Mercy & Justice

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Why did Jesus, the Son of God, have to atone?  Good question.  Not every offense carries the same gravity or punishment, even if the offense is identical.  Allow me, gentle, kind reader.

I want to use a disturbing example, indulge me kind reader, indulge me, I beg.  Imagine throwing a rotten tomato at a sleeping or unconscious homeless person in an alley, no witnesses.  Terrible, I realize, but it helps to make the point.  What penalty will you suffer?  Very likely none, if that child of God even awakes, or is able.  What if you threw the same rotten tomato at the President of the US?  You might have a problem.  My point, and the Church’s, is reason demands it depends on the dignity of the person so offended.  It does.  “Remember, money doesn’t go to jail”, as the saying goes, tragically.  The penalty will, must, by reason reflect the dignity of the personage so offended.

Now imagine God, and offending His infinite majesty. This is sin.  What is the penalty?  Terrifyingly infinite, but still, proportionate. Who can atone for even the least modicum of offense against God? Only God. See? Makes sense, doesn’t it? That’s the scary part, if you are willing and study, you will see again, and again, the reasonableness and infinite mercy of Christ’s salvation. You will. Do you dare? Will this knowledge, this awareness have consequences, implications to you and your life and how it is lived? Will you do the hard, long work of examination of your own conscience? Will you convict yourself? I hope so. I pray so. It will be accounted. The salvation of our souls is real. Pray for me and mine, I beg you. I truly do. Recall, justice is a mercy to the offended mortal.

“It would not be out of place at this point to recall the relationship between justice and mercy. These are not two contradictory realities, but two dimensions of a single reality that unfolds progressively until it culminates in the fullness of love.” -Pope Francis, Misericordiae Vultus, §20

From the Dialogue of St. Catherine of Siena, OP, (1347-1380), Doctor of the Church, recording God’s words to her:

“This is why I gave the world my only-begotten Son. The clay of humankind was spoiled by the sin of the first man, Adam, and so all of you, as vessels made from clay, were spoiled and unfit to hold eternal life. So to undo the corruption and death of humankind and to bring you back to the grace you had lost through sin, I, exaltedness, united Myself with the baseness of your humanity. For my divine justice demanded suffering in atonement for sin. But I cannot suffer. And you, being only human, cannot make adequate atonement. Even if you did atone for some particular thing, you still could make atonement only for yourself and not for others. But for this sin you could not make full atonement either for yourself or for others since it was committed against Me, and I am Infinite Goodness.

Yet I really wanted to restore you, incapable as you were of making atonement for yourself. And because you were so utterly handicapped, I sent the Word, my Son; I clothed Him with the same nature as yours—the spoiled clay of Adam—so that He could suffer in that same nature which had sinned, and by suffering in His body even to the extent of the shameful death of the cross He would placate My anger.

And so I satisfied both My justice and My divine mercy. For My mercy wanted to atone for your sin and make you fit to receive the good for which I had created you. Humanity, when united with divinity, was able to make atonement for the whole human race—not simply through suffering in its finite nature, that is, in the clay of Adam, but by virtue of the eternal divinity, the infinite divine nature. In the union of these two natures I received and accepted the sacrifice of My only-begotten Son’s blood, steeped and kneaded with his divinity into the one bread, which the heat of My divine love held nailed to the cross. Thus was human nature enabled to atone for its sin only by virtue of the divine nature.”

Love, and constantly needing His mercy,
Matthew

Jun 20 – Mercy & the Dark Night of the Soul

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-Maria Medingen Monastery, southern Germany, please click on the image for greater detail.

Beati are memorialized on the anniversary of their death, if possible, and if the Curia do not alter for some viable reason over the centuries; seen as more important than their physical birthday into this temporal world, a second birthday into eternal life.

“Everything in [Jesus Christ] speaks of mercy. Nothing in Him is devoid of compassion.”
-Pope Francis, Misericordiae Vultus, §8

From the Revelations of Bl. Margaret Ebner, OP: Blessed Margaret Ebner, OP (1291-✝ Jun 20 1351) was a Dominican nun at Kloster Maria Medingen (Mary, the Mother of Jesus Monastery), Germany, and a prominent figure among the Rhineland mystics. Her aunt, Christina Ebner, was also a Dominican nun and mystic. In addition to an account of her spiritual experiences, Bl. Margaret wrote a treatise on the Lord’s Prayer.

“[During the night], before matins, my Lord Jesus Christ placed me into such indescribable misery and a feeling of abandonment that it seemed as if I had never experienced the grace of our Lord in my whole life. I had lost complete trust in His mercy. Whatever I had received was taken from me totally. The true Christian faith—which is in me at all times—became darkened. And what was more painful to me than any previous suffering—worse too than any martyr’s death—was doubt. I began to doubt against my will and wondered whether He and His works were acting in me or not. Indeed, it remained for me only to want to suffer willingly, patiently for His sake. And that seemed right to me because of my sense of guilt. And then I felt an inner, deeper humility and out of these depths I cried out to the Lord and desired that He show me His mercy, which He had shown me so lovingly before, and to show me truly by some authentic sign whether it was He and His work acting in me.

Since His Spirit gives witness to our spirits that we are children of God, so my Lord is good and merciful and cannot ignore the desire of the poor and humble. He came like a friend after matins… and gave me His true help. This is the natural virtue of the Lord: to whomever He gives sorrow and pain, He then comforts. Whomever He afflicts, He then makes glad. And in His holy suffering He gave me the sweetest delight and the greatest pain and the most incomparably severe sorrow…. When that finally left me I was granted sweet grace and with this I recognized in truth without any doubt that it was He alone who worked His merciful deeds in me. What I had wished to know earlier in my suffering He now revealed.”

Born in Donauwörth, Swabia, in 1291, Margareta was a member of the aristocratic Ebner family and she received a thorough education in her home. In about 1305, she entered the Monastery of Mary the Mother of Jesus (German) of the Dominican Second Order nuns at Maria Medingen, near Dillingen.

From 1312 onward she was dangerously ill for three years. In her later Revelations she describes how she had “no control over herself”, laughing or crying continuously for days at a time. This illness was the stimulus for her conversion to a deeper mystical life of devotion. Subsequently, for a period of nearly seven years, she was mostly at the point of death. Even when she partially recovered, for the next thirteen years Margaret had to remain in bed for six months each year, and was subject to further bouts of illness for the rest of her life.  She could exercise her desire for penance and mortification only by abstinence from wine, fruit and bathing, which were considered some of the greatest pleasures of life in that era.

During this period of the Great Schism in the Catholic Church, when there were three different claimants to the papal throne, the nuns of the monastery were loyal adherents of the Pope in Rome. As a result, the community was forced to disperse during the military campaign of the Holy Roman Emperor Louis IV against papal forces. Margareta took refuge at her family home. Upon return, her nurse died, and Margaretha grieved inconsolably until the secular priest Henry of Nördlingen assumed her spiritual direction in 1332.

Eventually Master Henry had to flee Germany due to his personal allegiance to the Avignon Papacy. The correspondence that passed between them is the first collection of this kind in the German language. At his command, beginning during the Advent of 1344, she began to write with her own hand a full account of all her Revelations (German: Offenbarungeng) and her conversation with the Infant Jesus, as well as all answers she had received from Him, even in her sleep. From the intimate nature of her interaction with the Divine Child, she has become a leading example of what is termed “mother-mysticism”. She wrote her visions in the Swabian dialect.

This journal is preserved in a manuscript of the year 1353 at Medingen. She also had extensive correspondence with the noted Dominican theologian and preacher, Friar Johannes Tauler, OP. He was considered the leader of a lay spiritual movement known as the Friends of God. Through her connection with him, she has become identified as part of this movement. From her letters and diary we learn that she never abandoned her compassion for the Emperor Louis, whose soul she learned in a vision had been saved.

Blessed Margaret Ebner, OP was beatified by Pope John Paul II on 24 February 1979.


-Margaret’s tomb in Maria Medingen Monastery

Love, and always praying for & receiving His Mercy!!!
Matthew

The Eucharist & sin

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-by Elizabeth Duffy

“Any two-year-old will testify that while it may be possible to cobble together a few freshly acquired words in order to request a sippy-cup of milk, a tantrum will do the trick much faster. Meanwhile, frustrated parents may testify that while lullabies, rocking chairs, and bedtime stories eventually suffer that child to sleep, threats and spankings are more time efficient. Marriage counselors testify that even in a healthy relationship, it takes five compliments to undo one harsh criticism.

Negative energy has tremendous power, more power — it would seem — than the still small voice of charity, and when we affirm what is negative it only gets stronger. We affirm it, not by granting it approval, but rather by devoting to it our fear, our attention, our time, and our words. Whatever we commit ourselves to is a tacit affirmation.

Look at the Starbucks Christmas cup 2015. A few small people made a few disgruntled murmurs about its holiday decor, but in the crazy internet echo-chamber, those murmurs turned into posts and anti-posts, complaints, and anti-complaints, until a cultural phenomenon of anger and resentment was born. What we affirm grows stronger.

In a culture that feels, at the moment, overwhelmingly negative, how do we prevent this metastasis? We don’t want the shootings, the racism, the xenophobia, and the suppression of people of faith to get stronger. So how do we prevent that?

Prayer affirms what is positive, even those halfhearted “thoughts and prayers” going out all over the cosmos. They are not on par with the pious rebukes to which we’ve become accustomed: Christians admonishing other Christians, atheists admonishing Christians, cheeky editors admonishing God, everyone demanding a better performance out of everyone on earth but themselves.

Prayer is silencing the self, silencing the anger, all the things we negatively affirm with our time and attention, and affirming what is one, true, life giving, and good. What we affirm grows stronger. In the Words of St. John the Baptist, “He must increase, I must decrease” (John 3:30).

When the apostles first encountered Jesus, they became more than Christ-followers. They were spending time in the presence of the One True God. Rev. Jeanne-Pierre de Caussade, SJ (1675-1751) wrote, “The apostles are moved more by the guidance of His spirit than by imitating His works.” They weren’t “following” the Lord so much as basking, feasting on His presence. And still they were not exempt from temptation.

They sat at the table with Jesus as He instituted the Eucharist, and even in such precious company, they had the freedom to reject Him, as Judas did, taking the Heavenly Bread and then leaving to betray Him. We all depart from Jesus for small and piddling reasons, to argue with a stranger, or worse, with the people we love, diminishing their person as we magnify their faults.

Now is the hour of our visitation (Luke 19:44). We are in the presence of the Lord, and when we affirm His presence, when we affirm what is good in others, in the people we love, in our friendships and our environment, when we go around seeking what is true and good and beautiful, it gets stronger. As Mary said, “My soul magnifies the Lord!” (Luke 1:46) and His presence in her expanded, literally and figuratively.

I can feast on His presence not just in the Eucharist, but in the souls who surround me, in every moment that He has sanctified with His blood. I am not just a Christ-follower, I am a Christ-devourer. And I become the substance of what I eat. His flesh and blood becomes my flesh and blood. “Unless you eat My body and drink My blood there is no life in you” (John 6:53). The banquet is never-ending. I will not go hungry.”

Love,
Matthew

Facts: The Inquisition

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-by Matthew B. Rose

“As members of a 2,000 year old church, we often find ourselves apologizing for mistakes of the past. For example, how often do we find ourselves apologizing for the Inquisition? Don’t worry, we want to say, we’re not like that anymore. We see the inquisitors as awkward uncles at family reunions; we distance ourselves from them. We accept the story told to us by those who do not always have the Church’s best interest in mind. When confronted with accusations about the Inquisition, we acquiesce. We do so out of fear, embarrassed because we do not know our own history. Yet fear flees in the light of truth. We as Catholics should examine the truth behind the Inquisition, and in doing so, come to appreciate what men of old did to preserve truth.

In order to do this, we need to get something straight. The Inquisition was not created in order to persecute heretics. Rather, it was meant to protect the rights of people accused of heresy. In the pre-modern era, heresy was seen as not just an offense against God, but as an act of treason against the state.  (Ed. Kings were crowned, typically by prelates of the Church.  A king was seen as having divine approbation simply for the fact of being the legitimate heir.  In tradition, there is a wedding of temporal and spiritual authority, from Constantine on down.  The separation of church from state is the first radical break with this temporal tradition.) For this reason, the state executed heretics, not the Church. The Church’s role was to carry out the investigation with the aim of protecting the innocent. This process of investigation was called the Inquisition.

The Inquisition was essentially a theological court. There were three main inquisitions: the Medieval Inquisition (against the Albigensian heresy), the Spanish Inquisition (formed in the late 1400s) and the Roman Inquisition (later the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith). We will focus on the Medieval and Spanish Inquisitions, the ones more readily associated with the term “Inquisition.”

Most anti-Inquisition writers have three major objections to the Inquisition: A) Inquisitors frequently tortured the accused to obtain false confessions; B) The Inquisition provided the opportunity for personal vendettas; C) The Inquisition was responsible for the death of millions of victims. Since all three attack the Church’s mark of Holiness, they must be addressed with charity and gravity.

Objection A: Torture was frequently used to elicit confessions

This first objection is perhaps the most widely held objection against the Inquisition. Movies, TV shows, and popular historical works suggest that the inquisitors tortured the accused to obtain false confessions, and then used these confessions to execute the prisoners. However, the historical record shows that this was not the case. Though torture was allowed during the Inquisition, it was rarely used. Strict rules accompanied the provision allowing torture. The torture could not threaten the accused’s life, nor could it leave a permanent mark (nor, according to some sources, cause the suspect to bleed). The inquisitors did not actually inflict the torture; civil authorities did, with the inquisitors there to make sure that the civil authorities did not harm the suspect. Once a suspect indicated his desire to confess, all tortures ceased. The confession was written down as the suspect gave it, and would be read back to him within twenty-four hours. If the suspect agreed to the confession, he signed it, and the trial ended. If he did not agree with the confession, or reverted and refused to recant his teachings, he could not be tortured again.

Torture was a last resort, when there was overwhelming evidence that an unconfessed suspect was guilty. An authentic confession was necessary for any verdict.

Objection B: The Inquisition was largely a tool for personal vendettas

Another claim that anti-Inquisition proponents make is that even if the tortures were few and far between, human corruption, being what it is, allowed the Inquisition to be a tool of revenge and personal vendettas. It makes sense that this would be the case, since we see such corruption in most human institutions. Examining the historical record, however, shows that not only was that not the case, but that the Inquisition procedures were established to avoid such abuses.

As inquisitors collected reports of local heresies, they also collected information about the heretics, including lists of the heretics’ enemies and other untrustworthy sources, usually provided by the accused. If any of those enemies testified against the accused, the evidence was dismissed as unreliable. Two reliable witnesses were required to proceed with the trial; lack of evidence dismissed many cases in these early stages. If the trial did proceed and the suspect was convicted of heresy, he had the right to appeal to the pope for a retrial. All of these provisions protected the suspect from abuse by inquisitors during the trial. If an inquisitor showed signs of abusing his position, he faced immediate dismissal. The Church did not tolerate such abuse.

Objection C: There were millions of victims of the Inquisition

Even if there were no other sinister motives, the high body count, millions of people, should be enough to warrant condemning the Inquisition. Reports of such high numbers are frequently tossed about in popular historical narratives. However, as with the previous two objections, the claims against the Inquisition are not based in history. Executions did occur, as noted above, by the civil authorities; however, they were shockingly rare, particularly in light of the number of executions performed for other reasons in Europe. Bernard Gui, the most famous grand inquisitor of the Medieval Inquisition, presided over 930 heresy cases during his seventeen years as grand inquisitor (1306-1323); of those 930 cases, only forty-two ended with executions, about 5% of his cases. Torquemada, the notorious grand inquisitor during the early Spanish Inquisition, had an even lower record: only 1% of the heretics were executed. The body count of the Inquisition is greatly, even slanderously, exaggerated.

Because we are living in a secular society, we often find people who try to undermine the Church. If someone tries to do this by invoking the dark specter of the Inquisition, we should approach with charity and understanding, while remaining ready to set the record straight so that, once shown the historical record, our listener might be open to the truths of Faith and come to the fullness of life in Christ. That is, after all, the ultimate goal of any sort of apologetics, and was also the ultimate goal of the Inquisition.”

Love, and never ignoring heresy,
Matthew

Why do Catholics call ordained men “Father”?

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-Holy Orders

Mt 23:9

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-by Dr. John Switzer, PhD

“This delightful question serves as a reminder that fathers—and mothers—are not just biological realities but symbols as well. The role and work that parents perform in the raising of children naturally lends itself to this symbolism. When we think of good parents, we think of kindness, nurturing, and unconditional love. They bring to mind strength, protection, loving care, and attentiveness. We use the symbols of parenthood to describe other contexts as well. Mary is the mother of the church. Mahatma Gandhi is the father of Indian independence. The early leaders of our nation are referred to as Founding Fathers.

This symbolic understanding of parenthood goes back to biblical times. In 1 Cor. 4:15, St. Paul uses his own life as a model for Christian living. Paul reminds the Christians of Corinth that it was he who brought the faith to them. “I became your father in Christ Jesus through the gospel,” he writes. Though he sometimes has to engage strong emotions in his letters, Paul seems to prefer a tone of gentle reproof: “I am writing you this not to shame you but to admonish you as my beloved children” (1 Cor. 4:14). It is easy to see why he presents himself as a spiritual father.

Those who tend toward biblical literalism sometimes express concern for Paul’s presentation of himself as a father of the church, a concern that carries over to using the word “father” in other religious contexts as well. This is due to a passage in the Gospel of Matthew, in which Jesus cautions his listeners that they should “call no one on earth your father; you have but one Father in heaven” (Matt. 23:9). But when read in context, it is apparent this commandment comes after a story where Jesus contrasts a sincere religious leader, who practices what he preaches, with one who fails to follow the teachings he conveys. Jesus is not insisting that we avoid using the word father in all metaphorical senses but that we recognize that only God can be perfect; only God can fulfill the role of the sincere religious leader, ultimately, at its best, at its most sincere, as God the Father.

Given the ways in which they serve the community, it seems a natural and even holy development that we see priests as symbolic parents. Their sacramental service runs parallel to the sacrifices given for us by our biological parents. Priests baptize us, bringing us into the realm of Christ and incorporating us into the family of the Church. They pronounce words of healing and forgiveness. They feed us and counsel us. (‘At its core, fatherhood is meant to strengthen and animate us.’ -Br PMB, OP)”

Love, and with particularly deep Christian affection for our priests, even the ornery ones, maybe especially the ornery ones!
Matthew

Roman collars

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“Clothes make the man.  Naked people have little or no influence in society.”  -Mark Twain

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-by Dr. John Switzer, PhD

“Controversy about this subject goes all the way back to 428 AD when Pope Celestine I took issue with the clergy of present-day France, who distinguished themselves in their attire. He argued that learning, purity, and good conduct should mark the clergy rather than vesture. That’s not a bad lesson to remember these days as some priests have returned to wearing the cassock, the traditional black robe of diocesan priests. Is it service they have in mind, or simply the need for attention?

Despite the warning of Celestine, the habit of clerical dress caught on and developed in two parallel tracks, one being the garb worn for everyday use and one reserved for liturgical and sacramental celebrations. The source for both, however, is the daily attire of bygone eras. As Germanic influences became more common in southern Europe, more and more Roman men adopted the legged garments of the northern tribes. Long tunics were shortened and turned into something we might call a coat or jacket. Though styles changed, some clergy retained older ways of dress for their daily use, such as the chasuble (a large cloak originally worn by men and women in ancient Greece and Rome) and the stole or pallium (a Roman symbol of civic authority).

These garments were eventually reserved for liturgical actions. In the Roman Catholic tradition, the stole and chasuble continue to appear in their varied liturgical colors. A more ornate stole, called a pallium and made of white lamb’s wool, is worn only by metropolitans, bishops overseeing large cities. Among these bishops, the pope, as bishop of Rome, holds greatest honor, and it is he who gives the pallium to the others.

Today’s “Roman collar” probably received its start as a shirt worn under a high-collared tunic or perhaps even as a scarf intended to prevent the tunic’s stiff collar from aggravating the neck. It’s an odd turn of history that something so usefully soft has become a rigid and sometimes irritating symbol adorning its wearer! It can be found as a simple plastic insert on a shirt. It is also a prominent part of the cassock.

Whatever the origin of today’s clerical garb, we could justifiably adapt the insight of Celestine to our own time: With or without the Roman collar or distinctive dress, clergy should be known primarily by the manner in which they welcome and serve others, rather than by what they wear.”

Love,
Matthew

The Wild Goose – The Holy Spirit

Why the Wild Goose?

Because apart from the Wild Goose there is no life.
The Wild Goose was a term that the ancient Celts had for the Holy Spirit.

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-by Rev. David Pivonka, TOR

“From the first time I heard this it stirred something in my heart. Yes, there is a wildness to the Holy Spirit. The dominant images of the Holy Spirit are a meek dove or a flickering flame of a candle, both of which are in one way accurate. But the Holy Spirit is more than that. God’s Spirit is power and blows not merely like a gentle breeze but at times like a raging wind. Sometimes, this power makes us nervous. We like the idea of the Holy Spirit as a flame on a candle but a raging fire often causes anxiety. Our first instinct is to get it under control. It’s hard to control a wild goose; believe me, I know.

In the 19th Chapter of Acts, St Paul meets a group of disciples who “have never heard of the Holy Spirit” (v.2). I’ve long been convinced that too many people today have the same sentiment as the people St. Paul encountered. Sure, perhaps most have heard something of the Holy Spirit, but their experience of the Holy Spirit is very limited. The idea of God wanting us to encounter the Holy Spirit, to have a relationship with the Holy Spirit is a foreign concept for far too many people.

The Wild Goose Project is a simple attempt to invite Catholic Christians into a more profound life giving relationship with the Holy Spirit. This is a relationship marked by the love of God which breathes life into our daily existence. The Holy Spirit is not merely something relegated to Confirmation but the Spirit desires a relationship with us that will take us on the greatest adventure imaginable; a journey to the very Heart of God. The Holy Spirit desires to be present to us in a manner that brings light out of darkness, freedom out of bondage, order out of chaos and life out of death.

Such is the power of the Wild Goose.”

Love,
Matthew

Dec 31 – Te Deum

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-click on the image for more detail, please.

-The Te Deum window by Christopher Whall, St Mary the Virgin, Ware, Hertfordshire, UK.

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-by Br John Sica, OP

“The Church places the ancient Latin hymn, the Te Deum, at the end of the year as a way of giving solemn thanks to God. The Manual of Indulgences grants an indulgence to the faithful who pray it in a church on the final day of the year as a way of thanking God for all the benefits He has bestowed on them throughout the year (#26, §1, 2°). Yet, this traditional hymn of thanksgiving does not have any explicit mention of giving thanks.

A Catholic who is unfamiliar with the content of the hymn might recognize instead the great 19th-century hymn Holy God, we praise Thy name, which is a paraphrase of the Te Deum. In order to get the sense of the place of the Te Deum in the liturgy, it would be useful to compare it to the Gloria in the Mass. Both are very ancient Latin hymns which praise God for the greatness of His divinity and move on to the praise of His saving works in Jesus Christ. Both are prescribed to be sung on days of an especially festive nature. On Sundays, solemnities, and feast days, the Gloria is sung at Mass, while the Te Deum is sung at the Liturgy of the Hours. We also sing the Te Deum outside the liturgy. The friars often sign it as a song of thanksgiving at a particularly joyous event, like the election of a pope or superior.  So why isn’t there a mention of thanksgiving in the hymn?

When we speak of gratitude, we are usually referring to a specific form of justice. Justice is the virtue that makes us give others what we owe them. Gratitude is what we owe those who are our benefactors, in return for benefits received. By explicitly acknowledging what is good in our lives, we are at the same time constrained to acknowledge these goods as benefits from God. “Every good endowment and every perfect gift is from above,” St. James says, “coming down from the Father of lights” (James 1:17). The Church’s pedagogy in gratitude is meant to train us to go more and more quickly from acknowledging the gift to thanking the giver.

God’s greatness, His glory, His very divinity, however, are not really “benefits” given to us, so it is difficult to see how they would form the basis for thanksgiving. Yet, adoration of God, confession of His glory, and thanks for it seem to merge into one in the Gloria: we give you thanks for your great glory! In harmony with this line from the Gloria, the triumphant joy in confession of the truth of God’s greatness, which the Te Deum displays, might be called instead a sort of proto-thanksgiving. For God’s divinity is the basis of the liberality and mercy of God which lavishes His gifts on us, undeserving as we may be.

As our year ends, the Church encourages us to reflect on the blessings He has bestowed on us over the past year, and to pray and praise Him for it. Beneath the many gifts, the Church is always solicitous that we not forget the Giver, and so encourages us to break forth in praise of Him—thanksgiving for Him being God. “O God, we praise Thee: we acknowledge Thee to be Lord!”

Love, and great thanks to You, Lord Jesus Christ!!!
Matthew

Eucharist as idol

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I know what I am going to say is touchy. What isn’t these days except untruth which is universally palatable, but false, which is ostensibly why we like it so much. Lies are easier. Truth is hard.

I am musing on the concept of a fringe of Catholics who worship the Eucharist practically as an idol. It has no relation to them. It is so divine as to be totally, totally other. It goes far beyond reverence for the Real Presence. It is recognized when these Catholics USE the Eucharist as something to beat everyone else down who isn’t as holy as them or it. Feel me? To make others feel totally other.

I can find lots of non-Catholic critiques, but to say NO Catholic ever goes too far in the distance they put between their own sanctity and that of the Eucharist seems, at least, disingenuous to me, if not overly and falsely pious.

I revere the Blessed Sacrament, extremely. Sometimes, I encounter Catholics whose reverence for the Eucharist is so extreme, if that is possible, and while God dwells in unapproachable light, it seems to me moreso they are worshiping a thing rather than person? Feel me? Their reverence seems to lack the intimacy one may expect in having a personal relationship with Someone. God became man to become intimate. I just get this weird idolatry vibe from them.

I pray for myself and those Catholics who worship the Eucharist as idol rather than as personally intimate Savior, and who USE it to make others feel lesser. The Real Presence is a personal intimate relationship for me. Not a thing. Not a weapon. Not a reward. Medicine for we sinners. Not a thing, a person, with Whom I am in love. To make it too Divine is to separate man & God. A separation the Incarnation denies. It gets/got weird.

Love,
Matthew

A Witness to Mercy

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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.

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-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, "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