Catholics treat Holy Days like holidays and are already almost completely secularized. But even for those who are very observant Catholics, there is still the danger that we will make Christmas too much like the secular, eviscerated version. That is why observance of the Advent and Christmas seasons are so important. The four weeks of spiritual preparation (rather than focusing primarily on the shopping, the decorating, and the card-writing) for Advent, and the two-plus weeks of celebration of the Christmas season (from Christmas Eve to the Baptism of the Lord on January 10) are liturgical antidotes to the binge-and-purge mentality of the secular approach to this time of year. So let us celebrate and contemplate the great joy of the coming of Christ, and share that joy with all we meet.

The Reason for the Season

2009-12-25T23:39:00.003-05:00

Shortly before his crucifixion, Jesus had a conversation with Pontius Pilate. Part of this conversation concerned the reason for His Incarnation. Jesus said to Pilate:

"For this I was born, and for this I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth. Every one who is of the truth hears my voice." Pilate said to him, "What is truth?" (John 18:37-38)

The reason we celebrate Christmas is because God was born as a human being. The reason He was born was to "bear witness to the truth." The problem is we are too often like Pilate, and, to paraphrase Jack Nicholson's character in A Few Good Men, we "can't handle the truth."

On this Christmas night, may we draw closer to the One Who is Truth itself. And in the coming year, may we bear witness to the truth to all we meet.

Gimme Shelter

2009-12-22T20:44:00.003-05:00

I continue to think of the theme of shelter in the birth of Jesus. I wrote about this earlier today. I then began to think about different ways in which we give shelter to Jesus. Mary sheltered Jesus in her womb, which is why she is sometimes referred to as a "living tabernacle." Visiting Jesus in the tabernacle for Eucharistic adoration is another setting where Jesus is being sheltered. Of course, receiving Jesus in Holy Communion is a crucial way of sheltering Jesus. Yet another way that we give shelter to Jesus is through spiritual Communion, where we ask Jesus to come into our heart.

We must also not forget those fellow children of God who do not have shelter. Fr. Benedict Groeschel has a recording of the Rosary (The Rosary is a Place) where he meditates on the the Third Joyful Mystery, the Birth of Jesus, as a reflection on how Jesus came in poverty, and how we are to be moved to help those in need. We should be especially mindful of the homeless during this Christmas season. Not only was the Holy Family without a home at Jesus' birth, but they were refugees in Egypt as they sought to escape Herod's slaughter.

While I would not generally look to the Rolling Stones for spiritual inspiration, I find the title of their song, "Gimme Shelter," to be relevant here. Jesus is asking us to give Him shelter. How can we say no?

Christmas Greetings from St. John of the Cross

2009-12-22T00:29:00.003-05:00

I've been reading the poetry of St. John of the Cross. Here is one titled "Christmas Refrain":

The Virgin, weighed
with the Word of God,
comes down the road:
if only you'll shelter her.

The Spanish word translated here as "shelter" is "posada." Today we think of the Mexican tradition of Las Posadas, where during the nine days prior to Christmas (a physical novena, of sorts), people go from house to house re-enacting the wandering of Mary and Joseph looking for a place to stay so Mary can give birth to Jesus. During Las Posadas, neighbors form a procession and knock on the doors of various houses but are not admitted entrance, until one house lets them in, and the neighbors come in to celebrate with a party.

Mary is Jesus' mother, and our mother. If we let her, she will show us the fruit of her womb, Jesus. Pray this Christmas that we will give the Holy Family shelter.

College Football and the Peace of Christ

2009-12-18T23:00:00.005-05:00

Those who are college football fans know Tim Tebow, the amazing quarterback for the University of Florida Gators. His accomplishments in the arena of football are already legendary. However, what I find most interesting about Tebow is his faith and the way he wears it on his sleeve. Actually, he wears it on his eye black. Eye black is the black strip that football players often wear under each of their eyes. Tebow puts scripture verses in white on his eye black. A couple of weeks ago he wrote "John 16:33" on his eye black. That passage reads: "I have said this to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world."

Peace is important to Christ, and to us. However, peace as Jesus speaks of it does not mean the absence of conflict. Jesus talks about giving us peace in the midst of tribulation, not as a replacement of it. Think of the peace that so many martyrs experienced in the midst of their martyrdom. St. Ignatius of Antioch and St. Polycarp spring immediately to my mind. The peace of Christ helps us to oppose the world, and to transform it, because Jesus has overcome the world. John begins his Gospel with this crucial message of Christ's supremacy:

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 were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. (John 1:1-5)

John also focuses on peace elsewhere. When Jesus is telling his disciples about his departure from this world and the coming of the Holy Spirit, he addresses the worries and fears of his followers:

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid. (John 14:27)

Again, we are told that the world is not to be our guide, but Jesus. He often speaks in the Gospels of not being afraid (which Pope John Paul II reiterated throughout his pontificate). Peace does not eliminate trouble, but it does eliminate fear, because we put our trust in the One who is wholly trustworthy.

On the evening of Jesus' resurrection, he appears to the disciples in their closed room and his first words to them are: "Peace be with you" (John 20:19). They were certainly facing tribulation that day, and would in the foreseeable future, but Jesus greets them with a message of peace and trust.

Tim Tebow put John 16:33 on his eye black before Florida fell to Alabama and would not play for their third national championship in four years. Jesus did not promise that there would not be disappointment. He did promise that if we place our trust in Him rather than in the world, we would not be disappointed, and in that trust we would find peace. Tim Tebow understands that, and I appreciate his reminding us all of that promise.

St. John of the Cross on the Eucharist

2009-12-15T22:09:00.007-05:00

I have started reading the writings of St. John of the Cross in The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross, translated by Kieran Kavanaugh, O.C.D and Otilio Rodriguez, O.C.D. After reading St. Therese, I find myself going to her Carmelite forebears as I seek to increase the fervor of my spiritual life. This is a struggle for me, because my spiritual life (such as it is) often stays on an intellectual, abstract plane (this is my comfort zone).

I was reading St. John's poem, Stanzas of the soul that suffers with longing to see God. The first stanza begins:

I no longer live within myself
and I cannot live without God,
for having neither him nor myself
what will life be?
It will be a thousand deaths,
longing for my true life
and dying because I do not die.

The goal of our spiritual lives must be to go outside of ourselves and into God. The paradox of dying to ourselves and living for God is that we find ourselves, our "true life." As St. Matthew writes, "Then Jesus told his disciples, 'If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it'" (Matthew 16:24-25). The Catechism of the Catholic Church reminds us that this is not an either/or proposition, but a both/and one. Quoting St. Gregory of Nazianzus, the Catechism tells us that immersing ourselves in God puts us fully in touch with our humanity: "The grace of the Kingdom is 'the union of the entire holy and royal Trinity...with the whole human spirit'" (CCC, paragraph 2565).

St. John has an interesting perspective on Eucharistic adoration in stanza 5 of this poem:

When I try to find relief
seeing you in the Sacrament
I find this greater sorrow:
I cannot enjoy you wholly.
All things are affliction
since I do not see you as I desire,
and I die because I do not die.

We learn about how deep this affliction was by how much he loved Jesus in the Eucharist. In the Biographical Sketch in The Collected Works, we are told that Corpus Christi was one of his favorite feast days (p. 27). "On arriving at a monastery he always made it a point first to greet the sick after his visit to the Blessed Sacrament" (p. 24). "His greatest suffering during the imprisonment in Toledo was being deprived of the Eucharist. The Blessed Sacrament was 'all his glory, all his happiness, and for him far surpassed all the things of the earth.' The one privilege he accepted when major superior in Segovia was the cell closest to the Blessed Sacrament" (p. 27).

I find such solace and peace most of the time in Eucharistic adoration. However, St. John reminds me that if I truly perceived (as much as we finite creatures can perceive) Who is before me and how much He loves me, then I would ache with love to be united with Him.

While I enjoy the solace and peace, I pray for the ache and longing, so that I may progress along the road of spiritual growth.

St. Louis Bertrand Parish - Louisville, KY

2009-12-14T22:54:00.004-05:00

My wife and I spent the weekend in Louisville, KY. On Sunday, we went to mass at the Dominican parish, St. Louis Bertrand. It is a beautiful, Gothic-style church with amazing woodwork in the sanctuary. The parish website has some pictures of the church. I have posted one of those pictures above, although it does not do the sanctuary justice. St. Louis Bertrand Church made me think about how the surroudings of our worship matter. I like both modern and past architectural styles. God did not ordain Gothic architecture as the truest expression of faith in form, although it is certainly an important one. What matters in our worship spaces are at least the following aspects: 1) does the building express important truths of our faith (transcendence and immanence, for example), 2) is beauty used to reflect and glorify God, and 3) does the physical building help us to worship and grow closer to God. Sometimes going to different parishes helps us to pay more attention to how the building helps us to build up our faith and increase our fervor for God. The building matters. However, in the most beautiful parish church, cathedral, or basilica, the beauty of that space is but a dim reflection of the center of that church, of the Church, Jesus in the Eucharist residing in the tabernacle.

Is Christmas for Children?

2009-12-11T23:38:00.004-05:00

Each year I hear at least one person say, "Christmas is for the children." Unfortunately, this view trivializes Christmas. Yes, Christmas is for children, as it is for all of humanity. But Christmas is so much more than presents. St. Paul reminds us that there are some things we outgrow: "When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became a man, I gave up childish ways" (1 Corinthians 13:11). Our faith, and our understanding of Christmas, must do the same.

Christmas is the comingling of the divine and the human. "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; we have beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father" (John 1:14).

Christmas is Jesus as the fulcrum of salvation history. The advent practice of creating a Jesse Tree reminds us of how God has acted in human history and prepared Israel for the coming of the Savior. The world changed when Jesus came into it. That is why Christians view time in terms of "Before Christ" (BC) and "Anno Domini" (AD - "In the Year of the Lord"). We also see a similar divide regarding Christ's first coming and His anticipated Second Coming.

Christmas is the road to the Cross. There is an interesting Christmas decoration of a nail, to be hung deep within the tree, as a reminder of Jesus' Passion. Imbedded in the joyful mystery of the birth of Jesus is the sorrowful mystery of His crucifixion. We see this in the carol, "We Three Kings," in the verse which reads: Myrrh is mine, its bitter perfume/Breathes a life of gathering gloom;/Sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, dying,/Sealed in the stone-cold tomb."

Christmas is a Eucharistic revelation. In Hebrew, Bethlehem, means "House of Bread." In Arabic, it means, "House of Meat." Jesus was laid in a "manger" (Luke 2:7), which is a trough where animals eat. The bread that is transformed into flesh is the Eucharist, and it is our food for salvation. "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have not life in you; he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is food indeed and my blood is drink indeed. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me and I in him" (John 6:53-56).

Is Christmas for children? Yes. Christmas is for helping children to understand that the things of this world cannot satisfy them, but there is One who can.

The Gift - A Piece of the True Cross

2009-12-06T21:43:00.003-05:00

One day a while back my daughter gave me a gift. It was a piece of foam wrapped in facial tissue and tied with a rubber band. The foam was part of a cross that she had made at church as a craft and later tore apart to make a bridge for some imaginary adventure. So here was this ugly, worthless pile of things that she gave me. Quickly I was reminded of how everything that we offer to God is objectively worthless, deficient, even pitiful compared with the One to whom we offer it. This is especially true when we think of the gift He gave us of His Son. And yet, it is precisely because of His gift to us--the clear sign of His prodigal love for us--that we know that our worthless gift has value in His eyes. So my daughter helped build several bridges: her play bridge, a bridge between her and me, and a bridge between me and God. The use of a cross as a bridge to God was rather inspired. Not bad for a day's play.

Do You Trust that I Will Help You?

2009-11-23T23:02:00.004-05:00

I was helping my second-grade daughter with her homework a couple of weeks ago. I would explain to her what she needed to do, and then walk away so she could see if she could get it done on her own. If she could not do it on her own, then she could come get me. She became increasingly frustrated with her own ability to complete her homework, and she began crying and throwing a bit of a tantrum. I tried to explain to her what to do again, and that I would help, but this repetition did not seem to be sinking in. In my frustration, I said to her, "Do you trust that I will help you?" She answered "Yes" through her tears.

Suddenly, it dawned on me that the scenario she and I had been acting out was really no different than what I far too often act out with God. I become frustrated at my own efforts to do certain things on my own, or I become anxious about the uncertainty of the future. I don't turn to God and place my confidence in Him. And in my voice to my daughter, I could hear what God is constantly telling me if only I would listen: "Do you trust that I will help you?" If I am truly honest with myself, my answer to that question is often "No." And part of my prayer life needs to be changing that "No" to a "Yes." I think of Mary and her "Fiat," her "Yes." But she did not give that assent only one time. Whether it was the flight to Egypt, or when Jesus went missing for three days as a boy, or most especially during Jesus' passion, Mary was telling God, "Yes, I trust that You will help me."

Lord, please grant me the grace to trust that You will help me.

The Imitation of Christ

2009-11-15T14:34:00.003-05:00

I'm just about finished reading St. Therese's The Story of a Soul. She talks about how valuable Thomas a Kempis's The Imitation of Christ is for her spiritual development. I have not read it, but it sounds like I need to do so.

I was thinking about the process of imitation. Great painters become great by copying the work of other great painters. Musicians learn songs from the recordings of their heroes. Imitation is one of the ways that we become better at something. It should be clear that imitating Christ is something that we ought to do to become more Christ-like.

I received a valuable lesson from my son on this point. He is at a stage where he often copies what I do. When we get dressed for mass, he will often try to wear either the same colors or the same kind of clothing that I do. The other day he asked me how I take a shower because he wanted to wash up the same way that I do. There are times when he wants to be so close to me that he is physically right against me.

I realize that I need to be like this with Jesus. I need to be like Him. To be like Him, I need to know the Gospels in particular, and the Bible in general, very well. Then I need to live those words. I need to long to be as physically close to Him as possible. The Eucharist is the best way for us to physically be close to Him. Confession is the best way for us to move closer to Him spiritually. Christ shows us the way. He is the Way. All we need to do is follow Him.

Thanks to my son for teaching me the lessons I should already have learned by now.

Let My Life Be Consumed

2009-11-11T23:29:00.003-05:00

While on a silent Ignatian retreat a few weeks ago, I read parts of Encounters with Silence by Fr. Karl Rahner, S.J. In the chapter on vocation, he wrote this about his priestly vocation:

O God of my vocation, let my life be consumed as the Sacred Host, so that my brothers and I may live in You, and You in us, for all eternity" (p. 77).

Some important things come to mind in reading this. First, God is the God of our vocation, whether that be priestly, religious, or lay. Our vocation is a call from Him to become most fully ourselves in Him. Second, we should be consumed by that call. Jesus was consumed by His love for the Father and for us in His crucifixion. There is a suffering, sacrificial aspect to that consumption. However, there is also a redemptive, life-giving aspect to that consumption as well. The consumption of food gives us natural nourishment and life, and the consumption of the Sacred Host gives us supernatural nourishment and life. Finally, whatever vocation we have, that vocation is strengthened by frequent receipt and adoration of the Blessed Sacrament.

Feast of All Saints

2009-11-01T21:54:00.003-05:00

Today is the Feast of All Saints. Perhaps I have been watching too many sporting events recently, but today I was thinking about how Holy Days of Obligation are a sort of half-time pep talk to a flagging Church Militant which is being challenged to live up to the storied franchise of the Church Triumphant. This seems especially true of the Feast of All Saints.

The Feast of All Saints is a day that often we don't really "get" in the pews. We may go through the motions, but it doesn't really move us much. I think the reason for that is because those of us in the pews focus entirely on honoring the saints. That's important, to be sure. As I was on retreat last weekend, I reflected on some of my favorite saints: St. Peter, St. Augustine, St. Therese of Lisieux, and St. Ignatius of Loyola. They have much to teach me, and I need their prayers.

However, the Feast of All Saints is about remembering the saints we don't know, who aren't canonized, who don't have a feast day. The person who lived next door to us growing up who is now with God. The grandmother who has gone on to eternal life. The child who died of cancer and is now praying for his parents who are grieving still. We are reminded of the "universal call to holiness," a call described in Chapter 5 of Lumen Gentium. We are all called to be saints. If we don't become saints, we will spend eternity separated from God. There is no permanent half-way house (Purgatory is a temporary half-way house). We are called to choose life or death (Deuteronomy 30:19), and saints are people who have chosen life. We often think of sainthood as something unattainable for us. The secret is this: sainthood is unattainable by us but is not unattainable for us. If we cooperate with God's grace, we can become saints. St. Therese of Lisieux, the Little Flower who described for us "the little way" in her book, The Story of a Soul (translated by John Beevers), made a choice to become a saint: "You know, Mother, that I have always wanted to become a saint" (Chapter, 9, p. 113).

So how do we become saints? There are as many ways to become a saint as there are individuals. Read the lives of the saints. Each had a different road to take to reach heaven. But some patterns emerge.

Trust in God - Saints trust that God will keep his promises. They have faith in God's word.

Prayer - Saints know they must be in relationship with God. They must talk to God. They must listen to God. They must read God's word. Heaven is about fulfilling one's relationship with God, so we must begin that relationship here on earth.

Vocation - Sainthood is possible through all vocations: ordained life, consecrated life, marriage, and the single life. However, sainthood is not possible if we reject the vocation to which God calls us and willfully choose a different vocation. Think of Jonah. We must go where God calls us, which is to go where we will ultimately encounter him most fully.

Sacraments - Saints live sacramental lives. They attend mass frequently; they receive Jesus in the Eucharist frequently; they go to confession frequently.

Love in Action - Saints love God so much that their love spills over to others. They don't merely say they love people, but they express that love in actions. They are doers of Jesus' words (Matthew 7: 24-27).

That's my list. One could slice and dice it different ways, but you get the idea. It's like losing weight. We all know how to do it. The problem is we don't want to do what it takes.

Where Am I? Look at Me

2009-10-22T23:29:00.004-04:00

My daughter sometimes finds it difficult to look a person in the eyes when she is talking to that person. When she does that to me or my wife, we often say, "Where am I?" or "Look at me."

I was at Eucharistic adoration recently. I did what I usually do: I look at the tabernacle, then close my eyes and bend my head downwards. But then, it felt as though Christ were saying to me those words that I have so often said to my daughter: "Where am I?" and "Look at me." So I raised my head, and opened my eyes, and looked at Him. It felt like a clear reminder of His Real Presence. Of course, the whole reason I was there was because I believe that Christ is really and substantially present in the Blessed Sacrament. However, that does not mean I always feel His presence or even that I am intellectually aware of His presence. But He was reminding me of why I came there, reminding me of who He is and where He is, and reminding me of who I am and my relationship with Him.

Feast of St. Ignatius of Antioch

2009-10-17T22:05:00.010-04:00

Today is the feast of St. Ignatius of Antioch. St. Ignatius is a saint everyone should learn about. Ignatius had a deep relationship with Christ that resulted in a joyful spirit as he was led from his see in Antioch to Rome where he was put to death by lions in 107 for being a Christian. His Letter to the Smyrnaeans is the earliest instance we know of the use of the phrase"the Catholic Church" (section 8). I find his Letter to the Ephesians to be especially rich. Here are some excerpts from his Letter to the Ephesians from Early Christian Writings (translation by Mawell Staniforth and revised translation by Andrew Louth):

It is true that I am a prisoner for the Name's sake, but I am by no means perfect in Jesus Christ as yet; I am only a beginner in discipleship, and I speaking to you as fellow-scholars with myself. (Section 3)

Regarding the rest of mankind, you should pray for them unceasingly, for we can always hope that repentance may enable them to find their way to God. Give them a chance to learn from you, or at all events from the way you act. Meet their animosity with mildness, their high words with humility, and their abuse with your prayers. But stand firm against their errors, and if they grow violent, be gentle instead of wanting to pay them back in their own coin. Let us show by our forbearance that we are their brothers, and try to imitate the Lord by seeing which of us can put up with the most ill-usage or privation or contempt--so that in this way none of the devil's noxious weeds may take root among you, but you may rest in Jesus Christ in all sanctity and discipline of body and soul. (Section 10)

Apart from Him, nothing else should have any value in your eyes; but in Him, even these chains I wear are a collar of spiritual pearls to me, in which I hope to rise again through the help of your intercessions. (Section 11)

Do your best, then, to meet more often to give thanks and glory to God. When you meet frequently, the powers of Satan are confounded, and in the face of your corporate faith his maleficence crumbles. Nothing can better a state of peaceful accord, from which every trace of spiritual or earthly hostility has been banished. (Section 13)

... for life begins and ends with two qualities. Faith is the beginning, and love is the end; and the union of the two together is God. All that makes for a soul's perfection follows in their train, for nobody who professes faith will commit sin, and nobody who possesses love can feel hatred. As the tree is known by its fruits, so they who claim to belong to Christ are known by their actions; for this work of ours does not consist in just making professions, but in a faith that is both practical and lasting. (Section 14)

Whatever we do, then, let it be done as though He Himself were dwelling within us, we being as it were His temples and He within us as their God. For in fact, that is literally the case; and in proportion as we rightly love Him, so it will become clear to our eyes. (Section 15)

As for me, my spirit is now all humble devotion to the Cross: the Cross which so greatly offends the unbelievers, but is salvation and eternal life to us. (Section 18)

[Ignatius says that he will write to the Ephesians again, God willing, if, among other things, they] ... are ready now to obey your bishop and clergy with undivided minds and to share the one common breaking of bread--the medicine of immortality, and the sovereign remedy by which we escape death and live in Jesus Christ for evermore. (Section 20)

Forty Days for Life

2009-10-11T20:19:00.006-04:00

This past Monday I stood in front of a local Planned Parenthood facility and prayed the Rosary as part of Forty Days for Life. I was part of Forty Days for Life last year, and I found it a moving experience. Last year I was there praying with a friend of mine from our parish. This year, however, I missed the day our parishioners were attending. I didn't know if anyone would be there (I went around 10:00 AM). I was dreading it, frankly. I went to a Communion service at another parish that morning for encouragement. I was feeling a bit like Jonah--I wanted to run in the opposite direction from the place to where God was calling me. Like Jonah, I was a reluctant witness. I went to Planned Parenthood and there was a familiar face--a man who is there most every day. He is a familiar fixture in the neighborhood. He is joyful, encouraging, and compassionate. It was comforting to see him there. I paced up and down the sidewalk, praying on my son's red hand-made twine rosary. I was wondering if this was enough, and tonight I just came across this quotation from St. Francis of Assisi: "It is no use walking anywhere to preach unless our walking is our preaching." That gives me some consolation that my timid efforts still have some effectiveness.

I was thinking about how to speak with others who may not agree why abortion is wrong. Here are ten reasons that came to mind:

1) Because whether a fetus is a human being or not should not depend on whether he or she is wanted or not.

2) Because the weekly growth of an embryo into a fetus into a born child clearly demonstrates the continuity of human development.

3) Because if you can convince yourself that killing an unborn child is not only permissible but a human right, then society can rationalize any atrocity.

4) Because if you do not know when human life begins, then you should err on the side of caution and assume it begins earlier rather than later.

5) Because tearing a sprouting acorn out of the ground and destroying it is the same as cutting down an oak tree.

6) Because abortion comes from the domination of hope by fear.

7) Because aborting an unborn child in cases of rape or incest is like killing a born child for the crimes of his or her father.

8) Because sacrifice is an honorable act, unless the adjective “human” precedes it.

9) Because abortion is an answer to half of a question. If one asks, “What do I do now?” when faced with an unexpected pregnancy, then abortion seems like an option. But if one asks instead, “What do I do now in the best interests of the person I helped to create through my free choice of engaging in an act that by its very nature creates life?” then one’s options appear very different.

10) Because an unborn child is not a problem to be fixed but a gift to be received—or given.

Thanks to Tate for a couple of wonderful resources for talking to others about abortion. The first focuses on how a baby develops:

Diary of an Unborn Child

Chronology of the New Life

1. On day 1, I already have a unique DNA which includes whether I’m a boy or a girl.

2. At 7 days, I implant in my mother’s womb.

3. At 18 days, my heart starts beating

4. At 19 days, my eyes start to develop.

5. At 28 days, my arms and legs are forming.

6. At 30 days, my ears and nasal are developing.

7. At 42 days, my skeleton is complete and my reflexes are present.

8. At 43 days, my brain wave patterns can be recorded. I’m now considered a thinking person.

9. At 7 weeks, I have the appearance of a miniature doll with complete fingers, toes and ears. I’ve even been caught in pictures sucking my thumb.

10. At 8 weeks, all of my organs are complete and functioning. Everything is now present that will be found in a developed adult.

11. At 9 weeks, I can squint, make a fist and move my tongue.

12. At 10 weeks, my sense of touch is working, and I can feel comfort or pain.

13. At 12 weeks, I can smile.

14. At 16 weeks (four months), I’m swimming, kicking and doing somersaults.

15. At 18 weeks, my vocal cords are working, and I can cry.

16. At 20 weeks, I’m approximately 12 inches long, weighing 1 pound.

17. At 22 week, I can live outside the womb.

Then there is this excellent dialogue (of sorts) in 1999 between then-Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum and California Senator Barbara Boxer on when life begins:

Senator Santorum: I think the issue of where we draw the line constitutionally is very important. And I’m sure the Senator from California [Senator Boxer] agrees with me. I think the senator from California would say that she and I, and the senator from Illinois and the senators from Arkansas and Kansas here, we are all protected by the Constitution with a right to life. Would you agree with that, senator from California -- [would you] answer that question?

Senator Boxer: I support the Roe versus Wade decision.

Santorum: So you would agree any child that’s born has the right to life, is protected under the Constitution? Once that child is born?

Boxer: I agree with the Roe v. Wade decision. And what you are doing goes against it and will harm the women of this country. And I will speak to that issue when I get the floor myself.

Santorum: But I would like to ask you a question. You agree, once that child is born, is separated from the mother, that that child is protected by the Constitution and cannot be killed? Do you agree with that?

Boxer: I would make this statement: That this Constitution, as it currently is -- some of you want to amend it to say that life begins at conception. I think when you bring your baby home, when your baby is born -- and there is no such thing as partial-birth -- the baby belongs to your family and has all the rights. But I am not willing to amend the Constitution to say that a fetus is a person, which I know you would.

But we will get into that later. I would prefer to address --I know my colleague is engaging me in a colloquy on his time, and I appreciate it -- I will answer these questions.

I think what my friend is doing, by asking me these questions, is off point. My friend wants to tell the doctors in this country what to do. My friend from Pennsylvania says they are "rogue" doctors. The AMA will tell you they no longer support you. The American nurses don't support you. The obstetricians and gynecologists don't support you. So my friend can ask me my philosophy all day. On my own time I will talk about it.

Santorum: If I can reclaim my time: First of all, the AMA still believes this is bad medicine. They do not support the criminal penalties provisions in this bill, but they still believe -- I think you know that to be the case -- that this procedure is not medically necessary, and they stand by that statement.

I ask the senator from California, again: you believe, you said "once the

baby comes home." Obviously, you don't mean they have to take the baby out

of the hospital for it to be protected by the Constitution. Once the baby is separated from the mother, you would agree -- completely separated from the mother -- you would agree that baby is entitled to constitutional protection?

Boxer: I will tell you why I don't want to engage in this. You did the same conversation with a colleague of mine, and I never saw such a twisting of his remarks. [Editor’s note: See Nov. 14, 1996 NRL News, page 24, for transcript of an exchange between Santorum and Senator Russ Feingold (D-Wi.).]

Santorum: Well, be clear, then. Let's be clear.

Boxer: I am going to be very clear when I get the floor. What you are trying to do is take away the rights of women and their families and their doctors to have a procedure. And now you are trying to turn the question into, "When does life begin?" I will talk about that on my own time.

Santorum: What I am trying to do is get an answer from the senator from California as to where you would draw the line? Because that really is the important part of this debate.

Boxer: I will repeat. I will repeat, since the senator has asked me a question – I am answering the question I have been posed by the senator. And the answer to the question is, I stand by Roe v. Wade. I stand by it. I hope we have a chance to vote on it. It is very clear, Roe v. Wade. That is what I stand by. My friend doesn't.

Santorum: Are you suggesting Roe v. Wade covered the issue of a baby in the process of being born?

Boxer: I am saying what Roe v. Wade says is, that in the early stages of a pregnancy, a woman has the right to choose. In the later stages, the states have the right, yes, to come in and restrict. I support those restrictions, as long as two things happen: They respect the life of the mother and the health of the mother.

Santorum: I understand that.

Boxer: That is where I stand. And no matter how you try to twist it, that is where I stand.

Santorum: I would say to the senator from California, I am not twisting anything. I am simply asking a very straightforward question. There is no hidden question here. The question is --

Boxer: I will answer it again.

Santorum: Once the baby is born, is completely separated from the mother, you will support that that baby has, in fact, the right to life and cannot be killed? You accept that; right?

Boxer: I don't believe in killing any human being. That is absolutely correct. Nor do you, I am sure.

Santorum: So you would accept the fact that once the baby is separated from the mother, that baby cannot be killed?

Boxer: I support the right -- and I will repeat this, again, because I saw you ask the same question to another senator –

Santorum: All the person has to do is give me a straight answer, and then it will be very clear to everybody.

Boxer: And what defines "separation"? Define "separation." You answer that question. You define it.

Santorum: Well, let's define that. Okay, let's say the baby is completely separated. In other words, no part of the baby is inside of the mother.

Boxer: You mean the baby has been birthed and is now in its mother's

arms? That baby is a human being.

Santorum: Well, I don’t know if it’s necessarily in its mother’s arms. Let’s say in the obstetrician's hands.

Boxer: It takes a second, it takes a minute – I had two babies, and within seconds of their birth --

Santorum: We’ve had six.

Boxer: Well, you didn't have any.

Santorum: My wife and I had babies together. That’s the way we do things in our family.

Boxer: Your wife gave birth. I gave birth. I can tell you, I know when the baby was born.

Santorum: Good! All I am asking you is, once the baby leaves the mother's birth canal and is through the vaginal orifice and is in the hands of the obstetrician, you would agree that you cannot abort, kill the baby?

Boxer: I would say when the baby is born, the baby is born, and would then have every right of every other human being living in this country. And I don't know why this would even be a question, to be honest with you.

Santorum: Because we are talking about a situation here where the baby is almost born. So I ask the question of the senator from California, if the baby was born except for the baby's foot, if the baby's foot was inside the mother but the rest of the baby was outside, could that baby be killed?

Boxer: The baby is born when the baby is born. That is the answer to the question.

Santorum: I am asking for you to define for me what that is.

Boxer: I don’t think anybody but the senator from Pennsylvania has a question with it. I have never been troubled by this question. You give birth to a baby. The baby is there, and it is born. That is my answer to the question.

Santorum: What we are talking about here with partial birth, as the senator from California knows, is a baby is in the process of being born --

Boxer: "The process of being born." This is why this conversation makes no sense, because to me it is obvious when a baby is born. To you it isn't obvious.

Santorum: Maybe you can make it obvious to me. So what you are suggesting is if the baby's foot is still inside of the mother, that baby can then still be killed.

Boxer: No, I am not suggesting that in any way!

Santorum: I am asking.

Boxer: I am absolutely not suggesting that. You asked me a question, in essence, when the baby is born.

Santorum: I am asking you again. Can you answer that?

Boxer: I will answer the question when the baby is born. The baby is born when the baby is outside the mother's body. The baby is born.

Santorum: I am not going to put words in your mouth –

Boxer: I hope not.

Santorum: But, again, what you are suggesting is if the baby's toe is inside the mother, you can, in fact, kill that baby.

Boxer: Absolutely not.

Santorum: OK. So if the baby's toe is in, you can't kill the baby. How

about if the baby's foot is in?

Boxer: You are the one who is making these statements.

Santorum: We are trying to draw a line here.

Boxer: I am not answering these questions! I am not answering these questions.

The Catholic Church's reasoning for opposing abortion is based on thoroughly logical philosophical methods, not simply divine revelation. I have often said that if I became an atheist tomorrow I would still staunchly oppose abortion merely on the grounds of human reason. Senator Boxer's exchange with Senator Santorum shows how her ideology prevents her from examining the philosophical and logical inconsistencies and gaps of her position.

The Rhetoric of Planned Parenthood

2009-10-04T23:18:00.004-04:00

Today I attended a local Life Chain. We held up signs along a busy local state route for an hour. As Peter said to Jesus at the Transfiguration, "Master, it is well that we are here" (Mark 9:5). There were a number of motorists who honked in support. It was encouraging to see so many people on the sidewalk and in the cars expressing their concern about legalized abortion.

The other day I was reading through Planned Parenthood's website. I was struck by their rhetoric. Not by their rhetoric's audacity (though there was a little of that) but much more so by their rhetoric's subtlety. I found their use of rhetoric deft but disturbing.

Here are some examples:

Abortions are very common. In fact, more than 1 out of 3 women in the U.S. have an abortion by the time they are 45 years old.
http://www.plannedparenthood.org/health-topics/abortion-4260.htm

This bit of information is used, not so that the reader will think, "That's awful; we should do something about that," but rather so that the reader will think, "Oh, an abortion is no big deal; many people do it." President Obama has publicly expressed his support for reducing the number of abortions. If that is the President's goal, Planned Parenthood, a vocal supporter of the Administration on abortion issues, does not appear to share his goal.

Most women want to have children. And they want to have children when they are ready and best able to care for them. But millions of women face unplanned pregnancies every year. In fact, half of all pregnancies in the United States are unplanned.
http://www.plannedparenthood.org/health-topics/pregnancy/pregnant-now-what-4253.htm

We are supposed to think that because half of all pregnancies are unplanned, that also means that they are a problem. And Planned Parenthood wants to present itself as a solution provider. This is a very common marketing strategy: present a problem, and get the consumer to envision your company as the one who can solve your problem.

If you are pregnant, you have three options to think about — abortion, adoption, and parenting. Reading and learning about each one will help you get the facts and may help you decide. It may also help to weigh the benefits and risks of each one. Think about which benefits and risks are most important to you.
http://www.plannedparenthood.org/health-topics/pregnancy/pregnant-now-what-4253.htm

Of course, "abortion" is the first option given. That is because Planned Parenthood is in the business of abortion and cannot make money off of the other two options. And then we come to the intellectually dishonest attempt to equalize all three options based on "risk." But what are the "risks" of adoption vs. abortion? Look and see:

Here's what they say about "How Will I Feel After the Adoption"
http://www.plannedparenthood.org/health-topics/pregnancy/adoption-21520.htm

Many women who make this choice are happy knowing that their children are loved and living in good homes. And they feel empowered in their role as birth mother. But some women find that the sense of loss is deeper than they expected.

You may feel some grief after the adoption is complete. Or you may be reassured by knowing that your child is in good hands. A range of emotions is normal. And your feelings may be complicated for a while.

It's a good idea to find counseling to help you work through your feelings. This can be important during the adoption process as well as afterward. If you work with an adoption agency, they can often provide counseling for you. If you have an independent adoption, you can still receive counseling and guidance through a local adoption agency. No matter which type of adoption you pursue, it's important to find people who will support you during and after your pregnancy.

Now, here's what they say about "If I Have an Abortion, How Will I Feel Afterward?"
http://www.plannedparenthood.org/health-topics/pregnancy/thinking-about-abortion-21519.htm

A range of emotions is normal after an abortion. There is not one "correct" way to feel. Some women feel anger, regret, guilt, or sadness for a little while. For some women, these feelings may be quite strong.

For some women, having an abortion can be a significant life event, like ending a relationship, starting or losing a job, or becoming a parent. It can be very stressful and difficult. Other women have an easier time after abortion.

Serious, long-term emotional problems after abortion are about as uncommon as they are after giving birth. They are more likely to happen for certain reasons — for instance, if a woman has a history of emotional problems before the abortion, if she doesn't have supportive people in her life, or if she has to terminate a wanted pregnancy because her health or the health of her fetus is in danger.

Ultimately, most women feel relief after an abortion. Women tend to feel better after abortion if they can talk with supportive people in their lives.

So there you have it. If you read these two options carefully, clearly adoption is the greater risk. Adoption may cause "grief" and may be "complicated for a while." Abortion, on the other hand, may result in "regret" but only "for a little while." However, "ultimately, most women feel relief" after an abortion while only "many women" who decide on adoption "are happy knowing that their children are loved and living in good homes."

But here's my favorite bit of propaganda:
http://www.plannedparenthood.org/health-topics/pregnancy/pregnant-now-what-4253.htm

Family planning clinics, like your local Planned Parenthood health center, have specially trained staff who can talk with you about all of your options. But beware of so-called "crisis pregnancy centers". These are fake clinics run by people who are anti-abortion. They often don't give women all their options. They have a history of scaring women into not having abortions. Absolutely no one should pressure you or trick you into making a decision you're not comfortable with.

If you are anti-abortion, you are a "fake" provider of care and counseling. "Beware."

Beware, indeed. But rather, beware of manipulative rhetoric that subtly tries to make women focus on their fears rather than the entire picture, which includes another human life that has the power to immeasurably enrich either their own lives or the lives of others in a better position to raise these children.

Feast of the Guardian Angels

2009-10-02T20:57:00.004-04:00

(Angels Swinging Censers, ca. 1170. French; Made in Troyes. Pot-metal, white glass, vitreous paint, silver stain; 18 1/2 x 17 5/16 in. (47 x 44 cm). Gift of Ella Brummer, in memory of her husband, Ernest Brummer, 1977 (1977.346.1) Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, NY.)

Today is the Feast of the Guardian Angels, the patronal feast day of my parish.

St. John Chrysostom in his Homilies on the Epistle to the Hebrews (ca. 403 A.D.) talks about angels:

“Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation?” [Hebrews 1:14.] What marvel (saith he) if they minister to the Son, when they minister even to our salvation? See how he lifts up their minds, and shows the great honor which God has for us, since He has assigned to Angels who are above us this ministration on our behalf. As if one should say, for this purpose (saith he) He employs them; this is the office of Angels, to minister to God for our salvation. So that it is an angelical work, to do all for the salvation of the brethren: or rather it is the work of Christ Himself, for He indeed saves as Lord, but they as servants. And we, though servants are yet Angels’ fellow-servants. Why gaze ye so earnestly on the Angels (saith he)? They are servants of the Son of God, and are sent many ways for our sakes, and minister to our salvation. And so they are partners in service with us.

Consider ye how he ascribes no great difference to the kinds of creatures. And yet the space between angels and men is great; nevertheless he brings them down near to us, all but saying, For us they labor, for our sake they run to and fro: on us, as one might say, they wait. This is their ministry, for our sake to be sent every way.

And of these examples both the Old [Testament] is full, and the New. For when Angels bring glad tidings to the shepherds, or to Mary, or to Joseph; when they sit at the sepulcher, when they are sent to say to the disciples, “Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven?” ( Acts i. 11 ), when they release Peter out of the prison, when they discourse with Philip, consider how great the honor is; when God sends His Angels for ministers as to friends; when to Cornelius [an Angel] appears, when [an Angel] brings forth all the apostles from the prison, and says, “Go, stand and speak in the temple to the people the words of this life” ( Acts v. 20 ); and to Paul himself also an Angel appears. Dost thou see that they minister to us on God’s behalf, and that they minister to us in the greatest matters? wherefore Paul saith, “All things are yours, whether life or death, or the world, or things present, or things to come.” ( 1 Cor. iii. 22.)

Well then the Son also was sent, but not as a servant, nor as a minister, but as a Son, and Only-Begotten, and desiring the same things with the Father. Rather indeed, He was not “sent”: for He did not pass from place to place, but took on Him flesh: whereas these change their places, and leaving those in which they were before, so come to others in which they were not.

And by this again he incidentally encourages them, saying, What fear ye? Angels are ministering to us. (Homily 3, Section 4) (Available at Christian Classics Ethereal Library)

St. John has so many meaningful things to say here. It is good to think of ourselves as "heirs of salvation" -- not so that it leads us to presumption, but that it feeds us with hope. "...this is the office of Angels, to minister to God for our salvation" -- the word translated as "office" is the same Greek word from which the English word "liturgy" comes (λειτουργία [leitourgia]). We are told that we are doing "angelic work" when we work for the salvation of others; like angels, we have an important "ev-angelizing" role. Like angels, we are servants. I particularly like the last part: "What fear ye? Angels are ministering to us."

St. Epiphanius of Salamis on the Eucharist

2009-09-27T19:42:00.003-04:00

In his work, The Man Well-Anchored (374 A.D.), St. Epiphanius of Salamis wrote about the Eucharist:

We see that the Savior took [something] in His hands, as it is in the Gospel, when He was reclining at supper; and He took this, and giving thanks, He said: "This is really Me." And He gave to His disciples and said: "This is really Me." And we see that it is not equal nor similar, not to the incarnate image, not to the invisible divinity, not to the outline of His limbs. For It is round of shape, and devoid of feeling. As to Its power, He means to say even of Its grace, "This is really Me"; and none disbelieves His word. For anyone who does not believe the truth in what He says is deprived of grace and of Savior. (The Faith of the Early Fathers, Vol. 2, by William A. Jurgens, p. 69.)

I love so many things about this passage. First, Epiphanius' title, The Man Well-Anchored, is a good reminder to us to be conscious of what we make our anchor in life: is it God, or is it some idol, some created thing, such as money, fame, power, lust, sports, TV, control, etc.? Second, Epiphanius uses the phrase "This is really Me" to make immediate and penetrating the Lord's "This is my body" and "This is my blood" as we try to grapple with how what appears to be bread and wine can "really" be the body and blood of Christ. But we are called to believe that Jesus cannot lie to us; we are called to trust that he is as good as his word.

Is Perception Reality?

2009-09-24T23:04:00.006-04:00

I have always disliked the saying, "Perception is reality." If taken literally, this saying indicates that one's perception is equal to objective reality. While that is a false claim, too many people believe it. "That's your truth, not my truth" kind of stuff. What people should mean by the saying, "Perception is reality," and what I would agree with, is "One's perception can have a real impact." Hitler's perception of Jewish people was clearly not in accord with objective reality, but his perception had a devastating impact on the European Jewish community.

St. John Chrysostom in his Homilies on the Gospel of Matthew, 370 A.D. (Homily 82, section 4), talks about the Eucharist in a way that reminds us that perception is often not reality:

Let us therefore in all respects put our faith in God and contradict Him in nothing, even if what is said seems to be contrary to our reasonings and to what we see. Let His word be of superior authority to reason and sight. This too be our practice in respect to the Mysteries [i.e., the Eucharist], not looking only upon what is laid out before us, but taking heed also of His words. For His word cannot deceive; but our senses are easily cheated. His word has never failed; our senses err most of the time.

When the word says, "This is My Body," be convinced of it and believe it, and look at it with the eyes of the mind. For Christ did not give us something tangible, but even in His tangible things all is intellectual. So too with Baptism: the gift is bestowed through what is a tangible thing, water; but what is accomplished is intellectually perceived: the rebirth and the renewal. If you were incorporeal He would have given you those incorporeal gifts naked; but since the soul is intertwined with the body, He hands over to you in tangible things that which is perceived intellectually. How many now say, "I wish I could see His shape, His appearance, His garments, His sandals." Only look! You see Him! You touch Him! You eat Him! (The Faith of the Early Fathers by William A. Jurgens, Vol. 2, p. 112)

So let us remember that reality is reality, whether we accept it or not, whether we perceive it or not. And let us also remember that saying that the unreal is true has very real, very detrimental effects.

Murderers and Redemption

2009-09-19T20:32:00.005-04:00

I've been reading St. Therese's The Story of a Soul. It is important for me to read it because I tend to thrive on abstract, academic, rational kinds of reading, and this is true of my spiritual reading. Recently in a conversation with one of the deacons at our parish, I realized that I need to tap into a more emotional and deeper spiritual relationship with God. St. Therese is a great start for that pilgrimage. (And my son's football game was at St. Therese the Little Flower parish today, which is a nice reminder to stay on this track for a while.)

St. Therese wrote something that has a great deal of applicability to today's headlines. Romell Broom raped and killed a fourteen-year-old girl in 1984. His recent execution at the Lucasville prison in Ohio by lethal injection was halted because the executioner could not get a vein. On a local radio talk show both the host and a caller referred to Broom as an "animal" without any second thoughts on that viewpoint.

What Broom did was an horrendous evil. He caused a tremendously painful, humiliating death to an innocent teenage girl, Tryna Middleton, as well as the on-going agony of her mother, Betsy. Broom's attorney made the outrageous statement: "There's still a state that wants to execute Romell Broom even though he's been through this horrific, tortuous two-and-a-half hour battle with the executioners on Tuesday, and it's our hope that we can convince the courts that once the state has tried once to execute this man and has failed, that they can't try again." The attorney seems to be conveniently forgetting the horrific, torturous battle Tryna Middleton faced at the hands of Broom.

However, it is important to remember what the Catechism of the Catholic Church says about the death penalty:

2266 The efforts of the state to curb the spread of behavior harmful to people's rights and to the basic rules of civil society correspond to the requirement of safeguarding the common good. Legitimate public authority has the right and duty to inflict punishment proportionate to the gravity of the offense. Punishment has the primary aim of redressing the disorder introduced by the offense. When it is willingly accepted by the guilty party, it assumes the value of expiation. Punishment then, in addition to defending public order and protecting people's safety, has a medicinal purpose: as far as possible, it must contribute to the correction of the guilty party.67

2267 Assuming that the guilty party's identity and responsibility have been fully determined, the traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor.

If, however, nonlethal means are sufficient to defend and protect people's safety from the aggressor, authority will limit itself to such means, as these are more in keeping with the concrete conditions of the common good and are more in conformity to the dignity of the human person.

Today, in fact, as a consequence of the possibilities which the state has for effectively preventing crime, by rendering one who has committed an offense incapable of doing harm - without definitely taking away from him the possibility of redeeming himself - the cases in which the execution of the offender is an absolute necessity are very rare, if not practically nonexistent.NT

We should focus on this line:

...rendering one who has committed an offense incapable of doing harm - without definitely taking away from him the possibility of redeeming himself...

This is the dance of justice and mercy. People must take responsibility for their actions, society must be protected from dangerous people, but criminals must also be urged toward redemption. Broom is created in the image and likeness of God, no matter how deformed, how defiled, that image has become.

St. Therese can help us here:

I'd heard of a criminal who had just been condemned to death for some frightful murders. It seemed that he would die without repenting. I was determined at all costs to save him from hell. I used every means I could. I knew that by myself I could do nothing, so I offered God the infinite merits of Our Lord and the treasures of the Church. I was quite certain that my prayers would be answered, but to give me courage to go on praying for sinners I said to God: "I am sure You will forgive this wretched Pranzini. I shall believe You have done so even if he does not confess or give any other sign of repentance, for I have complete faith in the infinite mercy of Jesus. But I ask You for just one sign of his repentance to encourage me."

This prayer was answered. Daddy never allowed us to read any newspapers, but I thought I was justified in looking at the stories about Pranzini. On the day after his execution I eagerly opened La Croix and I had to rush away to hide my tears at what I read. Pranzini had mounted the scaffold without confessing and was ready to thrust his head beneath the guillotine's blade when he suddenly turned, seized the crucifix offered him by the priest, and thrice kissed the Sacred Wounds.

I had been given my sign, and it was typical of the graces Jesus has given me to make me eager to pray for sinners. It was at the sight of the Precious Blood flowing from the Wounds of Jesus that my thirst for souls had been born. I wanted to let them drink of this Immaculate Blood to cleanse them of their sins and the lips of my 'first child' had pressed against the Sacred Wounds! What a wonderful reply to my prayers! After this striking favour my longing for souls grew greater every day. I seemed to hear Jesus say to me what He said to the Samaritan Woman: "Give me to drink." It was a real exchange of love: I gave souls the Blood of Jesus and offered Him these purified souls that His thirst might be quenched. The more I gave Him to drink, the more the thirst of my own poor soul increased, and He gave me this burning thirst to show His love for me. (St. Therese of Lisieux, The Story of a Soul, translated by John Beevers, pp. 53-54)

St. Therese was concerned about Pranzini's soul. But St. Therese was not simply concerned about Pranzini's soul; she thirsted to save his soul. She calls him her "first child." How difficult for me to conceive of doing that. But we should turn to St. Therese to help us to thirst for the salvation of souls -- all souls. This includes the likes even of Romell Broom.

Our Capacity to Harm Others

2009-09-13T21:45:00.003-04:00

The Desert Fathers are a wonderful source of inspiration, advice, guidance, and admonition. The following is from Abba Isaiah:

He also said, "When someone wishes to render evil for evil, he can injure his brother's soul even by a single nod of the head." (The Sayings of the Desert Fathers by Benedicta Ward, SLG, p. 70.)

We forget that we can harm others very easily. We forget that harming even those who seem to richly deserve it is wrong. In advice from the priest at my most recent confession, he reminded me that in a situation I had confessed that I had fulfilled justice but that as Christians we are also called to fulfill mercy. The problem is, to quote Clint Eastwood from the movie, Unforgiven, "We all got it comin' to us." The Good News is that if we sincerely seek it, what we will have coming to us is mercy. The bad news is that if we show no mercy, we will receive no mercy:

"...forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you; good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap. For the measure you give will be the measure you get back" (Luke 6:38).

St. Augustine - Our Enemy is Vice, Not People

2009-09-05T23:41:00.004-04:00

St. Augustine has this wonderful passage from one of his sermons:

So, of course, say to your friend, who wants to make you the enemy of your friend--speak to him and so to say massage his aching spirit with a soothing liniment--say to him: "Why do you want me to be his enemy?" "Because he's my enemy," he answers. "So you want me to be your enemy's enemy? What I ought to be the enemy of is your vice. This one you want to make me the enemy of is a human being. You have another enemy, whose enemy I ought to be if I am your friend." "Who is the other enemy of mine?" he answers. "Your vice." "What's my vice?" he asks. "The hatred you hate your friend with." So be like a doctor. A doctor doesn't love the sick person if he doesn't hate the sickness. To set the sick free, he persecutes the fever. Don't love the vices of your friends if you love your friends." (Sermon 49, Section 6, from The Works of Saint Augustine: Essential Sermons, translated by Edmund Hill, O.P., edited by Boniface Ramsey, p. 60).

Too often today we see people dismiss as false or hypocritical the idea of "hate the sin, love the sinner." We see this attitude lodged against the Church and her followers with regards to the Church's teachings on sexual morality. However, Augustine reminds us that real love desires to bring our loved ones into conformity with the truth, for the benefit of their physical and spiritual health. To condone misdeeds is to make our love for them a superficial and self-serving thing. But we also have to remember that as Christians sometimes we forget to make the vice our enemy, not the human being. We should remember this when we speak of people like the late Senator Edward Kennedy. He worked terrible evil in his promotion of abortion in this country, and we must not fail to speak of it as a terrible evil. But we must also loudly speak of our desire and hope for the salvation of his soul, for he was a child of God. I think of some of the anger some feel about illegal immigration. We can condemn illegal immigration while still acknowledging the humanity of the person. As usual, Augustine challenges us, regardless of our political or religious partisanship.

Health Care Reform

2009-09-01T19:54:00.005-04:00

Let me start with a caveat. I have much to learn about health care in the U.S. and how to reform it. So take my comments as those of one with some definite limits on his knowledge of the subject. That being said, here are my thoughts on the matter.

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has done quite a bit in forming a Catholic position on the matter. Their information can be found at:

http://www.usccb.org/healthcare/

The bishops are urging us to contact our Congressional Representatives and Senators:

Call your members of Congress (use the Capitol Switchboard at 202-224-3121 to contact your Representative or Senators) and tell them health care reform should:

Include health care coverage for all people from conception until natural death, and continue the federal ban on funding for abortions;

Include access for all with a special concern for the poor;

Pursue the common good and preserve pluralism, including freedom of conscience; and

Restrain costs and apply costs equitably among payers.

Here is what my wife and I sent to our Congressional Representative and Senators:

While we do want to see more extensive health care coverage for Americans, such significant legislation should not be rushed and it should not promote certain agendas that expand abortion and restrict religious liberty. We support the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' position on health reform, which includes health care coverage for all people from conception until natural death, and continues the federal ban on funding for abortions; preserves freedom of conscience clauses; and restrains costs and apply costs equitably among payers. Our concerns include not duplicating the experiences of the United Kingdom, Canada, or the Veteran Affairs department in terms of rationed health care, and not duplicating the experiences of Medicare in terms of inadequate cost containment. In addition, we do not want to see more situations such as Belmont Abbey College which is being compelled by the EEOC [Equal Employment Opportunity Commission] to offer contraception as part of their medical insurance package to employees, even though this is explicitly against the college's religious affiliation with the Catholic Church. Please support responsible health care reform. Thank you.

It seems to me that the bishops have it right. My thoughts on their points, and a couple of my own, are below:

How to reform health care is a prudential judgment. Unlike the issues of abortion, embryonic stem cell research, or euthanasia, which are intrinsically evil under all circumstances, health care reform can take one or more of many forms and be consistent with Catholic social teaching. I would argue that expanding coverage is a good thing and should be a primary goal. However, that goal should not be achieved at any cost (either monetarily or morally).
The maintenance of conscience clauses is a non-negotiable for health care reform. We cannot allow even a beneficial expansion of health care coverage at the expense of religious liberty. We must continue to protect health care workers from being forced to participate in activities that are antithetical to their moral and religious convictions. In addition, we must also make sure that religious institutions are not forced to offer medical insurance packages that are contrary to their religious missions. The recent situation where Belmont Abbey College is being pursued by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) to force the college to include abortion, sterilization, and contraception coverage, is deeply disturbing.
The explicit statement that federal funding of abortion will not be allowed is a non-negotiable for health care reform. We cannot allow for abortion to become part of a federal health care package. If explicit provisions are not in the legislation, abortion will become part of the coverage. If abortion becomes a basic right of health care, there will be tremendous pressure on Catholic hospitals and doctors to become complicit in abortions. It will expand promotion of abortion and use tax-payer dollars from those who know abortion to be intrinsically evil.
Faith and Morals Catholics need to think more about the poor and the uninsured and under-insured, and Peace and Justice Catholics need to think more about intrinsically evil health care issues such as abortion. As one who primarily tends to be more focused on the former set of issues, I need to remember that the Catholic Church is universal in her scope and vision, and that Catholic teaching requires Catholics to promote both faith and orals and peace and justice. We don't get to choose one over the other.
All health care is rationed; the question is what is the least rationed model? As long as there are limited resources, health care will always be rationed. It simply has to be. Under our current health care system, there is significant rationing. If you work and don't qualify for Medicaid but your employer doesn't offer health insurance, then your health care is rationed by what you can afford. If you have an employer with health insurance, it is undoubtedly managed health care, which means there are judgments about what is covered and what is not. But we must be careful not to jump from one form of rationed health care into a more severely rationed form. State run, single payer systems seem to be pretty good for maintenance and preventative health care, and pretty poor for severe, chronic, or catastrophic health problems.
Health care reform must reduce or control costs or it will not help the people its advocates claim to be helping. Medicare and Medicaid are not self-sufficient. Social Security is not self-sufficient. Federal programs have not shown in recent decades an ability to contain costs. We need to see that this process will be different if we are expected to support it. In addition, the demographics of the current U.S. birth rate significantly affects our ability to support such programs when the number of workers is disproportionate to those who are requiring the most health care.
Rushing health care reform will result in bad health care reform. When legislation is pushed through, many, many undesirable things are tucked into the legislation that are not examined by most legislators, let alone most of the public. We need to deliberate and discuss and compromise (but not compromise foundational values). The town hall meetings seem to be mostly for show rather than real exchanges of information, but there have been some exceptions. In addition, the debate cannot go on forever. We need to be committed to real reform, and we need to hold our representatives and senators accountable to such real reform.

The Domestic Church - Make Sure You Read the Bible

2009-08-30T19:39:00.006-04:00

Our children can be wonderful evangelists to us, their parents. Since I've been thinking about how to inculcate a daily Catholic culture at home, I need to remember that evangelization, at its best, is a reciprocal activity. Last week, my seven-year-old daughter left me a to-do list. It was simple and profound, as children are wont to do. They have a way of cutting to the chase.

Here is her list:

take good cari of Lizzy (Take good care of Lizzy) - Lizzy was the name she gave to a plastic necklace that she was pretending was a lizard.
take cari of your sellfs (Take care of your selves) - This was directed toward me and my son.
Dad make sher you read the Bible (Dad, make sure you read the Bible) - Apparently my son was not obligated to do this.

This was completely unprompted. And it was such a blessing in so many ways.

Little did my daughter know that she was reinforcing the message of the Second Vatican Council in Dei Verbum, which strongly urges us all to read Sacred Scripture:

The sacred synod also earnestly and especially urges all the Christian faithful, especially Religious, to learn by frequent reading of the divine Scriptures the "excellent knowledge of Jesus Christ" (Phil. 3:8). "For ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ."(5) Therefore, they should gladly put themselves in touch with the sacred text itself, whether it be through the liturgy, rich in the divine word, or through devotional reading, or through instructions suitable for the purpose and other aids which, in our time, with approval and active support of the shepherds of the Church, are commendably spread everywhere.

My daughter did not make this list for me because she sees me reading the Bible constantly. Where this urging on her part came from, I don't know, but I suspect it was the Holy Spirit working in her to guide me. Who could resist such a team as the Holy Spirit and my daughter?

There is a wonderful group of faith-filled couples with whom my wife and I have been associated for the past year. Last year we met monthly to read Fr. Walter J. Schu's, The Splendor of Love: John Paul II's Vision for Marriage and Family. It was a very good book and sparked a good deal of thought-provoking conversation. This year, we are having a monthly Bible study based on the Acts of the Apostles, and we are using the Ignatius Catholic Study Bible edition. I have never been part of a Bible study group. Better late than never.

Children, Priests, and Prophets of Nonsense

2009-08-28T19:05:00.009-04:00

Canada's National Post has had an interesting series of articles on the value of children. Some of the tones taken on both sides of the issue have been less than charitable. However, my interest in the discussion is focused on Corinne Maier and Fr. Raymond J. de Souza. Maier is a French author of a book called, "No Kids: 40 Good Reasons Not To Have Children." Her article in the National Post, excerpted from her book, can be found here. An article on Maier by British writer Emma Tucker in the London Times Online can be found here. Maier's focus is on France but she expands to include all of the Western countries. Her comments range from innocuous to outrageous. The latter, includes such things as this (quoted by Tucker):

“It’s not that there are too many people,” she writes, “but too many rich people. No one needs our children, because we and they are the spoilt kids of a planet that is on a collision course. To have a child in Europe or America is immoral – more scarce resources wasted on a way of life that is ever more voracious, capricious, hungry for fuel and destructive of the environment.”

The idea that it is "immoral" to have a child in Europe or America is silly on its face, and it would be laughable if only so many people did not actually believe it. Maier herself has children, so she does not really believe what she says. Tucker goes on to report:

So would Maier tell a “childfree” friend who was contemplating motherhood to resist? “No, I wouldn’t as it’s not my place to interfere in other people’s business,” she says.

So why write her book? Maier wants to have her cake and eat it, too. (And smash it in your face.)

Maier takes issue with what is apparently a campaign by the French government to increase the nation's birth rate by promoting having more children. Tucker says, "So yes, France has a high birth rate...." Tucker's idea of "a high birth rate" is a bit distorted. According to the CIA's statistics, France's birth rate is 12.57 births per 1,000 (2009 estimate), making France #162 in the world for birth rate. Apparently Tucker thinks that France has a high birth rate by comparison to the United Kingdom, which has 10.65 births per 1,000, ranking as #182 in the world. The United States is a little ahead of France, but not by much, with 13.82 births per 1,000 (#153). Canada, home of the National Post, has a birth rate below the United Kingdom at 10.28 births per 1,000 at #192. Even India, which has a substantially higher birth rate (21.76 births per 1,000) is only #87 in the world. Italy has a birth rate of 8.18 births per 1,000 and ranks #222.

Most interesting to me was a wonderful article written in the National Post in response to Maier's article. This article was written by a priest, Fr. Raymond J. de Souza. The article, "Why Priests Don't Have Kids," is a beautiful explanation of the rational behind priestly celibacy in the Latin rite of the Catholic Church. Here is Fr. de Souza's article in its entirety:

Childlessness advocates tell us, in sum, that children require a lot of sacrifices. That's not news. What may be new is that people now feel confident enough to argue publicly that those sacrifices are too great -- in short, that the child is not worth it. I say "may be" new because while the technology has changed over the millennia, the human heart has not. No doubt in every age there were a few who thought children not worth the bother.

The book excerpted in these pages [Maier's No Kids: 40 Good Reasons Not to Have Children] this week makes the argument that life would be more convenient, and therefore happier, without children. That does not really follow. Many things, including most things that give meaning to life, are inconvenient on one level or another. A life of great ease and convenience and even wealth is not necessarily a happy one. Surely the mother at home with toddlers is more constrained than the jet-setting sybarite, but if you know people in both categories, you know that the latter is not necessarily happier than the former.

But any father or mother could tell you that. I, as you would correctly intuit, have no children. Catholic priests of the Latin rite are celibate (the Catholic eastern rites have married clergy).

Understanding the celibacy of the priest requires an understanding of what marriage and children are all about. If they were bad things, or wicked things, or merely things constraining human flourishing, then celibacy would simply be required for everybody. Only if they are good things, very good things, does it make sense to sacrifice them for something greater. So if children are such a good thing, why does the Catholic priest remain celibate?

The first answer is that is how Jesus lived. He chose not to marry and have children, contrary to the norms of his time--and our time too. In the Catholic sacramental world, the priest acts not merely as a representative of Christ, but in the person of Christ Himself. What a priest does no merely human power can do--baptize, forgive sins, consecrate the holy Eucharist. So when the priest acts in the sacraments, it is Christ who acts. The priest then is meant to be an icon of Christ. That is understood, incidentally, even by those who are not Catholic, which is why priestly wickedness occasions so much attention and legitimate opprobrium.

The identification of the priest with Jesus Christ is deeply rooted in the apostolic tradition. Though the apostles were certainly drawn from married men, the biblical witness indicates that they left married life behind, or never married, in response to their vocation. The apostolic tradition has roots even farther back, in the priests of the Jewish covenant, who refrained from conjugal life when engaged in their sacred duties.

There is another dimension at work -- what we call the eschatological dimension. The priest lives now as we all hope to live one day, in the blessedness of heaven. In heaven, there is no marrying or giving in marriage, as Jesus teaches. Marriage and family are for this world. To be sure, it is precisely through marriage and family that most learn the virtues that prepare them for blessedness in heaven. But it remains a preparation.

The priest, and others in consecrated celibacy, lives now as a sign of the world to come, with his life fixed upon the promise of the eternal fulfillment God provides. In freely renouncing the great good of married life and children, the priest points to the world to come. Indeed, without the world to come, the celibacy of the priest would make little sense.

The childless by choice are aiming to maximize some of this world's goods -- education, professional advancement, travel, wealth and, to be blunt, consequence-free sex. For this they are willing to sacrifice their most enduring stake in this world: The only enduring thing we leave in this world is our children. The priest's motivation could hardly be more different. He sacrifices his enduring stake in this world not for more of this world's transitory goods, but for those things that are more enduring than this world itself.

The child by his very nature points to the future. The childless advocates reject the future in favour of the present. The celibate priest points to the future beyond the future even children promise-- eternity.

Fr. de Souza's comment about "childless by choice" needs further clarification and qualification. I would not want to impute to couples who did not choose to have children that they did so for maximizing the world's goods. However, Fr. de Souza is right to challenge all of us--with children or not--to look inward at how we aim to maximize the goods of this world at the expense of sacrifice and service.

Fr. de Souza's article sparked many, many comments. Some were supportive, others were critical. Some were thoughtful, some were combative. Some were just plain nasty. Many did not understand (because not addressed in the article) that celibacy is a discipline, not a doctrine. On the positive side, a secular newspaper actually published a priest's article, and it began a conversation. It does show that the message of Catholicism is one that meets a great deal of resistance in the secular world, and we should be prepared to face that resistence.

Prayers for Senator Edward Kennedy

2009-08-26T22:13:00.004-04:00

As everyone who has any link to any media knows, Senator Edward Kennedy died today. He sincerely sought to improve the lives of the poor, workers, and racial and ethnic minorities, among other legislative areas. For his efforts in these area, we should be grateful. We should also use it as an opportunity to reflect on how much we ourselves do to help those who need our help. I know that I do not do enough in the area of social justice as the Church has reiterated through her social teaching, as the Old and New Testaments direct us.

We should also bear in mind the areas where he significantly strayed from Church teaching, such as the sanctity of life. His relentless public support of abortion, as well as his support for embryonic stem cell research, was, sadly, very successful in undermining the culture of life. He led the way in trying to legitimize Catholic politicians taking positions on fundamental moral issues contrary to the teachings of the Church. Perhaps, he let his partisan loyalty darken his vision and faith.

May God have mercy on his soul, as we would hope that God will have mercy on ours. For the good that he did, despite the evil he did, we pray for his repose and salvation.

Prayers for Bishop Carl Moeddel

2009-08-25T23:11:00.004-04:00

I just found out that the former auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, Carl Moeddel, died. He retired in 2007 and had been ill for some time. We pray for the repose of his soul. He had a gentle voice and a compassionate heart.

Information about Bishop Moeddel's passing can be found below:

Cincinnati Enquirer

Archdiocese of Cincinnati

Cincinnati Telegraph

Creating a Catholic Culture at Home

2009-08-25T22:06:00.004-04:00

In my post, "Can we keep our children Catholic?" I mentioned Pat McDonough's article which refers to the importance of creating a Catholic culture at home for our children's faith formation. There I mentioned that Pope Benedict XVI recounts being a child and the parental blessing he received when leaving home. In his wonderful book, The Spirit of the Liturgy, here is what Benedict says:

Through the Cross, we can become sources of blessing for one another. I shall never forget the devotion and heartfelt care with which my father and mother made the sign of the Cross on the forehead, mouth, and breast of us children when we went away from home, especially when the parting was a long one. This blessing was like an escort that we knew would guide us on our way. It made visible the prayer of our parents, which went with us, and it gave us the assurance that this prayer was supported by the blessing of the Savior. The blessing was also a challenge to us not to go outside the sphere of this blessing. Blessing is a priestly gesture, and so in this sign of the Cross we felt the priesthood of parents, its special dignity and power. I believe that this blessing, which is a perfect expression of the common priesthood of the baptized, should come back in a much stronger way into our daily life and permeate it with the power of the love that comes from the Lord (p. 184).

There is so much in this brief passage. "Through the Cross, we can become sources of blessing for one another." Although the sign of the Cross is usually used in blessing, we don't usually think of the Cross itself as a source of how we can bless each other. As baptized Christians, we have a share in the priesthood of Christ, something else we don't much think about. But as parents we are called to be a blessing to our children. And I was very moved by the Holy Father's urging that parental blessings "should come back in a much stronger way into our daily life and permeate it with the power of the love that comes from the Lord." I was so moved that my wife and I now bless our children at night with the sign of the Cross before they go to bed, and we say a family blessing in the morning when one or all of us leave the house. We need to find more ways to permeate our daily life with visible signs of our Catholic faith.

Can We Keep Our Children Catholic?

2009-08-23T21:40:00.006-04:00

Today's mass readings for the Twenty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time got me thinking about choices and faith.

The first reading comes from the Book of Joshua:

Joshua gathered together all the tribes of Israel at Shechem,
summoning their elders, their leaders,
their judges, and their officers.
When they stood in ranks before God,
Joshua addressed all the people:
“If it does not please you to serve the LORD,
decide today whom you will serve,
the gods your fathers served beyond the River
or the gods of the Amorites in whose country you are now dwelling.
As for me and my household, we will serve the LORD.”

But the people answered,
“Far be it from us to forsake the LORD
for the service of other gods.
For it was the LORD, our God,
who brought us and our fathers up out of the land of Egypt,
out of a state of slavery.
He performed those great miracles before our very eyes
and protected us along our entire journey
and among the peoples through whom we passed.
Therefore we also will serve the LORD, for he is our God.” (Joshua 24:1-2a, 15-17,18b)

I have on my refrigerator, "As for me and my household, we will serve the Lord." But for how long can we parents speak for our household? Most of us have families or come from families that experienced children reaching adulthood and leaving the Church.

The Gospel reading reminds us that in the long run we cannot speak for the faith of anyone but ourselves:

Many of Jesus’disciples who were listening said,
“This saying is hard; who can accept it?”
Since Jesus knew that his disciples were murmuring about this,
he said to them, “Does this shock you?
What if you were to see the Son of Man ascending
to where he was before?
It is the spirit that gives life,
while the flesh is of no avail.
The words I have spoken to you are Spirit and life.
But there are some of you who do not believe.”
Jesus knew from the beginning the ones who would not believe
and the one who would betray him.
And he said,
“For this reason I have told you that no one can come to me
unless it is granted him by my Father.”

As a result of this,
many of his disciples returned to their former way of life
and no longer accompanied him.
Jesus then said to the Twelve, “Do you also want to leave?”
Simon Peter answered him, “Master, to whom shall we go?
You have the words of eternal life.
We have come to believe
and are convinced that you are the Holy One of God.” (John 6:60-69)

That confession of faith is not something that we can give on behalf of another; it must come from that person's heart. But many, sometimes ourselves, have been among the crowd who find the sayings of Jesus hard and leave Him. I was among those once.

God gave us free will so that we may love, for without the ability to freely love we cannot call it love. But that freedom also gives us the opportunity to reject love. The Second Vatican Council in Dignitatis Humanae (Declaration on Religious Liberty), tells us the relationship between conscience and freedom, declaring that we are obliged to follow the truth when we recognize it, but we can neither be compelled to follow that truth nor compelled to recognize it:

The sacred council likewise proclaims that these obligations bind people's consciences. Truth can impose itself on the human mind by the force of its own truth, which wins over the mind with both gentleness and power. So, while the religious freedom which human beings demand in fulfilling their obligation to worship God has to do with freedom from coercion in civil society, it leaves intact the traditional catholic teaching on the moral obligation of individuals and societies towards the true religion and the one church of Christ." (Section 1)

God calls people to serve him in spirit and in truth. Consequently, they are bound to him in conscience, but not coerced. God has regard for the dignity of the human person which he himself created; human persons are to be guided by their own judgement and to enjoy freedom. (Section 11).

Given all of this, are there things we can do to help increase the chances of keeping our children Catholic?

At one time there were Six Precepts of the Church; the sixth was "Not to marry persons who are not Catholics...." Today there are five; the sixth has been left off. It is good that the the sixth has been removed, because the precepts are required, but we must remember that they are minimum requirements. We should do much more. (Just as the the Ten Commandments are minimum requirements; we need to do much more than not kill someone.) While the former sixth precept is no longer required, it should nevertheless be our goal if we are called to the vocation of marriage. Interfaith marriages can be very strong, very faithful, very faith-filled marriages, and as such it is good that they are not prevented. Marrying a Catholic does not guarantee a solid marriage; a Catholic couple are invariably at different stages of spiritual development, different stages of orthodoxy, different stages of religious comprehension. Marrying a nominal or merely cultural Catholic could in fact be more detrimental to one's Catholic faith than marrying a devout person of a different faith. But we must strongly advise our children to take seriously the nature of the faith journey of a potential spouse. Faith matters. If one marries someone of no faith or of nominal faith, or of a faith that rejects or denigrates the Catholic faith, such a marriage may weary and possibly extinguish the Catholic partner's faith.

When I help with baptism prep at our parish, I hand out to the parents an article by Pat McDonough. McDonough is a wonderful syndicated Catholic writer. The article I hand out is "Will our kids be Catholic?" While watching a baptism, she wonders, "how many of these infants would embrace the faith that was embracing them over the baptismal font." Her advice on how to try to keep our children Catholic is to foster a visible, deep faith at home that permeates daily life. Read to our children Bible stories. Develop religious rituals in the family. (I use in baptism prep a moving story from Pope Benedict XVI about how his parents would bless the children before leaving home and the impact that had on him.) Bring children to mass and foster love of the Eucharist. And faith must not strictly be intellectual but emotional as well: "If an emotional connection is not formed between kids and their church while the window of opportunity is still open, chances are the doors to that church will not beckon them inside later in life."

And sometimes none of this is enough. I think of St. Monica, and her wayward son, Augustine. But her prayers, her penance, and God's grace and persistence, brought Augustine back to the faith, to becoming a formative voice in the Church, and to Heaven.

So let us work and pray so that our children, as adults, will come to see no other viable alternative than to declare: "Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life."

Charity and Truth

2009-08-22T22:47:00.007-04:00

Cokie Roberts, a television and radio journalist and a Catholic, is reported to have said that Pope Benedict XVI was "really lacking in the theological virtue of charity." (I have not been able to find an original source for this quotation.) Whether or not she said this, it is a sentiment held by some, including some Catholics. However, such a viewpoint represents a profound lack of understanding of the Holy Father and of charity.

Pope Benedict's first encyclical was Deus Caritas Est (God is Love). He wrote a post-synodal apostolic exhortation called Sacramentum Caritatis (Sacrament of Charity). His third encyclical was the recent Caritas in Veritate (Charity in Truth). If anything, Pope Benedict is in fact obsessed with the theological virtue of charity. It appears that the mission of his pontificate is to further develop the theology of charity and live that theology out.

Benedict's encyclical, Caritas in Veritate, is in part indebted to his predecessor, Pope John Paul II, who reminded us that true charity is rooted in truth. In his encyclical, Veritatis Splendor (The Splendor of Truth), Pope John Paul tells us that those who criticize the Church for a lack of charity do not understand that charity without truth is not charitable. If we truly love others, we will share the truth with them, because the truth will lead them to goodness and happiness:

The Church's teaching, and in particular her firmness in defending the universal and permanent validity of the precepts prohibiting intrinsically evil acts, is not infrequently seen as the sign of an intolerable intransigence, particularly with regard to the enormously complex and conflict-filled situations present in the moral life of individuals and of society today; this intransigence is said to be in contrast with the Church's motherhood. The Church, one hears, is lacking in understanding and compassion. But the Church's motherhood can never in fact be separated from her teaching mission, which she must always carry out as the faithful Bride of Christ, who is the Truth in person. "As Teacher, she never tires of proclaiming the moral norm... The Church is in no way the author or the arbiter of this norm. In obedience to the truth which is Christ, whose image is reflected in the nature and dignity of the human person, the Church interprets the moral norm and proposes it to all people of good will, without concealing its demands of radicalness and perfection".

In fact, genuine understanding and compassion must mean love for the person, for his true good, for his authentic freedom. And this does not result, certainly, from concealing or weakening moral truth, but rather from proposing it in its most profound meaning as an outpouring of God's eternal Wisdom, which we have received in Christ, and as a service to man, to the growth of his freedom and to the attainment of his happiness. (section 95)

These words of John Paul II have only become more important since he wrote them in 1993. As our culture is plunging ever more deeply into ethical relativism, let us remember that the struggle for truth matters, especially if we are truly concerned with charity and love.

Visible Catholicism

2009-08-15T23:25:00.004-04:00

The Booklady has written three postings at her blog on mental prayer on 8/10/09, 8/12/09, and 8/13/09 that I found very informative. I struggle with my prayer life, as I suppose do most who draw breath in this life. The Booklady reminds us of the importance of nurturing our interior life. By doing that, we will give expression to that spiritual life in our daily physical living out of that interior faith. In fact, the deeper our hidden interior life, the more visible will be our exterior faith life. We need to consciously foster that exterior faith life, too. We need to make visible our Catholic faith.

We can make our Catholicism visible in little and big ways. On both our cars is a bumper sticker that says, "You can't be Catholic and pro-abortion." My family and I say grace before meals in restaurants. I cross myself when I go by a Catholic Church, even if I am in a car with someone else. On Ash Wednesday, I try to go to mass in the morning so I will wear the ashes all through my work day. Eucharistic processions are a public act of faith and adoration in the Real Presence. I have an image of the Sacred Heart on my key chain, and sometimes a co-worker will need to borrow my keys because I have a master key to certain rooms. I don't eat meat on Fridays throughout the year, and when someone asks me if I'm a vegetarian, it gives me an opportunity to say why I'm not eating meat.

These are all ways (and there are so many others) that give us an opportunity to show the distinctiveness of our Catholicism. We are a consecrated people, a people set apart. We are in the world, but not of the world. As Catholics, we should appear different; our faith should be different from what the world offers. Let us strive to make visible our Catholicism so that others (and ourselves!) may see it, wonder about it, and be changed by it.

Lessons from St. Clement and St. Lawrence

2009-08-10T21:49:00.009-04:00

St. Clement of Alexandria (ca. 150-216), wrote in his work, The Instructor of Children (Paidagogos) (written some time before 202):

The greatest of all lessons, so it would seem, is to know oneself. For whoever knows himself will know God; and knowing God, he will become like God, not by wearing gold ornaments and robes which reach to the feet, but by doing good and by requiring as few things as possible. (William Jurgens, The Faith of the Early Fathers, Vol. I, #411, p. 180)

As St. Clement points out, we can know about God by knowing ourselves. The concept of natural law explains how this works. That is perhaps one of the conscious or unconscious reasons why many people nowadays try to dismiss natural law; it is an attempt to rid their (and everyone else's) worldview of God. St. Clement then makes an important point: by knowing God, we will become like God. Adam and Eve falsely believed that by trying to usurp God's authority, they could become like God. However, had they instead focused on knowing God, then they could have become like God. Rather, they revealed that they did not know God at all, for, as the Catechism of the Catholic Church says, Man "let his trust in his Creator die in his heart" and that "[a]ll subsequent sin" would be a "lack of trust in his [God's] goodness" (section 397). Since God is goodness itself, to not trust God's goodness is to not know God.

St. Paul reminds us that even Christ, who is God, did not seek equality of His human nature with his divine nature:

Have this mind among yourselves, which was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross. (Philippians 2:6)

As St. Clement notes, to be like God is not to lord it over others, not to have ostentatious wealth, but "by doing good and requiring as few things as possible." All we need to do is look at a crucifix; there we see the greatest good being done (our salvation) on that "Good" Friday, and we see Christ stripped of everything, requiring no things but His body and blood.

And that brings us to St. Lawrence, whose feast day is today. St. Lawrence suffered martyrdom in 258. In 405, Aurelius Prudentius Clemens wrote an account of Lawrence's death:

The prefect of Rome driven by a greed for gold summoned Lawrence to his court and questioned him about the treasures of the Church. Lawrence, as if ready to cooperate, gave his reply.

'Our church is very rich,' he said.
'I must confess that it has wealth;
Our treasuries are filled with gold
Not found elsewhere in all the world.

Lawrence agreed to surrender the treasure and requested a short delay so that he could gather all the goods and estimate their total worth. The prefect's heart swelled with joy and he readily granted Lawrence three days. He dismissed Lawrence from the court and the latter went forth to carry out his task.

He hastens through the city streets,
And in three days he gathers up
The poor and sick, a mighty throng
Of all in need of kindly alms.
...
He sought in every public square
The needy who were wont to be
Fed from the stores of Mother Church,
And he as steward knew them well.

When the appointed time had come, Lawrence assembled those whom he had gathered before the temple gate. He then invited the prefect to accompany him to view the "wondrous riches of our God."

The prefect deigns to follow him;
The sacred portal soon they reach,
Where stands a ghastly multitude
Of poor drawn up in grim array.

The air is rent with cries for alms;
The prefect shudders in dismay,
And turns on Lawrence glaring eyes,
With threats of dreadful punishment.

Lawrence, undaunted, faced the prefect's rage at the unwelcome spectacle.
He admonished him and urged him to consider a more sublime reality.

'These poor of ours are sick and lame,
But beautiful and whole within.
They bear with them a spirit fair
And free from taint and misery
...
'These humble paupers you despise
And look upon as vile outcasts,
Their ulcerous limbs will lay aside
And put on bodies incorrupt,

'When freed at last from tainted flesh
Their souls, from chains of earth released,
Will shine resplendent with new life
In their celestial fatherland.

'Not foul and shabby, or infirm,
As now they seem to scornful eyes,
But fair, in radiant vesture clad,
With crowns of gold upon their heads.

The prefect was neither amused nor edified. He accused Lawrence of making him a laughingstock, of mocking him, and of staging a farce. He promised that Lawrence would pay for it with a slow and lingering death. The prefect then prepared a bed of coals and ordered Lawrence to ascend the pyre and lie on the bed he deserved.

Thus spoke the prefect. At his nod
Forthwith the executioner
Stripped off the holy martyr's robes
And laid him bound upon the pyre.

Prudentius wrote that the "martyr's face was luminous" and that "round it shone a glorious light" but noted that this phenomenon was only visible to the baptized. Similarly, he wrote that, "the very odor given forth by holy Lawrence's burning flesh was noxious to the unredeemed and to the faithful nectar sweet." The poet then presents the final moments in the life of Lawrence in a paean that has resounded through the centuries.

When slow, consuming heat had seared
The flesh of Lawrence for a space,
He calmly from his gridiron made
This terse proposal to the judge:

'Pray turn my body, on one side
Already broiled sufficiently,
And see how well your Vulcan's fire
Has wrought its cruel punishment.'

The prefect bade him to be turned.
Then Lawrence spoke: 'I am well baked,
And whether better cooked or raw,
Make trial by a taste of me.'

He said these words in way of jest;
Then rising shining eyes to heaven
And sighing deeply, thus he prayed
With pity for unholy Rome.
...

Thus ended Lawrence's fervent prayer,
Thus ended, too, his earthly life:
With these last words his eager soul
Escaped with joy from carnal chains.

Some noble Romans, who were led
By his amazing fortitude
To faith in Christ, then bore away
The hero's body from the scene.

The prefect's "greed for gold" is like what St. Clement described as "wearing gold ornaments and robes which reach to the feet." But St. Lawrence knew that by emptying ourselves like Christ, we become like Christ, that by serving, we will be saved. If we can learn the lessons which these two great saints are teaching us, then we will become like God.

Devotion to the Sacred Heart

2009-08-07T23:13:00.004-04:00

On the Feast of the Sacred Heart, I decided that I would adjust my schedule to attend mass on the first Friday of each month. I was off from work on the first Friday in July. Today I modified my work schedule so I could go to mass first and then go into work later. I don't know what has drawn me to this devotion, and I have much to learn about this devotion. However, I am very glad to be doing this.

St. John Vianney has a wonderful quotation about the Sacred Heart that I find very moving:

Let us open the door of the Sacred Heart, and shut ourselves in for a moment amidst its divine flames; we shall then realize what God's love means.... (Thoughts of the Curé d'Ars, p. 39)

St. John's reflection reminds me of the story in the Book of Daniel of Hananiah (Shadrach), Mishael (Meshach), and Azariah (Abednego), where the Babylonian King, Nebuchadnezzar has the three Israelites thrown into a fiery furnace for not worshipping the Babylonian gods (Chapter 3). Instead of being consumed, "they walked about in the midst of the flames, singing hymns to God, and blessing the Lord" (Daniel 3:1, following Daniel 3:23). Azariah goes on to say: "And now with all our heart we follow thee, we fear thee and seek thy face" (Daniel 3:18). Then a song of praise is given by the three youths:

Bless the Lord, Hananiah, Azariah, and Mishael, sing praise to him and highly exalt him for ever; for he has rescued us from Hades and saved us from the hand of death, and delivered us from the midst of the burning fiery furnace; from the midst of the fire he has delivered us. Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his mercy endures for ever. (Daniel 3:66-67)

Sometimes in confession the priest will say, "Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good," to which the penitent responds, "His mercy endures forever." I heard that in confession for the first time on Monday. I like that very much. The story of Daniel makes me think of Jesus' Sacred Heart in the sense of being in the fire without being consumed (also reminding me of the Burning Bush), of being protected by God, of being loved despite our sinfulness (much of the prayer of Azariah and the song of the three youths is about Israel's sinfulness and God's mercy). I want to reflect more on St. John's words as I try to enter into the mystery of God's love through the devotion to Jesus' Sacred Heart.

Sacrament of Love and the Feast of St. John Vianney

2009-08-04T21:52:00.006-04:00

I did something this week that I have never done in my 46 years on this earth. Yesterday, I went to confession one week after I had my last confession. I hope to make a habit of weekly confession. For a while I thought, "What will I have to confess after only one week?" (Self-awareness is sometimes not my strong suit.) As I was conducting my examination of conscience, I had trouble remembering my sins from just a couple of days ago; how pathetic were my powers of recall for confessions that were 6 weeks or 6 months apart?

This happened to be a particularly moving confession. It is important for me to remember that how confession feels is not an indication necessarily of its effectiveness, but certainly when it does feel good, that certainly is motivating.

I continue to be very nervous about going to confession. When I was a boy, I used to read Charles Schulz's Peanuts before confession to try to calm my nerves. As an adult, when I get ready to confess, I sometimes think about not going. Yesterday when I went to confession, I had that feeling, but then I thought, "Satan would like nothing better than for me to walk out of here right now without going to confession." That idea helped.

After confession, I went to the Blessed Sacrament to say my penance. The words "Sacrament of Love" came to me. Pope Benedict has called the Eucharist the "Sacrament of Charity" (Sacramentum Caritatis). However, there he discusses the "intrinsic relationship" between the sacraments of Eucharist and Reconciliation (Chapter II, sections 20-21). The Sacrament of Reconciliation is also a sacrament of love, as God shows His love for us through the gift of His mercy, a wonderful complement to the gift of His sacrifice in the Eucharist. And then I thought about how all the sacraments are signs of God's love for us, giving us the grace to to love Him as we ought. Pope Benedict talks about the relationship between the Eucharist and the other sacraments (sections 16-29).

In this Year of the Priest and its patron, St. John Vianney, whose feast day is today, we pray that our priests and deacons will catechize the laity on the importance of frequent confession. We also pray that those laity who do go to confession will encourage their fellow Catholics on the need to go to confession. Two of my friends go to confession weekly, and because they spoke openly about it to me, their example inspired me to try to do the same. I was in the stands at a parish football practice with one of those friends, talking about confession while our sons were on the field; hopefully our conversation was overheard by others and got them thinking about going to confession more (or at all). "Encourage each other daily while it is still today" (Hebrews 3:13, which we say in the Liturgy of the Hours in the Invitatory prior to reciting Psalm 95).

The Food Which Endures

2009-08-02T11:33:00.003-04:00

Today's Gospel reading for the Eighteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time is the passage that contains the title of this blog (my title comes from the Revised Standard Version rather than the New American Bible):

When the crowd saw that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there,
they themselves got into boats
and came to Capernaum looking for Jesus.
And when they found him across the sea they said to him,
“Rabbi, when did you get here?”
Jesus answered them and said,
“Amen, amen, I say to you,
you are looking for me not because you saw signs
but because you ate the loaves and were filled.
Do not work for food that perishes
but for the food that endures for eternal life,
which the Son of Man will give you.
For on him the Father, God, has set his seal.”
So they said to him,
“What can we do to accomplish the works of God?”
Jesus answered and said to them,
“This is the work of God, that you believe in the one he sent.”
So they said to him,
“What sign can you do, that we may see and believe in you?
What can you do?
Our ancestors ate manna in the desert, as it is written:
He gave them bread from heaven to eat.”
So Jesus said to them,
“Amen, amen, I say to you,
it was not Moses who gave the bread from heaven;
my Father gives you the true bread from heaven.
For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven
and gives life to the world.”

So they said to him,
“Sir, give us this bread always.”
Jesus said to them,
“I am the bread of life;
whoever comes to me will never hunger,
and whoever believes in me will never thirst.” (John 6:24-35)

Our days are so caught up in working for the food that perishes, in making a living or making dinner. These are not unimportant things. We need food to maintain the health of our bodies, and we should be very concerned for the hungry. We need to support our families and do the things necessary to take care of them. But we need to remember the example of Martha and Mary. When it comes to daily service versus religious devotion, we don’t neglect the one for the other. There is a time for one, and a time for the other. We can even integrate the two. But, as St. Benedict reminds us, “Let us do now that which will profit us for all eternity.”

Eucharistic Adoration and the Readings for the 18th Sunday in Ordinary Time

2009-07-30T21:08:00.007-04:00

Here is a very good article by Father Thomas Rosica, CSB about this week's readings for Sunday mass. I am particularly interested in what he has to say about Eucharistic adoration:

Adoration rediscovered

Here is one concrete example to illustrate the above point about liturgy and devotion. [Fr. Rosica had just finished saying that there should be no dichotomy between liturgy and devotion, charity and justice.] Many of my generation have responded very negatively to the younger generation's rediscovery of Eucharistic adoration and devotion.

Benedict XVI has put a great emphasis on Eucharistic adoration and devotion in Catholic life. Many of us have failed to see that our public worship is intimately related to adoration, so much so that that they could be considered as one. Piety and devotion can be springboards to mature faith. Each time we gather together to celebrate the Eucharist as the Christian community, we profess, together with the whole Church, our faith in Christ the Eucharist, in Christ -- the living bread and the bread of life.

"...they could be considered as one." That idea is expressed in the Sacred Congregation of Rites' Eucharisticum Mysterium:

The mystery of the Eucharist should therefore be considered in all its fullness, not only in the celebration of Mass but also in devotion to the sacred species which remain after Mass and are reserved to extend the grace of the sacrifice. (Section 3g)

Pope Paul VI called attention to the importance of Eucharistic adoration in Mysterium Fidei:

And they [the faithful] should not forget about paying a visit during the day to the Most Blessed Sacrament in the very special place of honor where it is reserved in churches in keeping with the liturgical laws, since this is a proof of gratitude and a pledge of love and a display of the adoration that is owed to Christ the Lord who is present there. (Section 66; this passage is also quoted in the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments' Redemptionis Sacramentum, section 135)

If we see Eucharistic adoration as "a proof of gratitude and a pledge of love," then we see how important it is, and how it is a way to stay close to Christ between sacramental receptions of the Eucharist.

Father Rosica also refers to Philippino Bishop Louis Antonio Tagle's address to the 49th International Eucharistic Congress in Quebec City. Father Rosica quotes a wonderful passage from Bishop Tagle's address:

In the Eucharist, the Church joins Jesus in adoring the God of life. But the practice of Eucharistic adoration enlivens some features of worship. We believe that the presence of Christ in the Eucharist continues beyond the liturgy. Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament connotes being present, resting, and beholding. In adoration, we are present to Jesus whose sacrifice is ever present to us. Abiding in him, we are assimilated more deeply into his self-giving. Beholding Jesus, we receive and are transformed by the mystery we adore.

I love the idea of "being present, resting, and beholding" as the disposition for fruitful adoration. Such simple words. Such challenging actions.

Abortion - Taking Away Parents' Rights to Choose How to Parent Their Children

2009-07-29T20:41:00.010-04:00

Abortion is first of all a human rights violation. However, the pro-abortion agenda also includes a concerted effort to restrict how parents are allowed to parent their children.

I was thinking about the things that our children cannot do without written parental permission, even though our daughters can get an abortion without our permission. In Ohio, the law requires that one parent be notified of the intended abortion, unless the minor gets approval from a judge (through "judicial bypass"). Judges could approve the abortion without the consent of a parent if the judge deems that a) the minor is mature enough to make the decision on her own, b) the minor has been the victim by one of the parents of physical, emotional, or sexual abuse, or c) it is not in the best interests of the minor to notify the parents. See the 1990 U.S. Supreme Court decision, Ohio v. Akron Center. Even with the parental notification, a parent only needs to be notified; a parent's consent is not required. Not surprisingly, Planned Parenthood referred to even this inadequate accommodation of parental rights as one of "two major blows against abortion rights." The extremism of Planned Parenthood's position is clear in this statement.

According to a Lifenews.com article in 2003, the Akron Beacon Journal conducted a study which showed that Ohio judges approved judicial bypass requests 86% of the time.
It is worth considering what minors can and cannot do without parental permission:

Written permission from a parent is required for a minor to go on a field trip, but a minor girl can kill her unborn child without parental consent.
In Ohio, parental consent is required for a minor to marry, but a minor girl can kill her unborn child without parental consent.
Written parental consent is required for a minor to enlist in the military, but a minor girl can kill her unborn child without parental consent.
In Ohio, parental consent is required for a minor to get a tattoo, body piercing, or ear piercing, but a minor girl can kill her unborn child without parental consent.

Parents need to be parents, especially when their daughters are in a confusing, complicated, and frightening situation like an unexpected teen pregnancy. But apparently we need the consent of the government for us to exercise what is clearly a fundamental human right.

More on Sin

2009-07-26T22:03:00.009-04:00

I don't recall where I heard this, but I have long remembered it. It went like this: We need to stop thinking of sin as the equivalent of stealing paper clips from IBM, and start thinking of sin as the equivalent of slapping your grandmother.

How we think of sin will determine how we act and the nature of our faith (or lack of it). We often take one of two approaches. The first approach is that we see the sins of others in great detail and are utterly oblivious to our own sins. Jesus warned us about this attitude: "Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?" (Matthew 7:3). Or again when Jesus tells the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector:

"The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, 'God, I thank thee that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week, I give tithes of all that I get.' But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, 'God, be merciful to me a sinner!' I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted." (Luke 18:11-14)

The second approach is that there is no sin. Pope Pius XII famously said in 1946, "The sin of the century is the loss of the sense of sin." Instead we talk about "bad choices" or psychological disorders or the idea that "what is a sin for you may not be a sin for me and vice versa." Now, certainly Catholic moral theology takes into account degree of culpability based on knowledge that a particular action is a sin and on the degree of free consent of the will to commit the sin. But if we completely relativize sin, then we are actually saying that sin does not exist.

As Michael Dubriel rightly points out, "Remove sin and you are essentially removing God from the picture--because you are admitting that it really doesn't matter if you are offending God or not" (How to Get the Most out of the Eucharist, p. 53). No wonder faith in Western culture is on the ropes; without a sense of sin, Westerners do not feel a need for God. However, Dubriel reminds us that not only do we need God, not only do we need to be aware of our sins and turn to Him, but we need to do so constantly: "... in truth, we also need to be reconciled to him [Christ] at every moment of the day" (p. 57). We can not only receive the graces of frequent Spiritual Communion, but we can benefit as well from frequent reconciliation. The Ignatian practice of the examen is based on every day, several times each day, reviewing where we have sinned and seeking God's forgiveness and strength to love God better in the future.

Certainly it is possible to be overly scrupulous about sin. But that does not seem to be the problem with the present age. Sin can actually bring us closer to God because it makes us aware of how much we need Him. So let us take our sins to our God, whose limitless mercy and grace can restore our relationship with Him.

Holiness and Sin

2009-07-23T23:29:00.003-04:00

The church, however, clasping sinners to its bosom, at once holy and always in need of purification, follows constantly the path of penance and renewal. (Lumen Gentium, section 8)

I am thinking about holiness and sin these days. In the above passage, Lumen Gentium links holiness and sin, church and faithful. As we know from the Nicene creed we recite at mass, the Church is "one, holy, Catholic, and apostolic." We also know that everyone who is a member of Holy Mother Church is a sinner. Though we are sinners, we are called, we are urged, we are begged, to become saints. Lumen Gentium tells us of "The Universal Call to Holiness" (Chapter 5, sections 39-42). There we read:

Therefore all the faithful are invited and obliged to try to achieve holiness and the perfection of their own state of life. (Section 42)

How do we become saints? By being aware of our sinfulness before the God who is goodness itself. By using that awareness to seek God's love and mercy. By going to the Sacraments frequently and humbly to strengthen us in the struggle to be holy, to love as God loves.

As such, I am realizing that I need to go to Confession much more frequently than every month or two--or longer. I am realizing that I need to go to mass and adoration more frequently than weekly.

I like the first quotation from Lumen Gentium because it causes me to reflect that the Church models for us penance and renewal. In addition, the Church, which is a holy institution, is made up of sinners who are touched by the holiness of the Church and who stain the Church with our sin, even while the Church maintains its holiness. How does this interplay of holiness and sin work? It's a mystery.

However, what we do know is that we must follow the Church's model of constant penance and renewal. Now comes the hard part: living that penance, that renewal.

On Spiritual Communion by St. John Vianney

2009-07-22T23:55:00.003-04:00

After the reception of the Sacraments, when we feel the love of God growing cold, let us instantly make a Spiritual Communion. (Thoughts of the Curé D'Ars, p. 35)

Of course, it is not God's love for us that grows cold, but our love for God. Or, it is our awareness of God's love for us that grows dim.

As Vinny Flynn points out in his CD on the Eucharist, spiritual communion is not a consolation prize when we can't receive Jesus sacramentally. Rather, spiritual communion is a way to keep sacramental communion a vital part of our daily lives.

Traveling Evangelization

2009-07-20T21:53:00.005-04:00

Evangelization is a scary thing to most of us Catholics. We don't want to impose. We don't want to be pushy. We don't want to make people feel awkward. We don't want to be embarrassed. However, evangelization is not optional for Catholics. We find in the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

Since, like all the faithful, lay Christians are entrusted by God with the apostolate by virtue of their Baptism and Confirmation, they have the right and duty, individually or grouped in associations, to work so that the divine message of salvation may be known and accepted by all men throughout the earth. (Section 900; based on the Vatican II document, Lumen Gentium [Dogmatic Constitution on the Church], section 33)

It is important to note that the Catechism tells us that evangelization is a right and a duty, and we should remain aware of both aspects. How do we cope with the fear that we have of evangelization? Lumen Gentium tells us about one of the most important ways:

Moreover, by the sacraments, and especially by the sacred Eucharist, that love of God and humanity which is the soul of the entire apostolate is communicated and nourished. (Section 33)

So what are some ideas for evangelizing in non-threatening ways, especially starting out? Since this is the season of summer vacations, and since many people travel for business, here are a few ideas that I have either used or am planning on using when traveling and staying in a hotel.

Rosaries

Once while traveling for business, I rented a car. In the glove box was a rosary. (It was bright-deer-hunting-season orange; simply hideous as far as aesthetics.) That started me thinking that I should say the Rosary while on my trip, which I did. I left the rosary on the desk in the room. After the maid had come in to clean up the room, she had very reverently hung the rosary over the center of the headboard of the bed. I was (and still am) very touched by that simple yet powerful gesture of faith. When I returned the rental car, I put the rosary back in the glove box for the next person.

So I would suggest two approaches. First, inexpensive rosaries are very easy to come by. Leave one in a rental car or leave one in a drawer in a hotel room. You never know how the rosary may speak to the next guest in the room. Second, while you are staying, leave the rosary out for the maids to see. Many maids are Hispanic and may currently be or may have once been Catholic, so such a religious object may have great meaning for them, or call them to a renewed use of the Rosary. Even if the maid is not and has never been Catholic, simply seeing the rosary may be some consolation to her in what is a difficult day's work.

Putting Money in Perspective

I once heard something about someone (possibly an urban legend) putting a large denomination bill in a hotel Bible. I thought, that's an interesting way to get people to at least open a Bible. And as we know from his Confessions, simply opening a Bible had a significant impact on St. Augustine:

So was I speaking and weeping in the most bitter contrition of my heart, when, lo! I heard from a neighbouring house a voice, as of boy or girl, I know not, chanting, and oft repeating, "Take up and read; Take up and read. " Instantly, my countenance altered, I began to think most intently whether children were wont in any kind of play to sing such words: nor could I remember ever to have heard the like. So checking the torrent of my tears, I arose; interpreting it to be no other than a command from God to open the book, and read the first chapter I should find. For I had heard of Antony, that coming in during the reading of the Gospel, he received the admonition, as if what was being read was spoken to him: Go, sell all that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven, and come and follow me: and by such oracle he was forthwith converted unto Thee. Eagerly then I returned to the place where Alypius was sitting; for there had I laid the volume of the Apostle when I arose thence. I seized, opened, and in silence read that section on which my eyes first fell: Not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying; but put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, in concupiscence. No further would I read; nor needed I: for instantly at the end of this sentence, by a light as it were of serenity infused into my heart, all the darkness of doubt vanished away. (8.12.29)

I don't put large bills in the hotel room Bibles, just one dollar bill. But I always put it in the same spot: Matthew 18. That is the part where Peter asks Jesus how often he has to forgive his brother if he sins against him. "As many as seven times?" (Matthew 18:21). Peter reminds me very much of myself in these moments, which is why he makes such a good patron saint for me. Of course, Jesus replies, "I do not say to you seven times, but seventy times seven" (Matthew 18:22). Then Jesus tells the parable of the servant who owed his king an insurmountable debt. The servant pleads with the king, who forgives the entire debt. Then, the ungrateful servant goes out and threatens to put a man into prison if he does not pay him the much smaller sum owed to him. When the king finds out about this encounter, he throws the ungrateful servant into prison "till he should pay all his debt." The parable concludes, "So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart." (Matthew 18:23-35). This is what Jesus was talking about earlier in Matthew when he prayed "forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors" (Matthew 6:12). I like the irony of leaving money in a Bible passage that commands us to be charitable both as regards money and also as regards love.

Prayer Cards

I have not done this yet, but another item we can leave in hotel rooms is a prayer card. Whether they be cards for particular saints, cards with the Our Father or the Hail Mary on them, or some other religious card, these can be very meaningful to others. I think of Fr. John Corapi's conversion story in this regard. Although raised a Catholic, he had left his faith, pursued a life of complete materialism, and through drug addiction ended up homeless. At that point he began re-learning the Hail Mary from a prayer card that his mother had sent him. That child-like beginning started him along a path that led him back to the Church, into the priesthood, and into a powerful apostolate. Think of prayer cards as signposts left to mark the trail for other fellow travelers.

I'm sure others have more ideas. These are unobtrusive ways of spreading the faith that get us started on the path to more overt apostolates. When it comes to evangelization, let us all pray:

...grant to your servants to speak your word with all boldness. (Acts 4:29)

More from St. John Vianney

2009-07-15T22:46:00.002-04:00

St. John Vianney wrote:

Those who practice devotion, who go often to Confession and Communion, and fail to do works of faith and charity, are like trees in blossom. You think there will be as much fruit as flower; but there is a great difference.... (Thoughts of the Curé D'Ars, p. 27).

Timely words in light of Pope Benedict XVI's recent encyclical, Caritas in Veritate. We must not be faith and morals Catholics at the expense of social justice, and we must not be social justice Catholics at the expense of faith and morals. We must be Catholics, and Catholics are people who try to live both faith and morals, and social justice. To do otherwise is to be a cafeteria Catholic.

Kathleen Kennedy Townsend and the Politics of Ignorance

2009-07-14T22:05:00.011-04:00

Let me start with saying that I do not consider myself either a Democrat or a Republican. I consider myself first and foremost a Catholic. Partisan politics, be it Democrat or Republican, liberal or conservative, is like a prism that separates the light, and then chooses only certain colors of the spectrum. By contrast, the Catholic vision is integrated.

It is clear that the Democratic Party is actively courting Catholics. There is nothing wrong with that. That is what political parties do: they solicit voting blocs, and as many as they can get. The Republican Party has certainly been doing the same, especially with evangelical Christians, but also with Catholics. My objection with the current approach by the Democrats is that their strategy appears to be a focused one of disinformation from within the Church. They have been using very high profile Catholics who prey on the ignorance of most American Catholics regarding Church teaching and history. Nancy Pelosi was certainly the most vocal and appalling in her grossly erroneous "lesson" on abortion and the history of the Catholic Church in her interview with Tom Brokaw on Meet the Press. Joe Biden's interview with Brokaw was somewhat less egregious, but his privatization of faith, moral relativism, and total inability to see abortion in terms of science and human rights in addition to faith was not much better.

In an article in the The American Spectator on former Kansas governor and current Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius, writer Matt Bowman makes the argument that the Democrats are trying to marginalize Catholic opposition from within:

But the most intriguing component of Sebelius's nomination is her Catholicism. Not that Catholic abortion supporters are rare -- see Obama's failed nominee to HHS, Tom Daschle. But Sebelius is significant as an attempt by Obama to foment a civil war within Catholicism to neutralize its pro-life efforts.

Like a shrewd general, Obama is using Catholics themselves as his ground troops. Two dozen prominent Obama supporters quickly launched a letter supporting Sebelius, and claiming that they are Catholic and pro-life. The letter's signers are the same liberal Obama Pro-Lifers from his presidential campaign, led by Professor Doug Kmiec and the Soros-funded group "Catholics United."

What is different about this new strain of cafeteria Catholics is not their support for abortion politicians, but their claim that they are the true abortion opponents within Catholicism. They reveled in Obama's season of audacity, and simply claimed that the most extreme pro-abortion candidate in history was really a pro-lifer. It worked. In an election about economics, they gave Catholics the rationalization they needed to vote for political celebrity but against the unborn.

Bowman's thesis seems to be supported by the recent article in Newsweek by former lieutenant governor of Maryland, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend. In a clearly concerted effort to exploit the ignorance of American Catholics of the faith they profess to believe, Townsend trumps faith with crass party and ideological politics.

The title of her article is, "Without a Doubt: Obama Represents American Catholics Better than the Pope Does." As others have pointed out, the Pope does not represent only American Catholics, but the worldwide Church. The Church is catholic, meaning universal, precisely so that the interests of one nation, region, or ethnic group do not overshadow those of everyone else. Furthermore, the Pope does not "represent" Catholics in the way that Townsend represented the people of Maryland as lieutenant governor. The Pope pastors them. He teaches them. He encourages them. He loves them enough to tell them what they need to hear, rather than what they want to hear.

Apparently, Townsend is looking to promote Obama from president to pope. She notes where President Obama and Pope Benedict XVI agree, and then notes where they disagree, indicating that the Pope should fall in line with the President's views. She accuses the Pope of hypocrisy, saying: "While the pope preaches love, listening to the other has been a particular stumbling block for the Catholic hierarchy (as it is for many in power)." She refers to Humanae Vitae as a "heinous decision." She criticizes Pope Paul VI for upholding Church teaching on abortion and contraception because he went against an advisory panel on the subject which had voted "69 to 10." Again, Townsend seems to be confusing majority rule with issues of truth and falsity.

She does not seek to understand the Church's teaching on any subject with which she does not agree, including the ordination of women or homosexuality, and in so doing mischaracterizes the Church's views on these issues. She says that a 1979 meeting at the Vatican on the role of women in the Church was "greeted with revulsion," and that "Despite the rhetoric of love and truth, the Vatican shows disdain (if not disgust) toward gays." Townsend is silent on the President's opposition to same-sex marriage. Townsend herself does not show much interest in either love or truth.

Townsend asserts: "For Obama, respectful disagreement and a willingness to recognize differences was the animating spirit of the presidential campaign, and it was central to his Notre Dame speech." The President may respectfully disagree with others on such matters as abortion and embryonic stem cell research, but the result is not simply one of disagreement. Rather, the result is setting in place policies that promote his positions on these matters. Townsend's contention that the President's path is more compassionate than the Pope's is simply naive at best, disingenuous at worst.

After her litany of polls, Townsend ends her article: "The pope has a lot to learn about Catholic politics in America. Barack Obama can teach him." What she does not seem to grasp is that the Pope is not in the business of American politics, but of shepherding souls. Fortunately, the Holy Father quite clearly discerns that distinction.

Such attempts to use American Catholics as political pawns will not end any time soon. We should take this opportunity to commit ourselves to bolstering the efforts of recent years to catechize Catholics better, from the pulpit and from the pew. The better we know our faith, the better we will be able to see through such pandering, and then we can get on to meaningful political discussion of how to address the issues of ethics and social justice that challenge our nation.

Dedicating July to the Precious Blood

2009-07-13T21:14:00.011-04:00

I was not aware of this, but July is dedicated to the Precious Blood of Jesus. It appears that there was a Feast of the Precious Blood prior to the 1969 calendar. At one time it was the first Sunday in July, at another time it was July 1. In 1969, the feast was combined with Corpus Christi, which now commemorates both the body and blood of the Lord.

Catholic Culture has a good article on this with some excellent links on the topic. The links include:

The Chaplet of the Most Precious Blood - I had not come across this chaplet before, but I think that this would be a very good devotion that I would like to take up. We have such wonderful devotions in the Church (such as the Rosary, the Stations of the Cross, and the Seven Last Words of Christ on the Cross) which allow us to contemplate significant moments in the life of Christ and how we can enter into those moments.

Litany of the Blood of Christ - In the past I did not much care for litanies; they seemed monotonous and mindless. It was not until I really began praying the Rosary in earnest, in understanding how sound and rhythm can initiate and enhance contemplation, did I begin to see the value of litanies. We used this litany at our parish's Corpus Christi procession.

Pope John XXIII's Document Promoting Devotion to the Precious Blood - There the Holy Father notes how when he was growing up, his family would recite the Litany of the Precious Blood every day in July. He makes a moving exhortation on the role of devotions in our faith life:

"Now among the cares of our pastoral office, venerable brethren, we are convinced that, second only to vigilance over sound doctrine, preference belongs to the proper surveillance and development of piety, in both its liturgical and private expressions."

That is a sobering and hopeful contrast to the World's usually contemptuous use of such terms as "pious devotion," intended to indicate either hypocrisy or naivete.

Pope John Paul II's Message to Those Devoted to the Precious Blood - There the Holy Father said: "How could we ever fail to recognize the value of every human being, when Christ shed his blood for each one without distinction?" This is an important reminder, in light of Pope Benedict XVI's Caritas in Veritate, that Christ's Precious Blood makes all human life precious, which speaks to how Catholics and all people should act as regards life issues such as abortion, contraception, in vitro fertilization, and embryonic stem cell research, as well as social justice issues such as hunger, economic opportunity, human labor, and poverty.

Here are some other interesting related entries at various sites:

Saint Louis Catholic (Latin version of the Litany of the Precious Blood)

Vultus Christi (Pope Benedict's comments on the Feast of the Precious Blood)

Vultus Christi (A beautiful prayer based on the Feast of the Precious Blood by Father Mark)

Maria Stein Center and Shrine of the Holy Relics (The Sisters of the Precious Blood have a retreat center and shrine with many relics in western Ohio)

The Rosary and Eucharistic Adoration

2009-07-11T23:14:00.011-04:00

I came across an interesting article, "The Rosary and Eucharistic Adoration," by Susan Benofy from May, 1999 in the Adoremus Bulletin. Adoremus - the Society for the Renewal of the Sacred Liturgy promotes authentic reform of the liturgy.

Benofy does a very good job of addressing concerns that the Rosary is not an appropriate devotion done before the Blessed Sacrament. Benofy shows how the Congregation for Divine Worship (CDW) and various popes have explained what the Rosary is and how that is thoroughly compatible with Eucharistic adoration, given the proper disposition of the faithful. This was, apparently, a bit of a reversal of position by the CDW from a 1968 statement which concluded that the Rosary was a prayer addressed to Mary and therefore not appropriate for Eucharistic adoration.

However, in a 1999 document, the CDW cites Paul VI's Marialis Cultus , which affirms the Rosary as Christ-centered:

As a Gospel prayer, centered on the mystery of the redemptive Incarnation, the Rosary is therefore a prayer with a clearly Christological orientation. Its most characteristic element, in fact, the litany-like succession of Hail Mary's, becomes in itself an unceasing praise of Christ, who is the ultimate object both of the angel's announcement and of the greeting of the mother of John the Baptist: "Blessed is the fruit of your womb" (Lk. 1:42). (section 46)

In his apostolic letter, Rosarium Virginis Mariae, John Paul II writes:

The Rosary, though clearly Marian in character, is at heart a Christocentric prayer.... With the Rosary, the Christian people sits at the school of Mary and is led to contemplate the beauty on the face of Christ and to experience the depths of his love. (section 1)

Brant Pitre discusses the Jewish roots of the Eucharist, and in doing so highlights the bread of the presence in the temple as a type of the Eucharist. The word for "presence" in that phrase can also be translated "face." Both John Paul II and Pitre show us that the Rosary and the Eucharist are complementary ways of encountering the face of Christ.

John Paul II goes into great depth connecting Mary and the Eucharist in his encyclical, Ecclesia de Eucharistia, where he speaks of "Mary, Woman of the Eucharist" (Chapter 6). Of course, his addition of the Luminous Mysteries includes the Institution of the Eucharist, which makes the Rosary even more obviously Eucharistic. However, even in the original mysteries, he sees profoundly Eucharistic connections:

In a certain sense Mary lived her Eucharistic faith even before the institution of the Eucharist, by the very fact that she offered her virginal womb for the Incarnation of God's Word. The Eucharist, while commemorating the passion and resurrection, is also in continuity with the incarnation. At the Annunciation Mary conceived the Son of God in the physical reality of his body and blood, thus anticipating within herself what to some degree happens sacramentally in every believer who receives, under the signs of bread and wine, the Lord's body and blood.

As a result, there is a profound analogy between the Fiat which Mary said in reply to the angel, and the Amen which every believer says when receiving the body of the Lord. Mary was asked to believe that the One whom she conceived “through the Holy Spirit” was “the Son of God” (Lk 1:30-35). In continuity with the Virgin's faith, in the Eucharistic mystery we are asked to believe that the same Jesus Christ, Son of God and Son of Mary, becomes present in his full humanity and divinity under the signs of bread and wine.

“Blessed is she who believed” (Lk 1:45). Mary also anticipated, in the mystery of the incarnation, the Church's Eucharistic faith. When, at the Visitation, she bore in her womb the Word made flesh, she became in some way a “tabernacle” – the first “tabernacle” in history – in which the Son of God, still invisible to our human gaze, allowed himself to be adored by Elizabeth, radiating his light as it were through the eyes and the voice of Mary. And is not the enraptured gaze of Mary as she contemplated the face of the newborn Christ and cradled him in her arms that unparalleled model of love which should inspire us every time we receive Eucharistic communion? (section 55)

Finally, there is a good address by Cardinal Archbishop Sean O'Malley of Boston on "Mary and the Eucharist." He gave this at a Eucharistic congress, and it is specifically on the the Sixth Chapter of Ecclesia de Eucharistia. Cardinal O'Malley is clearly comfortable combining the Rosary with Eucharistic adoration:

Allow me to share with you some of my personal meditations on the Joyful Mysteries of the rosary. These are the mysteries I like to use when I am praying the rosary during a holy hour before the Blessed Sacrament.

It is important that we think about what we are doing and saying when praying the Rosary in Eucharistic adoration. Such clarifications are important, given the principle of lex orandi, lex credendi (literally "the law of praying, the law of believing," meaning that how we pray forms what we believe). We can be thankful for the clarifications given by these people and others, which help us to draw closer to our Savior in the Blessed Sacrament.

Caritas in Veritate

2009-07-08T21:50:00.003-04:00

Yesterday Pope Benedict XVI published his encyclical, Caritas in Veritate (Charity in Truth). I have glanced through the encyclical and want to comment on it more later, but for now I wanted to note some early commentators:

George Weigel in National Review

Amy Wellborn in Via Media

S. Schneck in Catholics in Alliance

Sameul Gregg in Acton Institute

John Allen in National Catholic Reporter (shortly before the release of the encyclical)

There is even a Facebook group for the encyclical (something good to see).

Mystery

2009-07-06T21:45:00.007-04:00

While saying a family Rosary the other night, we were telling our children about the Trinity. We said that God was one god in three persons. Without any further explanation, our five-year old son started to think about this and then said, "Jesus is his own father? That's crazy!"

A few days ago I was at Eucharistic adoration with my daughter and son. The Blessed Sacrament was exposed in front of us, but my son wanted to go back to the tabernacle as we usually do. I tried to explain to him that Jesus was right in front of us in the monstrance, so we did not need to go to the tabernacle, although he was in both places. He found that concept confusing.

Leave it to children to lead us to the core of Mystery, and to remind us that while there is much God has revealed to us and much that reason can make out, in the end God cannot be comprehended by our limited minds, no matter how much we may think we have the idea of of God under control.

True Freedom

2009-07-04T21:58:00.009-04:00

On this Fourth of July we rightly remember the founding of our nation. We remember ideals of democratic government that had only intermittently been practiced to greater and lesser extents throughout human history. We remember blood shed in sacrifice so that democratic governance might be born and maintained.

It is also a good time to reflect on the nature of freedom. False notions of freedom are potentially as dangerous as the deprivation of true freedom.

Civil law that is not rooted in natural law has power, rather than justice, as its foundational principle. Laws rooted in fear, expedience, or a distorted conception of the individual undermine democracy. Abortion is a prime example of this problem.

True freedom has boundaries. I have heard it said that a fire within the confines of a hearth heats the home, but outside the hearth, the fire burns down the home. We must rid ourselves of the idea that restrictions by definition mean the limiting of freedom.

St. James reminds us that law in its restrictions gives us liberty:

But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if any one is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who observes his natural face in a mirror; for he observes himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. But he who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer that forgets but doer that acts, he shall be blessed in his doing. (James 1:22-25)

The law of liberty gives us not only rights, but obligations as well. The Catechism of the Catholic Church reminds us of this fact regarding the Ten Commandments:

They shed light on the essential duties, and so indirectly on the fundamental rights, inherent in the nature of the human person. The Decalogue contains a privileged expression of the natural law.... (CCC, 2070)

I am currently reading Pope John Paul II's encyclical letter, Veritatis Splendor (The Splendor of Truth), which elaborates the connection between human freedom and truth. There he quotes the above passage from the Catechism. I hope to comment on Veritatis Splendor more after finishing it.

The Christian tradition emphasizes that freedom is necessary for love, for without free will there cannot be love, since love is an act that cannot be compelled. As a result, the Christian experience is filled with people who freely chose to endure tremendous restrictions on their own will to do God's. In the Agony of the Garden, Jesus submits his human will to the Father's to endure torture and execution. "My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will but as thou wilt" (Matthew 26:39). In the Annunciation, Mary submits to God's will to bear the Messiah, although it will cause her great sorrow. "Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word" (Luke 1:38). In fact, the Greek word translated here as handmaid is doule, which is a female slave. A slave has no freedom in the legal sense. St. Peter would follow Jesus to the end (with some detours), himself facing crucifixion. After telling Jesus three times that he loves Him (a kind of reparation for his three denials of Jesus at the time of His Passion), Jesus tells Peter:

"Truly, truly, I say to you, when you were young, you girded yourself and walked where you would; but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will gird you and carry you where you do not wish to go." (This he said to show by what death he was to glorify God.) And after this he said to him, "Follow me." (John 21:18-19)

Human beings often do not do what they should do or what is best for them because these things do not correspond with our desires. But freedom is not doing whatever we want whenever we want it. Freedom is choosing the good for the sake of God, and the benefit to others and oneself.

Hugo Munsterberg made this comment on the state of American education 100 years ago in 1909:

We began to feel that those who had never learned to obey never really became their own masters.... (The Atlantic, October, 1909).

It seems paradoxical that obedience can lead to mastery, but it is true. I have heard it asked, who is more free: the musician who through discipline and self-denial has learned through many years of practice how to play a piano beautifully, or the untaught person who simply bangs on the keys?

We are very fortunate to live in the United States and have all the freedoms we enjoy. To be sure, we have not always lived up to our ideals (slavery and the genocide of Native Americans being two of the most notable instances). However, given our fallen human nature, we should not be surprised by this fact. We should not settle for it, but we should not be surprised.

We should remember on this day those who, like Jesus, chose to be "obedient unto death" (Philippians 2:8), sacrificing their lives for us. They knew a kind of freedom of which the rest of us have but a dim vision.

Feast of St. Thomas

2009-07-03T16:29:00.014-04:00

Today we celebrate the Feast of St. Thomas. The reading for mass today is taken from the account of Thomas not believing the testimony of the other disciples about the Resurrected Christ:

Thomas, called Didymus, one of the Twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples said to him, "We have seen the Lord." But Thomas said to them, "Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands and put my finger into the nailmarks and put my hand into his side, I will not believe." Now a week later the disciples were again inside and Thomas was with them. Jesus came, although the doors were locked, and stood in their midst and said, "Peace be with you." Then he said to Thomas, "Put your finger here and see my hands, and bring your hand and put it into my side, and do not be unbelieving, but believe." Thomas answered and said to him, "My Lord and my God!" Jesus said to him, "Have you come to believe because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed." (John 20:24-29)

Above is Caravaggio's painting, The Incredulity of St. Thomas. Caravaggio is very graphic in this painting. Thomas does not simply lay his finger or hand on the wound in Jesus' side, but he puts his finger into the wound, probing it as if he wants to be absolutely certain that this is not a deception. The viewer is almost repulsed by this. Jesus' face is nearly in darkness, with the wound becoming the focus of the light. I think of the line from the Anima Christi: "Within your wounds, hide me."

Faith is hard work. Think of when Jesus talked to His followers about the need to eat His flesh and drink His blood. The response of many of His followers that day was: "This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?" (John 6:60). When Jesus asks the Twelve if they too will leave Him, Peter responds: "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life; and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God" (John 6:68-69).

St. Paul reminds us that "we walk by faith, not by sight" (2 Corinthians 5:7). However, like Thomas, we tend to like "proof" in the form of the senses. Jesus tells a crowd, "This generation is an evil generation; it seeks a sign, but no sign shall be given to it except the sign of Jonah" (Luke 11:29). In fact, later in the Gospel of Luke, Jesus indicates that for those who do not believe, they would even discount the evidence of their senses. In the story of Lazarus, and the rich man, Lazarus begs at the rich man's door, and the rich man sends him away empty-handed. After Lazarus dies he is "carried by the angels to the bosom of Abraham," but when the rich man dies, he is "in Hades, and in torment" (Luke 16:22-23). The rich man asks for relief but is reminded that on earth Lazarus suffered and in death finds comfort, while the rich man lived well without any care for the poor, and now he is in torment. The rich man then asks Abraham to send Lazarus to the rich man's five brothers to warn them to lead holy lives. "But Abraham said, 'They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them.' And he said, 'No, father Abraham; but if some one goes to them from the dead, they will repent.' He said to him, 'If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced if some one should rise from the dead'" (Luke 16:29-31). Both of the passages from Luke relate to resurrection. The story of Jonah in the belly of the whale for three days represents the death and resurrection of Jesus. The story of the rich man involves a request for Lazarus to "rise from the dead" to set his brothers on the right path. Thomas is convinced by One who rises from the dead, but St. Paul reminds us that the rest of us won't get such a showing, and Jesus tells us that we are better off for it.

Faith is hard work. How often does Jesus say to someone, "Oh ye of little faith"? How little faith do we have? Jesus says, "For truly, I say to you, if you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, 'Move hence to yonder place,' and it will move; and nothing will be impossible to you'" (Matthew 17:20). We have so little faith that we would only need enough comparable to mustard seed to do fantastic things, but we are so far away from that as to have a tiny fraction of a tiny seed worth of faith. This is a fairly intimidating concept!

Faith is hard work, but we can't do it by ourselves. And the Good News is that we don't have to do it by ourselves. A man whose son is possessed by an unclean spirit asks Jesus to help him. Jesus tells him, "All things are possible to him who believes." Then the father cries out to Jesus, "I believe; help my unbelief" (Mark 9:23-24). Then Jesus heals the boy.

Like Thomas and many others, we struggle with belief at times. For some, it may be much of the time. But Jesus is willing to let us share our doubts and struggles with Him. In response, we need to open ourselves to Him and trust Him. Original sin came through human beings succumbing to the doubt sown by Satan, doubt that God was truthful and trustworthy. We are still learning that lesson even now. But if we come to Jesus with what little faith we have, He will increase it. Therefore, let us join St. Thomas every time we see the priest lift up the Body and Blood of Jesus during the consecration at the mass and say, "My Lord and my God!"

The Luminous Mysteries

2009-07-02T20:45:00.008-04:00

This beautiful stained glass window is a recent addition to St. Francis of Assisi Church in Centerville, Ohio. The window shown here includes the Luminous Mysteries of the Rosary. I have come to love these recent additions to the Rosary, which include the Baptism of Jesus, the Miracle at the Wedding Feast of Cana, the Proclamation of the Kingdom, the Transfiguration, and the Institution of the Eucharist.

One can view all of the Luminous Mysteries as having Eucharistic implications.

The baptism of Jesus shows the cleansing from Original and personal sin through the waters of Baptism. The Eucharist cleanses us from venial sin. In addition, water is mixed with the wine prior to the Consecration, representing the pouring of water and blood from Jesus' heart after being pierced by the lance. See Tiber Jumper's post at his blog, Crossed the Tiber, where he quotes St. John Chrysostom on the connection between baptism and Eucharist.

The miracle of the wedding feast at Cana shows the transubstantiation of water into wine, prefiguring the transubstantiation of wine into blood and bread into flesh of the Eucharist.

The proclamation of the Kingdom indicates both the word of God in the Scriptures and the Word of God in the Second Person of the Trinity. As Fr. John Corapi often says, the Good News is not some thing; the Good News is some One.

The Transfiguration is about Jesus appearing in His glory, revealing His divinity which was veiled in His humanity. In a similar way, Jesus' body and blood is veiled in the appearance of bread and wine in the Eucharist.

The institution of the Eucharist is Jesus' great gift to us so that He could be with us "until the end of the age" (Matthew 28:20).

Pope John Paul II set out the new Luminous Mysteries in his apostolic letter, Rosarium Virginis Mariae (2002). See especially sections 19 and 21.

The Rosary is such a wonderful prayer, and it can deepen our love for Jesus in the Eucharist. It is a fitting prayer during Eucharistic adoration, since it is a contemplation of Jesus' life. In the future I will also look at a set of prayers for the Rosary with a Eucharistic focus which I have come across.

St. John Vianney on Fear and Crosses

2009-06-30T22:28:00.003-04:00

St. John Vianney said:

"Our greatest cross is our fear of crosses." (Thoughts of the Cure of D'Ars, p. 23)

How true this is. We seek comfort, we seek predictability, we seek admiration, we seek things, but we run in dread from the God who made and loves us. We do not trust that He wants what is best for us.

St. John Vianney also said:

"You must accept your cross; if you bear it courageously it will carry you to Heaven." (p. 9)

Following Christ is counter-intuitive to how we are socialized by our culture. But contrary to the prevailing culture, suffering is not the worst thing that can happen to us. The worst thing that can happen to us is to be separated from God by our own actions which turn us away from Him.

The Eucharist: The Past is Not Past

2009-06-28T23:27:00.004-04:00

The great twentieth-century American novelist, William Faulkner, famously said about the American South that there the past is not only not dead, it isn't even past. That can help us understand the sacrifice of the mass as a re-presentation of Christ's sacrifice on Calvary.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church makes this clear:

The sacrificial memorial of Christ and of his Body, the Church

1362 The Eucharist is the memorial of Christ's Passover, the making present and the sacramental offering of his unique sacrifice, in the liturgy of the Church which is his Body. In all the Eucharistic Prayers we find after the words of institution a prayer called the anamnesis or memorial.

1363 In the sense of Sacred Scripture the memorial is not merely the recollection of past events but the proclamation of the mighty works wrought by God for men.184 In the liturgical celebration of these events, they become in a certain way present and real. This is how Israel understands its liberation from Egypt: every time Passover is celebrated, the Exodus events are made present to the memory of believers so that they may conform their lives to them.

1364 In the New Testament, the memorial takes on new meaning. When the Church celebrates the Eucharist, she commemorates Christ's Passover, and it is made present the sacrifice Christ offered once for all on the cross remains ever present.185 "As often as the sacrifice of the Cross by which 'Christ our Pasch has been sacrificed' is celebrated on the altar, the work of our redemption is carried out."186

1365 Because it is the memorial of Christ's Passover, the Eucharist is also a sacrifice. The sacrificial character of the Eucharist is manifested in the very words of institution: "This is my body which is given for you" and "This cup which is poured out for you is the New Covenant in my blood."187 In the Eucharist Christ gives us the very body which he gave up for us on the cross, the very blood which he "poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins."188

1366 The Eucharist is thus a sacrifice because it re-presents (makes present) the sacrifice of the cross, because it is its memorial and because it applies its fruit:

[Christ], our Lord and God, was once and for all to offer himself to God the Father by his death on the altar of the cross, to accomplish there an everlasting redemption. But because his priesthood was not to end with his death, at the Last Supper "on the night when he was betrayed," [he wanted] to leave to his beloved spouse the Church a visible sacrifice (as the nature of man demands) by which the bloody sacrifice which he was to accomplish once for all on the cross would be re-presented, its memory perpetuated until the end of the world, and its salutary power be applied to the forgiveness of the sins we daily commit.189

When we go to mass, we need to bear in mind that we are not simply remembering an event that occurred long ago. Not only is Jesus really present in the Eucharist, but his sacrifice on the cross is, in a mystical way, present as well. Jesus is not dead, and He is not a memory, but He is there, with us, and we with Him.

Some Excellent Posts on Eucharistic Adoration

2009-06-26T23:21:00.003-04:00

At her blog, "Practicing Catholic," Heather Barrett has a thoughtful posting on Eucharistic adoration. She rightly indicates our need to "question the Eucharist," not in the sense of doubting it, but in the sense of seeking a deeper understanding of that ultimately unfathomable mystery. Think of how St. Thomas Aquinas structures the Summa Theologica with questions, objections, and replies. He questions not to cast doubt on sacred matters, but rather to apply reason to make sacred matters more accessible and more firmly held.

Heather also points to another enlightening blog entry on adoration, this one by Julie at "Happy Catholic." She re-prints there a handout from a parish that actively discourages Eucharistic adoration. Her rebuttal to that handout is very well done. Certainly anyone who thinks of Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta, who made Eucharistic adoration a central event in the daily lives of the Missionaries of Charity, should be convinced that Eucharistic adoration neither detracts from the Mass nor excludes the community.

Many thanks to Heather and Julie for these insightful posts.

St. John Vianney on the Eucharist

2009-06-26T22:40:00.004-04:00

I went to one of our local Catholic bookshops today and picked up a booklet on St. John Vianney called Thoughts of the Curé d'Ars (Tan Books). Since we are now in the Year of the Priest, I thought this would be a good way to introduce me more to this beloved pastor.

Here are some of the passages that reflect St. John Vianney's thoughts on the Eucharist:

How pleasing to Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament is the short quarter of an hour that we steal from our occupations, from something of no use, to come and pray to Him, to visit Him, to console Him. (p. 8)

We can only receive God once a day; a soul enkindled with divine love makes up for this by the desire of receiving Him every moment of the day. (p. 10)

Although the good God does not allow us to see Him, He is nonetheless present in the Blessed Sacrament; nonetheless ready to grant us all we ask. (p. 15)

When we leave the holy banquet of Communion, we are as happy as the wise men would have been if they could have carried away the Infant Jesus. (p. 15)

Grieve over the contempt cast upon Jesus Christ in the Blessed Sacrament, and try to make amends for it by a greater and more ardent love." (p. 18)

Our Lord is hidden in the Blessed Sacrament, waiting for us to come and visit Him.... See how good He is!... If He had appeared before us now in all His glory, we should not have dared to approach Him; but He hides Himself like one in prison, saying: "You do not see Me, but that does not matter; ask Me for all you want...." (p. 21)

"Live on Him that you may live for Him." (p. 22)

I have much to learn from St. John Vianney, and I look forward to learning it.