“Do you know,” Blessed Fulton Sheen once said, “that I think perhaps we spend too much time—there must be some—praying for the departed souls and not enough time praying to them? Take the example of parents, husbands that are dead, wives, children. They are our intercessors. And perhaps we limit their influence in heaven simply because we do not sufficiently invoke them.”

When he said this, Sheen was preaching a retreat in Ireland on the subject of St. Thérèse (later published in book form as St. Thérèse: A Treasured Love Story), and he was talking about the power of intercessory prayer.

At first glance, his words might startle those of us who have learned to pray fervently for the dead and to be very careful, for their sake, not to assume our loved ones went straight to heaven. How could it be possible to spend, in Sheen’s words, “too much time” praying for the dead?

But the answer is in the words Sheen said after that: “not enough time praying to them.” If we are solely praying for them and not praying to them, the time we spend is lopsided. Bishop Sheen was helping us by pointing out a part of the Catechism that is often overlooked: the part that talks about the intercessory power of the souls in purgatory.

“Our prayer for [the dead],” the Catechism (par. 958) says, “is capable not only of helping them, but also of making their intercession for us effective.”

This sentence makes it clear that there are two sides to this intercessory coin:

1. Our prayers help the dead.
2. Their prayers help us.

It’s the second point that Blessed Fulton Sheen is emphasizing here. The souls in purgatory need our prayers—and they also want to give us theirs. When we pray for them, our prayers are like a key that unlocks their ability to pray for us. In purgatory, souls are not able to pray for themselves, but they can pray for others, and they long to help us just as we long to help them.

“The Souls in Purgatory Protected Her”

In her autobiography Story of a Soul, St. Thérèse shares a passage from a letter her mother, St. Zelie, wrote to Thérèse’s sister Pauline in 1874, when Thérèse was one and a half years old. In this letter, Zelie tells Pauline how she used to put little Thérèse in her own big bed and push the cradle alongside it to protect the child from falling out.

One morning, however, Zelie forgot the cradle. When she came back in the room later that morning, Thérèse was nowhere in the big bed. Then Zelie heard a whimper coming from a chair at the head of the bed, where little Thérèse was sitting up, still asleep, with her head resting on a cushion. She was uncomfortable in that position but unharmed.

“I can’t understand how she fell onto the chair in a sitting position since she was in the bed,” Zelie writes. “I thanked God, feeling it was providential as she could have tumbled onto the floor. Her good Angel watched over her and the souls in purgatory protected her. I pray every day to them for her. This is my explanation for it; explain it the way you like.”

St. Zelie prayed to the souls in purgatory for her little daughter Thérèse every day. There can be no doubt that the prayers of the souls in purgatory helped lay the spiritual foundation for Thérèse to become one of heaven’s most powerful intercessors.

The holy souls are an army of prayer warriors, waiting to intercede for our intentions as soon as we unlock that door with our prayers for them. Remembering Bishop Sheen’s words, we can confidently turn to our departed loved ones for intercession more often, so that we do not “limit their influence in heaven.”

One way to help us do this is to make a habit of following every prayer for a departed soul with a prayer asking their intercession for us. When we visit the cemetery and pray there for the dead, we can immediately also ask them to pray for us. We can turn to them with all the intentions, big or small, that we carry in our hearts.

A Special Gift for the Souls in Purgatory

In His infinite goodness, God gives us a special gift each November to give to the departed souls—or rather, eight gifts: eight days of extra ways to gain plenary indulgences for the holy souls.

From November 1st through 8th, Catholics can obtain a plenary indulgence for the souls in purgatory by visiting a cemetery and praying there for the dead, even if only mentally.

Also, on November 2nd, Catholics can obtain a plenary indulgence for the souls in purgatory by visiting a church or oratory and reciting an Our Father and Creed.

In addition to performing the acts above, the faithful seeking to gain a plenary indulgence must be in a state of grace and fulfill the usual conditions for obtaining a plenary indulgence, which are:

• Make a sacramental Confession (a single confession, within about 20 days before or after, will suffice for all the indulgences a person obtains within that time period).
• Receive Holy Communion (once for each indulgence obtained; preferably on the day of the indulgence, but can be within about 20 days before or after).
• Pray for the intentions of the Holy Father (also within about 20 days; the choice of prayer is left to the faithful, but an Our Father and a Hail Mary are suggested).
• Be free from attachment to all sin, including venial.

One plenary indulgence can be obtained each day. The indulgence is partial if the conditions are partially fulfilled. These November 1-8 indulgences can be applied only to the souls in purgatory. (For the rest of the year, here are four daily ways to obtain a plenary indulgence either for oneself or for the souls in purgatory.)

A note about the last condition: Sometimes people wonder whether it is possible for them to be completely detached from venial sin. The answer to this can be found in Mark 10, when Jesus tells His disciples how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God, and they wonder who then can be saved.

“For human beings it is impossible, but not for God,” Jesus tells them. “All things are possible for God.”

Even if it would be impossible for us to be completely detached from sin, it is not impossible for God. As Matthew 7 reminds us, “Ask, and it will be given you;” for our Father in heaven gives “good things to those who ask him.” Let’s ask Him, then, for the grace to be detached from all sin. You might add this little prayer to the prayers for the indulgence: Dear Holy Spirit, if I am not detached from all sin, please make me detached now, so that I may gain this plenary indulgence that my Mother, the Church, offers to me, Her child.

God is on our side. He wants us to be able to obtain this indulgence as an act of charity for the souls in purgatory, and He will help us fulfill the conditions if we only ask. 

And just as God wants us to be able to give this gift of our prayers to the holy souls, He also wants us to be able to receive the gift of prayers from them in return. These dear friends are ready and waiting to pray for us the moment we start praying for them.

May the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace—and may they pray for us and for every intention we hold in the depths of our hearts. Thanks be to God for the communion of saints!

Images from Wikimedia Commons

“Our whole life is nothing but a race towards death, in which no one is allowed to stand still for a little space, or to go somewhat more slowly, but all are driven forwards with an impartial movement, and with equal rapidity.” —St. Augustine, City of God, 13.10

Across social media this time of year, you’ll likely see an unusual Catholic chapel: an ossuary, or “bone churches” in modern parlance. These strange but sacred places often feature skulls lining altars, chandeliers made from femurs, and designs from finger bones. Your average influencer or tour guide will present this as a Catholic Halloween decoration, but it is much more than that. Ossuaries are a place where pilgrims come face to face with the Church’s teachings on memento mori—the ancient practice of remembering and contemplating death.

Roughly translated, memento mori means to “remember [your] death,” and it entails contemplating the inevitability and universality of death in order to enrich life. Thus, memento mori is not a macabre exercise in allowing the reality of death to defeat us, but a contemplation of this undeniable reality so that we may live a good life. As St. Robert Bellarmine said, “A good death depends upon a good life.”

Death may be an inescapable reality, but as Catholics, we know that it does not have the final word. “The last enemy to be destroyed is death,” declares St. Paul (1 Cor. 15:26), which, by His death, Christ has defeated. Because of this victory, our ancestors understood that contemplating the grave wasn’t an exercise in despair, but a preparation for eternal life.

Let’s see how this concept ties into the first ossuary I visited, and perhaps the most famous: the crypt beneath Santa Maria della Concezione dei Cappuccini in Rome, known as the Capuchin Crypt. The church that houses the ossuary had been a dream of the Capuchin Cardinal Antonio Marcello Barberini, a member of a princely family and the brother of Pope Urban VIII. He found land on Via Veneto near his family’s palace and assigned Fra Michele da Bergamo, a Capuchin friar, as the architect for his church, which was to be dedicated to Mary’s Immaculate Conception. Construction wrapped up in 1631, but the friars had one final task: moving their dead to their new church.

While it may seem strange to us today to exhume bodies and move them across town, we need to understand the reality our Christian ancestors faced. A common problem with burial grounds throughout Christendom was that there was only so much room for the dead. Everyone must die, and they must be given a Christian burial, but what do you do when you run out of space? The Capuchins of Rome, along with other churches, came up with the idea of decorating their crypt chapels with the bones of their deceased friars.

Some of the bones in the Capuchin Crypt are kept whole, with skeletal friars in their brown habits looking back at you. Skulls adorn the altars, and even the lamps and passageways are decorated with a variety of human bones. It is a shocking place, one that frightened authors such as Mark Twain and Nathaniel Hawthorne. It also left a permanent mark on my own psyche, but as a Catholic, it was also a spiritual experience I’ll never forget.

I was a student in Rome in 2007, having only received confirmation a few years before. When I visited the Capuchin Crypt, I didn’t even know the words memento mori. As a longtime fan of horror movies and ghost stories, I wanted to visit a strange and spooky place after class one day, and so I made my way to Via Veneto and the Crypt. Instead of that experience, my mind awoke to the wonderful teachings of memento mori.

At the time, you entered the Capuchin Crypt through the church, and I saw two things that changed my perspective: first, a painting of Mary and the saints rescuing souls from purgatory. Second, in a chapel built from skulls stand three skeletons clothed in the brown robes of the Capuchin order. Each skeleton holds an item to represent death and, as if the bones could talk, a sign proclaims in five languages, “What you are now, we once were; what we are now, you shall be.”

As a new Catholic and student, that sign was a gut-punch of memento mori. In that moment, below the streets of Rome, I had a flash of realization. I suddenly understood a core Catholic teaching: that the dead friars and I were separated by time, language, and culture, but we were united in our faith. I knew that I was going to pray for the deceased friars, but more importantly, they were also praying for me. In that moment, I met my brothers in Christ and understood that the work of our faith continues, even in death.

As I left the Capuchin Crypt, I was thankful for what God taught me through my accidental pilgrimage. It planted a seed for my continued work to understand our Catholic ancestors and also inspired my continued work to pray for the dead. Finally, it also made me understand just how big of a promise it was that one day, maybe long after I’m gone, Christ would return and breathe life into these dry bones, raising the dead from their tombs.

I’ve visited many more ossuaries and crypts, trying to find that spiritual experience I first had in Rome. Each one has a unique story and stands as a reminder of death, judgment, and the promise of Resurrection. While I know not everyone will experience these odd and sacred sites the way I do, I hope you get to see an ossuary and that it will inspire you the same way it inspired me.

“Now, to live well,” St. Robert Bellarmine wrote, “it is necessary, in the first place, that we die to the world before we die in the body.” Rather than just shocking sites, places like the Capuchin Crypt allow us to reflect on St. Robert’s wisdom. Ossuaries give us a chance to viscerally see how death may be inescapable, but they also proclaim the promise of everlasting life in Christ, whose death allows us to proclaim, “O death, where is thy sting?” (1 Cor. 15:55)

Author’s Note: This article includes information found in my book, Weird Catholic Handbook. In it you’ll find more information about ossuaries, as well as other topics like saints who fought monsters, old Catholic ghost stories, spiritual warfare, and confounding miracles. I also highly recommend St. Robert Bellarmine’s The Art of Dying Well if you’d like a primer on memento mori.

Photo by Ahmet Yüksek ✪ on Unsplash

It has been said that the saints are God’s most beautiful works of art in human flesh and blood. Our readings for the Solemnity of All Saints tell us why that is true.

Gospel (Read Mt. 5:1-12a)

On the day when the Church calls us to remember the long, continuous line of saints who have lived in every age since Christ walked the earth, our Gospel points us to the beatitudes. This makes all the sense in the world, because there is perhaps no clearer picture of what is exquisitely beautiful in human life in all of Scripture than what we find here.

Jesus wanted to teach His disciples that true happiness (or blessedness) in this world is found in the deep paradoxes of the Christian life. Those who seem least likely to be happy (the poor in spirit, those who mourn, etc.) are, in fact, already living in the beatitude for which we were all designed and for which we all long. Imagine how this teaching sounded in the ears of the ones who first heard it. 

The description of the path to blessedness takes a journey from poverty of spirit into shocking persecution before it arrives at divine beatitude. Had the world ever known such a recipe for the good life? 

Jesus makes it clear here that the life to which He calls us makes almost no sense to the worldly minded—His is truly a kingdom not of this world. Of course, He was Himself the first one to show us that He knew what He was talking about. Have there been others?

Yes! The Church reminds us today that our history is full of people who said, “Amen!” to the beatitudes, fully opening their lives to the work Christ desired to do in and through them. The saints are the flesh-and-blood examples that the paradoxes of the beatitudes actually do produce happiness in human lives. 

The saints, through history, endured so many struggles, setbacks, persecutions, and humiliations, but, let us ask—were they miserable people? No, the palpable joy of the saints recorded in our history and witnessed by our own eyes in this very age (St. Teresa of Calcutta, St. John Paul II) confirms that Jesus was right to give us this prescription for happiness. Their testimony gives us courage to likewise say, “Amen!” to the beatitudes as we hear them read today.

All you holy men and women, pray for us!

Possible response: Father, thank You for giving us a communion with Your friends, the saints. May we know their help as we seek to live the beatitudes.

First Reading (Read Rev. 7:2-4, 9-14)

In his apocalyptic vision of heaven, St. John gives us a scene that helps us see the future outcome of those who live their human lives according to the beatitudes. It is a scene that describes the work of God in preserving His people through all the ages, both Jew and Gentile, as well as their active participation in their own destiny. These are all the saints who, having embarked on that journey from poverty of spirit, traveling through the inevitable persecution that accompanies those who live otherworldly lives, arrive finally in white robes before the throne of God. They, along with the angels, bask in Divine Beatitude and can do nothing else but sing, “Blessing and glory, wisdom and thanksgiving, honor, power, and might be to our God forever and ever. Amen!”

In other words, the saints tell us that no matter what it costs us to follow the life of the beatitudes, it is worth it. 

All you holy men and women, pray for us!

Possible response: Father, help me keep this vision of heavenly glory always before me as I follow the path that leads to You, through this world and into the next.

Psalm (Read Ps. 24:1bc-4ab, 5-6)

From the beginning, God designed man to seek His face, knowing that this is the end for which we were made, giving us true happiness. The psalmist reminds us that those who long for communion with God must be like Him (“Who can ascend the mountain of the Lord? Or who may stand in His holy place? One whose hands are sinless, whose heart is clean, who desires not what is vain”). This is the kind of life Jesus taught us in the beatitudes. Through all our centuries of human history, the saints have been examples of how we can become “the race that seeks Him, that seeks the face of the God of Jacob.” The path to the Divine is carved in flesh and blood.

All you holy men and women, pray for us!

Possible response: The psalm is, itself, a response to our other readings. Read it again prayerfully to make it your own.

Second Reading (Read 1 Jn. 3:1-3)

In his epistle, St. John tells us that the work of art God does in flesh and blood has one source: His immeasurable love for us. He also confirms for us the obvious truth of the beatitudes: when we live them, we will be misfits in this world, just as Jesus was. Nevertheless, if we persevere, we will discover what we only barely perceive now: “When it is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.” The saints have always been people who, first and foremost, were taken up, captured and enraptured by God’s love. We can see that they were those described by St. John here: “Everyone who has this hope based on Him makes himself pure, as He is pure.”

All you holy men and women, pray for us!

Possible response: Lord Jesus, Your promise that when we are faithful to Your calling, we will one day be like You is more than we would ever think to ask for. Thank you for the saints, whose lives help us believe it.

Image of All Saints by Willem Vrelant from the Getty Museum Collection

At the first college retreat I led, I made a strict no phone policy. It was helped by the fact that the retreat center we were using had no cell service. When I first announced it to the group, there was a mix of shock and fear. They had never been disconnected before. Their entire lives have been lived under the blue glow of some kind of screen. Their childhoods were marked by the advent of the smartphone which came on the market when they were 6 or 7 years old.

I stuck to my rule for their own sake. To add to it, the priest I was working with and I made 4 hours of the retreat silent. We knew that the Lord would work in the silence we were forcing them into. I’ve learned that young people, including my own daughter, will not willingly go into silence, so I have to corral them into it.

What happened to the students was a deeper encounter with Christ and the beginning of healing. Some of them have started fasting from technology in order to hear the Lord more clearly and to give themselves a break from the noise and chaos of the digital world. Others returned to their former ways. This is how ministry goes.

I’ve noticed the struggle to let the phones go is particularly virulent amongst women. Social media plays into the relational needs of women in a way it does not for men. The addiction roots more deeply for women. I was recently asked to co-lead a retreat last minute with a different college. At the beginning of the retreat, I announced that there was no cell service and that they should embrace this time of silence to draw closer to Christ.

The students struggled with the silence the entire time. The young women loudly proclaimed that they couldn’t handle not being able to “doomscroll” and that they would “make up for it when they got back to their dorm rooms.” When they couldn’t be on their phones, they talked about the content they had seen on their phones. This is the response of a full-blown addict. We are wrecking entire generations of people, especially women.

Young people are terrified of silence. They have been taught from a very young age that they should constantly be entertained and that noise—whether visual or audible—should always be attended to. This is not all together surprising given that we live in a cacophony of noise day-in-and-day-out.

I’ve been meditating on this noise because my own town turned my neighborhood into a motor speedway while it repairs a bridge just outside of my neighborhood. The noise is intolerable when at its zenith during commuting hours. Coupled with trains, planes, and trauma helicopters, there are seldom moments of silence. We tried to purchase a house in the country to get away from it, but it didn’t work out.

As a culture we are incapable of silence because the opportunities for it are extremely rare. This is a bigger problem for those of us who live on the East Coast, West Coast, or urban centers. Growing up in Montana, there were plenty of occasions for silence, and there still are today, but I no longer live there. Plus, the smartphone in our pocket guarantees that we never experience silence.

The lack of silence is one of the primary drivers for the increasing anxiety rates among younger generations. Constant stimuli make us anxious. The need to scroll or listen to music 24/7 harms us. It keeps us from being able to hear God’s still small voice in the depths of our soul. This raises the question: Are Catholics adding to the anxiety and addiction by our over-emphasis on digital content? I think the answer is yes.

First, good content is unhelpful or even harmful when it plays into addiction. Doomscrolling Catholic content is just as noisy and anxiety inducing over time. It keeps young people trapped in cycles of dependence and distraction. Praying with an App is good for a beginner, but it doesn’t help someone progress spiritually up the holy mountain where the only way forward is through silence. Prayer is not consumption of content.

Second, I’ve started to realize that we are not practicing our own teachings in the digital age. We are not living solidarity and subsidiarity. We have convinced ourselves that the digital world is where the “real work” of evangelization must take place. False. Young people don’t need our digital content; they need our physical presence. The young adults I’ve been able to minister to have only come about because I have built deeper relationships with them in person. In fact, I’ve had to temper their Catholic digital dependency because social media has led some of them into very polarizing places within the Catholic online world which fuel anger, division, and sin.

Solidarity means to live in communion with those directly around us first. It is to share in the joys and sorrows of the people the Lord puts in our path. Other forms of solidarity such as supporting people impacted by devastation, war, violence, and poverty are also important, but our ability to be fully united to them doesn’t typically move beyond prayer and providing donations.

To live solidarity more deeply we must physically and spiritually walk with the people around us on the path to heaven. It is not something that can be fully lived in the digital world. The digital version is a shell of the real thing, and it costs very little. True solidarity requires sweat, blood, and tears. It means sacrificing time and energy. It cannot be done from the comfort of our sofa.

One aspect of the principle of subsidiarity—another dimension of Catholic social teaching—is the call to work at the lowest level of society in order to make the greatest impact. It is at the lowest level that we are able to properly discern the needs of particular communities rather than use top-down approaches that are unhelpful or harmful for particular peoples.

The saints, especially reformer saints, understood this principle. They worked from the bottom up by renewing their own local communities before moving outward. St. John Vianney and St. Francis of Assisi are two examples who understood that they were called to reach those in their direct physical vicinity first. Given the state of the culture, it is glaringly obvious that we have abandoned our local communities for the unreality of the digital “community.”

Our communities are crumbling, young people are lost and struggling, and the world is becoming more divided. If we were working at the lowest level—within our families, parishes, workplaces, clubs, local government, and schools, etc.—then things would begin to change over time. We are not called to evangelize the whole world with our popular digital content. There may be some with that calling, but it is not the majority. You want to help young people? Go serve in college campus ministry or with a young adult group and teach them how to shut their phones off so they can hear God.

We aren’t living our own teachings. We are allowing the temptations of both the ego and the enemy to lead us to think that everyone is called to be Word on Fire. I’m watching in real-time as young people get swallowed up by both social media and AI addictions, then cannot understand why they are anxious and unhappy. When I do get them to stop scrolling and staring into the false light of the smartphone, they begin to feel better over time, even if they have to go through the withdrawals of an addict. I’ve been there.

Evangelization is needed in our local communities. We should be going into hospitals to help the sick and the lost. Walking onto college campuses to help young people encounter Christ and to embrace the silence that allows us to commune with Him. The poor and the homeless need us to show up. We should be visiting the elderly, homebound, and the lonely. Our local parishes need to build communities around genuine fellowship and presence so we can lead others to Christ. There are people around us the Lord wants to help, but we have to look up from our screens to seem them.

We need to be brutally honest with ourselves as a Church, as parents, and as disciples about whether or not we are adding to the addiction or helping. Conversions through digital content are great at the beginning of the spiritual journey, but if young people never break free of their addictions to technology because of the incessant content we are producing, then we become a hindrance to their sanctification.

What are we putting in place as next steps to help people grow in their relationship with the Lord that does not have a digital interface? How are we walking with them in person in order to help them break free from harmful addictions that are not from the Lord? How are we seeking to renew at the lowest level?

Recently, one of my former college students showed up unannounced at my house. He couldn’t call or text beforehand because he was taking advantage of his fall break to take an entire day technology free. We had a wonderful visit during which no screens mediated the discussion. He came back later to get my daughter and me for Adoration because I was battling vertigo that day and my husband was working on a construction project 45 minutes away. It was a deeply human experience.

All of us, along with another former college student, went to spend an hour in silence before the Blessed Sacrament. This young man is more capable of hearing God now than when I first met him precisely because he has encountered Christ in the silence. He knows it’s the only way forward to mature as a disciple. His spiritual progression since I first met him nearly two years ago is remarkable, and I know it is tied to Our Lady’s intercession.

This is what we should be doing as a Church, rather than constantly enabling addiction through more digital content. Regardless of the optimism of Catholic influencers, young people are not doing well. They are trapped, and they need us to help pull them out. We can only help them when we shut off our own devices, so that we can truly seek them out and bring them into the loving silence of Christ.

Photo by Melyna Valle on Unsplash

During his ministry, St. Paul spoke about a war being waged in the world that is not from the world, a war fought against Principalities and Dominions. It is a war crafted by ultra-potent, preternatural intellects, obsessed with one idea: to make man curse himself for all eternity in everlasting suffering. To fulfill this, Satan and his army have a battle plan that they are determined to execute to the end, with a persistence unparalleled in the material universe, forged by wills unable to tire, waver, or doubt. Yet, daunting as the foe is, man—aided by the grace and mercy of God—is more than capable of stopping the infernal plan in its tracks and driving a dagger into the dragon’s heart.  

THE THREE WEAPONS OF SATAN 

Every soul looking for sainthood in Christ has to wage a brutal war on three battlefields:  

The World

The spirit of the world can be easily confused with the earth. However, the earth is part of God’s creation and is, therefore, good. On the other hand, the spirit of the world is everything that is artificial, that which is worldly—be it thoughts, words, or actions—which are always aimed at obtaining praise, compliments, or fame for the self. 

“If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down. For it is written: ‘He will command his angels concerning you, and they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’” (Mt. 4:6) 

The Flesh

The spirit of the flesh is the misapplication of the powers of the body, for the sole purpose of self-amusement. It is the misusage of the means of procreation and nutrition given by God to man for his multiplication and nourishment. In essence, the spirit of the flesh is an agency used by Satan to make the temple of the Holy Spirit—the body—a house of gluttons, bandits, and prostitutes. It is his business to make man feed from false diamonds.

“If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to turn into bread.” (Mt. 4:3)

The Devil

The word “Devil” derives from the Latin diábolos, which in itself derives from the Greek διάβολος, meaning “slanderer.” He is a fallen angel, deformed by his fall, the first protestor against the Divine Will, and author of all evil. 

From the dungeons of his eternal gloom, he casts his shadow upon the world in an attempt to make all things into his image and likeness. His will is to make mankind go against itself by trading an eternal good for a temporary advantage at the expense of the soul. His energy is forever focused on making man worship himself and become a monster.

“All this I will give you, if you bow down and worship me.” (Mt. 4:9) 

THE FOUR TACTICS

Every strategy worth its salt requires powerful tactics to be successful. The devil, being a fallen angelic intellect, is a top strategist and a master tactician who knows the exact formula for the demise of every soul. Only the mercy of God prevents him from total success.  

To achieve maximum results within the scope of his divinely imposed limits, the enemy of mankind uses four tactics to disarm and doom a soul:  

Deception

The devil is incompatible with the truth. In order to operate, he needs his victims to believe that what is false is true. Therefore, his first attack will always be directed towards misdirecting the steps of his victims in order to separate them from God.

Division

Where there is unity, the devil is absent. Just like an atomic explosion requires the division of the atom, so too does the enemy of man require division to triumph over a soul.

The main objective of division is to break a form and rebuild it in deformity. Cracks serve the enemy as platforms for spiritual disease and agents of confusion. Satan is the embodiment and the origin of the antediluvian stratagem “divide and conquer.” 

Diversion

The human soul has an instinct for God. To subdue it, the enemy turns that instinct against itself. To achieve this, he must divert the powers of the spirit away from their natural inclination and feed them with useless entertainment. “Anything but God” is the fire behind the smoke of diversion.

The grand objective of the enemy’s diversionary attacks is to make sure that his victims arrive at the divine tribunal empty-handed, or even better, proud of their sins, so that they will be forever lost.   

Despair

Hope is fuel to the soul. Without it, man cannot obtain either charity or faith. Satan knows that if he deprives an individual of hope, his spiritual faculties will be paralyzed. 

The aim of despair is both physical and spiritual suicide.  

THE FOUR LEVELS OF ATTACK

Fallen angels are shrewd. They aim for nothing less than to inflict maximum damage on their victims and to extract the highest degree of pain. Demonic attack can be of either an ordinary or extraordinary nature. It has four degrees of intensity: 

Temptation

Temptation is the only form of ordinary attack on a soul and the most common. Despite their hideous deformation of will, the devil and his army retain their angelic nature. They know beauty much more intimately than humans. Hence, they can embellish the ugly and make the atrocious look virtuous. 

Making evil look like good is the devil’s most powerful bait to hook souls.

Vexation

The devil knows that big trees are not cut down by a single stroke. Big becomes small when one becomes many. To drive a stake into the heart of a soul, the enemy launches a series of small but constant attacks on his victim’s environment, focusing mainly on his affections, health, and wealth. In disrupting the channels of prosperity, the devil ignites a guerrilla war in a person’s life. 

Obsession

The devil will not be content with ravaging a victim’s material environment. If he finds open doors, he will shatter his victim’s mental landscape by implanting persistent and unnatural thoughts disconnected from objective reality. The goal is isolation, mental imprisonment, and, if possible, insanity.

Possession 

Material reality has a great impact on the human physique. To maximize trauma, the enemy will take control of the body and denigrate it by making it act like an animal, reptile, or insect. In this fashion, he desecrates the image and likeness of God in man.

This is the outline of Satan’s plan for the demise of all mankind. Yet, cunning as his strategy is, it is harmless against the power of God that we inherit in the sacraments. Fr. Gabriel Amorth once said that the Sacrament of Reconciliation is more potent than an exorcism. The situation is even more helpless for the enemy when he attacks those who hold fast to the Blessed Virgin Mary, for she crushes the serpent’s head with her heel (see Gen. 3:15).  

“Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.” (1 Pet. 5:8)

Image from Wikimedia Commons

Rembrandt painted The Return of the Prodigal Son around 1668, in the last years of his life, and it hangs now in the Hermitage. The half of it that gets reproduced shows the father—nearly blind, in Nouwen’s description (Nouwen, 1992, p. 21)—bending over the kneeling son with his hands on the boy’s shoulders. The full canvas includes a second son. He stands off to the right, at a distance from the embrace, and Henri Nouwen, who spent hours in front of the painting and then wrote a book about it, recorded the contrast in detail. The father bends, while “the elder son stands stiffly erect, a posture accentuated by the long staff reaching from his hand to the floor.” The father’s hands are open in blessing, while the son’s “are clasped together and held close to his chest.” There is light on both faces, “but…the light on the face of the elder son is cold and constricted” (68–69).

I sit on the Iowa Court of Appeals, and I have found the figure on the right harder to look away from than I would like.

The Complaint

The elder son gets one speech in Luke: “All these years I have slaved for you and never once disobeyed any orders of yours, yet you never offered me so much as a kid for me to celebrate with my friends” (Lk. 15:29). On its face it is a sound claim. He alleges a course of performance over many years and his own compliance without exception, and he identifies a benefit conferred on the party who breached and withheld from the party who performed. He misstates nothing. What he asks for is proportion between conduct and consequence, the ordinary business of a court.

What makes the parable difficult is that it is not the story of a mistaken litigant. The elder son is not confused about the facts, and he is not demanding more than his conduct would ordinarily earn. In any accounting I have been trained to perform, he prevails.

But unlike Judge Sandy, the father does not answer it: the reproaches “are not met with words of judgment,” there is “no recrimination or accusation,” and the father “does not defend himself or even comment on the elder son’s behavior” (80). The father does not fight against the claim—he declines to adjudicate it, and says: “My son, you are with me always, and all I have is yours.” Nouwen notes that Luke’s word in this verse is teknon, nearer to “child” than to “son” (80).

What replaces the accounting is what Nouwen calls “non-comparing love,” and he is candid that he has “little experience” of it and does “not know the healing power of such a love” (81). As a judge, neither do I. As a father of four children, I know all too well the “non-comparing love” Nouwen speaks of.

The Disposition

Nouwen is not proposing a jurisprudence. Courts are obliged to compare; that obligation is most of what we mean by equal treatment, and a judge who declined to compare would be derelict. But the parable is not about the administration of justice, and the father is no magistrate. Rather, Nouwen’s subject is about the disposition of the person who judges.

He arrived at it about himself, and not on his own. He had spent a long time identifying with the younger son—the exhausted traveler who wanted to be embraced—until a friend, Bart Gavigan, listened to him describe it and said: “I wonder if you are not more like the elder son” (20). Nouwen then took an inventory and did not spare himself.

He was the eldest child. He had decided at six that he would be a priest and never changed his mind. He was born, baptized, confirmed, and ordained in the same church, and had been obedient in turn to his parents, his teachers, his bishops, and his God. “I was the elder son for sure,” he concluded, “but just as lost as his younger brother, even though I had stayed ‘home’ all my life” (21).

The reason this form of lostness is hard to identify, he argues, is that it is “so closely wedded to the desire to be good and virtuous” that it cannot be separated out and inspected (70). Nouwen states the general case in terms that take in a good deal more than himself: “There is so much resentment among the ‘just’ and the ‘righteous.’ … There is so much frozen anger among the people who are so concerned about avoiding ‘sin’” (71).

Resentment, Nouwen writes, is “far more pernicious: something that has attached itself to the underside of my virtue. Isn’t it good to be obedient, dutiful, law-abiding, hardworking, and self-sacrificing? And still it seems that my resentments and complaints are mysteriously tied to such praiseworthy attitudes” (75). He then asks the question the observation raises and declines to answer it: “How to weed out these resentments without uprooting the virtues as well?” (76)

I will not speak for anyone else on the bench. I will say only that the habits which make a person competent in this work—attention to what is owed, resistance to sentiment, memory of a criminal history—are not far from what Nouwen is describing, and that he is right about how difficult the resemblance is to see from the inside. He also thought the difficulty asymmetrical. Both sons in the parable are lost, but “the hardest conversion to go through is the conversion of the one who stayed home” (66, 69).

What the Record Does Not Show

A great deal of what courts do is discretionary, and discretion is exercised in a space where the interior condition of the judge operates without appearing anywhere in the record.

I am in a position to say something about that record, since reading it is what I do. When we review a discretionary ruling, we have the reasons the judge gave, and those reasons are ordinarily sound (and grounded in statute). What the record cannot show, however, is the interior disposition from which they were given. Two judges can reach opposite conclusions on the same facts, each supported by reasoning that will survive review, and nothing on the record will disclose which of them was, that day, standing outside the feast. I review such rulings deferentially, and by design. Deference assumes that the judge closest to the parties perceived something the record cannot carry, which is ordinarily true and is why the rule is a sound one. But it also means that the thing we would most want to know about a discretionary ruling is impossible to see.

There is also the question of what resentment does to the room. Nouwen’s claim is that it converts every relationship into a matter of rank. Once a person is “outside of the light,” the only postures left to him are these: “To be afraid or to show disdain, to suffer submission or to enforce control, to be an oppressor or to be a victim” (82). Nothing remains in which two people simply regard one another. A courtroom is an unusually easy place for that condition to go unnoticed, because a courtroom is already arranged as a hierarchy. The judge sits above the parties. Everyone rises when he enters. Deference runs in one direction. Resentment in that setting does not present as resentment; it presents as procedure. And the parties are better readers of it than we are—they have to be. A litigant can prevail on the merits and still leave understanding that he was tolerated rather than heard.

Two Kinds of Standing

Nouwen’s remedy is not a program, and he concedes he cannot supply it himself: “I am totally unable to root out my resentments. They are so deeply anchored in the soil of my inner self that pulling them out seems like self-destruction” (76). What he offers instead is a distinction. There is the authority of power, and there is what he calls the authority of compassion, and he asks whether he is “doomed to remain so caught up in my own need to find a place in my world that I end up ever and again using the authority of power instead of the authority of compassion” (128).

The first arrives by commission and functions regardless of the person holding it—a judge. The second cannot be conferred by anyone. He thought it was reached by three roads—grief, forgiveness, and generosity—and about the first he said: “There is no compassion without many tears” (128). That is a claim one can test. A judge who is no longer grieved by what comes before him has arrived at the far-right edge of Rembrandt’s canvas: legally correct, widely respected, and outside the feast.

Frustratingly, the parable does not resolve. Luke gives the father’s answer and stops; we are never told whether the elder son went in. Rembrandt does not resolve it either. “Rembrandt does not reveal whether he sees the light,” wrote the art historian whose study of the picture shaped Nouwen’s reading, and so “the interpretation of the elder brother’s reaction is left up to the viewer” (77–78). Nouwen left his own position in the same condition. His summary of the book, written in its introduction, is a sentence in three tenses: “I am the younger son; I am the elder son; and I am on my way to becoming the father” (23). Not “I have become.” He published that in 1992 and died four years later, at the age of sixty-four.

Every matter that reaches my court concludes. A case comes up unresolved and goes down under an opinion, and whatever else is true of it, it is over. This one does not conclude, and the party whose conduct remains at issue is the one holding the book. No doubt, I am a judge vested with the authority of power. That is by commission. And I am the younger son. I am the elder son. The unresolved question is whether, like Nouwen, I am on my way to becoming the father—the hardest conversion.

Image from Wikimedia Commons

Children Are Not Obstacles

Recently, someone learned that my husband and I have six children and told us, “Please just stop. There are too many children in this world.”

We’ve heard similar comments from others, including relatives. This mentality has seeped deep into our culture. We are told children are obstacles—expensive and inconvenient. They interfere with our careers, with our freedom, and with the lives we’ve planned. There are just simply too many of them.

Abortion becomes much easier to justify when we think this way. The question is no longer, “Who is this child?” Instead, it becomes, “What will this child prevent me from doing?”

Human Dignity Does Not Depend on Development

Following the legalization of abortion until birth in Massachusetts, I found myself in a heated debate with a woman. She argued that a newborn’s continuing brain development means a newborn is not yet meaningfully human in the way an older child or adult is. She pointed to a baby’s inability to engage in complex thought and even compared newborns to animals that merely “look” human. This is where the horrifying logic of denying human dignity based on developmental ability can lead. 

Human beings develop throughout their entire lives. A newborn doesn’t become human only when he learns to speak or solve problems, and a person with disabilities doesn’t become less human simply because of limited cognitive abilities. A person doesn’t cease to be human if dementia takes away his abilities. We don’t earn our human dignity through intelligence, independence, or productivity.

A baby is already a human being, made in God’s image and likeness. This is why what happened in Massachusetts is so troubling. On August 10th, Governor Maura Healey signed legislation that allows abortion all the way up until birth. I watched a video of the signing and was disgusted to see women surrounding Governor Healey smiling and applauding.

I am disgusted as a woman, as a mother, as a Catholic, as a resident of Massachusetts, and, frankly, as a decent, God-fearing human being. At its most basic level, this is about whether we can intentionally kill another human being. I believe the obvious answer is no.

When We Make Ourselves Gods

For decades, women have been told that children interfere with education, careers, financial independence, or the life they planned. Pregnancy is presented as a problem to manage, and the child as an inconvenience. Then we call the ability to eliminate that child “empowerment.”

Does our freedom depend upon the ability to destroy another human being? Do women need to be “liberated” from motherhood?

We behave like gods. Our desires, plans, comfort, and autonomy are viewed as sacred. Sacrifice and self-denial are treated as oppressive. Yet Christianity has never claimed that the purpose of life is to arrange the world around our own selfish desires. Instead, Christ calls us to love and sacrifice radically and to give of ourselves for others.

God gave us the Ten Commandments to teach us how to love Him and our neighbor rightly. “You shall not kill” does not come with exceptions for when another person’s existence interferes with our plans. “You shall not covet” challenges a culture that tells us that we deserve the life we want, exactly when we want it, and without inconvenience or sacrifice.

When our own freedom becomes more important than another person’s life and our own comfort becomes the highest good, then we are placing ourselves at the center of the moral universe. That is a very dangerous place for any human being to stand.

Motherhood Is Not the Problem

Motherhood is not a problem. It is a gift.

Having a large family has not always been easy. We are cramped in our current home. My husband is our main provider, and he doesn’t work the easiest job or the best shift. We have bills to pay. Our house is loud sometimes. Three of my children have heart conditions like me, and life can be unpredictable and, at times, frightening.

Yet, despite everything the world tries to tell us, my husband and I have discovered quite simply that we actually like our kids. We even homeschool them, so we’re around them most of the time. While there is certainly chaos in a home with children ranging from 16 years to 10 months, we like being together. What a peculiar notion!

My children have not ruined my freedom. They have expanded my capacity to love. They have certainly required sacrifice, but sacrifice is not the same as loss. My life looks different than I once imagined, but I have received gifts I could never have planned for myself.

Women deserve better than being told their children are obstacles and that motherhood is oppressive. Instead of telling a frightened pregnant woman, “You can’t possibly do this,” we should be telling her, “You are not alone. We will help you. You and your family are not burdens.”

Mercy Means Helping, Not Eliminating

Actress Anne Hathaway once said on The View that “abortion can be another word for mercy.” She seems confused about what mercy actually means. Mercy does not mean deciding that a vulnerable human being is better off dead. Mercy means drawing near to the suffering and helping to carry a burden. It means refusing to abandon the vulnerable.

Fear, desperation, coercion, and lack of support can profoundly affect the choices people make. If a mother is frightened or having a difficult pregnancy, we should help her. If a child has a disability, we should help. If a woman became pregnant through violence, we should surround her with extraordinary compassion and help her and her child. We don’t have to kill her child in order to love her. The answer to violence against women cannot be violence against their children.

We cannot leave the fathers out of the equation either. Fathers are called to love, protect, sacrifice, provide, and remain.

When sex is separated from responsibility, pregnancy becomes an inconvenience. When pregnancy becomes an inconvenience, the child becomes a problem, and when the child becomes a problem, abortion is presented as the solution.

Building a Culture Worthy of Children

I am a Catholic and a woman, a wife, a mother of six, and a survivor of clerical abuse. As someone who advocates for survivors, I know firsthand what happens when human beings are treated as objects. I have seen what happens when sexuality becomes detached from love, dignity, and responsibility. That is precisely why I cannot accept the idea that the answer to a broken sexual culture is to dispose of other vulnerable human beings.

Just because a child is small, dependent, disabled, unexpected, or feels inconvenient does not make him any less human or worthy of the basic right to life. A child’s dignity doesn’t come from being wanted, independent, or productive. There is no meaningful reason whatsoever to intentionally kill an innocent child.

If you are discouraged by what is happening in Massachusetts and elsewhere, don’t stop praying and keep speaking up for life. Keep supporting mothers and encouraging fathers to step up. Keep building strong, holy marriages and families. Keep defending the vulnerable.

The answer to a culture that claims there are too many children is not to encourage fewer children. It is to become a culture worthy of the children we are blessed with, however many that is.

I refuse to believe there are too many children. There will never be too many human beings worthy of love.

Photo by Kyle Nieber on Unsplash

No canonized saint ever held a grudge upon their death. The martyrs even forgave their killers, imitating Jesus who said from the cross, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.”

Exorcists report being blocked from helping victims of the demonic if they hold onto unforgiveness; forgiveness, on the other hand, unleashes the power of God to drive out evil. Jesus told us that “the measure with which you measure will be measured back to you” in Matthew 7:2 and “…forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those, who trespass against us” in the Our Father. Colossians 3:13 commands us to forgive grievances using Christ’s example as the standard: “…forbearing one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other, as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.”

Martyrs Forgave Their Killers

The Church’s martyrs didn’t just die for their faith; they forgave their murderers. St. Stephen, a deacon to the apostles who was stoned to death, prayed, “’Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.’ And falling to his knees he cried out with a loud voice, ‘Lord, do not hold this sin against them’” (Acts 7:59-60).

St. Maria Goretti (1890–1902) was an 11-year-old Italian girl stabbed 14 times by her neighbor, Alessandro Serenelli, after resisting sexual assault. She clung to life for 24 hours, repeatedly forgiving Serenelli. “For the love of Jesus, I forgive him, and I want him to be with me in Paradise,” she cried. Serenelli experienced conversion in prison after seeing Maria in a dream offering him 14 lilies. He repented and ultimately attended her canonization in 1950. 

Blessed Miguel Pro forgave his executioners before facing a firing squad on November 23, 1927, during the religious persecution of the Church in Mexico. “He cried out, ‘May God have mercy on you! May God bless you! Lord, You know that I am innocent! With all my heart I forgive my enemies!’ He then rose, faced the firing squad, extended his arms as if on a cross, and prayed in a loud voice, ‘Viva Cristo Rey!’”

Ordinary Lives Transformed

Ordinary people have experienced transformation in their pain when they were led by Jesus to forgive. Jennifer Hubbard in her book, Finding Sanctuary: How the Wild Work of Peace Restored the Heart of a Sandy Hook Mother, shared how her painful journey had ignited parts of her souls which eventually led to the unthinkable—forgiveness of the one who had taken her precious daughter in Newtown, Connecticut, on December 14, 2012. She and 25 other kindergarteners were victims of a school shooting.

“On a purely human level, it is impossible to imagine being able to heal from the devastation of kneeling on the frozen earth beside your baby’s grave,” Hubbard wrote. “However, recovery and healing are not only possible but also promised for those who offer their sufferings back to the One who suffered for us. For some, the pain and hurt run so deep, they cannot bear to find a way out.” She begged readers with that mindset to sit with her “in the unexpected places where graces are afforded, peace is found, and hearts are transformed” to restore their footing in “ways and places we never could have imagined.”

Jess Echeverry was shocked when a priest told her to pray for the two men who had sexually assaulted her. She was a convert to the Faith and had gone to therapy trying to overcome the trauma. The priest asked if she wanted to see those men in heaven one day. She did not. It seemed unthinkable, she wrote in Dazzled: Finding the Key to Perfect Forgiveness.

Still, Echeverry reluctantly agreed to pray for the men. At the end of two years, she was shocked at the sudden, unexpected feeling of love and forgiveness she had for them. “Lord, you did it!” she cried. It was God’s supernatural power working through her obedience of praying for her offenders, so that today, she continues to pray for them. Echeverry attests that by allowing Jesus to transform our wounds, we experience a complete forgiveness that frees us.

Persecutors as Benefactors

Servant of God Don Dolindo Rutolo (1882-1970) an Italian priest from Naples known for his holiness and authoring the Surrender Novena, went beyond forgiveness; he thanked God for his persecutors. Padre Pio expressed admiration for him, once telling a pilgrim from Naples: “Why do you come here, if you have Don Dolindo in Naples? Go to him, he’s a saint!”

In the book Jesus, I Surrender Myself to You: The Life of Don Dolindo Ruotolo by his niece Grazia Ruotolo, we learn of his complete trust in God even amid persecutions. He drew strength from the Eucharist, the Blessed Mother, and his own deep humility. “What moves me most is thinking about the generosity and tenderness with which Don Dolindo, truly in the image and likeness of Jesus, forgave his accuser,” his niece recalled.

He had written a massive 33-volume commentary on Holy Scripture, alongside numerous spiritual works. He was accused by other priests of heresy in his writings that resulted in years of being denied celebrating Mass or preaching. Grazia explained: “He could hear the devil’s sneering voice: ‘See what has happened to you for writing about God? Wouldn’t it have been better if you had listened to me and stopped?’”

Her uncle did not see the triumph of evil, but rather a painful path to a greater good as the example of Jesus’ own life. When questioned by his followers about his kindness of even visiting his slanderers, he wrote them: “I have never felt so much love for them…They are my benefactors!” He believed they gave him the opportunity to love and be merciful, so thus, they were a gift to his soul.

Don Dolindo taught that forgiveness requires surrendering our pain to Jesus, letting Him handle the offense. The powerful prayer he wrote that has spread far and wide centers on that teaching: O Jesus, I surrender myself to you, take care of everything.

Image from Wikimedia Commons

I have written extensively in this forum on the practice of visio divina, and on its benefits for a person’s spiritual life and growth. As the Solemnity of All Saints approaches, a visio divina exercise on Saint Augustine by Philippe de Champaigne offers a wonderful opportunity for any viewer. In the quest for sanctity this painting, and St. Augustine himself, offers a poignant reminder of the transformative work God desires to do in the minds, hearts, and actions of anyone who answers His call with a generous heart.

Meditating on Champaigne’s painting, my eyes are drawn first to Augustine’s face. He is in awe of something. The direction of his gaze helps me know what that thing is. His eyes are locked on the light source at the top-left corner of the painting, which bears the Latin word VERITAS. This reminds me of his diligent, even obsessive, quest for Truth from his late teens onward.

In his spiritual autobiography, Confessions, Augustine recounts a significant transformation in his life. After experiencing the “cauldron of shameful loves” that was ancient Carthage, he writes, “All my vain hopes forthwith became worthless to me, and with incredible ardor of heart I desired undying wisdom” (III.1, 5). The ray of light emanating from Truth enlightens and enflames his intellect, a fact signified by the aura of flame around the back of his head.

The line from the Light Source passes through Augustine’s head—that is, through his intellect—and terminates in a flaming heart. Here, the artist obviously means to capture the image of the restless heart the author mentions at the very outset of Confessions: “…for you have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you” (I.1). Beyond that, the saint recounts the movement of his heart after his initial turn toward Truth: “How I burned, O my God, how I burned with desire to fly away from earthly things and upwards to you” (III.8).

The enflamed head and the enflamed heart seem to be having a mutual effect on each other. This ought to remind us of the mutual effect a person’s intellect and will have in his or her soul. Augustine writes in Confessions of the mutual effect these two powers of the soul have on a person’s psyche. His mind, he explains, knows something, and he even commands himself to do that thing. “The trouble is,” he writes, “that it does not totally will: therefore it does not totally command” (VIII.9).

Later in the same work, the writer draws together the themes of light and flame, dealing with the mind and the heart. “You have blazed forth with light and have shone upon me,” he writes, “and you have put my blindness to flight! …You have touched me, and I have burned for your peace” (X.27). Intellect and will, mutually enflamed, impels a person toward the Divine Source of Light, Love, and Peace.

Pondering these details opens my own conversation with the Lord. How diligently have I sought Truth? From which sources have I sought it? Has the search for truth enflamed and enlightened my mind? Has my heart followed my head? Has my desire for Goodness and Beauty caused me to search more diligently for Truth? Is God’s Peace a desire that burns constantly in my soul?

I also notice the book directly below the Light of Truth. Augustine’s search for Truth orients him toward BIBLIA SACRA. The Bible factors prominently into Augustine’s conversion (see Confessions VIII.12, for example); and it was a source of inspiration for so much of his Christian theology and teaching. The quill pen he holds in his hand might be symbolic of the hundred-plus individual works he penned—books, biblical commentaries, letters, and sermons that totaled some five million words.

In Confessions, he comments that God gifted Holy Writ to humans “since we were too weak to find the truth by pure reason,” and that God I desired it to be a primary source of humans seeking and knowing Him (VI. 5). This is obviously true for Augustine as all of his scholarship, commentary, and preaching was saturated with the words and message of Sacred Scripture. Those facts lead me to ask about my own devotion to Truth and Sacred Scripture. Do I spend time meditating on God’s Word? Even if I will not write nearly as much as Augustine, do I allow the Bible’s light to shine on my daily pursuits, whether they are lofty ideas or basic moral actions?

Augustine’s garments also factor prominently in this scene. The outer garment is a liturgical vestment, likely significant of the fact that Augustine was ordained a priest shortly after his conversion and, eventually, a bishop. Under these vestments, Augustine dons a white garment, legitimately an alb, which signifies the priest’s baptismal purity. Augustine took seriously both his Baptism—which occupied such a central place in Confessions—and his service as a bishop. In Sermon 340, he preached to his flock in Hippo, “For I am a bishop for you, with you I am a Christian.” The remainder of the homily explained the necessity of both parts of the Church—the ordained hierarchy and the laity—assisting each other in answering the call to holiness.

Do I reflect on the grace of my own Baptism? Do I revisit the baptismal ritual, or the teachings on Baptism (found, for example, in the Catechism)? Do I realize that I have been baptized into the common priesthood of the faithful, called to offer sacrifices within my daily life? Do I engage in reverent celebration of the liturgy, even as someone simply sitting in the pews? Does the liturgy inform and inspire my intellect and will, my desire to know what is True and act in ways that are truly Good?

Three other books in the scene gain my attention, all at Augustine’s feet. One is inscribed with “Julianus,” which likely refers to Julian the Apostate, the Roman emperor who rejected his baptismal faith just before Augustine’s birth. In City of God, Augustine describes Julian as “the man whose marvelous gifts were poisoned by his lust for power”; who “fell a victim to a silly and sacrilegious occultism”; who “put his trust in vain oracles” (V.21). The book on which Augustine’s right foot rests bears the name Pelagius, Augustine’s contemporary (born in the same year) who denied original sin and taught that humans could earn their salvation. Beside that second book is a scroll bearing the name Caelestius, who was a disciple of Pelagius. Augustine wrote extensively against the Pelagian heresy; and he recommended that Caelestius be excommunicated at the Council of Carthage in A.D. 411. Each of these prominent figures of his era gave Augustine the opportunity to preach and teach on man’s fallen condition and his need for grace. Because of this general message, and because of his refutation of Pelagius’ heresy, in particular, Augustine is known as the Doctor of Grace.

Ruminating on Augustine’s title—on his humble, yet heroic work—do I recognize the primacy of grace in my life as a Christian disciple? Or, do I continue to carry a disposition that I can earn God’s favor? Do I have a lust for power or control? Do my actions suggest that I can find salvation and fulfillment by any means other than God’s gift?

One final detail near the bottom of the painting warrants attention. The toes of two blue shoes peek out from below the alb. In sacred art, blue is typically associated with wisdom, quietude, and contemplation. It is also traditionally associated with the Blessed Virgin Mary, and the position of Augustine’s foot here very much resembles Mary’s foot crushing the head of the serpent in many depictions of her. Finally, blue also connotes divinity. Tying all these meanings together, I surmise that the artist intends to depict Augustine relying on Divine Grace and, by employing the fruit of years of contemplation, striking an intellectual blow to the serpent’s “head,” Pelagius, who taught that humans could work and earn their salvation.

As I conclude this visio divina exercise, I am inspired to imitate Augustine’s holiness. Like him and all the saints, my Baptism and my participation in the Church’s sacramental life are the chief sources of grace. I pray God will pour out His grace to enlighten my intellect and enflame my will so my soul’s two faculties might operate in mutual combustion. Finally, I pray those graces will guide me, in the mundane settings of my life, toward an energetic and charitable presentation of Truth, even toward those who might not accept it. By such a formula, one day—God willing—I might take my own place alongside this giant within the communion of saints.

Author’s Note: The quotes from Confessions are from the translation by John K. Ryan (1960); quotes from City of God are from the translation by Walsh, Zema, Monahan, & Honan (1958).

Image from Wikimedia Commons

Empty Kettles

When I reminisce about my Catholic grade school days, I recall a nun with a round face who was graced with more patience than I probably deserved. Mostly because I was overly chatty with my friends. Whenever we would talk too much, which was often, she would exclaim, “Girls! Empty kettles make a lot of noise.” That would ignite a fit of giggles behind little hands and blushing cheeks. It wasn’t until I matured that I realized how true and helpful those words still are, especially today. Whenever I am in the company of someone who overcommunicates or if I find myself talking too much, I see her face and remember those words.

In fact, St. Francis de Sales, who is the patron saint of writers and journalists, taught the value of measured speech. He stressed the importance of speaking honestly and kindly, and warned against excessive, careless words. He gave us the six pillars of mindful speech. These include gentleness, reasoning to bridle your tongue, being brief, no mocking, no indecent language, and being lighthearted without ridicule. He believed that mastering the tongue and our speech would lead us closer to God and to a perfected spirituality. It’s no wonder that our beloved nun wanted to help lead us down the right path into adulthood by limiting our senseless chatter!

Is Silence Really Golden?

So, should my friends and I have kept silent throughout the day? No, that was not the point of the lesson. St. Francis de Sales said, “Mere silence is not wisdom, for wisdom consists in knowing when and how to speak and when and where to keep silent.” St. Francis de Sales and my school nun aren’t saying we should never talk. Instead, the issue is unnecessary speech.

Our words should be intentional. When we speak too much, we start babbling. We have all been in a situation where, when talking with someone, we can’t get a word in edgewise. By disciplining our tongues and speaking carefully, we give the other person a chance to speak. However, if we make a lot of noise by talking, we don’t learn through the art of listening and therefore remain an empty kettle.

When I think about measured speech, I like to compare it to baking. We are careful to follow a recipe and measure out a cup of sugar, two sticks of butter, a teaspoon of vanilla, etc. But if we add too much salt or confuse baking soda for baking powder, our confection can be ruined. With our speech, we sometimes forget to measure. If we spew it all out there without thinking about the quantity and quality of the words we are using, relationships can be ruined. Limitless words and meaningless chatter turn us into empty, clanging kettles, which is a recipe for disaster.   

Why did Jesus Choose to Speak in Parables?

Jesus knew the importance of precise words and how best to convey His teachings. You may say, “Of course! He’s God.” Yes, and we can learn from how He chose His words and why. The purpose of using parables was to reveal His messages to those willing to listen while concealing the truths from the critics. This was a brilliant way to engage His followers because He used everyday scenarios they were familiar with. His words were intentional and filled with timeless wisdom. His followers could relate to Him when talking about vineyards, sheep, mustard seeds, wheat, and grains, to name a few. His words were meaningful and spoke to the heart.

When we speak to others, we, too, can consider ways our speech can connect with them. I sometimes like to use analogies. It gives a person perspective to see something they are dealing with in a whole new light. It also adds lighthearted humor, if appropriate, depending on the situation.

Keep Out of Trouble

Aside from getting in trouble with the nun, I learned throughout the years that an unchecked tongue can hurt people’s feelings, cause anger, crush spirits, lose friendships, and cause overall division. Words can start wars or make peace. We are reminded of this in Proverbs 21:23: “To watch over mouth and tongue is to keep out of trouble.” I find that, especially when I need to have a difficult or critical conversation with someone, saying exactly what is necessary without too much or too little keeps me out of trouble.

It’s not easy. It’s not something you ace overnight. Just like anything else, it takes practice and self-awareness to master this habit. Some helpful tips: slow down, pause, breathe deeply, always be truthful, and think before you respond.

I have recently fallen into the trap of overexplaining when I needed to say no to someone. Sometimes the more you try to explain, the more trouble you get yourself into. We mistakenly think we are being nice by giving more detail. Instead, the more reasons you give, the more the response may sound as if you are unsure about your decision, even though that was not your intent.

Full Kettles

How can we ensure we live our lives as full kettles and not empty ones? St. Francis de Sales knew that controlling our tongue allows us to make time for listening. When you are conversing with someone, pause. Remind yourself to listen seventy percent of the time. Try your best to speak only thirty percent of the time or less, using thoughtful, intentional words. Then discover how that positively changes your spiritual life!

Try to avoid interrupting and show careful attention to the speaker. It is through listening that we learn. If you don’t know much about what the other person is saying, don’t be afraid to admit it. Ask the person to tell you more. Never bluff and do not try to make it seem as if you know more about a topic than you do. The more you practice judicious speaking and listening, the better you will become, and over time it will become a habit.

It is amazing what you learn when you take time to listen to others who are willing to share their stories. Over the years, controlling my tongue and listening more has enabled me to start a ministry at my local church, which just so happens to be St. Francis de Sales Parish. I also became a dedicated volunteer at a local hospice facility where compassionate speech and listening are essential. God works in mysterious ways.

Why was St. Francis de Sales so passionate about his message on speech? Because he knew how important it was for all of us to reach our destination, which is eternal life in heaven. Whether she realized it or not, the dear, patient nun at my Catholic school followed the teachings of a great saint and did her best to communicate an important life lesson to us. I think she would be proud that because of her wise, repetitive warnings, we didn’t end up as empty kettles!

Photo by Miryam León on Unsplash

“Why are you testing me, you hypocrites?”

God used the Persian emperor, Cyrus, to liberate His people from Babylonian captivity and bring them back from exile. But Cyrus never knew who God was. Even so, God said about Cyrus, “For the sake of Jacob, my servant, I have called you by your name, giving you a title, though you knew me not…It is I who arm you, though you know me not” (Is. 45:4-5).

If God can do such great things through a pagan king who does not know Him, imagine the great things that God can do through us, His beloved sons and daughters, if we truly know Him and love Him. Imagine what we can endure and overcome for God’s glory if we have intimate knowledge of God.

This is why the Pharisees and Herodians in Matthew 22:15-21 are most pitiable. They had a chance to come to Jesus in good faith and learn about God. Jesus always reveals God to us at each moment of our lives, for He teaches that “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (Jn. 14:9). We come to living communion with God only through Jesus Christ: “To all who received Him, who believed in His name, He gave power to become children of God” (Jn. 1:12).

But the Pharisees and their Herodian counterparts did not care about knowing God better through Jesus. Rather, they came to test Him and to try and trick Him: “The Pharisees went off and plotted how they might entrap Jesus in speech.” They tried to bait Him with their question, “Is it lawful to pay the census tax to Caesar or not?” They failed woefully in their malicious pretense.

Jesus clearly saw their malice and bad faith towards Him, as Scripture records, “Knowing their malice, Jesus said, ‘Why are you testing me, you hypocrites!’” He exhorted them to have good faith towards Caesar and towards God, instructing, “Repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God.” In other words, let Caesar be Caesar and let God be God in our lives.

How about us? Do we come to Jesus with good faith to know God better, or do we rather put Him to the test with our habits? Do we play God, or do we allow God to be God in our lives? We have to make a choice because we cannot both know Him and put Him to the test at the same time.

There are five ways that we might be testing Jesus instead of knowing God through Him.

1. By Our Ingratitude 

Firstly, we put Jesus to the test by our ingratitude for all His gifts to us. We can take God’s gifts for granted and waste them. We can also abuse these gifts by using them in a way contrary to the will of God for us. When we lack true gratitude to God for His gifts, we test Jesus, and we can never know God better.

2. By Choosing to Remain in Sin

Secondly, we put Jesus to the test by choosing to sin and remaining in a state of sin. Jesus died and rose from the dead so that we can have forgiveness of sin and a new beginning. He has also given us the amazing Sacrament of Reconciliation in which all our sins are completely cleansed, and we are strengthened for a new and better life with Him. There is just no tangible reason to remain in a state of sin. We are testing Jesus by choosing to remain in sin, and we get nothing from Him.

3. By Failing to Bring Our Needs to Him

Thirdly, we put Jesus to the test by not praying to Him for all our needs. Jesus Himself guaranteed us the efficacy of our prayers, saying, “Ask and you shall receive, seek and you shall find, knock and the door will be opened to you” (Mt. 7:7). We put Him to the test when we do not bring our needs confidently before Him but choose to trust in ourselves and our resources and abilities. We gain nothing by abandoning our trusting prayer to Jesus.

4. By Rejecting or Doubting His Loving Dominion

Fourthly, we put Jesus to the test by rejecting or doubting His love, power, and wisdom. We can easily doubt His love for us or His power to do what He has promised in our lives. We can question His presence in our lives and forget that He is “Emmanuel—God with us” (Mt. 7:23). We even doubt if He knows how to solve our problems and meet our many needs. We cannot know Him when we are skeptical about His power, wisdom, and love.

5. By Not Believing in His Words

Fifthly, we put Jesus to the test when we do not believe in His words. We have the comfortable lies that make us feel good about ourselves and prevent us from true ongoing conversion. We can pretend to be ignorant about God’s words on morality. We can pretend we are searching for the truth through endless dialogues and synods in the Church. We hold on to our lies and think we can also know Him at the same time. All we are doing is putting Jesus to the test, and we gain nothing by doing so.

St. Paul affirmed the Christians in Thessalonica for their true knowledge of Jesus Christ, writing, “We give thanks to God always for all of you, remembering you in our prayers, unceasingly calling to mind your work of faith and labor of love and endurance in hope of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Notice the blessings they have from their strong faith, lively hope, and ardent charity: “For our gospel did not come to you in word alone, but also in the power and in the Holy Spirit and with much conviction” (1 Thess. 1:2-5). The Thessalonian Christians can overcome all things by knowing Jesus Christ through their faith, hope, and charity. The risen Christ can act in and through them because they know Him and don’t put Him to the test.

Most of the evils that we face in our lives, in the Church, and in our world today are due to this poor knowledge of Jesus Christ. Our prayer lives are more focused on getting our needs met than on actually cultivating an intimate relationship with Jesus Christ. Even when we come to Him, we are knowingly or unknowingly putting Him to the test. If He is going to use us in bringing about victories over all these evils, we must purify our motives and come to Him with good faith to know Him better—not to test Him.

Jesus is present to us in each Eucharist, and He is always revealing the true God to us. If we get to know Him better and not try to test Him, He will surely make us victorious over all the evils that we face.

Glory to Jesus!!! Honor to Mary!!!

Image from Wikimedia Commons