To Be Your Witness

Why real neglect comes from Helicopter parenting.

2015-07-30T19:10:00.001-07:00

Recently I posted on Facebook about an incident that occurred in our neighborhood with one of our heli-neighbours. Heli-neighbour because she and her husband are not only almost always within view of their children but they are almost always hovering and providing input of the behaviour of other children's behaviour. Which on the surface may seem like prudent parenting but I would like to propose a slightly different perspective. To do so I will give an example of what I mean.

Helicopter mom comes over to our property to instruct a small group of boys ages 4-13 not to wrestle "cause things can escalate too fast and someone might get hurt. Just be gentle..." Helicopter mom then walks back to her home. Not 2 minutes later one of her son's punches another boy in the face for no reason. My first reaction is to whisper under my breath "your freaking kidding me!" But almost immediately I understood why, her children are incapable of play fighting because they are so controlled that they have no ability for self control? Truth be told many of us at some point have hovered, particularly us moms. Think about it. How many times do we descend upon our bickering children and command that they smarten up or we will doll out the consequences, and then do. We are all, at some point, guilty of trying to control situations so as to avoid that annoying fight, the hurt feelings, or worse the hurt and maybe even bruised and bloody body. But are we perhaps not hurting more by meddling? Worth considering.

There is nothing like natural consequences often times to teach children, no amount of hovering can replace that. I am not advocating a free for all, nor savagery, but having children has taught me that, to a large extent, they are empiricists who need to test hypotheses before arriving at the proper conclusions. I have noticed this in particularly with our boys. My husband has often told the boys that if they wanted to get rough that is fine but each had to suck it up if they got hurt or everyone involved would have to deal with his consequences. They eventually learned boundaries and that some things were just dumb to do to an older sibling who is stronger and faster then they are. Of course this is an ongoing learning process and considering we still have a four year old with older siblings it will continue to go on for some time yet. We get involved if necessary, but often they are able to work it out with little involvement from us. We have a duty as parents to instill in our children the underlying principles of being kind, fair, respectful of others, etc. In other words to be good citizens at home so they will become good citizens when they are out on their own. But they will only really make those principles their own when allowed to put them to the test. It's called life! And sometimes it hurts like heck and there is no way around that reality.

I think our culture has brainwashed us to think that if you don't watch your child's every move you are a bad parent. Child psychologists and social workers have sold many on the nonsense that we must prevent conflict and shield our children from "bullying" at all costs, even if that cost is the damage to their ability to protect and stand up for themselves. As a result we are obsessed with having our child fit a mould that exists only in the imagination of so called child psychologists and social workers. It comes from spending way too much time watching and examining our children rather than just letting them take the skills we teach them and run with them.

Here comes the part that I expect to get some flack for, I think moms tend to be more likely to want to interfere in squabbles and even big conflicts that we are probably not meant to interfere in. This is a generalization that clearly does not apply to all moms. I do think that some of what we are seeing today with men who just won't man up and take responsibility comes from households that either have no dads or that have fathers who are there but who have checked out. Yes we often read and hear stories of those great men whose moms pushed them to be the men who they have become, and those men are good men, but I think without exception, these are moms who understood that in the absence of a father they had to step back and to a large extent let their boys fall down and pick themselves up.

A while ago I had a very uncomfortable discussion with my husband about my interference in a dispute between him and our eldest son. I witnessed my son being reprimanded for failing to fulfill his obligation to complete a task for his father. I heard the tail end of the reprimand and felt that the punishment did not suit the crime. I talked to my husband later about this and he got, justifiably, annoyed. Why? I thought it was reasonable that as the mom I should have some say in how the young man was disciplined, which on the surface seems fair....right? What I failed to see, not only on this occasion but on many others, was that by interfering I was robbing my son of the opportunity to a) learn that his actions have consequences that are sometimes unfair and hey that is life my friend, but most importantly b) that my interference was robing my son of an opportunity to man up and confront his father and make his own case, no matter the consequences. When my husband implied the latter point to me by telling me that my interference was in a way emasculating my son I was furious and indignant! How dare he make such an accusation? What made me angriest though was that deep down I knew that there was more than a grain of truth to his comment.

Now there is a time when mama's love and protection is necessary. However eventually we need to let that innate instinct to protect give way to a less natural but equally necessary need to let them get hurt. For a mom it can be hellish, but it is absolutely necessary, particularly for boys! In the end what is more neglectful, leaving your child to their own devices, within reason of course, or being there to try to prevent every little hurt to the point of making them incapable of facing challenges and deal with pain and failure?

There is one area where parents need to be in total control, the one area where today's parents are either clueless or incompetent, and that is the virtual world. Parents are so busy protecting their children from natural consequences and normal day to day dangers that they have missed the greater soul robbing danger of computer gaming and Internet porn. But that is for another post.

Pax Christi!

Lent is here again!

2014-03-11T18:56:00.002-07:00

Lent is here again and it is time to rekindle, at least for me it is, a commitment to be a better child of Christ. Being a cultural Catholic for most of my life I have only been consciously on this journey for a couple of decades, and in truth only with any serious commitment over the past 7 years.

Lent in my earlier reversion years was a time to give up sweets, or maybe a favourite TV show. But then what? It took me many years to realize, only vaguely at first, that to give something up meant that the time should be filled with activities that would serve to bring one closer to Christ, joining our little crosses to his monumental one. I used to dread Lent, truly! The thought making my little sacrifices and often giving in to my weak will and indulging or finding back doors so that suffering could be lessened, was not appealing so much was my dread of it that I would often neglect to give anything up and sort of make up little sacrifices along the way to appease the occasional pricks of conscience.

God is truly merciful God who, in his unbounded love for us allows us to come to him and is there always waiting for us to finally wake up to his perfect will and wisdom. Despite my many years of prideful indifference to this miraculous opportunity he was ready and waiting for that day when I would finally recognize what a gift Lent is, what a Divine act of Love.

So now I still struggle with my mortifications, sacrifices, and fasts, but instead of looking to myself and my own will to get me through it, I use each moment of struggle as a step to turn to God and his Mercy. My fasts are geared toward not only sacrifice, but reminding myself that this body which God has given me is to be treated with respect. All that goes in it should first be to keep it strong so as to serve our Lord in my duties as wife and mother. The time which I whittled away with social media and entertaining myself with favourite films and tv shows should be time spent with my God, through meditations, reading and service. In the end Love can only increase as sacrifice increases, and in turn as Love increases sacrifice is made easier, because the very nature of true love is sacrificial and a willed denial of self for the beloved.

In the end, at the ripe old age of 49, finally I am starting to understand Lent, and love it. No I am no masochist, suffering is not fun and it hurts, but because I am such a sinner it takes this intense reminder for me to pick up my cross and truly, willfully, follow our Lord. And while to journey is hard and rife with temptations and attacks from the enemy, the fruits are always worth it. Even if it is a barely noticeable increase in my closeness to our Lord, it is worth it.

What he endured for us, are we prepared to endure for him?
May God Bless you and Keep you on your Lenten Journey,
Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam

Mother's love

2014-02-21T05:39:00.002-08:00

The other day I listened to an audio sancta sermon from the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord, (http://www.romans10seventeen.org/audio-files/20140202-That-Out-of-Many-Hearts-Thoughts-May-Be-Revealed.mp3,) and it occurred to me that God was again clearly pointing me in the direction which he has been directing me my whole life. Sadly it has taken me most of my life to be able to finally recognize, sometimes, his encouraging push. The essence of the sermon was on God's infinite love for us and how it is reflective in the maternal love of Mary and to a more imperfect degree in the maternity gifted to every woman.

As I listened I realized again what an honour I have been given to be able to mother our children. Being a mother has meant more to me than anything I have ever undertook, second only to being a wife.

In his sermon Father was saying that each of us is hard wired to need to be mothered. This resonated with me because of the belief that each of us is created to yearn for God's love. This need is imprinted on our souls from conception and we spend our earthly lives trying to fill this yearning. Alas those who reject God's love, because they are created to love him and be loved by him, find far less satisfying means of answering this yearning. Father quotes from Dom Columbia Marmion on the nature of motherly love.

"God is Love, and so that we may have some idea of his love he gives a share of it to mothers. The heart of mother was her unwearying tendingness, the constancy of her care, the inexhaustible delicacy of her affection, is a truly divine creation. Although God has placed in her only a spark of love for us. Yet however imperfectly a mother's heart reflects the divine love towards us God gives us our mothers to take his place in some manner with us. He places them at our side from our cradles to guide us, to guard us, especially in our earliest years when we have so much need of tenderness."

The words struck me so deeply. Mothering, if we are willing to accept for a moment that the above reflects some truth, is not the act of feeding, diaper changing, bathing, cuddling the sick, scolding the wayward in and of themselves. Mothering rather is that disposition which informs all the above, which drives those acts. Mothering therefore can not be replaced by daycare as so many have come to believe. One might argue that the very notion of daycare is so counter family as to be communistic in nature. Is it a coincidence that daycare came from communist/socialist ideologies. Ideologies which by the way deny the existence of God. Mothering is that spirit of deep sacrificial nurturing that comes from a heart filled with a will to give so completely of self that it informs all other decisions. That spirit that allows us to overcome some of the most heart wrenching pain and torment because God has placed in our care people who's needs have become paramount in our lives and to put ourselves first would mean giving them less than what they must have.

I realize that there are situations where a woman has no choice but to go out into the workforce, where she must set aside her maternity for a chunk of time in the day to take on what had traditionally been a paternal role. But out of need or choice there is still left the question as to what happens to those who are not given that which they have been created needing?

Let us say that we have been hard wired with an innate need to be mothered, not part time when it is convenient for the motherer, but full time at the expense of the motherer's perceived needs and desires. If this is true what does that mean for the billions of us who's mothers have been sold on the idea that there is no need of sacrifice in mothering? That mothering can be a part-time job shared with a career? That the "constancy of her care" need not be quite so constant? Would this not reflect on the generation preceeding this shift? Is it any wonder that we now live in a culture of "me firstism?" That sacrifice, dedication to others at the expense of self, is considered neglectful and counter-productive on our supposed role of self-fulfillment? How often have we heard the statement, "how can I make others happy and give to them when I am unhappy and do no have what I need/want?" How many have left families and marriages citing some form of the above position?

And then what happens to our understanding of God? If mothers are meant to be a reflection of God's love for us, from whom we first learn about what the true meaning of love, then what happens to a world in which that love is not properly presented or nurtured. Well we are living what happens. Over 50% of marriages do not last. In all honesty I do not know the numbers but fewer mothers than at any other time in history stay home full time. The very notion of family has become some relative idea that anyone can define to mean just about anything. Babies are murdered daily by the very person who was put on this earth to protect and care for them. Men are left wondering where they fit in a world where they really aren't needed anymore because women can now do it all. And throughout the western world God has been exiled from our lives.

I am so thankful that God has opened my ears to be able to no hear now and again his call to me to embrace motherhood, not as a burden that I must survive, or a task I must perform and compensate for it by finding a "fulfilling career," but abandoning myself to the beauty of motherhood. I am a sinner and so I do have my far too many moments of selfish rejection of what mother needs to be. I have my moments of wanting "me time," knowing that other's needs come first and I tend to their needs not wholeheartedly but grudgingly. But I hope that those moments are fewer than they were, and I hope that despite those moments my children have gotten some sense or experience, some minuscule taste of God's divine love for us. And so I continue asking him for the Grace to be a better mother, that my children will, with his Mercy, know even a glimmer of his Love through me as his instrument.

Y que Dios sintiendose triste
Y en eternas soledades
para ser más DIOS que nunca,
quizo tener una MADRE…

(And God feeling so sad
in his eternal solitude
to be God more than ever
needed himself a mother)

Author unknown

Pax Christi

Morning smoothy!

2014-02-19T06:38:00.001-08:00

Here is a great way to start your day. I usually have a cup of warm water, juice of half a lemon and tsp of cinnamon after I oil pull for 10 minutes. Then I have cup of infused water, just started doing this and boy does it clear the cobwebs. While I am sipping my water I make the smoothy.

The infused water is easy peasy! Get a mason jar put in it whatever fruit, veggies, herbs and I even add a few pieces of raw ginger fill it with filtered water put a lid on it and let stand for at least 30 minutes. I like to put it in the fridge over night so it is very flavourful in the morning.

here are some combo options but that you can mix and match to suit your tastes and needs.

1. Green tea, mint, lime-fat burning, digestion, headaches, congestion and breath freshener.

2. Strawberry, kiwi-cardiovascular health, immune system protection, blood sugar regulation, digestion.

3. Cucumber, lime, lemon- water weight management, bloating, appetite control, hydration, digestion

4. Lemon, lime, orange- digestion vitamin C, immune defense, heartburn, (Drink this one at room temperature)

Now onto the smoothy! Here too you can add all sorts of things but this is what works for us.

1 can coconut water
1cup infused water
1/4 cup coconut oil give or take
4 raw eggs
1 peeled lime
1/2 peeled lemon
1/3 cup raw unpasteurized honey
a hand full of raw kale, spinach, or parsley
1 600 g bag of frozen mixed berries

Blend the first 8 ingredients until liquefied then slowly add the frozen berries. It might come out more like a sorbet, which in my house is a plus! So feel free to play around with the amounts till you get the result that suits you best.

The day after yesterday

2014-02-19T05:51:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was my birthday and it was great. Not great as in I did some extraordinary thing that almost never happens. Not great because I got some great new toy, gadget, outfit, or went to an event. It was great because yesterday God gave me the gift of an insight that let an ordinary day feel extraordinary.

It was a day like many others. I got up and gave out instructions to the troops on what the days priorities were and then set out to go shopping for food that would be consumed within moments of its arrival into the pantry…this continues to amaze me! After my eldest daughter and I wondered the grocery isles chatting and checking things off the list, the use of which did not prevent me from forgetting several things, we went to grab a quick snack before beginning round two of the shopping journey, or maybe it was round three. I sat with her and realized what a good day I was having and shared this with my daughter. Her response was "I feel like this not a very exciting birthday." She said this as if she and her siblings had somehow failed me. I laughed and said to her that there comes a time in life that a good birthday looks very different than it did when you are a child or youth. And I assured her that I was having a very good day.

So what made yesterday a good day. Well I think that it was God's great gift of insight. Those far too rate moments, for me anyway, when you look at something you have looked at many times and all of a sudden you remember what you already know… Life is a beautiful gift. You remember that the most perfect gifts are almost always found in the simplest of places, in knowing that you are where you are supposed to be, doing what you are supposed to do in that moment. Yesterday was good because I was able to go about my day, doing what needed doing, while not letting all those things that I normally let disrupt my peace, distract me from the moment, and cause me to waste the time that I am living in. Yesterday was a good day because I lived that day, the time with my children, with my husband, hearing from dear friends, doing what God called me to, and I was acutely aware of how rich my life is, how much love I am enfolded in.

I pray that all my days would be so enlightened….hmmm well here's praying anyway!

Have a Blessed day, and may God's peace wash over your every moment, especially those that seem too much to bare, and make your day a good day.

Pax Christi,
Dominique

Happy Feast of St.Valentine

2014-02-14T04:49:00.000-08:00

I dedicate this post first and most especially to my husband. I love you with my whole heart and am profoundly aware that my life is so much the richer for having you in it. And to our beautiful children.

May we all be Blessed today and always with a deep commitment to serve one another with the same courage and charity of St.Valentine. Let our love for one another start with a deep love of God and so endure all hardships! On this day remember to show the ones you love how much they mean to you through acts of service and sacrifice.

Grant, I beseech Thee, O almighty God, that my husband Marco, who celebrates the heavenly birthday of blessed Valentine, Thy Martyr, may by his intercession be delivered from all the evils that threaten him. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son, Who liveth and reigneth with Thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end.

This post was copied from http://www.fisheaters.com/customstimeafterepiphany5.html

Feast of

St. Valentine

St.Valentine (Valentino) was a Roman priest who performed marriages in spite of Claudius II's law against such (Claudius believed that marriage was distracting to his soldiers, so outlawed it to them for a time). Fr. Valentine was martyred in A.D. 270 on the Flammian way, and at the site of his martyrdom, Julius I built a popular basilica.

Other than this, little is known. Because two other St. Valentines share this Feast day ("Valentine" was an extremely common name for Christians as it has the same root as the word "valor"), often their stories are confused, but it is the Roman priest-martyr whom we honor during the liturgy.

The relics of St. Valentine -- at least a great majority of them -- are, interestingly enough, in the Whitefriar Church associated with the Calced Carmelites in Dublin, Ireland. They were excavated from the Cemetery of St. Hippolytus, on the Triburtine Way in Rome in 1835 and were then given to Fr. Spratt, an Irish Carmelite, by Pope Gregory XVI in 1836. The relics, "together with a small vessel tinged with his blood," were deposited "in a wooden case covered with painted paper, well closed, tied with a red silk ribbon and sealed with our seals and we have so delivered and consigned to him, and we have granted unto him power in the Lord, to the end that he may retain to himself, give to others, transmit beyond the city (Rome) and in any church, oratory or chapel, to expose and place the said blessed holy body for the public veneration of the faithful without, however, an Office and Mass, conformably to the decree of the Sacred Congregation of Rites, promulgated on the 11th day of August 1691," as the letter accompanying the relics reads. On this Feast Day, his relics are carried in procession, and a special Mass is offered for young people and lovers.

Customs

Because of his Nuptial Masses, he became the patron of lovers, the affianced, and married couples, and fortuitous to the priest's association with romance is the belief that halfway through the month of February, birds choose their mates, hence St. Valentine's association with birds, especially lovebirds and doves. Chaucer mentions this belief in his "Parliament of Foules":

For this was sent on Seynt Valentyne's day
Whan every foul cometh ther to choose his mate.

Also fortuitous is the fact that red is both the color of Martrys and the color associated with love. Red roses are also a symbol of both martyrom and love, and had also always been associated with the Roman godess of love, Venus.

Venus' son, Cupid ("Eros" in Greek), god of love, was originally depicted as a very handsome young man, but now as a winged putto bearing a bow and arrow with which to smite hearts with love. His image, along with the image of hearts he has pierced with his arrows, are ubiquitous symbols of romantic love on this day.

Oldest existing valentine, British Museum

St. Valentine's Day cards are a very ancient custom; one of the oldest extant "valentines," as such St. Valentine's Day greetings -- and the persons to whom they're sent -- came to be known, was sent in 1477 by Margery Brews to her fiancé, John Paston, and can be seen now in the British Museum. It reads:

Unto my right well-beloved Valentine John Paston, squire, be this bill delivered.

Right reverent and worshipful and my right well-beloved valentine, I recommend me unto you full heartedly, desiring to hear of your welfare, which I beseech Almighty God long for to preserve unto his pleasure and your hearts desire.

And if it pleases you to hear of my welfare, I am not in good health of body nor of heart, nor shall I be till I hear from you.

For there knows no creature what pain that I endure, And even on the pain of death I would reveal no more.

And my lady my mother hath laboured the matter to my father full diligently, but she can no more get than you already know of, for which God knoweth I am full sorry.

But if you love me, as I trust verily that you do, you will not leave me therefore. For even if you had not half the livelihood that you have, for to do the greatest labour that any woman alive might, I would not forsake you.

And if you command me to keep me true wherever I go, indeed I will do all my might you to love and never anyone else.

And if my friends say that I do amiss, they shall not stop me from doing so.

My heart me bids evermore to love you truly over all earthly things.

And if they be never so angry, I trust it shall be better in time coming.

No more to you at this time, but the Holy Trinity have you in keeping.

And I beseech you that this bill be not seen by any non earthly creature save only yourself.

And this letter was written at Topcroft with full heavy heart.

By your own Margery Brews

To send a very Catholic valentine to someone you love, how about using a paraphrase of today's Collect as the basis for the text?

Grant, I beseech Thee, O almighty God, that (Name of loved one), who celebrates the heavenly birthday of blessed Valentine, Thy Martyr, may by his intercession be delivered from all the evils that threaten (him/her). Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son, Who liveth and reigneth with Thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end.

...with all the personal, mushy stuff at the bottom! For a romantic card for a spouse, some of the poetry found in Solomon's Canticle of Canticles -- a Book which uses marital love as a metaphor for God's love for His Church -- cannot be surpassed for inspiration.

As to foods, oysters, chocolates, champagne, and heart-shaped foods are all considered to be romantic.

Note to men: Don't forget St. Valentine's Day. Even the least romantic woman appreciates being remembered on this lovely holy day. One needn't (shouldn't!) spend lavish sums and buy into the marketing nonsense that has become associated with all big Christian Feasts, but a single red rose is just as lovely as an $80 dollar dozen, and chocolates in a small box are as delicious as those in a large box; it is the thought that counts. And it costs nothing to tell her you love her...

And a note to all: be sure to wish people "Happy Saint Valentine's Day" rather than just "Happy Valentine's Day." This will help bring the deeper meaning of the day into focus!

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Index

Heart graphic on this page from Victorian Clipart

Finally back with "Gift from the sea."

2014-02-13T05:22:00.001-08:00

Wow I can't believe it has taken me 4 years to get back to writing. It certainly has not been for a lack of things to write about, so much has happened in the last four years and my life, though so much the same, has changed so much. I have shed much and gained even more, and through it there has been some constants that I have grown to love and appreciate so much more deeply. The main one is our Blessed Lord and his Blessed Mother. So I will return to my journey here with a re-dedication to all that I write here to our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and His Blessed Mother Mary.

It is ironic that what would prompt my return to writing is reading a book. The book is part of a mentoring course that I am taking with my two eldest children, Ivania and Gabriel. The title is "Gift from the sea."

I could write a book on everything that I have come away with in reading this book. Ironically I am also currently re-reading a brilliant work by one of my mentors Alice von Hildebrand called "The Privilege of being a woman" which stands as a stark contrast to "Gift from the sea." In some ways von Hildebrand is responding to many of the ideas and beliefs that Lindenburg is presenting to us. But I digress. Bellow are some of the most significant things that I have come away with after having read "Gift from the sea."

On the surface "The Gift from the Sea" is a book about a woman's need for space and time to explore herself and create. Lindberg is an artist yearning for the luxury of time to simply create, without distractions, without the burdens of day to day life in the 1950s. I agree with her that we all, not just women but all of us, need quiet time to reflect on what is important, what our priorities should be, what inspires us. Where I think she misses the mark is that she only subtly brushes the notion that this is somehow tied into the eternal, the supra-natural, God. It is here that I think her book loses so much and fails all of us, but most particular it fails her.

I find it sad and unfortunate that she sees her day to day life as a hindrance to her discovery of herself and her inspiration. I believe that it is in our day to day life, those things that we seem to see as so mundane and burdensome, that we find our centre. It is in these tasks, as much as in our quiet times, that God speaks to us, if only we could listen. And it is through God's voice, in whatever manner that it comes to us, that creativity, in the truest sense of the word can come into being. To those who are struggling with guilt over trying to find time for self-discovery, formation, growth, I think we have lost the ability to find and achieve all this even in the throws of our daily duties. Indeed she too alludes to this in her chapter Moon Shell.

"Mechanically we have gained, in the last generation, but spiritually we have, I think, unwittingly lost. In other times women had in their lives more forces which centered them whether or not they realized it, sources which nourished them whether or not they consciously went to those springs. Their very seclusion in their home gave them time alone. Many of their duties were conducive to quiet contemplative drawing together of the self. They had more creative tasks to perform. Nothing feeds the center so much as creative work, even humble kinds like cooking and sewing. Baking bread, weaving cloth putting up preserves, teaching and singing to children, must have been far more nourishing than being a family chauffeur or shopping at supermarkets, or doing housework with mechanical aids." (pg. 46)

In her day the "art and craft of housework (had) diminished" and today it has virtually disappeared. And with it much of the time and quiet we can find to reflect and be in the presence of ourselves and should we choose, and we should choose, with God. Despite this shift there are some women, by the Grace of God, who have chosen to dedicate their lives to a homelife. I truly believe that as women we have such a beautiful gift of being able to do this, and I agree with her that this life is much more a woman's lot than a man's. By unlike her I see this as a gift not a lot. It is easier to turn our daily duties toward God and self-discovery in the home than out there in the world.

As I journey through the book, examining these "gifts from the sea" that she has picked up and treasures, I realize that many of the questions that she asks, the insights she gains are inviting. The need to find that centre, the need for quiet in which to do so, the vision to recognize when we are filling our lives with needless clutter to fill an emptiness that to us seems too daunting to examine, the need to rid ones life of that same clutter that acts as a barrier to being able to see what is truly important. These are all profoundly important to consider, and in so far as she invites us to do so this is a worthwhile read. But unfortunately she does not go to the core of the search, she does not dig. To dig she tells us is to "defeat the purpose." (pg. 11) To dig is to be greedy and impatient and ultimately to lack faith. What we must do is simply wade and wait for the sea to bring us the gifts. For life to deliver to us the answers that we need. Searching, digging, exploring too deeply cannot supply us with the great insights that come to those who open themselves, empty themselves and wait to be filled. But filled with what?

She is very much a reflection of a particular mindset in the fifties that was pushing for what they called greater equality. She believed that there was in fact a change between men and women that would mark a shift in their relationship. This shift would mean a truer, more honest, more equal relationship that would come about as women were seen as mens equals, not simply equal in dignity, which is what Christ has taught regardless of how that teaching may have been ignored or distorted it has always been his call for us. This new equality, equality of opportunity and ability, which to her mind and that of the feminist movement, would create a world where relationships between men and women would "no longer follow traditional patterns of submission and domination or possession and competition." Here again she has missed the deeper issue. She is convinced that this superficial shift by creating a world where women and men have virtually the same opportunity will somehow mean that they will be seen as having the same abilitiy, and this would further translate into greater fulfillment and better relationships. Has this fantasy been born out? Are women not treated today even more like objects but now in the disguise of freedom of opportunity? Look at how women are objectified today. The explosion of the pornography industry is one horrifying example of women being dominated and possessed. Some might claim that they are free to do as they please now, they have been freed to exercise their will as men have throughout history in most areas of society even and especially in the most intimate area. But is this better? Is this freedom? Is the kind of self fulfillment that Lindberg had in mind? I hope not.

Our journey to self-fulfilment, the fulfilling of self, the filling of self with self, must be taken alone. "A woman must come of age by herself." (pg.89) The lie of self-sufficiency here rear its ugly head. This same self-sufficient that has made it possible for our culture to deny the rights of the child in the womb because he/she is not yet self-sufficient. He/she encroaches on the life of the woman, invades her. It lends itself to the justification of the position that euthanasia is a viable and even "humane" response to those who are incapable of caring for themselves. They too being guilty of a lack of self-sufficiency and thereby impose themselves on others. But who is truly self-sufficient? Who does not need and yearn for others? Self-sufficiency does not exist in any honest sense. How can we have true family and true community if we embrace such a notion of fulfilment? We cannot. Family and community, those places where we learn to become who we are called to be require not self-preoccupation but self-denial. We must deny self to find self. We must die to self in order to be born again in Christ, we must be willing, as our Blessed mother was willing, to make room for other. Fulfillment in the end is not the filling of self with self, but rather it is the emptying of self so as to make room for God.

What a very lonely, empty concept. Is it any wonder that there is this sense of sadness and loneliness as we read? What is implicit throughout the book is arguably the opposite of what is true. Fulfillment comes when we embrace our connections, open ourselves to union, find meaning in all those things which lend themselves to communion which inevitably brings us to not the focus on self but the denial of self, self-sacrifice. Fulfillment in the end is not the filling of self with self, but rather it is the emptying of self so as to make room for God.

Finally she implies that the women of her daughters generation, my generation, seem to have arrived. They are to be admired for what she thinks is a richer life. Richer because they have moved past the restrictive and oppressive limits of previous generations. That there are more women in the workforce, trying to balance career and home is a good. That they have failed, in the truest sense of the word is irrelevant to Lindberg, and that they may or may not be happier is also irrelevant. For Lindberg the true success is in the journey for the journeys sake. But as von Hildebrand tells us "the crucial question is not whether a person is creative, but rather what does he create." If we measure progress by the number of women in particular fields, the fact that women who can vote, the of women who are independent achieving great financial success, fame, power, notoriety, by the number of women who are unwed and going it alone, then yes I guess there is progress. But what is all that in light of eternity? As the Good book tells us in Matthew 16:26 "For what does it profit a man, if he gain the whole world and suffer the loss of his own soul?" Kierkegaard warns that we have turned our world upside down and that we have absolutized the relative (money-making, power, success) and relativized the absolute (truth, moral values, God.) In thinking that a world of more varied opportunity means a world of greater fulfillment we have done just that. I am by no means glamorizing earlier generations and times, but I am quite confident that this time has no fewer hardships, just different and I would argue more eternally dangerous.

The book fails in that much of her conclusions are superficial, despite the fact that she seems to think they are profound. It fails because they are focused on the a secular goal of life success that fails women and as such it fails the world. If "the value of a people is gauged by the value of its women," then what does that say of a people that has chosen to reject the feminine almost entirely for the sake of a female population that has rejected the masculine in men and adopted it in its women? Is this anyway to show the value of women? The book succeeds in that it inspires one, whether we agree with her conclusions or not, to consider if she is right or wrong. It is this question, it is in this considering, that we find the real gift from the sea. In taking the time to consider her questions, and even to consider the validity of her questions, I was able to find my own answers, but also come up with my own questions, questions that have allowed me to move on my journey to grow as a better wife, mother, and ultimately daughter of Christ. To move past self-fulfillment toward our greatest calling, that is to true fulfillment, to filling ourselves with Christ. "In order to understand the greatness of a woman's mission, we must open our minds and our hearts to the message of the supernatural. It is the key that will reveal to us the greatness of femininity," the greatness of self.

The economy of woman's work?

2010-11-23T23:26:00.000-08:00

It has been a while since my last post and I have my husband to thank for prompting to write this one after a chat about a recent article my uncle wrote. In this particular piece my very talented and prolific uncle Dr. Ian McDonald was venting rightly placed anger regarding abuse and the overall undervaluing of women. (http://www.stabroeknews.com/2010/features/11/21/the-world-insult-to-women) One would be hard pressed to disagree with his frustration and disgust. He went on to summarize and support Professor Marilyn Waring's explanation that it is "patriarchal economic paradigms" that are largely to blame for this phenomenon.

Ms. Waring argues, “For me the patriarchal economic paradigm is the theory and practice of economics that says that women unpaid work is not worth anything at all. It’s not that I want to estimate its monetary value. I want to make it visible for policy-making, purposes, for fairness and equality. If you’re not visible as a worker, then you’re not visible in the distribution of benefits.”

Dr. McDonald goes on to concur with her and explains "If women as housewives and mothers were more visible economically, if the prodigious volume of devoted work they do day in and day out was given official recognition, do you think, for instance, that such valuable actors in society would have to use up as much as 85 per cent of their daily calorie intake to fetch water and suffer, as they do in many rural areas of the world, from anaemia and spinal and pelvic deformities from carrying heavy pails for miles before their families rise in the morning? In such a case, if their true value was factored into national accounts, there is no doubt that the location of public sources of water would be very quickly improved. The fact is that if a woman’s work is given no value she will be treated worthlessly."

At the risk of seeming disrespectful of my uncle I must disagree with this and propose that there is a much deeper root to the lack of value given to women and to people in general who are so often treated as chattel, disposable and worthless. I would also like to suggest that this view not only risks to further devalue women but devalues parenting on a the whole.

First I do not believe that we can put a value to the role of motherhood and homemaking monetarily or as recognizable economically, be it by a mother or father. I believe the minute we try and put a price tag on it and make it a market variable we reduce it and objectify it like we do some many things today. How can you put a value on love, nurturing, caring, forming, supporting the ones you love? Does this not seem a little obscene? And what are we saying to those parents who are out of the home earning an income, that their parenting is done once they have finished their days work, or that they too should be compensated for coming home and caring for their wife and children, cleaning up messes, preparing meals, helping in the ongoing formation of their children and families? And how would we incorporate such things in an economic model?

Next I think that by saying that once we have given a monetary value or economic recognition to the work women do this will open oppressive, objectifying eyes to the worth of women does not go to the root of why women are abused, neglected, and "undervalued". In order for people to be respected and treated with dignity there must first exist a recognition of that human dignity and where that human dignity comes from. If a culture, community, nation does not acknowledge and protect the intrinsic God given human dignity of each and every individual soul, man, woman, and child, then how can we hope to nurture it. Quantifying a persons worth does not enhance dignity it objectifies human beings.

I think that the greater contributor to abuse, neglect and objectification of women and human life altogether is explained more aptly in looking at the contraceptive culture we live in which encourages women to become even more objectified. The minute we see pregnancy and child rearing as a burden rather than a gift we have devalued woman's dignity and human dignity. When we separate sex from its God given gift as a procreative activity we have reduced each other as mere objects of pleasure and have cemented even further the use of women, children, and even men, as less than human things to be discarded when they are no longer useful or wanted.

And let us not forget abortion as a contributor and tool to further devalue human beings. What does it say about a culture that can extinguish innocent lives at the rate of thousands a day. Is this a culture that really understands and protects the dignity of human life? If life at its most vulnerable and innocent stage can so easily be snuffed out why are we surprised at the wide scale under valuing of life at any stage? A culture that encourages women to abort children who may potentially be "handicapped", a culture that neglects its aging population and over medicates and under supports its elderly is not a culture that understands the dignity of human beings, and will not treat those weakest with caring and compassion, but rather with indifference and disdain.

God Bless,

Dominique

All Souls Day (another good one from www.fisheaters.com)

2010-11-02T09:33:00.000-07:00

There is a Mexican saying that we die three deaths: the first when our bodies die, the second when our bodies are lowered into the earth out of sight, and the third when our loved ones forget us. Catholics forestall that last death by seeing the faithful dead as members of the Church, alive in Christ, and by praying for them -- and asking their prayers for us -- always. Cardinal Wiseman wrote in his Lecture XI:

Sweet is the consolation of the dying man, who, conscious of imperfection, believes that there are others to make intercession for him, when his own time for merit has expired; soothing to the afflicted survivors the thought that they possess powerful means of relieving their friend. In the first moments of grief, this sentiment will often overpower religious prejudice, cast down the unbeliever on his knees beside the remains of his friend and snatch from him an unconscious prayer for rest; it is an impulse of nature which for the moment, aided by the analogies of revealed truth, seizes at once upon this consoling belief. But it is only a flitting and melancholy light, while the Catholic feeling, cheering though with solemn dimness, resembles the unfailing lamp, which the piety of the ancients is said to have hung before the sepulchres of their dead.

Though we should daily pray for the dead in Purgatory, above all for our ancestors, today is especially set aside for hanging that "unfailing lamp before the sepulchres of our dead" as we are told to do by Sacred Scripture:

II Machabees 12: 43-46
And making a gathering, [Judas] sent twelve thousand drachms of silver to Jerusalem for sacrifice to be offered for the sins of the dead, thinking well and religiously concerning the resurrection, (For if he had not hoped that they that were slain should rise again, it would have seemed superfluous and vain to pray for the dead,) And because he considered that they who had fallen asleep with godliness, had great grace laid up for them. It is therefore a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead, that they may be loosed from sins.

At the three Masses offered today, the glorious Sequence "Dies Irae" (also used in Requiem Masses, i.e., Masses for the Dead) will be recited after the Epistle, Gradual, and Tract ("Dies Irae" means "Day of Wrath").

Between Noon of November 1 and Midnight tonight, a person who has been to confession and Communion can gain a plenary indulgence, under the usual conditions, for the poor souls each time he visits a church or public oratory and recites the Our Father, the Hail Mary and the Glory be to the Father six times. This is a special exception to the ordinary law of the Church according to which a plenary indulgence for the same work can be gained only once a day. Because of this, some of the customs described below may be begun on All Saints Day.

Also, the faithful who, during the period of eight days from All Saints Day, visit a cemetery and pray for the dead may gain a plenary indulgence, under the usual conditions, on each day of the Octave, applicable only to the dead. Here is a simple invocation for the dead, called the "Eternal Rest" prayer:

Eternal rest grant unto him/her (them), O Lord; and let perpetual light shine upon him/her (them). May he/she (they) rest in peace. Amen.

Latin version:
Réquiem ætérnam dona ei (eis) Dómine; et lux perpétua lúceat ei (eis). Requiéscat (Requiéscant) in pace. Amen.

Catholics also pray this prayer for the dead anytime throughout the year, and whenever they pass a cemetery. Many families pray a Rosary nightly for the dead throughout the Octave of All Saints, replacing the Fatima prayer with the Eternal Rest prayer.

Customs

It is practically universal folk belief that the souls in Purgatory are allowed to return to earth on All Souls Day. In Austria, they are said to wander the forests, praying for release. In Poland, they are said to visit their parish churches at midnight, where a light can be seen because of their presence. Afterward, they visit their families, and to make them welcome, a door or window is left open. In many places, a place is set for the dead at supper, or food is otherwise left out for them. In any case, throughout the Octave of All Saints, our beloved dead should be remembered, commemorated, and prayed for.

During our visits to their graves, we spruce up their resting sites, sprinkling them with holy water, leaving votive candles, and adorning them flowers (especially chrysanthemums and marigolds) to symbolize the Eden-like paradise that man was created to enjoy, and may, if saved, enjoy after death and any needed purgation.

Today is a good day to not only remember the dead spiritually, but to tell your children about their ancestors. Bring out those old photo albums and family trees! Write down your family's stories for your children and grandchildren! Impress upon them the importance of their ancestors! Bring to their minds these words from Ecclesiasticus:

Ecclesiasticus 44:1-15
Let us now praise men of renown, and our fathers in their generation. The Lord hath wrought great glory through his magnificence from the beginning. Such as have borne rule in their dominions, men of great power, and endued with their wisdom, shewing forth in the prophets the dignity of prophets, And ruling over the present people, and by the strength of wisdom instructing the people in most holy words. Such as by their skill sought out musical tunes, and published canticles of the scriptures. Rich men in virtue, studying beautifulness: living at peace in their houses. All these have gained glory in their generations, and were praised in their days. They that were born of them have left a name behind them, that their praises might be related:

And there are some, of whom there is no memorial: who are perished, as if they had never been: and are become as if they had never been born, and their children with them. But these were men of mercy, whose godly deeds have not failed: Good things continue with their seed, Their posterity are a holy inheritance, and their seed hath stood in the covenants. And their children for their sakes remain for ever: their seed and their glory shall not be forsaken. Their bodies are buried in peace, and their name liveth unto generation and generation. Let the people shew forth their wisdom, and the Church declare their praise.

As usual with big Catholic Feast days, food is involved with the day, with many Catholic families having picnics near their loved ones' graves. Traditional foods include "Soul Food" --- food made of lentils or peas.

Basic Split Pea Soup (serves 4)

1 cup chopped onion
2 cloves garlic (optional)
1 teaspoon vegetable oil or bacon grease
1 pound dried split peas
1 pound ham bone
1 c. chopped ham
1 c. chopped carrots (optional)
salt and pepper to taste

In a medium pot, sauté onions in oil or bacon grease. (Optional: add garlic and sauté until just golden, then remove). Remove from heat and add split peas, ham bone and ham. Add enough water to cover ingredients, and season with salt and pepper.

Cover, and cook until there are no peas left, just a green liquid, 2 hours. (Optional: add carrots halfway through) While it is cooking, check to see if water has evaporated. You may need to add more water as the soup continues to cook.

Once the soup is a green liquid remove from heat, and let stand so it will thicken. Once thickened you may need to heat through to serve. Serve with either sherry or sour cream on top, and with a crusty bread.

In Italy, the sine qua non of All Souls' celebrations is a cookie called "Ossi di Morto," or "Bones of the Dead":

Ossi di Morto

1 1/4 cups flour
10 oz almonds
1/2 cup sugar
1 oz pine nuts
1 TBSP butter
A shot glass full of brandy or grappa
The grated zest of half a lemon
Cinnamon
One egg and one egg white, lightly beaten

Blanch the almonds, peel them, and chop them finely (you can do this in a blender, but be careful not to over-chop and liquefy).

Combine all the ingredients except the egg in a bowl, mixing them with a spoon until you have a firm dough. Dust your hands and work surface with flour, and roll the dough out between your palms to make a "snake" about a half inch thick. Cut it into two-inch long pieces on the diagonal. Put on greased and floured cookie sheet, brush with the beaten egg, and bake them in a 330-350 oven for about 20 minutes. Serve them cold. Because they are a dry, hard cookie, it is good to serve these with something to drink.

In Mexico "Dia de Los Muertos" (Day of the Dead) is celebrated very joyfully -- and colorfully. A special altar, called an ofrenda, is made just for these days of the dead (1 and 2 November). It has at least three tiers, and is covered with pictures of Saints, pictures of and personal items belonging to dead loved ones, skulls, pictures of cavorting skeletons (calaveras), marigolds, water, salt, bread, and a candle for each of their dead (plus one extra so no one is left out). Chicanos will make a special bread just for this day, Pan de Muerto, which is sometimes baked with a toy skeleton inside. The one who finds the skeleton will have "good luck." This bread is eaten during picnics at the graves along with tamales, cookies, and chocolate. They also make brightly-colored skulls out of sugar to place on the family altars and give to children. Below are recipes for those skulls and for Pan de Muerto:

Sugar Skulls

2 cups powdered sugar
1 egg white
1 TBSP. corn syrup
1/2 tsp. vanilla
1/3 cup cornstarch
colored icing
1 fine paintbrush

Sift powdered sugar. Mix the egg white, corn syrup, and vanilla in a very clean bowl, then add the powdered sugar with a wooden spoon. When almost incorporated, start kneading with the tip of your fingers until you can form a small ball. Dust with cornstarch on board. Keep on kneading until smooth, then form into skull shapes. Let dry completely, then paint with colored icing, including the names of the people you are giving them to.

Pan De Muerto (makes two loaves)

1 tablespoon active, dry yeast
1/4 cup of lukewarm water
4 to 5 cups all-purpose flour and extra flour for dusting
1 teaspoon of salt
1/4 teaspoon of fresh grated nutmeg
1/2 cup unsalted butter at room temperature
3/4 cup white sugar
6 extra large eggs at room temperature
zest of 1 orange
2 tablespoons orange blossom water
3 tablespoons Sambuca liqueur (optional)
1 egg for egg wash
2 tablespoons of water for egg wash
1/4 cup water for brushing bread
1/2 cup white sugar for dusting

Glaze:
1/2 cup sugar
1/3 cup fresh orange juice
2 tablespoons grated orange zest

In a small bowl combine the water, yeast, 1/3 cup of flour, mix well and let it stand until it doubles in volume. In a large bowl mix the flour, salt, nutmeg and set aside.

In a large bowl with a whisk mix the butter and sugar until creamy color.

In a medium bowl mix the eggs, orange blossom water, orange zest (and Sambuca, optional). Set aside.

With a whisk, incorporate the egg mixture 1/3 at the time to the butter mixture. Incorporate the yeast mixture to the butter/egg mixture. Add the flour mix 1/3 at the time and work it with a wooden spoon until it incorporates.

Dust the working counter and your hands with flour and transfer the dough to the counter. Start working the dough by folding it with a scraper. It should be sticky. Keep dusting dough with flour and folding in order to firm it up. Once it firms up, continue to dust with flour and start kneading. Knead the dough by pulling then folding it back and forth for 3 minutes. Then lightly dust the dough and continue working for another 3 minutes and dust again until the dough is smooth and a little sticky, but don't add large amounts of flour at once or your bread my have flour traps. As it firms up continue to knead for 15 minutes. Don't worry if the dough is slightly sticky - it will change after you let it rest.

When you're finished kneading form it into a loose ball and cinch it closed. Flip it over and transfer the dough into a large greased bowl. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let it rest at room temperature until it doubles in volume.

Flour your knuckles and punch down the dough so it deflates and turn it onto a floured counter. Divide the dough into 3 portions. Punch down 2 portions of dough, fold and cinch dough then flip over and shape each one into a ball. Place the 2 balls of dough on a baking tray with parchment paper. Press both dough balls down to make them flat. Divide the last portion into three more portions. Make 2 of the 3 portions into little balls. Cut the last piece of dough in half and roll one portion of that piece into a long rope. Cut the rope in half and then cut one of the halves into smaller segments. Mould each segment to look like little bones by rolling and pinching them. Trim the edges with your pastry scraper and set them aside on baking tray. Form small tear-shaped pieces with the other segment of rope. Roll out the last piece of excess dough into 2 long ropes and another ball and set all pieces on baking sheet. You may not have enough dough for this, but if you do, simply make another small loaf. Cover with a dry cloth and let rest in a warm place for an hour or when it doubles in volume.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Let the dough rest until it almost doubles in size. Then very carefully brush the round loaves with egg wash. Immediately place and press the "bones" and "the tears" onto each loaf before the egg wash dries. And place the smaller dough balls on top of each. Glaze each loaf with egg wash. Decorate the extra remaining ball with the last 2 pieces of rope and finish off with small tears. Place the decorated loaves in the oven, turn down to 350º F and bake for 15 minutes. Turn the tray around and bake for another 15 to 20 minutes or until bread is brown. Pull bread out of the oven when it is ready and cool loaves on cooling wire racks for 10 minutes. Mix glaze ingredients, apply glaze all over the bread with a pastry brush, then immediately dust each loaf with sugar. Let it rest for 10 minutes. Serve warm.

Readings

Tales from The Golden Legend's "The Commemoration of All Souls"
By Jacobus de Voragine, Archbishop of Genoa, A.D. 1275

...It is read that some fishers of S. Thibault that fished on a time in harvest, and took a great piece of ice instead of a fish. And they were gladder thereof than of a fish, because the bishop had a great burning of heat in his leg, and they laid that ice thereto and it refreshed him much.

And on a time the bishop heard the voice of a man in the ice, and he conjured him to tell him what he was. And the voice said to him: I am a soul which for my sins am tormented in this ice, and may be delivered if thou say for me thirty Masses continually together in thirty days. And the bishop emprised to say them, and when he had said half of them he made him ready to continue forth and say the other.

And the devil made a dissension in the city, that the people of the city fought each against other, and then the bishop was called for to appease this discord, and did off his vestments and left to say the Mass.

And on the morn he began all new again. And when he had said the two parts, him seemed that a great host had besieged the city, so that he was constrained by dread, and left to say the office of the Mass. And after, yet he began again service, and when he had all accomplished except the last Mass, which he would have begun, all the town and the bishop's house were taken by fire. And when his servants came to him, and bade him leave his Mass, he said: Though all the city should be burnt, I shall not Ieave to say the Mass. And when the Mass was done the ice was molten, and the fire that they had supposed to have seen was but a phantom and did no harm.

There was a master which was chancellor at Paris named Silo, which had a scholar sick, and he prayed him that after his death he should come again to him and say to him of his estate. And he promised him so to do, and after died.

And a while after he appeared to him clad in a cope written full of arguments fallacious, and sophisms, and was of parchment, and withinforth all full of flame of fire. And the chancellor demanded him what he was. And he told to him: I am such one that am come again to thee. And the chancellor demanded him of his estate, and he said: This cope weigheth on me more than a mill-stone or a tower, and it is given me for to bear, for the glory that I had in my sophisms and sophistical arguments, that is to say, deceivable and fallacious. The skins be light, but the flame of fire withinforth tormenteth and all to-burneth me.

And when the master judged the pain to be light, the dead scholar said to him, that he should put forth his hand and feel the lightness of his pain. And he put forth his hand, and that other let fall a drop of his sweat on it, and the drop pierced through his hand sooner than an arrow could be shot through, whereby he felt a marvellous torment. And the dead man said: I am all in such pain. And then the chancellor was all afeard of the cruel and terrible pain that he had felt, and concluded to forsake the world, and entered into religion with great devotion.

As S. Augustine saith: Sometimes souls be punished in the places where they have sinned, as appeareth by an ensample that S. Gregory reciteth in the fourth book of his Dialogues, and saith that there was a priest which used gladly a bath, and when he came in to the bath he found a man whom he knew always ready for to serve him.

And it happed on a day, that for his diligent service and his reward, the priest gave to him a holy loaf. And he weeping, answered: Father, wherefore givest thou me this thing? I may not eat it for it is holy. I was sometime lord of this place, but after my death, I was deputed for to serve here for my sins, but I pray thee that thou wilt offer this bread unto Almighty God for my sins, and know thou for certain that thy prayer shall be heard, and when then thou shalt come to wash thee, thou shalt not find me. And then this priest offered a week entire sacrifice to God for him, and when he came again he found him not.

And Peter, abbot of Cluny, saith that there was a priest that sung every day Mass of requiem for all Christian souls, and hereof he was accused to the bishop, and was suspended therefor of his oflice.

And as the bishop went on a day of great solemnity in the churchyard, all the dead arose up against him, saying: This bishop giveth to us no Mass, and yet he hath taken away our priest from us, now he shall be certain but if he amend he shall die. And then the bishop assailed the priest, and sang himself gladly for them that were passed out of this world. And so it appeareth that the prayers of living people be profitable to them that be departed, by this that the chanter of Paris rehearseth.

There was a man that always as he passed through the churchyard he said De Profundis for all Christian souls. And on a time he was beset with his enemies, so that for succour he leapt into the churchyard. And they followed for to have slain him, and anon all the dead bodies arose, and each held such an instrument in his hand that they defended him that prayed for them, and chased away his enemies, putting them in great fear.

There was a knight that lay dead and his spirit taken from him, and a while after the soul returned to the body again. And what he had seen done he told, and said there was a bridge, and under that bridge was a flood, foul, horrible, and full of stench, and on that other side of the bridge was a meadow, sweet, odorous, and adorned full of all manner of flowers. And there on that side of the bridge were people assembled, clad all in white, that were filled with the sweet odour of the flowers. And the bridge was such that if any of the unjust would pass over the bridge, he should slide and fall into that stinking river, and the righteous people passed over lightly and surely into that delectable place.

And this knight saw there a man named Peter, which lay bound and great weight of iron upon him, which when he asked why he lay so there, it was said to him of another: He suffereth because if any man were delivered to him to do vengeance, he desired it more to do it by cruelty than by obedience.

Also he said he saw there a pilgrim that, when he came to the bridge, he passed over with great lightness and shortly, because he had well-lived here and purely in the world, and without sin.

And he saw there another named Stephen, which when he would have passed, his foot slid that he fell half over the bridge, and then there came some horrible black men and did all that they might to draw him down by the legs, and then came other right fair creatures and white, and took him by the arms and drew him up.

And as this strife endured, this knight that saw these things returned to his body and knew not which of them vanquished. But this way we understand that the wicked deeds that he had done strove against the works of alms, for by them that drew him by the arms upward it appeared that he loved alms, and by the other that he had not perfectly lived against the sins of the flesh.

Like as S. Gregory recounteth, in the fourth book of his Dialogues, that one of his monks named Justus when he came to his last end, he showed that he had hid three pieces of gold, and thereof sorrowed sore, and anon after he died. And then S. Gregory commanded his brethren that they should bury his body in a dunghill, and the three pieces of gold with him, saying: Thy money be to thee in perdition. Nevertheless, S. Gregory commanded one of his brethren to say for him every day mass, thirty days long, and so he did. And when he had accomplished his term, the monk that was dead appeared on the thirtieth day to one which demanded how it was with him, and he answered to him: I have been evil at ease unto this day, but now I am well. I have this day received Communion, and thie sacrifice of the altar profiteth not only to them that be dead, but also to them that be living in this world.

It happed there was a man which was with others, laboured in a rock for to dig for silver, and suddenly the rock fell on them and slew them all save this one man, which was saved in a crevice of the rock, but for all that he might not issue ne go out, and his wife supposed that he had been dead, and did do sing every day a Mass for him, and bare every day to the offering a loaf and a pot of wine and a candle. And the devil which had envy thereat appeared three days continually to this woman in form of a man, and demanded her whither she went, and when she had said to him, he said to her: Thou goest in vain, for the Mass is done. And thus she left the Mass three days that she did not sing for him.

And after this another man digged in the same rock for silver, and heard under this the voice of this man, which said to him: Smite softly and spare thine hand, for I have a great stone hanging over my head. And he was afeard, and called more men to him for to hear this voice, and began to dig again, and then they heard semblably that voice, and then they went more near and said: Who art thou? And he said: I pray you to spare your smiting, for a great stone hangeth over my head.

And then they went and digged on that one side till that they came to him and drew him out all whole. And they enquired of him in what manner he had so long lived there. And he said that every day was brought to him a loaf, a pot of wine, a candle, save these three days. And when his wife heard that, she had great joy, and knew well that he had been sustained of her offering, and that the devil had deceived her that she had do sing no Mass those three days.

And as Peter, the abbot of Cluny, witnesseth and saith that, in the town of Ferrara in the diocese of Grationopolitana, that a mariner was fallen into the sea by a tempest, and anon a priest sang Mass for him, and at the last he came out of the sea all safe. And when he was demanded how he escaped, he said that when he was in the sea and almost dead, there came to him a man which gave to him bread, and when he had eaten he was well comforted, and recovered his strength, and was taken up of a ship that passed by. And that was found that it was the same time that the priest offered to God the blessed sacrament for him.

...a solemn doctor which rehearseth that, there was a woman which had her husband dead, and she was in great despair for poverty. And the devil appeared to her, and said that he would make her rich if she would do as he would say to her, and she promised to do it. And he enjoined her that the men of the church that she should receive into her house, that she should make them do fornication. Secondly, that she should take into her house by daytime poor men, and in the night drive them out void, and having nothing. Thirdly, that she should in the church let prayers by her jangling, and that she should not confess her of none of all these things.

And at the last, as she approached towards her death, her son warned her to be confessed, and she discovered to him what she had promised, and said that she might not be shriven, and that her confession should avail her nothing. But her son hasted her, and said he would do penance for her. She repented her, and sent for to fetch the priest, but tofore ere the priest came, the devils ran to her and she died by the horribleness of them. Then the son confessed the sin of the mother and did for her seven years penance, and that accomplished he saw his mother, and she thanked him of her deliverance. And in likewise avail the indulgences of the Church.

It happed that a legate of the pope prayed a noble knight, that he would make war in the service of the church and ride to the Albigeois, and he would therefor give pardon to his father which was dead. And the knight rode forth, and abode there a whole Lent, and that done his father appeared to him more clear than the day, and thanked him for his deliverance.

Whereof is read that when a knight lay in his bed with his wife, and the moon shone right clear which entered in by the crevices, he marvelled much wherefore man which was reasonable obeyed not to his Maker, when the creatures not reasonable obeyed to him. And then began to say evil of a knight which was dead, and had been familiar with him; and then this knight, of whom they so talked, entered into the chamber and said to him: Friend, have none evil suspicion of any man, but pardon me if I have trespassed to thee.

And when he had demanded him of his state, he answered: I am tormented of divers torments and pains, and especially because I defouled the churchyard and hurt a man therein, and despoiled him of his mantle which he ware, which mantle I bear on me and is heavier than a mountain.

And then he prayed the knight that he would do pray for him. And then he demanded if he would that such a priest should pray for him, or such one, and the dead man wagged his head, and answered not, as he would not have him.

Then he asked of him if he would that such a hermit should pray for him, and then the dead man answered: Would God that he would pray for me. And the living knight promised that he should pray for him, and then the dead man said: And I say to thee that this day two years thou shalt die, and so vanished away. And this knight changed his life into better and at the day slept in our Lord.

As Turpin the archbishop of Rheims saith, that there was a noble knight that was in the battle with Charles the Great for to fight against the Moors, and prayed one that was his cousin that if he died in battle, that he should sell his horse and give the price thereof to poor people. And he died, and that other desired the horse and retained it for himself.

And a little while after, he that was dead appeared to that other knight, shining as the sun, and said to him: Cousin, thou hast made me to suffer pain eight days in purgatory, because thou gavest not the price of my horse to poor people, but thou shalt not escape away unpunished. This day devils shall bear thy soul into hell, and I being purged go into the kingdom of heaven.

And suddenly was a great cry heard in the air, as of bears, lions, and wolves, which bare him away. Then let every executor beware that he execute well the goods of them that they have charge of, and to beware by this ensample heretofore written, for he is blessed that can beware by other men's harms. And let us also pray diligently for all Christian souls, that by the moyen of our prayers, alms, and fastings, they may be eased and lessed of their pains.

All Saints' Day (All Hallows' Day, or "Hallowmas") (again thanks to www.fisheaters.com)

2010-11-01T08:48:00.000-07:00

This is a Holy Day of Obligation on which we celebrate the Church Triumphant -- all the Saints in Heaven, canonized or unknown.

After Noon today, and until Midnight tomorrow, a person who has been to confession and Communion can gain a plenary indulgence, under the usual conditions, for the poor souls in Purgatory (who will be commemorated tomorrow) each time he visits a church or public oratory and recites the Our Father, the Hail Mary and the Glory be to the Father six times. This is a special exception to the ordinary law of the Church according to which a plenary indulgence for the same work can be gained only once a day. Some of the grave-visiting customs described on the entry for All Souls Day, then, may begin today in some places.

In anticipation of All Souls' Day tomorrow, when night comes on this day, we darken the room, light a candle blessed at Candlemas, and pray the Rosary for our dead. Praying the 129th Psalm (the De Profundis) and/or the Litany of the Saints would also be lovely. You can download the Litany, in Microsoft Word .doc format, in English or in Latin.

You can also download the following reading for All Saints' Day -- St. Gregory Thamaturgus (b. A.D. 213) -- in Microsoft .doc format by clicking here (2 pages).

Reading

On All the Saints
By St. Gregory Thamaturgus

Grant thy blessing, Lord.

It was my desire to be silent, and not to make a public display of the rustic rudeness of my tongue. For silence is a matter of great consequence when one's speech is mean. And to refrain from utterance is indeed an admirable thing, where there is lack of training; and verily he is the highest philosopher who knows how to cover his ignorance by abstinence from public address. Knowing, therefore, the feebleness of tongue proper to me, I should have preferred such a course.

Nevertheless the spectacle of the onlookers impels me to speak. Since, then, this solemnity is a glorious one among our festivals, and the spectators form a crowded gathering, and our assembly is one of elevated fervour in the faith, I shall face the task of commencing an address with confidence. And this I may attempt all the more boldly, since the Father requests me, and the Church is with me, and the sainted martyrs with this object strengthen what is weak in me. For these have inspired aged men to accomplish with much love a long course, and constrained them to support their failing steps by the staff of the word; and they have stimulated women to finish their course like the young men, and have brought to this, too, those of tender years, yea, even creeping children. In this wise have the martyrs shown their power, leaping with joy in the presence of death, laughing at the sword, making sport of the wrath of princes, grasping at death as the producer of deathlessness, making victory their own by their fall, through the body taking their leap to heaven, suffering their members to be scattered abroad in order that they might hold their souls, and, bursting the bars of life, that they might open the. gates of heaven.

And if any one believes not that death is abolished, that Hades is trodden under foot, that the chains thereof are broken, that the tyrant is bound, let him look on the martyrs disporting themselves in the presence of death, and taking up the jubilant strain of the victory of Christ. O the marvel! Since the hour when Christ despoiled Hades, men have danced in triumph over death. "O death, where is thy sting! O grave, where is thy victory?" Hades and the devil have been despoiled, and stripped of their ancient armour, and cast out of their peculiar power. And even as Goliath had his head cut off with his own sword, so also is the devil, who has been the father of death, put to rout through death; and he finds that the selfsame thing which he was wont to use as the ready weapon of his deceit, has become the mighty instrument of his own destruction.

Yea, if we may so speak, casting his hook at the Godhead, and seizing the wonted enjoyment of the baited pleasure, he is himself manifestly caught while he deems himself the captor, and discovers that in place of the man he has touched the God. By reason thereof do the martyrs leap upon the head of the dragon, and despise every species of torment. For since the second Adam has brought up the first Adam out of the deeps of Hades, as Jonah was delivered out of the whale, and has set forth him who was deceived as a citizen of heaven to the shame of the deceiver, the gates of Hades have been shut, and the gates of heaven have been opened, so as to offer an unimpeded entrance to those who rise thither in faith.

In olden time Jacob beheld a ladder erected reaching to heaven, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon it. But now, having been made man for man's sake, He who is the Friend of man has crushed with the foot of His divinity him who is the enemy of man, and has borne up the man with the hand of His Christhood, and has made the trackless ether to be trodden by the feet of man. Then the angels were ascending and descending; but now the Angel of the great counsel neither ascendeth nor descendeth: for whence or where shall He change His position, who is present everywhere, and filleth all things, and holds in His hand the ends. of the world? Once, indeed, He descended, and once He ascended,--not, however, through any change of nature, but only in the condescension of His philanthropic Christhood; and He is seated as the Word with the Father, and as the Word He dwells in the womb, and as the Word He is found everywhere, and is never separated from the God of the universe.

Aforetime did the devil deride the nature of man with great laughter, and he has had his joy over the times of our calamity as his festal-days. But the laughter is only a three days' pleasure, while the wailing is eternal; and his great laughter has prepared for him a greater wailing and ceaseless tears, and inconsolable weeping, and a sword in his heart. This sword did our Leader forge against the enemy with fire in the virgin furnace, in such wise and after such fashion as He willed, and gave it its point by the energy of His invincible divinity, and dipped it in the water of an undefiled baptism, and sharpened it by sufferings without passion in them, and made it bright by the mystical resurrection; and herewith by Himself He put to death the vengeful adversary, together with his whole host.

What manner of word, therefore, will express our joy or his misery? For he who was once an archangel is now a devil; he who once lived in heaven is now seen crawling like a serpent upon earth; he who once was jubilant with the cherubim, is now shut up in pain in the guard-house of swine; and him, too, in fine, shall we put to rout if we mind those things which are contrary to his choice, by the grace and kindness of our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory and the power unto the ages of the ages. Amen.

Hallowe'en (courtesy of www.fisheaters.com)

2010-10-30T21:50:00.000-07:00

31 October and 1 and 2 November are called, colloquially (not officially), "Hallowtide" or the "Days of the Dead" because on these days we pray for or remember those who've left this world.

The days of the dead center around All Saints' Day (also known as All Hallows') on November 1, when we celebrate all the Saints in Heaven. On the day after All Hallows', we remember the saved souls who are in Purgatory being cleansed of the temporal effects of their sins before they can enter Heaven. The day that comes before All Hallows', though, is one on which we unofficially remember the damned and the reality of Hell. The schema, then, for the Days of the Dead looks like this:

31 October:	Hallowe'en:	unofficially recalls the souls of the damned. Practices center around the reality of Hell and how to avoid it.
1 November:	All Saints':	set aside to officially honor the Church Triumphant. Practices center around recalling our great Saints, including those whose names are unknown to us and, so, are not canonized
2 November:	All Souls':	set aside officially to pray for the Church Suffering (the souls in Purgatory). Practices center around praying for the souls in Purgatory, especially our loved ones

The earliest form of All Saints' (or "All Hallows'") was first celebrated in the 300s, but originally took place on 13 May, as it still does in some Eastern Church
es. The Feast first commemorated only the martyrs, but came to include all of the Saints by 741. It was transferred to 1 November in 844 when Pope Gregory III consecrated a chapel in St. Peter's Basilica to All Saints (so much for the theory that the day was fixed on 1 November because of a bunch of Irish pagans had harvest festivals at that time).

All Souls' has its origins in A.D. 1048 when the Bishop of Cluny decreed that the Benedictines of Cluny pray for the souls in Purgatory on this day. The practice spread until Pope Sylvester II recommended it for the entire Latin Church.

The Vigil of, or evening before, All Hallows' ("Hallows' Eve," or "Hallowe'en") came, in Irish popular piety, to be a day of remembering the dead who are neither in Purgatory or Heaven, but are damned, and these customs spread to many parts of the world. Thus we have the popular focus of Hallowe'en as the reality of Hell, hence its scary character and focus on evil and how to avoid it, the sad fate of the souls of the damned, etc. ¹

How, or even whether, to celebrate Hallowe'en is a controversial topic in traditional circles. One hears too often that "Hallowe'en is a pagan holiday" -- an impossibility because "Hallowe'en," as said, means "All Hallows' Evening" which is as Catholic a holiday as one can get. Some say that the holiday actually stems from Samhain, a pagan Celtic celebration, or is Satanic, but this isn't true, either, any more than Christmas "stems from" the Druids' Yule, though popular customs that predated the Church may be involved in our celebrations (it is rather amusing that October 31 is also "Reformation Day" in Protestant circles -- the day to recall Luther's having nailed his 95 Theses to Wittenberg's cathedral door -- but Protestants who reject "Hallowe'en" because pagans used to do things on October 31 don't object to commemorating that event on this day).

Some traditional Catholics, objecting to the definite secularization of the holiday and to the myth that the entire thing is "pagan" to begin with, refuse to celebrate it in any way at all, etc. Other traditional Catholics celebrate it without qualm, though keeping it Catholic and staying far away from some of the ugliness that surrounds the day in the secular world. However one decides to spend the day, it is hoped that the facts are kept straight, and that Catholics refrain from judging other Catholics who decide to celebrate differently.

For those who do want to celebrate Hallowe'en, customs of this day are a mixture of Catholic popular devotions, and French, Irish, and English customs all mixed together. From the French we get the custom of dressing up, which originated during the time of the Black Death when artistic renderings of the dead known as the "Danse Macabre," were popular. These "Dances of Death" were also acted out by people who dressed as the dead. Later, these practices were moved to Hallowe'en when the Irish and French began to intermarry in America.

From the Irish come the carved Jack-o-lanterns, which were originally carved turnips. The legend surrounding the Jack-o-Lantern is this:

There once was an old drunken trickster named Jack, a man known so much for his miserly ways that he was known as "Stingy Jack," He loved making mischief on everyone -- even his own family, even the Devil himself! One day, he tricked Satan into climbing up an apple tree -- but then carved Crosses on the trunk so the Devil couldn't get back down. He bargained with the Evil One, saying he would remove the Crosses only if the Devil would promise not to take his soul to Hell; to this, the Devil agreed.

After Jack died, after many years filled with vice, he went up to the Pearly Gates -- but was told by St. Peter that he was too miserable a creature to see the Face of Almighty God. But when he went to the Gates of Hell, he was reminded that he couldn't enter there, either! So, he was doomed to spend his eternity roaming the earth. The only good thing that happened to him was that the Devil threw him an ember from the burning pits to light his way, an ember he carried inside a hollowed-out, carved turnip.

And when you carve up your pumpkin, keep the seeds to roast! Here's a recipe:

Roasted Pumpkin Seeds

2 cups pumpkin seeds (approx.)
2 TSP melted butter or oil (approx.)
Salt to taste
Optional: garlic powder; cayenne pepper; seasoned salt; Worcestershire Sauce; Cajun seasoning; or Hot Spice Mix (1/2 tsp. Tabasco sauce, 1 tsp. cayenne pepper, 1/2 tsp. cumin, 2 tsp. chili powder)

Preheat oven to 300° F. Toss pumpkin seeds in a bowl with the melted butter or oil and any optional ingredients of your choice. Spread pumpkin seeds in a single layer on baking sheet. Bake for about 45 minutes, stirring occasionally, until golden brown and crispy. Store airtight.

Option: If you roast them without any of the above optional flavorings, you can now flavor them Spicy-Sweet by doing this:

Heat a TBSP of peanut oil in a skillet, add 2 TBSP sugar, and the seeds. Cook the pumpkin seeds over medium high heat for about 1 minute or until the sugar melts and starts to caramelize. Place pumpkin seeds in a large bowl and sprinkle with this mixture: 3 TBSP sugar, 1/4 tsp. salt, 1/4 tsp. cinnamon, 1/4 tsp. ginger, and a pinch of ground cayenne pepper.

From the English Catholics we get begging from door to door, the earlier and more pure form of "trick-or-treating." Children would go about begging their neighbors for a "Soul Cake," for which they would say a prayer for those neighbors' dead. Instead of knocking on a door and saying the threatening, "Trick-or-treat" (or the ugly "Trick-or-treat, smell my feet, give me something good to eat"), children would say either:

A Soul Cake, a Soul Cake,
have mercy on all Christian souls for a soul cake!

Soul, soul, an apple or two,
If you haven't an apple, a pear will do,
One for Peter, two for Paul,
Three for the Man Who made us all.

While Soul Cakes were originally a type of shortbread, it is said that a clever medieval cook wanted to make Soul Cakes designed to remind people of eternity, so she cut a hole in the middle of round cakes before frying them, thereby inventing donuts! Fresh plain cake donuts would be a nice food to eat on this day.

Cake Doughnuts (makes 20)

2 quarts canola oil
2 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting
1/4 cup sour cream
1 1/4 cups cake flour (not self-rising)
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 tsp coarse salt
1 1/2 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
1 packet active dry yeast or 0.6 ounces cake yeast
3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons nonfat buttermilk
1 extra-large whole egg
2 extra-large egg yolks
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
1 1/4 cups nonmelting or confectioners' sugar

1. Heat oil in a low-sided six-quart saucepan over medium-high heat until a deep-frying thermometer registers 375°. Lightly dust a baking pan with all-purpose flour, and line a second one with paper towels; set both aside.

2. Meanwhile, place sour cream in a heat-proof bowl or top of a double boiler; set over a pan of simmering water. Heat until warm to the touch. Remove from heat; set aside.

3. In a large bowl, sift together all-purpose flour, cake flour, granulated sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and nutmeg. Make a large well; place yeast in center. Pour warm sour cream over yeast, and let sit 1 minute.

4. Place buttermilk, whole egg, egg yolks, and vanilla in a medium bowl; whisk to combine. Pour egg mixture over sour cream. Using a wooden spoon, gradually draw flour mixture into egg mixture, stirring until smooth before drawing in more flour. Continue until all flour mixture has been incorporated; dough will be very sticky.

5. Sift a heavy coat of flour onto a clean work surface. Turn out dough. Sift another heavy layer of flour over dough. Using your hands, pat dough until it is 1/2 inch thick. Using a 2 3/4-inch doughnut cutter, cut out doughnuts as close together as possible, dipping the cutter in flour before each cut. Transfer doughnuts to floured pan, and let rest 10 minutes, but not more.

6. Carefully transfer four doughnuts to hot oil. Cook until golden, about 2 minutes. Turn over; continue cooking until evenly browned on both sides, about 2 minutes more. Using a slotted spoon, transfer doughnuts to lined pan. Repeat with remaining doughnuts.

7. Gather remaining dough scraps into a ball. Let rest 10 minutes; pat into a 1/2-inch-thick rectangle. Cut, let rest 10 minutes, and cook.

8. When cool enough to handle, sift nonmelting sugar over tops; serve immediately. (Recipe from Martha Stewart).

Other customary foods for All Hallows' Eve include cider, nuts, popcorn, and apples -- best eaten around a bonfire or fireplace!

Another Hallowe'en custom is the old Celtic "bobbing for apples." To do this, fill a large tub two thirds full with water and float apples in it. Children take turns trying to pick up one of the floating apples using only their mouths (hands are not allowed and must be held or tied behind the back!) -- very tricky to do! The first to do so wins a prize (some say he will be the first one to marry someday). You can make the game more fun by carving an initial into the bottom of each apple, letting that initial indicate the name of the person each apple-bobber will marry, and/or using different colored apples with different assigned meanings or prizes. (You can play a dry version of this game by tying the stems of the apples to strings and suspending them. If you do this, carve any initials at the tops of the apples. Of course, all of this sort of thing is a parlor game and should never be taken seriously or cross the line into divination!).

...and tell scary stories! If you want the perfect poems to relate to your children on this day, see Little Orphant Annie, The Raven, The Stolen Child, and the Wreck of the Hesperus. And here are those poems and some stories for you to download in Microsoft Word .doc format:

Little Orphant Annie by James Whitcomb Riley (2 pages)
The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe (3 pages)
The Stolen Child by William Butler Yeats (2 pages)
The Wreck of the Hesperus by Henry Wordsworth Longfellow (3 pages)
The Monkey's Paw, by W. W. Jacobs (11 pages)
The Lottery, by Shirley Jackson (5 pages)
The Tell Tale Heart, by Edgar Allan Poe (4 pages)
The Cask of Amontillado, by Edgar Allan Poe (7 pages)
The Masque of the Red Death, by Edgar Allan Poe (5 pages)
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, by Washington Irving (22 pages)

After teaching your children about the frightening realities of Hell and the fate of the damned, reassure them by telling them that the Evil One has already been conquered! Satan has no real power over those who are in Christ, and mocking him and his minions is a way of demonstrating this; teach your children how to call on the power of Christ and His Church to protect themselves from their snares. Warn them that magic (the art of performing actions beyond the power of man with the aid of powers other than the Divine) is real, that there is no such thing as "white magic," that playing with the occult -- whether by divination, necromancy, the casting of spells, playing with Ouija boards, etc. -- is an invitation to demons to respond, and that it is from demons that magic gets any power it has. Remember St. Michael to them, teach them about the power of sacramentals and prayers that ward off evil when piously used (the Sign of the Cross, Holy Water, blessed salt, the Crucifix, the St. Benedict Medal, St. Anthony's Brief, etc.), teach them to call on the Holy Name of Jesus when they are afraid, etc.

And please pray to all the Saints that they might intercede and bring pagans and witches to Christ so they might know the peace that comes from knowing that God loves them so much that He allowed Himself to take on a human nature, to suffer, and to die for them..

2010-10-29T17:38:00.000-07:00

Vietnamese Man Saves Kids from Abortion by Adopting – 80 of Them!

PS Some thoughts on fairness and Careerism.

2010-10-28T20:47:00.000-07:00

I am not sure if there is such a word as careerism. Don't know if I heard it said or if it just seemed to sound about right when thinking about vocations to family. I have not bothered to look it up because whether it is a word or not is of no import as I will explain what I mean by it and in so doing give you the definition of it as I see it.

In my previous post I talked about population decline and the brave new world we live in. Part of that discussion touched on women in the work force and the impact a woman choosing a career path has on the number of children she is likely to have, on population and on family. This part of the post actual came from a debate that took place between myself and a few other women on the issue of career versus family and why women had to choose between the two and men did not. Some of the women found it unreasonable and unfair that this should be the case. They argued that it was because of short sighted social attitudes and by extension a lack of effective social policy. Oh were it that simple! If only we could just throw a little public policy, and public money, and correct all the perceived injustices in our societies! But just because a segment of society perceives an injustice does that make something an injustice? Here are some examples of possible perceived injustices that my girlfriend Alane and I came up with that we might want to try and fix with a little social policy and public money.

while people sunburn and black people don't (and if they do not nearly as quickly and it does not look nearly as bad)
my daughter and husband have beautiful singing voices and I don't
I know many people who are much faster runners than I am
my friend Jocelyn is a much better cook than I am
my friend Alane plays many musical instruments, she is gifted and I am not
my sister is a wonderful painter and I am not
I have several friends who have much more money than I do
One of our friends is a multi millionaire.
My friend Thea can knit a baptismal gown and I cannot
I know people who speak five or more languages, I only speak three
etc, etc, etc,

I could go on with the list but I think you get where I am going with this. There are plenty of things in life that seem unfair, but just because they seem unfair does not make them worthy of massive social engineering and social outcry. As Alane quite rightly put it, "Oh come on, get over it, for crying out loud!"

When talking about choices between career and family I only very briefly touched on something which I would now like to expound upon a little. I mentioned that one rarely sees male CEOs of companies who were also devoted, dedicated husbands and fathers. They may have a child or two but their lives are pretty much tied to their careers, because that is what it takes to be the best in any given career. This is the danger and, I believe, inevitable trapping of careerism.

Careerists are very different from those who are dedicated to being good at what they do. A careerist is someone who has come to define themselves by the success or failure of their career, for whom their career is their life! All that they do, all that they are is based on how well they succeed in their given career. In the end a careerist serves his/her career first, at the expense of all else, sometimes even life itself.

Our culture promotes this, it applauds this, it feeds this. How many times have you heard someone say, "my work is my life" "my career is my whole world." This is all is quite sad, and even sadder when the person saying it is a mother or father.

What is the purpose and end of work? Well depending on who you talk to there will be varying answers. I believe that the purpose and end of work has always been to provide for and care for your family and yourself. I think it is important that you get some satisfaction in the work you do, and I think that if you can find work that can be rewarding and enjoyable as well as provide for your family that is great. I am not advocating that we should suffer miserably and unnecessarily in our chosen profession, not at all. But I do think that once you are spending all of your quality time and energy devoting it to your profession at the expense of time spent nurturing and caring for your family you have allowed yourself to be dangerously side tracked into careerism.

Culturally we have lost sight of what is truly important, men and women alike. I think one of the reasons why a career seems so appealing to women is that they watch men virtually abandon their families for the sake of, greater career opportunities, public acclamation, peer adulation, more status, more money, etc, and with seemingly no consequences. People talk about how history remembers so and so, and their successes, and sometimes their failure. We talk about how so an so will be remembered in the annals of history for their great successes. But really who cares. Does it mean that the great historical figure has lead a better life than the person who fathered/mothered children to become good people who went on to have families who themselves were good and caring people and so on. Who really has the greater legacy?

Many of these great successful men have wives who have made a choice to stay home and care for their families so that their husbands can pursue their careers. And in some cases men have chosen to stay home with the children while their wives go out and pursue their careers. I would say that if it is unfair for a woman to be expected to stay home and essentially bring up her children by herself, it is just as much unfair for her to expect her husband to go it alone while she goes off to "fulfill herself" through her career.

It is a sad statement of how truly lost we are when we need a career to feel fulfilled. When we cannot find fulfillment it caring for our families, helping to guide our children, being companions and helpers to our mates. True fulfillment, I believe, can only be found in taking the time to commune with God and discern what he is calling you to. And that may very well be to a profession, but it certainly would not be to a professional life that would pull you away from your vocation as husband and father, or wife and mother.

So while it may seem unfair to some that women have to make the choice between career and family, as it may seem unfair that some people have green eyes while others do not, fairness really is not the issue is it? The issue I believe is truly about the difference between what we should do and what we want to do, what is best for our families as opposed to what seems best for our wants. Only in recent decades have we seen women have doors open to them, career opportunities made available to them, that have never been before and instead of taking the time to truly discern a life's vocation we have gone clamoring right behind so many men making all the same mistakes that they have been making. We are wanting to make many of the same selfish sacrifices. How unoriginal!

Who do you think is more fulfilled?

God Bless,
Dominique

Alice Demo Dancing Under the Gallows H264 No TCB

2010-10-28T19:11:00.000-07:00

God is dead and our populations are dying!

2010-10-26T12:29:00.000-07:00

For more than a century we have heard the Malthusians tell us about the dangers and damage an ever growing population would do to our societies, to our environment, to the Earth. In recent decades we've heard about the depletion of our natural resources from environmentalists, we heard about the social strain of increasingly denser populations by some economists, we have heard about the dangers of growing pollution to our world if we did not curb the growth of our populations world wide. But little mention was made until recent year of the dangers and harm of the opposite. Only in recent years are we becoming more and more aware of the reality of declining birth rates.

If we look at what has been happening in parts of Asia where there have been government imposed limits on family size. Singapore is now looking at a fertility rate of 1.1 which is so far below the replacement rate that there is little likelihood they will be able to pull it back up again. So what does this mean? Well is means that we are looking at a population that is essentially dying! And what will happen as the aging population ceases to be able to work and there are not enough young people to sustain care for this population? I shudder to think, in a society where abortion and infanticide was the means of choice to reduce their population it does not take much mental gymnastics to imagine a viable means for decreasing the aging population.

When we talk about replacement rates we are referring to the number of children per woman, on average, necessary for a population to replace itself. That is, for a society to maintain a level in the work force to sustain the economy, and in societies that are dependent on government funded programs to care for those who cannot care for themselves to sustain the tax base to run said programs. If the fertility rate falls below replacement rate then there is cause for concern.

In a recent New York Times article "As Populations Change a chance for younger Nations" by Ted C. Fishman author of “Shock of Gray: The Aging of the World’s Population and How It Pits Young Against Old, Child Against Parent, Worker Against Boss, Company Against Rival and Nation Against Nation,” outlines for us some of these concerns. One of them is how to care for our aging population. In other words if our younger population is out numbered by the aging populations who will provide for the care necessary for them? The other concern is the economy. An aging workforce is a workforce that will struggle to keep up in a global economy. "The globalization of the economy is accelerating because the world is rapidly aging, and at the same time the pace of global aging is quickened by the speed and scope of globalization. These intertwined dynamics also bear on the international competition for wealth and power. The high costs of keeping our aging population healthy and out of poverty has caused the United States and other rich democracies to lose their economic and political footing. Countries on the rise amass wealth and geopolitical clout by refusing to bear those costs. Older countries lose work to younger countries."

Immigration while an immediate aid for declining fertility rates in rapidly aging countries, in turn harm those countries from which young people are emigrating. Case in point, says Fishman is Spain and Ecuador. Of course, immigration for one country means emigration from another — and an older population left behind. Spain, which rivals Japan as the world’s oldest country, was for much of the 20th century one of the youngest nations in the West. Before 2000, it had virtually no foreign-born residents. Today, nearly 12 percent of Spain’s population is foreign born. Among the arrivals are hundreds of thousands of Ecuadoreans (many of them female caregivers for elderly Spanish) whose absence at home increases the median age of Ecuador’s population. More than one in 10 Ecuadoreans has left in search of work, and the loss of so many of the country’s youngest and most enterprising workers means Ecuador has little chance of developing. Recently, its president initiated the Welcome Home Program to lure emigrants back with tax breaks and money to start businesses.

So as people in the environmental movements continue to cry about the need for population control and tell developing nations to forgo industrialization because they need to be responsible for the environment, as the Al Gore's and James Cameron's tell us all to live with less and have less children while they own millions of dollars worth of property and vehicles for families of two, let us spend some time thinking of the legacy we will be leaving behind! I suppose if one loves nature more than humanity the idea of less humans and more nature is not so bad, and for some of these people that is exactly what is the goal. Let us rid the world of the scourge that is humanity so that nature can thrive!

In their rush to decrease the rate of growth of populations nations have used various methods. It is agreed that some of the main reasons for a decline in population replacement and of aging populations are the following: growth in wealth, urbanization (it is harder to have big families in urban areas because the higher cost of living), increase in family planning through contraception and abortion, and more women going onto higher education and entering the work force and waiting to have children until after they have established a career. Barbara Kay argues Read more: http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2010/10/20/barbara-kay-the-coming-demographic-crisis-%E2%80%94-too-much-school-not-enough-babies/#ixzz13UNm5aDr

The lie of many of these modern movements is a better life of all, but it is in reality motivated by a desire to make life better for fewer, the fewer enlightened. Along with this lie are the lies to rationalize the extermination of some members of society so that others may thrive. In the past decades we have seen nations, including our own, justify the whole scale slaughter of millions of babies in the name of "women's reproductive rights" and a world where "babies are wanted". Some nations implementing actual government imposed initiatives to reduce family sizes to one child per family at the cost of an entire generation of an unnatural male to female ratio. The elderly, sick and disabled are being viewed and treated like burdens to both themselves and their families and being offered Euthanasia as a reasonable alternative to being said burdens. In other words humans are treated as means to an end, are objectified, are dehumanized, so that a few can live in the kind of world that they have reasoned is best.

Should we be surprised? NO! In their book "Architects of the Culture of Death" Donald de Marco and Benjamin Wiker go to great lengths to explain the origins of the kind of culture that makes the above seem reasonable and justifiable. They go all the way back to the likes of Schopenhauer, Darwin, Marx, Sartre, and many more who through have varying interpretations of human nature all share something fundamental in common. They have chosen to extract God from the picture and by so doing have promulgated the dehumanization of humanity. He says that human beings freed from God as these architects would have us, man created by a natural force rather than from God in his own image is then free to define salvation for himself. "The new doctrine of salvation is, to say the least, multifaceted--salvation by the expression of naked instinct, by sexual indulgence, by bloody proletarian revolution, by raw acts of the will, by population control, by contraception, by scientism, by eugenics, and on, and on...Indeed we could well define modernity as the ongoing depersonalization of humanity, the attempt to reduce human beings to the subhuman, not only according to some abstract definition, but also in regard to ever aspect of humanity. The origin of life has become depersonalized by the ever expanding technological displacement of natural procreation by unnatural mechanical methods of conception. Sexuality thus torn from its proper expression, as the unitive procreative consummation of marriage, has been reduced to pleasure seeking where others and even oneself become mere objects...(H)umane treatment of human beings (is no different) than humane treatment of animals, so that it becomes an equivalent act of mercy to "put down" the elderly and suffering human beings in the same way and for the same reason as we put down elderly and suffering pets."

What a brave new world we live in! The challenge then becomes how do we reverse the trend? Can we? Kay says that in her research governments have had great success at promoting and implementing population reduction but despite some nations efforts the opposite has not been the case. How do you tell people in a world of self interest as self fulfillment that "oops we were wrong, you need to go back to believing in God, you need to start recognizing self sacrifice as a good, you need to start having big families again and give up career aspirations and higher education at the cost of solid families! The idea of having it all is really a myth!" Can a Godless people accept any of this?

God Bless,

Dominique

Fr. Barron comments on The Depressing Pew Forum Study

2010-10-24T19:37:00.000-07:00

A moment in time

2010-10-24T19:27:00.000-07:00

I find myself more and more yearning for calm and a true charity toward others in my aging. I used to think that as we get older we get more tolerant, less uptight, and more ready to let things go....apparently that is not part of my aging process!

To be fair, I do find myself better able to let things go in some important areas of my life, for example in my marriage. Well at least more of the time than I did in my youth anyway! My husband and I have overtime grown better at resolving our conflicts than we ever were, and I believe that that is due in part to our ability to just let things slide that we used to jump on. It is also due in larger part to God's Divine Mercy and Grace in our lives. Though we are by no means near good at it, but better is nothing to sneeze at.es

With my children I find that I am not nearly as patient and laid back as I once was, for some things anyway, but then I find that it is such as tenuous dynamic with teenagers and preteens than with toddlers and young children. And of course looking at the world through my current eyes, the eyes of an old pregnant lady who is struggling with severe nausea, tolerance is not something that comes easy to me about anything these days!!! But even factoring that in, and I would not say that I am an old curmudgeon, at least not yet, I do find some things more and more difficult to be tolerant about, or to be immediately forgiving of.

I got to thinking about this today after losing my temper while I was standing in line waiting to go to confession before Mass. One Mass had just ended and people were mulling out of the sanctuary and the noise level was almost deafening.

The Mass that our family attends is a noon High Mass and we often get there about half an hour early as our older boys serve and one assists the sacristan and helps to set up the alter for the High Mass. So it is quite common for us to be there as the earlier Mass is getting out. Usually around this time one of the men who attends the noon Mass begins to pray the Rosary out loud. This sometimes helps to remind those leaving that there are people there who are either still praying or who have arrived early in order to spend quiet time in God's real presence to pray.

Anyway I digress. As I stood in line waiting and praying, trying to take some time to reflect upon my difficult week, a week of vacillating between feeling sorry for myself, feeling angry at my children's failings in their household duties (and at my own,) and losing sight of God's many Blessings and great Mercies in my life, I found myself getting distracted by the noise. All of a sudden I was not thinking of my failings, I was focusing on the failings of all these people, most complete strangers, who were seemingly oblivious to where they were and of the fact that there were people there who desperately yearned for the silence and peace of a quiet church before Mass. I forgot about my own failings and instead could not seem to let go of a growing anger at these noise makers. What made matters worse, I thought to myself, was there was a priest, standing there in the sanctuary, chatting away with a parishioner. Oh that just made me fume, how on earth can we expect lay people understand that this a sacred place, a place which is deserving of the greatest reverence, chit chatting about who knows what. Why can't he go to his office to chat? Why not the breezeway, why not the Hall where there was at that moment a social going on with refreshments?

By the time I got into the confessional I was confessing anger and lack of charity toward neighbour that had more to do with my disposition at that very moment and the swell of emotion just prior to entering the confessional than all the instances throughout the previous two weeks!

As I walked away, acutely aware of my stumbling I began to think of the level of self righteousness involved in feeling as angry as I was. Don't get me wrong, I do think there are times when it is appropriate to be offended by the ignorance of others, but to stand in judgement, to find oneself fuming with anger at what one might perceive to be blatant disrespect, is not right, is not charitable, is not what I believe we are called to. After all it was not that long ago that I was one of those people chatting and even gossiping in the presence of our Lord. So what are we to do in such situations? Is it reasonable to spend our time and energy dwelling on and condemning others?

No I do not believe so. I wish that our Bishops and our Priests would foster a greater reverence for the Sacred spaces that are our churches. We might pray for a conversion of heart of the faithful, and a greater interest in coming to understand the Mass and the Real Presence of Christ in the Tabernacle. But I must also pray for a more charitable disposition toward my neighbour. I need to stop thinking and assuming that it is out of disrespect that many people behave the way they do in Christ's presence. I need to remember that our faithful are not taught reverence and our catholic culture has been so busy over the last several decades trying to make the Faith more down to earth, more palatable, more relevant, that we have pushed the Sacred right out of the picture. In our local parish Christ has been ushered out into a seperate room, the Jesus closet as my children call it. I think it is ironic that in the same church we have two glass enclosed areas, a crying room and a room to put the tabernacle. It is no wonder that so many forget where they are and in Whose presence they are.

Everywhere we turn there are places to socialize, cafes, community centres, Church halls, bowling alleys, friends' homes, gyms, book clubs, dance clubs, pubs, and the list goes on. But how many truly Sacred spaces do we have? How many spaces are there where we are able to spend time in God's presence, in His Real presence? If you are Catholic then it is really and truly only in our churches, before Christ in the Tabernacle. What a gift that is! What a miracle! What an opportunity to be able to reach out, in time, and join with all the angels in Heaven and commune with the true and living God! And would that gift not be better appreciated in a spirit of charity and prayer rather than judgement and condemnation?

God Bless,
Dominique

The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass: Part VIII What the Mass is NOT

2010-10-23T11:50:00.000-07:00

This is the last of the series and he closes with a bang. I hope that everyone has found this series useful in some way. As I explained when I started posting this series I was wowed by it, but that just might be because of how truly clueless I was at the time. I will trying to get back to some of my own writing but seeing as I am still not back on my feet, so to speak, I will likele also be borrowing from other places.

Blessings,
Dominique

A PRIMER for CLUELESS CATHOLICS

Part VIII

What the Mass is NOT

By now we should have acquired a fairly clear idea of what the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass principally IS.

It is no less important for us first be clear about what the Mass is NOT, for a good deal of what the Mass is will become much more clear if we understand what the Mass is not.

Most Catholics, as Pope John Paul II noted, have either lost, or no longer have remembrance of, the most central aspects of the Mass – and the fault, largely, is not their own. It is the result of a systemic failure in Catechesis over the past 40 years. Bishops – whose principal duty, above all other duties, as "teachers of the faith" – appear to have forgotten, or have simply relinquished, this absolutely vital responsibility, relegating it to others as something of a "less pressing" issue, failing to see that the "larger" issues at hand are an immediate and direct result of this failure.

Doctrine and Dogma vs. Doctrinaire Dissent

Having been pawned off to – and eagerly seized by – increasingly doctrinaire and "progressive" committees who articulated Catholic teaching not in terms of the genuine Deposit of Faith, but in terms of social and political issues — largely liberal and distinctly feminist — current or correct at the time, the concept itself of "doctrine and dogma" came into disrepute, such that the words themselves became terms of reproach and disdain. In fact, "doctrine and dogma" became the antithesis to endless "enlightened experiment", which, disdaining doctrinal certainties as somehow regressive, eventually came to repudiate them – however catastrophic the results and however detrimental to the Faith ... and to the faithful.

Indeed, we ourselves are not without blame. Unwilling to accept, or even to recognize our own complicity in the matter through our failure to be "the primary teachers of our children" — as the Church insists — the reproach that we legitimately lay on the doorsteps of our "Religious Educators" and Catechists is no less an indictment of our own irresponsibility. It is profoundly true, unfortunately, that the Catechists to whom we entrust our children had themselves acquired little in the way of authentic Catholic doctrine from their own predecessors who themselves were largely ignorant of the authentic teachings of the Church and the Deposit of the Faith ... or disagreeing with much of it, deliberately failed to teach what did not conform to their own partisan commitment to prevailing social, sexual, and gender-related issues. It is equally true that we, as parents, indeed, as Catholics, have been resolutely indifferent to learning many of the most basic tenets of our own Faith.

Our own indifference, together with the ignorance or the dissent (or both) of the Catechists and the "professional" Religious Educators — nevertheless remain a direct consequence of the inexcusable negligence of the bishops ... to whom Christ entrusted us as children to a father. The problem is that the father is remote, indifferent, and largely absentee. He has washed his hands of what his children are learning, and appears indifferent to what they are being taught. In this sense, the bishop appears to have taken his cue from the majority of secular fathers with children in public education. Uninvolved and ill-informed, he knows little or nothing of what they are being taught, however destructive it may be to the fabric of the family. By the time the child comes home in confusion because he has been prompted to question his own sexual identity the damage has already been done ... and very often cannot be undone. "If only I had been more proactive, more informed, more involved in my sons' or daughter's education, this terrible situation would never have occurred." But he laments too late, and he knows it.

Something very similar occurred within the seminaries of the Archdiocese of Boston — and at what cost in every way! The negligence and indifference of the bishops exacted a terrible and lasting tribute. Just as it has within the classrooms of virtually every Catechism class (now known as "Religious Education" classes — being neither in any significant way).

So what is the point of all this? We know little of our Faith, and therefore even less of the momentous event that occurs each day at our Altars.

While this may appear an unkind assessment, it is sadly borne out by the appalling lack of knowledge of even the most elementary aspects of the Catholic Faith by our own children. From First Penance to Confirmation they are "processed", grade by grade, to "Confirming" that of which they know nothing because they have been taught nothing.

This absence of what authentically constitutes Catholic doctrine has created a vacuum in the Mass. We celebrate it and really do not know why. Most often we appear, really, to be celebrating ourselves.

The True, the Untrue, and the Absurd

In this vacuum, it comes as no surprise that certain things practiced – or left undone – things that have become part and parcel of our experience at Mass – really have no place there. This can be a stinging realization. No one likes being told that they behave badly or without understanding — that what they have long practiced and what has been long condoned and even encouraged, is wrong.

In this respect we all lack humility.

We do not like being "wrong".

Nevertheless, it remains the case that some things are true and others are not – however this vies with or offends our largely democratically evolved sensitivities that would hold the true to be what best suits the most or the many, or, perhaps better yet, what is least offensive to them. This notion pleases us.

No one is wrong. In fact, nothing is wrong. And if nothing is wrong, nothing, eo ipso, is intrinsically right. We have the best of all possible worlds.

Truth, absurdity, contradiction – all are concomitant, but ultimately lesser issues.

We wish to get along. And we do so by "going along".

In fact, the most certain formula for contention, for not "getting along", is to insist that 2+2=4 and not another number of our choosing. Our insistence that the sum of this simple equation is 4, and cannot be 5, is surprisingly fraught with deep implications, for it means that the world is not arbitrary – at least the world of numbers, and with the world of numbers, the world of matter as susceptible to quantification of any meaningful sort. If we pay for two apples and receive one, we are not indifferent to it.

But there is an inherent tyranny in equations of this sort, and, in fact, in any physical phenomena construed in terms of "laws", in other words, as sequences or configurations that do, because they cannot, admit of exceptions. We are both constrained and confined by them. People do not like mathematics, not because it is abstruse, but because it admits of definitive and unequivocal answers. There are correct and there are incorrect answers. There are right answers and there are wrong answers — and this infuriates us. There is no latitude. We cannot fake the right answer. And that burns us.

It provokes us because it violates our freedom. It constrains our will. Do you doubt it?

State something categorically ... and a hand will immediately rise to challenge it. We esteem this. It is part and parcel of our democratic patrimony and our allegiance to it even at the cost of reason. The will to dissent, has, in the West, come to verge upon the pathological such that the unwillingness to dissent has come to acquire a pathology of its own: "What?", we are asked incredulously, "You do not question? What is wrong with you?"

If we are honest, however, we will admit that often our challenge has little to do with a genuine questioning at all, but is an expression of a contention with our will which we perceive threatened by being deprived of its freedom to choose otherwise. Dostoyevsky, in his famous "Notes from Underground", stated it more succinctly: "To me, 2 plus 2 making four is sheer insolence".

Would that the Moon were Green Cheese

However much it may pique us, however undemocratic or "incorrect" it may be, it nevertheless remains that some things are the case, and some things are not; some things are right and some things are wrong – that some things are true and some things are not – irrespective of their pleasing or displeasing us. We cannot make them other than they are simply because they do not, and intrinsically cannot, comply with our will or conform to our sensitivities. However much we will a triangle to have four sides, it will remain, withal, a three-sided figure. There is, in short, an ontological intolerance that is indifferent to our desiderations — and if there is one thing that we will not tolerate, it is intolerance ...

Absurdity may perplex us, but it does not offend us. Truth offends us. It vies with our will and is not amenable to it ... especially when it does not accord with our will.

So what does that have to do with the Moon as green cheese and the Mass as the Sacrifice on Calvary?

It is a prologue to some things that are, and some things that are not — despite our wishing them to be otherwise.

Let us look at some of these things in the way of the Mass and what it is NOT (in order to understand what it really is):

THE MASS IS NOT:

Entertainment
A social
A musical ("The employment of the piano is forbidden in Church, as is also that of noisy or frivolous instruments such as drums, cymbals, bells, and the like" ¹
A comedy
A talent show
Your gift to God in an act of personal munificence and sacrifice for which God should be grateful..
A liturgical and linguistic laboratory
A mere remembrance of something done long ago
A mere ritual, albeit a very ancient one
Optional

None of the above is even remotely connected to the Mass. To better understand this, imagine the following scenario:
Jesus Christ, hanging on the Cross, is being crucified before you. He is dying! His hair is matted with blood from the Crown of Thorns and His face is bruised from the blows of the Roman soldiers and covered with spit from all who mock Him. He is disrobed and open to shame. Even as the blood continues to issue from too many lacerations to count from the Scourging at the Pillar an hour before and the nails hold fast against the flesh yielding under the weight of the cruciform Figure, He is crying out in agony to His Father. Mary, His Mother, is standing before Him crying inconsolably, and would crumple to the ground were she not borne up by John and Mary Magdalene. They are weeping uncontrollably, too. All around, pious women are weeping and wailing, men are sobbing and jeering. It is a scene of utter desolation, unfathomable sorrow, a torrent of tears and a torrent of taunts.
Have you grasped the scene? THIS is what is being enacted before you at the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.
Now we arrive.
The electric guitars are plugged in, the drum and trap set are being set up, and the piano is being tuned. The acoustic guitars are being strummed aimlessly, and the flute trills sporadically in the background. There is chattering intermingled with laughter among the musicians. They are preparing to entertain the sobbing women, the raging men, and the indifferent spectators looking on. The entertainment is about to begin and Cat Stevens' (now a Muslim), "Morning has Broken" is the song that will first greet us on Calvary after the MC of the musicians cordially welcomes us to the Crucifixion. Throughout the Mass they will compete with Jesus Christ on the Cross for our attention and adulation, calling us away from the Cross that we made of our sins for the Son of God to hang upon, to their virtuosity as singers, guitarists, or piano players. They will entertain us.
But we are a restless audience, and demand more than music during this drama. We want comedy, too. The priest accommodates us, demonstrating his own virtuosity as an entertainer. He had stood briefly at the Altar by the Cross, but is now eager to leave the summit of Golgotha altogether and to walk among his audience. He leaves the Sanctuary of suffering and walks the aisles and avenues of the spectators, much in the manner of talk show hosts trying to garner the attention of the people for himself. What better way than comedy? And he is well provisioned with anecdotes and jokes ... some rather "sly" and just slightly "off-color" ("what a rascal!" we smile, as insiders of the joke with him).
There may be a "question and answer session" in the style of successful television hosts, but the point is to make you feel terribly good about yourself, and him — despite what is going on in the background, on that sad summit that he quickly left and where Christ still hangs. With the "punch-line" the skit ends, sometimes vaguely connected with what is going on with Christ, or something He said prior to His being raised on the Cross.
Still restless, the audience is once again entertained by the musicians, and they remain once the Crucifixion has been consummated and Christ is dead on the Cross ... awaiting our applause — which we extend them despite a sense of terrible incongruity with all that has happened in the background and from which we had been constantly pulled away ... lest we see or understand the consequences of our sins ... and the magnitude of Christ's love for us.
An impolite assessment, to be sure. But a very accurate assessment ... nevertheless.

There are, of course, many other things that the Mass is not. These are merely the more salient among them, for they are, very likely, what we encounter most often before, during, and after Mass, in the trivializing of the most momentous act in history that unfolds before us.

It is true that we cannot fully comprehend what the the Mass is ...

We can, however, clearly grasp what it is not ... even if we would have it otherwise.

What we have learned today: The Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is the occasion of the utmost reverence. It is Holy Ground, and we stand, really and truly, before Christ crucified. Christ has died on the Cross ... and we have died with Him. And because we have died with Him, we will also rise with Him ... not in applause ... but in the Resurrection.

END OF SERIES

Return to Part VII: A Matter of Proximity

The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass: Part VII A Matter of Proximity

2010-10-22T10:34:00.000-07:00

A PRIMER for CLUELESS CATHOLICS

Part VII

A Matter of Proximity

Not very long ago, hundreds of people flocked to see what appeared to be an image of the Blessed Virgin Mary ... in the condensation that had occurred upon a window at a local hospital in Boston. Some came from great distances. Many came as long as the image appeared, and, being interviewed on local television news, expressed no doubt about the authentic and "miraculous" nature of such a thing as they continue to marvel at the image, pondering its significance. In yet another instance, a tree growing somewhere in the Southern United States had resembled the profile of Our Blessed Lord, and thousands came to gaze upon the tree.

In a similar way, people, many thousands, have gone, and continue to go, to Medjugorje, to a place where, they believe, Mary has appeared for the past 30 years (about 10,000 -12,000 times) ... to a group of (then) young people in 1981, conversed with them, and, they claim, still does to this day. They have gone in the hopes of seeing their Rosaries turn to gold, or to witness some other inexplicable phenomena that will, for them, validate their faith, or enable them to return home with some account of the miraculous that they themselves had witnessed, and in so doing entering into an inner circle of the privileged and the elect to whom such extraordinary graces are given, graces that are not dispensed to the many.

This is not to say that some good has not come from condensation on glass, or the shape of a tree, or a Rosary appearing to turn to gold for a moment or two. To my understanding, no one has brought back a Rosary that has remained gold; the condensation has evaporated, and the tree has acquired new branches and leaves and now resembles something quite different and more akin to ... well ... a tree.

We flock to the miraculous and the extraordinary, not because we believe in miracles, but I think because we do not and wish to (although as Catholics, we must). We want the evidence. Like King Herod, before whom Christ was brought on the night of His Passion, we demand a miracle, hard copy, proof – which, of course, would make faith unnecessary. We needn't have faith in something proven to us, in things evident. We do not understand ourselves as having faith in gravity. We do not need it. An ill-placed step on a stairway suffices to remind us. The Apostle Thomas wanted proof and got it. But at the price of a lesser blessing (St. John 20.24-29).

What has this to do with the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass?

Consider this – not ex hypothesi, but as as an actual event: You are sitting at home when a neighbor bursts into the door and breathlessly exclaims that Jesus Christ has just appeared down the street – and He is still there! You look up in amazement, incredulous before your neighbor. In a trice you grab the keys to your car and speed off down the street, heedless of all else, hoping to get to the place where you will find Jesus Christ Himself! You've left the water boiling for your tea, the door open, and the television still on ... in fact, you realize as you are speeding along that you've even forgotten to put on your shoes! Who cares? If this is real, you would have fled your house naked grabbing a towel on the way.

You eventually come to where your friend had told you that Jesus is – and there is nothing and no one.

You are furious! You speed back even more quickly to scold your erstwhile friend for sending you on a wild goose chase. He is still back at your house, standing in the driveway. Barely able to restrain yourself from parking precisely where he is standing, you fling open the door to your car and jump out, full of indignation!

Your friend is astonished. "He was there when I left", he cries. "Are you certain that you went to the right place?"

He hops in your car and back you go. Then, coming to the Church, he tells you to stop! "Come along!", he urges you, impatiently. You get out and follow him through the door of the Church, barely able to keep pace with your friend, and then, at the end of the aisle, before the Tabernacle, he stops.

You look around. The Church is empty.

You look at your friend, utterly bewildered ... but he has fallen to the floor on his face in front of the Most Blessed Sacrament.

And you are left standing ... and still you do not understand.

Herod believed in miracles too ... or wanted to. Even as the Author of all miracles stood before him. (St. Luke 23.8)

What we have learned today: If truly we believe, we would hasten to the Most Blessed Sacrament of the Altar – where Jesus really and truly IS ... hidden under the appearance of mere bread.

Part 8: What the Mass is NOT

Return to Part VI: "I Die with Thee, O Christ!"

The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass: Part VI "I Die with Thee, O, Christ ...!"

2010-10-21T09:39:00.000-07:00

A PRIMER for CLUELESS CATHOLICS

Part VI

"I Die with Thee, O, Christ ...!"

When you assist at Mass (for that is what you are really doing, you are actively "assisting", not passively "attending", as we so often say), you have a very real part and a very real place in the drama that is about to unfold before you, a drama into which you will be called, not as a spectator, but as a participant.

A participant in what?

In the Passion, Crucifixion, and Death of Jesus Christ on Calvary.

Really? Really.

The only difference between your being actually present at the foot of the Cross outside the walls of Jerusalem 2000 years ago, next to Mary, St. John and the Magdalene – and your being present at the Altar before which you kneel at Church during the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is this: the mere closing of your eyes!

It is the difference — the very same difference — that Mary, that St. John, and that the Magdalene experienced when they, too, closed their eyes at the foot of the Cross upon which Jesus hung before them.

Did He cease to be on the Cross when they closed their eyes and could physically see Him no more? Did Jesus disappear? Go away? Cease to be? The skin covering their eyes, your eyes, my eyes, is the thinnest epidermal membrane (0.05 mm thin) in the human body. But it was – it still is – sufficient to conceal Him from us.

In the case of Mary, John, and the Magdalene, it concealed Him when their eyelids closed. In our case, it conceals Him when they are open! His presence was revealed to them when their eyes were opened. It is only revealed to us when our eyes are closed. In both instances it is not the case that He was there – and in the blink of an eye is no more – but that He is there!

At the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, we are present at the death of Christ. We are present at His crucifixion! It is happening before us!

How many times have we said, "Oh, would that I were there! ... there to stand before Him ... to share in His Passion, to stand at His feet ...!"

You are!

But even more than present at this Sacrifice, we participate in it, and we do so in a two-fold manner:

through our sins for which and by which He was crucified –
and we die with Him on this Cross of our own making!

Through our Baptism, we must remember, we were baptized not only into His life, but also into His death!

For this reason, Archbishop Fulton Sheen once so poignantly said that each of us should, at the Elevation (the moment when the Priest lifts up of the Host that is Christ's Body, the Chalice that is Christ's Blood – when He holds up Jesus Christ Himself, in the most perfect offering to the Father –, saying, "Through Him, With Him, in Him, in the unity of the Holy Spirit all glory and honor is Yours, Almighty Father, forever and ever" – that at that moment we should, from our hearts, from the depths of our being, utter in all truth: "I die with Thee, O Christ, on Calvary!"

What we have learned today: We are active participants in the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, actually standing at the foot of the Cross.

The Holy Sacrifice of The Mass: Part V A Matter of Uncommon Courtesy

2010-10-20T10:53:00.000-07:00

A PRIMER for CLUELESS CATHOLICS

Part V

A Matter of Uncommon Courtesy

We had left off asking the question, "How, then, will you enter?"

You have just passed beyond the door – and immediately you come face to face with your neighbor whom you have known these many years. You look each other in the eye ..... and then pass as though you did not see him, without saying so much as a word or making any gesture of acknowledgement whatever! Your neighbor, expecting at least the minimal courtesy, would very likely take grave offense and wonder what he had done to deserve such shabby treatment. Yes?

Have you ever done this?

Of course not.

If you do, however, it is extremely likely that your next encounter with your neighbor will be less than cordial.

What, moreover, if you had passed him by in your haste to greet, not your very next door neighbor, but some acquaintance with whom you really have little to do, not breaking stride to at least say hello to your neighbor?

What if you were that neighbor? Would you take offense? How would you account yourself, in the way of importance, in that person's life? You would say that he behaved as though he did not so much as know you!

What would possibly prompt this discourtesy? Something, surely, is amiss. You have either offended him, wittingly or not – or what is more remarkable still, he had completely forgotten you.

Only one other explanation is possible, even plausible: ... despite all appearances, he did not see you! Had he, he would never have behaved so badly, treated you so poorly.

Let us take it a step further. What if the person you just ignored was the very person who had invited you to his house, and it was his house that you had just entered. He even opened the door for you, but you breezed by him to greet the other guests within ... completely heedless of your host.

What could possibly account for such odd behavior? It is either inexcusable effrontery ... or a total unawareness of who – or where – the person is who had invited you — or somehow, having arrived, you are unable to find him.

I am open to other possible reasons, but can think of none off hand.

The courtesy you extend your neighbor – and remote acquaintances ... surely you would extend no less to God Himself?

And yet you walk into the Church, pass before the Tabernacle (where Jesus Christ is, really and truly, remember?) and the Altar, chat with this one and that one on your way down the aisle, wave left and right, stop to accord someone a special greeting – careful to offend no one you know by failing to acknowledge them – and finally make your way to a pew, pass right in front of Jesus Christ with (and often even without) a perfunctory genuflection (the kneeling on one knee, for reasons of which you are quite unsure – it simply is done ...) you take your seat ... and begin socializing with everyone ... except Jesus Christ.

Sometimes you will kneel in an attitude of prayer, careful that you do not pray too long or appear too pious, utter a few words by rote ... and then get back to business: socializing while you await; not to enter the most significant event of all time which will be enacted before you, but to be entertained ... hoping that the priest today will be not so much a model of sanctity as an engaging entertainer who will have a well provisioned stock of good jokes and cute anecdotes, and above all, who will make you laugh and feel terribly good about yourself for deigning, this day, to bring yourself to God's Presence.

There is a beautiful verse from the Book of Psalms that is lilting with alliteration, and very apropos of this day;

"Deus sedet super sedem sanctam Suam" God sits upon His holy throne. (Psalm 46.9)

The problem, however, is that the throne is right before you – and He Who sits upon it – and you do not know! Or worse yet, if knowing, behave toward Him as you did to the neighbor we spoke of earlier whom you first met at the door.

"If ..." (an unerring test of your Faith)

If Jesus stood before you – visible to your eyes, as you walked up the aisle toward the Altar and your pew – would you behave any differently than you do at this moment when He is hidden from your eyes? Would you chat and gossip with your neighbors? Would you fail to bow before Him as you passed right in front of His eyes? ... and once seated, turn your attention away from Him to more ... important ... people around you, discussing events more important than Him and which have nothing to do with Him?

If you saw with your eyes, you know that this would not be so.

Still ... still you fail to grasp that HE IS THERE in the Most Blessed Sacrament of the Altar – and expects at least some measure of the courtesy you lavish upon lesser beings.

What we have learned today: God is present in the Most Blessed Sacrament ... and should be accorded at least the Courtesy of Recognition. After all, He is the Host, and you are the guest ... and the House is His. Remember?

The Holy Sacrifice of The Mass: Part IV The Road to Golgotha

2010-10-19T16:08:00.000-07:00

A PRIMER for CLUELESS CATHOLICS

Part IV

The Road to Golgotha

We had just said that,

"With us, that new world of unspeakable life and beauty will be revealed ... when we close our eyes. "As the eyes of the body close, the eyes of faith open. And what they will see, discover to us, reveal, will touch the fiber of our being ... and more than touch it, transform it!"

How so?

Once you begin to understand where you are – really and truly – a change, a profound change, will begin to occur within you. You will be unable to prevent it. Initially – even necessarily – it will come to you through your understanding, and as you enter more deeply into the realization of where you are, your understanding itself will begin to be eclipsed by something deeper still, by something more vital.

Understanding will "tell" you where you are – but faith will take you beyond the appearances, to the the realities beneath them. The change that will come will occur within you – not in the appearances of things about you.

You will have changed.

But as we had also said, before any of this occurs, you must first understand what is happening before you – and it is this, and nothing less than this:

Jesus Christ is being crucified before you. He is on the Cross! And you are witnessing it. You are even taking part in it!

It is not another Sacrifice, but the same Sacrifice that He enacted 2000 years ago. It is not a "re-enactment" much as great battles are re-enacted for theatrical effect. It is an "enactment", the "same" enactment, re-presented to us (not represented to us, but "re-presented") to us ... enacted again while not being a second or another sacrifice. It is the same Sacrifice, with one exception: it is unbloody ... just as it was unbloody when He gathered His Apostles around Him at the very first Mass on the night He was betrayed and before He was crucified:

"The day before He suffered he took bread in His sacred hands and looking up to heaven, to you, His almighty Father, He gave you thanks and praise. He broke the bread, gave it to His disciples and said: Take this, all of you and eat it: this is My body which will be given up for you. When supper was ended, He took the cup. Again He gave you thanks and praise, gave the cup to his disciples, and said: Take this, all of you, and drink from it: this is the cup of My blood, the blood of the new and everlasting covenant."

(Eucharistic Prayer I)

But now you witness it before you, take part in it ... see the unspeakable value of your life (in His love for you Christ suffered and died) ... and the consequences of your choices (the sins by which and for which He suffered, was crucified, and died) ... right before you!

Time, we told you, had been left in the vestibule as we entered the Church. It no longer divides us from that day.

We have entered into something sacred, and everything sacred is invested with the eternal, for it pertains to God Who IS eternal; Whose Son is eternal; the Son of God, now here before us on that Cross of agony hewn from our sins.

How then will you enter?

Everything that leads up to the Canon of the Mass (that most sacred part of the Mass in which the Consecration occurs, when the bread becomes Jesus' Body, the wine His Blood) is a prologue to that epic moment when He will be sacrificed before you.

When you passed the doors leading into the Church and toward the Sanctuary, you began to wend your way through the road that leads to Golgotha, the Place of the Skull, the Mount of Crucifixion — the Altar of Sacrifice.

Not unlike 2000 years ago, the people that line the way, the voices, the talking, the laughing, together with all the other things that compete for your attention as you walk that road to your pew – one and all, they will call you aside, distract you as though to call you away from a false prophet on a road well worn and ultimately tiresome ...

Something has changed, however. This day is unlike other days. You have begun to understand ...

How, then, will you enter?

What we have learned today: The Mass is the enactment, really and truly present before you, of Jesus' Sacrifice on Calvary, and you have a very real part in it.

The Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass: Part III "I Don't Think We're in Kansas Anymore, Toto"

2010-10-18T10:27:00.000-07:00

A PRIMER for CLUELESS CATHOLICS

Part III

"I Don't Think We're in Kansas Anymore, Toto"

So, we have discovered that HE IS THERE.

From the beginning of time men and women have sought God. Today we seek Him still ... and we have found Him.

You have entered the Church and are about to pass beyond, as it were, the gates that lead to the vestibule of Heaven ... which is timeless.

Beyond those doors you will encounter, as much as is possible in this life, something very like Heaven where the past, the future, and the eternal are present. History, understood as something past – as events that once occurred but have receded into a frame of time no longer available to us – is, or soon will be, gathered up into the present and be enacted once again before you. It is not that the present time has left us, as that the present has penetrated the past, and the past the present, so that we can no longer speak of some things that once occurred (although they did occur at some definite point in history, in time), but only of things occurring now, here, presently, immediately before us. The past, in a very real sense, becomes present to us – not as a memory, but as a present reality.

Do you remember the sequence in the "Wizard of Oz" in which Dorothy's house is swept up in a tornado, spun relentlessly in the furious skies, and dropped suddenly, not in Kansas from which it was uprooted, but in the Land of Oz? Dorothy approaches the door warily. Up to that point in the movie, all is in black and white – and then ... as Dorothy opens the door, beyond which lies the new world, a effulgence of magnificent color is revealed to her, pours in upon her. It is a world of recognizable things, by and large, but they are suddenly invested with unspeakable life and color and beauty. Hidden from her eyes, however, at least at first, are the people who dwell there, the yet unseen.

This is a metaphor for your standing before the doors that lead into Church, into the place where the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass will be enacted, celebrated.

You leave the whirlwind of the world behind you, and all the gray and lifeless things that accompany you every day of the week except this day. Beyond the door is a new world, a world of things unseen by the eyes – but a strange inversion occurs. With eyes wide in astonishment, Dorothy opened the door and entered a new world.

With us, that new world of unspeakable life and beauty will be revealed to us ... when we close our eyes.

As the eyes of the body close, the eyes of faith open.

And what they will see, discover to us, reveal, will touch the fiber of our being ... and more than touch it, transform it!

What we have learned today: The Mass is Timeless

Footnote to this weeks series of posts on the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

2010-10-17T20:42:00.000-07:00

I thought that I would add a little side post to this weeks post series with resources to check the accuracy of the author's interpretation and understanding of the Mass. The following are citations from Vatican II: Sacrosanctum Concilium, The Catechism of the Catholic Church, and Canon Law. I hope you find this useful.

Yours in Christ,
Dominique

#2: For it is the liturgy through which, especially in the divine sacrifice of the Eucharist, "the work of our redemption is accomplished," and it is through the liturgy, especially, that the faithful are enabled to express in their lives and manifest to others the mystery of Christ and the real nature of the true Church.
#7. To accomplish so great a work Christ is always present in his Church, especially in her liturgical celebrations. He is present in the sacrifice of the Mass not only in the person of his minister, "the same now offering, through the ministry of priests, who formerly offered himself on the cross, " but especially in the eucharistic species. by his power he is present in the sacraments so that when anybody baptizes it is really Christ himself who baptizes. He is present in his word since it is he himself who speaks when the holy scriptures are read in the Church. Lastly, he is present when the Church prays and sings, for he has promised "where two or three are gathered together in my name there am I in the midst of them" (Mt. 18:20).
Christ, indeed, always associates the Church with himself in this great work in which God is perfectly glorified and men are sanctified. the Church is his beloved Bride who calls to her Lord, and through him offers worship to the eternal Father.
The liturgy, then, is rightly seen as an exercise of the priestly office of Jesus Christ. It involves the presentation of man's sanctification under the guise of signs perceptible by the senses and its accomplishment in ways appropriate to each of these signs. In it full public worship is performed by the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ, that is, by the Head and his members.
From this it follows that every liturgical celebration, because it is an action of Christ the Priest and of his Body, which is the Church, is a sacred action surpassing all others. No other action of the Church can equal its efficacy by the same title and to the same degree.
#8. In the earthly liturgy we take part in a foretaste of that heavenly liturgy which is celebrated in the Holy City of Jerusalem toward which we journey as pilgrims, where Christ is sitting at the right hand of God, Minister of the holies and of the true tabernacle. With all the warriors of the heavenly army we sing a hymn of glory to the Lord; venerating the memory of the saints, we hope for some part and fellowship with them; we eagerly await the Saviour, Our Lord Jesus Christ, until he our life shall appear and we too will appear with him in glory.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church further explains:

#1330 "The memorial of the Lord's Passion and Resurrection. The Holy Sacrifice, because it makes present the one sacrifice of Christ the Savior and includes the Church's offering. The terms holy sacrifice of the Mass, 'sacrifice of praise,' spiritual sacrifice, pure and holy sacrifice are also used, since it completes and surpasses all the sacrifices of the Old Covenant."
#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."
#1367 "The sacrifice of Christ and the sacrifice of the Eucharist are one single sacrifice: 'The victim is one and the same: the same now offers through the ministry of priests, who then offered himself on the cross; only the manner of offering is different.' 'In this divine sacrifice which is celebrated in the Mass, the same Christ who offered himself once in a bloody manner on the altar of the cross is contained and is offered in an unbloody manner.'"
#1368 "The Eucharist is also the sacrifice of the Church. The Church which is the Body of Christ participates in the offering of her Head. With him, she herself is offered whole and entire. She unites herself to his intercession with the Father for all men. In the Eucharist the sacrifice of Christ becomes also the sacrifice of the members of his Body. The lives of the faithful, their praise, sufferings, prayer, and work, are united with those of Christ and with his total offering, and so acquire a new value. Christ's sacrifice present on the altar makes it possible for all generations of Christians to be united with his offering."

Canon Law reconfirms the truth:

Canon 897: "The most venerable sacrament is the blessed Eucharist, in which Christ the Lord himself is contained, offered and received, and by which the Church continually lives and grows. The eucharistic Sacrifice, the memorial of the death and resurrection of the Lord, in which the Sacrifice of the cross is forever perpetuated, is the summit and the source of all worship and Christian life. By means of it the unity of God's people is signified and brought about, and the building up of the body of Christ is perfected. The other sacraments and all the apostolic works of Christ are bound up with, and directed to, the blessed Eucharist."

Clearly then, the Mass is not a "meal." - it is a Sacrifice. This is dogma.

The Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass: Part II A Sacred Darkness

2010-10-17T08:11:00.000-07:00

A PRIMER for CLUELESS CATHOLICS

Part II

A Sacred Darkness

So far, we have learned this: that the MASS IS PRIMARILY A SACRIFICE.

Unless we begin to grasp this, we can go no further. We are, as it were, standing at the door looking in, aware that we are in the vestibule of something deeply sacred. Beyond the doors we will encounter something that we have never experienced in our lives: the Sacrifice – not of bread and wine; not even a merely "commemorative", still less a "symbolic", Sacrifice. No. We will witness the Sacrifice of a Human Being.

We will witness death.

As in most things of great importance, our eyes will betray us. You know well of what I speak. The world of "appearances" that surrounds us so often as a lie. It is among the greatest of paradoxes that we are blinded by our sight, and given sight by our blindness. Things are so seldom what they appear to be: the fluted columns of "marble" within most Churches are really plaster, and the voice that greets you in kindness in the vestibule will calumniate you as soon as you leave. Our eyes tell us that this man is sinful and that woman pious, seeing nothing of the humility in the one and the pride in the other. How much love, and how much malice, is concealed from our eyes. Why, the very sky itself is not blue, but only appears so.

At the door of the Church, you enter, or ought to enter, a sacred darkness. The world lies without. God lies within. Appearances must fall away the moment you anoint yourself with the Holy Water and sign yourself with the Cross. The world has passed. You have entered another dimension in which time itself is anointed with eternity. Your eyes will avail you nothing here. Here they will distract you, vex you, call you to your neighbor and away from God. Your ears will not be deafened by a sacred silence, but will contend with a thousand words that have no place in Church and in the presence of the Living God.

The only one who will not compete for your attention is God. The humility of God is stunning.

To Whom have you come this day? To God. Where is He?

No, He is not upon the Altar. Not yet. Nor is He in the statues, if any remain. He is not even on the Crucifix ... at least not yet.

But He is here. No, no ... not in the mindless aphorism that "God is everywhere." He is truly here. He has deigned to come to a place, a specific place, and to dwell there in utter humility; a place before which you can actually kneel, lift up your face, close your eyes, and look upon Him. ... as He looks upon you. He confines Himself for you, because He knows your littleness.

"But where?", you ask with incredulity. "Where is the Living God, that I may be before Him?" How this can be you will soon understand, but right now it is only important that you realize that He is there – right before you. Not symbolically, not metaphorically – but Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity, He is there! As really and truly as I would be, could I stand before you. You could ... in fact, you will ... even touch Him!

The difference between His being there before you, Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity – and His being absent from you – is the blink of an eye ... an eye that sees not upon opening, but closing. It is the difference that Mary, the Mother of God, experienced as she stood at the foot of the Cross and closed her eyes in her unfathomable grief ...

Was Jesus still on the Cross before her as she closed her eyes?

He is no less present to you when you kneel before Him ... and close your eyes ...

Where?

In the Tabernacle ... in that little gold House of the Living God within which He dwells really and truly ... in the Most Blessed Sacrament of the Altar ... under what only appears to be a humble Host; what, to the eyes, is only bread. Bread? Yes, Bread! "The Bread of Angels that has come down from Heaven" and which to eat is life everlasting (St. John 6:48-52). He is there!

You will find the Tabernacle behind the Altar – or, sadly, often shunted off to the side, but if you look carefully, you will find it, and when you find it you will find Him! Most often it has a little door (for Him Who is "the Gate") upon which two engraved angels face each other in adoration of Him within. But they are made merely of gold. You are made in the very image of God!

Do no less than the angels ... and adore Him Who awaits you there.

What we have learned today: JESUS CHRIST is really and truly present, Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity – as really as you or me in the Tabernacle ... under the appearance of Bread ... HE IS THERE!

Part 3: "I Don't Think We're in Kansas Anymore, Toto": The Mass is Timeless

To Be Your Witness

Why real neglect comes from Helicopter parenting.

Lent is here again!

Mother's love

Morning smoothy!

The day after yesterday

Happy Feast of St.Valentine

Feast of St. Valentine

Customs

Finally back with "Gift from the sea."

The economy of woman's work?

All Souls Day (another good one from www.fisheaters.com)

Customs

Readings

All Saints' Day (All Hallows' Day, or "Hallowmas") (again thanks to www.fisheaters.com)

Reading

Hallowe'en (courtesy of www.fisheaters.com)

PS Some thoughts on fairness and Careerism.

Alice Demo Dancing Under the Gallows H264 No TCB

God is dead and our populations are dying!

Fr. Barron comments on The Depressing Pew Forum Study

A moment in time

The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass: Part VIII What the Mass is NOT

A PRIMER for CLUELESS CATHOLICS

What the Mass is NOT

Doctrine and Dogma vs. Doctrinaire Dissent

The True, the Untrue, and the Absurd

Would that the Moon were Green Cheese

It is a prologue to some things that are, and some things that are not — despite our wishing them to be otherwise. Let us look at some of these things in the way of the Mass and what it is NOT (in order to understand what it really is):

THE MASS IS NOT:

END OF SERIES

The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass: Part VII A Matter of Proximity

Part VII A Matter of Proximity

What has this to do with the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass?

What we have learned today: If truly we believe, we would hasten to the Most Blessed Sacrament of the Altar – where Jesus really and truly IS ... hidden under the appearance of mere bread.

The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass: Part VI "I Die with Thee, O, Christ ...!"

Part VI "I Die with Thee, O, Christ ...!"

What we have learned today: We are active participants in the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, actually standing at the foot of the Cross.

The Holy Sacrifice of The Mass: Part V A Matter of Uncommon Courtesy

A PRIMER for CLUELESS CATHOLICS

Part V A Matter of Uncommon Courtesy

"If ..." (an unerring test of your Faith)

What we have learned today: God is present in the Most Blessed Sacrament ... and should be accorded at least the Courtesy of Recognition. After all, He is the Host, and you are the guest ... and the House is His. Remember?

The Holy Sacrifice of The Mass: Part IV The Road to Golgotha

A PRIMER for CLUELESS CATHOLICS

Part IV The Road to Golgotha

How so?

What we have learned today: The Mass is the enactment, really and truly present before you, of Jesus' Sacrifice on Calvary, and you have a very real part in it.

The Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass: Part III "I Don't Think We're in Kansas Anymore, Toto"

A PRIMER for CLUELESS CATHOLICS

Part III

"I Don't Think We're in Kansas Anymore, Toto"

What we have learned today: The Mass is Timeless

Footnote to this weeks series of posts on the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

The Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass: Part II A Sacred Darkness

A PRIMER for CLUELESS CATHOLICS

Part II A Sacred Darkness

To Whom have you come this day? To God. Where is He?

Where?

What we have learned today: JESUS CHRIST is really and truly present, Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity – as really as you or me in the Tabernacle ... under the appearance of Bread ... HE IS THERE!

Feast of

St. Valentine

It is a prologue to some things that are, and some things that are not — despite our wishing them to be otherwise.

Let us look at some of these things in the way of the Mass and what it is NOT (in order to understand what it really is):

Part VII

A Matter of Proximity

Part VI

"I Die with Thee, O, Christ ...!"

What we have learned today: **We are active participants in the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, actually standing at the foot of the Cross.**

Part V

A Matter of Uncommon Courtesy

Part IV

The Road to Golgotha

Part II

A Sacred Darkness