It started in January when I wrote a poem about the cherry tree in the front of the house. I had built a simple bird feeder that we hung in that tree. The feeder mainly attracted chickadees. Our daughter and son liked to push a chair up to the kitchen window and watch them.
Then I wrote another poem in February about an Amaryllis that blossomed in the kitchen window. I think it was after that poem that I set myself the task of writing a poem for each month of the year throughout 2013.
I managed it and here they are. I like some better than others, but I can say I'm pleased with each of them.
The poem for March, Crocuses, isn't an accurate reflection of what March was this past year. Normally crocuses do blossom here in March but this year we lots of snow through the first week of April (including a snow fall on Easter Sunday that had it looking more like Christmas!). The crocuses had to wait until April.
All poems are written by me except where otherwise noted. I include Wanda Chotomska's poem Łabędzie (Swans) in Polish that I translated for the month of December.
I hope you enjoy them.
Cherry Tree in January
Black against a lime green wall,
bare branches
with black-capped chickadees
quickly
flashing
from branch
to branch,
black against a lime green wall.
Amaryllis in February
Dull are the days in late winter.
Trees tug the skies like a blanket.
Freezing rain spatters the window.
In the sleeping kitchen darkness
A fire star erupts in the night:
Amaryllis in the morning light.
Crocuses
Up from the March mud
and melting ice of Winter's hems
retreating,
come sky blue, blood
red and sun fire gems:
Spring's greeting.
April Orchard
In clouds of blossom
Billowing pink and white
Bees thrum and birds sing bright
And clear - Listen
Fallen man
Listen and you will hear
Creation exult
He is risen!
For Our Lady
Come, crown the Queen of May
With lilacs, tulips and apple broth.
The chestnut trees will light the way,
A thousand torches held aloft.
Bring spotted lilies, peonies;
The dandy-lions will guard the way.
With flags of flowers such as these,
Come, crown the Queen the May.
June
There on my left the moon hangs white as wax.
On my right, the western horizon glows.
Some late birds twitter unseen in their roosts.
Incessant crickets pulse and pulse and pulse.
Overhead the stars slowly salt the night
As on we're hurled through frigid space. Yet still
I stand in this orchard of swelling fruit.
A brief half-night and then the cocks will crow.
Now's the soft unfolding of the season.
The air is cool. As it is in summer's
Beginning, so shall it be at the end.
Summer
In the cooling air of an evening in July,
Beneath a space of blue, magenta clouds sail high.
Swallows, sharp as arrows, swoop, turn, then rise again
In arabesques as swift as light, sweet as rain.
Harvest
August comes a fiery king
In robes of radiant gold;
Embroidered figures thereupon
With stories to be told:
Rolling fields of grain new shorn
Reflect an amber light;
Squared and ribbed and crossed by roads
Of blinding dusty white
That run away to wooded hills
Of green burnt at the edges,
Where thrushes rustle furtively
In thorny black cap hedges.
A hamlet's nestled on a stream.
Great chestnuts and a steeple
Lift a cloudless sky above
A bronzed and honest people.
There walks within an orchard cool
A girl with golden hair,
'Neath russet apples, purple plums
Suspended in the air.
Potato Season
A haze hangs low in fields
Where families stoop in staggered rows
Gathering potatoes into buckets.
A tractor and wagon stand nearby.
Hours turn, the wagon's slowly filled.
An autumn sun burns bright as now
One figure stands and stretches,
September light reflected in each eye.
Early Fire
Is that the smoke of war
this early morning,
punctuated with bursts of orange fire,
bursts of yellow, blasts of magenta,
a mute artillery fight?
The morning sun reveals
October fog
pierced by radiant oaks and maples
afire with day's new light.
Novemberland
Gray watery sky
On damp brown weeds;
No sun, no song, no breath.
No sparrows fly
To gather summer seeds;
A day of quiet death.
Swans
Great swans are flying.
Their white feathers fall
on the quiet earth below.
Careful swans a'flying,
you're losing feathers all!
But no -
'Tis only winter's first snow.
Łabędzie
Wanda Chotomska
Odleciały
łabędzie o świcie.
Białe pióra
spadły na brzeg.
- Uważajcie,
pióra gubicie!
- To nie pióra,
to pierwszy
śnieg.
Saturday, December 28, 2013
Saturday, December 21, 2013
Maranatha!
There's a Hindu legend that tells of Yashoda, the foster mother of the god Krishna, looking into Krishna's mouth and seeing the entire universe there.
This paradoxical story happened long, long ago . . . That is, in the mists of legend. It's merely a fable, however interesting.
In the 42nd year of the reign of Caesar Octavian Augustus, year 752 since the foundation of the City of Rome, the whole world being at peace, in Judea, a provincial outpost of the Roman Empire, a young Jewish woman carried the Creator of the entire universe in her womb.
Such is the astounding paradox that in a specific place and at a specific time in human history, a woman gave birth to her Creator.
The King of the Universe entered human history not with the blare of trumpets and pomp and splendor. He came as a vulnerable baby, born in a stable to parents of no great social standing. Splendid angels from heaven did announce his birth, but apparently only to some simple shepherds in a nearby field. As C. S. Lewis wrote somewhere, Jesus the Christ entered the world rather quietly, as if behind enemy lines.
With that, I'd like to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas, and peace and joy in the New Year. May our Lord find a home in our hearts.
Midwinter Light
by Randall Peaslee
In bleak December days of snow
And fog, mud and gloom,
A fire blazes, candles glow
And friends are gathered in a room
Of carols, wine and mirth;
And the dying twelvemonth ends
with a Birth.
This paradoxical story happened long, long ago . . . That is, in the mists of legend. It's merely a fable, however interesting.
Icon of the Creation by Fr. Luke Dingman
In the 42nd year of the reign of Caesar Octavian Augustus, year 752 since the foundation of the City of Rome, the whole world being at peace, in Judea, a provincial outpost of the Roman Empire, a young Jewish woman carried the Creator of the entire universe in her womb.
Such is the astounding paradox that in a specific place and at a specific time in human history, a woman gave birth to her Creator.
The King of the Universe entered human history not with the blare of trumpets and pomp and splendor. He came as a vulnerable baby, born in a stable to parents of no great social standing. Splendid angels from heaven did announce his birth, but apparently only to some simple shepherds in a nearby field. As C. S. Lewis wrote somewhere, Jesus the Christ entered the world rather quietly, as if behind enemy lines.
Nativity by Marc Chagall
With that, I'd like to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas, and peace and joy in the New Year. May our Lord find a home in our hearts.
Midwinter Light
by Randall Peaslee
In bleak December days of snow
And fog, mud and gloom,
A fire blazes, candles glow
And friends are gathered in a room
Of carols, wine and mirth;
And the dying twelvemonth ends
with a Birth.
Saturday, December 14, 2013
Lambs
A few years ago my wife was with our two small children in a shopping mall. This particular mall had a children's play area located where four of the mall alleys meet. There was no restraining barrier around this play area; it was open in all directions.
My wife was watching our kids but turned her attention away for a moment. When she looked back to see where our kids were, she saw our daughter Emilia but didn't see Adam.
"Emilka, where's Adam?" my wife asked.
Emilia didn't know and my wife couldn't see Adam anywhere. She stood up to look for him. The mall was crowded with people and, as I've mentioned, the play area was open to four different alleys. She looked in all directions, wondering which way he might have gone - or been taken.
The worst fear a parent can experience chilled my wife's heart. Oh God, where can he be?
And then, she saw him. Adam was wearing a shirt the exact same color as the children's play equipment. The little chameleon was playing happily the whole time, just a few feet away!
I once dreamt of losing Adam in similar circumstances and woke up from that dream with my heart racing.
That's as close as my wife and I have come to losing one of our children, real or dreamt. (How ever many times they have been saved unawares from harm by their guardian angels, we'll probably only know in heaven.)
December 14th marks the one year anniversary of the Sandy Hook massacre at the primary school in Newtown CT. My wife and I can only imagine the pain and grief of those parents who lost children that day.
I'll now turn the rest of this posting over to some text from this month's Magnificat.
From the Editorial, by Father Peter John Cameron, O.P., Editor-in-Chief:
There is something that many Magnificat readers may not know. Since my main apostolate is Magnificat, I am not assigned like other priests to a parish. But each Sunday I help out in a parish. And the parish where I have been celebrating Mass on Sundays for the past four years is Saint Rose of Lima Church in Newtown, Connecticut.
On the evening of the massacre, Mass was held at Saint Rose. I got there early, and was overwhelmed at the turnout. Easily a thousand people packed the church too small for such a crowd. And another thousand massed outside.
I kept wondering: Why are they here? What are they looking for? Not all of them were parishioners . . . or even Catholic, for that matter. And although they could not get inside the church, people did not opt to leave. They stayed because they had to be there. The atrocity had incited an instant Advent: the urgent need for God amidst the pain of human powerlessness. Together we had become expectation.
What was the only thing adequate to meet the agony people were suffering in that desperate moment? The answer appears on the lips of one of the bereaved young mothers. Jenny Hubbard's beautiful, redheaded, six-year-old daughter Catherine had been slain in the rampage. Barely a month later, Saint Rose Church held a gathering of grade school parents. And Jenny volunteered to speak to them. I asked her where she found the strength to do what most people would consider impossible. Jenny replied, "There is a Presence that is so much better than ourselves, and we have to acknowledge it."
Lamb of God
Jenny Hubbard
It is the time during Mass where my tears flow steadily:
Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world, have mercy on us.
Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world, have mercy on us.
Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world, grant us peace.
It is then that the pain becomes overwhelmingly raw. The wound that I think has started to heal is suddenly ripped open.
Lambs are innocent, exposed, and vulnerable, and yet they are always protected. My lamb is my Catherine. I knew her cry before it came from her lungs. I knew it was Catherine calling "Mama" even though she was in a room full of children calling out. I knew where she was, even when I couldn't see her. She is the lamb I knew had been called home before I truly understood what had happened. Just knowing - it is a gift God gave me when he placed her next to my heart for nine months. A gift he gave me when he allowed the quiet beating of our hearts to find rhythm next to each other's.
It is always a lamb I see when I think of Catherine. She is the lamb that she would nuzzle right beside Mary in the Nativity. She is the lamb that greets us from the pasture as we walk on a foggy spring morning. She is the lamb I had carved into the footstone at her resting place. And now, as I tuck it into the pages when I close my Bible, it is Catherine that I see walking confidently beside Jesus on her prayer card.
"The Lord is my Shepherd there is nothing I shall want" (Ps 23:1). It is Jesus who was waiting for her as he welcomed his flock. He led her to still waters, and she fears no evil. She is his lamb, innocent and vulnerable - naïve to what the world is capable of. She is sheltered under his vigilant watch; she is whole and is resting peacefully at his feet.
And I too am his lamb. It is myself he has cradled across his shoulders. He knows my heart aches to feel the beating of hers against mine. He acknowledges my cry, even when it hasn't yet left my lungs. He hears my quiet calling through all the voices and comes to me. I know that he will guide me as I seek his guidance, and that he will answer my voice when I call out. He continues to scoop me up and carry me when the days seem too much. He shows his unending love in the simplest things that are so undeniably Catherine. In doing so he reminds me that his promise has not been broken. He reminds me that one day he will gently lift me from his shoulders and place me beside her. When that day comes, I will close my eyes and relish the quiet rhythm of our beating hearts.
My wife was watching our kids but turned her attention away for a moment. When she looked back to see where our kids were, she saw our daughter Emilia but didn't see Adam.
"Emilka, where's Adam?" my wife asked.
Emilia didn't know and my wife couldn't see Adam anywhere. She stood up to look for him. The mall was crowded with people and, as I've mentioned, the play area was open to four different alleys. She looked in all directions, wondering which way he might have gone - or been taken.
The worst fear a parent can experience chilled my wife's heart. Oh God, where can he be?
And then, she saw him. Adam was wearing a shirt the exact same color as the children's play equipment. The little chameleon was playing happily the whole time, just a few feet away!
I once dreamt of losing Adam in similar circumstances and woke up from that dream with my heart racing.
That's as close as my wife and I have come to losing one of our children, real or dreamt. (How ever many times they have been saved unawares from harm by their guardian angels, we'll probably only know in heaven.)
December 14th marks the one year anniversary of the Sandy Hook massacre at the primary school in Newtown CT. My wife and I can only imagine the pain and grief of those parents who lost children that day.
I'll now turn the rest of this posting over to some text from this month's Magnificat.
From the Editorial, by Father Peter John Cameron, O.P., Editor-in-Chief:
There is something that many Magnificat readers may not know. Since my main apostolate is Magnificat, I am not assigned like other priests to a parish. But each Sunday I help out in a parish. And the parish where I have been celebrating Mass on Sundays for the past four years is Saint Rose of Lima Church in Newtown, Connecticut.
On the evening of the massacre, Mass was held at Saint Rose. I got there early, and was overwhelmed at the turnout. Easily a thousand people packed the church too small for such a crowd. And another thousand massed outside.
I kept wondering: Why are they here? What are they looking for? Not all of them were parishioners . . . or even Catholic, for that matter. And although they could not get inside the church, people did not opt to leave. They stayed because they had to be there. The atrocity had incited an instant Advent: the urgent need for God amidst the pain of human powerlessness. Together we had become expectation.
What was the only thing adequate to meet the agony people were suffering in that desperate moment? The answer appears on the lips of one of the bereaved young mothers. Jenny Hubbard's beautiful, redheaded, six-year-old daughter Catherine had been slain in the rampage. Barely a month later, Saint Rose Church held a gathering of grade school parents. And Jenny volunteered to speak to them. I asked her where she found the strength to do what most people would consider impossible. Jenny replied, "There is a Presence that is so much better than ourselves, and we have to acknowledge it."
Lamb of God
Jenny Hubbard
It is the time during Mass where my tears flow steadily:
Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world, have mercy on us.
Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world, have mercy on us.
Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world, grant us peace.
It is then that the pain becomes overwhelmingly raw. The wound that I think has started to heal is suddenly ripped open.
Lambs are innocent, exposed, and vulnerable, and yet they are always protected. My lamb is my Catherine. I knew her cry before it came from her lungs. I knew it was Catherine calling "Mama" even though she was in a room full of children calling out. I knew where she was, even when I couldn't see her. She is the lamb I knew had been called home before I truly understood what had happened. Just knowing - it is a gift God gave me when he placed her next to my heart for nine months. A gift he gave me when he allowed the quiet beating of our hearts to find rhythm next to each other's.
It is always a lamb I see when I think of Catherine. She is the lamb that she would nuzzle right beside Mary in the Nativity. She is the lamb that greets us from the pasture as we walk on a foggy spring morning. She is the lamb I had carved into the footstone at her resting place. And now, as I tuck it into the pages when I close my Bible, it is Catherine that I see walking confidently beside Jesus on her prayer card.
"The Lord is my Shepherd there is nothing I shall want" (Ps 23:1). It is Jesus who was waiting for her as he welcomed his flock. He led her to still waters, and she fears no evil. She is his lamb, innocent and vulnerable - naïve to what the world is capable of. She is sheltered under his vigilant watch; she is whole and is resting peacefully at his feet.
And I too am his lamb. It is myself he has cradled across his shoulders. He knows my heart aches to feel the beating of hers against mine. He acknowledges my cry, even when it hasn't yet left my lungs. He hears my quiet calling through all the voices and comes to me. I know that he will guide me as I seek his guidance, and that he will answer my voice when I call out. He continues to scoop me up and carry me when the days seem too much. He shows his unending love in the simplest things that are so undeniably Catherine. In doing so he reminds me that his promise has not been broken. He reminds me that one day he will gently lift me from his shoulders and place me beside her. When that day comes, I will close my eyes and relish the quiet rhythm of our beating hearts.
Saturday, December 7, 2013
I Love You
I've recently re-discovered a band called The Blue Nile. They were a trio out of Glasgow, Scotland. I used to have the CD of probably their best album, Hats.
Somehow in my many moves to and fro, I misplaced that CD. I found the complete album on youtube a week ago and have listened to it nearly every day since.
It's a 7-song, 39-minute album that begins with the yearning song "Over the Hillside." The horns on that track slowly and majestically unfold to a heart-lifting crescendo. Another of my favorites is the rhythmic and stirring "Headlights on the Parade." The album ends with the gentle "Saturday Night." However, all of the tracks are lovely. When I'm not listening to the album on youtube, the songs keep playing in my head wherever I go.
Paul Buchanan was the singer and main song-writer in the band (that's him front and center in the picture below). His singing style is passionate yet restrained. There's a delicious tension in most of his songs.
I saw in an interview one of the other band members commenting on Buchanan's songs and saying, "Really, every song could be titled 'I Love You'." I've listened to numerous other songs of theirs from other albums this past week and yes, I think "I Love You" just about sums it up.
The Choice Food of Advent
I read this meditation earlier this week in Magnificat:
How busily employed you must be during this holy season in preparing a lodging for the Guest who is coming to you! I fancy I can see you, as solicitous as Martha, and yet as peaceful as Magdalen, preparing to give to your coming Savior the service both of soul and body; and he is worthy of both, for he is your God. O blessed time, which brings before our minds the truth that God came in the flesh to dwell amongst us, to enlighten our darkness and to direct our feet in the way of peace, so that being made his brethren, we might share in his inheritance!
Earnestly indeed may you long for Christ's Advent, and prepare your heart to be his dwelling-place, for men wished for his coming ages before his birth, so that the prophet styles him "the Desired of all nations." Jesus gives himself to none but those who anxiously look for him. Choice food is thrown away on such as cannot taste it, and so those who long not after God's presence cannot value him as they ought. Our Lord hears "the desire of the poor" (Ps 10:17) and bends his ear to listen to the sighing of their hearts after him, for that is all he cares for in the children of men. When their sighs reach him, he comes into their souls; nor can he refuse himself, for, as he tells us in the Canticle (4:9), "Thou hast wounded my heart, my sister, my spouse, thou hast wounded my heart with one of thy eyes and with one hair of thy neck." What can be more tender than that which is wounded by a glance of the eye, or more weak than what is bound by a single hair?
by Saint John of Avila
Somehow in my many moves to and fro, I misplaced that CD. I found the complete album on youtube a week ago and have listened to it nearly every day since.
It's a 7-song, 39-minute album that begins with the yearning song "Over the Hillside." The horns on that track slowly and majestically unfold to a heart-lifting crescendo. Another of my favorites is the rhythmic and stirring "Headlights on the Parade." The album ends with the gentle "Saturday Night." However, all of the tracks are lovely. When I'm not listening to the album on youtube, the songs keep playing in my head wherever I go.
Paul Buchanan was the singer and main song-writer in the band (that's him front and center in the picture below). His singing style is passionate yet restrained. There's a delicious tension in most of his songs.
The Blue Nile
I saw in an interview one of the other band members commenting on Buchanan's songs and saying, "Really, every song could be titled 'I Love You'." I've listened to numerous other songs of theirs from other albums this past week and yes, I think "I Love You" just about sums it up.
The Choice Food of Advent
I read this meditation earlier this week in Magnificat:
How busily employed you must be during this holy season in preparing a lodging for the Guest who is coming to you! I fancy I can see you, as solicitous as Martha, and yet as peaceful as Magdalen, preparing to give to your coming Savior the service both of soul and body; and he is worthy of both, for he is your God. O blessed time, which brings before our minds the truth that God came in the flesh to dwell amongst us, to enlighten our darkness and to direct our feet in the way of peace, so that being made his brethren, we might share in his inheritance!
Earnestly indeed may you long for Christ's Advent, and prepare your heart to be his dwelling-place, for men wished for his coming ages before his birth, so that the prophet styles him "the Desired of all nations." Jesus gives himself to none but those who anxiously look for him. Choice food is thrown away on such as cannot taste it, and so those who long not after God's presence cannot value him as they ought. Our Lord hears "the desire of the poor" (Ps 10:17) and bends his ear to listen to the sighing of their hearts after him, for that is all he cares for in the children of men. When their sighs reach him, he comes into their souls; nor can he refuse himself, for, as he tells us in the Canticle (4:9), "Thou hast wounded my heart, my sister, my spouse, thou hast wounded my heart with one of thy eyes and with one hair of thy neck." What can be more tender than that which is wounded by a glance of the eye, or more weak than what is bound by a single hair?
by Saint John of Avila
Saturday, November 30, 2013
Expectation
Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I shall raise up a righteous shoot to David; As king he shall reign and govern wisely, he shall do what is just and right in the land. In his days Judah shall be saved, Israel shall dwell in security. This is the name they give him: "The Lord our justice." Jeremiah 23:5-6
Madonna del Parto, unknown painter
December 1st is the beginning of the Advent season this year. Every year I gripe about how early the holiday commercials and tinsel appear. There's too much rush and clamor and not enough quiet preparation. Some of my facebook friends have been posting Christmas pictures since October!
It's occurred to me lately, however, that maybe I'm being a little unfair. For all of the hype and chintzy-ness of the holiday season, the true magic of Christmas still shines through. Beneath all of the fool's gold is the real gold of Jesus Christ's coming. Each of our hearts yearns for the coming of the King. We can't wait to celebrate his birth.
I heard some people sniping about how stupid it was for people to get so excited over the birth of Prince William and Kate Middleton's baby last summer. "What a lot of nonsense!" they grumbled.
I don't agree. There's something deep within us that anticipates with joy a royal birth. Multiply that to the nth degree and you have so many people chomping at the bit to begin celebrating Christmas.
Advent, in my opinion, is a more beautiful and fulfilling way to prepare for the celebration of the greatest royal birth in human history, the birth of God.
"Advent means a presence begun, the presence of God. To celebrate Advent means to bring to life within ourselves the hidden Presence of God," writes Pope Benedict XVI.
Magnificat
The first image on this post, Madonna del Parto, showing the Virgin Mary heavy with child, is on the cover of the December issue of the magazine Magnificat. For an interesting commentary on this particular image (starting December 1st), go to www.magnificat.net, click on 'Discover Magnificat' in the English Language section, then find 'The commentary of the cover' at the top of the right column.
I often include texts from Magnificat on this blog. It's a fantastic monthly magazine that includes the Scripture readings for each day's mass, with a daily meditation on the theme of that day's readings. Plus, there are daily morning and evening prayers and Scripture readings and a handful of thought-provoking essays scattered throughout the magazine.
I highly recommend you go to any Catholic book store and for $5.95 buy yourself a copy. Read it daily throughout the month and you may decide to subscribe to it.
Saturday, November 23, 2013
Thanks-Giving
How does an atheist celebrate Thanksgiving? To whom or to what does he give thanks?
Both 'to thank' and 'to give' are transitive verbs; they require an object. We can't just say I thank or I give. We can say I thank you or I give you thanks.
And so, who do we give thanks to?
O felix culpa!
That's Latin for O happy fault! I'll get back to that in a moment.
At this time of year we often say how thankful we are for our health, our families and friends, our jobs, etc. It is only right to give thanks to God for all of those things.
But what about the bad things? Should we give thanks for those, too? Our trials and troubles can make us stronger, improve our character, teach us patience and humility, and if nothing else make us appreciate the good things.
After all, if there was no bad then good would have no meaning.
"Oh happy fault that merited such and so great a Redeemer." So goes a line in a song traditionally sung during the Easter Vigil mass. If not for the Fall in the Garden of Eden, then there's no need for Jesus Christ to redeem us. Put another way, there's no reason for God to demonstrate the astounding love and mercy he shows us in his Son, Jesus. There's no reason for the Father to search for his wayward children; the house doesn't need to be swept in search of a lost coin.
It's a peculiar theological concept and is worth much reflection.
The following is a reflection by Ann Voskamp on Luke 17:11-19. This Gospel passage recounts Jesus' healing of ten lepers, one of which returns to give thanks to Jesus. Jesus tells this leper, "Stand up and go; your faith has saved you."
I look back to the text. That is what it says: "Thy faith has saved thee." And the leper's faith was a faith that said thank you. Is that it? Jesus counts thanksgiving as integral in a faith that saves.
We only enter into the full life if our faith gives thanks.
Because how else do we accept his free gift of salvation if not with thanksgiving? Thanksgiving is the evidence of our acceptance of whatever he gives. Thanksgiving is the manifestation of our Yes! to his grace.
Thanksgiving is inherent to a true salvation experience; thanksgiving is necessary to live the well, whole, fullest life.
"If the Church is in Christ, its initial act is always an act of thanksgiving, of returning the world to God," writes Orthodox theologian Alexander Schmemann. If I am truly in Christ, mustn't my initial act, too, always be an act of thanksgiving, returning to Jesus with thanks on the lips?
I would read it much later in the pages of the Psalms, at the close of a Communion service as the bread and the wine were returned to the table, the Farmer handing his Bible over to me, his finger holding the verse for me to see because he had just read it there, what I had been saying, living, believing, and the chin would quiver before I'd brim at the way God shows his salvation: "He who sacrifices thank offerings honors me, and he prepares the way so that I may show him the salvation of God" (Ps 50:23)
Thanksgiving - giving thanks in everything - prepares the way that God might show us his fullest salvation in Christ.
from One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
Both 'to thank' and 'to give' are transitive verbs; they require an object. We can't just say I thank or I give. We can say I thank you or I give you thanks.
And so, who do we give thanks to?
Parable of the Lost Drachma by Domenico Fetti
O felix culpa!
That's Latin for O happy fault! I'll get back to that in a moment.
At this time of year we often say how thankful we are for our health, our families and friends, our jobs, etc. It is only right to give thanks to God for all of those things.
But what about the bad things? Should we give thanks for those, too? Our trials and troubles can make us stronger, improve our character, teach us patience and humility, and if nothing else make us appreciate the good things.
After all, if there was no bad then good would have no meaning.
"Oh happy fault that merited such and so great a Redeemer." So goes a line in a song traditionally sung during the Easter Vigil mass. If not for the Fall in the Garden of Eden, then there's no need for Jesus Christ to redeem us. Put another way, there's no reason for God to demonstrate the astounding love and mercy he shows us in his Son, Jesus. There's no reason for the Father to search for his wayward children; the house doesn't need to be swept in search of a lost coin.
It's a peculiar theological concept and is worth much reflection.
The following is a reflection by Ann Voskamp on Luke 17:11-19. This Gospel passage recounts Jesus' healing of ten lepers, one of which returns to give thanks to Jesus. Jesus tells this leper, "Stand up and go; your faith has saved you."
Ten Lepers Healed by Brian Kershisnik
I look back to the text. That is what it says: "Thy faith has saved thee." And the leper's faith was a faith that said thank you. Is that it? Jesus counts thanksgiving as integral in a faith that saves.
We only enter into the full life if our faith gives thanks.
Because how else do we accept his free gift of salvation if not with thanksgiving? Thanksgiving is the evidence of our acceptance of whatever he gives. Thanksgiving is the manifestation of our Yes! to his grace.
Thanksgiving is inherent to a true salvation experience; thanksgiving is necessary to live the well, whole, fullest life.
"If the Church is in Christ, its initial act is always an act of thanksgiving, of returning the world to God," writes Orthodox theologian Alexander Schmemann. If I am truly in Christ, mustn't my initial act, too, always be an act of thanksgiving, returning to Jesus with thanks on the lips?
I would read it much later in the pages of the Psalms, at the close of a Communion service as the bread and the wine were returned to the table, the Farmer handing his Bible over to me, his finger holding the verse for me to see because he had just read it there, what I had been saying, living, believing, and the chin would quiver before I'd brim at the way God shows his salvation: "He who sacrifices thank offerings honors me, and he prepares the way so that I may show him the salvation of God" (Ps 50:23)
Thanksgiving - giving thanks in everything - prepares the way that God might show us his fullest salvation in Christ.
from One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
The First Thanksgiving at Plymouth
by Jennie A. Brownscombe
Saturday, November 16, 2013
The Gospel According to C. S. Lewis
November 22nd this year marks the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President Kennedy. I saw recently that according to one survey, Americans consider Kennedy to be America's greatest president.
I think Americans (and not only Americans) often confuse popularity with greatness. A certain pop singer recently grabbed plenty of attention by her disgusting antics at a 'music' awards show. For a while her video was the most viewed on youtube. Popular, maybe, but there isn't a shred of greatness there.
But getting back to Kennedy, I think President Kennedy's fortune was that he was young and handsome, he had a wife with film-star good looks, and he died young. I mean, how many films was James Dean in? You can count them on the fingers of one hand. And yet, he's a legend.
President Kennedy's greatest accomplishment (other than dying in the glow of eternal youth) was staring down the Russians over the Cuban missiles. But on the negative side of the ledger come the disastrous 'Bay of Pigs' Cuban invasion attempt and American involvement in Vietnam.
His 'man-on-the-moon' speech, you say? OK, he was a good cheerleader for that mission but it was Congress which funded the program - with American taxpayers' money - and the numerous scientists and astronauts who put in countless hours to make it happen.
On the same day Kennedy was killed in 1963, occurred the deaths of two of the twentieth century's most influential writers. Naturally they received scant coverage by the media because of the Kennedy assassination.
Aldous Huxley died at age 69 in Los Angeles and C. S. Lewis died at age 64 in Oxford, England.
Aldous Huxley is best known for his novel Brave New World, a dystopian novel published in 1932 about a future world of scientifically controlled human reproduction and psychological manipulation of human behavior. It's a superficial world of pain avoidance and lack of deep and lasting human relationships.
When I was a kid and the year 1984 was approaching, many people saw George Orwell's dystopian vision in his novel 1984 as a likely future scenario. I read that book but as I grew older I began to doubt if human beings would ever acquiesce to such a grimly spartan, emotionally suppressed world. Then I read Huxley's Brave New World and I thought, Here is a likelier possibility!
I recently ran across this from a letter Huxley wrote to Orwell after the publication of Orwell's novel in 1949, congratulating him on his 'profoundly important book' but going on to state, 'Within the next generation I believe that the world's leaders will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience.'
(Does anyone recall that 'Life of Julia' video from Obama's 2012 campaign? It wouldn't have surprised Huxley.)
Against all of this is the voice of C. S. Lewis. If Huxley's is a voice of warning, Lewis' is a voice bringing good news. Through the medium of print, Lewis may have brought the good news of Jesus Christ to as many people as Billy Graham and Pope John Paul II have done through public speaking.
I think I've read most of Lewis' books and there isn't a dull one in the entire lot. As far as I can tell, all of his books remain in print - decades after he wrote them.
The world as C. S. Lewis sees it in his books is full of drama and wonder and excitement. The Incarnation of God in Jesus Christ is the greatest story ever; it is in fact THE story of all stories. Everything else in human history, both before and after the Incarnation, only matters in relation to that central event in history.
This applies as well to fairy tales. What are fairytales after all but the working out of the dramas of reality through the prism of human imagination. I think most all of us have been enchanted by Lewis' The Chronicles of Narnia at some point in our lives. My own two children love the recent Narnia films, though the books are still a little bit beyond them. As an adult I've been astounded by his books The Screwtape Letters and the 'Space Trilogy' novels (Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, That Hideous Strength).
Add to those his works of straightforward apologetics and literary criticism like Mere Christianity, The Problem of Pain, The Four Loves, The Discarded Image, etc., and you have a powerful body of writing. He never won the Nobel Prize for Literature, but he didn't need to. Look at the list of Nobel winners and most of them you've never heard of and are little read nowadays. Lewis' books are like perennial flowers - they just keep coming back year after year.
The following comes from Lewis' The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses as reprinted in this month's Magnificat.
What more, you may ask, do we want? Ah, but we want so much more - something the books on aesthetics take little notice of. But the poets and the mythologies know all about it. We do not want merely to see beauty, though, God knows, even that is bounty enough. We want something else which can hardly be put into words - to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it.
That is why we have peopled air and earth and water with gods and goddesses and nymphs and elves - that, though we cannot, yet these projections can, enjoy in themselves that beauty, grace, and power of which Nature is the image. That is why the poets tell us such lovely falsehoods. They talk as if the west wind could really sweep into a human soul; but it can't. They tell us that "beauty born of murmuring sound" will pass into a human face; but it won't. Or not yet. For if we take the imagery of Scripture seriously, if we believe that God will one day give us the Morning Star and cause us to put on the splendor of the sun, then we may surmise that both the ancient myths and the modern poetry, so false as history, may be very near the truth as prophecy.
At present we are on the outside of the world, the wrong side of the door. We discern the freshness and purity of morning, but they do not make us fresh and pure. We cannot mingle with the splendors we see. But all the leaves of the New Testament are rustling with the rumor that it will not always be so. Some day, God willing, we shall get in. When human souls have become as perfect in voluntary obedience as the inanimate creation is in its lifeless obedience, then they will put on its glory, or rather a greater glory of which nature is only the first sketch. For you must not think that I am putting forward any heathen fancy of being absorbed into Nature. Nature is mortal; we shall outlive her. When all the suns and nebulae have passed away, each one of you will still be alive. Nature is only the image, the symbol; but it is the symbol Scripture invites me to use. We are summoned to pass in through Nature, beyond her, into that splendor which she fitfully reflects.
I think Americans (and not only Americans) often confuse popularity with greatness. A certain pop singer recently grabbed plenty of attention by her disgusting antics at a 'music' awards show. For a while her video was the most viewed on youtube. Popular, maybe, but there isn't a shred of greatness there.
But getting back to Kennedy, I think President Kennedy's fortune was that he was young and handsome, he had a wife with film-star good looks, and he died young. I mean, how many films was James Dean in? You can count them on the fingers of one hand. And yet, he's a legend.
President Kennedy's greatest accomplishment (other than dying in the glow of eternal youth) was staring down the Russians over the Cuban missiles. But on the negative side of the ledger come the disastrous 'Bay of Pigs' Cuban invasion attempt and American involvement in Vietnam.
His 'man-on-the-moon' speech, you say? OK, he was a good cheerleader for that mission but it was Congress which funded the program - with American taxpayers' money - and the numerous scientists and astronauts who put in countless hours to make it happen.
On the same day Kennedy was killed in 1963, occurred the deaths of two of the twentieth century's most influential writers. Naturally they received scant coverage by the media because of the Kennedy assassination.
Aldous Huxley died at age 69 in Los Angeles and C. S. Lewis died at age 64 in Oxford, England.
Aldous Huxley is best known for his novel Brave New World, a dystopian novel published in 1932 about a future world of scientifically controlled human reproduction and psychological manipulation of human behavior. It's a superficial world of pain avoidance and lack of deep and lasting human relationships.
When I was a kid and the year 1984 was approaching, many people saw George Orwell's dystopian vision in his novel 1984 as a likely future scenario. I read that book but as I grew older I began to doubt if human beings would ever acquiesce to such a grimly spartan, emotionally suppressed world. Then I read Huxley's Brave New World and I thought, Here is a likelier possibility!
I recently ran across this from a letter Huxley wrote to Orwell after the publication of Orwell's novel in 1949, congratulating him on his 'profoundly important book' but going on to state, 'Within the next generation I believe that the world's leaders will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience.'
(Does anyone recall that 'Life of Julia' video from Obama's 2012 campaign? It wouldn't have surprised Huxley.)
Against all of this is the voice of C. S. Lewis. If Huxley's is a voice of warning, Lewis' is a voice bringing good news. Through the medium of print, Lewis may have brought the good news of Jesus Christ to as many people as Billy Graham and Pope John Paul II have done through public speaking.
I think I've read most of Lewis' books and there isn't a dull one in the entire lot. As far as I can tell, all of his books remain in print - decades after he wrote them.
The world as C. S. Lewis sees it in his books is full of drama and wonder and excitement. The Incarnation of God in Jesus Christ is the greatest story ever; it is in fact THE story of all stories. Everything else in human history, both before and after the Incarnation, only matters in relation to that central event in history.
This applies as well to fairy tales. What are fairytales after all but the working out of the dramas of reality through the prism of human imagination. I think most all of us have been enchanted by Lewis' The Chronicles of Narnia at some point in our lives. My own two children love the recent Narnia films, though the books are still a little bit beyond them. As an adult I've been astounded by his books The Screwtape Letters and the 'Space Trilogy' novels (Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, That Hideous Strength).
Add to those his works of straightforward apologetics and literary criticism like Mere Christianity, The Problem of Pain, The Four Loves, The Discarded Image, etc., and you have a powerful body of writing. He never won the Nobel Prize for Literature, but he didn't need to. Look at the list of Nobel winners and most of them you've never heard of and are little read nowadays. Lewis' books are like perennial flowers - they just keep coming back year after year.
The following comes from Lewis' The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses as reprinted in this month's Magnificat.
What more, you may ask, do we want? Ah, but we want so much more - something the books on aesthetics take little notice of. But the poets and the mythologies know all about it. We do not want merely to see beauty, though, God knows, even that is bounty enough. We want something else which can hardly be put into words - to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it.
That is why we have peopled air and earth and water with gods and goddesses and nymphs and elves - that, though we cannot, yet these projections can, enjoy in themselves that beauty, grace, and power of which Nature is the image. That is why the poets tell us such lovely falsehoods. They talk as if the west wind could really sweep into a human soul; but it can't. They tell us that "beauty born of murmuring sound" will pass into a human face; but it won't. Or not yet. For if we take the imagery of Scripture seriously, if we believe that God will one day give us the Morning Star and cause us to put on the splendor of the sun, then we may surmise that both the ancient myths and the modern poetry, so false as history, may be very near the truth as prophecy.
At present we are on the outside of the world, the wrong side of the door. We discern the freshness and purity of morning, but they do not make us fresh and pure. We cannot mingle with the splendors we see. But all the leaves of the New Testament are rustling with the rumor that it will not always be so. Some day, God willing, we shall get in. When human souls have become as perfect in voluntary obedience as the inanimate creation is in its lifeless obedience, then they will put on its glory, or rather a greater glory of which nature is only the first sketch. For you must not think that I am putting forward any heathen fancy of being absorbed into Nature. Nature is mortal; we shall outlive her. When all the suns and nebulae have passed away, each one of you will still be alive. Nature is only the image, the symbol; but it is the symbol Scripture invites me to use. We are summoned to pass in through Nature, beyond her, into that splendor which she fitfully reflects.
Saturday, November 9, 2013
The Great War
November 11th is Veterans' Day. This day of course commemorates the end of World War I in 1918. I read recently that the BBC plans to air 2,500 hours of First World War programming from 2014 to 2018 to coincide with the 100 year anniversary dates of that war.
I'm sure there'll be a lot of interesting programs included, though I can't imagine anybody having time to watch it all.
Lately I've been thinking of something else in connection to that war. George Weigel and others have remarked that the 20th century - politically and culturally - began in 1914 and ended in 1989. In other words, the essence of that century began with the First World War and ended with the fall of communism in Eastern Europe.
This blog isn't the place for an in depth consideration of that argument, but to me it holds a lot of truth. The general attitude prevailing in western civilization before WWI was one of optimism about human progress. That 'war to end all wars' shattered this rosy optimism and ushered in an era of decadence in morals and art (the two go hand in hand). Furthermore, the idea of human or societal progress was taken up in a brutal fashion by communism and fascism.
So what ended in 1989? I think that's the more interesting question. The general line goes that the western idea of individual freedom won and collectivist-statist authoritarianism lost.
I suppose so, to a degree. However, Western Europe and Canada have been - and America is increasingly becoming - very statist. Those in government know better and more and more decide what's best for the individual. The sphere of government power grows as individual liberty and responsibility shrink.
And I don't think I need to differentiate here between liberty and libertinism.
André Malraux once wrote that "the next century (the 21st) will be religious, or it won't be at all."
Whenever it was that the 20th century ended, I think what marks the 21st century is the confrontation between a vibrant, militant Islam and a morally confused and weak west (Europe, North America, Australia).
Those who continually say that religion has been the cause of all wars are either willfully stupid or just ignorantly parroting what they hear from the stupid. However, at a deeper level it really is all about religion. Cult is the root word in culture. I mean of course cult in its primary sense, not the Jim-Jones-following-freak sense.
Islam is an incomplete religion but it's a much stronger force than the wishy-washy 'whatever' relativism which currently has a vise grip on the western mind.
The west has already lost the battle, I'm afraid, though we still retain the superior technology and military hardware. That won't save us ultimately.
Here's what will:
Love has made you a Christian
and you are a Christian for Love.
Nothing else made you a Christian
and you were made a Christian for no other reason.
If you forget Love you make yourself absurd;
if you betray Love you become monstrous.
No justice can ever dispense you
from the law of Love.
If you turn away from Love
to receive something greater
you are preferring riches to Life.
If you turn away from Love
so as to give something greater than Love,
you deprive the world of the one treasure
that you were destined to give it.
If Love is more or less an optional extra for you,
don't bother setting out for Abidjan
or anywhere else for you are good for nothing.
We are free of every obligation
but totally dependent
on the one thing necessary: Love.
Love is our life becoming eternal life.
When we give up Love, we give up our own life.
One act of Love is one immediate resurrection.
You win Love by desiring it, asking for it,
receiving it, and passing it on.
We don't learn Love, we get to know it little by little
as we get to know Christ.
Faith in Christ makes us capable of Love;
the life of Christ reveals to us what Love is;
the life of Christ shows us how to desire Love
and how to receive Love.
The Spirit of Christ makes us alive with Love,
active with Love,
fruitful with Love.
Everything can be of service to Love
but without it everything is barren -
first and foremost ourselves.
by Madeleine Delbrêl
(pictured below)
Gassed and blinded soldiers
I'm sure there'll be a lot of interesting programs included, though I can't imagine anybody having time to watch it all.
Lately I've been thinking of something else in connection to that war. George Weigel and others have remarked that the 20th century - politically and culturally - began in 1914 and ended in 1989. In other words, the essence of that century began with the First World War and ended with the fall of communism in Eastern Europe.
This blog isn't the place for an in depth consideration of that argument, but to me it holds a lot of truth. The general attitude prevailing in western civilization before WWI was one of optimism about human progress. That 'war to end all wars' shattered this rosy optimism and ushered in an era of decadence in morals and art (the two go hand in hand). Furthermore, the idea of human or societal progress was taken up in a brutal fashion by communism and fascism.
So what ended in 1989? I think that's the more interesting question. The general line goes that the western idea of individual freedom won and collectivist-statist authoritarianism lost.
The smiling face of Statism, then . . .
. . . and now
I suppose so, to a degree. However, Western Europe and Canada have been - and America is increasingly becoming - very statist. Those in government know better and more and more decide what's best for the individual. The sphere of government power grows as individual liberty and responsibility shrink.
And I don't think I need to differentiate here between liberty and libertinism.
André Malraux once wrote that "the next century (the 21st) will be religious, or it won't be at all."
Whenever it was that the 20th century ended, I think what marks the 21st century is the confrontation between a vibrant, militant Islam and a morally confused and weak west (Europe, North America, Australia).
Those who continually say that religion has been the cause of all wars are either willfully stupid or just ignorantly parroting what they hear from the stupid. However, at a deeper level it really is all about religion. Cult is the root word in culture. I mean of course cult in its primary sense, not the Jim-Jones-following-freak sense.
Islam is an incomplete religion but it's a much stronger force than the wishy-washy 'whatever' relativism which currently has a vise grip on the western mind.
The west has already lost the battle, I'm afraid, though we still retain the superior technology and military hardware. That won't save us ultimately.
Here's what will:
Love has made you a Christian
and you are a Christian for Love.
Nothing else made you a Christian
and you were made a Christian for no other reason.
If you forget Love you make yourself absurd;
if you betray Love you become monstrous.
No justice can ever dispense you
from the law of Love.
If you turn away from Love
to receive something greater
you are preferring riches to Life.
If you turn away from Love
so as to give something greater than Love,
you deprive the world of the one treasure
that you were destined to give it.
If Love is more or less an optional extra for you,
don't bother setting out for Abidjan
or anywhere else for you are good for nothing.
We are free of every obligation
but totally dependent
on the one thing necessary: Love.
Love is our life becoming eternal life.
When we give up Love, we give up our own life.
One act of Love is one immediate resurrection.
You win Love by desiring it, asking for it,
receiving it, and passing it on.
We don't learn Love, we get to know it little by little
as we get to know Christ.
Faith in Christ makes us capable of Love;
the life of Christ reveals to us what Love is;
the life of Christ shows us how to desire Love
and how to receive Love.
The Spirit of Christ makes us alive with Love,
active with Love,
fruitful with Love.
Everything can be of service to Love
but without it everything is barren -
first and foremost ourselves.
by Madeleine Delbrêl
(pictured below)
Saturday, November 2, 2013
Homesickness
I've got it bad. Just about every night I dream of the U.S. My wife often dreams about it too. 'Home' often comes up in conversation as well - "Remember in Texas when . . .?"
We gave up a lot to move here and I don't just mean financially. In a lot of ways our life was freer there while here it's more pinched.
There are serious reasons why the migration of people is nearly 100% in the direction of the U.S. and not in this direction. I clearly remember the many raised eyebrows of Polish bureaucrats when I went through the process of applying for my residence card allowing me to work here. Their looks said, You're an American and you're moving here? So many people here would dearly love to move in the opposite direction.
Absence makes the heart grow fonder, as they say. I have to remind myself that I was pretty discontented with many aspects of my life in the U.S. My job was a nearly daily stress-bomb. Suburban America hardly makes a charming postcard picture.
I watch NFL games on the internet and the American TV commercials and TV show promotions remind me of the ugly underside of American culture. One of my students here has discovered Honey Boo Boo on youtube and she likes to talk about it. I've had a look at this show on the internet. Yikes!
I guess most of us are always looking for perfection. My Dad was afflicted with this search for perfection which caused us to move from place to place. Call it wanderlust. I have it too and so does my sister Renée.
As a kid, even when we weren't physically moving house, we changed churches a lot. My Dad was never satisfied. And that brings me to a couple of points I want to make in all of this.
When I discovered the Catholic Church, it was like coming home. There isn't space to go into all of the details here, but the Church answered so many of my deepest desires. The Church is truly the physical manifestation of Christ's Body on earth.
My second point is that even in this Church, Christ's visible Body on earth, we see things darkly (1 Corinthians 13:9-12). We are pilgrims on earth; our true home is heaven. It is for heaven - true perfection - that we long. Because of that, nothing on this earth will ever completely satisfy us.
from A Shropshire Lad
A. E. Housman
Into my heart an air that kills
From yon far country blows:
What are those blue remembered hills,
What spires, what farms are those?
That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.
We gave up a lot to move here and I don't just mean financially. In a lot of ways our life was freer there while here it's more pinched.
There are serious reasons why the migration of people is nearly 100% in the direction of the U.S. and not in this direction. I clearly remember the many raised eyebrows of Polish bureaucrats when I went through the process of applying for my residence card allowing me to work here. Their looks said, You're an American and you're moving here? So many people here would dearly love to move in the opposite direction.
Homesickness by Rene Magritte
Absence makes the heart grow fonder, as they say. I have to remind myself that I was pretty discontented with many aspects of my life in the U.S. My job was a nearly daily stress-bomb. Suburban America hardly makes a charming postcard picture.
I watch NFL games on the internet and the American TV commercials and TV show promotions remind me of the ugly underside of American culture. One of my students here has discovered Honey Boo Boo on youtube and she likes to talk about it. I've had a look at this show on the internet. Yikes!
I guess most of us are always looking for perfection. My Dad was afflicted with this search for perfection which caused us to move from place to place. Call it wanderlust. I have it too and so does my sister Renée.
Homesickness by Marcin Kesek
As a kid, even when we weren't physically moving house, we changed churches a lot. My Dad was never satisfied. And that brings me to a couple of points I want to make in all of this.
When I discovered the Catholic Church, it was like coming home. There isn't space to go into all of the details here, but the Church answered so many of my deepest desires. The Church is truly the physical manifestation of Christ's Body on earth.
My second point is that even in this Church, Christ's visible Body on earth, we see things darkly (1 Corinthians 13:9-12). We are pilgrims on earth; our true home is heaven. It is for heaven - true perfection - that we long. Because of that, nothing on this earth will ever completely satisfy us.
from A Shropshire Lad
A. E. Housman
Into my heart an air that kills
From yon far country blows:
What are those blue remembered hills,
What spires, what farms are those?
That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.
Saturday, October 26, 2013
Who is a Saint?
Beloved: See what love the Father has bestowed on us that we may be called the children of God. Yet so we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God's children now; what we shall be has not yet been revealed. We do know that when it is revealed we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. Everyone who has this hope based on him makes himself pure, as he is pure.
First Letter of St. John 3:1-3
November 1st is All Saints Day on the Church calendar. It's a day for celebrating and contemplating the lives of the Saints.
Who is a saint? I've read many descriptions, some rather long and complicated and some short. Here are some good (short) ones:
A saint is always someone through whose life we learn what God is like - and what we are called to be. Only God 'makes' saints. The Church merely identifies from time to time a few of these for imitation.
Anyone who is in Heaven, whether recognized here on earth, or not.
A person who kept on trying when everybody else gave up.
I'm not sure how theologically correct that last one is, but I like it.
There are two things I want to stress about saints. First of all, the Church (Catholic or Orthodox) doesn't 'make' saints. She merely recognizes, after much discernment and guidance by the Holy Spirit, certain individuals who led lives of 'heroic virtue'; that is, individuals who dedicated their lives to loving and serving God and who now live eternally in heaven with God. It's kind of like the Church's 'Hall of Fame.'
This leads me to my second point. The saints aren't those who walked the earth in a dreamy rapture all the time, carrying a prayer book or rosary beads, and who never lost their temper or said a bad word. The heroic virtue these individuals practiced meant they struggled with and overcame their own personal shortcomings through God's grace. They surrendered their lives - warts and all - to God. They understood that they could do nothing, absolutely NOTHING, without God's grace and strength.
The saints had their share of human weaknesses while they lived on earth. We should all know about Saint Peter's shortcomings as a man from the New Testament. He appeared to have a short temper and he denied our Lord three times the night before his crucifixion. Saint Ambrose (4th century) had a quick and sharp tongue. Saint Therese of Lisieux (19th century) admitted to being tempted by blasphemous thoughts. Saint Padre Pio (20th century) struggled with a short temper. Those are just a few that come immediately to my mind.
God's will is that all be saved (1 Timothy 2:4; 2 Peter 3:9). We are all meant to spend eternity with God. Whatever our personal shortcomings, we are all called to be saints. We must choose every single day to love God and give him our entire selves, body and soul, thoughts, words and actions. Only then can God make us saints.
First Letter of St. John 3:1-3
November 1st is All Saints Day on the Church calendar. It's a day for celebrating and contemplating the lives of the Saints.
The Denial of St. Peter, by Caravaggio
Who is a saint? I've read many descriptions, some rather long and complicated and some short. Here are some good (short) ones:
A saint is always someone through whose life we learn what God is like - and what we are called to be. Only God 'makes' saints. The Church merely identifies from time to time a few of these for imitation.
Anyone who is in Heaven, whether recognized here on earth, or not.
A person who kept on trying when everybody else gave up.
I'm not sure how theologically correct that last one is, but I like it.
There are two things I want to stress about saints. First of all, the Church (Catholic or Orthodox) doesn't 'make' saints. She merely recognizes, after much discernment and guidance by the Holy Spirit, certain individuals who led lives of 'heroic virtue'; that is, individuals who dedicated their lives to loving and serving God and who now live eternally in heaven with God. It's kind of like the Church's 'Hall of Fame.'
This leads me to my second point. The saints aren't those who walked the earth in a dreamy rapture all the time, carrying a prayer book or rosary beads, and who never lost their temper or said a bad word. The heroic virtue these individuals practiced meant they struggled with and overcame their own personal shortcomings through God's grace. They surrendered their lives - warts and all - to God. They understood that they could do nothing, absolutely NOTHING, without God's grace and strength.
The Temptation of Saint Anthony, by Jacques Antoine Vallin
The saints had their share of human weaknesses while they lived on earth. We should all know about Saint Peter's shortcomings as a man from the New Testament. He appeared to have a short temper and he denied our Lord three times the night before his crucifixion. Saint Ambrose (4th century) had a quick and sharp tongue. Saint Therese of Lisieux (19th century) admitted to being tempted by blasphemous thoughts. Saint Padre Pio (20th century) struggled with a short temper. Those are just a few that come immediately to my mind.
God's will is that all be saved (1 Timothy 2:4; 2 Peter 3:9). We are all meant to spend eternity with God. Whatever our personal shortcomings, we are all called to be saints. We must choose every single day to love God and give him our entire selves, body and soul, thoughts, words and actions. Only then can God make us saints.
Saturday, October 19, 2013
Eternity
The big news here in Poland lately is the announced canonization of Pope John Paul II next spring, April 27th to be exact. John Paul II was Polish, born Karol Wojtyła, and the Poles are very proud of him.
Regarding sainthood and canonization, that's a topic I'll deal with next week as we approach All Saints' Day on November 1st.
Blessed John Paul II's feast day is October 22nd and that and the announcement of his canonization has led me to read some of the things he said and wrote.
I came across the following in this month's Magnificat:
We are now standing in the face of the greatest historical confrontation humanity has ever experienced. I do not think the wide circle of the American society, or the wide circle of the Christian community realize this fully. We are now facing the final confrontation between the Church and the anti-church, between the Gospel and the anti-gospel, between Christ and the antichrist. This confrontation lies within the plans of Divine Providence. It is, therefore, in God's Plan, and it must be a trial which the Church must take up, and face courageously.
Then Cardinal Karol Wojtyła spoke those words in an address at the Eucharistic Congress in Philadelphia in 1976. If some people thought he was exaggerating then, I think subsequent events should clarify the truth of his words.
When Cardinal Wojtyła was elected pope two years later, he would begin his pontificat with the words of Christ, Be not afraid! He would repeat those words often over the following quarter century.
What is it that we are not to be afraid of? Death? Satan and the powers of darkness? Illness, failure and pain?
The Gospel reading for mass last Friday, October 11th, was from Luke 11:15-26. I'll cite the first few verses:
When Jesus had driven out a demon, some of the crowd said: "By the power of Beelzebul, the prince of demons, he drives out demons." Others, to test him, asked him for a sign from heaven. But he knew their thoughts and said to them, "Every kingdom divided against itself will be laid waste and house will fall against house. And if Satan is divided against himself, how will his kingdom stand? For you say that it is by Beelzebul that I drive out demons. If I, then, drive out demons by Beelzebul, by whom do your own people drive them out? Therefore they will be your judges. But if it is by the finger of God that I drive out demons, then the Kingdom of God has come upon you . . ."
We often hear the line that Satan's greatest accomplishment in this later age is to have convinced people that he doesn't exist. Those who dabble in the occult or Satanism are fools to the nth degree. But I think that those who have comfortably come to the conclusion that the devil is just silly old superstition are the bigger fools.
Those who grope through the dark forest of Satan's kingdom are at least aware of the realities of the supernatural. They play a fool's game by adoring That which hates them passionately and wishes to deface the image of God in which they were created and works tirelessly to snatch them eternally from the love of God. But I think that those aware of the existence of Satan are also very aware of the existence of God. And therein lies hope for them.
It's those who sleepily deny the existence of Satan and evil who tend to have a dim awareness of God. If they think about God at all, he's simply a vague 'goodness' who is OK with whatever I do since I'm just following my conscience anyway and I'm basically a good person who never hurt anybody, and well cutting corners at work or taking home office supplies isn't so bad since my company's rich and I hate my freak'n boss, and ogling that hot woman in the next cubicle isn't so bad, it's not like my wife knows about it, and though I would never agree to an abortion myself it's no problem to vote for a politician who supports a woman's right to choose, so we don't need to trouble ourselves too much with God. It's all cool . . .
Eternity is now. The Kingdom of God upon us. And so is Satan's kingdom. Our biological death, whether it's in the distant future or today, is but a transition from this time on earth with it's constant hardships and fleeting moments of joy, to the beatific vision of God, or to the full realization of our eternal separation from God. That is Heaven and Hell.
But it begins here and now in our hearts. Either God reigns there, or Satan does, whether we believe in either of them or not. And whether we have heaven or hell in our hearts, we bring heaven or hell into our immediate surroundings, into our daily lives. Cheating and theft, lust and adultery, anger and murder are all signs of the kingdom of Satan. Love, peace, joy, respect for life and good humor are signs of the Kingdom of God.
In which kingdom do we live? Who do we serve?
Regarding sainthood and canonization, that's a topic I'll deal with next week as we approach All Saints' Day on November 1st.
Blessed John Paul II's feast day is October 22nd and that and the announcement of his canonization has led me to read some of the things he said and wrote.
I came across the following in this month's Magnificat:
We are now standing in the face of the greatest historical confrontation humanity has ever experienced. I do not think the wide circle of the American society, or the wide circle of the Christian community realize this fully. We are now facing the final confrontation between the Church and the anti-church, between the Gospel and the anti-gospel, between Christ and the antichrist. This confrontation lies within the plans of Divine Providence. It is, therefore, in God's Plan, and it must be a trial which the Church must take up, and face courageously.
Then Cardinal Karol Wojtyła spoke those words in an address at the Eucharistic Congress in Philadelphia in 1976. If some people thought he was exaggerating then, I think subsequent events should clarify the truth of his words.
When Cardinal Wojtyła was elected pope two years later, he would begin his pontificat with the words of Christ, Be not afraid! He would repeat those words often over the following quarter century.
What is it that we are not to be afraid of? Death? Satan and the powers of darkness? Illness, failure and pain?
The Gospel reading for mass last Friday, October 11th, was from Luke 11:15-26. I'll cite the first few verses:
When Jesus had driven out a demon, some of the crowd said: "By the power of Beelzebul, the prince of demons, he drives out demons." Others, to test him, asked him for a sign from heaven. But he knew their thoughts and said to them, "Every kingdom divided against itself will be laid waste and house will fall against house. And if Satan is divided against himself, how will his kingdom stand? For you say that it is by Beelzebul that I drive out demons. If I, then, drive out demons by Beelzebul, by whom do your own people drive them out? Therefore they will be your judges. But if it is by the finger of God that I drive out demons, then the Kingdom of God has come upon you . . ."
We often hear the line that Satan's greatest accomplishment in this later age is to have convinced people that he doesn't exist. Those who dabble in the occult or Satanism are fools to the nth degree. But I think that those who have comfortably come to the conclusion that the devil is just silly old superstition are the bigger fools.
Jesus said, "I have observed Satan fall
like lightning from the sky." Luke 10:18
Those who grope through the dark forest of Satan's kingdom are at least aware of the realities of the supernatural. They play a fool's game by adoring That which hates them passionately and wishes to deface the image of God in which they were created and works tirelessly to snatch them eternally from the love of God. But I think that those aware of the existence of Satan are also very aware of the existence of God. And therein lies hope for them.
It's those who sleepily deny the existence of Satan and evil who tend to have a dim awareness of God. If they think about God at all, he's simply a vague 'goodness' who is OK with whatever I do since I'm just following my conscience anyway and I'm basically a good person who never hurt anybody, and well cutting corners at work or taking home office supplies isn't so bad since my company's rich and I hate my freak'n boss, and ogling that hot woman in the next cubicle isn't so bad, it's not like my wife knows about it, and though I would never agree to an abortion myself it's no problem to vote for a politician who supports a woman's right to choose, so we don't need to trouble ourselves too much with God. It's all cool . . .
Eternity is now. The Kingdom of God upon us. And so is Satan's kingdom. Our biological death, whether it's in the distant future or today, is but a transition from this time on earth with it's constant hardships and fleeting moments of joy, to the beatific vision of God, or to the full realization of our eternal separation from God. That is Heaven and Hell.
The Marriage Feast at Cana, by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo
An anticipation of Heaven
But it begins here and now in our hearts. Either God reigns there, or Satan does, whether we believe in either of them or not. And whether we have heaven or hell in our hearts, we bring heaven or hell into our immediate surroundings, into our daily lives. Cheating and theft, lust and adultery, anger and murder are all signs of the kingdom of Satan. Love, peace, joy, respect for life and good humor are signs of the Kingdom of God.
In which kingdom do we live? Who do we serve?
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