Gifts I Don’t Deserve

We try to read the Scripture for Mass before we arrive at church. Sometimes this means we’re on the way in the car when it happens, which is what happened this past Sunday. But usually we at least look it over so that Mass isn’t the first time we encounter the readings. It gives you an extra opportunity to hear it and absorb the message within the various readings.

This past Sunday, the 11th in Ordinary Time (Year C), we read the familiar Gospel before Mass. I was ready to listen again when our deacon proclaimed it, but I was not ready for my reaction to it. Here’s the short form of the Gospel which we heard:

A Pharisee invited Jesus to dine with him,
and he entered the Pharisee’s house and reclined at table.
Now there was a sinful woman in the city
who learned that he was at table in the house of the Pharisee.
Bringing an alabaster flask of ointment,
she stood behind him at his feet weeping
and began to bathe his feet with her tears.
Then she wiped them with her hair,
kissed them, and anointed them with the ointment.
When the Pharisee who had invited him saw this he said to himself,
“If this man were a prophet,
he would know who and what sort of woman this is who is touching him,
that she is a sinner.”
Jesus said to him in reply,
“Simon, I have something to say to you.”
“Tell me, teacher, ” he said.
“Two people were in debt to a certain creditor;
one owed five hundred days’ wages and the other owed fifty.
Since they were unable to repay the debt, he forgave it for both.
Which of them will love him more?”
Simon said in reply,
“The one, I suppose, whose larger debt was forgiven.”
He said to him, “You have judged rightly.”

Then he turned to the woman and said to Simon,
“Do you see this woman?
When I entered your house, you did not give me water for my feet,
but she has bathed them with her tears
and wiped them with her hair.
You did not give me a kiss,
but she has not ceased kissing my feet since the time I entered.
You did not anoint my head with oil,
but she anointed my feet with ointment.
So I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven
because she has shown great love.
But the one to whom little is forgiven, loves little.”
He said to her, “Your sins are forgiven.”
The others at table said to themselves,
“Who is this who even forgives sins?”
But he said to the woman,
“Your faith has saved you; go in peace.”

Rubens: Feast in the House of Simon the Pharisee

Years ago, I learned about the Ignatian method of reflection on Scripture, where you imagine yourself within the story, often as an observer of the scene. I often do this at Mass, sometimes closing my eyes and really working to put myself into the events of the passage. This past Sunday, I easily slipped into the story, imagining that I was watching the scene unfold before my eyes. I looked at Jesus’ face and thought about the tenderness in His eyes as he looked at the woman, who goes unnamed.  I thought about the amount of crying that had to happen for Christ’s feet to be washed by those tears. I thought about the extreme sorrow she had and how she had a real contrition for her sins (just as King David did in the Old Testament reading).

Suddenly, instead of watching, I was the woman. In my mind, I backed away, trying to watch the scene from across the room, but I could not stop being pulled directly in front of my Lord, looking up at Him with tears in my eyes, weeping for my sins that burden me so greatly. Suddenly, I could feel His hand on my face, moving my chin up so I would look him in the eye, as He moved my hair away from my face so He could see right into my own eyes.

I started to pull back again, trying to move myself – staying in the story, but across the room – but He pulled me in again. I started to cry. Not just in the story, but at Mass. I realized that I was struggling not to weep openly, but tears filled my eyes and I could no longer see the pages of my missal in front of me. I thought again about that one sin that burdens me, even though I know I’ve been forgiven. Even though I know it’s Satan who tries to hurt me with it.

“I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven because she has shown great love.”

God gives me such gifts that I don’t deserve. He knows I am trying to trust, trying to hang on to the fact that He forgave me years ago for this sin. But He also knows I’m human and that I just hurt from it to this day. He knows that it’s been hard for me recently – though I am grateful that it hasn’t been as hard as it has been in the past. But it still comes up sometimes, and I have to stop what I’m doing and pray that God pushes away the demons who bring it up to me again.

And so He sends me reminders. Sunday was another of those reminders, and it will carry me forward as long as I hold on to it. And I’m sure that if I forget again, or my grip on this fact slips, He’ll remind me again.

“Your faith has saved you; go in peace.”

Am I Some Kind of Jesus Freak? Session 3 of Lawn Chair Catechism

Hosted by CatholicMom.com

Welcome back to Lawn Chair Catechism! If you haven’t already read any of the previous discussions on the introduction or chapter 1 of Sherry Weddell’s terrific book, Forming Intentional Disciples, that’s okay! You can use the study guide that CatholicMom.com is providing, and if you’re in the mood to get deeper with it, you can order the book here and get free shipping. (Personally, I highly recommend the book. I used the study guide alone for the first 2 weeks, but received my copy in the mail just before vacation and have now caught up with the readings. If you can swing it, or even share a copy with a friend, it’s worth it!)

Okay, housekeeping out of the way. Now it’s time to get into Chapter 2: “We Don’t Know What Normal Is.” No, that’s not a description of my crazy family, you sillies. Not this time, anyway. Sherry spent chapter 1 (“God Has No Grandchildren”) outlining the problem we face as a Church: dwindling involvement in the Church, people leaving the Church in early adulthood and never really returning. The problem doesn’t lie in a lack of catechesis, necessarily, but the fact that so many Catholics don’t have a concept of a real, personal God who loves them. We aren’t helping people develop a personal relationship with God, and they don’t even know they can have one as a result. As Sherry says on p. 57, “One of our most surprising discoveries has been how many Catholics don’t even know that this personal, interior journey exists.” (Emphasis in original.)

There’s this Spiral of Silence that ensues when we sense that we are holding an opinion that is different than the majority of a group we’re in. Our brains literally and physiologically turn a switch that tells us we’re doing something wrong. We tend to stop ourselves from continuing to do something or speak about something when we realize that we are in the minority. Sherry talks about the idea of “normal” being different from what is “typical” in parishes around the country. Typically, we don’t talk about our faith with others very much; we don’t wear it on our sleeves. Typically, we see people who are “on fire for Jesus” as a little Protestant and get a bit freaked out by that sort of talk. But this is not what normal Christianity is supposed to look like.

Sherry and some friends started a support group of sorts to get together and discuss the Faith and to help each other grow in holiness. They outlined some definitions of what “normal” is really supposed to look like:

. . . It is NORMAL for lay Catholics to be excited Christian activists.

. . . It is NORMAL for lay Catholics to be knowledgeable of their faith, the Scriptures, the doctrinal and moral teachings of the Church, and the history of the Church.

. . . It is NORMAL for lay Catholics to have fellowship of other committed lay Catholics available to them, to encourage, nurture, and discern as they attempt to follow Jesus.

. . . It is NORMAL for the local parish to function consciously as a house for formation for lay Catholics . . ..

So how do we get from the kind of Catholic culture that is resistant to talking about our relationship with God to one that is comfortable with being on fire for Christ and wanting to spread that kind of joy and zeal? After all, right now, we’re about here:

The discussion questions, which will help us move towards addressing these issues, are these:

In your own faith:

• Are you comfortable talking with others about your relationship with God?
• Would you say that you’re a “normal” Catholic using the criteria outlined above? Or are you a “typical” Catholic, fighting that feeling that interest in the faith is only for a few pious eccentrics?

In your parish:

• Do you personally have, within your parish, a group of Catholics you meet with regularly, to discuss the faith, study the faith, and encourage each other to greater virtue?
• At this time, does your parish have in place a working system for actively mentoring those who want to grow in their relationship with God?

Let’s start with me, shall we?

Am I comfortable talking with others about my relationship with God? Well, I think so. I didn’t used to be, for sure. But I think as I have become more and more engrossed in my faith, I have found that I am more apt to share my faith with others. It’s not quite the way Jim Gaffigan was joking about, but it’s more a matter of my faith and relationship with God becoming so ingrained in my life that I can’t help but have it come up. And, again, I have quite a ways to go before I’m really a good disciple, as far as I can tell.

I think I vacillate between “normal” and “typical,” to be honest. I would hope I’m leaning more towards normal than I used to be, but I know there are times when I fail to be the Christian I ought to be. That Spiral of Silence, that switch in my head … it goes off sometimes, and I swallow it. As someone who battles introversion, it’s still difficult to stand out and be different. But at the same time, I am no longer self-conscious in crossing myself in public when an ambulance goes by or even simply crossing myself before praying with a group (including when the group is mainly Protestant).

There was a really fascinating part of this chapter, where Sherry describes a frustrating experience when someone explained that spiritual growth happens when you wake up one day and suddenly, you’re different! The kind of growth we’re striving for here is not something that happens, as Sherry puts it, magically. One must make the intentional effort – a conscious decision – to follow Christ, just as Saint Peter and the rest of the apostles did. That decision will help move us from spiritual infancy into spiritual adulthood, though it’s not the end of that journey.

I think what does happen, though, is that as you grow closer to God and learn to love Jesus as a real Person (someone who really exists!), you start to change to be more like Him. It’s so gradual that you don’t see it happening to yourself until, one day, you look back at something from your past and wonder, “How did I get from there to here?”

Gosh, this happens to me all the time. I’ll see a TV show I used to watch, or a movie I once loved, and I think, “I filled my head with that garbage? It’s so awful!” and I realize that I’m no longer the same person I used to be.

Does our parish have a group that facilitates this kind of intentional decision to choose Christ? Well, I think there’s a serious effort through adult catechesis to help us know the Faith better. And I’ve always looked at these are important programs to offer. But I think what has really accelerated my own journey has been my involvement with the Lay Dominicans.

This group doesn’t meet at my parish, but 2 1/2 hours away. We gather monthly to pray and to learn and to move further along the road to holiness through a Dominican spirituality. Dominicans’ lives are based on four pillars: Prayer, Study, Community, and Apostolate (or Preaching). Trying to live a life under the shelter these four pillars give has greatly improved my ability to see God as Someone with whom I am in a relationship. I think about Him as Father, as Savior. And even when I’m feeling spiritually dry, when I persevere and pray anyway, I’m often rewarded with a beautiful insight that drives home this point ever more clearly.

For me, I can no longer imagine being able to move down the path to holiness without these pillars to support me, without the Dominicans to guide me. It’s worth getting up at 5 am each month to make the drive to our meetings. The direction and formation I’m receiving in my Chapter is invaluable, and so I can see Sherry’s point in this chapter so well: we need to be able to get together and share our experiences this way. We need to be in a group where we’re seen as normal, not strange, for being on fire for Jesus. And with the strength gained in that group, we can go spread the fire to others, helping them see the beauty of our faith and the wonder of a real, personal relationship with the loving God and Father who created us and loves us without measure.

That’s when we can get to this point:

What do you think? If feel like you have a real and personal relationship with Christ, how do you share that? What helps to keep your fire for Him burning? Leave your comments here or at the CatholicMom.com site.

Freely Choosing Love Over the World

My husband and I are on a little getaway while our children vacation with my parents this week. For Lauds today, I had this view instead of my usual altar.

It was so peaceful that I easily sailed through the usual 5 minutes of meditation on the reading for this morning with very little of the usual mind-going-into-rabbit-holes I struggle with daily.

Today’s Scripture for Lauds was this:

READING Ezekiel 36:25-27

I will sprinkle clean water upon you to cleanse you from all your impurities, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. I will give you a new heart and place a new spirit within you, taking from your bodies your stony hearts and giving you natural hearts. I will put my spirit within you and make you live by my statutes, careful to observe my decrees. You shall live in the land I gave your fathers; you shall be my people, and I will be your God.

So often, I struggle with allowing God to do this with my heart: to take away my impurities and disordered desires and put in their place a holy zeal for Him and His Church. But again and again, God calls me back, promising that He will do this for me.

If only I allow Him to do it.

Jesus’ Sacred Heart

Taken by Fr. Lawrence Lew, O.P.

God has given us the great gift of free will, which allows us to truly love Him if we so choose. For true love cannot ever be forced upon someone or drawn out of them against their will. Love must be chosen willingly, without coercion. Coming just after the Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, this is a pretty timely reading. Father Lawrence Lew, O.P., wrote this about the Sacred Heart and its founding as a feast:

As St Margaret Mary Alacoque, saint of the Sacred Heart said: “Showing me His Divine Heart, He said, ‘Behold this Heart which has so loved men and women that It has spared nothing, even to exhausting and consuming itself to prove to them its love. In return I receive from the greater number nothing but ingratitude, contempt, irreverence, sacrilege and coldness in this Sacrament of My love. But what I feel still more is that there are hearts consecrated to Me who use me thus.

Therefore I ask of you that… a special Festival [be kept] in honour of My Heart, to make reparation for the indignities offered to It and as a Communion day, in order to atone for the unworthy treatment It has received when exposed upon the altars. I also promise that my Heart shall shed in abundance the influence of Its Divine love on all those who shall honour It or cause It to be honoured’”.

So many of us turn from God’s love. But as I have been praying the Divine Office over the last year, I’ve seen a beautiful pattern in the readings from the prophets: God calls us back to Himself continually. Often, we see the people of God depicted as a bride, but Jesus also let us know that God is our Father. This was especially evident in the parable of the Prodigal Son:

Finally, I realized what it means to say that if we are unfaithful he will still remain faithful, for he cannot deny himself. No matter how much we might deny Him, God will always look for us, searching the horizon for his prodigal sons and daughters. He loves us, and will never give up hope that we will turn our hearts to Him again and come home. Like the father of the prodigal son, His desire is to have all of His children with him, happy and safe in His home. He seeks us out, calls to us from the distance, though we often ignore Him andpretend not to hear. He watches for us – how else could the father in the parable have seen his son “at a great distance” – and when we appear on the horizon, still a long way from being really, truly home, He runs to us and embraces us with the kind of love we can never truly understand in this life.

God seeks us out, and He waits patiently for us as any parent would, calling us back to Himself. He begs us to abandon the life we are leading that is hurting us in ways we cannot see, and He tells us again and again that we can come Home. He will forgive us.

He is waiting for us, searching for our silhouette against the setting sun, waiting for that moment when our figure will appear on the far horizon. When that happens, He will run to us and embrace us even as we weep and confess that we aren’t worthy to be His children any longer.

Because no sin is too great for Him to forgive when we ask Him for it.

Lawn Chair Catechism Session 2: Chapter 1

Welcome to Session 2 of Lawn Chair Catechism! Today, we’re talking about Chapter 1 of Sherry Weddell’s book Forming Intentional Disciples. Don’t worry if you don’t have the book; CatholicMom.com has a study guide here with a summary of the chapter, which is what I’m using today, since I was late in ordering my book. (You’ve got until June 7 to order it for only $10 with free shipping, and then after that, you’ll be able to get it at regular price with free shipping. I have a friend who is reading it on her Kindle, so there’s another option that can get it into your hands faster, though I’m not sure of the price that way.)

So, let’s dive into Chapter 1: God Has No Grandchildren.

In her first chapter of Forming Intentional Disciples, Sherry Weddell describes with detailed statistics the crisis of Catholics leaving the Church. She shares the evidence that most departures happen in young adulthood, and that most who leave never come back. She concludes:

If this trend does not change, in ten years it will cease to matter that we have a priest shortage. The Builders will be largely gone, the Boomers retiring, and our institutions – parishes and schools – will be emptying at an incredible rate.

Sherry goes on to say that this is not a trend isolated in one area of the Church; everyone is affected by this trend. The root of the problem is that few Catholics have an understanding that a personal relationship with God is even possible.

Questions for Discussion:

In your own faith:

• Have you always been Catholic? How did the instruction and mentoring you received help you – or prevent you – from having a personal relationship with God?
• If you were raised in a Catholic home, are your family members all still Catholic? What events among your friends and family seem to explain why some are Catholic, and others are not?

In your parish:

• How’s your “retention rate”? What percentage of 8th graders in your parish are still practicing their faith at age 18? At age 24? Do young adults in your parish stay in touch with their childhood faith community, or do they drift away to an unknown faith?

I did grow up Catholic, but the idea of a personal relationship with God was never something discussed. I don’t think anything really prevented me from having a relationship with Him except for the fact that terminology like that wasn’t used. I always loved God very much, and I always loved being Catholic. My CCD was rather bland for the most part – better than some people my age, but not particularly rigorous – but I gained a love for Holy Eucharist that has stayed with me all my life. (In fact, I received my First Communion on my 8th birthday and cried for joy.) But my catechism classes ended after my Confirmation in the 6th grade (which was not the parish’s choice, but the choice of most parents), and so a deeper level of understanding of my faith was left untouched until my adult years. I think this prevented me from developing a deeper love for the Church and a better understanding of Her teachings.

Consequently, for my family the Catholic Church has not always been the most important thing in our lives. My father was raised Catholic, and he would never, ever leave the Church (which has always been my own attitude), but my mother was a convert whose RCIA class probably left a lot to be desired. My own delving into the Church and her history and teachings has led to me educating my parents on some issues! (Again, my life seems to have been leading up to my involvement in the Dominican Laity!) But grace before meals was only on special days like Christmas, Easter, and Thanksgiving, and I didn’t know about Holy Days of Obligation aside from Sundays until I was an adult.

I sometimes wonder if more challenging homilies on Sundays would help Catholics see the Church as more than the cultural association it seems to be, especially for cradle Catholics. Stronger preaching can lead to a desire to learn more about the faith, which leads us to a desire to be more pleasing to God in order to be closer to Him.

I think this leads to the parish questions, which I think I’ll touch on a little bit. I don’t see a good retention rate among older students who have been Confirmed (which our diocese does in the 10th grade). Many of the high school students become “too busy” for Mass and other parish activities, and it could be that they don’t feel like they could be involved sooner than Confirmation. A good friend of mine, a fellow Lay Dominican, encouraged her high school students to be involved at the parish so they didn’t feel “bored” at Mass. One 10th grade boy started to sing with the choir and discovered she was right: when he was involved in that part of Mass, he saw the Mass as more interesting. He had to pay attention and think about it; it was no longer something to sit through in his pew each Sunday.

But involvement doesn’t always lead to this kind of revelation, and can even become “boring” on its own. I think that helping people see that at Mass they are encountering a Person – Someone real who loves them perfectly – can do a lot towards keeping people in the pews. And further developing this idea by leading parishioners towards this reality while helping them get to know God through His Church will lead them towards a relationship. This relationship is the one that will never fail us, never diminish – it can only grow stronger the more we lean into it! – can lead to better satisfaction in every area of life. Perhaps we’d stop searching for fulfillment through our jobs, spouses, boyfriends and girlfriends, and our experiences if we realize that our fulfillment can only come when we accept God’s love and love Him back.

Barbara Nicolosi wrote about the sorry state of our catechetical programs in America’s Catholic parishes recently, and I think a lot of what she said about fixing the religious education programs in our parishes can be applied to helping people become true disciples of Christ:

The Problem

“Who can name the Gifts of the Holy Spirit?” It was Pentecost, and our pastor was walking up and down the middle aisle with a goofy grin and tone that said, “Bear with me, here.” There were a few embarrassed chuckles from the congregants who hadn’t already tuned out. Father pressed on, “Come on, anybody?” Again, the people dutifully and lightly snickered. This was supposed to be the funny set up of some point, right? I didn’t think it was funny at all. I raised my hand.

I think our pastor was a little put out because he really hadn’t intended for anyone to speak up. He made a comical face and then said, “Really?” The people laughed. Still grinning but with his hands on his hips, Father nodded at me, “Okay, let’s hear it.” So, I answered using the WUCKPuFF formula I had learned back in the third grade from Sr. Mary Randall, RSM. “Wisdom, Understanding, Counsel, Knowledge, Piety, Fortitude, Fear of the Lord.” (Probably because I am a child of the Sixties, I prefer the word “Reverence” to “Fear of the Lord,” but WUCKPuFR just doesn’t work as well as a mnemonic.)

People gasped. Father approached our pew actually shocked. He was intrigued and, I guess, figured maybe I had gotten lucky. “Stand up and say them again. Slower.” So, I did. And then our priest looked around and pointed at me and people applauded. Like I had done something extraordinary. Like I had said something brilliant. Like I was some kind of theological nerd, instead of just a fellow disciple in the pew, delineating something so catechetically pedestrian that seven-year-olds should know it before we ever think of placing the Eucharist in their little mouths. I would have been much more impressive explaining the meaning of all the gifts but Father clearly didn’t want to go that far with his little trivia moment.

At the Sign of Peace, an older woman behind me shook my hand and leaned in conspiratorially. She said with a touch of bravado, “I knew Piety.” I had to force myself not to grimace in dismay. “Peace be with you,” I rejoined.

If I was pastor of this parish, and only one person in the pews could name the Gifts of the Holy Spirit, I would reorient my entire preaching calendar for the next seven months. And every month for the next seven would be on one of the Gifts. I would drill it in at every Sunday Mass until the whole parish would know in depth and forever, what God’s life in us means, that is, the Gifts of the Holy Spirit.

Looking around the church as Father moved on to whatever his point was—it certainly wasn’t the scandal of religious ignorance—I thought to myself, “Was the Baltimore Catechism really so bad? Really?”

As silly as some people think it is, learning things from the Baltimore Catechism gives a foundation to build on. Learning prayers like the Act of Faith help us to build a relationship with God. Who can feel down for long when they think back to why God made him?

God made me to know, love, and serve Him in this life, and to be happy with Him in the next.

And

God made me out of His love and goodness.

And rote prayer has such a great depth that many people overlook, too. When nothing else comes to mind, those old, memorized prayers are a way to talk to God, to be with Him in prayer, and can be springboards into deeper contemplation and prayer.

O my God, I firmly believe that You are one God in three divine persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. I believe that your divine Son became Man and died for our sins, and that He will come to judge the living and the dead. I believe these and all the truths which the Holy Catholic Church teaches, because in revealing them You can neither deceive nor be deceived.

The prayers I say at Mass before I receive Holy Communion are ones that, if I read them carefully, I can contemplate on a deeper level:

Act of Love

Jesus, my God, I love you with my whole heart and above all things, because You are the one supreme Good and infinitely perfect Being. You have given Your life for me, a poor sinner, and in Your mercy You have even offered Yourself as food for my soul. My God, I love you. Inflame my heart so that I may love You more.

And these kinds of things, in the end, are what I think can help lead us to a deeper relationship with God. These kinds of things can help keep our children (and us!) Catholic. Instead of trying to simplify the faith by keeping it on a low-level, we should be reaching and stretching. Instead of still going over basic information in middle and high school, we should be delving deep into the why’s of our Faith, plumbing the deep, learning to defend the Church through apologetics. These are the kinds of things that ultimately led me to where I am now, though I still have a long way to go. Fortunately, the Catholic Church has almost 2000 years of material to study, so I don’t think I’ll run out of material or opportunities to grow closer to God.

Late, But Ready to Party! Lawn Chair Catechism!

CatholicMom.com is full of awesomeness, and I don’t say that to be self-serving. (Frankly, I’m low on that totem pole, and a newcomer to boot!)

Lisa Hendey and Sarah Reinhard have presented a great opportunity for spirtual growth this Summer called Lawn Chair Catechism. Weekly, we can “meet” online for a discussion. But allow me to let the crew at CatholicMom.com to explain better:

We’ll be using Forming Intentional Disciples: The Path to Knowing and Following Jesus by Sherry Weddell as our basis for this discussion.

Every Wednesday morning this summer, from May 29 to August 28, we’ll post a series of  discussion questions from our team here at CatholicMom.com. We’ll also have a link-sharing at the end, so others can participate.

You’ll be able to participate whether or not you have read or are reading the book. Here’s the complete discussion guide and questions (13 pages). If you just want the discussion questions, here they are (2 pages).

With thanks to Our Sunday Visitor.

From May 8 through June 6, Our Sunday Visitor will be offering the book for $10 with free shipping. From June 7 on, you can order it with free shipping from Our Sunday Visitor. Simply click here to purchase the book from them or pick it up at your nearest Catholic bookstore.

So today, despite not having the book yet (have I mentioned how busy I’ve been over the last month?), I am jumping in, using the study guide until my book arrives. I’ll be ordering my book and reading through ASAP. Join in here or at the CatholicMom.com site, or blog about your own thoughts and link up!

Session 1: Introduction

In her introduction, Sherry reveals that she has spoken to many practicing Catholics who can’t put into words their relationship with God. This asking-around started with one incident with a leader in her own parish that startled her:

Her stories were so vague that I wasn’t hearing any evidence of how God might be using her. . . . So I asked her a question that I had never asked before: Could you briefly describe to me your lived relationship with God to this point in your life?

After thinking carefully for a few moments, she responded briskly, “I don’t have a relationship with God.” Her answer stunned me. My first thoughts were, “That’s not possible. You’re a leader in your parish. You wouldn’t do that without some kind of relationship with God . . ..”

. . . By the end of the interview, I realized she had accurately described her spiritual reality.

Sherry goes on to say that this is a reality for many active Catholics, that we tend towards a passive reception of our faith which holds us back from truly engaging our culture and making a change for the good in the world around us.

For my own blogging, I’d like to stick with the personal discussion questions, which are these:

Questions for Discussion

In your own faith:

• How would you describe your lived relationship with God to this point in your life?

• What does the word “discipleship” mean to you?

• Do you perceive a need in the Church today to help lay Catholics become more fervent followers of Jesus Christ?

These are really thought-provoking! Let me jump in.

It’s a Big World: Find a Map!
Abraham Ortelius [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

My relationship with God at this point in my life is, I think, moving in a better direction than before. For a long time, I was trying to learn, but was a bit adrift – lacking direction for my journey. There are lots of roadmaps through the Catholic faith, for the countryside the Church encompasses is wide and there’s a lot of different kinds of beauty out there. Last year about this time, I was invited to a meeting of Dominican Laity; things clicked so quickly for me, that I jumped into discernment immediately and was received into the Third Order this past January. I think this is an important step for me; it gives me direction and a kind of roadmap through Catholicism that suits me well.

There are times that I feel like I’m a terrible daughter of God, though. I don’t call or write as much as I ought to, and my prayer life is not where I always think it should be. But I think I’ve come to realize that God loves me a lot. More than I can imagine. And knowing this – even without a full grasp of the depths of His love – is spurring me on to a better relationship with Him. I’m learning to be a better child of God.

Discipleship, to me, means that I am doing my best not to just follow Christ – playing by the rules of the Church, receiving Sacraments as often as possible – but that I am learning about my faith. The word disciple comes from the Latin word for student. And so discipleship is more than just following Christ and doing His will, but also being in a constant state of learning more about Him and His Church. It means that I don’t passively sit at Mass and hear the homily without really listening and striving to learn something new from Father this week. It means that if someone asks me why I do something as a Catholic (and often, that’s right here in my own home!), I learn why if I don’t know. It means I have books on the Faith and Lighthouse Media CDs in the car and Dr. Ray DVDs on the shelf.

Does that mean that the only things I watch, read, or listen to are Catholic things? Well, no. Not for me, anyway. I still love watching movies, old Firefly episodes, and listening to rock music in the car. But it does mean that I should make sure I get a healthy dose of Catholic stuff at some point during the day. (And sometimes that means that I pray a Rosary with intent, focusing on each Mystery as much as I can while I pray.)

Do you perceive a need in the Church today to help lay Catholics become more fervent followers of Jesus Christ? Yes! I think many Catholics, even those who learned the Baltimore Catechism by heart, never were taught the deeper meanings behind their beliefs – why the Church teaches those things. And that kind of passivity actually affects how we see our role in the Church. It’s funny that some people get all excited about the role of the laity, but don’t quite know what to do with it. A wonderful role for us as laity is to help educate other Catholics about the Church! (Yup, that’s what really clicks for me about the Dominicans; we’re all about the education!) I’ve seen this personally in my own life. When I was first married, I was not a good Catholic in the least. Yes, I was there most Sundays, and I never wanted to leave the Church, but it wasn’t until people started questioning me that I started to really dig deeper into my faith. The more I dug into it, the more committed I became. The more committed I became, the more my actions lined up with what the Church expects of me. I’m in no way, shape, or form done learning or growing or becoming a better Catholic, but I have more confidence that I’m on the right track. And now, when someone asks why I’m Catholic, I actually can answer that question with more than, “Because I’ve always been Catholic.”

How about you? What would you answer to these questions? Jump in the discussion here and at CatholicMom.com.

Thanking God for the Dryness

The Floor of Death Valley – By Paxson Woelber (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons

So many people have written about spiritual dryness in ways far superior to what I could probably do. Jennifer Fulwiler wrote recently about it, describing it as a mid-life crisis that, at the root, is about a growing understanding that God is the only thing we will have left in the end:

At least for me, a mid-life crisis is nothing more or less than a realization that every day brings us a little closer to that point when all we have left is God, and that we may be closer to that point than we thought we were. It sounds kind of depressing, like something I’d shout into the phone at Joe at 3 PM when I’m exhausted and the baby won’t nap and someone just spilled yogurt on the wall (“ALL I HAVE LEFT IS GOD!!!”), but it’s really quite inspiring. To go through a mid-life crisis and to come out the other side is to go through a process of purification, in which you accept the things that are gone, and realize that they were were never the source of true happiness to begin with.

Her collection of posts on spiritual dryness has been inspiring to me, and really helpful on a number of levels. For one, I had never heard of this idea (or a “Dark Night of the Soul,” as Saint John of the Cross described it) until about 8 years ago, when I was describing to a friend my horrible experiences with hyperemesis and the deep depression I felt the second time through it. I’d been blessed with great consolations in my faith as a child, and when I lacked them during my second pregnancy, it was panic-inducing.

…While I had great hope each day when I was pregnant with Big Girl, it was not so this time. When the HG struck me, I went into a deep depression. My OB sent me directly to the same high-risk OB as last time, and I was put on Thorazine right away. This time, though, it didn’t work as well. Whereas, with Big Girl, each night I went to sleep thinking that the next day might be better, this time I went to sleep thinking, “I have 20 weeks of this hell to get through.” It was devastating to my Faith. I knew God was there, but I felt abandoned. I could not feel Him there at all. I could not even pray. I brought my father to tears when I asked him why God was punishing me. I never, ever considered abortion with either pregnancy, but this time I would wish for miscarriage just so the pain would end. …

Only later, when talking about it with a friend, did I ever hear of spiritual dryness or dark nights. While I had never doubted God was there, many times the only thing I could think of when I wanted to pray was part of Psalm 22: My God, my God! Why have You forsaken me?

And yet, once she mentioned this to me, I began to see it in other places, too. Many saints experienced the same thing, and when I learned that Blessed Mother Teresa had a dark night of the soul that lasted nearly 40 years, it brought me to tears. Here was a woman, I thought, who never doubted God’s existence and worked to fulfill His will for her, even when she had no consolations. It’s a comfort to know that not only ordinary people, but even those we look to as saints, experience this dryness.

By Tom Bayly from England (British Night Sky Uploaded by russavia) [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons

This past Lent, I began to feel this spiritual dryness. Occasionally, I’d get a break-through of emotion and feel graces flowing, but most, it’s been dry. I feel rotten about my own prayer because it feels so rote. I don’t feel as though I’m growing spiritually, and it’s a struggle to fulfill even the most basic of spiritual tasks.

It’s Easter, and all my Catholic friends are rejoicing and Alleluia-ing everywhere. And I’m here struggling to get to evening Mass or sit through Adoration. I pray “Alleluia” during Lauds and Vespers, but I don’t feel it. I know He is Risen (truly, He is risen!), and yet my heart doesn’t feel it.

And yet I know that if I persevere in prayer and continue to feed my soul by going to Mass when I don’t feel like it, praying a Rosary when I’m not in the mood, maintaining my morning and evening prayers, that this is like watering and feeding plants during a drought: the roots will grow deeper and stronger, and when the drought is over, big things can happen.

Saint Thomas Aquinas

And so I’m trying to thank God for the dryness I’m still experiencing. If I keep going, I will grow in maturity. If I maintain and pray anyway, I will grow stronger. If I wait on the Lord, He will not disappoint. I know this. And what I’m also grateful for is that I even know this. It’s such a help to understand that it’s not bad that spiritual dryness happens. It’s not my fault. It’s not wrong. It’s okay. God is here with me in the darkness, even if I can’t see Him. The words of Saint Thomas Aquinas – though meant to describe the Eucharist – also apply here:

Faith for all defects supplying,
Where the feeble senses fail.

At some point, I’m sure that consolation will return, and I’ll cry tears of joy for it. But in the meantime, I’m going to keep feeding my soul whether I feel it or not. And I’ll thank God for His mercy and love, even when I don’t feel it readily.

Rejected Stones

I swear, you’re going to start thinking this blog is about nothing but the Liturgy of the Hours.

Last night, while praying Vespers, I had a bit of a lightbulb moment as I read the New Testament reading:

READING 1 Peter 2:4-5

Come to the Lord, a living stone, rejected by men but approved, nonetheless, and precious in God’s eyes. You too are living stones, built as an edifice of spirit into a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

Quo Vadis? by Annibale Carracci

Jesus is the Living Cornerstone, rejected by the builders, Who makes us living stones to build up His Church.

And, if the world rejects the Cornerstone, chances are they aren’t going to be really fond of the rest of the stones God gives them, either. I’ve really been stuck lately thinking about the world’s rejection of Christian influence – at least in Western culture. I am not being defeatist about it, for I know Who wins in the end. And my hope is not in this world – in princes or governments or their laws – but is in Christ Jesus Himself. And I know that no matter how bad things get, the gates of Hell will never prevail against God’s Church. I’ll always have a home on earth in the Church, and if I stick with her, she’ll get me to Heaven to my real home.

But I can’t get away from the idea that we are moving rapidly into a time when the Culture of Death reigns in America.

I’ve heard some Christians say that America is the world’s best hope, but this is completely untrue. Jesus Himself said that the world would hate us, just as it hated Him. He calls on us to pick up our crosses and follow Him. He promised persecution. And we won’t be spared just because we love the Lord and strive to do His will. To think so would be heresy. God promised us the opposite in this life, as a matter of fact.

When we become living stones in the Lord’s Church, we’ll get the same treatment as Jesus did. It won’t all be dark, but we certainly are not to be spared our share of sufferings in the name of the Lord. Some will be small ones – perhaps someone attempts to slander you unfairly – and some will be larger ones – perhaps you risk fines and jail for refusing to obey an unjust law.

What really matters is what we do with our sufferings. God knows we’ll try to avoid them when we can, but when we cannot … then what?

Do we offer these sufferings up as Jesus did, for the good of others? Do we bear all wrongs patiently, as Jesus did? Do we accept that sometimes, despite our best efforts, we have rough patches to go through? Do we show our mourning or do we wash our faces and present ourselves to the world as people with an inner, sublime kind of joy?

Lord, help me bear my sufferings with patience. Allow me the graces to endure to the end for Your name’s sake. May all I do and say give you glory and further the interests of You and your Holy Church.

It’s Not My Place

Crucifixion of Jesus (Russian Icon) by Dionisius

Jesus died outside the gate, to sanctify the people by his own blood. Let us go to him outside the camp, bearing the insult which he bore. For here we have no lasting city; we are seeking one which is to come. Through him let us continually offer God a sacrifice of praise, that is, the fruit of lips which acknowledge his name.

By magister at he.wikipedia (Originally from he.wikipedia) [see page for license], from Wikimedia Commons

 As I knelt in the chapel near the Blessed Sacrament after Mass last night, I prayed my evening prayers. The above passage from Hebrews was the reading during Vespers for Holy Thursday. It’s not the first time I had read it, and each time I am more struck by it.

In years past, I might not have thought about it except in the terms Saint Paul is speaking in to the recipients of the letter he wrote. His fellow Jews-turned-Christians, being rejected and shunned by their fellow Jews who do not believe the Gospel. How heartbreaking it must have been for them to be rejected by family and friends because of their belief in Jesus as Christ. Saint Paul encouraged them to hold fast to the Christ, knowing that their true home is Heaven, where Jesus promised that He would prepare a place for us.

But these days, I’ve felt under assault. I gave up Twitter for Lent, as I’ve found it to be a good way to clear my head and get away from the shouting (so to speak) that tends to occur there. There can be a lot of vitriol on all sides of every issue, and even though I’ve been culling my follow list to gradually eliminate people who have nothing but this kind of attitude, it still wears on me. So with the exception of a few hours on the Feast of Saint Joseph, I haven’t been on Twitter’s site. My blog and Flickr pictures both auto-post there, as well as Facebook, but aside from that, I haven’t been on.

Then came the Supreme Court hearing on gay “marriage.”

HRC’s New Symbol

Suddenly, I was feeling just as assaulted on Facebook. I felt more and more frantic as the day went on. It didn’t help that I had started following the actor George Takei, who in the past had one of the funniest feeds I’ve ever seen. I’m telling you, the guy has some of the funniest graphics, filled with geek humor and puns, and it’s almost always hilarious to read. There were occasional posts of his where he’d celebrate his homosexuality or make mention of his “husband,” but it was easy to simply scroll past the posts, since the vast majority of them were just these silly puns and geeky pictures about Sci Fi/Fantasy topics.

But beginning on Tuesday, when he decided to switch his profile picture to the red equal sign, his feed changed from the occasional post on homosexuality to a non-stop barrage of nothing BUT homosexual “marriage” posts. One after another, filling my feed, in my face, with comments showing below (only two or three at a time) calling people who don’t support redefining marriage as bigots, haters, the equivalent of racists, idiots, etc. Seeing the occasional red equal sign or post in favor from family and friends wasn’t going to make me un-friend them, but a non-stop, nothing-but-gay-”marriage” stream was enough for me to un-like Takei’s page and decide to take a break from Facebook for the Triduum.

As Jayne would say, it was damaging my calm.

I’ve been feeling more and more as though our culture is less and less okay with people truly living their faith. Oh, going to church on Sundays is fine, but don’t bring your beliefs with you to work or into your business. Don’t tell us what you think if you’re in the public eye or have a big business. (Unless, of course, you support the Culture of Death; then it’s fine to talk about your beliefs and let them guide your business model.) It’s fine if your Catholic belief wants you to go out and perform the Corporal Works of Mercy, but don’t tell me that those same beliefs demand that you not give material cooperation to mortal sins like abortion and contraception. Paying for those things for other people is now considered a human right!

America is not what she once was; in fact, I’d say she’s pretty close to gone. And things are not going back to the way they were.

This isn’t said in despair. It’s a fact. Our culture worships the orgasm, as Frank Weathers would say. Our culture believes in choice as long as it’s related to unrestricted sex, but not if it has to do with actual laws written down, the right to life, or even the right to practice and live out our faith on a daily basis. The very idea that a person’s faith would inform every aspect of his life is anathema to our Culture of Death.

The Rich Young Man by Ai.kefu

And yet this is exactly what we’re called to. Now that we know the Gospel, what do we do with it? What impact will it have on our lives? Any at all? Will it change us forever? Will we be as the rich young man, who was offered Christ Himself and turned away because his life as he was living it was too good, or will we be as Matthew, who saw that as good as his life might be, it was nothing in comparison to living a life with Jesus.

Even though I have seen the story about the rich young man geared towards the vocation of the priest, I also can see it as every one of us in many ways. Are we willing to give up all of our comforts, even if it’s gradual and one at a time, in order to be faithful followers of Christ? Are we willing to be different, to live differently than others (and even our past selves) in order to live as Christians?

Are we willing to endure ridicule, persecution, and the pain of lost friendships for standing firm in our beliefs and following the doctrines of our Church? Are we willing, if it comes to it, to lose everything just to be with Him?

In this life, we have no city. Our true home is in Heaven with God. One of the first questions in the old Baltimore Catechism reminded us of this fact:

Question: Why did God make you?

Answer: God made me to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him forever in the next.

And, truly, the better we know God and work to understand His love for us, the more willing we are to serve him in this life. When we begin to grasp His love and mercy, we don’t mind serving Him in this world. His yoke is easy and His burden is light because when you love someone, it’s not a burden to do things for them in love.

As times become darker for Christians in this world, it will do well for us to remember:

For here we have no lasting city; we are seeking one which is to come.

The Calling of Saint Matthew by Hendrick ter Brugghen

Accusing Myself

Entry of Christ into Jerusalem (1320) by Pietro Lorenzetti

This past Sunday was Palm Sunday, sometimes also called Passion Sunday. At Mass, we read the Passion according to Saint Luke (Luke 22:14-23:56).

When I was a girl, I both loved and dreaded Palm Sunday. I loved having palms, getting them blessed, and hearing the Passion read from the Gospel. But at the same time, I dreaded it; we would read the Gospel together, with Father reading the part of Jesus, a deacon reading the part of the narrator, and the rest of us – the whole parish – reading the parts of the crowd.

This meant that I, along with everyone else, would cry out for Jesus’ death. We would call for His Crucifixion. And every year, I would weep even as I forced myself to say the words. Even if all I could do was whisper it, I would make myself say, “Crucify Him! Crucify Him!”

It hurt me. But somehow, I knew that it was important, that I had something to do with what happened on that day more than 1900 years before.

For years after I moved from the Jersey Shore where I grew up, I attended parishes that did not read the Palm Sunday Gospel in this way. Instead, people would be selected to assist the priests with reading the Gospel, including the crowd’s parts. Most of the parish would listen to the proclamation. As I understand it, it is optional to have everyone read the crowd’s parts, so I have just kept my missal on hand (no parish I have attended since I got married has used missalettes in the pews) and whispered “my” parts.

This year, our new pastor asked the choir to read the parts reserved for the parishioners. Apparently, he told them to shout when appropriate. I was already reading quietly my own parts, when suddenly, the choir, which was a mere ten feet from where our family sits at Mass, shouted out, “CRUCIFY HIM!!!”

Antonio Ciseri’s depiction of Ecce Homo

I about jumped out of my skin. (Father told me after Mass that they were so into it, he was worriedly looking for the exit at one point.) I realized that this was the first time my 14 year old, who now sings with the choir, would be experiencing the Passion in this way. I couldn’t look at her during the Gospel, but asked her how it felt to say that, to call for the death of Jesus.

“It was upsetting,” she answered. And it’s supposed to be.

Father’s homily outlined why. Our new priest is a lawyer and was even a law professor before his call to the priesthood. His homilies sometimes remind me of someone wrapping up a case for a jury, and this Sunday was no exception. He has a true gift for bringing you to his conclusion in what seems round-about, but is so strongly linked that you are just left in wonder at the ease with which he got you there.

“We read this Gospel and wonder when it seemed real to Jesus’ followers that this was really happening,” he began. He continued discussion key moments during the Passion when things might have sunk in. Was it when Jesus said that He was about to be betrayed? When he was arrested in the garden? Could it have been when Pilate presented the beaten and bloody Christ to the angry crowd? Or when he washed his hands of the matter and handed him over to be crucified? Perhaps it really started to sink in when Jesus took up his cross and started His journey to Golgatha, or when He was stripped of His garments. But maybe His followers thought that even as Jesus hung from the Cross, angels might still come to His rescue. Did they finally accept that this was it when Jesus’ body was laid in the tomb?

At this point, Father asked when we would realize what happened. When will we realize that the Jews and the Romans did not do this to Jesus? When would we realize that what happened to Our Blessed Lord is a direct result of our own sins? That our transgressions put the lash to the back of the Christ?

When his beautifully-made film The Passion of the Christ was released, Mel Gibson said that he had a cameo in the movie. His hands are the ones that hold the hammer and nails that pierce Jesus’ hands and feet. This, he explained, was a reminder to himself that it is his own sins that caused Jesus to die.

Which brings me back to the proclamation of the Gospel on Passion Sunday (and Good Friday, for we remember the Lord’s Passion in the same way that night).

Even though no one ever told me in so many words when I  was a child, I had this idea that I needed to say, “Crucify Him!” during the Mass. I knew, even though it made me cry (even as a very small child), that I was responsible in some way for what happened to my Beloved Jesus. No one ever told me that, and I don’t recall my CCD teachers being blunt enough to say that my sins were responsible for Jesus’ death, but I knew it. And I think that the reason I knew was because every year the people in the pews would help to proclaim the Gospel. Just once a year, and we did it just to accuse ourselves of Christ’s death.

It’s a tradition that deserves a comeback. It’s a silent catechism: gentle, but stern. It helps even small children to understand that we are the ones denying Christ, that we are the ones putting the nails in His hands and feet.

The Crucifixion (1622) by Simon Vouet; Church of Jesus, Genoa

 

But we’re also the ones who are forgiven even as we cry, as we admit these things. We’re reminded that God loves us still, and that Jesus, even after hearing us all say, “Crucify Him!” calls out from the Cross:

Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.

Inheritance

During Lauds today, I was struck by an idea that humbled me greatly. In the reading for the Thursday after Ash Wednesday, something new sunk in for me about its meaning.

READING See 1 Kings 8:51-53a

We are your people and your inheritance, O Lord. May your eyes be open to the petition of your servant and to the petition of your people Israel. Hear us whenever we call upon you, because you have set us apart among all the peoples of the earth for your inheritance.

I’ve heard the Responsorial Psalm again and again wherein we proclaim “You are my inheritance, O Lord,” but I only today realized – and this after reading it twice and contemplating it for a while – that this is not the same thing. Here, we are being told that we are an inheritance to God Himself!

I’ve always thought about God being my own inheritance, the great treasure that I am given as a gift. This inheritance is something I should care for and keep safe; my faith must be nurtured so that I never lose sight of the great treasure that God is to me.

But me being an inheritance to the Lord?

I am awed that I am anything at all to Him Who created everything! The God who spoke the universe into being treasures me? Loves me? Who am I that He would care for me at all? 

The fact is, I’ve done nothing to deserve this. As a matter of fact, it’s likely the opposite. If I showered a person with gifts each day and did everything I could to help them be happy, yet that person ignored me most of the time and threw away most of the gifts I gave him, I don’t think I’d consider him much of a treasure. I’d consider him an ingrate.

Yet in spite of the fact that I often treat God like Someone to bail me out of trouble every time I go astray, He treasures me. He calls to me daily, asking me to come closer to Him and trust Him. He never stops looking for me on the horizon.

Lord, let me work daily to live up to the image of me being an inheritance to You. Let me learn to love and trust You and to be more deserving of such a title.