Part-time Jesus?

 Once, several years ago, our parish priest, during one of his homilies told us that we cannot pick and choose the teachings of Jesus.  If you are going to profess that you are a Christian, then you have to take all of Jesus, not just part of Him.

This stayed with me, as you can  see.   As a professed Christian, actually a Roman Catholic Christian, I have made it my priority to read the bible daily, read the readings of the liturgical year and know the teachings of our Lord. Do I  adhere to all His teachings?  Yes, as humanly possible. 

The Ten Commandments is the place to start:

1.    I am the Lord your God:  You shall not have strange gods before me.

2.    You shall not take the name of the Lord  your God in vain.

3.    Remember to keep the holy the Lord's Day.

4.    Honor your father and mother.

5.    You shall not kill.

6.    You shall not commit adultery.

7.    You shall not steal.

8.    You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.

9.    You shall not covet your neighbor's wife.

10.   You shall not covet your neighbor's goods.

After looking over these commandments and seeing where you are good with these, next,

the Beatitudes are the next good place to study.

The text of St. Matthew runs as follows:

• Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
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• Blessed are the meek: for they shall possess the land.
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• Blessed are they who mourn: for they shall be comforted.
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• Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after justice: for they shall have their fill.
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• Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.
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• Blessed are the clean of heart: for they shall see God.
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• Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.
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• Blessed are they that suffer persecution for justice' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of God.

Being a Christian is NOT an easy life.  The above guidelines are plain and simple in reading, however following them is not.

The Girl in the War, part 4? It ain't over yet....no help is coming

The "Girl In The War" is still in her war.  She is older now, and wiser, but still in a war.  She is a mother now, and in a new place in her life now, but still in a war.  She is depressed, anxiety-burdened, and alone, but still in a war.  We take care of her son now as she is emotionally unable to because of that war.

This blog used to be so much busier than these past years...I had so much to say.

It's been hard and then 2020 hit and it got just a little bit harder.

Prayers would be appreciated.

Jon Voight’s Impassioned Plea For America To Come Together

A reading of "Mere Christianity" by C.S. Lewis, and a thought

Reading "Mere Christianity" by C.S. Lewis has been an experience surpassing many of my reading experiences.  So many thought provoking moments when I just basically finish a paragraph and find myself looking into space in astonishment...or deep reflection...or just plain awe.  One such time was in the chapter called, "Two Notes".  If any of my few readers have read "Mere Christianity" you will probably also know that he would go back and show further thought on a previous chapter to  either clarify his reason for his intent or whatever.   Here is one of those instances.

And I quote:   

"I feel a strong desire to tell you - and I expect you feel a strong desire to tell me - which of these two errors is the worse.  That is the devil getting at us.  He always sends errors into the world in pairs - pairs of opposites.  And he always encourages us to spend a lot of time thinking which is the worse.  You see why, of course?  He relies on your extra dislike of the one error to draw you gradually into the opposite one.  But do not let us be fooled.  We have to keep our eyes on the goal and go straight through between both errors.  We have no other concern than that with either of them."

Wow, again very thought provoking.  Errors, or evils, in the world abound.  We have same-sex marriage and cohabitation outside of marriage with opposite sexes.  We have extramarital affairs and emotional affairs, we have cold-blooded murder and abortion (which is also cold-blooded), oh the list just goes on!  We have tended to go for the "least offensive" and well actually we have on some things gone on to be accepting of both though the years.

Is there anyway to go backwards from here?  Can we backup this train and review the basics of our existence with God's natural law, and what is fruitful and natural and what is not?  What is full of grace and mercy and what is not?  What is constructive and what is destructive?

There is more pain and anger in our world today than ever before, I would venture to say.  And I would say that it is all due to these errors of which C.S. Lewis is talking about.  It seems too, that many cannot see the forest for the trees in these evils.

 

The Mass: The Holy Food

This is the hard one.  This is the one teaching that Christians have the most trouble with.  However, I am here to, at least explain how I came to believe.  

As a cradle Catholic, one would think that my faith was simply drummed into my head and that today I robotically attend, pray, and receive this bread offered in the Mass as I should.  One would understandably think this.  Well, that's not the case any more.  As a young Catholic, I never thought anything about it, it was the thing we did and I didn't question it.  As a young Catholic mother, it was important to me to make sure my children received their sacraments, including First Communion, so that they could be part of our thing we did together.  Well, not really, I made sure they made their sacraments because that was what was expected of us....and that was the thing we did together.  Well, no, it was because I believed in the Holy Roman Catholic Church, her teachings, and that Jesus Christ was our redeemer who came down and humbled himself and took the role of a human to teach us about love and forgiveness and bring us to our eternal reward undeservedly.    Yes, all three reasons!  That's why, and seriously speaking, after marrying my husband, who is not Catholic, I realized that if I don't know my faith well enough to answer his questions, I won't be doing my best to lead my family to God.  After a few years of taking local and online courses, I became a master catechist.  So, yes, I do believe in the real presence in the Eucharist not because I am supposed to, or that it was drummed into my head, but because I took the time to do my own research and learning.

But here's another take, from a master mind who never became a Catholic, but respected it and probably believed in her.

"And let me make it quite clear that when Christians say the Christ-life is in them, they do not mean simply something mental or moral.  When they speak of being "in Christ" or of Christ being "in them," this is not simply a way of saying that they are thinking about Christ or copying Him.  They mean that Christ is actually operating through them; that the whole mass of Christians are the physical organism through which Christ acts--that we are His fingers and muscles, the cells of His body.  And perhaps that explains one or two things.  It explains why this new life is spread not only by purely mental acts like belief, but by bodily acts like baptism and Holy Communion.  It is not merely the spreading of an idea; it is more like evolution--a biological or superbiological fact,  There is no good trying to be more spiritual than God.  God never meant man to be a purely spiritual creature.  That is why He uses material things like bread and wine to put the new life into us.  We may think this rather crude and unspiritual.  God does not:  He invented eating.  He likes matter.  He invented it."

           CS Lewis, Mere Christianity 

Wow, talk about putting it down!  Our humanness cannot explain our Creator and Heavenly Father.  We cannot and were not consulted in how he was to come down to meet us where we are and bring us up to where he is.  BUT, he gives us a way to be changed, forgiven, and loved.   Loved enough to then, in turn, desire to be wanted.  The desire to be wanted by Christ, to have him "in us" and dwell in our hearts as we live our lives here as militant people fighting against the dark one.  Through this  holy food that God has given us to nourish our souls and empower our hearts we can be Christ in this world around us.

This is what Holy Communion is, this is what saves humanity.  By realizing that God designed the Eucharist to be physical food that we receive in our mouths and are nourished within our mortal bodies, God gets in close and is able to inspire us.  Only if we accept this sacrificial grace in the Eucharist can we take it to the streets, only if we realize that not only is it what we do as the body of Christ, but what we do for Christ, enabling to be his fingers and muscles, the cells of his body in the world.  No change is ever easy to be sure, perhaps if we took a second look at what we do during Mass and listened carefully to the prayers can we then appreciate this sacrament of communion so much more for what it truly is:      The Holy Food.

The Mass: The RITE to Have Peace!

The Rite of Peace

Otherwise called the sign of peace, by which the people turn toward each other and offer a sign of unity and charity.  Biblically speaking, this is where we symbolically show what Jesus told the apostles in Matthew 5:23-24 which says, “So if you are offering your gift at the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave  your gift there before the altar and go first be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift.”

The GIRM describes it this way:

“The Rite of Peace

82. There follows the Rite of Peace, by which the Church entreats peace and unity for herself and for the whole human family, and the faithful express to each other their ecclesial communion and mutual charity before communicating in the Sacrament."

The sign of peace is a rite that is and always has been included in the Mass prior to the Eucharist being distributed to the faithful.  The reason this is, is because we must be prepared in good faith and spiritually to receive the body of Christ, the most sacred and holy food.  

When the resurrected Jesus appeared to the apostles, the first thing he said was “Peace be with you.”  In the introduction to this rite within the liturgy of the Mass, the priest says, “Lord Jesus Christ, who said to your Apostles:  Peace I leave you, my peace I give you, look not on our sins, but on the faith of your Church, and graciously grant her peace and unity in accordance with your will.  Who live and reign for ever and ever. Amen.”  So it is during this rite that we the people of the Church, the Body of the Christ, share in the passing of the peace which is from Christ himself.

In preparation for receiving the Eucharist, we must be aware of our sinfulness and the need for forgiveness. So in the Introductory Rites, we pray the penitential Act where we confess our sinfulness and ask for prayers, then pray for mercy in the Kyrie.  During the Communion Rite we pray the Lord’s Prayer as our Savior commanded to reach out to our Heavenly Father.  Within this prayer, we tell God that we will forgive each other as we are forgiven.  This is where the sign of peace comes in.  In the next moment, we turn to one another in a peace that can only come from forgiveness and extend it to each other.  Again also, going back to Matthew 5:23-24 where we must reconcile with our brother before offering our gifts to God.

The sign of peace is an important part of the Mass, it is part of the process of preparation for receiving the holy Eucharist.  Preparing our hearts to receive the holy food of salvation.  So we must fully be aware of all that needs to take place in order to receive the sacramental graces that accompany the heavenly food.

There are times, I must admit that I will be sitting next to someone I don’t want to shake hands with, or times when I have been sick, not sick enough to not attend Mass, and refuse an extended hand with a kind word that I have a cold.  Still that kind word is the peace I wish to give anyway without the consequence of giving them the cold.  There are times, when I make the effort to shake someone’s hand that I am not necessarily keen on or had words with.  This is another way to share peace that otherwise would not be extended. The sign of peace gives us the opportunity to soften our hearts and desire peace for others in our community that otherwise would not be given.

So if we are attending Mass, offering our gifts of thanksgiving and praise to our Heavenly Father, we must also be peaceful people, forgiving people, wishing each other, as Christ commanded, peace.  We must reconcile with each other during before, and after Mass the peace of Christ.

A Morphed Sunday

So we are not able to attend our churches.  The doors are literally closed to the public with no end in sight at the moment.  What a queer thing this whole situation is to be sure. I don't really know what to make of it either.  Lately I had kind of taken on a new style of thinking....positive!  How novel a thought!  To take a situation or event that happens and instead of thinking how awful and why did it happen to me!  I take a moment to evaluate it and see that maybe there is something I need to learn from this.  I am trying here...really trying to see the positive of not being able to attend Mass.  Really trying. In my whole entire life I have never been unable to attend Mass because is was closed!  Reminiscing about the days of old, when we were able to attend Mass in the actual building...my thoughts trail away like this.....

Now a typical Sunday morning for my family went something like this:

Rising and shining....  need that coffee first...then I'll shine.

Sitting in the morning with my husband, drinking coffee and reading the readings for the day as we usually do during the week.  I especially like readings for Sunday because we get to hear a different take on the Word than the meditation that follows the readings.  We read from The Word Among Us.  My husband really likes their publication.  I don't eat breakfast, and then we march off to Mass.

As we drive to Mass we talk about the day, sometimes we talk about the readings, sometimes we talk about what we will do later after Mass.  Anyway, walking into Church we see friends and acquaintances and say hello, smiling faces, and seemingly good vibes.  We find our seat, sit and greet quietly those around us and I kneel and prepare for the celebration.  Several times during Mass I will look over at my husband and give him a smile and he returns it.  We usually sit close and during the Liturgy of the Word, I have my arm in his arm and it's nice.  If I don't put my arm in his arm right away, he reminds me by lifting his arm for me to so. We both sing the songs and say the prayers, even though he is not a Catholic, he takes seriously the prayers and what is going on.  Through the years, we have been married 27 years now, I have answered his questions, explained things, and I think he has a good understanding about the Mass.  I stopped holding out for him to convert years ago and just love him where he is.

At communion, he  usually comes out of the pew and stands aside to let everyone out, sometimes, if the priest he knows and is comfortable with, he will go with me for a blessing, but mostly not.  I return to the pew and get a big smile from him.  He crosses himself at the final blessing with me and everyone else and we sing the closing song.  He usually is in charge of getting the bulletin as we walk out and he knows the head usher and they exchange a quick word.  My husband is a homebrewer and found out that our priests like beer, so he usually has a beer update with the pastor as we shake hands and leave.  I think that's funny...my husband is usually a quiet sort, but when it comes to beer, he will talk.  Over the past couple of years, he has been the "milkman" of beer, leaving a 4 pack at the back door of the rectory and after Mass, waits to hear the review from the taste-tester priest.

Nowadays, all this has changed.  Our Sunday mornings look a bit different.

We still rise and shine....after coffee that is.

We eat breakfast and maybe read the readings, but usually my husband goes out to the garden and tells me to let him know what Mass I want to watch and he will watch with me.

I'll get on the computer and decide who I want to watch, usually it's been Bishop Barron's Mass, at first I was following one of our priests who is the chaplain for the college Newman Center.  He isn't as casual as many are and he has great messages.  Also, he gave us updates on what was happening around the parish community.

At first I was watching the Mass offered throughout the week, lately, I haven't even looked for on in days.  I don't know, just getting lazy and subdued over the whole thing.  Sundays were family days and slow days, and days that I looked forward to attending Mass and now without the ability to even go to the Church to sit in adoration....I don't know how I feel...just numb, maybe.

My Sundays have morphed into a very weird unsettled worship day....really.

Praying everyday that this "stay at home" order ends soon and that businesses and churches can reopen their doors.  But I don't even know what that will look like...in the beginning.

Anyway, it is my prayer for all involved in the care and medical needs of patients, for government officials to make the right choices, for those out of work, closing their businesses, and just being alone.  I am praying for you.