Fire, Salt, and Light.

KEEPING SCORE WITH JESUS

noreply@blogger.com (Arthur Joseph) — Wed, 30 May 2012 02:59:00 +0000

Ever since some wise man discovered the zero, thus enabling what became mathematics, we have been able to add, subtract, multiple, divide, etc., developing computer codes and such esoteric, yet deemed critically important, statistics as “earned run averages”, stock market averages, currency fluctuations, and literally innumerable other uses of numbers, though some, like tracking how many ‘friends’ one has on social media sites belie a deeper angst which infects much of the human family. I am tempted here to insert various common wisdoms such as ‘figures don’t lie, but liars sure can figure’ and ‘it is never too late to teach an old dog a new trick’, but to pursue such would be to avoid the very tough lesson I am barely on the threshold of embracing! In human terms there is no one more important in my life and whom I truly seek to be a gift to, to love, protect, serve, than my own son and since his marriage his wife and their children have a co-equal share of my heart. Holy Mother the Church, friends, the poor, yes even my enemies are treasured, loved, and when needed, forgiven. Primarily for each one of us love is an act of the will, but we are beings who also have emotions and we all know emotions are about as easy to control as it is to carry a pound of jello in our bare hands, running a steeple chase! Our emotions often behave like earthquakes. It is as if we live on a fault line, the sudden upheavals coming at the least expected and most inopportune moments in our lives. How about the emotional reaction of the disciples wanting to nuke those they felt opposed Jesus [Lk.9.54]! We learn as children, appropriately as it is connected both to playing fair and also teaches deep lessons about accepting loss in life, that some forms of play involve team sports and the team with the most goals, wins. The other team does not. Winning, wrongly interiorized, can lead to arrogance. Loss, wrongly interiorized, can lead to deep wounds woven into self-doubt, even in the extreme a sense of being unlovable which in turn is often expressed as extreme, never able to be satisfied, need for acceptance. If parents pit one child against another, deliberately or inadvertently, that is the ultimate experience of being the losing team. I admire my son and his wife how they manage the extremely important balance of treating each of their children equally with love and attention, yet also have neat little ways in which each child gets the right amount of individual love and attention which affirms to the child they are unique and uniquely loved. Suffice to say my experience growing up was the polar opposite and by the time I left home at fourteen to find my own way in the world more damage was done than then, or even now on the threshold of seventy, I realized or, as recent events have underscored, realize fully yet! Indeed it is a shock to face the fact I am not unlike the labourers who felt they should have been paid more [Mt. 20:1-16]. They were keeping score. I have been doing so most of my life, with more emotional damage to myself and being burdensome to those who love me than I have ever understood, Lord have mercy indeed! Keeping it simple, suffice to say the other day my son did something necessary for his own wellbeing as a hardworking family man which gave him some respite and a relaxing evening. When I heard about it I was frankly deeply hurt at not being included as it is something I have long desired to participate in with him and I went, to be honest, emotionally ballistic. Chatting with a friend I uttered score words, namely how long I have been waiting for……and my friend said very simply: “You are keeping score.” I felt like I have been sucker punched and went interiorly into aggressive denial, but his words would not be silenced in my mind or heart. I began begging the Holy Spirit to settle me down and enable me to look honestly at the implications of my friend’s words and I discovered, primarily about myself, this human bondage to keep emotional score and how damaging it really is. Now in some ways I have been trying to dig myself out of quicksand. Thankfully, I do not have to do it on my own because in the midst of all storms we see Who really is doing the digging out, the rescuing: Mt. 14:23-33. The Holy Gospel is filled with examples of Jesus taking someone by the hand and raising them up from illness or paralysis and so forth and each of these examples of physical healing, the examples of Jesus setting people free from bondage to demons, are applicable. Jesus will, indeed yearns to if we ask Him, raise us up out of, set us free from, emotional turmoil as well. So if I am to be raised up from drowning in, set free from the bondage of keeping score is there a sort of replacement means of score keeping, in other words, is there a way Jesus teaches me to keep score? If we meditate deeply and allow the Holy Spirit to teach us then in passages such as Matthew chapters 5, 6, 7 and 18:21, 22; Mark 10: 29-31; Luke 6:38; John 15:13, just a few examples, we will see that the way Jesus keeps score, as it were and call us to, is never about what I get or what need of mine is met, rather all is about gift, in essence how as Jesus gifts Himself to us is precisely how I am called to make myself gift to other. Sure I am not claiming when it comes to keeping score being converted as yet but thanks to that word from my friend I am no longer comfortable keeping score in the old way plus my eyes are wide open to being aware of what an immense gift my son is – and that, constantly giving thanks, is the essential way too Jesus keeps score, always giving thanks to Our Father and His for love and blessing, indeed Jesus gifts Himself as the penultimate reality of thanks-giving in the Holy Eucharist. So, how have you been keeping score lately?

LOSS OF MANHOOD AND THE CULTURE OF DEATH

noreply@blogger.com (Arthur Joseph) — Sat, 19 May 2012 05:56:00 +0000

Ever since President Obama declared himself in favour of gay so-called marriage I have been particularly concerned by his stating how he came to this stance based on consultation with his wife and daughters: in other words rather than assert authentic manhood he caved, rather than lead chose to be led, rather than teach truth he surrendered to the lie that the original human vocation of real marriage, the union in love open to self-gift and new life between a man and a woman, can be distorted by the mere dictates of pretence! There is a cry and deep sorrow at the very center of our world. The cry is wrenched from the hearts of adults but is rooted in the hearts of children. Someday a wise anthropologist, perhaps, will do an in depth study of our culture of death and make the connection between the origins of this cry, this deep sorrow, rooted in the loss of authentic manhood and how we came to suffer such a loss. Perhaps then we will have a better understanding of the complexities of human intercourse which resulted in the 20th century being so soaked on every page of its history with the blood of the innocent, shed massively in war but on an even greater scale through abortion, a river of blood already flooding this new century. How urgently we need to pray that we come to grips with a generation and more of fatherless men, of boys, in the words of Susan Faludi in her work: STIFFED, growing up in “...a culture that has them by the throat.” An adult whose own experience of being fathered, being authentically masculine, was actually that of being father deprived, starved for affirmation and completion as a male, finds himself in a situation ready made for legions of demons to create the evil of lack of courage, inability to be faithful to the command of self-gift. Marriage is the ultimate expression of authentic reciprocal gift of self to other and presupposes both the willing generosity and ability to make the gift. Distortion of authentic marriage, such as advocated by Obama and others, pre-supposes an intellectual, seemingly logical, disconnect between the reality of self-gift being about the other, rather than about myself. We live in such a dark and confused culture, such a disordered body politic, that we take demands for what the ‘I’ wants and devise arguments to make such a demand appear as a ’right’ and as the screams increase in volume gerrymander laws which then form a type of feedback loop so the egotistical ‘I’ is vindicated. This process is only possible when the culture, the body politic, and most disturbing of all large numbers of the baptized, abandon the law of gift for the anarchy of ‘take’! The supreme acts of self-gift are God, creating us in His own image and likeness; the Father loving us so much He gifts His only-begotten Son for us; the Son Jesus laying down His life for us; the Holy Spirit sanctifying us, crying out within us constantly: Abba! Bl. John Paul’s constant teaching on what he sometimes referred to as the ‘law of gift’, is drawn from the Second Vatican Council teaching on the Church in the Modern World, Guadium et Spes # 24, reminding us that we alone of all His creatures, we the human person, are the ones He wanted, ultimately, for communion of love, so the only way then we can discover our true selves is through a sincere GIVING of ourselves. The male person, we men, in face of the constant assault on faith, family, life from the womb to the tomb, as baptized men in particular, need to incarnate in all we do and say the fullness of self-gift. Unless we rediscover our true selves as men the darkness of the culture of death will overtake everything and we will wake up one morning and discover that, unlike the current situation where a type of emasculation leaves us with cowardice and indecisiveness in the body politic, frequently in the pulpit, we shall confront the polar opposite distortion of manhood asserting power if not complete control, namely those who use violence to subjugate their families and terror to cower whole nations. In 1989 Bl. Pope John Paul reminded us all in his letter on St. Joseph that we have a model of manhood and an intercessor for all in good Saint Joseph. Granted the prime icon is Jesus, yet in terms of a guy like us, St. Joseph is the model of self-gift manhood, authentic husband and fatherhood. A whole man, a real man, is a person comfortable in his skin as a man, who embraces life, protects and defends objective truth, thus he protects and defends life. In our culture, however, we have seen a progressive denigration of that which the Father has created: the human person, in the God created beauty and dignity of an equality of person which flowers in the diversity of some persons being created male and some persons being created female. Our media saturated, politically correct chattering classes are willfully blind to the sheer idiotic stance of debasing either gender, to those futile and sacrilegious continuing efforts, in particular, to un-male or un-female children to the point of making adults who are so totally confused about gender they no longer even know they are persons. Each person, each male his maleness and each female her femaleness, has this incontrovertible reality sanctified at Baptism. As men in our very Baptism we are irrevocably and indisputably consecrated as protectors of the domestic church, proclaimers of the Gospel of Life, defenders of the human person, especially in those stages of life – it’s very beginning and natural end, its childhood and old age, its times of sickness or weakness – when life is most vulnerable. To do less is to betray our male personhood and discipleship of Jesus Christ. Saint Joseph is a powerful intercessor for us as we seek to be whole and holy as male persons, mature men with childlike hearts who are at one and the same time son of the Father, father to all our brothers and sisters in Christ, brother to all the children of the Father, through the activity of the Holy Spirit within us by our sacramental baptism and fidelity to self-gift. Just as Bl. John Paul teaches how the Angel introduced St. Joseph to the mystery of Mary as mother, it follows quite simply then none is better than Joseph to introduce we men to, and teach us about, Our Blessed Mother, about self-gift to women, to children, to everyone. This is our vocation, to be protectors of the sacredness of other, of life, of truth. This requires we be real men, holy men, and fatherly men. Men capable of strength, courage, tenderness, love, wisdom, and generosity to provide for and protect those confided to our care: in the immediate wife and children but also our co-workers, the Church, the wider community, in particular the vulnerable pre-born. Saint Joseph was called by God to serve the person and mission of Jesus directly ‘through the exercise of his fatherhood’, as Bl. John Paul reminds us, and we men are likewise called to serve Jesus as well through self-gift to other and in a culture where the one who is allegedly the father of the nation, sort of the ‘man in chief’ has caved to the clamour of the culture of darkness and death, how urgent that the rest of the baptized men stand up in the face of all that is disordered, indeed in the face of satan himself, stand firm and declare enough! Fidelity is this day to day, moment by moment, willingness to give ourselves as gift. Once again, naturally enough, we come face to face with a simple fact: we need faith! Faith is a gift. Increase of faith is a gift we must ask for. The faithful St. Joseph will intercede on our behalf for a constant increase in this gift of faith if we, man to man, ask him. Because of the pulverization of our true understanding of self as a male person and living out of that gift, a pulverization inflicted upon us by the culture of death, we too, even as adult men, can be burdened by the sorrow(s) so common among our brothers. There seems to be, frankly, to a very dangerous degree – dangerous for the faith, the Church, for the vulnerable, especially for the unborn and those weak in anyway, for women and children in particular – a lack of mature holy manliness and is why Bl. Pope John Paul II was seen as such a sign of contradiction because he never wavered when it came to objective truth, never shied away from proclaiming the truth about the Gospel of Life, about the reality of marriage. A man has only to look upon Christ to see himself as God intends us to be and who better to bring us to Jesus but St. Joseph? Love and truth are inseparable. Love is never interested in self. Love is always servant of the other. As we seek to enter ever more deeply into communion of love with the Blessed Trinity, imitating the Trinity’s own self-gift, we must enter more fully into union with Christ the man, the obedient son of the Father. It is to journey, with steadfastness and honour, the pilgrim’s way. Self-gift love costs. It costs the life of Love Himself upon the Cross. Can we love any less? In the Litany of Saint Joseph, noted in the Litany as being strong, obedient and faithful, is also the terror of demons. When we, as true holy men, are by grace also strong, obedient and faithful we too shall be a source of terror for demons, in particular those demons of the culture of death. To become ever more completely that which we are, by gender, baptism, we must, like St. Joseph the good and just man before us, constantly be attentive to the movement of the Holy Spirit within our beings. The Sanctifier at work within us, calling us to ever more complete abandonment to Divine Providence, ever deeper metanoia, that total kenosis where nothing remains in or about us but Christ. The fidelity of which St. Joseph is our patron and model was not for him, nor is it for us primarily a matter of ‘doing’ what needs be done, as important as that is. Fidelity of the true and sacred kind, which implies explicitly the nitty-gritty doing well of the duty of the moment, is first of all a matter of ‘being’: being totally trusting of, and abandoned to, the love and will of the Father for us. We men, indeed all Christian men and women, need to begin again to build anew the civilization of love, the culture of life. Thus we need the grace of a deep interior life for Gospel action flows from deep contemplation. Saint Joseph is the patron of the interior life, having lived and served the person and mission of Christ with fidelity, courage, strength, obedience, selflessness and humility. While being the teacher of Christ in the ways of a man’s life on earth St. Joseph was undoubtedly also a ‘student’ at the feet of the Master, learning communion of love with the Father. Our increasingly fatherless culture has produced generations of children who become adults not knowing the truth, a truth we need to relearn and teach: that we are beloved. St. Joseph will teach us and then affirmed in the truth we are beloved of Love Himself, we will go forth and love. We have not been created primarily, to do great things, rather because we are greatly beloved, we are called to love, greatly. We are called to be faithful to Someone and with, in, through Him to love all others. It is through fidelity to the One who loves us so we are urged on by grace to be faithful in all else. Fidelity to love, to self-gift is heroic, for spouses, parents, for everyone. Fidelity is heroic especially in our day when we witness to the Gospel of Life in the darkness of the culture of death. Fidelity is that manly heroic courage lived at a time when as men we are pulverized from all sides, often simply because we are men, certainly because we are Christian men. Here too we turn to the good Saint Joseph as our model and patron, for he carried within his very being the history of a pulverized people, a history marked by deliverance as well. In his own life St. Joseph suffered much being faithful to his vocation as spouse and protector of his wife Mary and foster-father and protector of the Child Jesus. We men are likewise called to embrace, with courage, the mystery of suffering, the blessedness of suffering. We too are called to be father and protector of the Child Jesus: Christ who comes to us as every man, woman and child on the face of the earth. No human being should be an orphan of our fatherly, manly hearts. Our relationship is communion of love with Infinite of Infinite Love Himself! [Jn. 1:29, 36] St. John also notes Jesus is in motion, coming toward, as He does within us, towards us, every moment of our life. [ibid: 29, 26] How the heart of St. Joseph must naturally have pounded with the pride of a father every time he saw Jesus coming towards him, how his soul must have leapt with joy every time he saw Jesus coming towards him. Jesus comes towards us, walks with us in every moment of our lives, thus every moment is a moment of contemplation in love. So overtaken by the beauty of Christ, the holy allure if you will of Christ, the fire of His love radiating from His Holy Face, those eyes revealing the love of the Father, His disciples couldn’t bear being separated from Him and cried out to know where He dwelt. [ibid: 38] Should not our manly hearts likewise yearn to ask Him that question, the cry of a heart yearning to be in communion of love? Love’s invitation to intimacy is given, inviting us to ‘come and see.’ Always Love gives us freedom. We are free to follow Him, or not. Yet the essence of fidelity is to choose to always be inclined towards Christ, to follow Him; being always with Christ wherever He is in the moment. Where then is Christ in this moment: awaiting us, precisely where the Father wills us to be. The place where Jesus dwells is there. It is to be one with Him in that place He invites us to when He says: ‘come and you will see.’ Only when we follow Him, as St. Joseph did, into the reality, mystery, grace, of each moment, through fidelity to the duty of the moment -–will we dwell truly, live and move and have our being completely, in Him, with Him, through Him, for Him! Then all that we hunger for, seek, do, will be in accord with the fullness of our baptismal vocation and like our model and patron St. Joseph, will we be true whole and holy men. Fidelity is being in relationship with the Father in the place, manner, of Christ’s own relationship with the Father. Our fidelity is within the reality of communion of love with the Holy Trinity and will restore right order in the lives of our brothers and sisters, in our whole civilization. As the courageous and humble man chosen to be the earthly father-protector of the Child and His Mother, St. Joseph, we too must strive to be faithful in the reality of every moment wherein Christ is always ‘walking towards us’. This is the greater truth, the greater reality. Though we may live at a time when we are pulverized by the culture of anger, blame and death which surrounds us, pulverized because we are male, it is a little thing to suffer for and with Christ. St. Joseph suffered and remained faithful and chose the path of love, before he was ever consoled by the angel. Dare we be less of a man than Joseph? Dare we love less?

EVER LESS GEOGRAPHY

noreply@blogger.com (Arthur Joseph) — Wed, 16 May 2012 22:36:00 +0000

What I begin with may seem unconnected to geography, in the broader sense of places on the earth, but actually is connected for I speak of the geography of the mind or the soul. Geography is, among other things, a descriptive examination of the topographical features of, for example, some region of the earth or a planet – well I suggest there is a type of topography of the mind and the soul! We know various regions of the brain contain what is necessary for thought, emotions, mobility, speech, etc. and that certain traumas can impact how well things function, so in a way post a stroke you might say that the geography of the brain is less. PTSD and other traumas impact the emotional regions, the topography – one impact of those, along with other factors, can reduce the creative geographical regions dramatically to the point of experiencing what is known commonly as writer’s block. It has been out of a prolonged period of the latter that I have been reflecting a lot on the human experience of geography as in distances travelled, that is the ever widening outreach of human mobility in general to the various ways in which, as we age or our economic circumstances change, our mobility is restricted to the point where we experience ever less geography. I first began reflecting on ever less geography many years ago when I was chaplain in a nursing home and observed one of the elderly women, who lived in a sort of dorm room with three other women, pushing her wheeled walker down the hall. I was struck by how she kept everything precious to her in a large purse strapped to the walker. She had been a teacher, wife, mother, in a word someone whose area of life and mobility was extensive and for whom old age had reduced everything! As a human family we first began to expand our experience and use of geography by simply walking and it took thousands of years before the domestication of horses, elephants, camels, increased the range of travel. Then canoes, boats were developed, enabling travel not only along rivers and across lakes but eventually even across oceans until contact between peoples of all cultures, religions, languages became common place. Yes not all contact was positive as history teaches us, but contact there was, is. Only with advances in steam technology in the mid-19th century, then the development of commercial aviation, along with the combustible engine, did travel over ever vaster distances by ever greater numbers of people become ordinary, while space travel remains as yet mainly reserved to astronauts or the extremely wealthy. Who knows where the definitive edge of space is, or for that matter the edge of the geography of the internet! We can define the external limits of the human brain but not those of thought, emotion, creativity. When it comes to the soul, the heart, the image which most impresses me for their geography is the tardis of Dr. Who: the external dimensions are fixed but interiorly is a place of seeming infinitude. Such is the garden enclosed of the human heart and soul. Writer’s block then is a rather tough, indeed excruciatingly frustrating experience of less geography on a par with the pain that elderly woman experienced with her world reduced to a small crowded room and a few hallways. Age impacts physical, mental agility and stress impacts creativity agility. For wee the baptized in particular, the reduction of geographical travel, daily life space, even interior suffering such as writers block or other mental, emotional pain, offers us the opportunity to choose what we do with it: agonize with increased frustration or literally offer the pain in intercession for those of our brothers and sisters throughout the world who experience the more nefarious aspects of reduced geography: the homeless who find their world reduced to a few dirty inner city streets and alleys, perhaps on occasion a cot in a shelter; those suffering famine, war, genocide who are pushed off the land where they and their ancestors have lived for millennia; yes for those languishing in nursing homes, those suffering in hospitals, those in labour camps, prisoners in general. When it is the reduced geography of the creative aspects of the intellect needed to write that very painful struggle, experienced as mentioned for many weeks, can be an offering for those suffering depression, ptsd from being on the battlefield, or any form of mental illness or anguish. The Saints learned and have passed onto us, rooted in Romans 8:27 where the Apostle reminds us that by the power of the Holy Spirit all things can work for our good, hence in all suffering by the grace of God through the merits of Jesus’ own suffering, good can be found, purification embraced, life enhanced, for ourselves yes, but by offering what we suffer, grace for others. When the choice is made to offer up whatever we suffer, for the good of others in union with Jesus is made, the geography of gift, of communion of love, is limitless!

NEO-TOTALITARIANISM

noreply@blogger.com (Arthur Joseph) — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 17:59:00 +0000

Absolute control by the state or a governing branch of a highly centralized institution is the basic definition of totalitarianism and, neo is a fancy way of saying ‘new’.
I mention this at the outset because the Allies fought a multi-year war against the Axis powers in WWII to overcome such horror and waged the cold war for the same reason and rail, rightly, against those governments which continue to oppress their people.
Yet here is what is truly an Alice through the looking glass experience of daily life, more and more in particular in the United States and Canada: national, state, provincial government policies which are truly totalitarian: for example in the US the Obama government imposition upon the hospitals of people of faith to insure contraceptive and abortion drugs; in Canada, one example, the Supreme Court upholding provincial legislation which denies parents the right to exempt their children from classes which impose anti-Christian teaching.
I am reminded of a word from the great Father of the Desert, Abba Anthony, who when asked by his monks what the future held said: “The day will come when the world will go mad. They will come to us and tell us WE must be mad because we are not like them.”
Western Europe, Russia, North, Central, South America in particular are rooted in what is commonly known as Christian civilization and, along with our brothers and sisters of the Jewish and Islamic faiths, share a common heritage rooted in faith in the one true God, the God of our fathers Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
We not only dishonour our ancestors in faith, but also the countless men and women who past and present have laid down their lives to retain our freedom from totalitarianism, when we abandon the clear command of God for our lives and society in favour of a totally disordered, evil and totalitarian assault on freedom of belief and practice.
Bl. Pope John Paul in his homily at St. Catherine’s Monastery on Mount Sinai during the Jubilee 2000 reminds us that “…our faith leads us to become pilgrims in the footsteps of God.”
Where does He lead us?
To FREEDOM!
“…..He is indeed the God who does set His people free as He promised….God seals His love by making the Covenant that He will never renounce….The encounter of God and Moses…enshrines at the heart of our religion the mystery of liberating obedience, which finds its fulfilment in the perfect obedience of Christ in the Incarnation and on the Cross…We too shall be truly free if we learn to obey as Jesus did.”
If we allow governments to take away our freedom we have chosen to become slaves.
It is fundamental, as Bl. John Paul teaches that: “To keep the Commandments is to be faithful to God, but it is also to be faithful to ourselves, to our true nature, to our deepest aspirations.”
There are two ways of becoming an enslaved and oppressed people: 1] an individual or government by sheer force of military might conquer and enslaves a nation; 2] silent acquiescence in the face of totalitarian legislation.
Attributed to the German Christian Pastor Niemoller: “First they came for the Jews and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. They came for the communists and I did not speak out because I was not a communist. Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me.”
They have come for the Catholics and all believers, they have come for parents: who will speak out?

KONY 2012 AND PEACE

noreply@blogger.com (Arthur Joseph) — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 03:56:00 +0000

So millions of people have already viewed the KONY 2012 film yet numerous are the warmongers.

Millions of our brothers and sisters suffer violence daily.

If we start in Asia, for example being aware of the suffering people of Tibet, North Korea, Burma, then move further on and become aware of people suffering in places like Central Africa, Somalia, even consider the tens of thousands of families in Mexico suffering the death or wounding of loved ones, or simply living in fear, glance at the Middle East and the continuous conflict between the people of Israel, the people of Palestine, then as horrific as the violent Kony is, the daily horror Bashar al-Assad inflicts on his people no less evil, ……well I confess it is difficult to pray for peace without interiorly being filled with a combination of rage and weariness.

When O Lord will You grant us peace?

When will hatred be banished from the face of the earth?

Most of all when will I embrace with a repentant heart, begging the grace to be converted into a man of peace, a true heart of love for every human being, understanding that here within my own heart, my own being, lie the seeds of conflict, of failure to forgive, of harsh judgment, the seeds of war?

So long as I need to have a sense of control in relationships, put any of my emotional, material, even spiritual needs ahead of those of my brothers and sisters, so long as even a hint of resentment is within me, because of a perceived slight or even a blatant aggressive, hateful act against me, then I am part of every disorder and conflict, of every war and hatred.

To be a true person of peace, to plea for an end to war, hatred, anywhere on the face of the earth I must, approaching to stand before the face of the Father in the Name of Jesus to make the plea for an end, for example to the suffering of my brothers and sisters in Syria, I must beg the Holy Spirit to purify me of everything within me that is not Christlike.

Twelve years on since the Great Jubilee I admit, perhaps not unlike most people, rarely do I return to mediate upon the critical teachings of Pope John Paul connected to the Great Jubilee.

The documents of Vatican II continue to be a template for the Church, for all of us, moving in pilgrimage across the ages.

I believe the various teachings of Pope John Paul, in particular his teachings specifically related to the Jubilee are templates for this new millennia, new century.

So I have been meditating on Bl. John Paul’s message for the World Day of Peace, 2000, of which just a few quotes:

“….To everyone I affirm peace is possible….a need deeply rooted in the heart of every man and woman…humanity, however much marred by sin, hatred and violence, is called by God to be a single family…..” [cf. Message of His Holiness Pope John Paul II, January 1, 2000, para. 2]

This understanding of shared humanity, personhood, making us one single family, is critical for if I understand every human being is indeed my brother and sister then whatever happens to them becomes very personal and to intervene to protect them when they suffer becomes truly urgent.

“Clearly, when a civilian population risks being overcome by attacks of an unjust aggressor and political efforts and non-violent defence prove to be of no avail, it is legitimate and even obligatory to take concrete measures to disarm the aggressor.” [cf. para. 11]

It may seem at bid at odds with a message of peace to discover this papal endorsement for such intervention!

It should be noted that later in 2000, coming from an initiative of the government of Canada, which established the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty and first proposed “ responsibility to protect”, in 2006, the United Nations Security Council formally adopted this duty to our suffering brothers and sisters.

How we need to pray the UN will fulfill its duty!

Bl. John Paul teaches for each of us: “….there remains a fundamental duty for all men and women of goodwill…to commit themselves personally to the cause of peace….” [cf. para. 12]

So certain questions then pose themselves, for example: Am I truly at peace with everyone? Is there anyone I fail to love, be patient with, compassionate to? How do I love Kony, al-Assad …whomever?

Our emotions may appear to contradict our hearts.

Love is not a feeling in the first instance but a choice.

Do I choose to love?

Do I choose to be a peacemaker?

Jesus [Mark 9:29] teaches some evil spirits are not easily cast out; there must be prayer and fasting.

Lent is a good time to pray and fast for peace.

Regina Pacis come and help us!

WHEN GOVERNMENTS WAR AGAINST FAITH AND FAMILY

noreply@blogger.com (Arthur Joseph) — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 23:56:00 +0000

The prelude to Holy Lent this year in the United States at the federal level and, given provinces have great power, in Canada at the provincial level, is outright war against Christianity in general, the Catholic Church in particular and against the sanctity and sanctuary of the family.

Bl. Pope John Paul gave ALL families, not just Catholic/Christian families, their charter rights, a copy can be found at: http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/family/documents/rc_pc_family_doc_19831022_family-rights_en.html

As the Pope teaches, 3D: the family, a natural society, exists prior to the State or any other community, and possesses inherent rights which are inalienable;

When an American President or a Canadian Premier seeks to invade the sanctity of the family, such as stating by law what parents may/may not teach their children, such action is evil, destructive and is the very type of action which spreads ever more dangerous anger throughout the land.

In Article 5 of the Charter the Holy Father reminds us that: Since they have conferred life on their children, parents have the original, primary and inalienable right to educate them; hence they must be acknowledged as the first and foremost educators of their children.

Listen up government warriors against the family: that inalienable right means to educate their children in conformity with the parents’ own moral and religious convictions, and includes the right to choose the specific schools or other means necessary to teach their children in the faith of the family.

The Church herself is a family, Christianity in general is a family and so when a President seeks to force Catholic institutions to subsidize in any way medical procedures or drugs whose sole purpose is to murder unborn children then such a President has chosen not to wage war on an institution alone but to wage war against God, the creator and sustainer of life, to throw the gauntlet down before Christ, to insult the Holy Spirit.

Those government leaders referred to herein are waging war against every citizen’s religious liberty, which includes the freedom to be a non-believer, and it is a slippery slope for if government can do that, and if government can make it a crime in the sanctity of the home for parents to teach their children according to their faith – then the question must be asked: why do we wage war against the Taliban? Are they not already, to the extreme, doing what American and Canadian politicos are doing?

This Lent already are we not experiencing the prophecy of Jesus: “….you will be hated because of Me….many will turn from the faith and will betray and hate each other….but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved..”[cf. Mt.24:4-14]

PRAYERFUL THIEF!

noreply@blogger.com (Arthur Joseph) — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 20:57:00 +0000

Was heading out to get supplies for the hermitage when I noticed I had left the car unlocked.

Obviously some thief had noticed that too.

Only thing missing: a rosary!

Guess whomever it was felt an urgent need to pray!

Conclusion = WHEN YOU HEAR: WAR!

noreply@blogger.com (Arthur Joseph) — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 21:54:00 +0000

Jesus states this bluntly: “He who is not with Me is against Me, and he who does not gather with me scatters.” [Mt.12:30]

Yet there appears to be a paradox within all that has been said about spiritual warfare.

A paradox apparent in these words of Jesus which are explicit: “…I say to you offer no resistance to one who is evil.” [Mt.5:39]

This is the passage where Jesus tells us to turn the other cheek, to go further than we are forced too along the road.

We can fall into the trap of either assuming fighting in spiritual warfare means head-on confrontation, or the trap of the other extreme, a form of passivity.

Mostly spiritual warfare means loving without counting the cost, forgiving without self-interest, bearing one another’s burden with a light and generous heart, embracing the cross, suffering, spending ourselves in generous intercessory prayer, among which potent weapon is the Holy Rosary, fasting and in particular being faithful to the duty of the moment in our chosen vocation.

A mother who tenderly and patiently cares for a colicky child, a husband who worn out from his day’s labour surprises his wife with a night out, just two examples of how we build the civilization of love with Jesus and defeat the enemy.

It is rather simple: the Holy Trinity, God: first; everyone else: second; last/third: self.

It is to always have before our hearts the teaching of St. Peter: “For this you have been called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example that you should follow in His footsteps. He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in His mouth. When He was insulted, He returned no insult; instead, He handed Himself over to the one who judges justly. He Himself bore our sins in His body upon the cross, so that, free from sin, we might live for righteousness. By His wounds you have been healed.” [1 Pt. 2:21-24]

It may feel unfair that we should suffer in silence when the other side gloats and screams their position – yet the power of silent, prayerful witness in front of the slaughter-houses where babies are murdered is a peaceful, powerful sign of contradiction and truth of life in the face of evil and death.

When we contemplate Christ in the cross our hearts will be enlightened with understanding by the Holy Spirit about the immense power of sacred silence.

Bl. Pope John Paul has taught us in his letter on human suffering, SALVIFICI DOLORIS: “Down through the centuries and generations it has been seen that in suffering there is concealed a particular power that draws a person interiorly close to Christ…”

In spiritual warfare most of us will not be called to martyrdom by blood.

All of us however are called to the martyrdom of death to self, of laying down our lives moment by moment in union with Jesus, as the Servant of God Catherine Doherty teaches in her book MOLCHANIE: “Consider the martyrs in the Roman coliseum. Who can count them all?....Many not only forgave, but like St. Stephan, implored the Lord not to hold against them what their persecutors were doing……You must enter a whole new dimension, cross the bridge of God’s silence into His love….you are completely in love with Him…You stagger…like a person intoxicated with love, seeking your Lover…..back and forth He walks the desert of your souls crying out, ‘Don’t you know how much I love you!’ You answer, ‘You are God. You understand. You brought me to Your silence, and Your silence brought me to Your love. And now I want to identify myself with You completely. I want to die for You.’”

In his book WHEN JESUS SLEEPS, Archbishop Martinez encourages us: “The very state in which Jesus is found in the Most Holy Sacrament is a state of silence….He placed Himself in that state so that He might have nothing else to do but love…Let us not forget it: the summit of love is silence. Love that can still be expressed with words has not arrived at its perfection….Let us understand the silence of the Eucharist and put ourselves in unison with Jesus in that wondrous stillness.”

Our Lady of Silence will teach us this truth and in this, as in all aspects of Gospel life, Our Blessed Mother is our consolation, model, help, and protection.

The final word here, then, on being faithful to Jesus, soldiers of Christ, pilgrims of communion of love, is from Bl. Pope John Paul in his encyclical THE GOSPEL OF LIFE: “Mary…helps the Church to realize that life is always at the center of a great struggle between good and evil, between light and darkness….by His Incarnation the Son of God has united Himself in some fashion with every person…..Mary is a living word of comfort for the Church in her struggle against death. Showing us the Son, the Church assures us that in Him the forces of death have already been defeated…The Lamb who was slain is alive, bearing the marks of His passion in the splendour of the Resurrection….we…pilgrim people…people of life and for life, make our way in confidence to a new heaven and a new earth…O Mary, bright dawn of the new world, to you we entrust the cause of life: Look down, O Mother, upon the vast number of babies not allowed to be born, of the poor whose lives are made difficult, of men and women who are victims of brutal violence, of the elderly and the sick killed by indifference or out of misguided mercy. Grant that all who believe in your Son may proclaim the Gospel of life with honesty and love to the people of our time. Obtain for them grace to accept that Gospel as a gift ever new, the joy of celebrating it with gratitude throughout their lives and the courage to bear witness to it resolutely, in order to build, together will all people of good will, the civilization of truth and love, to the praise and glory of God, the Creator and lover of life.”

Part 4 = WHEN YOU HEAR: WAR!

noreply@blogger.com (Arthur Joseph) — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 15:42:00 +0000

Lest at this juncture we become anxious or discouraged this wisdom from the Catechism of the Catholic Church, para. 395: “The power of satan is…not infinite. He is only a creature, powerful from the fact that he is pure spirit, but still a creature. He cannot prevent the building up of God’s reign. Although satan may act in the world out of hatred for God and His kingdom in Christ Jesus, and although his action may cause grave injuries – of a spiritual nature and, indirectly, even of a physical nature – to each man and to society, the action is permitted by Divine providence which with strength and gentleness guides human and cosmic history. It is a great mystery that providence should permit diabolical activity, but ‘we know that in everything God works for the good of those who love Him.’”

Love, rather than the death-darkness of hatred, building the civilization of love, is the heart of the struggle.

As Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Elder Zosima teaches in THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV: “….what is hell? I think it is the suffering of one who can no longer love….knowledge of active, living love….this is why that creature was given life on earth, and with it, time and space. And what happens? The privileged creature rejects that priceless gift, fails to appreciate it, does not even like it, sneers at it, and remains unmoved. When such a creature leaves the earth….when he is already in sight of heaven and allowed into the presence of the Lord, he is filled with suffering at the thought that he will appear before the Lord never having loved and will be brought into the presence of those who have loved him but whose love he has scorned…..”

That is the ultimate horror of satan and the damned.

Who among us would choose such darkness?

It is the absolute absence of Gospel love which facilitates all the factors that bring about the murderous action of aborting an unborn child, a tiny creature created by Love Himself to be beloved of Him, of us; it is the same absence which facilitates the contraceptive, pornographic, addicted, greedy, self-centered culture which denies the objective truth that every human being, from cradle to grave is, like myself, beloved in the image and likeness of God, a redeemed person, and as baptized persons living, breathing, acting temples of the Holy Spirit.

No wonder we Christians need to be soldiers of Christ, need the intervention of St. Michael, are warred against by satan. [Rev. 12]

Reflecting on the life of the patron of parish priests, St. John Vianney, and drawing on the wisdom of Pope Paul VI, Fr. George Rutler writes in his work THE CURE D’ARS TODAY: “The modern age, which has seen the power of evil so gigantically displayed, is also a time of disbelief in the existence of evil. In 1972 Pope Paul VI told nations reeling from hunger, violence, indolence, and nuclear threats that evil is not the absence of good: it is a ‘living, spiritual being’ who is perverted and perverts: ‘What are the greatest needs of the Church today? Do not let our answer surprise you as being over-simple or even superstitious and unreal: one of the greatest needs is defense from that evil which is called the devil.’ And he publicly lamented that the smoke of satan had even entered the Church. The warning redresses what had already become the quandary of Vianney’s progressivist culture. Father Ravignan said of the devils in the nineteenth century: ‘Their masterpiece, Sirs, has been to get themselves denied by the age.’”

Fr. Rutler also stresses, and this is vitally important for us to peacefully, with intimate confidence in Jesus never to forget: “The evil one terrorizes no one as much as he is terrified himself by Christ the Victor….”

Thus as we read in St. Mark and elsewhere in the Holy Gospel: “He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey Him.” [cf. Mk. 1: 21-28]

By His grace we are challenged to embrace the stark reality spiritual warfare is the nitty-gritty daily, even nightly for many souls, life of the Church Herself and of all the baptized.

Both Revelations 12 and St. Paul speaking to the Ephesians, chapter 6, underscore this reality: “…draw your strength from the Lord and from His mighty power. Put on the armor of God so that you may be able to stand firm against the tactics of the devil. For our struggle is not with flesh and blood but with the principalities, with the powers, with the world rulers of this present darkness, with the evil spirits in the heavens. Therefore, put on the armor of God, that you may be able to resist the evil day and, having done everything, to hold your ground. So stand fast with your loins girded with truth, clothed with righteousness as a breastplate, and your feet shod in readiness for the Gospel of peace. In all circumstances, hold faith as a shield, to quench all the flaming arrows of the evil one. And take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. With all prayer and supplication, pray at every opportunity in the Spirit. To that end, be watchful with all perseverance and supplication for all the holy ones and also for me, that speech may be given to open my mouth, to make known with boldness the mystery of the Gospel….” [V.10-19]

One of the challenges we face in spiritual warfare is, seeking always the grace of purity of heart, to express this with a pure mouth.

By this I mean not only avoiding swearing, blasphemy, telling off-coloured stories, and most critically never gossiping, but also never to speak ill of another, but always to speak with sincere charity.

Sometimes in the heat of the battle I have heard both clergy and laity speak ill of the ‘other side’.

In many Western countries a blatant example of unbridled and unholy converse can be found in the way, by their own words or advertisements, political candidates speak about each other.

St James teaches us: “If anyone thinks he is religious and does not brindle his tongue but deceives his heart, his religion is vain. Religion that is pure and undefiled before God and the Father is this: to care for orphans and widows in their affliction and to keep oneself unstained by the world. [Ch. 1]

Jesus teaches us this about anger and forgiveness, the latter being the external expression of a heart which is pure, humble, meek like His own: “…whoever is angry with his brother will be liable to judgement…[Mt. 5:22]…I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your heavenly Father..[Mt.5: 44, 45]…If you forgive others their transgressions, your heavenly Father will forgive you. But if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive you your transgressions.” [Mt. 6: 14ff.]

Anything we do which is contrary to the teachings of Jesus, contrary to the Holy Gospel means we are if not deliberately, at least to a dangerous degree by slackness, withdrawing from the field of battle.

In this spiritual war there is no neutral ground.

Part 3 = WHEN YOU HEAR: WAR!

noreply@blogger.com (Arthur Joseph) — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 16:55:00 +0000

Again drawing from Jesus’ words in Mathew: “All power in heaven and on earth has been given to Me…behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age.” [Mt.28: 16-20]

Again and again as we reflect upon the mystery and reality of spiritual warfare we do well to keep before the eyes of our hearts the salient truth that Christ IS risen, He IS with us.

In his novel ALL THE PRETTY HORSES, Cormac McCarthy, has characters reflect thus: “Rawlins leaned and tipped the ash from his cigarette into the fire and leaned back. ‘You ever think about dyin? Yeah. Some. You think there’s a heaven? Yeah. Don’t you? I don’t know. Yeah. Maybe. You think you can believe in heaven if you don’t believe in hell? I guess you can believe what you want to.’”

In those few lines of dialogue we find clues to the core malaise of our over indulged culture, a culture of relativism and death, of anxiety and violence, of addiction and extremes between those who have so much, those who have so little, a culture in the darkness of so much anger and divisions, hated and war.

We have been created by Love for love, by Life for life, by Light for light.

Even within the depths of their being every person hungers for love, life, light and for the baptized this hunger is, or should be if we open to it, urgent!

The urgency is for fullness of communion of love with the Most Holy Trinity.

The one who refused communion of love for the eternal stench of hatred and aloneness, is what has him so dangerously jealous of us and why he wages war against Love; he chose the eternal cold of darkness, for the fires of hell burn not with warmth but with the scalding relentlessness of liquid nitrogen; he assaults us not because he cares a wit about us but because of his hatred of Jesus.

When I glance out of the windows of my urban hermitage into the alley and see men and women, homeless dumpster divers, I can observe them with prayerful love and compassion as my brothers and sisters, or I can chose to judge them as anything ranging from dirty to druggies or whatever.

I mention this because one of the ways the evil one weakens our being in union with Jesus in the battles of spiritual warfare is to suggest judgment.

We Christians should be observant about the reality of the culture of death, however if we are to be faithful to the Gospel mandate: “…do not judge that you may not be judged….” [cf. Mt.7:1-5].

Commenting on this, Erasmo Levi-Merikakis, in his book FIRE OF MERCY HEART OF THE WORLD, notes: “ The important nuance here is that, if we do not judge others, most likely others will go on judging us, but God will not judge us, and that one Judgement at the threshold of eternity is the only crucial one…If I had the mind of God I would forgive all, which means I would sustain rather than judge, or, better still, my very judgement would consist of forgiveness, because it would judge the misery and plight that underline most human actions.”

If we be still for a few moments and reflect honesty about abortion, domestic violence, Islamists, clerical abuse, a particular political party or whatever pushes us towards unbridled emotion/harsh thinking, we will discover how indeed we judge and whether or not we have the mind and heart of Christ.

Satan relies on human harshness and hatred, judgement and un-forgiveness, on anger because these emotional whirlpools sap our spiritual strength and distract us from being truly Christlike lights in the darkness.

In Revelation we are given a further insight into the mind and heart of God who, long before He is shown releasing the horsemen, the Lord casts His gaze upon the Church, upon us, lamenting from His heart: “…I hold this against you: you have lost the love you had at first. Realize how far you have fallen. Repent, and do the works you did at first.” [Rev. 2:4, 5] – and – “…I know your works; I know that you are neither hot nor cold. I wish you were either cold or hot. So, because you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth.’ [Rev.3:15, 16]

Once again we are reminded the first place of battle within this war is in the depths of our own being.

To be engaged in spiritual warfare is always the struggle to be faithful to our baptismal vocation, to be converted anew each day, cooperating with the action of the Holy Spirit within us as each day we take up our cross, His cross, and follow Jesus.

Anything less is surrender to being at the very least, cold of heart and soul, clearly at the very worst to be lukewarm.

The first letter of St. Peter, in a sense the first papal encyclical, is another template for how to live as faithful Christians, to embrace suffering as individuals, as Church [cf. 1 Pt. 1-5:7] and urges us to: “ Be sober and alert for your opponent the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.” [v.8ff.]

The Servant of God, Catherine Doherty, in her book SOUL OF MY SOUL, expresses everything discussed here very bluntly: “What is He calling us to? He is calling us to what each of us most deeply desires. He is calling us to a life that will bear fruit, for sterility is the most tragic thing that can happen to us. Remember the parable of the fig tree? God offers us fertility. He offers us a life of unimaginable fruitfulness, because He offers us the possibility of helping Him build His kingdom. What is that kingdom? It is you and me, and the girl who takes drugs, and the alcoholic down the street. His kingdom is the lame and the blind, the lonely and the jobless, the rich and the poor. It includes all human races. It is the whole world.”

Are we then through our struggle to be faithful, through our prayer and action, crying out for Divine Mercy for every human being, crying with the Church, maranatha! Come back to us Jesus, or through our lack of faith, repentance, love, lukewarmness, have be we deliberately or inadvertently through our fascination with or surrender to the culture of darkness and death become conjurers?

“Macbeth: How now, you secret, black and midnight hags, What is’t you? All the witches: A deed without a name. Macbeth: I conjure you by that which you profess, howe’er you come to know it, answer me, though you untie the winds and let them fight against the churches, though the yeasty waves confound and swallow navigation up, though bladed corn be lodged and trees blown down, though castles topple on their warder’s heads, though palaces and pyramids do slope their heads to their foundations, though the treasure of nature’s garments tumble all together even till destruction sicken, answer me, to what I ask you.

First witch: Speak. Second witch: Demand. Third witch: We’ll answer. First witch: Say if thou’dst rather hear it from our mouths or from out masters. Macbeth: Call’em, let me see’em.”

Shakespeare above, and in his own fashion Dostoevsky in novels, reveal this horrific human tendency to dabble in, or choose to invoke, powers and spirits of darkness and death, for example through the occult/pornography as two blatant examples, but we can also do so by giving into anger, hatred, ego, greed, etc..

We have Jesus, Mary, St. Joseph, St. Michael the Archangel indeed all the Angels and Saints for guidance and protection from every activity of evil spirits.

Most importantly we have Jesus Himself in the Holy Eucharist. Frequent participation, humbly, in the Sacrament of Reconciliation, and most critically in Holy Mass and Holy Communion envelops us with sacred shields, gives us a holy sword with which to battle the enemy.

In his work, in particular in his book HEALING YOUR FAMILY TREE, Fr. Hampsch teaches how we may indeed by impacted by the actions of others, warning clearly that: ``We must look particularly for involvement either in drugs or in the occult, which most often opens the door to evil spirits; also where there has been activity of a bizarre sexual nature. Within the occult, some practices are more deleterious, more dangerous, spiritually, physically, and emotionally. For instance, astrology is certainly a dangerous practice but nowhere near as dangerous as satan worship. Within the range of occultic practices, things…spawning demonic intervention would include astrology….the use of Ouija boards, consulting mediums, engaging in séances, using tarot cards,…fortune-telling….The prayer for relieving such bondage must involve exercise of consummate faith in Jesus [Mk.9:23]and spiritual maturity reflected in prayer and fasting. [v.29]

Part 2 = WHEN YOU HEAR: WAR!

noreply@blogger.com (Arthur Joseph) — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 16:05:00 +0000

Spiritual warfare is NOT some future event which will suddenly overtake us in the so-called ‘end times.’

These ARE, as every time preceding our own time since His Resurrection, Ascension and the gift of the Holy Spirit, the end times.

Spiritual warfare is the nitty-gritty of baptized daily life.

It is not the exclusive prevue of monastics, it IS reality for every one of us.

You cannot choose to be a conscientious objector, nor live as a non-combatant.

Either we are Christian soldiers or we will become that euphemistic bromide: collateral damage!

Our stark, and I suggest most urgent choice, is to choose if we shall be swept along by the tide of history, without participating in it actively as faithful disciples of Christ – or – choose through the strength and ongoing grace of Baptism to follow Jesus, to be with Him, fully engaged in the struggle between good and evil, life and death, to be true Christian warriors, passionate intercessors with and in Christ, crying out with Him to the Father for the fullness of Divine Mercy upon the whole world.

It is to choose to be with Jesus a sign of contradiction, thus living icons of hope, or to so blend in with the culture of death in its darkness we are invisible.

In many respects the entire Holy Gospel according to Matthew is a template, a battle plan if you will, for participation to the full in Christ’s spiritual warfare, and victory, over satan.

Matthew also presents us with the Gospel of compassionate love and truth.

When we gaze upon our brothers and sisters enslaved within the culture of death, become the ‘people in darkness’, yearning even if they are not sure they are, for light to shine upon them, not for us some gnostic holier than though egomaniacal attitude.

Lord no!

Ours should be hearts that are as His Heart, burning with love and hearts “…moved with pity for them because they were [are] troubled and abandoned, like sheep without a shepherd.” [cf. Mt.9:36]

One simple way of being engaged in this spiritual warfare, being living signs of contradiction and icons of light, life, hope, is to be proclaimers of the Gospel of Life, builders of a civilization of love, following the template Jesus Himself gives us in Matthew 25: 31-47 wherein Jesus makes everything so one-to-one personal between us and Him in the very person of all our brothers and sisters.

Of course spiritual warfare finds its primary battlefield within the depths of our own hearts and souls, and before we can courageously venture forth to the wider battlefield all around us we must first be fully, and constantly, engaged in this prime battle, this prime place of the struggle.

It is from this place that, if we struggle to be fully engaged and faithful, even if sometimes we get wounded in some skirmish, we will emerge graced and strengthened by the Holy Spirit with the purity of heart, the courage, prudence and discernment to face the great battles of the wider war.

We draw reassurance and courage throughout the battle from the blessing-promises, the guidance of how to be shining signs of contradiction from Jesus’ words: "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are they who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God. Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot. You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven. [Mt. 5: 3-16]

In the ebb and flow we experience within the battles of spiritual warfare we can look around within the darkness of the culture of death and perhaps from exhaustion, the weight of cares, even temptation via poisoned thinking suggested by the evil one, and believe that the battle is not going so well for the side of the Gospel of Truth and Life.

Much like the infamous HAL in 2001 A Space Odyssey, the 1968 film, satan speaks to us a similar lie as HAL did to Dave, the lone surviving crew member on the ill-fated voyage: “Just what do you think you’re doing Dave? Look Dave, I can see you’re really upset about this. I honestly think you ought to sit down, take a stress pill, and think this over….”

At such times it is critical we remember we live within the reality of Christ’s victory over satan, sin, death.

There is in the 19^th century hymn by William Chatterton Dix, ALLELUIA! SING TO JESUS, lines which powerfully express this abiding truth: “….His the victory alone….has redeemed us by His Blood….not as orphans are we left….faith believes, nor questions how….shall our hearts forget His promise, I am with you ever more.?”

PART 1 = WHEN YOU HEAR: WAR!

noreply@blogger.com (Arthur Joseph) — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 18:13:00 +0000

It began some weeks before Christmas, a spike in conversations, phone calls, emails, snail mail with a constant theme: souls feeling crushed under the weight of anxiety, darkness, and doom.

While Christmas brought a few days of respite from the constancy of priests and laity from various countries speaking with or writing to me about what they were experiencing, world news in general with weather extremes, famine, unrest, war, economic chaos, simply underscored what so many were experiencing.

In particular those aware of and fully engaged in lives dedicated to intercessory prayer, seemed to frankly being given, or permitted to experience, external and interior sufferings unceasingly.

For several weeks now I have tried to be attentive to those who have spoken and written, to pray and listen, to watch vigilantly to world events and, with the help of Our Lady of Silence, strive to be deep in the silence of God.

One of the first “words” I heard interiorly was from an old hymn, popular in my childhood not just for revival meetings but even on Sundays!

Perhaps its most famous use during the war was at the end of the film: MRS. MINIVER!: “Onward Christian soldiers, marching as to war, with the cross of Jesus going on before. Christ, the royal Master, leads against the foe….At the sign of triumph satan’s host doth flee….Like a might army moves the church of God….we are treading where the saints have trod……”

You don’t hear this hymn much anymore, certainly not since the 60’s when it was grossly misinterpreted as being a war-song, in the sense of battles between nations.

In truth it is a hymn rooted in Sacred Scripture, for example 2 Timothy 2:1-4: “You then, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable people who will also be qualified to teach others. Join with me in suffering, like a good soldier of Christ Jesus. No one serving as a soldier gets entangled in civilian affairs, but rather tries to please his commanding officer.”

Relativism, secular humanism, and just a basic fear of being a sign of contradiction in this modern, anti-Christian culture of darkness and death has made for throngs of the baptized so cowered by the surrounding culture they are afraid to grasp the above Pauline principle of the role of a true disciple of Jesus: oneness with Jesus in the struggle for the salvation of souls, for the transformation of this culture of darkness and death into a civilization of light, of life, of love.

Yes, equally sad and dangerous, are those Christians with such an apocalyptic bent who basically disdain other human beings, and while prophesying ‘the end is nigh’ don’t really yearn to see the beautiful face of Jesus returning, rather they want God to come and smack down those they deem to be the real sinners.

Thankfully each Holy Mass begins with recognition of our personal sinfulness and absolute need of Divine Mercy.

Jesus Himself cautions us in Mark 13:7: “And when you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed; this must take place, but the end is not yet.”

In his novel, published the same year as the horror of 9/11: THE CONSTANT GARDNER, John le Carré casts a critical an eye, long before the current economic chaos, towards the darker side of the emerging capitalist world order and puts these words in the mouth of one character: “And tuberculosis is mega-bucks: ask Karel Vita Hudson. Any day now the richest nations will be facing a tubercular pandemic and Dypraxa will become the multibillion dollar earner that all good shareholders dream of. The White plague, the Great Stalker, the Great imitator, the Captain of Death is no longer confining himself to the wretched of the earth. He is doing what he did a hundred years ago. He is hovering like a filthy cloud of pollution over the West’s own horizon, even if it is still their poor who are his victims.”

Virulent strains of TB are certainly present among the homeless in our larger cities, leprosy, and myriad other sicknesses plague the human family – yet the greatest disease, the most virulent plague destroying Western civilization in particular, and fueling the hatred of Islamists, diminishing the fabric of society, reducing entire populations below minimal replacement reality, and itself the bloodiest of wars, is the plague, the holocaust of abortion coupled with the systemic actions of government, media, which daily weaken the sacred institution of sacramental marriage and family life.

In Revelation chapter 6 we find revealed for us two devastating apocalyptic events which certainly, starkly, illuminate the reality of spiritual warfare in our day.

Rev. 6:5-8: “When he broke open the third seal I heard the third living creature cry out, ‘Come forward.’ I looked, and there was a black horse, and its rider held a scale in his hand. It said, ‘A ration of wheat costs a day’s pay, and three rations of barely cost a day’s pay. But do not damage the olive oil or the wine.’ When he broke open the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature cry out, ‘Come forward.’ I looked, and there was a pale green horse. Its rider was named death, and Hades accompanied him. They were given authority over a quarter of the earth, to kill with sword, famine, and plague, and by means of the beasts of the earth.”

Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Afghanistan ; ebola, leprosy, TB, AIDS; drought, extreme storms; massive unemployment, sovereign debt crippling entire nations; Islamist terrorism; homelessness, gang warfare: how can we deny we are at war?

AH! TO BECOME MAD!

noreply@blogger.com (Arthur Joseph) — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 23:31:00 +0000

It is a sign of the length of winter this far north, at the end of the shortest day of the year when we had barely seven hours of daylight, that today would be the beginning of longer days – yeah, by 8 seconds!

Contrast that with the approximately 12 hours of daylight in Somalia, with the attendant heat!

Famine still stalks that land and its people, though hardly a news outfit in the world, at least the major ones like BBC, CNN, seem to mention it anymore.

Egypt and Syria have around ten hours of daylight being further north than Somalia, while North Korea these days they get about 5 hours of daylight, though many would say the people live in perpetual darkness.

I mention those odd bits of information simply because, as we await the birth of the Holy Child, Light Himself born to shatter all darkness, in my prayer here in the hermitage I hear the cry of human beings for hope, for light, for love – these great yearnings only Jesus can truly satisfy so I pray, let us all pray, everyone will come to know Him, welcome Him into the manger of our hearts.

In the media these days, stories about economic matters seem to dominate, stories too about how anxious ‘the world’ is about what lies ahead: will the world economy collapse, will the Arab spring turn into an Arab winter, will North Korea start a war, will……………O Jesus how we need you!

Each day I walk a different area of the city, praying everyone will come to know him and yesterday I was wary of the ice on the sidewalk,[ the older I get the more cautious I am about ice when I walk, falling at my age leads to serious broken bones] so I was increasingly irritated at the man approaching, riding his bicycle towards me.

Irritated that someone would place my arthritic knees at risk by invading MY space with his bicycle.

As the man got closer I noticed he had the facial features common to a particular type of mental handicap and became more interiorly irritated, this time against myself for being such a sidewalk hog.

In that same instant the man past me, at a clip, as he said, with a great smile on his face: “Hello there! How are you? “

Not only a gift of light bursting into my interior self-preoccupied darkness, but a reminder the only way out of any darkness, economic crisis, oppression by dictators, step back from the precipice of war, to feed the hungry, is if, like that beaming man on his bicycle, my focus, our focus, like Jesus’, is on other and not self.

My youngest sister is clearing out my parents’ home, going through everything she keeps sending me packages of letters, photos, etc., she feels I might be interested in.

One such package contained the remains of my ration book from the war.

Millions of Americans today depend on food stamps, a modern variation of the old ration books.

We serve hundreds of hungry homeless people in the soup kitchen where I volunteer.

Over two millennia after the birth of Jesus, after Light Himself shattered the darkness, after the Holy Child came to teach us who we are, how to love, how to lay down our lives, how to touch and love Him by feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the sick and those in prison, welcoming the stranger we remain a world obsessed with power, money, pleasure and wonder why we are so anxious.

We live in a cult of celebrity so much so I dare say the average Catholic knows more about Jersey Shore than the great desert of the early hermits and monks, knows more about Lindsay Lohan than the Little Flower, more about ………………….

It is not simply that we Christians fail to tell the story of salvation, which granted in this culture takes great effort, but we fail to tell our own story, our own history, to each other.

Check, for example, how often from the pulpit you hear a homily about applying the Gospel to some social justice issue and how often you hear the story of the life of a saint!

I am not suggesting either/or, rather we need both.

How can we have a sense of purpose, courage, possibility to preach the Gospel with our lives without compromise if we are unawares other human beings like ourselves have lived such light filled, joyful lives, all the while embracing the cross, the ordinariness of human life?

Few days remain before the Holy Child will be placed in our midst, in the manger of our hearts, anew by our Blessed Mother.

Here are just three examples of faith lived:

He lived until he was over a hundred years old. He was born in Egypt of Christian parents but orphaned at an early age, with a younger sister to care for. One day in church his heart was broken open when he heard the words of the Gospel, spoken by Jesus to the rich young man. So moved, he immediately gave away all but what was needed to care for his sister. He gave away what was left, and went deep into the desert.

There he became the greatest of all spiritual warriors.

He is ABBA ANTHONY.

Divine Wisdom was fused into his heart in the crucible of decades of solitary life in the desert, battling evil spirits, being emptied of his false-self by the Holy Spirit, who illumined Abba Anthony and, with fire, configured him to Christ, so that this saint became known as ‘the friend of God!’

Abba Anthony famously said when asked about the future: A time is coming when men will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad, they will attack him saying, ‘You are mad, you are not like us. ‘

Does the surrounding culture think we Christians are mad because we are different or have we become so like others we pass among the throng unnoticed?

The Communion of Saints is part of the living treasury of the Church’s life, the storehouse of wondrous works of grace from which the Church brings forth models of hope and holiness for us, which are ever ancient and ever new.

Closer to our own time another saint emerged from that great tradition which has streamed across the millennia, developing into various forms of monastic-desert life, as well as various forms of religious orders of teachers, nurses, etc., and the modern new forms of consecrated community life in the Church today.

One of the more ancient, tracing itself back to Mount Carmel and Elijah, at least within pious memory if not hard fact, is the Carmelite order, from whose religious sisters in nineteenth century France came a woman known popularly as the Little Flower, whom Bl. Pope John Paul II made a Doctor of the Church, namely: St. Therese of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face.

On my journey of return to the faith, before I entered the seminary, her autobiography “The Story of a Soul” became a source of hope and courage.

A few words of wisdom from her: How sweet is the way of LOVE...True, one can fall or commit infidelities, but, knowing HOW TO DRAW PROFIT FROM EVERYTHING, love quickly consumes everything that can be displeasing to Jesus; it leaves nothing but a humble and profound peace in the depths of the heart.

This is the most difficult truth about actual conversion for many souls to accept: It is not the length of the journey, but the inward depth of the journey; it is not the quantity of the battles but the willingness to open wide the doors of our being to His transfiguring touch which enables us to become what He infuses within us at baptism, His own Light so we become light in the world.

Too often, infected as we Christians are with the Zeitgeist egocentric selfishness pervading our culture, we deny the reality of configuration to Christ by the Holy Spirit as meaning cross and death precede tomb and resurrection.

That contemporary Zeitgeist flays about in the quicksand error of love as what I experience from another, rather than soaring into the communion of joy which knows and lives love’s truth: love is gift of self to another first in imitation of God who is Love and first loves us, makes Himself First Gift!

St. Therese shows us how to respond to the culture of death, darkness, greed, power: In order to live one single act of perfect Love, I OFFER MYSELF AS A VICTIM OF HOLOCAUST TO YOUR MERCIFUL LOVE, asking You to consume me incessantly, allowing the waves of infinite tenderness shut up within You to overflow into my soul, and that thus I may become a martyr of Your love, O my God!

In the lives of the Saints we see in concrete terms of human life the marvellous deeds of the Holy Spirit, brought to ultimate fruition in a manner which should encourage our wounded souls and hearts with the joyful acceptance in our own beings that nothing is impossible to God.

An even closer contemporary of this generation, whose importance in the deepening of Gospel life in the lives of ordinary Christians cannot be overly stressed, and herself a pioneer of the new forms of consecrated life in the Church, is the Servant of God Catherine Doherty.

Born in Czarist Russia, forged into adulthood as a nurse in the bloodletting of the First World War and the Russian Revolution, she was led by the Spirit into the desert of external poverty and service of the poor. Through those experiences she also was plunged into the purifying fire of internal poverty.

Often referring to herself as a poor woman, she was incredibly rich in her passionate love of Christ and all human beings, especially the anawim, those bent over by the burden of external or internal impoverishment.

From the mystery of Christ in the desert, through the life of Abba Anthony, the self-offering as victim of the Little Flower, to the treasury of practical spiritual wisdom from her own heart, Catherine Doherty poured herself out in service of the poor and filled with illumination from the Holy Spirit in her days spent in contemplation in her hermitage — always called by her according to its Russian name: Poustinia — comes clear wisdom: When God becomes a Child, then the wrong image of ourselves vanishes. Because in a cradle, in a crib, we see Love…..we look…and ask ourselves, “Why do I think that God does not love me? Here He is.”

Let us pick up the Holy Child and follow Abba Anthony into the solitude of our hearts and there pour ourselves out in prayer, with and through the Holy Child, for suffering humanity.

Let us hold the Holy Child deep in our hearts and with St. Therese offer ourselves, with and through the Holy Child as holocaust of love for those who do not know they are beloved.

Let us carry the Holy Child as Catherine Doherty did, bringing Him in person where possible, and always through ardent prayer, to the furthest corners of the earth to the homeless and hopeless, to the hungry and oppressed, bring He, Holy Light, to the places of darkness – yes – let us be so unlike others they shall declare we are mad!

And we will be absolutely, totally mad, nuts, crazy, insane, WITH JOY, and look, the Child is smiling upon us!

THE WONDER OF IT ALL!

noreply@blogger.com (Arthur Joseph) — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 22:38:00 +0000

Today as we celebrate the solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Holy Mother of God I am struck by the awesome wonder of it all!

The “all” in this context means the beauty, holiness of this extraordinary woman, to be sure, but also of the exquisite tenderness of Love Himself, this Trinitarian bending towards all of creation, towards every single human being who ever has, who is, who shall ever be gifted with breath of life!

Each of us knows deep within the very core of our being, indeed in every fibre of our being, in soul’s yearning, mind’s seeking, and heart aching the immense impetus to seek to love and be beloved.

That is a most minuet ache, experience, of the infinite of infinite, if I might stretch the statement somewhat, ache, yearning, desire and active will flowing as immense fire of life and love from the Holy Trinity which, because God is love, in a sense compels creation, specifically creation of the human person, hence urges the self-gift of the Second Person of the Holy Trinity to become a man, a human person, in the wonder of the Incarnation, to pour Himself out in the selfless gift of Himself in His Passion, Death, Resurrection, and more to remain with us, nourishing us with love and holiness in the Holy Eucharist and flowing within this river of Trinitarian love-fire-life the Holy Spirit dwells within each of us, constantly setting alive within us the capacity and ability to love and be beloved.

All this Divine design hinges on a simple word from an ordinary yet extraordinary woman, a true woman of the ordinary people, of an ordinary family, a woman betrothed, living in a small village in an occupied country, a woman aware as are countless women on the face of the earth today of life as an oppressed and impoverished people – yes all the splendour of life, of love, of holiness of redemption, of the outpouring of the Holy Trinity hinging on one word, freely spoken, freely willed, freely chosen, love-gift: FIAT!

We accept, as almost so ordinary few reflect on the fact, that the paten and chalice upon which/in which bread and wine are placed to become by the power of the Holy Spirit the Body and Blood of Jesus, the reality of Jesus in the Holy Eucharist communing infinite of love-life-holiness to us, be made of gold, be blessed.

Hence this great solemnity, this creating of she who was to be the Mother of God, the very one who would give to Jesus the body and blood He would pour out for us, given to us as the critical food and drink essential for fullness of life, for our ability to love and be beloved, is as much celebration of the reality of the Immaculate Conception as it is celebration of preparation and purpose, of present and promise: preparation of the living vessel who would contain the One who cannot be contained; purpose of immediate, as it were, unfolding of redemption; in the present moment Mary is with us as icon of discipleship, trusting abandonment to the Holy Will of the Father, of intimate confidence in Jesus and taking up our cross and following Him, of communion of love animated by the Holy Spirit; promise too for in her assumption into heaven is revealed to comfort us the reality of Jesus as resurrection and life offering us too the everlasting embrace of Trinitarian love.

Yep, the wonder of it all!

JESUS: YESTERDAY, TODAY, FOREVER

noreply@blogger.com (Arthur Joseph) — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 00:26:00 +0000

On this day in 1994 Bl. Pope John Paul released his Apostolic Letter: Tertio Millennio Adveniente [As The Third Millennium Draws Near].

How quickly it seems we have arrived already near the end of the first year of the second decade of the millennium!

Over and over, leading up to the Great Jubilee Year 2000, Bl. John Paul reflected upon the words from Hebrews that Jesus is indeed the same yesterday, today and forever.

I have pondered this mystery in my heart today, recalling that time in my life when, indeed, Christ was making all things within me new through the mystery of the call to priesthood.

This afternoon I took a break from my prayer and spiritual reading to treat myself to the movie Titanic, which I had originally seen when it premiered.

My heart was struck how that disaster was truly a Babel experience for early twentieth century civilization, for it so traumatically demonstrated the limitations of technology because of human arrogance.

Then my heart reflected upon that other technological trauma, the atom bomb, and how it too showed us the dangers inherent in our misuse of what we discover.

These reflections led my heart to the Holy Rosary, the simple prayer of children and adults, of childlike hearts.

The Rosary weaves into our hearts contemplation of the mysteries of our redemption: the life, passion, death, glorification of Christ.

The Rosary invites us to place our hands in the hand of the Mother of the Redeemed.

Once again watching that movie, Titanic, my heart was struck by the powerful scene of the priest, holding desperately with one hand onto a ship’s cable stock, his other hand holding onto a desperate soul, she in turn being clung to by others.

The priest is first shown praying the Hail Mary and then quoting from Revelations.

Scene of a modern flood, a sinking tower of Babel, children crying out to their Heavenly Mother, confident she will speak to Jesus of them, the priest a living bridge between terror and peace, darkness and light, despair and hope, sin and mercy, death and eternal life.

This is the challenge for we priests to, like that priest on the deck of the Titanic — granted, a movie priest on a movie set, nonetheless a valid symbol — like that priest we are called, in spite of our own inner struggles with doubt, battle with fear, to stand firm, one hand holding the Anchor Himself, Jesus, the other, holding the hand of every human being.

It means, as at our ordination when we lay cruciform before the laying on of hands and our consecration by the Holy Spirit, the shape of our priestly lives, our very being, is the Cross.

It is the shape of Christ.

It is, no matter what may be happening on the surface of our beings, to dwell always in sheer joy!

So my heart was moved then to meditate upon the central phrase from Sacred Scripture Bl. Pope John Paul constantly repeated as the prism word through which the illumination of the Holy Spirit shines into souls: Jesus who was, is, always will be with us. [Hb. 13:8]

The great truth of this cry from Hebrews is found in the very mystery which is summit and the very source of our sacramental life: the Most Holy Eucharist.

Christ IS the same in His Real Presence, yesterday, today and forever.

In the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass we rightly proclaim, at Christmas, the today of His Birth, at Easter that this is the night of our redemption, the day of His Holy Resurrection.

Through the mystery of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, of His Real Presence, we can enter the Bethlehem cave as surely and as in reality as the shepherds and behold the Child; take the place of the woman, our sister, at His feet and bathe them with our own tears; the place of the blind man, the prodigal, the Good Thief, our brothers, of the woman at the well, the ointment bearing women at the Tomb; take our place among those in the room on Holy Thursday — as indeed happened at my ordination — in the Upper Room at Pentecost.

All men and women are invited to open wide the doors of their being and encounter Christ in all His mysteries.

This is the wisdom known to the childlike of heart when they pray the Rosary and contemplate the mysteries; enter into those same mysteries, led deeply by the hand of Mary.

This is the illumination granted each soul who participates in the communion of Love during Holy Mass.

This is the reality of life lived sacramentally.

Christ, like a divine leaven, always and ever more fully penetrates the life of humanity, spreading the work of salvation accomplished in the Paschal Mystery. What is more, He embraces within His redemptive power the whole past history of the human race, beginning with the first Adam.

The future also belongs to Him: “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever “ (Heb.13:8). For her part the Church “seeks but a solitary goal: to carry forward the work of Christ Himself under the lead of the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete. And Christ entered this world to give witness to the truth, to rescue and not to sit in judgement, to serve and not to be served “. [Ter. Mill. Adveniente: para. 56]

Standing on the shore looking out across the ocean, the burial place of thousands of souls over the millennia, walking amid the rubble of Hiroshima, hearing the cries of starving children, seeing the horrible films of death camps, it is understandable we can wonder, as the humble Rabbi who taught me about the theological challenge of the Holocaust did — as the equally humble woman survivor of Hiroshima also taught me — what of God, where God, when such things happen?

At such a moment, in the utter desperate depths of such a question, as the waters reach our necks and we sink in the mire without a foothold, when our throats are raw with crying out, eyes burned dimmed scanning the horizon as we seek our God-(Ps.69)-, the place to the Father is where His Son is, upon the Cross, within the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass — there Christ is in the depths of all human suffering, the desperation of every human shuddered ‘why?’ — His being there in fullness of His ‘ the same, yesterday and today and forever ‘, is also our awaiting at the mouth of the empty Tomb where we listen, for He approaches, calling us by name!

....it is helpful to recall the words of the Pastoral Constitution Guadium et Spes: “The Church believes that Christ, who died and was raised up for all, can through His Spirit offer man the light and the strength to measure up to his supreme destiny. Nor has any other name under heaven been given to man by which it is fitting for him to be saved. She likewise holds that in her most benign Lord and Master can be found the key, the focal point, and the goal of all human history. The Church also maintains that beneath all changes there are so many realities which do not change and which have their ultimate foundation in Christ, who is the same yesterday and today and forever. [op.cit. para 59]

IN THE CAMP OF THE 99%

noreply@blogger.com (Arthur Joseph) — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 22:17:00 +0000

More than any other reading since it was released on October 24^th by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, their statement on the global economy, I have been trying to come to grips with just what are they thinking?

Never before has a Vatican statement caused my being to shudder.

I am particularly uneasy about the call for a “world political authority”……”A supranational Authority……”

Immediately I thought of two books written in the last century, one near the beginning and one near the end: MR. BLUE by Myles Connelly and FATHER ELIJAH by Michael O’Brien.

I find it extremely difficult to agree with a document which frankly seems to me to miss the point: real people are suffering and arguing for more power over them by some supranational authority strikes me as bizarre.

Granted the so-self-named 99%, also known as the “Occupy Movement” appears not only bizarre in its own right but equally out of touch with the vast majority of the human family.

I visited the local camp.

I volunteer in a soup kitchen so am well experienced with the various smells of people unable to access clean clothes or showers, with people suffering all forms of mental/addiction pain, indeed often, as just the other day, helping a man who came to the door having just been savagely beaten and robbed of what little he had.

The local camp used to be a nice little park with green lawn, flowers, benches to sit on, an oasis in the desert of concrete towers.

Now the grass is gone replaced by mud and human debris, the smell is awful, the occupiers a mixture of ages, races, backgrounds, but mostly just angry and without a single cogent argument to clarify what they want.

Messages on cardboard span the whole spectrum of anti-just- about- everything and everyone, yet without clear suggested solutions to anything.

In a way it is just sad.

What again made me think of the two books mentioned above is the growing anti-Christian dimension among the 99% - witness the smashing of a statue of Our Blessed Mother by occupiers in Rome, seeking to disrupt Holy Mass and do damage inside the Cathedral in Vancouver.

No sane person can deny the global economy is in a mess or the degree to which greed, coupled with lax oversight of financial institutions and markets, makes not institutions but real people working in them responsible for the current crisis.

As a consequence real people, real families, indeed entire nations of real people, real families are suffering horribly and even those not hungry or out of work or who have lost the family home, suffer pernicious anxiety given how uncertain the future appears.

The Vatican document does, somewhat, reference the long tradition of social encyclicals – but all that remains somewhere in the ether unless bishops take the time to teach their priests in depth from this treasury and unless priests take the time, with in both cases competent faithful laity, with expertise in economic and social matters, to educate the wider Catholic community, indeed the entire Christian community so that, rather than a dangerous ‘supranational authority’ or the impotence of some ‘occupy’ movement, we have the birth of real energized by the Gospel of Life men and women, lay people, ordinary husbands and wives, widows and widowers, youth who will transform the world in the light and mercy, the teaching and life of Christ.

It is the sheer bigness of government and financial institutions, corporations and frankly of dioceses/parishes that is crushing people.

We need to learn from the sparrows: little, free, soaring yet industrious, communal yet never so huge a flock that they block out the light! [cf. Mt. 6:26; 10:29 & Lk.12:24]

BALLOONS & JESUS

noreply@blogger.com (Arthur Joseph) — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 15:14:00 +0000

One year ago today John and Lucille Everett, [http://blog.catholiclove.com/] and click on 2010 for their posts, experienced the immense pain and confusion of parents who suffer the earthly death of a child as that child is taken up into the eternal embrace, the everlasting communion of love, with the Most Holy Trinity.

John is my adopted son and thus in marriage Lucille is equally the child of my heart and so it was right that John called me just before two in the morning that fateful day and the Angels sure worked hard as the Everett family live in the next city over from this one, yet I made the trip as if somehow transported – of course by that I mean no red lights at intersections, for example.

It was a long and exhausting day especially for John and Lucille and for their other three children.

Their firstborn, a daughter, was just old enough to truly understand her little brother Dominic had just been born into heaven, but likewise she would not get to hold him here on earth.

Their third child, a son, was too young to grasp what had happened.

Their middle child, also a son, busied himself playing in the snow and did not say much, but I could tell he was feeling and sharing the pain of his parents.

I was granted a great grace of awareness of Dominic’s presence that day and every day since and each morning confidently ask his intercession for his family here on earth.

Yesterday, his brother the middle child, taught me a tremendous lesson about faith, about the tenderness of Jesus, about the Communion of Saints and reality of the gift of life, and yes about Jesus and balloons.

I can do no better than simply relate the dialogue without comment:

Grandson: “Papere we sent a yellow balloon up to heaven for Dominic to play with. He is with Jesus.”

Granddad: “Good for you. I know Jesus will play with the balloon too.”

Grandson: “Yeah. He likes Dominic. It is good for Jesus to have company.”

EXCLUSIVE - NOT!

noreply@blogger.com (Arthur Joseph) — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 19:30:00 +0000

Recently I wrote about the jealousy of God who loves us so.

Today I confront something within my own life, more in my emotions than heart, which is not pleasant to face.

I see more deeply now areas within me which undoubtedly trigger Divine Jealousy, most often experienced as Him pulling away until I see what He wishes to have me willingly face and hand over to Him for transformation, conversion, healing.

Two events have prompted this reflection.

The second in an email from a priest, who writes frequently needing affirmation, something I am pleased to give him as best I can, always with assurance of fraternal affection and prayer.

Part of loving one another, as we know, as Christ loves us is to affirm one another, listen to each other, pray.

The first event and the one which has been a source of intense emotional upheaval, resistance to the Holy Spirit trying to inform, teach, touch, heal, and came in the form of a single word in the midst of another note.

One single word: exclusive!

The word was in a note from a friend of a friend about why I would not be included in a trip to the mountains, as in: “sometimes we need exclusive time together.”

First I was totally shocked by the word, then by its implications, and for days now by the emotionally explosive impact.

Many of us, in spite of repeated toe-stubbing experience to the contrary, continually figure we can make it to the kitchen for a middle of the night snack or to the bathroom in the dark.

Those who learned the lessons about the silliness of repeated toe-stubbing either use night lights or put on the main lights.

I will confess this stubborn old man still egotistically figures if he tries just one more time and stays utterly focused he will make it – not!

Like spouses, whose only exclusivity of relationship in the sanctity of marriage is sealed, rooted, lived, grows, in Christ – thus paradoxically because He is their shared bond, friend in that sense there is no exclusivity, priests vowed to chastity likewise have foresworn any ‘exclusive’ relationship other than with Jesus, and thus in and through and for Him have an all-inclusive relationship with every human being, some close such as parishioners, in my case the homeless, as well as family, personal friends and by extension every human being – but the moment any of those relationships be extra-Christ, that is either excluding Him directly or in the person of someone else seeking to be included, we have begun to forget who we are as priests, as baptized disciples of Jesus who calls us to love others as He loves us.

So what a shocker that word: exclusive.

A shocker not primarily because I was being excluded, rather my reaction.

Granted like thousands of priests these days I live in a type of perpetual exclusion, exiled and denied association and fraternity with other priests, for example.

Approaching seventy as more and more confreres, family members, friends die that is another type of ‘exclusion’ which unfolds. This is natural but I suspect, for me at least, not yet fully embraced.

Certainly the intensity of grief the other day when a beloved priest friend-brother died proves the point.

Though I suspected it was happening, and like the proverbial stubborn-nighttime-toe-stubber kept ignoring brut fact, I have been in denial that I have formed particular attachments.

What a pickle!

It is part of the work of the Holy Spirit in calling us to open ever wide the doors of our being to true purity of heart, detachment, to having Jesus as our love-focus, indeed forming us to be intimately the beloved of the Divine Bridegroom, that He, with a surgeons skill, though often it feels like He has skipped giving anesthetic – seeks to excise anything within us that is globs of darkness, not to mention sin.

Sure seems these days His scalpel, which is actually the laser like light of His love, is that word: exclusive.

I assumed, since 99% of the time it is true, whenever I am blessed to spent time with one or the other in particular of the two friends I always had Jesus with us and certainly when it is we three it is actually we four.

Clearly while that may be my prayer, my intent, in my old age, feeling more and more vulnerable and insecure a neediness has taken root, a type of dependency – no wonder I am experiencing the jealously of God!

So I have been praying this all be healed and thus for the grace NOT to resist the Divine Surgeon and my eyes fell on this word from the Servant of God Catherine Doherty, which prompted these reflections:

“What is friendship? It is never exclusive. It is two people, hand in hand, as it were, going to God – but never forming a closed circuit and simply feeding on each other. They always have one hand free to hold anyone who comes into that friendship.”

Ouch!

It is a word from the Tender Holy Spirit, a reminder, an invitation for me to be much more vigilant over my heart and emotions, indeed to imitate and be one with Jesus who is excluded from so many souls, to embrace in all its dimensions the pain of exclusion for love of Him, for souls.

“The word of God is something alive and active; it cuts like any double-edged sword but more finely; it can slip through the place where the soul is divided from the spirit, or joints from the marrow; it can judge the secret emotions and thoughts. No created thing can hide from Him; everything is uncovered and open to the eyes of the One to whom we must give account of ourselves. [Hb.4:12-13]

Uncomfortable!

noreply@blogger.com (Arthur Joseph) — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 18:30:00 +0000

I almost wrote above “uncomfortable reading!” – But that would be disingenuous.

The fact is I have been using: The Return of the Prodigal Son, by Henri Nouwen, for spiritual reading and meditation.

Pray for the people close to me because uncomfortable is really too tame a word.

I have been emotionally more erratic, needing way too much attention and just generally discombobulated of late.

Nouwen has written such a truthful series of reflections they leave you exposed, squirming, by the time you get towards the end of the book confronting inner poverty at its depths.

If grace is called for, if openness to the Holy Spirit takes place then great healing, restoration, takes root.

The journey between the depths of poverty and restoration in Christ is when an added grace is needed, to tread humbly near and with those we love: humbly by simply giving them a head’s up of the intensity of what is unfolding within self and loving them enough when we are in that tough place to decline invitations unless they are prepared to be like the Good Samaritan with the beat up traveller.

In the end, of course because nothing is impossible for God, all will be well.

Pray dear friends for I am a mere beginner on the journey and if you read the book hold tight to Our Blessed Mother while on the journey!

PIUS XII AND 9/11

noreply@blogger.com (Arthur Joseph) — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 21:59:00 +0000

Sometimes great feasts, such as the Nativity of Our Blessed Mother, which is today as I write, are easy to, as it were, enter into.

Other times it can be difficult what with the vagaries of daily life to stay focused on the wonder placed before us.

Praying before writing this afternoon I was focused on Our Blessed Mother and the stark reality of 9/11, the 10^th remembering of which approaches, and for the first time was able to recall that day, and the day some months later when I was at Ground Zero with a Firefighter friend from New York who asked my company so he could return there and truly grieve – having been there on the day and lost so many brothers – yes thinking of Our Blessed Mother my heart suddenly understood she was/is the mother of everyone on that day, each day, this day – finally now I can remember: without anger or fear.

One who throughout his life had immense trust in her maternal love, intercession and protection was the Venerable Pope Pius XII and in my own way of preparing to remember on Sunday the reality of 9/11 decided to reflect upon his encyclicals.

I have been surprised that in the end I made notes from only two: Summi Pontificatus, his first written in the early days of WWII, October 20^th, 1939 to be exact and what I believe was his last, Meminisse Iuvat, written July 14^th in 1958 a couple of months before he died.

To this day most people recall where we were, what we were doing on that horrific morning and day.

Perhaps, as someone mentioned to me, undoubtedly the time has come to focus more on 9/12 – the wisdom being that eventually the sun did set and the sun did rise again the next morning and we have had ten years of new days since.

The secular philosopher George Santayana is usually credited with the fatalistic statement: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to fulfill it.”

There is however, even within basic Christian common sense, a grain of truth in the statement, to wit: if we forget who we are and whose children we are, that is we are beloved children of God called to love as He loves, then likely we will forget the past, the lessons of the past, and may well make choices which, in the end, appear an inevitable fulfillment, or rather re-enacting of the past.

Usually not the better aspects of the past either.

Between his birth in 1876 and his death in 1958 Pope Pius witnessed civil disturbances throughout his homeland, wars among the European and other powers, and the unrelenting tensions of the Cold War.

As regards the two bloodiest of global conflicts, the First and Second World Wars, his priestly duties, culminating in pontifical responsibilities, had him thrust into the darkness and anguish, the immense human suffering of both.

During the same period of history he witnessed the rapid advances from cavalry charges to aerial bombardment of cities culminating in the devastation of atom bombs; likewise rapid changes in social structure, the sciences, politics, etc., etc., and the crushing anti-person power of states over whole populations from Fascism, Communism, Nazism and a post war world which gradually became enslaved to unbridled materialism, nihilism and countless other philosophies, movements, ideas which diminish the sacred dignity and freedom of the human person.

In the shadow of 9/11, ten years on, some of the Pope’s words, cries from the heart really, pleading prayers, bear re-discovering in light of the prayer request posed to me by my Firefighter friend at Ground Zero: “Pray Father we, the whole world, will be converted!”

From Pope Pius:

What age has been, for all its technical and purely civic progress, more tormented than ours by spiritual emptiness and deep-felt interior poverty?

What heart is not inflamed is not swept forward to help at the sight of so many brothers and sisters who, misled by error, passion, temptation and prejudice, have strayed away from faith in the true God and have lost contact with the joyful and life-giving message of Christ?

At the head of the road which leads to the spiritual and moral bankruptcy of the present day stand the nefarious efforts of not a few to dethrone Christ; the abandonment of the law of truth which He proclaimed and of the law of love which is the life breath of His Kingdom.

…..one must not forget the essential insufficiency and weakness of every principle of social life which rests upon a purely human foundation, is inspired by merely earthly motives and relies for its force on the sanction of a purely external authority. [ Summi Pontificatus]

………….a just peace does not yet prevail, nor do men live in concord founded on brotherly understanding. For the seeds of war either lurk in hiding or - from time to time - erupt threateningly and hold the hearts of men in frightened suspense, especially since human ingenuity has devised weapons so powerful that they can ravage and sink into general destruction, not only the vanquished, but the victors with them, and all mankind.
If we weigh carefully the causes of today's crises and those that are ahead, we shall soon find that human plans, human resources, and human endeavors are futile and will fail when Almighty God - He who enlightens, commands, and forbids; He who is the source and guarantor of justice, the fountainhead of truth, the basis of all laws - is esteemed but little, denied His proper place, or even completely disregarded. If a house is not built on a solid and sure foundation, it tumbles down; if a mind is not enlightened by the divine light, it strays more or less from the whole truth; if citizens, peoples, and nations are not animated by brotherly love, strife is born, waxes strong, and reaches full growth. [Meminisse Iuvat]

THE JEALOUSY OF GOD: AND SOME NOT HIS!

noreply@blogger.com (Arthur Joseph) — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 23:53:00 +0000

There are times when I write and then, a neat advantage of using the computer, I hit delete either because the essay has been a mere rant with no charitable purpose, something utterly self-serving or so pedantic as it would either bore those who read it or have them hit delete for the entire blog!

There are times when I write, and this is rather humbling, I sense what has been written is minus my fingerprints: that is I have managed somehow to write words for the Word Himself.

Finally there are times, like right now, when the writing is a self-imposed cathartic exercise to try and get past emotional wounds, confusions, and resistance to the healing touch of Christ, to hear over the cacophony of my emotions or faith-doubts, the clear voice of the Holy Spirit asking trust, surrender, yes, conversion – that change of heart which seems never ending if we wish to be totally Christ’s.

I am at an age in life when: even if being banished by my bishop had not radically cut off from me most of those in my life I care for, removed me thousands of miles from the ‘where’ of life I felt at home, now death takes away even more treasured friends and family members and the circle gets smaller.

Likewise at the same time the growth of John and Lucille in their married union and the expanse of their family of growing children means the circle is even smaller – sure there are moments like babysitting or the very rare gathering where I am present but, mostly I believe they are unawares it happens, both family and friends present tend to relate among themselves and the old man is left watching the children.

Eventually you stop asking, though not expecting, for attention, for things important to you like a trip to the mountains or to a hockey game, because no longer able or comfortable doing such on your own, asking and it not happening, the pain of disappointment becomes too much – forgotten birthdays etc., you refrain from comment aware others are some busy and forget you not out of a failure to love, you tell yourself, it is just the way society is these days.

Of course none of those interior conversations ease a wit of the pain and, dangerously if not checked and handed over to Jesus through Mary, such painful interior conversations can slop over into doubts about whether God loves us or not.

Then comes the real shocker when some event you are excluded from smacks you so hard an emotion surfaces you don’t want to admit is even there until its raging tenacity seeking to be faced wears you down so much you unwittingly begin to cooperate with the feelings and thoughts which nourish them: insecurity, fear, resentment, anger – and once aware of them you are ready to be devoured by self-disgust.

The name of the shocker: jealousy.

There is a part of the brain called the amygdala which is like a storehouse the manger of which seems not to care a whit about housing in the same room, as it were, cats and dogs, lions and sheep, which are stand-ins for diametrically opposed emotions, some ferocious enemies of one another, all in the same place.

No wonder some days we humans feel like our interior lives are a perpetual war zone and that even before going to the deeper level wherein spiritually we seem to struggle simultaneously with God and the devil!

Of course the devil is capable of one thing only: hate.

Whatever else he may seem to express or talk about or suggest or do it all comes down to the single spawn of his cold, dark reality of pride: hate, hatred especially of the children of God: beloved children of the Father, beloved spouses of the Son, beloved temples of the Holy Spirit.

God who is love, pure love, says of Himself He has jealousy – hence the conundrum!

Divine jealousy, like divine anger, neither is an emotion, nor is divine love.

Each is an aspect of GOD IS LOVE, an expression of the infinite of infinite divine love-fire: for us!

If we wish to have our disordered emotions healed, embrace full and joyful surrender to whatever the Father wills or permits in our lives, whatever Jesus asks of us, wherever He asks us to be with Him, indeed to surrender to by whatever means the Holy Spirit heals, purifies, converts, sanctifies, then, I believe, we need to understand divine jealousy if we hope to grasp even an iota of the divine-love-fire-gift of our very being.

It is NOT as Descartes claims that I think and thus I am!

It IS that I AM beloved, thus capable of thought – all thought, the neat, nice, loving ones and those less so!

In Exodus, with the sound of His “I AM” still singing throughout creation and in human hearts God who is love states bluntly in His own words directly or through the mouths of others: I, the Lord, your God, am a jealous God…the Lord is ‘the Jealous One’….the Lord, your God, is a consuming fire, a jealous God….your God….who is in your midst, is a jealous God. [cf. Ex. 20:5; 34:14; Deut. 4:24; 6:15].

In essence these words are the aching heart of love Himself who has created us as His beloved and He is virtually pleading with us to understand He loves us, to love Him, to love ourselves enough that all our human need for ‘other’ and any response from ‘other’, love returned for love, must be what they are intended for: means of embracing ever more His love for us – never a replacement.

But we do make those ‘others’ replacements for Him because they seem so real, tangible, closely present and so when they fail we think it is ‘our’ need not being met.

Sure there is some truth to that but the deeper, fuller reality is the pure-burning-white-light-truth we are ‘feeling/experiencing’, beneath the emotional chaos, IS the consuming fire of His jealous love for us.

Now I won’t quote them here, as in this moment it would cut to the emotional bone way too deeply, but now all those teachings of Jesus about how we have to leave dad and mom and son and daughter and place and can’t serve two masters and o yeah by the way when we fail to pay attention to each other, that one about declining the wedding invitation because we have places to go and fish to fry and other people to see…..that is a turning away from the Divine Bridegroom present in ‘other’ who is in front of us and……………….

It is all about love: His love, our love, my love, your love.

Now when Jesus tells us to love ‘other’ as we love ourselves the presumption is indeed that we truly love ourselves – that is we move and live and have our being rooted in the Trinity, rooted in God-love, knowing hey: it is not how I was accepted or rejected or whatever as a child that testifies to my Lovableness/not as a person; it is not how I am remembered for that family outing or whatever that testifies, etc., etc., - fill in your own pain, disappointment, rejection – it is my VERY living, breathing, heart beating, yes emotional turmoil, which testifies I am beloved of Love Himself, for He is incapable of creating a single person He would not love.

The difficult challenge, the never ending struggle then is both to embrace the purifying fire of Divine-Love-Jealously and that it burns most intensely when we are ‘jealous’, that is experience the pain of the failure of ‘other’ to affirm our existence.

Of course no husband, wife, son, daughter, parent, friend can ever affirm that in full – but it sure helps if they slake our thirst from time to time with a wee dram of their loving presence!

Finally, He Himself who is the living-water, the wellspring of life, of love, yearning to slake our thirst to the full, gives us the ultimate word about the infinite of infinite intensity of how God loves us as Jesus says to us with every one of our heartbeats: As the Father loves Me, so I also love you. Remain in My love {Jn.15:9}.

Why the silent scream?

noreply@blogger.com (Arthur Joseph) — Sat, 06 Aug 2011 01:14:00 +0000

Before dawn this morning I was checking the latest emails, of which two informed me of brother priests: one died peacefully in his 83^rd year, after 55 years of priesthood and the other died by his own hand.

Out of respect for the priest who committed suicide I include here no other details suffice to say his is the second suicide of a brother priest reported to me this week.

I knew the first priest personally, though we had not seen each other in more than 20 years as the country in which he was born, lived, served is far away and his health prevented travel and my own circumstances likewise.

Heart to heart, geography is irrelevant since at the altar, in prayer, we were/are always together in the Holy Hearts of Jesus and Mary.

The second priest, until today, was unknown to me by name, but every priest shares in unity at the altar and in the Holy Hearts.

Normally my reaction when I hear of a priest taking his own life is one of intense pain, and prayer for mercy to be lavished upon him – yet this morning I was suddenly gripped with utter fury and found myself asking God where all the real bishops are? Where have they gone? Why do the bishops we have seem lacking compassion, courage, enough manly fatherhood to hear the silent scream of their despairing priest sons?

It is now mid-afternoon and the fury has abated, mostly, and I have prayed with affection for our bishops but cannot shake this sense something has gone terribly wrong that bishops in particular, but frankly all priests and yes anyone who knows a despairing priest, well somehow we are missing the clues, or don’t love enough or………..

There was a time when, it is said of St. John Chrysostom, that alone of all the bishops he refused to kowtow to the Emperor and spoke rather bluntly to the imperial personage who apparently told the saintly bishop: “No bishop has ever spoken like this to me!”

To which St. John replied: “Then clearly you have never met a real bishop!”

Courage!

The bishop who ordained me saw himself as father-servant of his priests.

For example when we would be on retreat the bishop insisted on being sacristan, laying out vestments, preparing the altar. As well in the evening he would walk around praying his rosary and, stopping by each priests’ room, gently asking about how we were – not how our parish was but how we personally were.

One final example: even though he had to act as required when I was falsely accused he stanchly defended my innocence and when I was convicted of something I did not do paid for an appeal and once I was acquitted restored me to active ministry.

He has since died but I sense always his fatherly presence.

Compassion!

Eventually I settled down even more before I began to write this and was praying for all despairing priests when suddenly I remembered the first time I saw a copy of “The Scream” and how transfixed I was and yet how it seemed incomprehensible to me any human being could be in such apparent despair.

Each time a priest commits suicide I admit I tremble while praying for his immortal soul, always with intimate confidence in Divine Mercy, yet aware every one of us might also fall into despair.

I am blessed to have a loving and supportive family, loving and supportive confreres, each of whom keeps a close eye and checks, especially when I am stressed, offering all needed support – and – they never believe me if I claim to be okay when I am not.

To quote from the diary of Edvard Munch who painted “The Scream”: “I was walking along a path with two friends – the sun was setting – suddenly the sky turned blood red – I paused, feeling exhausted, and leaned on the fence – there was blood and tongues of fire above the blue-black fjord and the city – my friends walked on, and I stood there trembling with anxiety – and I sensed an infinite scream passing through nature. “

All of us: bishops, priests, laity need urgently to beg Christ to have His heart with which to see, His ears with which to hear the silent scream of despairing priests.

Indeed we should be trembling, not so much with anxiety but with the intensity of our courageous, compassionate, active attentiveness and concern.

We need hearts and smarts, that is the wisdom to gently, yet if needed also firmly, to check that our priests are taking proper physical, emotional, spiritual care of themselves and if not then we need to intervene, to help them – for the silence around priestly suicide is itself the cry of our Mother the Church for her children who are no more.

THE FATHER'S LOVE LETTER

noreply@blogger.com (Arthur Joseph) — Sun, 31 Jul 2011 02:21:00 +0000

My Child,

You may not know me,
but I know everything about you.
Psalm 139:1

I know when you sit down and when you rise up.
Psalm 139:2

I am familiar with all your ways.
Psalm 139:3

Even the very hairs on your head are numbered.
Matthew 10:29-31

For you were made in my image.
Genesis 1:27

In me you live and move and have your being.
Acts 17:28

For you are my offspring.
Acts 17:28

I knew you even before you were conceived.
Jeremiah 1:4-5

I chose you when I planned creation.
Ephesians 1:11-12

You were not a mistake,
for all your days are written in my book.
Psalm 139:15-16

I determined the exact time of your birth
and where you would live.
Acts 17:26

You are fearfully and wonderfully made.
Psalm 139:14

I knit you together in your mother's womb.
Psalm 139:13

And brought you forth on the day you were born.
Psalm 71:6

I have been misrepresented
by those who don't know me.
John 8:41-44

I am not distant and angry,
but am the complete expression of love.
1 John 4:16

And it is my desire to lavish my love on you.
1 John 3:1

Simply because you are my child
and I am your Father.
1 John 3:1

I offer you more than your earthly father ever could.
Matthew 7:11

For I am the perfect father.
Matthew 5:48

Every good gift that you receive comes from my hand.
James 1:17

For I am your provider and I meet all your needs.
Matthew 6:31-33

My plan for your future has always been filled with hope.
Jeremiah 29:11

Because I love you with an everlasting love.
Jeremiah 31:3

My thoughts toward you are countless
as the sand on the seashore.
Psalms 139:17-18

And I rejoice over you with singing.
Zephaniah 3:17

I will never stop doing good to you.
Jeremiah 32:40

For you are my treasured possession.
Exodus 19:5

I desire to establish you
with all my heart and all my soul.
Jeremiah 32:41

And I want to show you great and marvelous things.
Jeremiah 33:3

If you seek me with all your heart,
you will find me.
Deuteronomy 4:29

Delight in me and I will give you
the desires of your heart.
Psalm 37:4

For it is I who gave you those desires.
Philippians 2:13

I am able to do more for you
than you could possibly imagine.
Ephesians 3:20

For I am your greatest encourager.
2 Thessalonians 2:16-17

I am also the Father who comforts you
in all your troubles.
2 Corinthians 1:3-4

When you are brokenhearted,
I am close to you.
Psalm 34:18

As a shepherd carries a lamb,
I have carried you close to my heart.
Isaiah 40:11

One day I will wipe away
every tear from your eyes.
Revelation 21:3-4

And I'll take away all the pain
you have suffered on this earth.
Revelation 21:3-4

I am your Father, and I love you
even as I love my son, Jesus.
John 17:23

For in Jesus, my love for you is revealed.
John 17:26

He is the exact representation of my being.
Hebrews 1:3

He came to demonstrate that I am for you,
not against you.
Romans 8:31

And to tell you that I am not counting your sins.
2 Corinthians 5:18-19

Jesus died so that you and I could be reconciled.
2 Corinthians 5:18-19

His death was the ultimate expression
of my love for you.
1 John 4:10

I gave up everything I loved
that I might gain your love.
Romans 8:31-32

If you receive the gift of my son Jesus,
you receive me.
1 John 2:23

And nothing will ever separate you
from my love again.
Romans 8:38-39

Come home and I'll throw the biggest party
heaven has ever seen.
Luke 15:7

I have always been Father,
and will always be Father.
Ephesians 3:14-15

My question is…
Will you be my child?
John 1:12-13

I am waiting for you.
Luke 15:11-32

Love, Your Father,
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THE GAZE

noreply@blogger.com (Arthur Joseph) — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 21:53:00 +0000

Recently I was sent a prayer card and then the digital image taken and enhanced from the image on the Shroud of Turin.

Contemplating this gaze, in prayer, reading, meditation I kept asking Jesus to teach me anew.

Various notes from my reading, yes the famous scraps of paper I have mentioned or quoted in previous posts, have been places where I have found fragments of the answer.

For example Metropolitan Philaretes of Moscow, teaches us that: “The Father is crucifying love, the Son is crucified love, the Holy Spirit is the invincible love of the Cross.”

Immediately I recalled Jesus’ own words that whoever sees Him sees the Father!

In a word then if I contemplate any image, an icon, painting, statue of Jesus, before such tenderness and beauty, be it of Jesus on the Cross or Risen, of Sacred Heart or Divine mercy, most especially if I contemplate Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament – then before me too are the Father and the Holy Spirit.

The gaze upon us then is Trinitarian.

Bl. Pope John Paul notes that: “In contemplating Christ’s face….on the Cross.”, we are before sacred mystery, moved to adoration, love, gratitude, but we do not stop there for Jesus is Risen and “It is the Risen Christ to whom the Church now looks.”

Archbishop Martinez of holy memory notes that the gaze of Jesus is priestly and is the look of one who loves and “..is immolated for the glory of the Father, one who implores graces for souls.”

There is within me, perhaps within you, a natural yearning to ‘see’ Jesus face to face – and no not in some vision, that’s like looking at a hologram – ethereal. You can’t hug a hologram nor be held by one.

Nah I’d like to see Jesus in the flesh, see in the beauty of His eyes, which are the colour of glory, a reflection of the tender gaze towards me of the Father and the Holy Spirit, experience in the depths of my being the closeness of Jesus’s gaze.

He answers that desire 24/7, as the saying goes, for since Jesus says whatever we do to one another is done to Him, for Him, Jesus is of many disguises, thus we encounter Him in each other, are caught up into His tender and love gaze through the eyes of those we meet.

To know the real beauty of His Face, of the Face of the Triune God, I must ask to have the eyes of Jesus, to see every human being as He sees.

Yes, to contemplate any image of Jesus is to open my heart to everyone, to see as Jesus sees, to love and rejoice as He does in the presence of beauty, the beauty of each human being in the image and likeness of God.

SEAL OF CONFESSION

noreply@blogger.com (Arthur Joseph) — Sun, 24 Jul 2011 01:15:00 +0000

The Government of Ireland wants to force priests to violate the seal of confession.

Others have tried, others will try.

My purpose here is not to argue the matter – as a wise man once said: “For those who refuse to believe no arguments suffice.”

Across the centuries governments and kings, state security apparatus under the Soviets, the Gestapo under the Nazis, by torture or imprisonment have all tried to force priests to violate the seal.

In the 14^th century St. John Nepomucene was martyred because he would not violate the seal.

In the 20^th century St. Mateo Magallanes was martyred because he would not violate the seal.

Every priest must be willing to face martyrdom by blood or by imprisonment by modern courts rather than violate the seal.

One of the things Jesus did which so infuriated His enemies was to forgive sins.

In face of this latest assault on the Priesthood let us simply turn to Jesus through the intercessions of those priests known and unknown who have, like Sts. John and Mateo, by blood or other suffering, like St. John Vianney, laid down their lives that the Sacrament of Forgiveness remains intact and inviolate.