“What does evangelization mean if not to carry to all peoples, after first to the cities of Judah, the good news of the coming of Christ on earth?” –Eusebius of Caesarea, writing of John the Baptist and by extension to us.
We need to first evangelize our own local communities and then go out to the whole world and do the same.
I sometimes wonder what it would be like at Christmas if:
For every dollar spent on a Christmas present, a dollar would be spent on the poor.
For every hour spent shopping, there would be an hour spent with the Lord in prayer.
For every ounce of emotional energy spent on anger or worry, an ounce of spiritual energy would be released into the world to uplift one another.
I sometimes wonder……
A Happy Thanksgiving to each of you on this day for family and friends. Let us be especially grateful for the many men and women of faith who have gone before us and given of themselves for our benefit.
I extend a special greeting to my good friends Mike and Eileen, Deacon Gordon and Alma, and all my diaconate family in the Winona Diocese. If Deacon Jim from North Dakota sees this, I hope all is well for you!
A diaconal blessing to all.
I read an interesting article today in the Archdiocesan newspaper of New Orleans, the Clarion Herald. Dan Spencer, the founder and director of St. Joseph Center spoke on October 17 at St. Rita’s parish in New Orleans. He called pornography the “sexual Katrina” that is destroying families, men and churches. He said that over 50% of men have a problem with pornography and 10% are addicted. Up to 75% of those addicted to pornography are men, but women are the fastest growing group developing problems with it.
“We are a totally sexualized culture,” he said. “You cannot beat this alone, nor can you help someone if you don’t go to a small faith group. You must get strength from other brothers. Iron sharpens iron. Primarily, you need deep adult conversion. You must ask the son of God to come live in all of you. You must give your whole identity, your whole life to Christ, not just this Sunday stuff…If you email me or let me know, I will work with you. I will call you every week.”
Spencer can be reached at: dspenceriii@kc.rr.com
St. Joseph Center can be checked out at: www.stjosephcenter.com
If you are addicted, perhaps you can check him out. Like any addiction, this one plays no favorites, and afflicts the rich and the poor, the strong and the weak, the learned and the ignorant, the holy and the sinner.
Check out the article at:
My apologies for the blog recently. I have been having a lot of server and data corruption problems, so I haven’t been able to post, and some of my posts have been lost. Luckily, I have a great computer fixer upper family member who is helping tremendously.
I hope to be online soon.
In the Old Testament we read, “No one can see God and live.’ (Exodus 33, 20) It has always made me a little frightened to think about that. God would kill me if I saw him. That is how I rather childishly conceived of it.
It isn’t about God striking us dead if we were to gaze upon him. We can’t really, in this world, even if we sought to do so.
But perhaps it is about something else. We often want to get caught up in the glory and glitz, the splendor and the divine pleasures that can be given us at times by God. We strain for the consolations of the spiritual life. We cling to life as we have it but want God to boot.
St. Bonaventure, whose feast we celebrate today, reminds us that we ought embrace the fogginess, the cloudiness, the darkness of life if we are to see God. Only in dying do we come to the vision of God. And we don’t have to wait for physical death. We can die a little each day by letting go of the extraneous, of whatever leads us into pride and embrace that which leads us to faith. Only in death to ourselves do we find life in God; this is the paradox of Christianity.
One cannot be a true environmentalist and at the same time be pro-abortion, pro-euthanasia or pro-death.
Said positively, real environmentalists are ardently pro-life, and vehemently anti-abortion, anti-death.
This makes intuitive sense to me and helps me understand myself. I have always felt this way and have always advocated for life and for the environment. I just haven’t ever heard a pope put the two together as has Benedict.
Take a look at Pope Benedict’s comments in this regard:
“If there is a lack of respect for the right to life and to a natural death, if human conception, gestation and birth are made artificial, if human embryos are sacrificed to research, the conscience of society ends up losing the concept of human ecology and, along with it, that of environmental ecology. It is contradictory to insist that future generations respect the natural environment when our educational systems and laws do not help them respect themselves….Our duties toward the environment are linked to our duties to the human person.” (bold lettering mine)– Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate, 51
I am trying to grasp some of Benedict’s ideas in Caritas in Veritate. I am referring to paragraph 38 of the encyclical where he talks about the “fraternity of reciprocity” leading to “economic democracy.” He identifies three logics: economic (contractual) logic, political logic, and the logic of unconditional gift. He then goes on to discuss three subjects of these logics: the market, the State, and civil society. Economic life, then, is multi-layered, and at every level “fraternal reciprocity” must be present. He talks later in the letter about how human development can no longer be understood only in terms of a market economy generating wealth and the political system ensuring proper distribution of that wealth. He says that increasingly there needs to be the development of a “civil economy” oriented toward social welfare that embraces both the private and public spheres in which profits are used to develop a humane market and economy. This, he says, will give rise to a civilized and more competitive market. (see paragraph 46).
Amazing stuff. I have to think a lot more about it.
“While you are proclaiming peace with your lips, be careful to have it even more fully in your heart.” — St. Francis of Assissi
“The name of Jesus is a standard in battle, that is to say, in the fight against evil.” — St. Bernardine of Sienna OFM
I have found a couple of websites you may want to browse. The first is a blog that is realtively well known called Whispers in the Loggia (http://whispersintheloggia.blogspot.com)
The second is a site of a photographer who seems to do wonderful shots of a religious nature. His name is Sam Lucero (www.samlucero.com)
Enjoy!
Thank you for your patience the past few days. I have been away from computer access since Tuesday for a couple of reasons. My computer completely died necessitating a new one on which I now type, and secondly, I was away at some diaconal training, finishing this morning.
More posts in short order.
My computer is down and I will be away from my office computer for five days, so you probably won’t see any posting until next Monday.
Have a great week!
You won’t be seeing any posts here over the next five days or so. I will be on retreat. Keep me in your prayers as I place myself at the feet of the Lord and try to listen to him.
I will pray for all of you who frequent these pages.
“Because the cross is a tree of life-giving grace, let us who have died so many times by reason of our sins, long for that tree, do penance and suffer with Christ.” — St. Bonaventure, OFM
St. Theodorus had a great reflection today on the cross in the Office of Readings. He called the cross the “most precious gift” “total beauty” and “completely magnificent.” How often do we think of the cross in those terms? He said that the cross “gives life, not death; illuminates, not obscures; opens the way to paradise, not expelling us from it.”
St. Paul spoke eloquently of the cross in Galatians: “With all that I am, may I not boast of anything but the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ through which the world has been crucified to me and I to the world.” (Gal. 6,14)
It seems a bit odd, I suppose, that the Church proposes for our meditation during the Easter season a treatise on the cross.
Yet, Easter makes sense only in light of the cross. Death leads to new life for those who believe. We will believe that which we contemplate. Lex orandi, lex credendi. As we pray, so we believe. The complete Easter celebration includes a joyful reflection on the cross, which is possible with the faith that come with the experience of the Risen Jesus.
I witnessed my daughter’s future father-in-law become a Catholic last night at the Easter vigil. It was in a more traditional parish you might say. Lots of people in the sanctuary. Lots of statues and murals and candles and other visual aids of worship. The pastor sang, full-throated, the Exultet. He had no need for a microphone despite the largeness of the church, but used one he did and so his voice echoed off the walls. His homily was filled with Scripture and doctrine. There were a concelebrant, a master of ceremonies who is on his way to Rome to begin theology studies, and several lectors. And voluminous, copious amounts of incense. I mean billowing clouds of it. Three of the altar boys kneeling at the foot of the altar I feared were near unconsciousness inhaling it. The one poor guy did his best to swing the censor to and fro, trying to directly the fumes from his face, only to launch it into the faces of his comrades. The choir sang, and they sang, and sang some more.
As I said, my daughter’s future father-in-law declared his faith in the Roman Catholic Church, was confirmed and received the Eucharist for the first time. He later confided that he was scared he was going to drop the wine and water, which were his responsibility to carry up to the altar before the offertory. He did fine with it all.
And at the end of the Mass, the priest gets up and said, “It was a noble Mass!” and he thanked us all.
Yes, a fitting word to described the tone and effect. Noble. I guess that is what the resurrection is in a sense, noble. It is a celebration of dignity, dignifying our humanity. Making us like unto God himself.
Alleluia!
Does today’s Morning Prayer reading hit anyone squarely in the heart? It did mine. Here it is (my translation of the Italian):
“I said, ‘Here I am! Here I am!’ to a people that weren’t calling on my name. I held out my hand every day to a people in rebellion. They were traveling a path that was not good, following their own whims; a people who were provoking me continually, with insolence.” (Isaiah 65: 1b-3a)
All of us have walked whimsical paths that have led us to places where all of a sudden we realize we were resisting God’s call rather than following the true path of happiness.
To all of my readers who may be searching for the path of truth and joy, I say, “Come home” to the body of Christ, which is his Church, who will welcome you.
Today’s Office of Readings again is from Qoheleth. Qoheleth says:
“I thought again that whatever God does is immutable; there is nothing to add, nothing to take away. God works like this so we may have a sense of awe and wonder of Him. That which is has been; that which will be already is; God searches again for that which is already past.”
Perhaps Qoheleth was caught up in our human concept of time as linear, chronological, and sequential. God’s time is an ever present, and ever now. He breaks through our time and space and gives meaning to all.
In the second reading in the Office, St. Gregory of Nyssa alludes to this, I think. He said:
” ‘ The is a time to be born’, he says, ‘and a time to die.’ (Qo 3:2) Would that the heavens might give me a good time to die and a proper moment for death……For St. Paul each moment is fitting for a good death…. It is clear, then, in what manner Paul dies every day, he who did not live for sin, but mortified his flesh and carried always in himself the mortification of Christ…. This, to me, is a timely death that gives true life….. The word of God, in fact, promises life as a result of death.” –St. Gregory of Nissa, Om 6; PG 44, 702-705.
All things are vanity, as says Qoheleth, if one considers only the created world. All things speak of the richness of God, if one considers how God has entered and continues to enter the world in each moment of our lives. In the passing and dying there is life. That is the Christian message. That is what makes sense of the finiteness and provisionality of our world.
All of creation speaks of the beauty and purpose of God.
The 17th World Day of the Sick will be 11 February 2009. Each year, the Holy Father issues a message to the world to mark this occasion. This year’s was released today from the Vatican City. I would encourage you to log onto the Holy See’s website, and read it for yourselves. Benedict XVI is asking every diocese to celebrate this day in reflection on the reality of suffering in our families and communities. He speaks of the Church’s obligation to assist families that may have children who are suffering from disease and distress.
I want to draw you attention to one segment of his message, which I have translated from the Italian:
“The dedication and responsibility we have unceasingly every day to serve sick children constitute an eloquent witness to the love for human life, in particular for the life of the weak and who are completely dependent on others. This demands, in fact, a vigorous affermation of the absolute and supreme dignity of every human life. The teaching that the Church incessantly proclaims, without change, throughout the passage of time is this: Human life is beautiful and is seen in its fullness even when it is weak and clothed by the mystery of suffering. It is to Jesus crucified that we must turn our attention: dying on the cross, he wanted to share the suffering of all of humanity. In his suffering in love, we see a supreme participation with the pain of the little ones who suffer and their parents.” (Italics original)
I sense the Holy Father may be referring to a current case in Italy very similar to the Terry Schiavo case here in the United States. In Italy, there is a young women (pictures of whom have an uncanny resemblance of Terry Schiavo) who is being starved and deprived of fluids. The House of Deputies and the Italian Senate have intervened and passed a decree requiring food and water be given to the young woman, but the Italian president refuses to sign the decree and without his signature, it fails to become law.
Regardless of contemporary Italian circumstances, the Pope’s words are worth our recall. Even the sickest, weakest and most vulnerable and dependent are of equal dignity to the healthiest, strongest and most independent of our families and communities. As Benedict indicates at the end of the excerpt, in them we see Christ crucified. Him alone do we adore.
“Understand that poverty is a choice way of salvation; the fruit it bears is manifold, and rare are they who know it well.” – St. Francis of Assissi
As we know, there are many poverties which lead us to salvation. Diadochus of Photike wrote of one such poverty in his “Chapters on Spiritual Perfection”: the poverty of loving God alone, which requires a certain self-forgetfulness. He said that to love God one must seek God’s glory and not one’s own (the poverty). He also talked about how in doing so, one is greatly loved by God (salvation). To quote him, translating from the Italian:
“Being preoccupied in loving God, one doesn’t think of one’s own dignity, and keeps one’s own glory hidden in the deep love one has for God…..He who loves God in the depths of his heart is known by God. To the extent one loves Him, one is able to receive the love of God.”
