This. On Creation.

God could not keep, as it were, the secret of His Love — and the telling of it was Creation. Love overflowed.

Eternity moved and said to time: “Begin.”

Omnipotence moved and said to nothingness: “Be.”

Light moved and said to darkness: “Be light.”

Out from the fingertips of God there tumbled planets and worlds. Stars were thrown into their orbits and the spheres into space. Orbs and brotherhoods of orbs began to fill the heavens. The great march of the world began, in which planet passes by planet and sphere by sphere, without ever a hitch or a halt.

In that long procession of the unfolding of the Creative Power of God, there came first, matter; then palpitating life, and the Paradise of Creation with its fourfold rivers flowing through all lands rich with gold and onyx; and finally those creatures made not by a Fiat but by a Council of the Trinity—the first man and woman.

By Venerable Fulton Sheen

Thought Of The Day: Enlightenment

"If you wish to explore the Holy Scripture, and you overcome your laziness and apply yourself, thirsting for the knowledge, then every good thing will be yours. You will fill your mind with the divine light. Then, when you apply that light to the doctrines of the Church, you will very easily recognize everything that is true and unadulterated, and lay it up in the hidden treasures of your soul."
— St. Cyril of AlexandriaCirca 400 AD


"I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe, according to the working of his great power."
Ephesians 1:17-19

Poem Of The Day: How Did You Die?

On Animals and Angels - Because I've never thought about it quite like this before

By Father Robert Barron:

Medieval scholars said that the human being was a kind of microcosm, since he bore within himself the spiritual and the physical. Through his body, man reached down to the lower elements and was one with the animals and minerals, but through his mind, he reached upwards to God and the angels.

 

We know instinctively how right this is. On the one hand, we can explore the intricacies of mathematics and geometry. We can soar with Mozart and Shakespeare. We can design high-level computers and machines that can move through the galaxy. We can enter into the depth and silence of prayer, becoming as much like the angels as possible. In so many ways, we strain upward to our home among the spirits.

 

On the other hand, we are, like it or not, animals. We need food and drink. We get too hot and too cold. We experience instincts and emotions that often get the better of us. We revel in the sheer pleasure of the senses and the thrill of being touched. We love to run, to exercise our muscles. We exult in the rough and tumble of very physical competition and play.

 

This is our glory - we combine the best of both worlds - but it is also our agony, the source of much of our sadness and conflict, for it entails that we are a hybrid, a half-breed, something of a metaphysical mongrel. We bring together two qualities that are at odds with each other. The spirit strains against the body, and the body strains against the spirit. Sometimes the spirit commands and the body refuses to obey; sometimes the body makes demands that the spirit cannot or will not accommodate. This tension is one of the faces of sin. It is the result of the dislocation between ourselves and God.

 

The harmony of the spiritual and the physical seems to be what God savors and intends. The spirit commanding the body, but the body also informing the spirit. There is a proper hierarchy between them, but it must never become a tyranny. The demands and goods of the body must always be respected and must even, to some degree, shape the life of the spirit. We were made as embodied spirits, or if you prefer, as spiritualized bodies. And we will be saved as spirit-body composites.

The Communion of Saints and Indulgences

So, yesterday was St. Patrick's day, and as we sat around the dinner table eating our Rueben sandwiches and learning about the man who drove paganism out of Ireland, my husband asked a very good question.

What is a saint, exactly?  Easy answer:  believers in Christ in heaven and  on earth.  But he was wanting to know about canonized saints, and the use of the same word to describe two things was confusing him.  "I mean, we're not naming churches after my aunt Dorothy right now".    So we talked about the canonization process, and what that entails, and how Christians have from the beginning raised up certain people as extraordinary examples of how to follow Christ during our time on earth.  And they honor and remember them, and ask for their prayers.

So that led to a discussion about the communion of saints.  I've always understood that to mean that all believers, both living and dead, are connected.  The church isn't just made up of those of us who happen to be alive and walking around on the planet.  It also includes all those who went before us, who still pray and intercede for us here on earth.  And in turn, we can also pray for them.  "Brothers and sisters in Christ" and all that. 

But Rob was struggling with the idea of indulgences, and I have to admit... I struggle with that idea, too.  "If a person is being cleansed to be in the presence of God, I really don't think someone else doing something or praying to God should effect that.  It's an individual thing."  That's what makes sense in my mind, too.  We're responsible for ourselves, and our choices.  But that's not what the Bible says.  The Bible says that we are all parts of one body, the body of Christ.  That is the Church.  His body.  Now, we can think that's all really nice figurative speech, but what if it isn't?  What if that "body of Christ" is far more literal than I understand it to be?  When Christ struck Paul blind on the road to Damascus, He didn't ask "Why are you persecuting the church?"  He asked "Why are you persecuting ME".  ME.   Christ himself.  Singular.  Rob said, "Oh, like one organism?"   And I stopped to pause to process that for a moment. 

So there was a really big AHA moment for me.  When Rob mentioned "one organism", not just a loose, figurative "club" made up of individual people and figuratively acting as one.... that made things fall in to place.  ONE ORGANISM.   It's why, in the early church, when a person sinned, he didn't just have to confess to a priest individually, but to the entire congregation, to restore himself to the whole group.    And it's why those "victim souls" who offer their suffering for the intentions of others - why that works.  Why my prayers of intercession for others, my actions of love, effect the Church as a whole, and not just me individually.  So many things making up one unified thing.  Like cells of the same body.  If a poison or disease enters one part of the body, it effects the whole body.  Likewise, if one part of the body is hurting, the other parts (immune system, blood supply, neurological) rush in to help heal.  Many things in one.   Like a father, mother and child make up a family.   Like three beings in one God: the Trinity.  Which means we are in the image and likeness of God in a way I'd never understood before.  Not just individually.  But together.

The Communion of Saints.  One organism.  Here to do the work set before us by Christ to transform the world.

Pondering this morning

Do you think those early Christians, those fervent martyrs whose blood mixed with Christ's to form the foundation of the Church we know today, do you think they were Christians for the same reasons many profess to be Christian today?  As they were torn apart by lions in the Coliseum, did they profess loudly to the throngs "Those homilies were GREAT!"  As they were being torn limb by  limb, did they say "I really felt welcome there at church."  "It has great kids programs" or "I really liked the music"?  Was it really about doughnuts and community for them?  Really about the "I"?  What "I" get out of being there every Sunday, as if it were some self-help program for a happy life?

To the point of horrific death? 

Inconceivable. 

Those witnesses gave their lives for the only reason TO be a Christian.

Because it's TRUE. 

Nothing less than that is worth dying for.  Then.  Or Now.

From The Mouths of Babes - Myriam's Story

St. Paul, on Faith and Works. There's no "versus" in the "verses".

"For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous in God’s sight, but the doers of the law who will be justified."  Romans 2:13

A Video To Share

I have followed Blythe Fike's blog for a few years now, and feel like she and I are "friends".  In reality, it's more like a stalker-stalkee relationship, because she doesn't know me at all, and I feel like I know ALL about her and her awesome family. We're tight.   Regardless...  she did a video for SoulPancake a few years back, and I just rediscovered it, so thought I'd share.

Holy Fires

"But you, ‘a chosen generation,’ weak things of the world, who have forsaken all things, so that you may follow the Lord, go after him, and confound the strong; go after him, you beautiful feet, and shine in the firmament so that the heavens may declare his glory… Run into every place, O you holy fires, you beautiful fires! You are the light of the world, and you are not put under a measure. He to whom you have held fast has been exalted, and he has exalted you. Run forth, and make it known to all nations."
— Saint Augustine

I didn't write this, but I wish I had.... 7 Things You Need to Know About the Catholic Church

Big BIG BIG changes are happening in my husband, and subsequently our family, right now.  I'm not ready to write about them yet, because we're in the midst of it all, and new things are popping up every few hours.  But, as surreal as it all is, it is TRUE.  And very cool.  This morning, I saw this blog post, and realized that it distilled down everything Rob is learning right now, in a nutshell.  So I had to share.  You can read the original here, compliments of Marcel Lejeune.

7 Things You Need to Know About The Catholic Church

1 – The purpose of the Church is to make disciples of Jesus. Too many people have a false understanding of the purpose of the Catholic Church. After Jesus made the Church, He gave a clear mission statement to His apostles: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.” -Matt 28:19-20. Everything else the Church does, feed the hungry, perpetuate the Sacraments, etc. is in service to this mission. Evangelization isn’t optional.

2- The Catholic Church may not be what you think it is. Catholicism isn’t just a set of doctrines or a hierarchy of clergy. Catholicism isn’t just about giving a moral code or set of social teachings. It is much more than we could ever know. The Church isn’t so easily definable, which is why we have so many different ways of describing it – “the bride of Christ”, “the body of Christ”, “the people of God”, etc.  The Church’s identity is inseparable from Jesus and thus shares in the mystery of God. When we think we “know” the Church, we are fooling ourselves. This is why growing in knowledge about the content of the Church’s teachings is so important.

3 – The Trinity really does matter. Many Catholics wouldn’t bat an eye if the Pope declared we don’t need the Trinity anymore, because it makes no difference in many Catholics’ daily lives. But, it really does matter. Why? Because if God is a communion of persons, a family, and we are made in God’s image and likeness, then our families and relationships are called to reflect the same kind of relationship found in the Trinity – the gift of self to another – true love. This is where the paradox of the Gospel finds a foundation. To gain life, we must lose ourselves. To live is to die. To die is to live. All because of the Trinity…and that is just the starting point. Since God is infinite, the Trinity matters an infinte amount. I haven’t even mentioned that it is the most basic of all Christian doctrines and the starting point of everything else we believe…

4 – The Incarnation changes everything. An all-powerful, eternal, all-knowing, divine being decided to create the universe and then he becomes one of the creatures he created!!! This is mind-numbing. Furthermore, in humbling himself to take on our flesh, he raises up our nature to a greater dignity – one that now shares in his own nature. We share in God’s nature. This is flabbergasting. The world is never the same and all of creation and time revolves around this one moment – when God becomes one of us. Our response should be to see God in all of his creation, but most importantly in all of humanity, including ourselves.

5 – The Church is beautiful. Because of the first three truths above, we can now see the beauty of the Church. Is the Church full of sinners? Certainly (I am in it!). But, we sinners are not the source of the Church’s beauty, God is. We are called to reflect this beauty as best we can, but true beauty is found in the being of God, who is beauty itself. The Church reflects Christ beauty to the world. Through the Saints’ lives, the Cathedrals and artwork, through the music and songs, and through the teachings of the Church. It is in these ways we see God’s beauty rise up for a world that focuses all too often on what is ugly.

6 – Catholicism contains the most balanced teaching you will find. Catholicism holds a lot of seeming tensions in balance. They include; 1 God and 3 persons, Scripture and Tradition, Faith and Works, Jesus is human and divine, the Church is both holy and imperfect, we can know God through both faith and reason, we are a people of both prayer and action, and the Bible is written by man and inspired by God. We are a people of both/and, not either/or. While it may seem there are contradictions, there are not. But, there is mystery behind the balance.

7 – The world needs the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church has the answer for all the world’s problems in the fullness of truth and the fullness of grace she offers to the world. The Church gives us a moral anchor, an answer to broken families, addiction, sin, war, violence, abuse, and all the other issues in our culture. More than ever the world needs the Catholic Church, if our society is to last. This answer is the personal relationship with Jesus that the Catholic Church offers to us all through the Sacramental grace, teachings of the Church, and in our own personal prayer we all need.

——————————–

-Jesus created 1 Church.
-We are that Church, the Catholic Church.
-If the world needs the Catholic Church, then the Church needs saints.
-We need to be holy if we are to change the world.

-Time to do our part. Time to be holy. Time to change the world. This is what we all need to know – and do.

On Faith vs Works

 

 

"By this we know that we have come to know Him, if we keep His commandments. The one who says, 'I have come to know Him,' and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him; but whoever keeps His word, in him the love of God has truly been perfected. By this we know that we are in Him: the one who says he abides in Him ought himself to walk in the same manner as He walked."

1 John 2:3-6