Dwight Longenecker's Blog, page 319

Immaculate Mary

The Immaculate reveals our human destiny. If you are one of the baptized you are destined for glory. Your final goal is perfection--to be all that you were created to be--to be clothed in light. Can you understand and bear this reality?

Family Brag

I don't often mention family in this blog, but my brother Daryl and his wife Anja live in Sacramento CA. Daryl's a school teacher and writer. Anja is an artist. She has found her true metier in restoration of statues and interior church design.



Look at the fine job she's done on some old statues we had here in our parish of Our Lady of the Rosary. These images were from the 1950s and had been in the original little white house that was used for a church.





The original factory spray paint job was faded, and St Joseph needed repair. Look at these great 'before' and 'after' pictures:














If you need statues for your church or chapel, go to one of the church salvage places and get an old plaster statue. They're plentiful and cheap. Then send it to Anja and ask her to restore it. You can see the end result is a hand painted restoration that looks better than the original factory mass produced job.




Anja has also done some expert work for a couple of SSPX parishes. These traditionalist parishes are rarely large enough and wealthy enough to build their own new church. So Anja helps them transform a useable church building from the Protestant tradition into a Catholic Church. Here is a stunning video of the work she does.









Go here to see her website. She also does original sculpture, painted 'tapestries' and stained glass windows as well as paintwork and stencil design.

Einstein and the New Translation

Here is my latest article for Crisis magazine. It references Einstein, the Imagination and the New Translation. See watcha think.

Short Prayer

St Benedict says, "Let your prayer be short and from the heart."

I Want My Blogger Back

Where's Faddah Longenecker? I want my priest blogger back. Where's he been? Why dontcha do more blogging eh?



FD: Okay. Okay. This has been a stressful week for me. On Monday I handed in my resignation as Chaplain at St Joseph's Catholic School. It's complicated. I love SJCS. In many ways it's a great school. I love the kids, the families, my colleagues, but it was too much trying to do two jobs--being chaplain there and being priest at Our Lady of the Rosary parish. As one person said jokingly, "You're doing two full time jobs...badly." 'Bout right.



So I'm free now to focus on being parish priest at OLR. We're building a new church. The parish is growing. Our little parish school is bouncing back from a few years of turbulence, and I've got a lot of different media and writing projects going on. Oh yeah. A wife and four kids, two dogs, some fish and all that other suburban American stuff.



I don't think I'll be idle.

St Andrew

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Old Baldie says Thanks

Now I have to say "Thank You". First of all, thanks to everyone who contributed to the annual Stick 'em Up Campaign. Once again the total came to just over $35,000.00. Just kidding--although, that would have been the amount if everyone who regularly reads this blog coughed up 25 bucks. Still, everyone was very generous, and I was humbled by your gifts. Thanks so much! As you know, this blog is a labor of love. I don't really do it for the money. I love writing. I love communicating the gospel. I love sharing with my readers, and blogging allows writers to publish stuff globally to a host of readers, and furthermore, we can publish stuff (like my alter egos) which are fun to write and maybe fun to read, which would never really have been published elsewhere.



I also have to say 'Thank you' to all those of you who contributed comments and suggestions. The general consensus from the combox is that most of you like most of what is written, but that you would like maybe some more spiritual stuff. I had promised a new alter ego, and I was thinking of having a trendy priest called Father Randy, but decided against it because I have made a solemn vow to never criticize any of my brother priests in public. (Geesh, you should hear what I say in private!!) So Father Randy will stay firmly in my imagination. I was also tempted to create an ultra trad young priest named Fr. Peregrine Florsheim who is all into Latin Mass and wing tip shoes, but he too will remain firmly locked away and you will all have to do with the edifying mysticism of Old Monk.



One last favor you can do me. If you like the blog, share posts with others, follow me on twitter and help spread the news. Join me on Facebook, and pray for me in the coming year as I attempt to expand the new media work I am doing with radio, books, articles, podcasts and videocasts.



God bless you all and thank you![image error]

Stepping Out

If just once you gave up everything for Christ you would never again be in chains.[image error]

Opinions Please

Does anybody like Old Monk? What do you like on the blog? What do you dislike? What would you like more of? What would you like less of? Do you follow me on Twitter? Do you want more tweets or fewer? If you like the blog and tweets, then please help expand the readership by being active. If you re-tweet or share a post it helps get the word out there.



Thanks for your feedback![image error]

Spirituality - The Vine and the Trellis

After my post 'Are You Scared of Spirituality' some readers asked me to write more about the subject.



The first problem is to define the term. I would say that 'spirituality' is the heart of our religion. It comprises all that is subjective and personal and relational and emotional and flexible and alive and open ended. In this sense it complements but never contradicts all the doctrine and dogma and rules and regulations and rubrics. Those elements, if you like, provide the structure or skeleton on which the rest survives. On their own they are dry bones, and 'can these dry bones live?'



These formal structures need spirituality, but spirituality also needs the formal structures. Think of the two like a trellis and a vine. The trellis is carefully crafted out of wood. It is put in place by clever vineyard designers. It needs maintenance and care, but it is the trellis. It is there to enable the vine to grow and flourish and bear rich fruit. The vine, on it's own will just grow across the ground aimlessly and the fruit (what fruit there is) would be crushed underfoot. The trellis, on the other hand, holds the vine up high. It allows the vine to be accessible, to grow and also to be properly pruned.



So spirituality is that free flowing life of God in our lives. It is the life of the Spirit, and the Spirit blows where it wills. Spirituality is free flowing and alive, but it must be nurtured through one of the many different spiritual traditions, and it is a good thing to discover one of the 'ways' within the church and stick with it.



This is where the communion of the saints becomes very practical and real. The saints are our brothers and sisters who have already been made whole in Christ. The church has endorsed their lives and endorsed the spiritualities they offer us. Following the spirituality of one of the saints is crucial because that way has not only been tested by the saint, but by the millions of brothers and sisters in Christ who have also followed that way. This is real, down to earth stuff. Not only has the saint lived the way he offers us, but he or she is also there with their prayers to help us on that way.



So explore the different spiritual traditions. Are you drawn to Franciscan spirituality? Carmelite? Salesian? Ignatian? Benedictine? Are you drawn to monasticism and contemplation or activism and relationships? Are you drawn to Divine Mercy or Sacred Heart? Your personality type will draw you towards one or another. Explore them. Learn about them and see where God leads you.



What you must not do is make it up as you go along. Don't pick and choose among spiritualities. By all means learn about the different ones, but then once you find your home stick with it. Avoid syncretism. This is the modern temptation to put together your own spirituality--kind of like going to a spiritual buffet--"I'll have a smidgen of Benedictine monasticism, a touch of Franciscan love of animals, a helping of work for the poor and top it off with a little bit of Buddhism. Fugeddaboudit. Choose a good solid Catholic spiritual tradition and learn from it and walk in that path.



One of the Franciscan friars of the renewal put it this way: "We follow Jesus Christ in the way of St Francis." This is what a true Catholic spirituality does for us. Through it the Spirit gives us a more specific way to follow Jesus Christ. Each way has its own charism, its own discipline, its own structure and tradition.



Don't be afraid of spirituality. On the other hand, be dismissive of what most people call 'spirituality'. What a lot of people mean by 'spirituality' is a sentimental mish mash of shallow aphorisms, self help nonsense and New Age foolishness.[image error]