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Saturday, July 30, 2011
Every month, I update my sidebar to reflect the monthly devotion and monthly virtue. For August, the virtue is diligence. After some reflection, I decided the best picture to illustrate diligence was Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta.
The definition of diligence is steadfast application, assiduousness and industry. The reason I chose Mother Teresa to represent this virtue is because she was the very definition of Christian steadfastness. She worked for decades among India's dying poor, running a hospice for those who had no one to be with them in their last hours on earth.
Only after her death did we discover that she suffered from a dark night of the soul for most of her life. For decades she did not hear the voice of God, she did not sense His presence and, at times, she even doubted whether or not He was there at all.
And yet, she kept on. She cared for the poor and for the sisters in her care, she traveled and gave controversial speeches to powerful people and greeted those who came to see her. She met with her confessor and poured out her heart to him in letters. She steadfastly worked for Christ.
"Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today. Let us begin." — Mother Teresa
Friday, July 8, 2011
Today is Friday, still a penitential day in the Church. Let's meditate on Psalm 51, the ultimate penitential psalm.
I made this slide show years ago.
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
I found an interesting article about finding a prayer style that suits your personality type. The author uses the Myers-Briggs Personality Indicator and matches it up with four Catholic Prayer traditions.
NT (Intuitive-Thinking) types are paired with the prayer tradition of St. Thomas Aquinas. In this tradition, you study a virtue, fault or theological truth from all angles in order to understand it. A scripture verse is meditated on in the morning and "carried around" through the day to effect a change in behavior.
NF (Intuitive-Feeling) types are paired with Augustinian prayer. Here you transpose the words of Scripture into daily life and current situation.
SJ (Sensing-Judging) types are asked to try the prayer style of St. Ignatius. The one who prays is put into the scriptural situation and so becomes a participant in salvation history. The liturgies of Holy Week are a good example of this type of prayer.
SP (Sensing-Perceiving) types are steered towards Franciscan prayer. This type of prayer is open to the working of the Holy Spirit. These people tend to pray throughout the day using something like the Jesus Prayer.
Hat tip to Lisa Graas via Twitter.
Monday, April 25, 2011
For those of you who are fans of pomp, pageantry and incense, look at this *massive* censor from the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Spain!
Imagine learning how to swing that!!
Monday, February 7, 2011
It is a well known phenomenon that children of immigrants with a minority language, culture and religion will lose that language, culture and religion within the first 2 or 3 generations in a new country.
Many aging parents blame themselves for the religious choices of their offspring and wonder what they could have done differently to influence those choices.
What is often missing is a realization that the very culture we live in puts Christianity and in particular Catholicism, in the position of being an unsupported minority religion within an alien culture.
One hundred years ago, parishes were local and in many cases, ethnic. People lived within walking distance of their church, parochial schools were affordable even to those with large families, and a majority of the parishioners came from the same ethnic background, which influenced and colored the feasts and festivals throughout the year.
Lack of modern transportation and communication technology meant that many raised their children in the same neighborhood in which they themselves grew up. To leave the religion of one’s childhood meant leaving an entire cultural and familial experience.
Today things are so different as to be almost unrecognizable. Church shopping is de regueur with the ease of transportation and internet research possibilities. At the same time, it is often difficult to find a comfortable parish home in part because of the lack of common cultural ties among its parishioners.
Feast days are no longer a time for bringing parishioners together because many are on the road travelling to visit far off family members, and feeling out of place worshipping in their parishes, or, often, desperately Googling Mass times for a strange city, hoping to get to Mass with a minimum of “good-natured” teasing from family members.
Catholicism today is becoming a minority religion in America. Culturally it is an accepted practice to publically demonize the Church either in a veiled way through humor or in a more direct way through endless posting, forwarding and discussing the bottomless pit of negative stories about the Church in the media. This would be unthinkable in the same circles with other religions.
Pope Benedict XVI has said that he thinks the future of Catholicism will be stronger but smaller, and I agree. The cultural supports that held it in place a century ago just do not exist anymore, and the current challenges are many and severe. Christianity is a way of life. Those who cannot abide its precepts will not stay in the Church merely out of respect for its culture. Those who do stay must do all they can to follow the teachings of Christ and become Christ to others.
What we need to guard against, though, is the temptation to become more aggressive as we feel more isolated. The challenge will be to insist upon respect for our beliefs while still giving respect to others for theirs. Jesus would do no less and expects no less of us.
To make Christianity into a political weapon is to enter into dangerous territory that Jesus never intended for His followers. Individual political issues should be pondered thoroughly and debated calmly and rationally. To use coercion of any kind as an excuse for converting others is dangerous and decidedly anti-Christian.
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Heavenly Coincidence--John Michael Talbot on the Early Monastics
0 comments Posted by nonong at 11:31 AMToday I was perusing the subscriptions on my Youtube channel when I came across the music of John Michael Talbot. After listening to his beautiful playlist, Quiet Reflections, a series of his songs along with some inspirational readings, I heard the following 2009 teaching on St. Antony of the Desert come up on the playlist I had subsequently clicked.
I was struck by his words on not placing blame on others for our problems. The current political situation in the United States is rife with blaming and this teaching really hit home for me. I know it is difficult, too, not to blame outside people and forces for our own personal problems.
I decided to post it today, wondering when the actual feast of St. Antony fell. I was shocked to realize it is January 17th, this coming Monday; surely a Heavenly coincidence!
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
I found a powerful and challenging blog--Homeless in America. It is a Catholic blog, complete with quotes and inspiration on the sidebar by Dorothy Day, Mother Teresa and Saint Bernadette. Yet, it does not (that I've seen) argue or pontificate about what style of liturgy is the "right" style. It doesn't wring its hands about the minutia of daily worship. It doesn't spend its time and waste its space complaining about how horrible things are in the Church.
Instead, it challenges its readers to think about the "least" in the world; in America. It reaches beyond a particular political fashion du jour and gets to the meat of Christianity--seeing God in the poor; living our faith in Jesus by getting out of our spiritual and financial navel gazing and putting our values where our faith is.
This is where Catholicism excels--although not nearly as much as it could. The Church built the first schools. The Church built the first hospitals. The Church has nurtured men and women who have literally given up everything to serve God's people year after year for their entire lives.
We are being made impotent as a church by infighting about things that even Jesus admitted would not last. It is time we wake up. It is time we live our faith. It is time we become Christian.
Saturday, August 21, 2010
Detraction is saying something against another person that is not true--spreading falsehood against one's neighbor.
Calumny is harming another's reputation by saying something that is, nevertheless, true.
Both are sins against the 8th commandment and both are discouragingly easy to do.
They are also both sins against peace. If we are to have peace we are to be peace. It is difficult, but everything is possible through the grace of God.
Monday, June 28, 2010
For tomorrow's Feast of St. Peter and St. Paul, I wanted to show these icons, discovered last year, that depict the two saints. They are from the 4th century and are believed to be the oldest icons in existence. What amazed me, is how similar they are to icons of the two saints today. The Eastern Church really has preserved the writing of icons, as it is called, down to the present day.
In both pictures, Peter is shown with white hair and a round white beard, and Paul is shown with brown hair, balding, and a brown pointed beard.
Traditionally, the icon of St. Peter and St. Paul represents the hoped-for unity between the East and the West. '
May it come quickly!
Monday, June 7, 2010
Yesterday was a trip back in time for me. Our parish had a Eucharistic procession for Corpus Christi and our pastor asked the recent first communicants to wear their first communion finery for the procession around the block. Each little girl looked stunning; one even came complete with white gloves. This brought back memories of my mom making sure I got good use out of my Easter hat and white gloves by making me wear them to Mass for months afterwards.
One little toddler boy had on the most adorable pair of blue saddle shoes. This, of course, brought back memories of my own saddle shoes that I wore each and every day to my Catholic high school. Quite nerdy, even way back then, but also surprisingly comfortable.
Is it sadistic that I take such joy that these traditions are coming back in spite of my own lack of appreciation for and enjoyment of them at the time?
