I find it embarrassing to tell you how many unmerciful Catholics I have had the displeasure of encountering online or in person. And, nuts. Stone-cold, freakin’ nuts. God loves crazy people, too. He does, we are told.
When considering the spectrum between the sexually depraved and the bitter Puritan, you can begin to see why and how the initial Noah-Ark solution is appealing. They ARE the minority, but still, it always takes my breath away. I should stop being scandalized, but each time, I am caught short.
I pray for myself, first off, and then all. “The measure with which you measure shall be measured unto you!” -Mt 7:2, makes me tremble. It does. “Lord, depart from me, for I am a sinful man!” -Lk 5:8.
-by Leticia Adams, a self-professed “hot mess convert” to Catholicism, and the future patron saint of “people who can’t stop cussing!”
“Mercy is central to my life. Without it, I would not be here. I have had mercy showered on me from the first time that I stepped foot in St. William Catholic Parish’s RCIA program (Rite of Christian Imitation for Adults). The first time that the RCIA director, Noe Rocha, looked at me and said the words “God loves you more than you think He does”, I felt it. I felt the Love of God to the core of who I am. At that moment, I had no clue who I even was, but I somehow knew that God did and that He was giving me a path to finding out for myself who it is that He created me to be. I really had no clue what the path was going to be like or what I was going to have to go through, but I knew that if a man like Noe, who had been a heroin addict, could stand in front of me and speak about Jesus like a friend, then I had a chance. It was a chance that I had to take.
The one thing that has always gotten in the way of me and God is my anger. When I sit down with people and tell them my life story from the time that I was 3 years old and my grandfather died to the day that I found myself in a drunk tank after being arrested for a DWI, they get why I lived most of my life angry. In God’s mercy, He has put me in the offices of Noe, priests, therapists and doctors who for whatever reason have been kind to me, who have loved me and most importantly just had mercy on me. That is what has slowly, very slowly, started to melt that anger away. People who don’t know, who assume to know and who think it is their job to let me know all the ways that I’m Catholicing wrong, don’t help me at all.(Ed. there’s a wrong way? Other than what’s in the Bible?) Except to help me know that I do know who I am now and that’s a gift.
Mercy is different than pity. In my old life, plenty of people knew about everything or just a few things that I had been through and there was plenty of pity but rarely was there mercy. The difference being that with mercy there isn’t that face. I don’t know how to really explain The Face, but anyone who has ever been abused knows what it is. It’s the “oh honey” face. The face that says you are a victim and broken and soft and doomed. It comes with a silent “Thank God that didn’t happen to me” that is felt rather than said. Mercy is when people say “I’m so sorry for what happened to you, let me sit with you in that pain and hold your hand so that when you’re done crying I can help you stand up and move forward.” There is a hope to Mercy that isn’t found in pity. Mercy stays even when the anger shows up. For people who have been traumatized, anger is sometimes the only way to survive and to keep living. Anger is what helps us defend ourselves from people who want to hurt us. Anger is what helps us keep people at arms length so that they don’t get close enough to see the pain. Anger is what helps us read people and know exactly what they are all about in minutes. The anger becomes a gift. A tool that helps us live without succumbing to the pain. The only cure for the anger is to have people offer us mercy.
I sat in so many priests’ offices and confessionals so pissed off about all kinds of things. I have cussed while confessing my anger towards a certain person with hot angry tears running down my face. I have dared people to walk out of my life in the name of Jesus, I have waited to be excommunicated. My life has been a series of rejections since the day that I was born and my father was nowhere to be found. The only time in my life that I ever found acceptance was in September of 2009 when a little old Mexican man looked me in the eye and told me that God had a plan for my life and asked me how I was going to respond to it. That is when I came face to face with Mercy.
Mercy. It is the only reason that I sit here. Not doctrine, not someone telling me how many things I was doing wrong and how to do them right. Not learning the rubrics of the Mass. Not any of that. Pure and simple Mercy. I have fallen in love with Christ and every single day I fall deeper and deeper in love with Him. It is the Mercy of God that allows someone who did the things that I did to be able to fall in love with Him. I only pray that I can be a witness of that and help other people encounter it the way the Noe helped me.”
Love, & Amen, Amen.
Matthew
Summa Catechetica, "Neque enim quaero intelligere ut credam, sed credo ut intelligam." – St Anselm, "“Si comprehendus, non est Deus.” -St Augustine, "Let your religion be less of a theory, and more of a love affair." -G.K. Chesterton, “When we pray we speak to God; but when we read, God speaks to us.” -St Jerome, "As the reading of bad books fills the mind with worldly and poisonous sentiments; so, on the other hand, the reading of pious works fills the soul with holy thoughts and good desires." -St. Alphonsus Liguori, "And above all, be on your guard not to want to get anything done by force, because God has given free will to everyone and wants to force no one, but only proposes, invites and counsels." –St. Angela Merici, “Yet such are the pity and compassion of this Lord of ours, so desirous is He that we should seek Him and enjoy His company, that in one way or another He never ceases calling us to Him . . . God here speaks to souls through words uttered by pious people, by sermons or good books, and in many other such ways.” —St. Teresa of Avila, "I want a laity, not arrogant, not rash in speech, not disputatious, but men and women who know their religion, who enter into it, who know just where they stand, who know what they hold and what they do not, and who know their creed so well that they can give an account of it, who know so much of history that they can defend it. I want an intelligent, well-instructed laity… I wish you to enlarge your knowledge, to cultivate your reason, to get an insight into the relation of truth to truth, to learn to view things as they are, to understand how faith and reason stand to each other, what are the bases and principles of Catholicism, and where lie the main inconsistences and absurdities of the Protestant theory.” (St. John Henry Newman, “Duties of Catholics Towards the Protestant View,” Lectures on the Present Position of Catholics in England), "We cannot always have access to a spiritual Father for counsel in our actions and in our doubts, but reading will abundantly supply his place by giving us directions to escape the illusions of the devil and of our own self-love, and at the same time to submit to the divine will.” —St. Alphonsus Ligouri, "The harm that comes to souls from the lack of reading holy books makes me shudder . . . What power spiritual reading has to lead to a change of course, and to make even worldly people enter into the way of perfection." –St. Padre Pio, "Screens may grab our attention, but books change our lives!" – Word on Fire, "Reading has made many saints!" -St Josemaría Escrivá, "Do you pray? You speak to the Bridegroom. Do you read? He speaks to you." —St. Jerome, from his Letter 22 to Eustochium, "Encounter, not confrontation; attraction, not promotion; dialogue, not debate." -cf Pope Francis, "God here speaks to souls through…good books“ – St Teresa of Avila, Interior Castle, "You will not see anyone who is really striving after his advancement who is not given to spiritual reading. And as to him who neglects it, the fact will soon be observed by his progress.” -St Athanasius, "To convert someone, go and take them by the hand and guide them." -St Thomas Aquinas, OP. 1 saint ruins ALL the cynicism in Hell & on Earth. “When we pray we talk to God; when we read God talks to us…All spiritual growth comes from reading and reflection.” -St Isidore of Seville, “Also in some meditations today I earnestly asked our Lord to watch over my compositions that they might do me no harm through the enmity or imprudence of any man or my own; that He would have them as His own and employ or not employ them as He should see fit. And this I believe is heard.” -GM Hopkins, SJ, "Only God knows the good that can come about by reading one good Catholic book." — St. John Bosco, "Why don't you try explaining it to them?" – cf St Peter Canisius, SJ, Doctor of the Church, Doctor of the Catechism, "Already I was coming to appreciate that often apologetics consists of offering theological eye glasses of varying prescriptions to an inquirer. Only one prescription will give him clear sight; all the others will give him at best indistinct sight. What you want him to see—some particular truth of the Faith—will remain fuzzy to him until you come across theological eye glasses that precisely compensate for his particular defect of vision." -Karl Keating, "The more perfectly we know God, the more perfectly we love Him." -St Thomas Aquinas, OP, ST, I-II,67,6 ad 3, “But always when I was without a book, my soul would at once become disturbed, and my thoughts wandered." —St. Teresa of Avila, "Let those who think I have said too little and those who think I have said too much, forgive me; and let those who think I have said just enough thank God with me." –St. Augustine, "Without good books and spiritual reading, it will be morally impossible to save our souls." —St. Alphonsus Liguori "Never read books you aren't sure about. . . even supposing that these bad books are very well written from a literary point of view. Let me ask you this: Would you drink something you knew was poisoned just because it was offered to you in a golden cup?" -St. John Bosco " To teach in order to lead others to faith is the task of every preacher and of each believer." —St. Thomas Aquinas, OP. "Prayer purifies us, reading instructs us. Both are good when both are possible. Otherwise, prayer is better than reading." –St. Isidore of Seville “The aid of spiritual books is for you a necessity.… You, who are in the midst of battle, must protect yourself with the buckler of holy thoughts drawn from good books.” -St. John Chrysostom
