Lin Wilder's Blog, page 20

People Don’t Change Their Minds

No or your choice symbol. Turned wooden cubes and changed concept words No choice to Your choice. Beautiful grey table grey background, copy space. Business and no or your choice concept.People don’t change their minds

The simmering Roe Vs Wade controversy is now a rolling boil. The catalyst?

The powerfully written prose with which Archbishop Cordelione explained Speaker Pelosi’s prohibition from the Eucharist. Until she changes her aggressive stand on abortion as a right and good for women.

Nancy Pelosi’s response makes me wonder if she even read Cordelione’s document since she treats the dispute as another family disagreement. Clearly, she considers this as one of a list of policy disputes she has with him, rather than a portent of eternal life or death. “Now our archbishop has been vehemently against LGBTQ rights, too, in fact, he led the way in some of the initiatives on — an initiative on the ballot in California. So, this decision taking us to privacy and precedent is very dangerous in the lives of so many of the American people.”

In their excellent podcast, “Full Interview,” Gloria Purvis and Archbishop Cordelione reveal more of the whole cloth of the thing. Although it’s long, almost forty minutes, I found their conversation more than warranted my time…finally, that is.

This is true for numerous reasons. Primarily these:

Purvis cleverly visits the issues of the death penalty and immigration used by Nancy Pelosi in her reply.” Doing so at least three times, Purvis permits Archbishop Cordelione the opportunity to clarify precisely why abortion is grave matter. Why abortion differs from immigration or with the death penalty. And offers practical legislative solutions were Speaker Pelosi open to mitigating her stand.In their conversation, the two clarify Canon Law 915. It reads, “Those who… obstinately persevering in manifest grave sin are not to be admitted to holy communion.” His comparisons of abortion with lynching and slavery are arresting and compelling.“The problem isn’t choice, it’s that there isn’t a choice.” Archbishop Cordelione’s statement reflects the reality of unplanned pregnancies for many, perhaps most of us who make the horrendous decision.Purvis concludes with what is evident: Archbishop Cordelione holds no animus toward Speaker Pelosi. If we read his letter to the Speaker, in fact, we can see echoes of the anguish this is costing him.This is not what I intended to write for the Feast of Pentecost.

After all, it was just last week, that detachment from breaking news was the topic which caught and held my attention. And frankly, I don’t like thinking and writing about abortion. There have been billions of words written on this topic, close to a hundred thousand of them my own.

Enough!

But this wasn’t my idea.

Not infrequently, my writing is directed. Occasionally, the direction is in the form of an unmistakable locution. Liike with the writing of the first two of the ancient novel series, I, Claudia and

“Your next story will be obout Pontius Pilate, told through his wife, Claudia.

“What? Write historical fiction?

“How can I do that? I know nothing about historical fiction!”

Indeed.

Other times it’s subtle nudges. Like those this past week to watch that interview I didn’t want to listen to. Then to read an article I found distasteful. And then the sudden emergence of a longtime “friend” which tied it all together.

The American Scholar and its lead article, The Dinner Party is timely. In the well-written article, the hostess/author decides to address the elephant in the room. She declares her support of Roe vs Wade…with her prolife in-laws. The results are predictable.

The third analagous piece is from a longterm virtual “friend’, Daniel Kahnemann. I “met” Daniel Kahnemann while researching and writing my dissertation on medical decision-making. His quote, “People don’t change their minds.” served as the aha. More accurately, the AHA.

People don’t change their minds, grace does.

While reading “The Dinner Party,” I became painfully aware that the author and her daughter’s were the views I held before my conversion. Including this one:

“You know, I read somewhere that men invented patriarchal religions because they can’t create life on their own. So they came up with a male god who can.”

This gifted woman poignantly relates her experience of pregnancy. Therefore, eminently logically, she believes that other women must be spared the sufferering she endured.

People don’t change their mind, grace does

There’s a reason that Archbishop Cordelione asks for roses, Friday fasting and rosaries for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Let’s start from the main domains where we know people don’t change their minds—politics or religion. When you ask people, why do you believe what you believe? They answer by giving reasons for their beliefs. Subjectively, we experience that reasons are prior to the beliefs that can be deduced from them. But we know that the power of reasons is an illusion. The belief will not change when the reasons are defeated. The causality is reversed. People believe the reasons because they believe in the conclusion.

Adversarial Collaboration

I’ll wager the Archbishop wouldn’t use Daniel Kahnemann’s words but he knows the truth of it.

And now I see too.

Were it not for the grace of God, I too, would be proclaiming the “right” to abortion from the rooftops.

Just as I once did.

My journey back to the God I walked away from and finding home in the Catholic Church was not achieved through reason or study. It happened because of His jaw dropping, inexplicable, grace and mercy.

It was this I needed to appreciate, be awed by and never forget.

Hence I renew my commitment to fast and pray rosaries for the Speaker of the House and all others still incapable of being led.

If you have another fifteen minutes or so, listen to this: Allowing Ourselves to Be Led by the Friars

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Detachment: Essential Tool for Sanity

Letting go psychology concept as a heavy anchor transforming into a flying group of birds as a motivational metaphor for liberation and leaving a life or business burden behind.Detachment: Essential tool for sanity

What do we do when faced with human heartache? Fr. Derek Sakowski asks the question in a recent article called Fixing vs Facing. So think about it for a minute or three.

How do you react while watching or reading the report of the latest horrors in the Russian Ukrainian war?

Or the firing of renowned Princeton classics professor Jay Katz for defending truth and refusing to cow to the “narrative?”

How about the latest school shooting where the teen shooter manages to take twenty-one lives before losing his own?

And the— it seems, obligatory politicization of the tragedy? Then assigning blame. Followed by the favorite fix

Closer to home, what can be said or done when a friend tells you that her mammogram was suspicious?

Or that she’s just learned of her husband’s adultery? Most likely, though, she’d say “affair” since we’ve forgotten that the best way to disempower evil is to look at it, see it.

We’re emotional creatures, wired to feel, especially us females. Today’s media are expert in promoting, publicizing and politicizing tragedy, all aspects of the latest breaking news of horror. The all-too-real voices and suffering faces can take up residence in our hearts, make us feel that we’re not just watching, but are there.

But what can we do?

When hearing about your friend’s suffering, are there concrete steps to be taken?

Just like most of us, my immediate reaction is fix it. Since my nature is “wildly enthusiastic” as my husband John quips, once I’ve discovered a ‘fix,’ especially one that works for me, I want to shout it from the rooftops. And in my toolkit, there are a variety of fixes. Most likely that’s so for you too: rather than face and feel the pain, we busy ourselves with the illusion of a fix.

Fr. Sadowski, however, states the plain, painful truth of that thinking:

“Fixing feels good at the time. We tell ourselves that we are “helping” the other person – but we are probably helping ourselves. We don’t like that feeling of heartache, and we definitely don’t like feeling powerless – so we back away from the abyss by trying to fix it.”

He’s nailed it, right?

Hence detachment: essential tool for sanity is just that, essential.

Although St. Ignatius is chair of my committee, detachment and indifference intimidate me. And yet they fascinate at the same time. Enough that I’ve been praying for the grace of “Ignatian indifference.” A couple of years ago, a book called The Love that Keeps Us Sane, by Marc Foley caught and held my attention, enough to not only read the book but write about it. Only now do I realize that the author was speaking about detachment, St. Therese’s gift of “Ignatian indifference.”

Why has the virtue of detachment been so difficult to ask for?

Because I didn’t understand what Ignatius was getting at. In my lexicon, detachment and indifference meant uncaring, coldness, and hardness of heart. St. Ignatius spent almost a year in a cave practicing Agere Contra. Ignatius fought against his disordered love of fashion, self-love by eschewing all that had defined him in order to get free of lust, vanity, all that was not God. Listening to Bishop Barron’s excellent homiliy on the young Ignatius’s so very human flaws, is inspiring. Here are a few reasons why.

What he learned at Manresa is that our attachments to various created goods—money, power, pleasure, and honor—stand in the way of our responding to God’s will for us.

Bishop Barron Ignatian

It’s not the money, title, praise or the food,

it’s our attachment to them that serves as obstacles between us and God’s purpose for creating them. Barron speaks of St Luke’s Gospel on the Beatitudes. “Blessed are you poor, who hunger, are grieving, weep, and blessed are you  when you are hated, persecuted.”

At face value, it sounds nuts, Barron declares.

But, “We’re meant to be shaken up, to understand that our imbued desire is Him!” If our attachment is to anything but Him, we are doomed to an endless cycle of more—food, drugs, sex, power, things, for nothing else can satisfy!

“How lucky you are if you’re not addicted to stuff, food, drink, sensual pleasure, How blessed are you if detached from these things….Often best things we can do feel opposite of good…not fun, Blessed are you if hated…again addiction of praise….”

Hence, I can see why I’ve been led to pray for the grace of Ignatian indifference and detachment. So often, my emotional reactions are so powerful that they obscure everything but my bad feelings.

The result?

I lose my ability to reason, discern and to think critically.

Perhaps what our troubled friend needs most is merely silent agreement and quiet presence, “Yes, this is an awful thing,”….facing the horror of the reality of the thing together. And most importantly, emptying ourselves of egodrama to embrace theodrama. Bishop Barron’s notion of egodrama vs. theodrama defines our moment to moment choice with precision.

The effects of others’ heartache isn’t subtle

or private or innocuous. Nor are our addictions limited to drugs and alcohol. The miasma of the breaking news of mothers whose children were senselessly killed and the effective political manipulation of the tragedy can also be enslaving. The pressure of reality of TV news has long been anathema to me— but turning off the TV isn’t enough.

It’s everywhere.

Whether at the gym to work out where all eight screens are tuned in, or logging on to laptop or phone to work or check social media or email, the dramatic headlines are ubiquitous.

Our enemy wants us fearful, frightened and despondent. Precisely the attitude when it’s almost impossible to pray, which, of course, is Satan’s goal.

Here and now are all we have. We can do nothing for the continuous display of catastrophe happening elsewhere. But we can attend to those He puts in our lives today.

If we’re here, in the now.

The paradox of pain is that it cannot be healed by pushing it away, running from the hurt, or rationalizing the rejection.  We must go toward the hurt, go closer to it, acknowledge it, to be healed of the wound we carry inside….Take the rejection and the pain to Jesus and look at it with Him.  Let Him see it.  Let Him heal the wound it caused.  Then, and only then, can we forgive the hurt we feel.

The Paradox of Pain

Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.

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In Praise of Work- The Christian in the World

Business career challenges concept. Businesswoman imagining to be a super hero looking aspired making career plansIn praise of work- The Christian in the world.

If the title seems peculiar, particularly the correlation between praising work with the Christian in the world, by the end of this piece, I hope you’ll see the association between work and Christians living in the world.

“So Lin, what will you do when you retire?” My friend Steve, then an intensivist at the Texas Medical Center where we both worked, knew my answer. He just wanted to see what happened when I said what I always did: That I never wanted to retire in front of the group of burned out physicians and administrators we sat with. His eyes twinkled while he waited for me to begin speaking in praise of work.

Back in those hundred plus hour weeks I balanced a more than full-time job with finishing my doctoral dissertation. I knew that Steve had a point each time he would exhort, “No one wishes they had worked more as they lay dying.” My life was way out of balance and my personal life was unraveling.

But work was something I knew I needed. Forever…or at least until I was physically or mentally incapable. But I could not find the words to explain why. To him, or for that matter, to myself.

Most likely, a primary reason was seeing the effects of boredom—idleness, on my mother as I grew up. Once my two older sisters left and I was in junior high, Mom had way too much time on her hands, so she’d eat. Large bags of potato chips and huge chocolate bars and giggle when she was discovered. The weight piled on and never came off. Soon, she was diagnosed with hypertension which terrified and depressed her. From then it was a slowly accelerating decline toward the end.

Can such serious morbity and eventual death be attributed to bordeom, inactivity, and lack of purpose?

Well—yes. I believe it can…in fact, retirement can be dangerous.

We know this intuitively, don’t we?

Why?

Three reasons:

Humans are

wired for work; idleness gets us into trouble, and mindless, even mundane tasks can be hugely fruitful.

Wired to work? Yes, it’s a fact, but acceptance of my premise requires some reflection.

Consider boredom for a moment…how it feels, how it looks. When you feel it. When you see it in others, your children, friends or just someone passing by, it’s instantly recognizable…and distasteful. Even repugnant.

Idleness gets us into trouble.

Our minds, psyches and very being require stimulation: Learning, challenge, activity…physical and mental work…”eustress.” If deprived of it, we turn into lifeless, pale imitations of ourselves. Like this woman. St. Benedict takes it so seriously that he writes this: Idleness is the enemy of the soul. It is the first sentence of Chapter 48: On the Daily Manual Labor in the Rule of Benedict.

Along the lines of boredom but even more dangerous, too much time on our hands can lead to destructive behavior. Too much TV, too much food, alcohol…you get the drift. Surveys consistently reveal that we work less for the money than for the satisfaction of the work performed.

During my many years of atheism and agnosticism, sacred was an alien concept like all ideas contained in the vocabulary of faith. This, along with everything else changed upon conversion to Christian Catholicism. But I think that sense I had back in those days when God and religion were anathema, was that work is sacred. I just didn’t have the words to express it.

What kind of work?

What kind indeed?

Back in the nineties, an organizational theorist Charles Handy predicted a sea change in the work force of the twenty-first century.

Among Handy’s many prescient forecasts were that much of the work would change place from office to home and that many of the new careers would be entrepreneurial. Moreover, the concept of retirement would change: The average Westerner would change careers an average of three or four times during his or her working life; for many, the concept of retirement would be obsolete due to the choice to work far past the average age of retirement at 65.

Is Retirement a Cancer of the Soul?

One of my favorite sections from my novel of Saul’s early life, is

the account of preparing for his son’s circumcison.

…this ritual marked the beginning of the eighth day—the day God taught us how to make light. While God Himself had begun creation with “Let there be light!” we celebrated the eighth day as the human contribution to the creation, marking our creative partnership with the Lord.

As the scripture informs us, Adam and Eve had sinned and were exiled from the Garden, but God’s mercy permitted them to spend an extra day there—shabbat—before their exile. As that day ended and they faced banishment into the darkness, the Lord showed them how to make light. For that reason, the Mishkan—God’s sanctuary—was created on the eighth day: a space of forty cubits containing the Creator of the Universe.

It was as if I could hear the whispers of my desert dwelling ancestors as they followed the Sanctuary and Moses, and“brought willing offerings to the Lord, every man and woman whose heart made them willing to bring for all manner of work which the Lord had commanded.”

The account of Saul’s marriage and fatherhood is fictional, of course.

But the soaringly majestic prayers of the eighth day, its meaning and holiness among ancient and orthodox Jews are not. These are beautiful, wonderous prayers that thrilled my soul then and again now…bringing tears to my eyes as I read them again. It is that which makes work sacred: being co-creators with God.

We do this by exulting in whatever phase of our life He has placed us.

We’re able do this, I think, by developing habits.

Habits of the will that wrest us away from judgement, despondency and hopelessness.

“No! I know you love this person who is sinning against me and my country…I refuse to hate, instead I will pray for her soul.”

“No! I will not give in to hopelessness when I hear of greater and greater evils…I will trust in You!”

“I’ve never been so scared but I know You are here.”

And yet we remain paradoxically aware that our ability—even our desire to do this is pure grace. We can do nothing without Him.

Mindless, even mundane tasks can be

enormously fruitful. Once again, we need to do adjust our thinking to make it happen. But when we do decide that this, right now is His will for me, we can be co-creators with God. And the satisfaction can be surprising.

We’ve recently moved to a new home in the hill country of Texas. The landscaping and large lawns needed attention. We decided to bid out the work to three different landscaping companies. The estimates varied widely but each was four figures, one was five.

So, we decided to do it ourselves.

I smile at the memories of the weeding, the vastness of the mountain (it looked impossibly huge after it was dumped) of shredded cedar for mulching all the landscaped islands. We had help from the young sons of John and Michelle, the realtors who found and helped us close on this beautiful home.

Young Christian and I grinned at one another as we worked that first Saturday-“This is a better workout than the gym!”

Christian replied, “Sure is! Because it’s the whole body and I really needed the workout!”

But, of course, it’s our choice, isn’t it?

To decide that each moment of our lives here we can make sacred…or profane, merely by our will to make it so. Sometimes though, the decision takes everything we have and asks for more.

The Christian in the World.

Somewhere around the second century, a Christian wrote a letter to a man named Diognetus. Those of us praying the Liturgy of the hours found it this past Wednesday. The anonymous author speaks of us as indistinguishable from anyone else by nationality, speech, customs or dress. But then comments that there is something extraordinary about their lives. Any homeland can be theirs but they labor under the “disabilities of aliens.”

This is an America—increasingly, a world, where illegal aliens are more welcome than are Christians for whom the Commandments are Law. Powerful and plentiful are those who call themselves Christians but for whom the commandments are background noise. Hence we do indeed labor under the disabilities of aliens.

This is one of my favorite passages of the letter, it speaks of these days as accurately as those of 2000 years ago.

“To speak in general terms, we may say that the Christian is to the world what the soul is to the body. As the soul is present in every part of the body, while remaining distinct from it, so Christians are found in all the cities of the world, but cannot be identified with the world. As the visible body contains the invisible soul, so Christians are seen living in the world, but their religious life remains unseen. The body hates the soul and wars against it, not because of any injury the soul has done it, but because of the restriction the soul places on its pleasures. Similarly, the world hates the Christians, not because they have done it any wrong, but because they are opposed to its enjoyments.”

The anonymous author offers us twenty-first-century Christians both consolation and command.

…”It is by the Christians, detained in the world as in a prison, that the world is held together. The soul, though immortal, has a mortal dwelling place; and Christians also live for a time amidst perishable things, while awaiting the freedom from change and decay that will be theirs in heaven. As the soul benefits from the deprivation of food and drink, so Christians flourish under persecution. Such is the Christian’s lofty and divinely appointed function, from which he is not permitted to excuse himself. [italics mine.]

Crazy People

I often listen to the radio station Message. When, earlier this week, I heard their song, Crazy People, by Casting Crowns, decided their lyrics are spendidly fitting.

Who builds a boat with no clouds in sight
Who walks up to a giant and picks a fight
Who turns a lion’s den into a petting zoo
Who can have church in a fiery furnace
Well I’ll tell you who

Crazy people trusting Jesus
Following Him wherever He leads us
Kingdom Seekers
Walk by faith believers
Here’s the church
Here’s the steeple
Here’s to all God’s crazy people

Perfect!

Here’s the song.

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We Have No Right to Happiness: Last Words of CS Lewis

happiness quotes for happy life written on women doing yoga near beach. focus on being happyWe have no right to happiness: Last words of CS Lewis

Right, it’s the title of the last article CS Lewis penned before he died. I’ll admit his statement consititutes a 180 for me since I have written numerous times about happiness—what I think is entailed to be happy. And more recently, thoughts that achieving happiness have more to do with avoiding unhappiness (the last I don’t think Mr. Lewis would disagree with.)

Lewis begins his last written words this way:

“After all,” said Clare. “they had a right to happiness.”

We were discussing something that once happened in our own neighborhood. Mr. A. had deserted Mrs. A. and got his divorce in order to marry Mrs. B., who had likewise got her divorce in order to marry Mr. A. And there was certainly no doubt that Mr. A. and Mrs. B. were very much in love with one another. If they continued to be in love, and if nothing went wrong with their health or their income, they might reasonably expect to be very happy.

It was equally clear that they were not happy with their old partners. Mrs. B. had adored her husband at the outset. But then he got smashed up in the war. It was thought he had lost his virility, and it was known that he had lost his job. Life with him was no longer what Mrs. B. had bargained for. Poor Mrs. A., too. She had lost her looks—and all her liveliness…

What Is a ‘Right to Happiness’?

I went away thinking about the concept of a “right to happiness.”

We Have No Right to Happiness

My friend Mary sent me the Youtube link to Fr. Mike Schmitz’s address, “Joy is the Gigantic Gift of the Christians.” Mary sent the link a few weeks ago. And I’m just now able to process all the points in his talk because Fr. Mike is a challenge to listen to. But always, what I glean from this man makes the work worth it. And in this case, it’s flipping what I’ve always believed about happiness around a bit. Shaking and stirring things up if you will.

In his forty-five minute talk,

Fr. Mike covers a lot of ground. From his mother’s bumper sticker, “There’re not 10 Suggestions but 10 Commandments” to “There are two ways to live in the world: God exists or he doesn’t. If he doesn’t then I can do whatever I want, because nothing matters. if He does, then I cannot do everything I want because everthing matters.”

And on to CS Lewis’s last words, We have no right to happiness.” Fr. Mike doesn’t dwell on them, in fact, it’s just a passing reference. Like the fact that his title is GK Chesterton’s from his book Orthodoxy and is worth repeating: “Joy is the gigantic gift of the Christians.” But his passing references are sufficient to encourage a little research and read the whole piece.

His statement that it’s our “practical atheism” that precludes our ability to live in joy…the joy that penetrates each and every event of our life, including profound grief. He expounded on his statement: “Even in our most incredible moments of grief, we can still choose joy, we just have to let go of our conditions.”

Unaware of that phrase, practical atheist before now, I learned that Pope John Paul ll wrote this in 1989, “Secularism proves particularly ruinous with its indifference to ultimate questions and to faith: it in fact expresses a model of man lacking all reference to the transcendent. “Practical” atheism is thus a bitter and concrete reality. While it is true that it primarily appears in economically and technologically more advanced civilizations, its effects also extend to those situations and cultures which are in the process of development.”

His successor, Pope Bendict, declared practical atheism more desctructive: “While actual atheists often think deeply about God before rejecting belief, practical atheism “is even more destructive … because it leads to indifference towards faith and the question of God.”

Fr. Mike slows his rapid delivery declare that “even in our most incredible moments of grief we can still choose joy, we just have to let go of our conditions.” I wonder if one of his reasons is the catalyst for St. Edith Stein’s conversion. Sr. Teresa Benedicta (Edith Stein) writes this about a meeting with a woman who should have been devastated by grief. “Awestruck by Anne’s courage and loving submission to God’s will, which seemed to manifest the power of Christian faith “it was the moment when my unbelief collapsed and Christ began to shine his light on me – Christ in the mystery of the Cross.”

“Nothing can steal your joy,

no fear, uncertainty, illness or grief!”

When Fr. Mike made that exhortation over and over using the life and acts of Mary as an examplar, I thought of a beloved movie, The War Room. And my favorite scene when the protagonist wife stomps out to her front yard and shouts, “Satan! No more will you steal my joy!”

If you’ve not yet taken the time to see it, do. It’s a recipe for achieving joy and defeating the devil. It’s my observation not Fr. Mike’s. Instead, his advice near the end of his talk is a read I’ll take him up on. Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder. Fr. Mike had been talking about Mary, our blessed mother. And the message she received from the angel Gabriel.

It’s easy to understand why thinking of Mary would bring Nassim Taleb’s book to mind.

“If there is something in nature you don’t understand, odds are it makes sense in a deeper way that is beyond your understanding. So there is a logic to natural things that is much superior to our own. Just as there is a dichotomy in law: ‘innocent until proven guilty’ as opposed to ‘guilty until proven innocent’, let me express my rule as follows: what Mother Nature does is rigorous until proven otherwise; what humans and science do is flawed until proven otherwise.”

Fr. Mike points to his audience and says, “You are like that. Antifragile. You’re made to be antifragile. Our Church is like that antifragile…even when it looks like it’s collapsing, we know our Church is antifragile.”

And then he ends his talk with the story of Mel. A teenager Fr. Mike knew well from his work with the summer youth camps. Devout, lover of the Eucharist and adoration, young Mel went for a routine check-up. Then said of her cancer diagnosis,

“My prayer is that if God decides to heal me, it will be for His glory. If He does not heal me, that my death will glorify Him.”

Jesus The Good Shepherd, Jesus and lambs.Brief afterword.

Even if you’re not wondering why these were the last words of CS Lewis, it’s worth pondering. The brief article appeared in the Saturday Evening Post just hours after Lewis’s collapse and death at his home. It was November 22nd 1963, the day John F Kennedy was assassinated.

Lewis was considering the words of a woman who was justifying infidelity and adultery. He called her Clare. Although the piece was published sixty years ago, Clare clearly (was her name tongue-in-cheek eponymous?) speaks for a loud majority of the men and women of the twenty-first-century. “The ancestry of Clare’s maxim, “They have a right to happiness,” is august. In words that are cherished by all civilized men, but especially by Americans…What did the writers of that august declaration mean?…They meant “to pursue happiness by all lawful means”; that is, by all means which the Law of Nature eternally sanctions and which the laws of the nation shall sanction.”

Lewis warns us of the consequences of sexual license…far graver for us women.

“A society in which conjugal infidelity is tolerated must always be in the long run a society adverse to women. Women, whatever a few male songs and satires may say to the contrary, are more naturally monogamous than men; it is a biological necessity. Where promiscuity prevails, they will therefore always be more often the victims than the culprits. Also, domestic happiness is more necessary to them than to us. And the quality by which they most easily hold a man, their beauty, decreases every year after they have come to maturity, but this does not happen to those qualities of personality —women don’t really care two cents about our looks—by which we hold women. Thus in the ruthless war of promiscuity women are at a double disadvantage. They play for higher stakes and are also more likely to lose. I have no sympathy with moralists who frown at the increasing crudity of female provocativeness. These signs of desperate competition fill me with pity.”

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Listen Carefully My Child: The Labor of Obedience

portrait pointer dog with big ears up. listening concept. Isolated on white background.Listen carefully my child,

Listen carefully, my son, to the master’s precepts, and incline the ear of your heart. Receive willingly and carry out effectively your loving father’s advice, that by the labor of obedience you may return to him from whom you departed by the sloth of disobedience. To you therefore, my words are addressed, whoever you maybe, who are renouncing your own will to do battle under the Lord Christ and are taking up the strong, bright weapons of obedience.

And first of all, whatever good work you begin to do you must beg of him to perfect it, that He who has deigned to count us among His children may not at any time be grieved by our evil deeds. For we must always so serve Him with the good things He has given us, that He will never as an angry Father disinherit His children, nor ever as a dread Lord, provoked by our evil actions deliver us to everlasting punishment as wicked servants who would not follow Hiim to glory.

There are numerous translations of St. Benedict’s Prologue but the one Brother Jerome Leo uses for his meditations on the Rule of Benedict surpasses all of them.

Why?

The language is deliciously loving… “Incline the ear of your heart…”Carry out you loving father’s advice.Yet precise…”by the labor of obedience you may return.To him from whom you departed by the sloth of disobedienceWhoever you maybe, you are renouncing your own willAnd do battle under the Lord Jesus ChristAnd are taking up the strong, bright weapons of obedience.”Renouncing your own will to do battle

We pray the Our Father daily. But are our words, “your will be done” said with conviction or rote? For me it was the latter until an online friend, Janet Klasson and her site, Joy of Penance showed up. Through Janet, I’ve met Luisa Piccareta and have begun to assimilate her writings. With the help of Father Joseph Ianuzzi’s interpretations of Luisa’s words the messages have gained heft; in fact, I’m working to adopt new habits.

Like simplifying and reducing my prayers after Communion or during adoration:

“Lord, I believe, help my unbelief.”

“Lord, I trust in you, help me to trust completely.”

“I surrender my will to you, help me to mean it.”

And the habit of welcoming obstacles.

Huh? Welcoming obstacles?

Yes, you read that right. But I got the idea from Janet. In one of her posts last year, she wrote the Lord was involved in each moment, each…literal roadblock. While driving to someplace in Canada where she lives, Janet was stopped by a detour and instead of permitting frustration and impatience to disturb her peace, she decided to pray and surrender, “Okay Lord, You must want me to take this detour for some reason!”

Not long reading her piece about turning the frustrating minutiae of each day into opportunities for obeying, I began to try it….while waiting in line or when my laptop freezes.

The labor of obedience:

It’s work. Perhaps the toughest we can do, this labor of obedience.

What if I’m unable to surrender, abandon myself to Him?

The only answer? Do it anyway.

It’s excructiating when He asks something of us that feels impossible. Those are the times when we forget that obedience means to hear because our focus narrows: “I can’t do this!”

Anxiety, fear and panic overwhelm and paralyze. Those are the precise times when all we can do is whisper, even groan, “I know You know what is happening right now. I can’t feel You or hear You but this would not be happening if you did not permit it.” Whether it’s your pain or —worse, someone beloved, we must not permit ourselves to believe that God doesn’t know what He’s doing. That He has no plan.

And if it’s not us but our children and grandchildren as we see the evil…everywhere? Not outside the Church but inside! My friend Janet Klasson wrote a wonderfully blunt piece on those of us consumed by what we think we see in our churches, in the hierarchy. Unable to stop thinking, talking and worrying about what looks like destruction.

Janet called her piece, Stop the Chatter! It’s an excellent read because Janet bases her comments on Luisa’s Book of Heaven where Jesus describes precisely what the membership in the Body of Christ means. Exquisitely detailing His Body and its intimacy with His Mystical Body-us. When I read it, I thought of St. Paul’s many writings about who and what we Christians are. Like this one from Ephesions:

And He came and preached peace to you who were far away, and peace to those who were near; for through Him we both have our access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but you are fellow citizens with the saints, and are of God’s household, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, is growing into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit.

Speaking of Saul,

what must Ananais have thought when he was told to go see the man from Tarsus? Imagine his confusion and even terror?

And yet, Ananais obeyed.

The readings for the latter part of this week have been about Saul of Tarsus. The young Jewish scholar who knew the Law better than many of the Temple rabbis. Saul had been given permission by the Chief Rabbi to come to Damascus to search and persecute Christians.

The word about Saul went gone out and quickly. Devout Ananais was praying when he heard from the Lord to go an heal the sight of the man he knew was a murderer. And Ananais objects.

Of course he does!

“Lord, I have heard from many sources about this man,
what evil things he has done to your holy ones in Jerusalem.
And here he has authority from the chief priests
to imprison all who call upon your name.”
But the Lord said to him,
“Go, for this man is a chosen instrument of mine
to carry my name before Gentiles, kings, and children of Israel,
and I will show him what he will have to suffer for my name.”
So Ananias went and entered the house;
laying his hands on him, he said,
“Saul, my brother, the Lord has sent me,
Jesus who appeared to you on the way by which you came,
that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit.”
Immediately things like scales fell from his eyes
and he regained his sight.”

In my fictional account of the last night of St. Paul’s life,

writes this:

“How would knowing about your murderous past help any of us? The events you speak of took place more than three decades ago—years before most of your followers—including me—were born.”
“NO, Aurelius!” he insisted. “Write this precisely as I say it! All must know who I was, what I did, what I was capable of. Only then can they understand the immensity of the gift we receive! Only then will they comprehend that the words you write tonight—and all of the thousands of words I have written over the last decades—are not mine. How could they be? How could such a contemptible man write of such truth, wisdom, beauty, mercy, forgiveness?”

Only that once did this saint raise his voice to me. During the endless weeks when I’d treated him so ill, he’d been nothing but pacific, meek, and kind. His ire was aroused only when I attempted to mitigate his self-condemnation.”

I loved the years spent immersed in the ancient world. These people and their stories who differ from us only in the superficialities of time and place reach out to teach and lead us to Him.

When completing the last of the ancient world series, my friend Linda introduced me to pianist and song writer, Marty Goetz: Esther’s song, “For Such a Times As This.” Take a moment or three and bask in Marty and Misha Goetz’s music and lyrics confident that He knows what He is about.

Even, perhaps especially, when we are blind to His purposes.

The post Listen Carefully My Child: The Labor of Obedience appeared first on Lin Wilder.

Forgiveness, Ignorance and Redemption

Man with black skin begging forgive and caucasian woman rejecting him in a parkForgiveness, ignorance and redemption

We pray it every day. “…Forgive us as we forgive those who…” But too often, the routinized words fall from my lips and disappear into the petty details of the day’s tasks. I know well the essential correlation between forgiveness and redemption in my own life and therefore I’ve written about its essential components. Like the truth that forgiving ourselves is the first step in spiritual growth. And that the act of forgiveness can function as a razors edge.

Until the last couple of weeks, however, I’d not considered the essential correlation of forgiveness, ignorance and redemption. I understand this now for two reasons. First, an excerpted article from Pope Benedict’s book: Jesus of Nazareth Part Two, Holy Week. Secondly, a meditation on forgiveness by Father Ken Geraci at St. Joseph Catholic Church last Divine Mercy Sunday afternoon.

Before proceeding to these two points however, a reminder that the soil of prayer is peace. Not ‘peace in the world’ but in each heart, beginning with my own. A peace which is, at times, elusive or absent. Although anxiety and worry are unwelcome, at times they overwhelm.

Saint Vincent de Paul, the last person anyone would ever suspect of being lazy, used to say: “The good that God does is done by God Himself, almost without our being aware of it. It is necessary that we be more inactive than active.”

Searching for and Maintaining Peace

It’s not about me, my will or my strength:

In his excellent book, Fr. Jacques Phillipe declares, “We believe, for example, that to win the spiritual battle we must vanquish all our faults, never succumb to temptation, have no more weaknesses or shortcomings. But on such a terrain we are sure to be vanquished! Because who among us can pretend never to fall?…The first goal of spiritual combat, that toward which our efforts must above all else be directed, is not to always obtain a victory (over our temptations, our weaknesses, etc.), rather it is to learn to maintain peace of heart under all circumstances, even in the case of defeat.”

Will I ever realize that it’s all God?

Each tiny or ginormous obstacle can be overcome only by surrendering: The Surrender Novena.

And so, when I read, then reread, Not Knowing What We Do-and the Cross, the power of Pope Benedict’s prose begged for far more than a read, but rather rumination. Ruminate: chewing, over and over.

The paradoxical association between knowledge and ignorance is real. I mean here that the more real knowledge we gain, the deeper we plunge into the vastness of our unknowing.

Or should.

What Pope Benedict suggests here however, is something else. And that something is both consoling and disturbing at the same time: Our sin, at its foundation, is due to our ignorance. Even when we knowingly and intentionally sin, it is because we don’t know: Forgiveness ignorance and redemption.

That’s a wholly radical thing to say—isn’t it?

Both the apostles Peter and Paul preach that ignorance lies at the foot of sin.

Pope Benedict writes, “You “denied the Holy and Righteous One, and asked for a murderer” to be granted to them. (3:14) You “killed the Author of life, whom God raised from the dead.” (3:15) After this painful reminder, which forms part of his Pentecost sermon and which cut his hearers to the heart (cf. 2:37), he continues: “Now, brethren, I know that you acted in ignorance, as did also your rulers.” (3:17)

Then quoting Paul, “He recalls that he himself “formerly blasphemed and persecuted and insulted” Jesus. Then he continues: “but I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief.” (1 Tim 1:13) In view of his earlier self-assurance as a perfect disciple of the Law who knew and lived by the Scriptures, these are strong words; he who had studied under the best masters and who might reasonably have considered himself a real expert on the Scriptures, has to acknowledge, in retrospect, that he was ignorant. Yet his very ignorance is what saved him and made him fit for conversion and forgiveness.

This combination of expert knowledge and deep ignorance certainly causes us to ponder.”

Indeed.

Then last Sunday,

Father Gerasy was speaking about forgiveness. About the many references in Proverbs to the prison that is unforgiveness. And Jesus’s own words that we will be forgiven… to the extent that we have forgiven others. Just as we pray in the “Our Father.”

Looking out at the packed church, he asked quietly, “Are there people you need to forgive? But have not?

“Politicians?
“People in the Church?

“Even those very high up in the Church?”

After a few moments of silence, Father Gerasy said that one day, while hearing confession, he was struck dumb by a woman who came for confession because she could not forgive someone.

“Father,” the woman said, “I cannot forgive the man who murdered my daughter two years ago.”

Looking out at our rapt, attentive faces, Fr. Gersay said, “There was nothing I could say to this woman. What could anyone say to her?

“And so I prayed. ‘Tell me please what I should say to this person…And I heard in the interior of my heart, “This is the perfect prayer of forgiveness.”

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

Behold, I make all things new Fr. Boniface HicksOh ineffable, consummate love!

You really are in love with what you have made! You, God, cannot suffer, yet
you wanted to make peace with us, and the sin we had
committed had to be punished. But we are not capable
of satisfying in any way for the great injustice done to
you, eternal Father. So in your love for us you found a
way. You clothed the Word in our flesh, and he at one
and the same time offered you honor and bore the
punishment in his own flesh, taken from Adam’s clay
that had sinned.
How then can we do anything but surrender our
selves? We see how he wrestled on the cross and let
himself be conquered even as he won. For death con
quered death even as death conquered life, and life
conquered and killed and destroyed death. They joust
ed, and death was completely defeated, and life rose
to life in us.
So let your heart hold back no longer. Let the city of
your soul surrender—for Christ has set fire everywhere,and there is nowhere you can turn, physically or spiri
tually, without encountering the fire of love. St. Catherine of Siena

The post Forgiveness, Ignorance and Redemption appeared first on Lin Wilder.

A Little Spark Gives Way to a Great Fire

Fire particles. Glowing effects with little flame parts burned sparks decent vector realistic set isolated. Fire light effect, spark in bright illustrationA little spark gives way to a great fire.

I’ve known forever that I should read Dante’s Divine Comedy. After all, it’s one of the most famed of all literary writings. Hence we should all have at least a nodding acquaintance with the Inferno and Purgatoria, perhaps even Paradisio, right?

But yet I managed to avoid reading it in undergraduate English classes. After all, I was an atheist, why would I want to read about hell, purgartory and heaven?

Much later, after converting to Catholic Christianity, I made a few perfunctory attempts to read the epic poem. But it was only when my online friend, Maura Harrison began posting her astounding images of the 100 Days of Dante that I decided, finally, to do this. But around Canto 20 in The Inferno, again I quit. Despite the excellence and variety of the professors commenting on the Inferno, I couldn’t get into it. The images, names, times and events felt far removed and Dante Alighieri? He felt like a wholly alien being.

But now, I get it. With that perfectly banal phrase, I mean that not only do I understand why the Divine Comedy is considered superior literature, but that Dante is no longer foreign to me. In fact, I have gained, I believe, another friend in heaven.

My title, “a little spark gives way to a great fire” is taken from Canto 1 of Paradiso beginning with this tribute to God. By the now wise and knowledgeable Dante:

THE glory of Him who moveth everything 1
Doth penetrate the universe, and shine
In one part more and in another less…

So seldom, Father, do we gather them
For triumph or of Caesar or of Poet,
(The fault and shame of human inclinations,)
That the Peneian foliage should bring forth
Joy to the joyous Delphic deity,
When any one it makes to thirst for it.
A little spark is followed by great flame;
Perchance with better voices after me
Shall prayer be made that Cyrrha may respond…

The poet’s words recall Christ’s preaching, “For truly I say to you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible to you.”

But until Hillsdale College’s

course by Dr. Stephen Smith on the Divine Comedy, this translated verse would have rung hollow and meaningless in my ears and mind. Much like most poetry did while a kid English major a million years ago. However, Stephen Smith’s passion for the Divine Comedy, love for the pilgim Dante Allighieria, and his irresistible delight in explaining precisely why this is indeed a masterpiece, ensnared me for the entirety of his ten lecture series.

Each one of his talks, it seemed, was better than its predecessor.

Initially, I’d planned to write snippets about this astounding 700 hundred-year-old work. Quoting some of the most salient-perhaps enlightening aspects of the Inferno and Purgatoria. Like Dante’s words upon entering the Inferno on Good Friday:

MIDWAY upon the journey of our life
I found myself within a forest dark,
For the straightforward pathway had been lost.

So familiar was the poet’s lament about the disappointment, confusion and often betrayals of midlife that it is one of the first quotes that appears in my first novel, .

And then famed Francesca’s insistence that it was love that landed her in the Inferno-she had no responsibility when she chose adultery is almost comical. It wasn’t her fault but that of the love that overwhelmed her.

“Were He who rules the universe our friend…,” she opines. God is the enemy of each of the lost souls we meet in the Inferno.

As if the descending nine levels of the Inferno aren’t dreadful enough, we then enter Malebolge at the eighth level of hell. It is made up of ten separate bolgias of damned souls who knowilingly and willingly commit fraud.

Dante’s itchily contemporary list?

false counsel, astology, flatterers, sowers of scandel, schismatics (those who separate religions to create new ones)corrupt politicians (Read more)

Then finally, the lowest level of the Inferno, where Satan lies, encased in ice.

Behold Dis– Behold Satan

But it’s impossible to grasp

the immensity of this poet’s genius and gut-wrenching honesty without watching-participating in- the whole course on Dante’s Divine Comedy for yourself. As told by Dr. Stephen Smith.

There are countless reasons I say this. Primarily though, it’s that feeling of being back in those heady days when I was discovering the great thinkers and philosophers. Excited and challenged by instructors of the caliber of Dr. Smith. The sheer unadulterated joy of learning, studying and questioning.

Maybe there was a time when you too were captivated by the search for knowledge and wisdom?And fell in love with the truth and beauty of the Greek and Roman philosophers and writers like Hemingway, Faulkner and Fitzgerald? Only to find that their wisdom yellowed and decayed, with the loss of youthful ideals?Leaving cynicism and its accompanying atheism in its wake?

We see in these lectures that Dante’s odyssey, his pilgimage, is that of all of us. His pain at the realization that his desire can be satisfied only by letting go of our desperate and dangerous grip on all that is not God, is that of all humanity. Even, maybe especially, our very love for justice, peace and beauty.

We learn from Dante that the Beatrices in our lives are not our endpoint, we must not rest in them.

Upon leaving the Inferno, then Purgatoria and ascending into the Heavens of the Sun, Dante’s poetry becomes more and more delicious, the visions and images ineffably splendid…like Piccarda’s reply to Dante when he observes that she is only in the first level of the Heavens, wouldn’t she be unhappy with being placed so low?

Consused by Piccarda’s effusive joy that pours out of her soul, Dante asks, “But don’t you wish you were higher in the heavens?”

Piccarda’s reply?

“In his will is our peace.”

And then the gripping image of the Eagle of Justice appearing in the Heaven of Justice…these are only two of the magnificent metaphors in this poem worth pondering forever.

The point on which everything depends…

is, of course, the point of the entire Divine Comedy and of each one of our lives: Christ.

St. Bernard’s last piece of advice to our pilgrim: “Into the face that most resembles, Christ, for by her radiance, only she can prepare you to see her Son…” sage counsel for us, day by day, moment by moment.

Dante echoes Thomas Aquinas’s words upon completing the Summa when he ends his 100 cantos:

My words are less than what a baby says who wets his tongue at his mother’s breast…how feeble language is, how lame my thoughts…”

Canto 33 Paradisio

In The Hands of Antaeus Salivor Dali Divine Comedy woodprint

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How Do I Pay for All the Blessings? Father Stu, the Movie

Father Stu, the movie

How do I pay for all the blessings?

It’s a question all of us ask, or should. But the phrase is Mark Wahlburg’s explanation for what he calls his “passion project,” the film Father Stu. Coarse, raw, and at times, vulgar, this movie is ideally suited for Holy Week and today, Resurrection Day. But it takes a while to understand this.

The true story (Biopic, in Hollywood parlance) is that of Stuart Long, a former Montana boxer who moves to Hollywood to be discovered as an actor. Wahlburg’s Stu is obnoxious. And so is his father Bill, Mel Gibson. Less so, but still rough, is his mother, Jacki Weaver. This isn’t a pretty story.

And yet, it feels simply real. Like Stu’s mother’s response to his gripe that he refuses to get a “blue-collar job.” Her whiny reply? “But Stu, what else is there?” the stark reality for many.

Ed Langlois writes, “Jaws dropped in Helena, Mont., when Father Stuart “Stu” Long was ordained a priest in 2007.

“I knew a Stu Long in high school, but it can’t be the same guy,” was the reaction of one former classmate. The Stu he had known growing up in Helena had muscled and gabbed his way through street fights, football games and boxing matches before becoming a bouncer and then a bit actor in Hollywood.”

Certainly, most definitely, not the climate from which profound, jaw-dropping saintliness and holiness emerges.

And yet they do.

Much of the movie centers on this seriously self-destructive guy who seems fated to be a clone of his alcoholic and abusive father. I believe that the film is ideally suited to Holy Week is because its last thirty to forty-five minutes plunge us deep into the belly of a level of suffering rarely experienced in a movie, (we can’t just watch, we’re pulled in) unless it’s called The Passion of Christ. Therefore, upon coming out of the movie into the San Antonio sunshine, I was unable to speak about it to John or our friend, Father Dan Crahen, because I had no words.

Just silence.

But this is a movie that sticks, hence, this tribute to an extraordinary story and Mark Wahlburg’s magnificent portrayal of Father Stu..

What is my mission, my purpose?

Wahlburg explains in an interview with Raymond Arroyo that he asks that question frequently of himself. His decision to do the story of Father Stuart Long came from a meeting with a couple of priests in which Wahlburg was ‘just trying to enjoy a glass of wine.’

“Why do you keep pitching me this movie? You know nothing about movies in Hollywood.”

Later on in the interview, the actor remembers the moment when he decided to “break the cardinal rule” of putting his own money into a film:

Stu was one of the most brutally honest … I actually remember now, what the thing that stuck out to me [was]: Father Ed was telling me a story about how Stu was already in the assisted-living home. There was a giant line of people waiting. He was a very prideful guy, so he wanted to continue to take care of himself, even as his sickness [inclusion body myositis] worsened. And he was just trying to wash his face in the sink. And this woman barged in, and she basically cut the line. And she was a big contributor to the Church. So she felt like she had the right to access Stu at any time. I’ll give you the mild version. I won’t give you the hard-rated R language that Stu used at the time. But he was there. He was just trying to wash his face. And she was complaining her car window had gotten broke, and they stole her computer. And he looked at her and he said, “Good, you probably deserve that. And the guys probably need it more than you do. Now, give some more money to the Church, and get out of here. I got people that I need to talk to.”

And again, I changed the wording a little bit for our family audience. But I was like, he was a brutally honest guy, but he touched so many people; so many people could relate to him. And he told the truth. And …

Mark Wahlburg talks with Raymond Arroyo

Ordination of Father Stuart Long (standing at far left with crutches)Here’s a 22 minute video of Father Start Long.

Reposted from Aleteia: Testimony of Father Stuart Long. the priest who died at the age of 50 explains his early life, conversion, illness and his intimate experience with suffering.

“We don’t get to choose what happens, only how we respond to it.”

By the end of the film, Mark Wahlburg’s physical transformation to the likeness of Father Stu is astonishing…even perhaps, miraculous

During these holiest of days, I think

of a recent piece titled, Vatican ll’s Most Harrowing Line:

Tucked at the end of a hotly debated passage in Lumen Gentium about the Church’s role in salvation comes one sentence that has not received as much attention. What follows the statement that “all the Church’s children” have received their holy Catholic faith not from merit, but from “the special grace of Christ,” is the most harrowing line of Vatican II:

If they fail moreover to respond to that grace in thought, word and deed, not only shall they not be saved but they will be the more severely judged. (LG 14)

In the twenty plus years I’ve been Catholic, I’ve met dozens of men and women who no longer practice their Catholic faith. Their stated reasons vary widely but boil down to disagreement with one or more of the precepts of the Church. I know my concern, at times anxiety, about them and their salvation emanates largely from my days as a staunch non-believer. Because I, far more than my cradle Catholic friends and husband, know the dangers of living life without God and the sacraments He instituted to bring us back to Him.

Hence my gratitude to Mark Wahlburg for the gift of his passion project, Father Stu, during this Easter season of 2022.

You mentioned a moment ago the R-rated language that Father Stu used. You don’t shy away from that in this movie, which I have to tell you, at first I thought, “Oh, wow.” And then, as you watch it, the language really gives it its authenticity. That’s who these people are. And, frankly, who your viewing audience is, in many ways. Was that the thinking there? Because, a lot of times, they’ll sanitize this for a family audience. 

Yeah. We had always talked about what the tone of the movie was. And Father Ed had told me a wonderful story about how Father Stu and his dad and a couple of the friends went to go see The Fighter … and how much they loved the movie, but also how much it affected them in a much more personal way because it really reminded them a lot about aspects of their own life. And you know …people swear. We wanted to be brutally honest. We want to make sure that this movie is not exclusive to Catholics and devout people. This is inclusive to everybody who needs people. You remember what God’s mission was, right? He didn’t come to save the righteous.

Mark Wahlburg talks with Raymond Arroyo

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He rides into Jerusalem: Palm Sunday

Biblical vector illustration series, Jesus comes to Jerusalem as KingHe rides into Jerusalem

He rides into Jerusalem amidst lavish, unrestrained, almost unanimous exaltation.

Slowly-on the colt of a donkey.

So many details here, in this story.

Why a colt?

So that a fully grown adult male on the colt prefigures the excruciating burden He will soon carry?

To assure that these faces, now adoring, soon to turn vicious as they scream, “Crucify Him!”,  to the ones who know His innocence, perhaps even sense that “Something greater than Solomon  is here” but who lack the courage to defy the mob and confess the Truth that stands before them can see clearly this face…these eyes?

The story is familiar in the telling, isn’t it?

Maybe too familiar. It’s a very long mass and the only one where we parishioners participate in proclaiming the Gospel.

Our part?

To mock, along with Peter, to deny and most terribly, shout,

“Crucify him!””

Why do we do this each year?

Maybe to look at our sin through the eyes of God?

To understand that our snide comment about our ‘friend’s’ new haircut, or self-righteous condemnation of our representative in Washington, is, to God, as serious a sin as any?

“We see ourselves as decent people, as Catholics in good standing. Indeed we are good people. The Church, though, would like us to see reality with the eyes of God, at least on this day, Palm Sunday.

In the eyes of God sin is sin, is sin. 

From the biggest to the slightest, any sin is an affront to His majesty and a self-inflicted wound undermining the soul slowly, even imperceptibly, or quite aggressively with a frontal, mortal attack. 

Any sin, big and small alike, has also uncontrollable, horrific consequences affecting even the most innocent of children.

Therefore, the traces of shock still lingering after today’s reading of the Passion narrative should suffice to help us resolve, with distinct decisiveness, to do two things. To look at any sin with God’s eyes, counting on His grace to resist even the fiercest temptations…read more

Throughout his astonishing book, The Lord, Romano Guardini explains patiently and persistently that the belief that Christ was born to die on the cross is far from the truth. That phrase, scandal of the cross was well-known up through the middle ages. But lost in recent centuries. It had never crossed my mind that the life of Christ was headed anywhere but toward an agonizing end. Until now.

And once we consider that shift from thinking there was not just one fall of man, but two, Palm Sunday becomes far more than palms and donkeys. 

Guardini writes of the very air as being saturated with divinity. The phrase explains Christ’s reply to the Pharisees attempting to quiet the jubilant throng of inspired people.

“I tell you,” He answered, “if they remain silent, the very stones will cry out.”

Imagine it.

Being so inundated with grace that all fear is erased. Everything obliterated but grace, the all pervasive knowledge that Truth is right in front of you, walking among you. So much so that defying the authorities is as nothing.

Consider how that could have felt, the absence of any fear…then take a leap to how everything could have changed. Everything.

My fictional Pontius Pilate reflects about the first Palm Sunday:

…Was this the riot that Caiaphas and Annas had feared for the past five years? These people are not just from Jerusalem. I hear Coptic, Syriac, Germanic, Aramaic, as well as Hebrew… and their voices sound joyous. This is no mob–these people are carrying on as if welcoming a hero or king!

As I watched, the crowd threw palm fronds and poplar branches onto the street in front of them, as if to form a carpet. As Longinus and I walked cautiously into the throng, no one even noticed us—we were invisible. Everyone’s attention was on a figure approaching on a horse. No, not a horse—something smaller. As the figure and beast grew larger, I could see that this was Jesus, the man about whom Caiaphas and Annas had been increasingly frantic.

Before I could get a clear view of him, he turned his mount left toward the temple. Without thinking, I started to follow, until Longinus put his hand on my arm. He and I locked eyes for a moment as I marveled at the energy in the air;

Their awe and joy were tangible as if they were connected in some mysterious way to the man who I now saw was riding a donkey colt! Amidst the cacophony of languages, I could hear alleluias and the hosannas, as if this man was a god.

Hosanna!

Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord,

The King of Israel!

They were calling him King, Lord…but what kind of god chooses a young donkey upon which to make his triumphal entry?

It was all so strange…and yet, I could not deny the yearning I felt, deep within. There was no other word for the feeling but yearning. It was a hunger for something I hadn’t known I lacked.

I Claudia

Guardini’s words sear and pierce.

“That Jesus’ task “is consummated” must be true, because he says so (John 19:30).

“Yet what a spectacle of failure! His word rejected, his message misunderstood, his commands ignored. None the less, his appointed task is accomplished, through obedience to the death—that obedience whose purity counterbalances the sins of a world. That Jesus delivered his message is what counts—not the world’s reaction; and once proclaimed, that message can never be silenced, but will knock on men’s hearts to the last day.”

A 100-year-old-poem comes to mind. It’s author, an English Anglican priest and chaplain in WW l, Geoffrey Stoddart-Kennedy, called his poem, Indifference. It’s now known as, “When Jesus Came to Birmingham.”

When Jesus came to Golgotha, they hanged Him on a tree,
They drove great nails through hands and feet, and made a Calvary;
They crowned Him with a crown of thorns, red were His wounds and deep,
For those were crude and cruel days, and human flesh was cheap.

When Jesus came to Birmingham, they simply passed Him by.
They would not hurt a hair of Him, they only let Him die;
For men had grown more tender, and they would not give Him pain,
They only just passed down the street, and left Him in the rain.

Still Jesus cried, ‘Forgive them, for they know not what they do,’
And still it rained the winter rain that drenched Him through and through;
The crowds went home and left the streets without a soul to see,
And Jesus crouched against a wall, and cried for Calvary.

And yet whether at mass in “the most Catholic city” in the country,

San Antonio, or back in California at St. Paul the Apostle in Pismo Beach, California, I see people there for the same reason I am. We go to be healed, knowing that the church is the only field hospital available on this earth.

For some, it’s a difficult task: their young children take time and patience, for others, pain and infimities make the process of dressing, driving and getting to mass on time an arduous one.

But they are there.

We all are. Because we know that there is just one truth, one source of wisdom. And it is the Person of Jesus Christ.

We know too, that regardless of the miles that separate us, we are one.

“And let me make it quite clear that when Christians say the Christ-life is in them, they do not mean simply something mental or moral. When they speak of being ‘in Christ’ or of Christ being ‘in them’, this is not simply a way of saying that they are thinking about Christ or copying Him. They mean that Christ is actually operating through them; that the whole mass of Christians are the physical organism through which Christ acts—that we are His fingers and muscles, the cells of His body.

And perhaps that explains one or two things. It explains why this new life is spread not only by purely mental acts like belief, but by bodily acts like baptism and Holy Communion. It is not merely the spreading of an idea; it is more like evolution—a biological or superbiological fact. There is no good trying to be more spiritual than God. God never meant man to be a purely spiritual creature. That is why He uses material things like bread and wine to put the new life into us.

We may think this rather crude and unspiritual. God does not: He invented eating. He likes matter. He invented it.”

CS Lewis Mere Christianity

El Greco

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Lenten Greetings from Texas: Have A Joyous Lent

Our new home in Belverde TexasLenten Greetings from Texas

Right, after twenty years in the west: eighteen in Nevada and a year and a half in California, we’ve moved to Texas. Precisely like every other major event in my life, this was not in the plan but an astonishing surprise, because, for me, it feels like returning home to Texas.

A couple of essays ago, I alluded to “huge aliquots of chaos” in my life, meaning that selling the California place and buying this lovely oasis in the Texas Hill Country was, as you may imagine, not without it’s trials-some of which felt overwhelming. And yet, just seven days after leaving California, all our possessions are here, including my car. We were told it would take at least two weeks.

My attempts to trust Him, give it all to Him were weak and bounded by, at times, “I don’t think I can do this!” But many ‘this’s’ did get done, often in spite of me. A fact that determines the providential nature of this whole process and the silly futility of all my anxieties.

Meanwhile, the end of this mercy-filled penitential season approaches swiftly. Pondering this fifth Sunday in Lent, fears that my habits of sin still adhere are amplified.

Therefore this piece on Lenten greetings from Texas.

“I don’t want to be worrying about what to wear,”

my friend Mary cried out, “I want to be praying, fasting, contemplating Our Lord!”

Indeed.

My reply to Mary was a reasoned one. “Well, this must be the sacrifice He wants you to make. Worrying about ‘silly dresses’ fit for a wedding, right?”

My smile is a rueful one because of the immense difficulty of taking my own advice. The days when the prayers could not be prayed weigh in. Times when the distractions extinguished peace and trust are all too clear.

And I hang on to what is known- prayer and faith are gifts sourcing not from me but Him. Stark evidence that it was His Will that prohibited offers with three different realtors on three houses in California. And assured that this one in Belverde, Texas, would go through.

“Have a joyous Lent!”

A few years ago, the priest ended his Ash Wednesday homily with the command to “Have a joyous Lent!” I do not know if anyone else in the crowded church was as astonished as I at this exhortation. But incrementally, I am beginning to peel back the infinite paradoxes and contradictions of this faith of ours. One that mandates joy while immersed in terrible sorrow, fear, loss, betrayal, even death. 

Ash Wednesday-40 Days of Opportunities

It was Fr. Nathan Mamo, S.T.L., who issued the oxymoronic command which echoes in my heart: “Have a joyous Lent!”

And recalls Gibran’s beloved poem, On Joy and Sorrow

Then a woman said, Speak to us of Joy and Sorrow.

     And he answered:

    Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.

     Andthe selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled withyour tears.

     Andhow else can it be?

     Thedeeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.

     Isnot the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter’soven?

     Andis not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed withknives?

     Whenyou are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only thatwhich has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.

    When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see thatin truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.

    Some of you say, “Joy is greater than sorrow,” and others say, “Nay,sorrow is the greater.”

     ButI say unto you, they are inseparable.

    Together they come, and when one sits alone with you at your board,remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.

    Verily you are suspended like scales between your sorrow and your joy.

    Only when you are empty are you at standstill and balanced.

     When the treasure-keeper lifts you to weigh his gold and his silver, needs must your joy or your sorrow rise or fall.

It’s tempting to focus on the penance and fasting

therby risk missing the goal: greater union with Him.

Parochial Vicar Fr. Duncan Amek used a parable to elucidate the Gospel reading from the Gospel of John for this past Friday.

….But when his brothers had gone up to the feast,
he himself also went up, not openly but as it were in secret.
Some of the inhabitants of Jerusalem said,
“Is he not the one they are trying to kill?
And look, he is speaking openly and they say nothing to him.
Could the authorities have realized that he is the Christ?
But we know where he is from.
When the Christ comes, no one will know where he is from.”
So Jesus cried out in the temple area as he was teaching and said,
“You know me and also know where I am from.
Yet I did not come on my own,
but the one who sent me, whom you do not know, is true.
I know him, because I am from him, and he sent me.”
So they tried to arrest him,
but no one laid a hand upon him,
because his hour had not yet come.

Fr. Amek’s parable began with an angel appearing to two men,

first, a rich and powerful ruler whose authority spanned many lands. The second, a farmer. The angel said to the two men, “You have been granted the ability to see God is whatever form you wish.

The powerful magistrate replied, “I want to see God in His majesty and glory, looking like a great ruler.”

Instantly a bolt of lightning struck from the sky bringing with it thunderbolts which pulverized the King’s palace, inhabiatants and much of his kingdom.

The farmer said to the angel, “I am a poor and simple man. I wish to see God in the work I do- in the furrows I make for the grain, the oxen who help me plow it, the rain which helps it grow and the faces of my family and neighbors.”

The farmer lived a long and happy life.

Again, I recall what I’ve been taugt, but can so easily forget. The path to union with Him, at times consists of messes to cleaned up joyously, (or at least without complaining), being interrupted in the task we want to do in order to do another’s.

…He assures those who have faith in God’s love that the way of love is open to all men, and that the effort to restore universal brotherhood is not in vain. At the same time he warns us that this love is not to be sought after only in great things but also, and above all, in the ordinary circumstances of life…Yet he makes all free, so that, by denying their love of self and taking up all earth’s resources into the life of man, all may reach out to the future, when humanity itself will become an offering acceptable to God.

Gaudium et Spies

Have a joyus Lent!

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