In today’s world, the culture has stressed a very strict standard and view of body image. But how should you really see your body? Emily Stimpson, author of “These Beautiful Bones: An Everyday Theology of the Body,” explains that you should see it as God sees it: Beautiful!
You’re So Vain (You Probably Think This Quiz Is About You).
How narcissistic are you? A new study shows that one question can accurately reveal the degree of narcissism you exhibit.
Ready…?
To what extent do you agree with the following statement, “I am a narcissist”?
Not at All True–1 2 3 4 5 6 7 –Very True
(A score of 3 is about average. A score of 4 means you’re more narcissistic than about 80% of people taking the quiz)
“You Are the Average of the 5 People You Spend the Most Time With.”
Yesterday on More2Life Radio, Lisa an I discussed an assertion of a new book, The Power of No Specifically, that “you are an average of the 5 people you spend the most time with.”
I haven’t read the whole book, but I was struck by this assertion. It’s really a terrific way of communicating, in simple terms, the Theology of the Body’s claim that the human person is communal and relational by nature. We have a profound impact on the lives of others and others have a profound impact on us. And although we have a tendency to think of ourselves as entirely separate and in charge of our own choices, the people we associate with do play a huge role in supporting or undermining our efforts to become the people God is calling us to be.
So, let me ask you….
1. Are the 5 people you spend the most time with helping or hurting your chances of becoming the person God created you to be?
2. If–whether you realized if or not–you really were an average of the 5 people you spend the most time with, would that be a good thing or a bad thing?
3. Finally, if you are less than pleased to be the average of these 5 people, what do you need to do about it?
Learn more about how the Pastoral Solutions Institute’s Catholic Tele-Counseling practice can help you transform your relationships. Call 740-266-6461 or email us to speak with a professional, Catholic counselor.
Joan of Arc: Model of Strength
By: Emma Smith
While researching potential confirmation saints, I learned that Joan of Arc had a “notoriously volatile temper.” This caught my attention as, if there is one thing I’ve struggled with, it’s my temper. Thus, learning that Joan of Arc, now my patron in Heaven, had a temper was of some consolation. However, learning that one can get to Heaven even with a temper was merely the beginning of what Joan of Arc had to show me about being a saint today.
We all desire the “big call.” People love the romance of leaving everything behind, traveling to foreign lands, abandoning our homes. There is something timelessly romantic in the notion that God could physically call us away from everything that makes us who we are. You can thank Hollywood for that in part, but in part you can thank the human existence. We understand that we were made for greatness and having a “big call” that asks those “huge sacrifices” of us makes us feel as though we’ve attained the greatness we strive for.
In that sense, Joan of Arc speaks to all of us. At a young age, she left all she knew behind to lead an army and was killed for her response to God’s call. That is no small calling. However, Joan also seems very distant from us. None of us (or not many of us!) will be asked to gallivant off across the globe for Christ’s kingdom. Her story is inspiring, yet we are unable to relate to it.
In our glorification of Joan’s work and martyrdom, I believe it becomes a temptation to gloss over the Joan of Arc who was tried before being burned at the stake. The Joan who was taken to trial is the Joan we should — and can — aspire to be, because the Joan at trial was incredibly human.
During her trial, Joan’s human weakness and frailty came out in incredibly real ways. The close proximity of evil and the inevitable pain it would cause allowed Joan’s human weakness to overpower her several times. Accounts vary, but one account reflects a time when Joan had to be removed from the court because she was so nervous that she was unable to speak clearly and kept recanting her statements. Further, when faced with burning at the stake on May 24th, Joan signed an abjuration document regarding her male clothing, visions, and call from God.
Her fear is understandable, and makes her less of an icon and more of a person to us. She shows us that trust in God is difficult at any moment in life, but when alone and faced with a torturous death, it is near impossible. Joan’s human weakness, then, points not to our own human existence, but to God’s faithfulness and mercy. On May 28th, Joan recanted her previous abjuration. Having been visited by saints overnight to encourage her, she gained strength from Christ and was able to say “yes” one more time to our Lord. She faced her death with composure and peace on May 30th, 1431.
That is the true romance of Joan’s “big call.” She waged the war, not without, but within, and won. God didn’t merely ask her to lead an army to victory — that was the relatively easy part. Rather, God asked her to abandon herself — her fears, her pains, her human terrors and weaknesses — and place herself squarely and firmly in His care. He was faithful to her, and she accepted His love and strength, thus being faithful to Him as well. By overcoming herself and allowing her human frailty to decrease, Joan was able to allow Christ to increase in her, and do the very thing that we celebrate her for today: she died for the glory of God so that His will could be done.
Joan’s story remains incredibly relevant today. Millennials especially have the unique opportunity to be modern day Joan of Arcs. We are called to wage a war that is, in many ways, very similar to Joan’s. Instead of a physical army of English swarming our lands, we are faced with a cultural war. As radical feminism, gay marriage, and the abortion debate swarm our cultural landscape, we are faced with the call to go out and lead our nation back to greatness.
Just as Joan’s work was only fulfilled in her martyrdom, in her total gift of self to Christ, so too will our cultural war only be won when we truly die to ourselves and leave ourselves solely in the care of Christ. When we die to our fears and temptations, when we decrease our own importance, we allow Christ’s hope and strength to increase. We are called to overcome the temptation of mediocrity and the fear of death (physical, social, or otherwise) by dying to ourselves so He may increase in us. Only when we successfully turn ourselves over to him do we become vessels for His glory, making His will present and witnessing to His goodness, just as Joan was finally capable of on the fateful day 583 years ago.
If we want to win the culture war we must wrestle with the very real possibility that we will be “burned at the stake”. We should look to The Maid of Orléans for guidance in turning to Christ and accepting His mercy and inspiration for those times when we fail to trust in Him. She can help us to win the war within so that our fight for beauty, truth, and goodness may not be lost without. May she be an inspiration to us to accept our fate with the same joy with which she finally bore her own Cross. In seeking her aid and learning to die to self, we may defend ourselves against the same evil Joan faced as it attempts, once again, to take over our land, nation and culture for its own.
Credit to Emma Smith of CatholicExchange.
The Miracle of Fulton J. Sheen
By: Patricia Treece
God has friends in places little connected with Him in the public mind.Would you believe an American proposed for official sainthood whose prime time television show brought him an emmy – for talking about God yet?
TV star Fulton John Sheen’s heroic virtue was recognized with the title Venerable in June 2012. You know well by now that it is God’s approval through a miracle that permits a beatification. In this Cause miracles seem in good supply. So beatification could come soon. When it does Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen may have the distinction of ending up with not just one shrine but two.
Not only a widely read author, the native of El Paso, Illinois, was famous for Life Is Worth Living, his television show seen by millions when there were only three networks (ABC, NBC, and CBS) in the United States and the whole country seemed to park itself before “the tube” nightly. Although one of television’s biggest stars, full of personal charisma, with a sense of the dramatic that could make viewers weep, as well as wit and a sense of comedy that evoked bubbles of laughter, Sheen was also revered among those, like Apostoli, who looked past the show for his spiritual attributes: primarily his deep love of Christ exemplified, among other ways, by his unfailingly spending an hour a day – he called it a Holy Hour – in prayer before the eucharistic Christ. Apostoli says that when he saw Sheen, he wanted to be like him – not the celebrity aspect but “the man of God.”
It was Billy Graham – no slouch himself at communicating Christ – who said, “Sheen was the greatest communicator of the twentieth century.” Looking at Sheen’s background, this is surprising. When he started his educational path to the priesthood, the successful business-man’s son’s potential for scholarship, not for communicating to huge groups of ordinary people, was what drew attention. Sent to be educated at some of the world’s foremost schools, the University of Louvain in Belgium, the Sorbonne in Paris, and the Angelicum in Rome, he was the first American at Louvain to win the prestigious Cardinal Mercier Prize for International Philosophy.
He came back to America and, after three years in his home diocese, began to teach theology and philosophy at Washington DC’s Catholic University as an educationally sophisticated intellectual of proven brilliance. Yet he would become known for the ability – often by coining witty and pithy sayings – “to explain spirituality and the Catholic faith in ways that everyone could understand.” And he did it first on radio – so it wasn’t his striking good looks that had people hang ing on his words. That was as early as 1930, when he began a Sunday-night broadcast called The Catholic Hour. Sponsored by the Church, for twenty years he taught Catholicism that way. From 1951 he “starred” on television.
On TV he taught Life and why it is worth living – a subject which led to God through every topic imaginable. In that anti-Catholic era, 1951 to 1957, there he was before millions, mostly non-Catholics, in full – some would say exaggerated – Catholic regalia: black cleri cal garb, a large crucifix on his chest, and a big magenta cape flowing behind him. In down-to-earth, humorous talks about life’s basics, aimed at people of every faith or none, his soft-sell approach won friends for Christ and the Church, his converts too many to detail.
Twenty-four years after his death and burial at St. Patrick’s Ca thedral as a bishop of New York, his Cause was opened in September 2003 by the Peoria Diocese.
Already in the summer of 2006, when the Cause for this Servant of God was only open three years, there were two cures of a magnitude to potentially qualify as official miracles – and definitely, in any case, worth sending to Rome. Following ceremonies in Peoria and in Pitts burgh, for each of the healings respectively, the Cause’s Rome-based postulator, Andréa Ambrosi, present at both, hand carried them to the Congregation for the Causes of Saints.
The first healing recipient was Therese Kearney of Champaign, Illi nois, then in her early seventies. During a surgery in 1999, Mrs. Kearney suffered a tear in her pulmonary artery. Told his wife would probably not make it, Frank Kearney, a long-time admirer of the media star priest, sought Sheen’s prayer intercession. (Sheen at this time had been dead twenty years.) His wife lived, and this was considered something be yond what medicine could have done. The couple died in 2006, seven years later, he in February and she, at age 79, in September. But the healing had already survived the diocesan-level vetting. Details of her cure – over five hundred pages of medical data and testimonies by the witnesses, who included the doctors involved, a nurse, a priest, and fam ily members – had been assembled under Msgr. Richard Soseman, as delegate of the bishop of Peoria. Packed and sealed in a witnessed cer emony, just five days after Therese Kearney’s death, the records were officially turned over to the postulator for transport to Rome.
Postulator Ambrosi made a second stop for similar ceremonies in Pittsburgh. There he picked up a thousand pages of meticulous testi mony and medical records on the cure of a seriously ill infant boy whose family belong to the Ukrainian Diocese of St. Josaphat in Parma, Ohio. The Catholic Ukrainian diocese is small and without either the person nel or financial resources to conduct the necessary investigation of a cure. The Pittsburgh diocese took over for them. While details of the infant’s cure were withheld, Fr. Ambrosi said only that the baby was “gravely ill” when his parents sought Archbishop Sheen’s prayer inter cession. Vice-postulator Fr. Andrew Apostoli has said the infant had three life-threatening conditions, one of which was the worst form of sepsis. The fact of this being a cure from God, not from medical means, was supported by the main doctors involved in the case. “All of them,” Ambrosi concluded, “recognized that a force superior to their medical science intervened for his [the infant’s] recovery.”
About four years later, in 2010, another infant is also said to have received a miracle, this one in Peoria. The facts actually made public, with the cooperation of the family, when Sheen was named Venerable in 2012 show the devotion Sheen can inspire.
Bonnie Engstrom and her family live in a small central-Illinois town not that far from El Paso, Illinois, the little town where Sheen was born. Bonnie had a special feeling for then Servant of God Sheen, she ex plains, precisely because he was “born in this small insignificant town, El Paso, followed God’s will in his life, and became a great instrument of the Lord.” To Bonnie, this showed “it doesn’t matter where you’re from.” She and her husband, Travis, agreed that the child of her current pregnancy would be James Fulton, the middle name honoring Sheen. Throughout this pregnancy, as she went about her daily chores as wife and mother, Bonnie also sought the prayer support of the dead TV-star evangelist.
But during James Fulton’s birth at the family home that Septem ber (2010), Fulton Sheen did not actually seem to be proving much of a friend: a previously undetected knot in the umbilical cord became so tight during delivery that the baby was born blue, without pulse or breath. Mother and the stillborn baby were rushed by ambulance to St. Francis Medical Center in Peoria.
Engstrom remembers chanting Fulton Sheen’s name over and over as a team of doctors and nurses worked on the baby. It seemed fruit less, and the ER group prepared to pronounce the Engstrom infant dead when suddenly his heart began to beat.
Today, apparently no worse for his harrowing birth because he is developing normally, James – along with his mother – is now a kind of star himself since mother and child are playing a role in their heavenly friend’s ascent to official sainthood. On the other hand, the small-town tyke is also, to his family’s joy, just like his older siblings.
As for Bonnie Engstrom, she finds her faith affirmed that God does work miracles. “Every milestone [in development] he has crossed was a milestone we thought he wouldn’t achieve,” she says with a kind of awe. The miracle of her stillborn baby’s not only returning to life but being undamaged has touched her in other ways too. One is that the mother of what today is considered a large family appreciates her vocation “a lot more.” She says when she sees her children do something, such as James, who should be dead, shaking toys at her, trying to be cute, she is able “to appreciate all those little moments more.”
Time will tell which of the cures being studied in Rome, this one, the two others, or one yet to come, proves the beatification miracle. There are other cures not chosen for Rome, apparently. Vice-postulator Fr. Andrew Apostoli notes that an extraordinary number of cases where people report the archbishop’s intercession involve infants.
Thinking about these and the elderly woman’s or the Ohio infant’s cures, if neither of the latter becomes the beatification miracle, two physician-proclaimed miracles that took place in our time and maybe not that far away from where you live may just fade away. Will the day ever come, for instance, in this new climate in which miracle recipients often have to be or choose to be protected, when you and I learn the details that caused more than one doctor to credit something beyond what medical skill can do for saving the seriously ill Ohio baby? Even James’s survival – in spite of being in the news – could one day soon be remembered by those close to him alone. Only one thing is sure: each of these events is an example of the miracles most of us will never be aware of and yet, as miracle “middleman” Zbig Chojnowski puts it, are going on all around us.
Credit to Patricia Treece of CatholicExchange.
St. Benedict and St. Therese: The Father and the Child
By: Fr. Dwight Longenecker
C.S. Lewis once observed, ‘How monotonously alike all the great tyrants and conquerors have been: how gloriously different are the saints.’ In his little biographies of Thomas Aquinas and Saint Francis of Assisi, G.K.Chesterton revelled in the sparkling individuality of both saints. Aquinas was the greatest philosopher of his time while Francis was a troubadour for Christ. Thomas a great bull of a man; Francis a scraggy fool of a man. Thomas was a restrained logician; Francis an extravagant poet. In their uniqueness, Aquinas and Francis display the magnificent full blooded humanity which every saint exhibits.
Chesterton and Lewis weren’t the only ones to be delighted by the variety of the saints. Writing to her prioress Thérèse of Lisieux said, ‘How different are the variety of ways through which the Lord leads souls!’ ‘Souls are more different than faces.’
Take three women who share her name: Theresa of Avila, Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein) and Teresa of Calcutta. They all wear a dull uniform and submit to a regime which seems designed to obliterate their individuality, yet each of them emerge as feisty, formidable and utterly unique individuals.
The saints are unique because they are ordinary people who have allowed an extraordinary power to bring them to their full potential. The saint is fascinating because she is the person she was created to be; and the more we become who we are, the less we will be like anybody else. The saint has no time for role models. She cannot spend time pretending to be someone else because she realises it is the work of a lifetime to become oneself.
While the saints are unique, they also complement one another. Threading through the life of every saint is a strand that links them to every other saint. Chesterton shows how Aquinas and Francis, despite their differences, complement one another and reflect the light of Christ back and forth. Thérèse makes a charming observation about how saints depend on one another spiritually. In heaven, she says,
‘all the Saints will be indebted to each other……who knows the joy we shall experience in beholding the glory of the great saints, and knowing that by a secret disposition of Providence we have contributed there unto…and do you not think that on their side the great saints, seeing what they owe to quite little souls, will love them with an incomparable love? Delightful and surprising will be the friendships found there–I am sure of it. The favoured companion of an Apostle or a great Doctor of the Church will perhaps be a young shepherd lad; and a simple little child may be the intimate friend of a
In the divine drama God creates a cast of heroes and children. The thought is echoed in the words of Pope Pius XI about Thérèse, ‘God created such giants of zeal and holiness as Ignatius Loyola and Francis Xavier. Behind these, on the far horizon, we catch a glimpse of Peter and Paul, of Athanasius, Chrysostom, and Ambrose. But behold! The same heavenly Artist has secretly fashioned, with a love well nigh infinite, this maiden so modest, so humble–this child.’
Benedict also hints at the surprising complementarity in the communion of saints. For him the magnificent community of heaven is reflected in the monastic community on earth. The monks are not ranked according to social privilege, ability or age, but in a celestial sort of egalitarianism, they ‘take their places according to the time of their coming to the monastery, for example, one who has entered the monastery at the second hour is to know that he is junior to him who entered at the first, whatever his age or dignity.’ As in Thérèse’s picture, the young and old respect one another, so Benedict expects the younger monks to show an oriental type of courtesy to their elders: ‘Whenever the brethren meet one another, the junior should rise and seek a blessing of the elder.’ However the older monks should respect the younger because ‘the youthful Samuel and Daniel acted as judges over their elders,’ and in his chapter on summoning the brethren for counsel the older monks must listen respectfully to even the youngest monk for, ‘it is often to the youngest brother that the Lord reveals the best course.’
To study two saints together is to perceive three things: their unique personalities, their similarity to one another and the way their lives and teachings complement each other. When Saint Benedict and Saint Thérèse of Lisieux are studied together the contrast between their personalities is striking. One is an Italian patriarch of the sixth century, the other a bourgeois French girl at the end of the nineteenth. Benedict writes from the edge of the middle age. Thérèse writes from the edge of the modern age. Benedict writes a monastic rule, founds monasteries, rules as an abbot, is visited by royalty and dies an old man. Like a French Emily Dickinson, Thérèse hardly moves beyond her provincial family circle. She has a pious father, lives an enclosed life, writes poetry and a quaint biography, and dies a painful death at the age of twenty four. Like Aquinas and Francis, Benedict and Thérèse are radically different personalities; also like Aquinas and Francis, they complement one another in surprising and profound ways. Augustine wrote about the Scriptures that ‘the New Testament is hidden in the Old and the Old made manifest in the New.’ So it is with the writings of Thérèse and Benedict; the remarkable insights of Thérèse are hidden within Benedict’s simple monastic rule, and the universal wisdom of Benedict is made fully manifest in the writings of Thérèse. In the two of them Thérèse’s picture of the saints in heaven comes true, for in Thérèse and Benedict ‘a simple little child becomes the intimate friend of a patriarch.’
In ‘studying’ a saint one is never drawn only to their writings. The first attraction to any saint is to their unusual life. The saint’s teachings are nothing without their life because their writings and their life are one. As Gregory the Great said of Benedict, ‘he could not have written what he did not live’ and Hans Urs Von Balthasar says ‘Thérèse protected herself from ever writing any statement that she herself had not tested and that she was not translating into deeds as she was writing.’
Hagiograpny and biography are not the same thing. We do not study the life of a saint as we might read the story of a dead celebrity. We can’t study the story of a dead saint because there’s no such thing. The saint’s life is dynamic because in Christ the saint is still alive. Thérèse is famous for anticipating the great work she would do after her death, ‘I will spend my heaven doing good on earth,’ she said. We venerate the saints and ask for their intercession not because they have written fine words, nor because we think them especially powerful in heaven. Neither do we venerate the saints and ask for their intercession simply because they are holy and good. We venerate saints and ask for their help because they have become our friends. They may be friends, but they are exalted friends. We relate to the saints as we might to a member of the royal family who has come to call. We are fascinated by them because they are greater than us, but we’re more fascinated because they’re not greater than us. They might wear satin breeches, but they step into them one leg at a time. Because the saints are like us and unlike us they not only show us what we are but what we could be. Studying a saint therefore, is a work of devotion not diligence. It is a relationship, not a report. We study a saint not for the love of knowledge but for the knowledge of love.
Credit to Fr. Dwight Longenecker of CatholicExchange.
Yes Straight Out: Halpin and the Compiegne Martyrs
By: Richard Becker
“Baba O’Riley” is my favorite song by The Who, but “Who Are You?” is a close second, mainly because of the drums. It came on the radio recently and I turned up the volume. “Listen to this,” I told my son, an aspiring drummer. “Keith Moon is amazing.”
And he was, a great drummer and a great performer…when he was sober. Unfortunately, he was frequently under the influence of various substances, and Moon literally passed out on stage on more than one occasion.
Such was the case on November 20, 1973, when The Who appeared at the Cow Palace in San Francisco. Moon actually passed out twice that night, and after the second time, guitarist Pete Townshend, utterly exasperated, turned to the assembled crowd for help. “Can anybody play the drums?” he pleaded. “I mean somebody good.”
Scot Halpin was a drummer and present at the concert.He’d just moved to California from Iowa and had gone to see The Who with his buddy, Mike. The two of them ended up at the side of the stage near the event’s promoter, Bill Graham, who was trying to salvage the concert after Moon’s exit. Here’s how Halpin described what happened next in an NPR interview:
My friend, Mike Deniseph, basically was pushing me forward to do this, and really interfacing with Bill Graham once he got there, nose to nose. And so he looks to me square in the eye and says, Can you do it? And I said yes, straight out.
“Yes, straight out.” That’s so great. Here’s a kid from Muscatine, Iowa, barely out of high school, and he’s put on the spot to back up one of the greatest rock bands of all time. Without hesitation, without it seems even a second thought, Halpin rose to the occasion. It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that came suddenly and out of the blue, yet he took it on and, the story goes, acquitted himself pretty well.
How?
The bare outline of Halpin’s story gives us a clue. First, he practiced — not because he thought he’d be a big star someday, but because he wanted to get better at what he loved. Second, he had people around him — Mike in particular — who believed in him, even more than he believed in himself.
And finally, Halpin found the courage to say “yes, straight out” at a critical juncture, despite the lack of warning or preparation. The key there is the word “found,” for it doesn’t appear to be the case that Scot was spectacularly courageous by nature. Still, at an historic moment, a now-or-never crossroads, he found enough courage — reckless courage, some would say — and he followed through.
Playing drums in a rock concert is one thing; martyrdom is quite another.But I think there are some parallels with how ordinary people manage to hang on to their faith when thrust into the most trying circumstances. Like the Blessed Carmelites of Compiègne whose feast we celebrate today.
Flash back to 1794 and the French Revolution in full swing. The Carmelites of Compiègne in northern France were feeling the brunt of the Reign of Terror, having been deprived of their habits and dispersed by the government two years before. Still, they’d made adjustments, donning simple attire and living together in several groups. Despite the open persecution and social disintegration, the eleven nuns and their five lay associates were attempting to maintain their communal life of prayer as best they could.
These were women who’d entered religious life with an expectation of an orderly rhythm of quiet prayer and piety. They weren’t escaping the world, nor were they insulating a refined way of life against the hoi polloi — most of them came from working class families, and only one had upper class connections. Nevertheless, they hadn’t signed up to be heroes, and the only martyrdom they had anticipated was the ordinary day-to-day martyrdom associated with celibacy and the cloister.
Here’s the deal with heroism though: Once you throw in your lot with ordinary heroics, you open yourself up for the most extreme forms, which is what we Christians ought to expect in any case.
Behold, I am sending you like sheep in the midst of wolves…. Brother will hand over brother to death, and the father his child; children will rise up against parents and have them put to death. You will be hated by all because of my name (Mt. 10.16, 21-22).
We fall in love with Jesus and embrace the Cross because we want to be like him and follow him as closely as possible; we receive the Sacraments, pray, and carry out our daily responsibilities; we strive to avoid sin and to grow in holiness. Is that the end of it? Do we get to coast then all the way to heaven?
The Compiègne Carmelites found out otherwise. The authorities had convicted the 16 women on trumped up charges and transferred them to Paris. On July 17, 1794, the women, now back in their religious garb, were paraded through the streets and brought to the place of execution. At first accompanied by the assembled crowd’s jeers and cheers, the women sang hymns as they were beheaded one by one — a horror captured so movingly in François Poulenc’s opera Le Dialogue des Carmélites (The Dialogue of the Carmelites). The dignity and bravery of the nuns and their companions was such that the raucous crowd was silenced — a silence and sobriety that persisted beyond the events of that day and that some believe contributed to the sudden termination of the Reign of Terror a short time later.
All of these women could have avoided the scaffold by renouncing their faith, but they didn’t. So how is it that a group of women given over to prayer and a quiet life hidden from the world could rise to such a height of fortitude and heroism. I think it’s the same pattern on display in Scot Halpin’s little brush with history — a pattern we do well to emulate as well.
- Regular practice: It’s funny to talk about “practicing” our faith the way Halpin practiced the drums, but that’s exactly what we do — because we never are quite finished polishing our skills. In fact, the Catechism directly associates the word “practice” with the idea of “heroic virtue” (CCC 828), which implies that the kind of heroism the Compiègne martyrs demonstrated is rooted in the ordinary heroics we perform every day.The Carmelites practiced through prayer and penance in the cloister, but we’re called to practice in a similar way out in the world, which includes carrying out the duties associated with our state in life — single, married with family, whatever. Such matters might not seem like the stuff of sainthood, but God can create saints out of very little — as the Carmelite St. Thérèse of Lisieux observed in her writing about the “little way.” We measure bigness on a different scale than God does.
- Communal support: Heroes, in real life, are not loners, and they always have people rooting for them from the sidelines. That’s true for martyrs as well, and we see it at work even in the brief records we have of what happened in Compiègne. Although the sisters had anticipated the guillotine, it was undoubtedly a shock to find themselves actually facing execution as an imminent reality.In their case, it was one of their own that provided the fortifying support, their youngest member who started off the singing, giving courage to the rest of her community. Plus, the silenced crowd gave an almost implicit form of support, and, of course, the sisters were surrounded by an invisible “cloud of witnesses” as the Scriptures attest (Heb. 12.1). We must not forget, as we go about our days, that we’re surrounded by that cloud as well.
- Reckless courage: On this point, we have the words of two Pope Benedicts to guide us. In the 18th century, Benedict XIV wrote that heroic virtue enables one “to perform virtuous actions with uncommon promptitude, ease, and pleasure, from supernatural motives and without human reasoning.” Certainly that was the case with the Carmelite martyrs who, as one body, gave themselves over to their fate with confidence and a song on their lips.But what of us? How do we live out reckless courage in our humdrum lives with no guillotines on the horizon? Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI pointed the way when he said that “heroic virtue does not mean that the saint performs a type of ‘gymnastics’ of holiness, something that normal people do not dare to do. It means rather that in the life of a person God’s presence is revealed….”
Practice of our faith. Mutual support and encouragement. Reckless courage in the ordinary activities of life. This is how people like you and me become saints. This is how we become martyrs when it comes down to it.
In other words, saying yes, straight out, on the scaffold means that we’ve together been saying yes, straight out, over and over and over again every day. And if we haven’t, it’s never too late to start.
Credit to Richard Becker of CatholicExchange.
Questions for the College-Bound Son
By: Richard Becker
Is this what it feels like to be the father of the groom?
Father of the bride is bad enough — as Spencer Tracy showed us in 1950, followed by Steve Martin forty years later — but it seems like father of the groom would be even more irrelevant to the whole wedding vortex phenomenon.
Not that any of my sons are heading to the altar any time soon. No, my feelings of irrelevancy are related to a different life event and milestone: My oldest is heading to Notre Dame. As a freshman. Next month.
Shouldn’t I be doing something?
Practical things — equipping the dorm room, last minute tips on laundry, etc. — seem to be covered by my wife at present. At least, Ben isn’t coming to me for advice, so I’ve got to assume that his mother is fielding those questions. If there are any. He’s pretty much launched out on his own already.
So, how about composing a fatherly testament of vision and values as a farewell gesture?
I’ve read plenty of “To My Son on the Brink of Manhood” (or marriage or fatherhood) screeds written by celebrity and journalist dads, but I’ve really no interest in attempting anything along those lines. It seems like any sage advice or tidbits of paternal wisdom that I’d offer in such a declaration ought to have taken root well before now. Otherwise, I’m guessing it’s a bit late.
Like riding a bicycle. Today I was out with Katharine, my youngest, who is just on the verge of training-wheel freedom. She is balancing on the bike just fine — the trainers rarely touch down when she’s pedaling along — and it’s just a matter of time until she has built up enough self-confidence and I can remove the side wheels once and for all.
It seems like just a blink of an eye since I was doing the same for Ben. In fact, I think it might’ve been the same bicycle, and even the same set of training wheels! But let’s say I’d never taken the trouble to help him wean off the trainers when he was in grade school. Let’s say he skipped riding bikes as a boy, learning to use public transit instead, and then jumped right into driver’s ed as a teen.
And now he’s getting ready for college, where freshmen are generally not allowed to have vehicles at their disposal. Wouldn’t a bicycle be convenient? Completing his two-wheeler training at this late stage would be awkward at best, and likely to fail altogether.
An eloquent parting shot, untethered to a commensurate upbringing, seems equally awkward and prone to failure. Any advice I have to give now that I haven’t already attempted to instill is too late, and a late-breaking Desiderata would pointless. And yet if I did attempt to raise my son with attention to truth and beauty and permanent things, then rehearsing it all in bullet point form would be unnecessary, and perhaps even somewhat ridiculous.
Still, I feel like I should be doing something, and, consequently, I’ve come up with a different kind of list. Instead of looking backward, at the things I hope I’ve taught him (or wish I had), I’ve decided to look forward. It’s a list of questions — questions I’ve already grown accustomed to asking former students when I encounter them long after graduation, and I’ve decided they’ll be among the questions I’ll ask my son when we see each other on weekends and breaks in the months and years to come.
- What are you reading? He’ll be at Notre Dame, so he’ll be reading a lot, but he’ll know I mean what is he reading that he doesn’t have to read. Reading for pleasure, in other words. If it’s something I know, I’ll enjoy hearing his insights. If it’s something I don’t know, all the better. Note, too, that I’m not asking, “What are you watching,” or “What are you listening to?” These can be important questions as well, to be sure, but they don’t deserve anywhere near the same priority. My kids have grown up surrounded by books in every conceivable way, and I’d be very surprised if books didn’t continue to surround them as they make their own way hence.
- Where are you working? That’s what I ask my former students, most of whom are staff nurses here and there (or full-time mothers, or both). For current students, like my son, I’ll ask, Where are you in your studies? The inquisitive “where” allows for an unfolding of conversation on a number of fronts: The progress being made in a particular program or discipline; the kinds of classes being taken at the moment; and, most importantly, the trajectory along which which current pursuits are trending. It’s an inquiry with both quantitative and qualitative angles, and it’s helpful in getting beyond mere questions of “what” classes and “what” jobs to the “why” and “who with” of daily living.
- How’s your soul? This one is loaded, no doubt, but it, too, is calculated to get into meaty matters as rapidly as possible. “Are you getting to Mass and confession? Are you praying?” are too easily dispensed with — either with a hasty “yes” (whether truthful or not), or a painful “no,” followed by an even more painful conversational stall. Who needs that? We’re all adults here. Sacramental obligations, vocational discernment, and the pursuit of holiness are totally his responsibility now, so I’m not going to grill him. I might’ve acted as a coach in such matters as he got older, but I’m on the sidelines now — a cheerleader, to be sure, and a ready consultant when asked. Yet, now I’m only one among many that he can turn to for input. Consequently, instead of grilling, I’m hoping for openness and candor, a space for us both to voice our inner joys and struggles as we wind our way along the murky years. No challenges, no guilt. Just invitation, and cross-bearing of burdens. And honesty. Listening.
These are questions that assume a lot, but don’t presume anything. They take for granted where we’ve come from together, but they leave lots of room for where we’ve made — and will make — side trips apart. Like I said, they’ll be the questions I ask my son in the months to come, and probably they’ll be the same questions I’ll ask him years from now when he’s launched beyond Notre Dame, rising in his chosen profession, and raising his own family.
And, soon enough, maybe he’ll be asking them of others as well. Now that would be something.
Credit to Richard Becker of CatholicExchange.
Don't Neglect the Word
By: R. Thomas Richard
If the evil one were looking for a way to quietly render infertile the Catholic Church, by effecting a decline of faith from within, I’d guess he would work for reduction at the source of faith: namely, the hearing of the Word of God. Paul left the clue in Scripture: “Faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes by the preaching of Christ.” (Rom 10:17) “So let this be,” the evil one might say, “the strategy of our battle against the Church: we will diminish and weaken the preaching of Christ, we will dilute the proclamation of God’s Truth, we will degrade the sacred to the level of the secular — we will stifle the potency and strangle the effects of the Gospel. We will bring the Church to impotence.”
The words of the Word nourish the very life of the Church: “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.” (Mt 4:4) Therefore, withholding the food of faith from human persons by withdrawing the Word from among them, contracepting new conversions and impeding continuing conversions, the evil one could starve the supernatural life of the Church. He would twist the wisdom of the Word in Paul to his own dark purposes:
Therefore take the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. Stand therefore, having girded your loins with truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with the equipment of the gospel of peace; besides all these, taking the shield of faith, with which you can quench all the flaming darts of the evil one. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. (Eph 6:13-17)
The Word — and faith effected by the Word — arm us both defensively and offensively, to guard our souls from his evil lies, and to forge the sword to defeat him. “Faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes by the preaching of Christ.” But deprived of that Word, what are we left with? I repeat the question: Deprived of His Holy Word, what are we and the Church left with? You might answer, “We have the sacraments! We have Christ!” This will be addressed below, but for now, let’s consider the effects in a Church deprived of the food of the words of the Word of God.
Persons left with malnourished faith, the uncertainties of poor understanding, impotent against the assaults of evil, too weak to look beyond our own narrowed horizons, and having no bread to offer the starving world — what do we have left, more than blind loyalty of habit — and I use the word carefully — superstition? Will this convert the world? Will this “make disciples of all the nations”? Indeed, will this save us, in the coming of “the evil day”?
Superstition: the Counterfeit of Faith
Whether or not such a plan ever existed in the dark mind of the evil one, such an impoverishment is taking place in the Church today: we are suffering from feeding from the Table of the Word increasingly thin and watered-down, having little substance, little meat, little to fortify and grow us into the fullness of the stature of Christ, our destiny. This must be discussed more fully, and will be, God willing. But first let us consider more carefully this troubling word: “superstition.” Can such a thing as “superstition” be appropriate here, discussing results of an impoverishment of the saving words of truth and of life? Could superstition exist today among Catholics, in our devotional and sacramental lives? Yes, and especially in souls malnourished or starved of the bread that proceeds from the mouth of God, His holy Word.
Secularists commonly charge believers with superstition. Secularists have no basis for understanding the difference between faith and superstition, so they easily confuse the two. Both faith and superstition are, to them, irrational — without substance. The two are the same thing to secularists, both seen as relics of an uneducated and unscientific past. There is a radical difference, however, between faith and superstition — sadly, the superstitious can be present among the company of faithful people. Superstition is very close to faith, outwardly, but there is a radical distinction inwardly. The Catechism gives a brief but helpful teaching:
2111 Superstition is the deviation of religious feeling and of the practices this feeling imposes. It can even affect the worship we offer the true God, e.g., when one attributes an importance in some way magical to certain practices otherwise lawful or necessary. To attribute the efficacy of prayers or of sacramental signs to their mere external performance, apart from the interior dispositions that they demand, is to fall into superstition.
Yes, the fruitful reception of any sacrament requires faith, and proper interior disposition. This must be heard alongside with the intrinsic efficacy of a sacrament. From the Catechism:
1127 Celebrated worthily in faith, the sacraments confer the grace that they signify. …
1128 This is the meaning of the Church’s affirmation that the sacraments act ex opere operato (literally: “by the very fact of the action’s being performed”), i.e., by virtue of the saving work of Christ, accomplished once for all. It follows that “the sacrament is not wrought by the righteousness of either the celebrant or the recipient, but by the power of God.” From the moment that a sacrament is celebrated in accordance with the intention of the Church, the power of Christ and his Spirit acts in and through it, independently of the personal holiness of the minister. Nevertheless, the fruits of the sacraments also depend on the disposition of the one who receives them.
1131 The sacraments are efficacious signs of grace, instituted by Christ and entrusted to the Church, by which divine life is dispensed to us. The visible rites by which the sacraments are celebrated signify and make present the graces proper to each sacrament. They bear fruit in those who receive them with the required dispositions.
The sacraments confer grace, because of Christ! Their outward signs “signify and make present the graces proper to each sacrament.” But that same paragraph adds: “They bear fruit in those who receive them with the required dispositions.” This same crucial factor is found also in #1128: “From the moment that a sacrament is celebrated in accordance with the intention of the Church, the power of Christ and his Spirit acts in and through it, independently of the personal holiness of the minister. Nevertheless, the fruits of the sacraments also depend on the disposition of the one who receives them.”
That proper disposition is formed through the power of the Word, and specifically, the words of the Word: revealed Truth, the Gospel, received and embraced personally in the heart of the believer. The Catechism teaches, “The Holy Spirit prepares the faithful for the sacraments by the Word of God and the faith which welcomes that word in well-disposed hearts.” (#1133)
To Summarize
Proper reception of the sacraments requires faith — which comes by hearing and receiving the words of the Word, holy Truth. Fruitful reception of the sacraments requires right disposition — a fully human reception, an act of mind and heart, a personal presence and participation, a conscious, willing, free reception of God’s grace in the sacrament.
But what happens when the potent words of the Word, the truths of the Gospel, are neglected in the life of a fully initiated Catholic? What happens to faith in a young adult, or an older adult, who has received no catechesis and growth in the Catholic Faith since eighth grade confirmation, who has no real life of prayer or the frequent companionship of Holy Scripture? What happens to faith after years of insipid homilies that avoid the hard moral challenges and full presentation of the faith of our Church? What happens after years of sweet platitudes from the ambo, droning weekly and weakly a gospel of “be nice to one another”? What happens to the authentic Gospel having power to save, transform, raise up, give life to a human person? What happens when living faith is starved, leaving mere habit and superstitious loyalty? What happens is that the potent sacrament is made barren, to the delight of the evil one: grace is wasted, grace is received in vain.
In a previous article, I gave some reflections on the contemporary abandonment of the Catholic Faith by about 1/3 of the “Cradle Catholics” in the U.S., from the results of a recent Pew Forum study. The Church has not been faithful to her mission: “make disciples!” Indeed the total membership would be shrinking today in the U.S., were it not for immigration. We continue to rely on sacramentalizing, while neglecting evangelizing and catechizing.
The result is for many in the pews weak faith, loyalty due to history or habit, and maybe even for some, superstition. They deserve better. He deserves better. Others in the Church may have faith, yet a blind faith, a faith in spite of poor formation and teaching we have given them! These members are gifts of God for us, because He remains faithful even though we continue to slumber and sleep. We need to recognize the crucial need for a potent ministry of the Word, proclaimed and taught with power and unction. A famine has come upon us, even while the storehouse is full to overflowing!
Credit to R. Thomas Richard of CatholicExchange.
Feeling Guilty
By: Br. John Dominic Bouck, OP
Ashlyn Blocker is in many respects a normal American teenage girl. She lives with her family, has fun with her friends, watches TV and sings pop music. But there is something different about her, something very different. After she was born she hardly ever cried. For instance, once she nearly chewed off her tongue while her teeth were coming in, but she didn’t cry or complain. It turns out she has a genetic disorder which blocks the electrical transmissions of painful events from reaching her brain. She has a congenital insensitivity to pain.
On the surface, that sounds like a problem that we would all like to have. Imagine the amazing things we would be able to do, and yet, not feel the painful consequences. It seems that congenital insensitivity to pain is a lot like a superpower. In reality though, it is really a super-disability.
In an article in the New York Times Magazine about Ashlyn and her situation, Dr. Geoffrey Woods, the geneticist who discovered the mutation, says about pain:
It is an extraordinary disorder. It’s quite interesting, because it makes you realize pain is there for a number of reasons, and one of them is to use your body correctly without damaging it and modulating what you do.
For Ashlyn, what comes as second nature to us, like pulling a hand away when it is getting burned, has been acquired through a lifetime of damaging trial and error. All those who share her condition know the benefits of pain and the danger of not experiencing pain.
It doesn’t take much searching to encounter someone who decries “Catholic Guilt.” It is portrayed as the experience of feeling bad for doing things that should be natural to us. It prevents us from being fully alive. It is a prison which rational adults should cast off as soon as they realize they suffer from it. I concede that many times, people feel guilty when they shouldn’t. This should indeed be cast off. But let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water.
As people of faith, we believe that each person is composed of body and soul. Just as dangerous things cause our bodies to feel healthy pain, so too does healthy guilt alert us to the fact that we are endangering our soul.
If we experience pain in our bodies, we ought to cease doing the action which causes that pain. If we set our hand on a burner, we pull it off. We are free to decide not to, but then our hand will be destroyed. If we experience guilt in an action we commit, then most likely we should stop doing it. Otherwise our soul will suffer.
Recall Dr. Woods’ finding, and substitute “guilt” for “pain” and “soul” for “body”:
It’s quite interesting, because it makes you realize guilt is there for a number of reasons, and one of them is to use your soul correctly without damaging it and modulating what you do.
Minor pains from cuts and bruises can be healed easily at home, just as minor venial sins simply need to be taken care of by an act of charity, devotion, or a simple expression of sorrow. But big pains–lost limbs, cancer, heart attacks–these need to be taken care of by a professional physician. So too, grave sins need to be taken care of by a spiritual physician. This physician is Jesus Christ himself, acting through the priest as his sacramental representative.
Often the healing regimens in the spiritual life are difficult, and they may involve cutting off activities and relationships that are dangerous. But we can have confidence that the Divine Physician knows exactly what he is doing, even if we don’t. His healing is our salvation. The prescriptions he gives out are remedies of love. They heal us and those around us. If we don’t take the medicine the doctor prescribes, then our health will get worse. If we don’t live out the life that Jesus Christ has shown to us through the Church, our soul will feel worse. The pain will still be there, but how will we treat it? Most forms of self-medication just mask the pain: alcoholism, careerism, living a double life, etc.
Often we can think of the life of sin vs. the life of the spirit as a legal drama. We want to do certain things, but there are laws that we try to avoid breaking because of various punishments that are imposed on us as a result. This is a poor way of looking at our lives.
On the contrary, in the life of the soul (and in the life of the body) our goal is to be happy. That is how we are made. We commit sin, though, when we search for happiness in the wrong places. We try to be happy, yet we hurt ourselves, and we hurt others. Just think, when we are not feeling our best—a cold, a stomach-ache—we can be crabby, we can want our alone time. When we are sick in our soul we suffer from similarly isolating behaviors. However, we can recognize the pain that we feel, be healed, and learn more about what activities cause us pain. All we have to do is make an appointment.
Credit to Br. John Dominic Bouck, OP of CatholicExchange.