“I plead with you—never, ever give up on hope, never doubt, never tire, and never become discouraged. Be not afraid.” - St. John Paul II

I'm praying for you!

:)

I found a book called Growing Up Catholic today that's pretty much a tongue in cheek guideto childhood in a Catholic family. It was joking about confession being a chance for you to make up ridiculous fake sins in order to seem more pious for knowing those ones and confirmation being a chance to pick a cool new name. I was laughing at the book until it hit me that the joking manner in which the author described Catholicism is actually the way a lot of Catholics, especially children, view the Church. We make kids memorize prayers and recite confessions and before long, we have whole generations of children who know next to nothing of the actual love and depth of Mother Church. I laugh at the ridiculousness of my "Catholic" education a lot, but it really shouldn't be funny. We should be raising kids to truly understand and love God and the Church to the best of their abilities,and anything short of that goal should make us weep in shame for failing to pass on the Faith properly to future generations.

I'm praying for you!

:)

Sorry for the long absence. I wish I could blame it on being at summer camp all last week, but my phone had service and I could have posted. The awful truth is that I spent a lot of the last 2 weeks refusing to speak to God much at all.

I went to a different parish on Sunday, and the priest gave a homily about adoration of Christ's body (which makes sense with yesterday's feast). He was talking about how adoration was the most basic stirring of the human heart and soul, the awestruck wonder with which parents and children stare into each others' eyes. And I thought, I want that back. I used to adore Christ constantly, and now, I don't feel that awe.

The homily continued to lay out the symbolism of the Last Supper in connection with Christ's Passion. Christ offers His disciples His Body at the beginning of the Passover meal, and he ends the meal that night with His blood, the third out of four cups that are to be drunk at the end of the meal, but He does not give them the fourth cup. They leave the dinner incomplete, having consumed Jesus at the beginning and the end. He is the alpha and the omega (the priest didn't say that part - that's just my musing).

On the cross, Jesus cries out that He thirsts. They offer him new, partially fermented wine on a reed. He tastes it and says "It is complete." The Passover meal is completed now. Now that His sacrifice is accomplished and He has brought about His kingdom, He tastes of new wine and completes the Passover he began on Holy Thursday (when He told the disciples He would not taste of the fruit of the vine until He drank new wine with them in His Father's kingdom - i.e. He would not complete the Passover meal until He had sacrificed Himself as the new lamb).

He accomplishes the Passover, establishing the new covenant with Himself as the Lamb, and inexorably links the Passover meal begun on Holy Thursday to His Passion on Good Friday.

"You cannot be present at the meal of Holy Thursday without also being present at the foot of the cross." - as close to direct quote as I can remember from the homily.

*This is the end of the actual homily. Below are my thoughts entirely.*

So when we receive the Eucharist as He instructed us to do, we are transported to the foot of the cross, to gaze up at our Lord and Savior, who in turn gazes on us.

That doting, loving sense of awe (although certainly not the worshiping aspect) is a two-way street. Christ invites us to the foot of the cross not just so that we can see His sacrifice and see the result of our sins and betrayal of Him. He invites us to stand at the foot of the cross and look into His eyes, to recognize the constant adoring love present in His eyes, to recognize the depth of His love for us. This love is most present and most evident on the cross. In the throes of His agony, Christ's love for us shines forth more brightly than we can ever imagine. Amid the concerns of everyday life, it is all to easy to forget that loving gaze, to imagine a harsh, judgmental gaze awaiting us on the cross. Yet each time we receive Him, we are transported once more to His presence and, if we only look, we can see His gaze of love and mercy. Perhaps, if we allow ourselves to meet His gaze, frightened though we may be, we will someday learn to return that gaze and to adore Him who loves us throughout all eternity.

I'm praying for you!

:)

I often make Saul 's mistake of assuming that I know God's will better than He does,  that I know best what will please Him. the Lord told Saul to kill Amazes and put all his followers and their possessions under the ban. Instead, Saul kept a lot of the livestock, ostensibly to sacrifice to God. When Samuel confronts him, he insists that he obeyed the LORD and that he will sacrifice the rest. He loses his kingship because there are many sins contained in one. First, he disobeyed the LORD. Second, he assumes that he knows better than God, even that he knows God better than God knows Himself. Third, he tries to conceal his sin by deceit. Finally, he is greedy and cowardly, since he kept the best livestock from the ban and did so at the request of his army. If God asks for me to clean my room or spend time with my brother, a rosary will not appease Him, because the words themselves were never what pleased him. He desires our love and obedience. Any form of offering, if not done out of live and obedience to Him, is empty show.

But we can also learn from Saul to worship the LORD always. He finally admits his sin and begs forgiveness through Samuel, and he is denied. Even though he loses his kingship and the favor of the LORD, he worships the LORD. Christ forgives our sins when we repent,  but we should not worship Him merely because he has shown us mercy. First and foremost, we should worship God because He is God.

I'm praying for you!

:)

I've probably said this a thousand times, but it amazes me how much even though I say I love Him and I want to do His will always, that I am so good at avoiding actually spending time with Him. Even when I'm praying I often just recite words in the hope that I can avoid being still with Him. He says be with me, I love you, and I rattle off Hail Marys as if that will get me off the hook, as if I won't have to spend time with him or as if that counts as me spending time with Him. Jesus told me once that I would be able to hear him again after going to confession and I thought that meant that when my heart was heavy with sin, that he would stop talking or that I would somehow just not be able to hear him. But that's not the way it works. He's always talking and if I want to I can always hear him. When my heart is heavy it's not God who creates the distance. It's me. When I haven't been to confession for a while,  I don't want to hear Him because I'm afraid of what He might say. and I pretend that I'm afraid because He'll be mad, because I'm afraid of some horrible punishment. But really I'm afraid of exactly the opposite. I'm afraid that he won't push me away, that he won't punish me, that his command will be the same as always: to simply be still, to be with him. and in those moments I think I know why the ancient Israelites were so afraid to look at the face of God, because his light washes everything else away, and I so often don't want to let go of everything else. So I run and I hide forgetting that nothing is hidden from him. I often think that all those things I'm holding on to are me, but the truth is that only when all of these things are stripped away am I able to see myself, and to do that, to know myself, I have to stop running; I have to be still, to be with him and allow him to love me.

I'm praying for you!

:)

The aunt I thought would never come into the Church is coming into the Church on Sunday, and tomorrow my uncle and she are having their official Catholic wedding ceremony. Sometimes, the world seems so irredeemable and so dark that it's easy to forget the overwhelming power and love of God, but He does not abandon us and nothing is impossible for Him. To paraphrase St. John Paul II, you can't paint a realistic picture of today's world unless you include the countless reasons we have for hope.

I'm praying for you!

:)

Just some food for thought: most of the times in the Old Testament when it says the Spirit of the LORD rushed upon someone, the person doesn't wander around murmuring sweetly about the beauty of creation. They start hulking out and killing the enemies of the LORD.

I'm praying for you!

:)

I'm praying for you!

:)

“Evening meditation:
Be still and know that I am God.
Be still and know that I am.
Be still and know.
Be still.
Be.”

— Fr. James Martin S.J.

I'm praying for you!

:)

“God’s presence is not the same as the feeling of God’s presence and He may be doing most for us when we think He is doing least.”

— C.S. Lewis

I'm praying for you!

:)