My Blog List

Saturday, December 29, 2012

Call

When dealing with our own personal suffering, it is important to realize that God has a special call for each one of us.  This includes a life vocation as well an every day invitation to follow Him.

Recently Pope Benedict exhorted the faithful to recognize Christ's call in their everyday lives and to look towards him as the only source of hope. "He lives now among the community of disciples that is the Church (importance of belonging to a parish), and still today calls people to follow him. The call can come at any moment. Today too, Jesus continues to say, "Come, follow me" (Mk 10:21)," the Pope said. 

"Accepting his invitation means no longer choosing our own path. Following him means immersing our own will in the will of Jesus, truly giving him priority, giving him pride of place in every area of our lives: in the family, at work, in our personal interests, in ourselves. It means handing over our very lives to Him, living in profound intimacy with Him, entering through Him into communion with the Father in the Holy Spirit, and consequently with our brothers and sisters."

If we truly give Christ "priority" and die to ourselves by "no longer choosing" our own way, we can expect the cross, but also the grace to endure to the end.

Vocation

Wednesday, December 26, 2012

Fathers

St. Joseph is a much needed model for fatherhood today.  We see over and over again the negative effects of fatherless families.  For the best part of thirty years we have been conducting a vast experiment with the family, and now the results are in: the decline of the two-parent, married-couple family has resulted in poverty, ill-health, educational failure, unhappiness, anti-social behaviour, isolation and social exclusion for thousands of women, men and children.

To be a Christian means to be a true man.  Every man should strive to be like Christ.

Read sad statistics here

Sunday, December 23, 2012

Orthodoxy and Manhood

Face suffering like a man!

Men want a challenge.  Orthodox Liturgy provides that.  The term most commonly cited by men who attend Orthodox worship was “challenging.” Orthodoxy is “active and not passive.” “It’s the only church where you are required to adapt to it, rather than it adapting to you.” “The longer you are in it, the more you realize it demands of you.”

The “sheer physicality of Orthodox worship” is part of the appeal. Regular days of fasting from meat and dairy, “standing for hours on end, performing prostrations, going without food and water [before communion]…When you get to the end you feel that you’ve faced down a challenge.” “Orthodoxy appeals to a man’s desire for self-mastery through discipline.”

“In Orthodoxy, the theme of spiritual warfare is ubiquitous; saints, including female saints, are warriors. Warfare requires courage, fortitude, and heroism. We are called to be ‘strugglers’ against sin, to be ‘athletes’ as St. Paul says. And the prize is given to the victor. The fact that you must ‘struggle’ during worship by standing up throughout long services is itself a challenge men are willing to take up.”

A recent convert summed up, “Orthodoxy is serious. It is difficult. It is demanding. It is about mercy, but it’s also about overcoming oneself. I am challenged in a deep way, not to ‘feel good about myself’ but to become holy. It is rigorous, and in that rigor I find liberation. And you know, so does my wife.”

Men also appreciate that this challenge has a goal: union with God. One said that in a previous church “I didn’t feel I was getting anywhere in my spiritual life (or that there was anywhere to get to—I was already there, right?)  But something, who knew what, was missing. Isn’t there SOMETHING I should be doing, Lord?”

Read the rest

The Triditine Rite in the Western Church corresponds with this.  Bishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco recently stated:

We get on to discussing why there is a relatively high number of young men pursuing vocations in seminaries dedicated to the Extraordinary Form. “The Old Rite corresponds more to a masculine spirituality in that the masculine psyche is one that protects, defends and provides, and during the Mass the priest is the one who dares to approach God to reconcile His people to him. In the Old Rite there is a greater sense of the priest as intercessor, offering a sacrifice for the people and bringing God’s gift to the people.”
While women may not become priests, Archbishop Cordileone clarifies that women do not in any way occupy second place. Instead, he pinpoints why women should be shown the highest respect and says that chivalrous practices such as holding a door open for a woman ought to be the norm. “A woman should walk out, ahead of the man, because she is the life-giver and, in holding a door for a woman, the man is recognising her special place as the one who gives life.” He says that mantillas, or chapel veils, are a way for a woman to veil their sacredness: “In Christian worship what is sacred is veiled, women are sacred because they are the life-givers.”

Thursday, December 20, 2012

God Exists

In order for God to help us in our struggles and sufferings, we must recognize that He does indeed exist.  Fr. Robert Spitzer works tirelessly to promote arguments for God's existence.

Jesuit Father Robert Spitzer -- a philosopher, accountant, former university president and leadership consultant -- always has had a fascination with the intersection of faith and reason. He's smart enough to have debated physicist Stephen Hawking, an avowed atheist, on national television over the scientific underpinnings of the beginning of the universe and the theological arguments for the existence of God. In a recent address in New Orleans, Father Spitzer said the exciting news for the new evangelization being called for by Pope Benedict XVI is the recent discoveries in "space-time geometry," prompting eminent physicists to assert the cosmos had to have a beginning and thus had to have a creator. On the occasion of Hawking's 70th birthday in January, physicist Alexander Vilenkin, director of the Institute of Cosmology at Tufts University, read a paper asserting just that. Science journalist Lisa Grossman, writing in New Scientist, pithily described Vilenkin's presentation as "the worst birthday present ever." If the rate of expansion of the universe is greater than zero -- something virtually all physicists agree on -- "at the end of the day we will reach an absolute beginning point prior to which the universe and multiverse (a combination of universes) were nothing," said Father Spitzer, founder and president of the Spitzer Center for Ethical Leadership in Ann Arbor, Mich. "Physical reality itself was nothing, and the one thing we know about nothing is that it's nothing," he said.  He also said that recent studies about near-death experiences point to God.
 
For years Dr. Eben Alexander III had dismissed near-death revelations of God and heaven as explainable by the hard wiring of the human brain. He was, after all, a neurosurgeon with sophisticated medical training.
 
But then in 2008 Dr. Alexander contracted bacterial meningitis. The deadly infection soaked his brain and sent him into a deep coma.
      
During that week, as life slipped away, he now says, he was living intensely in his mind. He was reborn into a primitive mucky Jell-o-like substance and then guided by “a beautiful girl with high cheekbones and deep blue eyes” on the wings of a butterfly to an “immense void” that is both “pitch black” and “brimming with light” coming from an “orb” that interprets for an all-loving God.
 
Dr. Alexander, 58, was so changed by the experience that he felt compelled to write a book, “Proof of Heaven,” that recounts his experience. He knew full well that he was gambling his professional reputation by writing it, but his hope is that his expertise will be enough to persuade skeptics, particularly medical skeptics, as he used to be, to open their minds to an afterworld. 

Saturday, December 15, 2012

Confession

The confessing of sins to a priest helps take away our burdens and ease our sufferings.  When Jesus absolves our sins we are set free.

Here are 20 tips to make a good confession:
1) …examine our consciences regularly and thoroughly;
2) …wait our turn in line patiently;
3) …come at the time confessions are scheduled, not a few minutes before they are to end;
4) …speak distinctly but never so loudly that we might be overheard;
5) …state our sins clearly and briefly without rambling;
6) …confess all mortal sins in number and kind;
7) …listen carefully to the advice the priest gives;
8) …confess our own sins and not someone else’s;
9) …carefully listen to and remember the penance and be sure to understand it;
10) …use a regular formula for confession so that it is familiar and comfortable;
11) …never be afraid to say something “embarrassing”… just say it;
12) …never worry that the priest thinks we are jerks…. he is usually impressed by our courage;
13) …never fear that the priest will not keep our confession secret… he is bound by the Seal;
14) …never confess “tendencies” or “struggles”… just sins;
15) …never leave the confessional before the priest has finished giving absolution;
16) …memorize an Act of Contrition;
17) …answer the priest’s questions briefly if he asks for a clarification;
18) …ask questions if we can’t understand what he means when he tells us something;
19) …keep in mind that sometimes priests can have bad days just like we do;
20) …remember that priests must go to confession too … they know what we are going through.


Fr. Z's Blog

Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Good and Evil

There is good and evil in this world because God exists.  God didn't create evil or doesn't will it, but allows it. 

Dr. Peter Kreeft

Tuesday, December 11, 2012

Division in Church

According to an old adage there is strength in numbers.  That being said, the unity of Christians is essential, and is the will of Christ.  In order to bear suffering and overcome evil we need the support of one another, we can't do it alone. 

Find a parish that is faithful to the Gospel and join it.  In this way God's grace will come upon you.

When speaking about the danger of division in the Church Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano recently stated, “There is a divisive strategy at work here, an intentional dividing of the Church; through this strategy, the body of the Church is weakened, and thus the Church can be more easily persecuted.”

Read the rest here in context

Sunday, December 9, 2012

Mary Full of Grace

Yesterday the Church celebrated the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of Mary.  As such she is full of grace.

The Holy Father spoke on this, "Mary is called the 'favoured one' (Lk, 1:28). With this identity she reminds us of God's pre-eminence in our life and in the history of the world. She reminds us that the power of God's love is stronger than evil, and that it fills the void that selfishness creates in the history of people, families, nations and the world. Such emptiness can become hell, where human life is pulled towards the bottom and emptiness, losing meaning and light. The false remedies the world offers to fill the void, drug use above all, in fact widen the gap. Only love can save us from such a fall, but not any love. It must have the purity of Grace, which God transforms and renews to fill the lungs with fresh, clean air and new vital energy. Mary tells us that, as much as man can fall, he is never too low for God, who has descended in hell. However led astray our heart may be, God is always "greater than our heart' (1 Jn, 3:20). Grace's soft breath can disperse the darkest clouds, and make life beautiful and rich in meaning even under the most inhumane situations."

When you suffer and/or are struggling with evil, call on the Blessed Mother.




Friday, December 7, 2012

God Loves the Widow and Orphans

Often widows and orphans are people who suffer the most in society.  Single mothers and children with no fathers statistically struggle.  Fatherless children are at a dramatically greater risk of drug and alcohol abuse, mental illness, suicide, poor educational performance, teen pregnancy, and criminality.
Christians are called to be a source of help and comfort to these people.  The Holy Father recently stated, "For this reason in the Bible, widows and orphans are people of whom God takes special care: they have last their earthly support but God is their Husband or their Father."

Read the rest

Monday, December 3, 2012

Mystery of Suffering

Although a profound mystery Christianity helps us view suffering these 3 ways:

  • Life is eternal.  God is able to compensate anyone who suffers unjustly.  We are immortal beings, it's not like we die and that's it.  We will continue to exist for eternity.  The sufferings of this life do not compare to the glory we will experience in heaven.
  • God can bring good out of our suffering, even in ways we don't understand.  Jesus Christ is the supreme example of this for Christians.  Through the evil and horrendous act of crucifixion perpetrated upon Him, God was able to bring about the salvation of the world.  In the same way God can take our own sufferings and make good come out of it for ourselves and others.  That is by prayerfully and faithfully uniting our sufferings to Christ, God can bring good into the world.
  • God is willing to suffer with us.  God takes on human nature and gets on the cross to help us shoulder and bear our own suffering.   
For Christians there is meaning in suffering, it is never wasted.  So don't despair.  We don't suffer and die and that's it.  Through faith we can overcome our sufferings (and put them to good use).  Our reward in heaven will be great!