Lin Wilder's Blog, page 6

We Should Kneel Down in Gratitude!

I wrote this article over two years ago. This looming election begs for reflection on our nation and its unarguably providential origins. And so biographer David McCoullough’s words warrant meditation.

We should kneel down in gratitude!

McCoullough’s comment, “We should kneel down in gratitude!” applies, of course, to more than the personage of George Washington. Still, after watching and listening to McCoullough talk about our first president, I read his book, 1776 a second time.

It’s an astounding read. The book reads like a novel as it reveals the immensity and impossibliity of the task looming in front of George Washington. In less than 300 pages, McCoullough relates the extraordinary events of the first year of the American Revolution: 1776. And does so in his classic understated prose.

When Washington took over the command of the ragtag collection of farmers, merchants and itinerants, the men had only enough gunpowder for nine rounds each.The “soldiers” were farmers, merchants, a far cry from the professionally trained British soldiers on warships surrounding Boston.A twenty-five year old bookseller named John Knox led a force to steal badly needed munitions and a cannon from New York. Along with the cannon, 58 mortars—120,000 pounds—of muntions from Fort Ticonderoga made the three-hundred mile trip in the dead of winter. It took two months. An incredible, impossible feat.The jubilance of the British retreat from Boston was followed closely by the calamitous losses in New York.We lost 25,000 men in the battle-one percent of the population at the time, a loss of more Americans than in any other war excepting the Civil War.

McCoullough’s summary of the first president?

“He was not a brilliant strategist or tactician, nor a gifter orator, not an intellectual. At several crucial moments, he had shown marked indecisveness. He had made serious mistakes in judgement…Above all, Washington never forgot was at stake and he never gave up….Without Washington’s leadership and unrelenting perserverence, the revolution almost certainly would have failed….Especially for those who had been with Washington…at the beginning…the outcome seemed little short of a miracle.”

Indeed, we should kneel down in gratitude!

Like millions here and around the world, I’m a huge fan of David McCoullogh.

And was extremely saddened to read of his death last week, just two months after the death of his wife and best friend, Rosie. My introduction to the biographer occurred at a long ago book club. Truman was to be the read for the following month. Gasping at the size of his biography, Truman, I thought, “I’ll never get through this tome!”

But I did. In fact, savored almost every word of that 1000 plus page book. And then felt the same about John Adams, because I got hooked on McCoullough’s style, refreshing candor, and the sympathetic portraits of the times and their characters. McCoullough placed me there, taking me out of our 21st century comforts, conveniences, immediacy, and transporting me to an entirely different era.

In order to write his books, McCoullough needed to like and admire the person he wrote about. In the preface to his book on Adams, McCoullough said that he’d intended to write about Thomas Jefferson, until he began doing the research and learned that it was Adams, not Jefferson, whose principled brilliance and steadfast character built the foundation of this country while Jefferson was mostly in France.

Reading McCoullough’s books always feels like an experience. He has a gift of transporting our psyches into the guts of crises and events and making us feel we’re part of it all. Part of the successes and even more, the humiliations and gravely costly errors. We end each book with a bit of awe at the nobility of our brothers and sisters, a kind of pride in our shared humanity.

In a 1992 interview about his new biography, Truman,

McCoullough said something worth shouting from the rooftops:

“… always you have to keep in mind at every step along the way: What didn’t they know? To look at it from the mountaintop, so to speak, as many historians do, and to take the grand view is to have a huge advantage of hindsight, which they never had, which we don’t have right now. So to fault a figure in public life or to condemn a whole generation because they failed to know what we know is really, to me, it’s dishonest and unfair.”

Dishonest and unfair, indeed. There’s no shortage of dishonesty and unfairness in our world, is there? A seemingly universal refusal to appreciate historical and cultural context.

But researching my ancient novel series taught me that manipulating history isn’t unique to the 21st century.

The last three of my novels were historical fiction. Hence extensive research was required. Because The Reluctant Queen was the third in my ancient novel series, I expected its writing to be simpler. After all, I was writing of the same period, give or take a couple of hundred years. But only when looking at the Greco-Persian wars through the Persian perspective did I learn that there’s nothing new about revising history to fit our biases and prejudices.

While researching and writing I Claudia and My Name is Saul, the thought that the ancients would be as tempted as we moderns to revise history never once occurred to me. But as I pondered that obvious fact, once more the distance between us and the ancients narrowed considerably. All of these challenges incited and excited me.

The Reluctant Queen

That’s the thing about history, isn’t it?

The only way to get even an echo of understanding for historical figures is to join them in their culture. What they knew and believed. And once we do so, we find the most extraordinary thing, don’t we?

My sympathetic writing about the characters of Pontius Pilate and King Xerxes has yielded criticism. Both are men many in our culture-especially the scholars-think we understand. But that’s the thing about writing, the awful humility of it. If we’re honest, we learn that we don’t really know. Anything.

Gratitude

In the eigthteen-minute video with McCoullough above, the author vehemently opines against those who think ours are the worst of times in America. At the time the video was filmed, the chasm between Democrats and Republicans was well on its way to apparent irreconcilability. But if you listen carefully to his remarks about the early years of this country, —better yet, learn about them for yourself—instantly, you know the foolishness of such statements.

Not just foolishness, McCoullough admonishes, but ingratitude.

Yes, the seeming incapacity to see the blessings we Americans have and do receive. In a world where want is the norm and clean water a precious gift, so many of us manage to be mostly unhappy. Mostly depressed.

Because I think about gratitude more than a little, I write about it. Often wondering, what is it?

As a child, I witnessed the mystery of gratitude and its absence. My non-church-going father seemed grateful. Tired, usually, but grateful for his work and the living it provided for him, his wife and girls. While my mom seemed mostly incapable of seeing the blessings of her life. Her lens revealed only a dirty house and Dad’s relentlessly oil-stained clothes and hands which bugged her, often making her angry.

All these years later I wonder about that: we should kneel down in gratitude! In my memory, admittedly faulty, the grateful person in our family was my father. The man who only began attending church after she died.

Weekly, I pray

the Patriotic Rosary for the consecration of our nation. It begins this way:

Come Holy Spirit
For the Conversion of our Nation’s Capital
The Apostle’s Creed
For the Holy Father
Our Father
For Bishops, Priests, Religious
Three Hail Mary’s
For the Conversion of our Country
Glory Be

Included in these magnificent prayers are those from five founding fathers upon the birth of this nation.

Each is sobering and haunting.

George Washington’s prayer precedes the first mystery for the Presidency of the United States. The man who made the momentous decision to step away from the presidency after two terms. An act, declares David McCoullough, that makes him worthy of being “our greatest president.”

The American Lucius Qinctus Cincinattus.

“No one can rejoice more than I do at every step the people of this great country take to
preserve the Union, establish good order and government, and to render the nation happy at
home and respectable abroad. No country upon earth ever had it more in its power to attain
these blessings than United America. Wondrously strange then, and much to be regretted
indeed would it be, were we to neglect the means, and to depart from the road which
Providence has pointed us, so plainly; I cannot believe it will ever come to pass. The Great
Governor of the Universe has led us too long and too far on the road to happiness and glory,
to forsake us in the midst of it. By folly and improper conduct, proceeding from a variety of
causes, we may now and then get bewildered; but I hope and trust that there is good sense
and virtue enough left to recover the right path before we shall be entirely lost.”
George Washington, June 29, 1788

We should kneel down in gratitude!

The post We Should Kneel Down in Gratitude! appeared first on Lin Weeks Wilder.

Recovering Our Lost Integrity

Search Seo Online Internet Browsing Web ConceptRecovering our lost integrity

“What does God want?”

“He wants his creation to recover its lost integrity.”

Bishop Barron’s words from his homily for the first Sunday in September, Be Opened, explain everything. While God’s creatures search madly for answers to their despair and sense of meaninglessness, there is just one remedy. Only one method to repair the disharmony, loss of identity and divisiveness caused by our enemy.

The context for Bishop Barron’s recovering our lost integrity, is Mark’s Gospel passage that recounts Jesus’ leaving Tyre and going to the Greek city of Decapolis. The tales of Jesus’ healing miracles precede him everywhere he goes. And so the Greeks bring him a deaf man with a speech impediment and “begged him to lay a hand on him.”

He took him off by himself away from the crowd.
He put his finger into the man���s ears
and, spitting, touched his tongue;
then he looked up to heaven and groaned, and said to him,
���Ephphatha!������ that is, ���Be opened!��� ���
And immediately the man���s ears were opened,
his speech impediment was removed,
and he spoke plainly.
He ordered them not to tell anyone.
But the more he ordered them not to,
the more they proclaimed it.

Twenty-third Sunday of Ordinary Time

Indeed, Jesus is a wonder worker

states Bishop Barron.

Why?

Why does he restore speech, hearing, raise the dead and cure lepers?

To show off?

To reveal God the Father. Over and over Jesus tells his disciples that when they listen to him, when they look at him, they hear and see God the Father. But although they were with him for three years, they were incapable of hearing–and seeing, Just like me, you and everyone on this beautiful planet, bleeding from flood, drought, bloodshed and hatred.

“Jesus,” says Bishop Barron, is the icon of the invisible God, the visible representation of the God of Israel…whatever he’s saying or doing is explaining who God is and what God is about.”

“And it’s not just an anthropological problem. No. Sin affects all of creation.”

The proponents of climate change are right, the natural world is sick, but their solutions can fix nothing. Governments and their regulations cannot heal the planet. The work of recovering our lost integrity begins with repentance: I am a sinner, and so are you, my friend.

I italicized Bishop Barron’s words, “Sin affects all of creation,” because they warrant reflection. Perhaps even reading the first three magnificent chapters of Genesis, carefully and thoughtfully. Long ago, when I’d decided to become Catholic, my now-husband John suggested I read the Bible.

I did. And was astounded by the poetic beauty, the splendor of the prose in the first three chapters. And I knew, Eden is real.

It is because I hear the echoes of Eden.

Of a place where all of creation ��� all of us creatures were, in a sense, one. We humans had dominion but the word does not connote perversion of power or hierarchy, rather it implies a deep reverence for all creatures, an understanding that supersedes words because perfect communication can exist only without words.

Ever Think About Eden? Whether It was a Real Place?

But we still don’t get it, do we?

Just like Joshua, we’re suspicious of modern Medab. And we, like the “Sons of Thrunder, want to rain down fire upon those who aren’t “one of us.” On his recent Asian trip, Pope Francis spoke at an interfaith meeting of Singapore young people.

“Every religion,” Pope Francis declared, “is a way to arrive at God.”

Jesuit Pope Francis is surely well-versed with another Jesuit: Karl Rahner and the brilliant, radical theology of his “anonymous Christian.” In fact, the pope frequently refers to Rahner’s criterion of “men of good will” when explaining the universality of God’s salvific plan. But instead of examining the meaning behind the Pope’s phrase, the predictablly banal outrage against Pope Francis once again exploded, not just from Catholics but from Christian groups as well.

Jesus’ reply to the James and John’s offer to rain down fire on those who rejected him and the disciples should “chill” us.

Anyone who is not against us is for us.

Numbers 11:25-29:If only the whole people of the Lord were prophets.
James 5:1-6: Your wealth is all rotting, your clothes are all eaten up by moths.
Mark 9:38-43,45,47-48: Anyone who is not against us is for us.

The stern words of today���s Gospel should send a chill down our spine. They set out what it means to be ���for��� and ���against��� Christ. It is clear that the Lord is not content with lip service. What he requires is an integral response that must shape our behaviour and definitively����structure our life. We are to cut ourselves off from everything and anything that incites us to evil. We are to look upon others with creative compassion, striving to anticipate and meet their needs.
Above all, we are not to come between them and the Lord, as stumbling blocks. How remarkable it is: we have the potential to reveal God to one another; and we can likewise conceal him��from��each other. It is a terrifying prospect: by my actions I may effectively block another from seeing God, from reaching true freedom, happiness, and beatitude.

Sunday B: Coram Fratribus

The post Recovering Our Lost Integrity appeared first on Lin Weeks Wilder.

Reclaiming the Joy of Wonder

Amazed or surprised child Reclaiming the joy of wonder

There are some weeks, like the one that just ended, where the end of the week looms. And still, I’ve no idea what to write about. But when I spied another lecture from the Institute of Catholic Culture:. Let them be reborn in wonder. my interest peaked, due to the salvific effects of my Dominican undergraduate education in liberal arts.

Yes, salvific. By my early twenties, my unexpected loss of faith weighed heavily on my soul. The meaninglessness of life felt overwhelming, until I met some of the great minds of the past-and present, at Dominican College. And began to see light.

The Joy and Wonder of Catholic Education, is written by Bishop James Conley. He begins his essay with second century Saint Iranerus. “The glory of God is man fully alive.” That simple statement reveals the purpose of human intellect, will and memory

Later in the piece, Bishop Conley writes

“When I discovered truth, goodness, and beauty in the great books, described by Matthew Arnold as “the best which has been thought and said,” wonder took hold within me. This was not a happy accident. The three KU professors who founded the Integrated Humanities Program firmly believed that a true education should engender “a birth of the human spirit, an entry into a new world that excites interest because it is seen in the light of wonder” (Dennis Quinn, “Essay on the Muses as Pedagogues of the Liberal Arts”). “Wonder is the beginning of knowledge,” said Professor John Senior (another co-founder), “the reverent fear that beauty strikes within us.” The idea was so central that they chose the Latin phrase Nascantur in Admiratione (“Let Them Be Born in Wonder”) as the program’s motto. As I was reborn in wonder my heart began to sing for joy. St. Augustine wrote, only the lover sings, and ultimately, I discovered love Himself through the joy and wonder suffused throughout my liberal arts program.”

Let Them Be Reborn in Wonder

Enthusiasm: enthūsiasmus is the Greek origin of the word, “posession by a god, having a god within.” The image of the child seen at the top of the page visually defines the word. The god within can be rekindled in our hearts and minds through good education–regardless of our age.

We are made for wonder, which is a wonder that breathes life into the soul and gives our lives meaning and purpose beyond the mere functional. What a gift it would be if our schools could give to our students that wonder through which God enters the heart and gives it new life.

A Passionate Advocate for Quality Education

Education means what exactly?

The etymology of the word is Latin: educere. Bishop Conley writes “its purpose is to lead us our of ignorance, to something greater. “Education is the process of shaping us to fulfill the purpose of our lives; to know the happiness that comes from living in accord with our dignity and our nature. Education is the work of drawing out, developing, and learning to use our intellects, our memories, our wills, and our imaginations, to the fullness of their potential.”

Bishop Conley is describing the process of reclaiming the joy of wonder, the enthusiasm, delight of learning, mastering. And is critical for each of us, whether we’re eight or eighty. In the mid-nineties, Charles Handy, a British organizational theorist wrote The Age of Paradox. In it, Handy predicted that 21st century 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.

I recall many laughter-filled conversations with my thirty or forty-something colleagues as I explained that retirement was dangerous: The consequential boredom. The reality of having too much time one one’s hands. We see far too many young, and old Americanshaunted by depression. Could forgetting how to use our intellects, wills and imaginations be a primary cause of all that depression?

St. Benedict

takes boredom 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. Note his choice of article. Back in the fifth century, the saint knew called the problem of too much time on our hands not one of many but the , singular, enemy of our souls.

“Education isn’t what some people declare it to be, namely, putting knowledge
into souls that lack it, like putting sight into blind eyes… But…the power to learn is
present in everyone’s soul and the instrument with which each learns is like an eye
that cannot be turned around from darkness to light without turning the whole
body. This instrument cannot be turned around from that which is coming into
being without turning the whole soul until it is able to study that which is and the
brightest thing that is, namely, the one we call the good… Then education is the
craft concerned with doing this very thing, this turning around, and with how the
soul can most easily and effectively be made to do it. It isn’t the craft of putting
sight into the soul. Education takes for granted that sight is there but that it isn’t
turned the right way or looking where it ought to look and it tries to redirect it
appropriately.” Republic VII 518b-d

A Truly Good Life-Insights from Plato’s Republic

The post Reclaiming the Joy of Wonder appeared first on Lin Weeks Wilder.

Dei Verbum: God Speaks

Head / face of a Jesus statue with telephone, clouds and skyDei Verbum: God speaks

It gets our attention. Even in the Latin which I never studied nor grew up with, the words Dei Verbum: God Speaks don’t bounce off. Rather, they burrow. Even if we consider ourselves above or beside all things religious, we alert–like our dogs–at seeing these words. Because he does, doesn’t he?

Speak.

Lectio Divina is a practice recommended daily I learned after converting to Catholic Chritianity. Regnum Christi taught one format that I followed consistently. Upon becoming a Benedictine Oblate, however, daily prayer routines changed. The Rule of Benedict doesn’t prescribe a format for prayer. Ora Labora– pray and work, fit my life. However, the loss of a disciplined method for lectio bagan to concern me. Hence, Dr. Jared Staudt’s Lectio Divina: Encountering the Scriptures with Pope Benedict XV drew my attention.

Dr. Staudt’s ninety-minute presentation warrants our time. Staudt’s handouts directed me to Pope Paul Vl’s opening document of the Vatican ll,, Dei Verbum. I’d not read it before. As always, I’m struck by the beauty and splendor of these Vatican ll documents.

The Church has always venerated the divine Scriptures just as she venerates the body of the Lord, since, especially in the sacred liturgy, she unceasingly receives and offers to the faithful the bread of life from the table both of God’s word and of Christ’s body. She has always maintained them, and continues to do so, together with sacred tradition, as the supreme rule of faith, since, as inspired by God and committed once and for all to writing, they impart the word of God Himself without change, and make the voice of the Holy Spirit resound in the words of the prophets and Apostles. Therefore, like the Christian religion itself, all the preaching of the Church must be nourished and regulated by Sacred Scripture. For in the sacred books, the Father who is in heaven meets His children with great love and speaks with them; and the force and power in the word of God is so great that it stands as the support and energy of the Church, the strength of faith for her sons, the food of the soul, the pure and everlasting source of spiritual life. Consequently these words are perfectly applicable to Sacred Scripture: “For the word of God is living and active” (Heb. 4:12) and “it has power to build you up and give you your heritage among all those who are sanctified” (Acts 20:32; see 1 Thess. 2:13)

Dei Verbum

Lectio Divina

Upon our move from the east coast, a good friend gave me a book on creating “sacred space.” Although it’s been years since I’ve read Ron’s book, the concept of “partnering with God” to enhance the beauty of our living space adhered. So much so that in each of the three homes we’ve lived in since that Connecticut house, I’ve felt an obligation to do just that: create a sacred space.

Ugliness is created by us: It’s nearly impossible to lift our minds and hearts upward to where they belong if all around us is drab, utilitarian, lifeless, and dark. In such a context, minds more readily believe the nonsense of today’s progressive ideology.

The word of God also inevitably reveals the tragic possibility that human freedom can withdraw from this covenant dialogue with God for which we were created. The divine word also discloses the sin that lurks in the human heart. Quite frequently in both the Old and in the New Testament, we find sin described as a refusal to hear the word, as a breaking of the covenant and thus as being closed to God who calls us to communion with himself.[78] Sacred Scripture shows how man���s sin is essentially disobedience and refusal to hear. The radical obedience of Jesus even to his death on the cross (cf. Phil 2:8) completely unmasks this sin. His obedience brings about the New Covenant between God and man, and grants us the possibility of reconciliation. Jesus was sent by the Father as a sacrifice of atonement for our sins and for those of the whole world (cf. 1 Jn 2:2; 4:10; Heb 7:27). We are thus offered the merciful possibility of redemption and the start of a new life in Christ. For this reason it is important that the faithful be taught to acknowledge that the root of sin lies in the refusal to hear the word of the Lord, and to accept in Jesus, the Word of God, the forgiveness which opens us to salvation.

Verbum Domini: Pope Benedict

Our eighteen years in the high desert of Nevada taught me that the most inhospitable, arid, and dead space can be transformed into a sacred space. Of course it was work. Hard, grueling and expenive labor in creating a rose garden for Our Lady. And then planting close to twenty-five trees and untold perennials. And finally figuring out how to keep the starving rabbits from eating everything. But the joy of watching the many hundreds of birds who came to drink, eat and live there is impossible to convey. Countless early mornings I’d be in the gazebo with the dogs, intending to pray the Liturgy of the Hours. Only to lose myself in awe and wonder at the beauty that had transformed sagebrush into an oasis.

After short time in California, Texas

Our small central coast of California vacation home worked for the short term, until it didn’t. The California coastline is magnificent but for numerous reasons, we decided to move—again: the third move in less than two years.

When John and I first saw this house on the outskirts of the Texas Hill Country, the statues of Saint Francis and Saint Anthony beckoning us inside, we knew.

This was our place.

The pictures of the back patio and yard during the day and night reveal sacred space that we didn’t labor to build. It was all done for us. All I needed to do was provide the feeders, food and fill the birdbaths. And they came, iin droves.

In front of the Saint Francis statue is a grass I planted in hopes of attracting the painted bunting–the “rainbow bird.”

It worked! We see these magnificent creatures along with countless others who come to eat, drink and hang out.

Once again, I’ve a sacred place to hear Dei Verbum: God Speaks. Reading, memorizing and meditating on the psalms, and the Old and New Testaments directly leads to the wonder and majesty of God. And so do his creatures: trees, flowers, birds and the skies transport our hearts and minds to the Triune God, where they belong: Adoring, praising, worshipping, gaining in trust and confidence in God’s mercy.

How great is your name

O Lord, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens.

Out of the mouths of babes and infants you have founded a bulwark because of your foes, to silence the enemy and the avenger.

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established;

what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?

Yet you have made them a little lower than God, and crowned them with glory and honor.

You have given them dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under their feet,

all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field,

the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the seas.

O Lord, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth!

We celebrated the Feast of Saint Matthew yesterday. Matthew, the tax collector despised by all, except Jesus.

“Come, follow me.”

“Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”
He heard this and said,
“Those who are well do not need a physician, but the sick do.
Go and learn the meaning of the words,
I desire mercy, not sacrifice.
I did not come to call the righteous but sinners.”

The post Dei Verbum: God Speaks appeared first on Lin Weeks Wilder.

The Time is Running Out

The time is running out

The liturgy for Wednesday morning eerily fit the twenty-third anniversary of 9/11. A day that seemed to change everything but In reality accelerated the forces that were already set in motion.

Like all first-century Christians, Paul was certain that this world was ending.

I tell you, brothers, the time is running out.
From now on, let those having wives act as not having them,
those weeping as not weeping,
those rejoicing as not rejoicing,
those buying as not owning,
those using the world as not using it fully.
For the world in its present form is passing away. Full Text

On that clear, crisp, September morning, twenty-three years ago, surely none of the 256 passengers boarding American Airlines flights 11 and 77 and United Airlines flights 175 and 93 planned to die that day. Most likely, at least one or two of the nineteen young jihadists [only one was over thirty] had doubts about their horrendous actions as they watched the looming towers, Pentagon buildings or the Pennsylvania fields hurtling toward them.

Although our nation promised never to forget, 9/11 has largely been forgotten. In fact, Americans under the age of twenty-five likely know nothing about the attack on our nation by Muslim jihadists. Tragically, many of our campuses are filled with the same ideology.

Where did all that post 9/11 sense of community, love of country, of America’s ideals, of our nationhood, go?

Saint Paul’s exhortation to his listeners, “The time is running out” forces more than a few seconds of thought about those 256 passengers and crew who ran out of time.

Even facing death, we choose

United Airlines flight 175 to Los Angeles took off from Logan airport at .8:14 am.. Brian Sweeney, a former Navy pilot and instructor, sat in the rear of the airplane. In the forty-five minutes between takeoff and crashing into the South Tower, Sweeny would have watched the entire, horrific takeover of the plane. Since his wife called him a warrior, we can assume he’d considered overpowering the five men once they announced themselves. Maybe during the breaching of the cockpit. Or later when there were just three left wandering among the passengers.

“Jules this is Brian. Listen. I’m on an airplane that’s been hijacked. If things don’t go well and it’s not looking good. I just want you to know I absolutely love you. I want you to do good, go have good times. Same to my parents and everybody. And I just totally love you. And I’ll see you when you get there.

Bye babe and I hope I call you.’

Voicemail from Flight 175

Sweeny would have noted the drop in altitude and change of direction from westward to the south. But until he saw that the plane was flying low over Manhattan, he’d not have thought about the gas. A coast-to-coast flight assures that each airplane was completely filled with gas, thereby guaranteeing unimaginable explosive potential upon collsion. He had to know this plane was headed directly on a collision path with something. Brian picks up the airphone on back of the seat in front of him and calls his wife.

Brian Sweeney’s calm voice expresses neither anger nor fear but rather a curious, almost superntural, confidence and trust. And even more than those, we hear love. Brian Sweeny’s choice to love in the midst of unimaginable terror recalls a film about Saint Paul’s last days. The magnificent film of Paul, Apostle of Christ teaches Saint Luke, and those of us willing to learn, that evil could only be overcome with love.

Looking into the faces of evil

It’s impossible to think about Sweeney and all of the 3700+ people who died that day without wondering, “What would I have done?”

Would I have been paralyzed with fear, unable to breathe, thinking, “Why is this happening to me?”

“Would I have died cursing and hating those lost, confused jahidists?”

���To you who hear I say, love your enemies,
do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you,
pray for those who mistreat you…To the person who strikes you on one cheek,
offer the other one as well,
and from the person who takes your cloak,
do not withhold even your tunic.
Give to everyone who asks of you,
and from the one who takes what is yours do not demand it back.
Do to others as you would have them do to you….

Looking straight into the face of evil has to be transformative. Mustn’t it? Could it have been so for Brian Sweeney? Might he have looked into the faces of the three young men and seen the frightened children of God behind the masks that possessed them?

We speak of evil when describing something transcendent, something beyond human experience. In his newest book, The Dragon’s Prophecy: Israel, The Dark Resurrectinon, Jonathan Cahn explains the personhood of evil, its uncreated nature. Evil has supernatural force yet it’s personal therefore requiring consciousness, will and volition.

What is it that makes evil evil? Evil is an inversion–an inversion of truth, of reality, of existence. Evil is, by nature inverted, and by nature, inverts, It twists, bends and turns existence in upon itself. It exists as anti-existence. It’s being is anti-being, and its nature anti-nature…It has no true, ultimate or absolute existence and therefore seeks to bring that which exists into nonexistence. And so evil, by its nature seeks destruction. It opposes that which is.

The Dragon’s Prophecy: Israel, the Dark Resurrection and the End of Days.

The Exultation of the Cross

Yesterday was the Feast of the Exulation of the Cross. To many, it’s an oxymoron–wholly foolish. But the more we pray, study, adore, we begin to glimpse the beauty, majesty and privilege of participating in suffering. In joining Christ in the victory over the destroyer and a growing confidence –like Brian Sweeney’s –that what seems to be happening, isn’t.

Adorable cross, I embrace you at last! You were the longing of my love. You, O cross, lingered until now, while my steps were always directed toward you…In you I concentrate my whole being; in you I place all my children. You will be their life, their guard and their strength…You will come to their assistance in everything and will bring them to me glorious, in heaven…

Jesus’ words to Luisa Piccarreta in The Hours of the Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ

Image Father Boniface Hicks

The post The Time is Running Out appeared first on Lin Weeks Wilder.

Moderation: A Forgotten Legacy from President Eisenhower

Angry adult men in a fiery conflict and a pacemaker between them trying mediate and stop the argument. Moderation: A forgotten legacy from President Eisenhower

We now stand ten years past the midpoint of a century that has witnessed four major wars among great nations….we yet realize that America’s leadership and prestige depend, not merely upon our unmatched material progress, riches and military strength, but on how we use our power in the interests of world peace and human betterment.

Progress toward these noble goals is persistently threatened by the conflict now engulfing the world. It commands our whole attention, absorbs our very beings. We face a hostile ideology global in scope, atheistic in character, ruthless in purpose, and insidious in method. [Italcs mine] Unhappily the danger it poses promises to be of indefinite duration. To meet it successfully, there is called for, not so much the emotional and transitory sacrifices of crisis, but rather those which enable us to carry forward steadily, surely, and without complaint the burdens of a prolonged and complex struggle — with liberty the stake. Only thus shall we remain, despite every provocation, on our charted course toward permanent peace and human betterment.

Eisenhower’s Farewell Address

His Farewell Address to this nation is prescient and eerily relevant. We’ll return to it shortly. First though, Eisenhower’s successful battle over himself is one that begs for our attention. Overcoming Eisenhower’s childhood outbursts of explosive anger led to what looked like a natural gift for moderation: a forgotten legacy.

In a recent post, I wrote of my fascination with the man who headed up the largest land invasive force in human history and then became one of the politicians he claimed to detest: Dwight D Eisenhower.He then worked assiduously for peace and disarmament because he could see the dangers of the growing military-industrial complex and its stranglehold over nations.

After reading Supreme Commander: The War Years of Dwight D. Eisenhower followed by Eisenhower: Soldier and President, I realize it’s a fascination once held by the entire world.

These two books are tomes, Stephen Ambrose’s detailed biographies are exhaustive and his objectivity commendable. While Ambrose makes patently clear his admiration–perhaps love–for his subject, he doesn’t diminish Eisenhower’s flaws, which were many. Rather Ambrose works to stand under (understand) them In so doing, he makes his reader do the same thus forcing a different perspective. And for me, to come to a different understanding of the politics of abortion.

Huh?

One of ‘Ike’s most criticized inactions

was on segregation: Brown vs Department of Education. Earl Warren had been installed as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court by President Eisenhower. But Warren’s declaration that ‘separate but equal’ was an infringement of the Fourteenth Ammenment of the Constitution shocked President Eisenhower. Unequivocally, he declared his responsibility as Chief Executive was to enforce the law of the land, But he expressed his profound sympathy for a culture with “deep ruts of prejudice and emotionalism that had been built up over the years in this problem…’He wanted moderation on the race issue.”

In a personal letter to a friend, Eisenhower wrote that “no single event has so disturbed the domestic scene…as dd the Supreme Curt’s decision of 1954 in the school segregation case.” Author Stephen Ambrose further quotes Eisenhower’s words to his friend, Swede. “Laws are rarely effective unless they represent the will of the majority. Further, ‘when emotions are deeply stirred,’ progress must be gradual and take into account ‘human feelings.’ Otherwise, we will have a ‘disaster.’ The south had lived for almost under 100 years under segregation. “It was impossible to expect instant reversal of condict by mere decision of the Supreme Court.”

It’s impossible for me to ignore the parallels between Brown vs Education and Roe vs Wade and, in my own mind, at least, consider moderation, a forgotten legacy when thinking about and speaking with my friends who insist that abortion is a protected right. Almost all have children and none has ever had an abortion and yet they are vehement about “my body, my choice.” I speak of something around fifteen to twenty women somewhere around my age, ranging from “Christian” to wholly non-religious whose “No, I have not done it but others must have the right!” has been puzzling and troubling.

Until a long-ago friend’s visit coupled with Ike’s wisdom. My friend, whom I’ll call Sally, read one of my books, before she came to visit, the one where I explain walking away and then running back to God. The one where I explain why I aborted my baby.

Taking into account human feelings

My rebellion against all things religious and being a submissive female began in my teens. While that of the friends mentioned above happened gradually, during marriage and motherhood. Thus immersing them in an incremental, insidious quasi-godlessness hardly noticed. My decades of atheism, on the other hand, created a profound horror of sin, making me profoundly aware of my capacity for falling into it.

“Where else can we go Lord?” That peculiar calculus of salvation: faith precedes knowledge of sin.

My friend Sally’s explanation of remaining “Christian” without believing in God’s law helps me sympathize with “human feelings.” President Eisenhower ntellectually saw the wrongness of segregation. But his southern upbringing precluded use of force. Just so, I see that Sally and all my pro-choice friends are immersed in the deeply emotional and confounding politics of five decades of equalty, abruptly ripped away. The baby’s an afterthought. It’s a place words where words bounce off. And so we shout across a chasm at one another.

It’s a place that can be accessed only through the heart, not with reason, but the Spirit of Christ.

“This is unlawful, outrageous!

There is little more seductive to our fallen intellects than the tribes of Us vs Them: moral outrage.

And it’s just those legalistic extremes that our Lord condemned. Jesus’ summary passage to the Pharisee and Scribes whose zeal eclipsed love speaks loudly to all.

“Well did Isaiah prophesy about you hypocrites, as it is written:
This people honors me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me;
in vain do they worship me,
teaching as doctrines human precepts.
You disregard God’s commandment but cling to human tradition.”

Gospel of Mark

Hostile global ideology.

“We face a hostile ideology global in scope, atheistic in character, ruthless in purpose, and insidious in method. [Italcs mine] Unhappily the danger it poses promises to be of indefinite duration. To meet it successfully, there is called for, not so much the emotional and transitory sacrifices of crisis, but rather those which enable us to carry forward steadily, surely, and without complaint the burdens of a prolonged and complex struggle — with liberty the stake…”

It’s taken seventy years for Eisenhower’s prophetic words to bloom. Where the Clinton’s qualified abortion to be”safe and rare”, we now have “reproductive rights” in the Department of Justice. This nifty legal terminology permits abortion clinic sidewalk prayer warriors to be indicted in a conspiracy against rights.

Whistleblowers testifying that children’s hospitals that ignore state laws against mutilating children due to “gender dysphoria” have been indicted by the Department of Justice.

Pregnancy centers are attacked by activists and Democratic state governments with impunity

And yet, it looks like once again, like four years ago, half of Catholics will vote Democrat according to the EWTN survey of 1000 Catholics. How could so many American Catholics vote for a party platform contrary to God’s Law and a jurisdictional plan that nullifies the Church’s teaching?”

“Donald Trump is crass, rude and obnoxious.”

“Trump is bombastic and annoying.”

“Trump’s a womanizer and brags about it.”

“Putin loves her laugh.”

“Harris is easier to look at and listen to.”

All these comments and many more are understandable. But this election cannot be about our feelings.

Robert Malone, a physician scientist has explained clearly why he endorses Donald Trump. Please read and consider his points, carefully, thoughtfully.

We must defend the truth boldy, fearlessly.

How?

“Lord, I believe! Help me in my unbelief.”

Remember the mute son possessed by demons? From the Gospel of Mark:

���Teacher, I have brought to you my son possessed by a mute spirit.

Wherever it seizes him, it throws him down; he foams at the mouth, grinds his teeth, and becomes rigid. I asked your disciples to drive it out, but they were unable to do so.���

He said to them in reply, ���O faithless generation, how long will I be with you? How long will I endure you? Bring him to me.���

They brought the boy to him. And when he saw him, the spirit immediately threw the boy into convulsions. As he fell to the ground, he began to roll around and foam at the mouth.

Then he questioned his father, ���How long has this been happening to him?��� He replied, ���Since childhood.

It has often thrown him into fire and into water to kill him. But if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us.���

Jesus said to him, ������If you can!��� Everything is possible to one who has faith.���

Then the boy���s father cried out, ���I do believe, help my unbelief!���

At our baptism, we were infused with the theological virtues of faith, hope and charity. Virtues that must be strengthened with prayer, fasting and penance.

Everything is possible to one who has faith.

Gospel of Mark

Bishop Barron quotes Paul Tillich’: “Faith is the most misunderstood word in the religious vocabulary.”

The post Moderation: A Forgotten Legacy from President Eisenhower appeared first on Lin Weeks Wilder.

Lack of Gratitude: The Deadliest Sin

Immanuel Kant – the German philosopher, the founder of German classical philosophy.

Lack of gratitude

Recently, I confessed my consistent failures in praying a nightly examination of conscience. Then I asked if the priest could make some suggestions. Father Charlie Banks replied, “Conscious examen” suggesting a review of the day, starting with the good things, giving thanks for them. Then on to those that hadn’t been so good and asking for the grace to improve. The brevity and simplicity of the priest’s suggestions cut through the lengthy examination of conscience proscriptions I’d been failing at. Instead of wallowing in the failures of my day, thinking first about the tiny and not so small miracles of each day makes me want to do it!

Conscious examen, derives from Saint Ignatius’ spriritual exercices. The phrase recalls Saint Ignatius’ conviction that ingratitude is the greatest of sins In fact, Saint Ignatius writes:

“Ingratitude is the cause, beginning, and origin of all evils and sins.��� 

A Gratitude Deficit

Since that confession, I don’t think I’ve missed a single nightly ‘conscious examen.’

Gratitude, its curious presence or absence in us, has intrigued me since childhood.. Although my father worked six days a week at his business that covered his clothes and hands with grime, he seemed grateful….for the work, the fact that he could work and that he could care for his family in a home in a small town outside of Boston where he grew up. My mom was mostly unhappy with life.

So I wonder, what is it? What is gratitude?

Is gratitude a virtue?Is it a feeling,Or an emotion?No, they are inadequate, it is more than these, much more, isn’t it?

In these ‘advanced’ times, the collective we has determined that each American is entitled to a ‘basic minimum’ of subsidized housing, food and income. Maybe add in medical care and other ‘rights.’Some of us rail that it’s too much while others rant that that it’s too little, while still others opine against the right of the collective to make our charitable decisions for us.

The once “creeping sense of entitlement” no longer creeps but gallops. Among its inimical effects is an us vs. them dichotomy whisch isn’t just false but hateful, as we see demonstrated on too many college campuses. But far more worrisome is the total absence of gratitude for all these free gifts.

GK Chesterton’s is a most excellent definition of graitude: “Gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.” Jesuit priest Anthony de Mello once wrote, “You sanctify whatever you are grateful for.”

Saint Ignatius’ conscious examen focuses the mind, forcing us to ponder the prodigious blessings of God. The saint pushed: Knowiing there is always more we can do, always more glory we can give to God. Teaching us that each moment is gift, that lack of gratitude for them is a deadly sin.

There’s another reason I’m thinking about gratitude, its presence and its lack.

Until the film, The Unfinsihed Symphony, I’d not heard of Father Al Schwartz. As a new priest in 1957, he asked to serve under the Catholic Bishop in war-ravaged South Korea. The conditions were desperate with thousands of orphaned children starving on the streets. At first, he visited the orphanages. Their dismal conditions impelled Father Al to do something. On the Assumption of Mary, Augus 15, 1964, he started the Sisters of Mary, Girls Town.

Father Al’s story and the remarkable, miraculous creation of the Sisters of Mary: World Villages for Children, persuaded me to contibute financially to this sublime mission. Shortly after setting up the first of my monthly contributions, I received a thank-you letter from Sister Yadira along with thank-you letters from seven of the girls who live and study at the Sisters at Villa de Las Ninas. A girl named Maria wrote,

“I never imagined a school like this…a computer for me to use personally….Here I get to eat something each day. We have our beds. We have water that comes from the wall to wash in….”

Father Longenecker paid witness to 3,000 Mexican teenage girls blaze with a startling type of joy. He saw children in the process of being mothered back to health and serenity by 56 members of the Sisters of Mary religious community. In many of the villages outside of the Girlstown community are the human traffickers, drug runners and gang members from whom the soul-bruised teenage girls must escape….

���A visit to Chalco is a little glimpse of heaven,��� said Father Longenecker, who wrote about his pilgrimage to Girlstown on his blog. ���Music, flowers, children, dancing. The whole experience has impressed on me the importance of using aright the time that is left to me here on earth. ��� I came away from Girlstown astonished at what God can accomplish through one priest who is 100% for Christ.

���Venerable Al Schwartz was unstoppable ��� even with a crippling disease he did not give up relying on God���s power.���

Gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.

The post Lack of Gratitude: The Deadliest Sin appeared first on Lin Weeks Wilder.

Goal of Education: To be Fit for Modern World Or?

Mind strength concept, silhouette of woman headGoal of education

Although it was a zillion years ago, I well recall my casual summer date’s, “Why liberal arts? What can you do with a degree in English literature?” In just a month, I was moving to Houston to work my way through college for a degree in English literature.

I’d spent three years in nursing school. The curriculum was designed to teach procedures, behaviors and techniques and I’d disliked it from the beginning. I graduated because my mother refused to let me quit.

“I told you you wouldn’t like nursing school. You wouldn’t listen.”

Therefore, almost instantly after graduation, working nights in a cardiac surgical unit in New York City, I started college classes while looking for a college that would give me a scholarship. At Dominican College in Houston, Texas. I found what I was looking for. And far more.

While working full-time in the exploding field of Houston’s cardiac surgery, courses taught by John Bradshaw and Sister Marie Bernard, altered what and how I thought. And opened my entire being to the joy of learning, of finding thinkers from ancient and modern times who answered questions I’d been incapable of articulating.

Upon graduation, I took the graduate record exams. And, on a lark, filled out some applications for grad school. To my great surprise, I was admitted to the combined Masters/PhD program in English at Fordham University. The application required a short essay explaining why I wanted to attend. My essay,, In Defense of Liberal Arts, was an ode to that Dominican education and its effect on my life. Had I accepted Fordhams’s offer though, I shudder at the thoughts of the person I might have become: a twenty-five-year-old atheistic aggressive, ambitious female grad student in late-sixties New York City.

To be unfit for the modern world

Richard Gamble’s recent piece, To Be Unfit for the Modern World was the catalyst for this trip back through my educational past. Gamble’s title is compellingly satirical and forces a response to the question, what is the goal of education?

More than two hundred years ago, the utilitarians disconnected themselves from liberal education and the Great Tradition, redefining and redirecting the “useful” away from that which forms the “complete man,” and toward that which primarily promotes man’s material well-being. Of course, education has always aimed to be useful. The question has been, and continues to be, useful to what end? The modern age, often with good intentions, has defined educational usefulness as that which leads to material results that can be weighed and measured and counted. Thus, it is no surprise that it has been darkened by the spiritual “eclipse” that Saint Augustine warned us against so long ago in his Confessions…it will, I hope, inspire modern misfits who seek to initiate themselves and their students into an ancient way of teaching and learning much larger than themselves, and who recognize that their task is chiefly formative rather than instrumental…

To Be Unfit for the Modern World

In the thirty plus years I spent in schoos and colleges, much of that time felt like an endurance test. BUT, in those undergraduate very Catholic liberal arts years and then much later, in my doctoral work, professors showed up who did indeed define their teaching as formative.

What does that mean?

It means resisitng the lure of the bully pulpit, respect and admiration for the uniqueness of each mind and heart. Teachers/professors hold a rare power. For some, the seduction of captured minds is irresistable. The professor, writer or the physician intent on forging his or her solution to everything on impressionable minds is a powerful force.

Most cannot resist the power.

Education and politics

After watching the 2004 film Countdown to D-Day, I became fascinated by Dwight D. Eisenhower and the impossible job of being the Supreme Commander of the allied forces. How could one man handle all those personalities: DeGaulle, Mongomery, Churchill, Roosevelt while planning the largest invasion in history?

So I read Stephen Ambrose’s Supreme Commander: The War Years of Dwight D. Eisenhower. It’s a tome but lucidly reveals the impossibility of the tasks put before Eisenhower. And yet he did them.

All of them.

Throughout the book, historian Ambrose reveals Eisenhower’s dislike, at times, hatred for politics and politicians. So, of course, I then read Ambrose’s Eisenhower:Soldier and President to learn how and why a man who so intensely disliked politicians, became one. As he deliberates about entering politics, Eisenhower muses that while the British “stand” for office, Americans “race” for it.

“The Republican Party of 1952, after twenty years without power or responsibility, was frustrated, angry, negative. What it did best was to criticize, charge, accuse.. When it went after the New Deal..Eisenhower was in perfect agreement…. But on foreign policy, he had a major problem….The truth was that Eisenhower had been one of FDR’s principal agents in carrying out his foreign policy in Europe during the war, and Truman’s Chairman of the JCS when China was “lost” No matter how much he didged, equivocated, denied, or explained his actions, it was inescapable that he had loyally, indeed, enthusiastically, helped implement FDR’s policy.”

Eisenhower’s ‘dilemma’ illustrates the forced binary, simplistic stance of our two-party system. However, there are legislative adjudications for which there are neither justification nor compromise.

“Reproductive rights”

The overturning of Roe vs Wade by the Supreme Court should have been the end of federal interference with abortion. But the President’s rhetoric against the court’s decision was not empty threats. The Biden administration ignored the law of the land with an exutive juggernaut-The US Justice Department’s Reproductive Rights. Quietly placing abortiion under the Attorney General’s Justice Department as a protected right changes the whole tenor of this terrible genocide of human babies. And sets a terrifying precedent in the carefully constituted balance of powers by the framers of the Constitution.

We’re just beginning to see the consequences.

The Republicans have diluted their long-held constitutional and moral objections to abortion. While the leading Democrats aren’t merely justifying but celebrating abortion. Carl Trueman writes, “ideologically it [abortion] has become the poster child of a world marked by desecration, a symbol of—even a rite of passage to—exhilarating liberation.”

In a piece called Catholics at the DNC, NCR writes about a panel of Democratic Catholic delegates who discuss the hypocrisy of Catholics like me.

“Claiming to be pro-life but refusing to fund the social safety net, or cutting mental health funding after blaming a mass shooting on mental health issues, is “the definition of hypocrisy,” Carolan said. Another delegate declared that “I believe the world is too complex for black-and-white simple answers.”

When filled with our ideologies, justifications and denials, right reason is impossible. I suppose taking only the parts of a religion that comports with what we choose to believe, discarding the rest. makes sense in this hazy, conflicted world of moral bankruptcy. But then it becomes just one of many thousands of religions denying our individual and collective sinfulness and desperate need for salvation.

If we acknowledge our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive our sins and cleanse us from every wrongdoing.
If we say, “We have not sinned,” we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.
Anyone who is so “progressive” as not to remain in the teaching of the Christ does not have God…

First and Second Letters of John

Source Father Boniface Hicks: A Monk shares his story

The post Goal of Education: To be Fit for Modern World Or? appeared first on Lin Weeks Wilder.

Lest We Give Offense: Give Twice What We Don’t Owe

Closeup portrait angry mature bearded middle-aged man Negative human emotion feeling body languageLest we give offense

Last Monday’s Gospel passage in the Christian liturgy details the peculiar passage about the Capernaum Temple tax. The disciples are reeling from what Jesus has told them at the start of the Gospel: the Son of Man is to be “…handed over to men. And they will kill him and he will be raised on the third day.” Matthew’s Gospel passage takes a breath and then:

When they came to Capernaum,
the collectors of the temple tax approached Peter and said,
“Does not your teacher pay the temple tax?”
“Yes,” he said.
When he came into the house, before he had time to speak,
Jesus asked him, “What is your opinion, Simon?
From whom do the kings of the earth take tolls or census tax?
From their subjects or from foreigners?”
When he said, “From foreigners,” Jesus said to him,
“Then the subjects are exempt.
But that we may not offend them, go to the sea, drop in a hook,
and take the first fish that comes up.
Open its mouth and you will find a coin worth twice the temple tax.
Give that to them for me and for you.”

Full Passage.

Always before, upon reading and hearing this Gospel, I focused on Peter’s bizarre trip to the Sea of Galilee: dropping in a hook, opening up the mouth of the first fish that appears and plucking out a valuable coin from its open mouth. Thinking all the while, Of course, go get the money from the mouth of a fish, entirely reasonable. But wait, considering that he’d just come down from seeing the transfigured Christ with Elijah and Moses on Mount Tabor, perhaps Peter merely did what the Master asked, accustomed, after three years, to miracles. The Transfiguration may have recalled Peter’s long-ago walk on water toward Christ. His memory that he began to drown only when he took his eyes off Christ to focus on the surging sea.

All of which now highlights the impact of Jesus’ phrase, that we may not offend them.

Give twice what we don’t owe

Although Jesus hadn’t heard the tax collectors ask their question, we intuit that after three years with the Lord, the fisherman was unsurprised at the recounting of a conversation he wasn’t present to hear. Or by the measured logic of Jesus’ reply taking him to a place that wasn’t logical at all. Right, Peter, we’re not foreigners, we’re subjects of this temple. But lest we give offense, we’ll double the tax we don’t owe.

The Temple tax was not Roman. Moses had established the half-shekel tax when told by God that each person coming to Israel must register and pay the tax. In Moses’ time, it was a one-time tax. But in the way of all tax burdens, it became a yearly tax.

All this past week, Jesus’ phrase, “lest we give offense,” has echoed in my head. The Word who became flesh and dwelled among us wanted no obstacle between him and the people he came from heaven to save. He wanted each of their burdens to be his also.

A primary reason the phrase sticks is this tsunami of offenses threatening to topple us in this mid-second decade of the 21st century: offenses deemed so serious they are termed “hate crimes.” Understanding the language and logic of hate crimes are subjects that dominated my thinking during the multi-year process of writing my last novel:

As he stared at six FBI agents standing on his porch with guns drawn and heard Max barreling down the stairs, about to launch himself at the agent closest to Rich, Rich drew down on years of experience in life-threatening situations: he spoke slowly, clearly, and with menace.

“Put the guns down, gentlemen. If you kill my dogs, wife, or daughters with a stupid move, I swear by all that’s holy, all hell will come down on you and your agency.” Rich grabbed the snarling Doberman with his right hand. “Max, sit.”

For a moment, no one moved. Then Rich nodded at the agents and repeated his words. “Put the guns down now, and tell me why you’re here.” Even standing in his sweatpants and bare feet, Rich had an air of authority. His voice’s low pitch and cadence, combined with a cold, calculated expression, conveyed more than any words could.

The agent closest to Rich cleared his throat and holstered his weapon, signaling the other five to do the same.
“I’m Agent Mark Blankenship, and I’m here to arrest Dr. Lindsey McCall for conspiracy to commit a federal hate crime against the American transgendered community and the unintentional murder of Joey Carmichael.”

Plausible Liars

These are times when

telling God we’ve had enough can tempt. When, like Elijah, the idea of sitting down and begging for it to be over sounds like the only reasonable plan. American colleges permitting groups demanding that Jews renounce their faith to access certain campus facilities. Political leaders insisting that abortion is congruent with Christianity. And known foreign killers walking across the border into our country.

“Lord, I’ve had enough!”

But then, our eyes are drawn to the cross, the quintessance of agony, Jesus affixed to the crucifix. Judged by the nation he had chosen and elevated above all others. “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.”

Our marching orders aren’t complicated, are they?

“Love as I have loved you.”

And our best teacher?

She whom we venerated on Thursday’s Solemnity of the Assumption of Mary. She who watched silently while the Creator of the Universe was mocked, judged, tortured, and crucified. Her heart, entire being, shredding but her will never deviating from that of the Triune God’s.

What a moment! Jesus was gasping; His eyes were veiled by agony, He was covered in the hatred of all the wicked, but He was spreading love. Satan, the spirit of hatred, was crushed. Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing; Satan heard it, and instantly saw an open gap in the flood of hatred, which he had poured onto the earth. He was defeated by merciful love, and then saw one of the condemned thieves escape, on whom he had already set his hooked claws. He trembled at that word of love: Remember me, trembled at hearing: Today you will be with me in Paradise. So, Paradise, which he believed he had closed forever to humanity, was opening up. He saw at the foot of the cross the Mother of his defeat: it was the Immaculate One, who had never been under his divine dominion, and it was the final blow. He was enraged to hear her called the Universal Mother: Mary was the Queen of the world, shining like a bright star, was a light of love, because like a shining mirror of justice, she gathered all the rays of the mercy of the Divine Victim…

The world will not find peace and will not see the full triumph of Jesus without first seeing the triumph and reign of Mary. The triumph of Jesus will be like a renewal and a rebirth of His redemptive work, and since He began it precisely through Mary, He will renew it through Mary. It is a historically established fact that the greatest saints, in every era of the Church, have always been the greatest devotees of Mary; this is a most certain sign that such devotion, far from distancing us from God or the Redeemer, brings us closer to the very sources of sanctity.

Let us imitate Saint John, who, having received Mary as Mother, accepted her into his own. Let us make her dwell in our soul, declare her Queen of our activities, consecrate our life to her so that she may renew and restore it to the Lord. Let us pass everything through her hands, so that everything may be consecrated and blessed by her, and we, under her maternal mantle, may present ourselves with greater confidence to the throne and tribunal of Jesus Christ.”

Jesus Entrusts Mary to John and All Humanity

The post Lest We Give Offense: Give Twice What We Don’t Owe appeared first on Lin Weeks Wilder.

Shall We Build Three Tents: Tu Es Petras

view of the biblical Mount Tabor and the Arab villages at its footShall we build three tents: Tu Es Petras

It’s always a surprise to me when The Feast of the Transfiguration rolls around on August sixth. It’s not so on the second Sunday in Lent when we once again celebrate the transfigured Jesus on Mount Tabor. On that Sunday, it feels like the goalpost we each aim for: our own divinity. By the second week of Lent, I’m so focused on the plethora of my weaknesses and failures that by the second Sunday, I need a crystal-clear reminder of what Lent, and my life, are all about.

By August, though, I’m lulled by the heat, its lassitude and slowness of mind that induce a bit of torpor.

Then—WHAM: the Transfiguration!

Listening to Father Eric Ritter’s last Tuesday morning homily, I considered Peter’s “Lord, shall we build three tents?” differently. Instead of focusing on Matthew’s “Peter was so terrified he didn’t know what he was saying,” I thought, with Peter, ” Let’s stay.” And breathe in the divinity clearly revealed before our very eyes. True because rhe homilist brought his listeners up to Mount Tabor with his memory of the ascent from the Jezreel plains up, up and up over 1800 feet to the Church of the Transfiguration. Where the priest vividly remembers entering the church. And passing between two towers: one dedicated to Moses and the other to Elijah.

Asphalt Road Leading to the Mount Tabor in Israel Stylized Photo

Listening, I considered what Peter had been trying to express. Enveloped in the essence of divinity, seeing in ‘person’, Moses and Elijah, talking with Jesus. The vision had to have felt like heaven, mustn’t it?

We’ve had experiences like that. Moments so permated with Him that we want it to last forever. But “No!” Father Eric exhorts, “we must go back down the mountain where the air is smoky with sin, where each of us and all of humanity are doing our level best to crucify Our Lord, over and over again.

Let’s break away from the intense heat of the weather, the politics and the yawning chasm which divides us and spend a few minutes reflecting on this oh so familiar man—Saint Simon Peter.
To allow ourselves to think like this passionate guy, this fisherman who frequently just acted—and then thought.

It is Good for Us to Be Here

Tu Es PetrasTu Es Petras

The work was comissioned for the first Papal visit to Westminster Abbey in over 1000 years. In September 2010, Pope Benedict XVl made a four-day visit to the United Kingdom. On the third day, he celebrated Mass in Westminster Abbey. Composer Sir James McMillan’s Tu Es Petras, chorale work Thou art Peter and on this rock will I build my church is thrilling when I listen on my laptop.

But live?

In that vast, magnificent church that was once a Benedictine Abbey?

We can almost sense a Petrine whisper, “Shall we build three tents??

But no, we’ve work to do, each one of us, according to the mission we’ve been created for.

“One of the greatest challenges facing us today is how to speak convincingly of the wisdom and liberating power of God’s word to a world which all too often sees the Gospel as a constriction of human freedom, instead of the truth which liberates our minds and enlightens our efforts to live wisely and well.”

Pope Benedict’s Westminster Cathedral Homily

The post Shall We Build Three Tents: Tu Es Petras appeared first on Lin Weeks Wilder.