"Seasons Greetings!
To all my liberal friends:
Please accept with no obligation, implied or explicit, my best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low-stress, non-addictive, gender-neutral, celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, with respect for the religious/secular persuasion and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all.
I also wish you a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognition of the generally accepted calendar for year 2011 but not without due respect for calendars of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make America great. Not to imply that America is necessarily greater than any other country, nor the only America in the Western Hemisphere. Also this wish is made without regard to the race, creed, color, age, physical ability, religious faith or sexual preference of the wishee.
Art Becker"
"It is not the magnitude of our actions but the amount of love that is put into them that matters." - Mother Teresa
“The LORD calls you back, like a wife forsaken and grieved in spirit.”This passage a few months, or even a few weeks ago may not have touched me as it was able to now, but God uses all things to stir our hearts in new ways. Just before this passage was read I was looking for a moment at a woman who I had seen attend Mass every day over the summer, with her husband of about 40 years. They had been there every morning, and were enjoying their newly acquired retirement together. The day before thanksgiving came, and the Lord brought her husband up to Himself. I was thinking how beautiful it was that she was still at Mass daily, but also that I could not imagine how she must be feeling to have lost her best friend only a few weeks previous. Again,
“The LORD calls you back, like a wife forsaken and grieved in spirit.”What great love the Lord has for me, for you, for all of us. As a wife who is grieved in spirit and calls after her lost husband... so the Lord calls out to us, reaches out to us, begs us to come back into his loving embrace. How must the Lord feel when we look at Him who is pure Love, turn and look at the destruction the world offers, and head towards the world. His heart grieves for us. The Lord offers many ways for us to prepare a place for him in our hearts, one of them being Sacramental Confession. I went last Saturday afternoon and received great healing from the Lord, healing I didn’t even know I needed. He brought great closure to many things, and opened my heart even more for His coming. Through our yes, our fiat to the Lord, amazing things will happen. Expect it. I have learned not to look to the future. All we can do is say yes to what the Lord is asking of us in each and every moment of the day, and everything falls into place. It will be a struggle day after day - we have to actively make the choice to follow Jesus and turn away from anything that will draw us away from him. We are in a spiritual battle daily for our own souls whether we acknowledge it or not and even in conversations with other Christians this terminology would probably gain you an odd glance or two and perhaps some disbelief. However, the devil would love for nothing more than for us to believe that he and the other fallen angels do not exist. We need to do our part in this battle by staying close to the Lord through the Sacraments, especially receiving the Eucharist as often as possible. Also through the prayer of the Rosary and asking the saints for intercession. These are gifts that have been given to us, gifts that are not without power and strength against evil! Believe it and rejoice in the love that the Lord has for us. It really is impossible to fathom the absolute glory of our Lord, and how he condescends to our level day after day though we do not deserve it. He loves us so much. That alone should inspire us to live radical lives, at least to attempt to.
I ask of you an extraordinary immolation of your heart.
"Yes, my Lord."
I ask you to love My enemy in My name.
"I will try to do this, my Lord, but I beg You for the necessary grace."
Where everything is given, nothing is lacking. Fear nothing, my son.
“Along the way, “orthodoxy” became an epithet, a term of disparagement. Referring to something as orthodox has become synonymous with calling it “discredited,” “antiquated,” “unimaginative” and of course, “repressive.” This is true regardless of the subject: calling something the “orthodox” view on the matter is a tacit invitation to the reader or listener to disregard that view.”
And HOW TRUE that is. Many of my non-Catholic friends often question me about the Catholic Church and about my beliefs, with little or no intention of listening to anything I have to say, because, Catholic = wrong. In all circumstances, no matter what.
“Preach the word, be urgent in season and out of season, convince, rebuke, and exhort, be unfailing in patience and in teaching. For the time is coming when people will not tolerate sound doctrine, but following their own desires and insatiable curiosity, will accumulate teachers and will stop listening to the truth and will be diverted to myths.”
That time isn’t coming, that time is now. No one wants to hear about how any form of contraception is wrong, how abortion is wrong, how women priests are wrong, how gay marriage is wrong, or any of the other issues of the day. To acknowledge these things as wrong means a change in lifestyle, and God forbid we would have to change our ways even if it is to help us get to Heaven. People start disagreeing with these and many more things because it doesn’t sit right with them, so they start a new Church. Luther didn’t believe in the real presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist so, logically, his human mind must not have been mistaken. New church, division. Anglicans separate. New church, further division. Calvinism, Baptist, Adventist, Methodist, Church of Christ, Pentecostal, etc. New churches, further division. There are now around 30,000 different division of Protestant churches. How is that leading to unity of the Body of Christ that I hear is so often prayed for? Fr. Don Calloway, in a discussion on his conversion said this regarding all of the varying denominations and people seeking them,
“...it baffled me that a lot of them were just church hopping, they went wherever the preaching seemed good until it ruffled them and challenged them, then they didn't like whatever that pastor said so they went and found a new church to comfort them and I thought to myself if that’s it then I should just become my own pastor start my own church and do my own thing but I said I want the real message not one that is just adapting to my likes and needs. I need the real one even though it sting me, your never going to catch a fish with a dull hook, it has to have a point and a barb to it, it has to get in, that's the mystery and beauty of Catholicism is it comes with a sting, but it’s going to set you free.”
When you come with an open heart, with faith seeking understanding, the Church will answer all the questions that you have been asking.
“Mass isn’t flashy... I don't know if you caught that. Mass is a marinade. That's what this worship, this Catholic worship is, its a marinade. Its all about God, we just soak in Him. The whole time I’m being shaped and transformed.”
This is a quote from a priest from my hometown, Fr. Mike Schmitz. God molds us interiorly and quietly. It isn’t extravagant or flashy; His grace is poured out upon His people as we thank Him for the sacrifice He made. In the Mass we are joining with the Angels and Saints in Heaven in their worship of Him, bringing Heaven to earth out of the sheer gratuity of Jesus Christ and his love for us. We are taking part in the New Covenant which he calls us to participate in, receiving His Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity in the Eucharist. This is what Christian worship is supposed to be focused on, the new temple that is His body. Not a symbol of His body, but His body truly present.
“Do not fear, My little child, you are not alone. Fight bravely, because My arm is supporting you; fight for the salvation of souls, exhorting them to trust in My mercy, as that is your task in this life and in the life to come.”
Jesus is with us every step of the way. Stand firm in your faith. Proclaim the truth. Fight for your brothers and sisters in Christ. Entrust your intentions and actions to the most Sacred Heart of Jesus, do all things for God and Souls.
The Lord has been teaching me a lot about obedience. There have been many times in the past couple months where weekly, daily, even hourly, something will happen and I will have no other choice but to give it over to God. It took me a long time (and I am definitely still in the process) to realize that what I think is best for me is in actuality, not the best for me. In fact when I follow my own will it leads me down paths that I wish I never would have taken. Jesus has been gently prompting me to offer up all that I have to Him, so that He may show me what he wants of me.
As I have grown closer to Jesus and his Blessed Mother in the past few months, I have received a strong conviction of sin. Many things that I have done or didn't think were hurtful to others or myself have been unveiled to me, leaving me with a stark image of a sin I didn’t know was there. After this process of further conviction of sin in my life, there came a profound realization of my nothingness apart from Jesus Christ. Again, after this realization of my own nothingness, I finally grasped that I must cleave to the Truth in all things. This was more than just saying that I need to “put Christ first in my life” as many people put it. I’m talking about an acute, severe, and overwhelming sense of my broken human nature... and the only way I will ever be able to survive is to beg God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit to be with me always. Apart from the Trinity, I can do nothing.
A sin that I was not aware of in my life is envy. You’d think I would have been able to recognize that, right?
“Simply put, envy is a resentment of others based on the conclusion that they have what we do not possess."The devil must rejoice over those who are caught up in envy! He must be thrilled when he sees a child of God, a child blessed with His graces and infinite love, but who still thinks they are missing something. What a trick satan plays on us, but worse... we fall for it. I do, at least. I found this quote on envy which pretty much perfectly sums it up...
"Envy is void of any good feeling. We are not seduced by envy as much as we are consumed by it, as if being swallowed by a monster. This image was not lost on Shakespeare whose character Iago (in the play Othello) says, “O! Beware, my lord, of jealousy (envy); it is the green-ey’d monster which doth mock the meat it feeds on.”Exactly it. Envy does not attract us, it is not something we are seduced into as this quote says.. but it is something that consumes us. One experience of envy I had not too long ago hit me just like that. I thought someone had something that I wanted myself. Now my initial response to this (for no reason other than my sinful nature) was envy; I was devoured by this empty sinking feeling. I even knew at that very time that I had no good reason for being upset but I couldn’t stop it. It sat with me, in me, and didn’t budge. A quote from the same article says,
"Envy is indeed a monster that consumes us, making us uncomfortably aware of the emptiness we have within, of the hunger that we possess for we know not what. As a result, envy drives us to accumulate, to possess and to consume in order to fill the empty space."
But that empty space is not intended to be filled with the person/object/possession we desire on earth. It can’t be. We were not created to be fulfilled by something anything other than God. Our beginning and end is not a boyfriend or the latest fashion. Our beginning and end is Jesus Christ. I thought that I was offering up to Jesus everything that I had, but I was keeping something to myself. Jesus doesn't want most of us, half of us, some parts of our life. He want’s it all. I wasn’t offering all of me and the Lord made that clear to me tonight. I was convicted of this sin. Jesus definitely used something awful like envy to draw me even closer to His merciful heart, because in Him all things are made good.
When we allow the devil to lead us into this sin, we are greatly grieving the heart of our Lord.
“Envy comes from people’s ignorance of, or lack of belief in, their own gifts.” It is indeed the symptom of an illness — a condition characterized by our inability to recognize our own good fortune.”Each person is blessed with all of the gifts they need. When we fall prey to envy, we are rejecting the fact that God has given us talents and gifts... we think that we must have the characteristic, appearance, or gift of another in order to be good. The fact of the matter is each second we take a breath is a gift from God. He made us exactly as He intended to: with all of the characteristics necessary for us to rise to the fullness of life on earth. It doesn’t matter what someone else’s walk looks like. What matters is my walk with Christ and what he is calling me to do. He didn’t need to create us but He did as a completely gratuitous gift, and that alone should leave us in a state of constant gratitude. If from this second forward I never “felt” the love of God again, that would be fine. I should be constantly rejoicing in the fact that He was generous enough to give me LIFE at all. This leads into detachment which I will discuss at a later day.
"I became the most humble and the most abject of all men, that you might overcome your pride. Learn O dust, to obey; learn to humble yourself, and how to bow under the feet of all. Learn to break your own will, and yield yourself up to all subjection."
