Who Cares?

On the Vortex today, Michael Voris put words to some vague thoughts I’d been letting drift through my mind the last few weeks.

Regarding the World Cup thing, he asked... “Who cares?”

Ha! I’m not a soccer fan, I’m not a World Cup fan…in fact, I’m not really a sports fan of any type. But I used to be. I was even a cheerleader in high school! (Now THERE’S a confession!)

Not that there’s anything wrong with being a sports fan, of course, as MV was quick to point out. But the world reveres sports in a way that we should reserve for God! I see this, too. Even in our own small community, sports is king. Parents will travel great distances to see their child play in a game, but they won’t go 50 miles to the next parish to attend a theological conference or a pro-life event or anything else to do with their faith.

MV points out that generally speaking, the people are not thinking so much about Heaven or Hell these days. They are not thinking about any heavenly matters. That’s reserved for Sunday (unless their child has an out-of-town game…). But the heavenly things matter all the time, and the sports matter not at all, in the big scheme of things.

Once I was at a rodeo, and before the event got underway, I cast my gaze around the stadium at all those people. I was struck by the fact that they all have a different story, they all had brought different “baggage” to the game that no one else could see, they all had their own spiritual journey, and they all were thinking something at that moment related to their personal lives. How many were thinking of God? I wondered. How many were even aware of the state of their souls? I felt like I was feeling the weight of their problems, and that I was feeling Our Lord’s sorrow that so many were not turning to him. The moment came and went very quickly, but the memory of it has lingered for years. I occasionally have the same experience in the grocery store.

This past week, I confronted a long-time friend about his failure to accept Catholicism (again! We’ve been having this conversation off and on for several years!). I get pretty intense when we talk about the truths of the faith, and I get frustrated when he refuses to listen to logic and reason. But we are still friends, and I hope he will be converted one day.

In the same time frame, I also confronted a new friend who has very traditional views of Catholicism, wants the EF Mass, and wants the truth to be told…but who thinks now that it would be better to make the switch over to the Orthodox church. “The one that’s in schism?” I asked her. And I added, “Friends don’t let friends go to hell!” Well, she took offense at that! But if she were truly accepting Catholic teaching, she would know why I said it, and she would see the truth in it. I am not sure if we are still friends or not, but I won’t change my tune or my tone just to appease her. I care about her soul!

And finally, during this past week, my daughter went to confession. I won’t say that I badgered her into it; she knew she needed to go, and she wanted to get it taken care of, but she didn’t quite feel the urgency about it that I did! She had to work on Saturday mornings a few weeks in a row, which conflicted with the confession time; she didn’t see the urgency in her situation that really demanded that she make an appointment with the priest in order to accommodate her schedule and to cleanse her soul! But she did finally make it, and I heaved a sigh of relief.

So I agree with MV. Those three things that occurred in my past week are the kinds of things that matter. The World Cup? Who cares! Time is short, I told my new friend who wants to leave the Church; that is why I am blunt. Some will hear, some will not, I guess. Maybe I should use more tact, but really, all I know how to do is to say truthfully what the Church teaches. Tact is not my charism!

Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me!

Chapel Changes

I posted a while back about giving my chapel a new coat of paint, and what a project that was! 

I made some other changes, too. First of all, the back wall of the chapel went from looking like this:

to this:

There has to be some sort of "cover" on the back wall because there is a rather unsightly door there, and in addition to being unsightly, it is not centered. I like the new look - clean and bright and uncluttered. Also the screen makes for better acoustics than the long draperies did.

The biggest and most wonderful change has been the recent addition of a tabernacle! I mean a real tabernacle instead of the little wooden collection box that was serving in that capacity before. I bought it on ebay, and I got it for an unbelievably excellent price. Here's the photo from ebay:

Now, to be perfectly clear, I do NOT have the Blessed Sacrament reserved in my chapel. Many years ago, I tried to convince the bishop to allow it, but I was unsuccessful. One problem is that a priest must come and say Mass to refresh the Blessed Sacrament quite frequently, and that is an issue where I live. And at this point, I would really want the priest to say the EF Mass, and that's become a pipe dream at this point. 

Nevertheless, I now have a suitable resting place for Our Lord, should He decide it is time for His Real Presence to abide in my little chapel. 

At first, I didn't know exactly how I would mount the tabernacle. Here it is in the initial stages:

 This is actually the second generation of the project. I had trouble finding a circular platform, and had another improvised arrangement. Then one day, as I doing chores in the house, my eye fell on our bar stools. I realized immediately that the seat was exactly the right diameter to hold the tabernacle. It was a simple matter to take the top off the stool and turn it into the platform for the tabernacle. I thought the brackets would be heavy-duty enough to support it, but there was still too much play with the weight of the tabernacle. I added the candlestick to keep it from dipping too low. That was only a temporary solution till I figured out something else.

The "something else" also came from ebay. It is a wall sconce/shelf. It finally arrived yesterday, and I got everything set up. But prior to that, I decided that I would veil the tabernacle even though the Blessed Sacrament was not reserved there. I figured the Lord would know I was really ready if I did that, and since I'm the only one here, no one will object to the veil. Here's one shot:

And here's the tabernacle, with a veil, mounted on the wall sconce (I will need to lengthen that veil!:

The sconce is actually just a "false front". It's not big enough to actually support the whole tabernacle. The bar stool/bracket arrangement remains in place, and the sconce takes over the job of supporting the outer edge of the platform. It's not pretty from "behind the scenes" but it will have to do for now!

I'm pretty happy with my little chapel, and I do believe Our Lord is pleased, too.

Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me.

Just Some Pretty Pictures

I resumed my morning walks a while back. I'm such a fair-weather walker...

At any rate, here are a few photos from those early mornings.

Here are a few from this time of the year at other places:

It is good to venture out into God's creation! 

Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me!

A Byzantine Adventure - Edited

Yesterday, a friend and I made an exploratory trip in search of a Ruthenian Rite (Catholic) Postenia, which I think is a term for a proto-monastery – a small community in the initial stages, but on its way to becoming a full-fledged monastery. But I’m not positive about that word!

I had heard about this little monastery from a priest friend who has spent some time there. Knowing that the monks had no internet presence, he gave me their physical address and phone number, and suggested I write or call and arrange a visit.  I did write, expecting an answer within a week or two…but I heard nothing.

That was months ago. But my friend and I decided to go and find the place anyway. Interestingly, we had never met face-to-face! We’ve been emailing for a couple of years or so, and we only live about a 3-hour drive apart, but had never arranged a face-to-face visit before. We met at the half-way point between our respective towns, and that “just happened” to be about a 30-minute drive from the “postenia” – according to Google maps. So off we went!

The monastery is in a rural area, just heading up into the mountains. Fortunately, there were quite a few properties with signs announcing their addresses, so we knew when we were in the right vicinity. We missed the monastery driveway on the first pass, though, and had to turn around and come back to it.

We pulled in, and saw no activity – no humans, but there were a couple of sheep and some chickens, as well as a very healthy-garden. We parked rather awkwardly behind two cars that were already there, since there really wasn’t much in the way of a parking lot.

There was a large house with a bright red front door, but there was no doorbell, and for some reason we decided knocking there wouldn’t do. Around the side of the building we saw a little bell rack – you couldn’t really call it a bell tower – with a couple of bells mounted on it.  And there was another door right there.

I am really a rather shy person, and having not met the monks, nor heard from them in response to my letter, I was hesitant to knock. But my friend wasn’t nearly as reticent, and when I said, “Should we knock?”, she said, “Sure, why not?” So I did – rather timidly.

There was some indication of activity behind the door, and after a few seconds, the door opened to reveal a gray-bearded monk. He smiled as I stammered out some sort of introduction, and then opened the door wider to invite us in.

“We’re just about to start the Divine Liturgy,” he said.

WOW!!! My friend and I were ecstatic! Who would have dreamed that we would show up announced – not even knowing if we would be able to find this place – just in time for the Divine Liturgy! Well…God knew, of course. But we were amazed. I asked if we could attend, and he said yes. We weren’t dressed for the occasion at all, but in we went.

[Edit/Addition:]Before the Liturgy began, the priest asked us where we were from. When I mentioned my city, he said, "I wrote to you!" I told him I had never received anything from him, and he said he had included some literature with his letter. God only knows where that envelope went on its journey through the postal system!

The monk provided us with books so we could follow along. Almost everything was in English, but it was all sung/chanted. There was plenty of incense, too!

After the Liturgy, the priest and the two brothers insisted that we come into their parlor and visit for a bit, and then they insisted that we stay for lunch. We had a wonderful time with them, and left with each of us carrying a large packet of literature about “Byzantine Christianity”.

And my friend and I felt like we’d known each other forever. Well, after all, there's nothing like going to Mass together to cement a friendship, eh?

Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me.

Souls Who Have Strayed Away

A number of years ago, my husband I taught RCIA. I was a pretty new Catholic myself then. If I knew then what I know now, RCIA would have been a whole lot different, and I probably would have been “fired” pretty quickly.

One young woman who came into the Church under our watch has been in my line of vision ever since then. She didn’t make it to every RCIA class, and she missed the important stuff about chastity and artificial contraception. Shortly after being received into the Church she informed me quite happily that she was living with her (also Catholic) boyfriend and was pregnant.

Well, eventually they did get married in the Church, and now she has two children, both of whom have been baptized. I brought up the contraception with her at one point (privately, of course) because of a public statement she made on Face Book, and she told me then that she wasn’t going to Mass because she didn’t agree with Church teaching in several areas.

Recently, this young woman’s father died, and she is devastated. I feel sad for her, not only because she has lost her father, but because she lacks the “tools” to deal with her grief – the faith that the Church teaches.  She thinks her non-Catholic father went straight to Heaven, so will she pray for the repose of his soul?! I doubt it. Her FB status today said, “When just a month has seemed like a lifetime, what is the rest of my life going to feel like??”

I want so badly to talk to her about eternity. She seems so completely tethered to the temporal sphere! Nothing she has said about her father’s death indicates any kind of Catholic understanding of death, judgment, Heaven, or Hell, let alone purgatory. There seems to be little or no comprehension about what “eternity” means, no comprehension of what it means to fight the good fight here on earth so that we can get to Heaven, no awareness of the salvific value of suffering.

Alas, she is unlikely to want to discuss these issues with me!

And, another alas – she is not the only one of our “converts” to stray from the fold.

Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me.

Spokes on a Wheel

I was driving along the highway, and started to think about the sorrow in the world. Mostly I was thinking of all the "little" sorrows in people's lives, not the huge tragedies and travesties that also abound. Everyone's life is full of sorrow...because this isn’t Heaven, after all!

But it made me sad anyway.

It seemed like I was seeing individual people, all of them isolated in their own little lives, thinking they know what others think of them (who loves them, who doesn't, etc.), but really not knowing – and not able to know, for the most part – the inner workings of even those they think they know best. And every now and then, they find out that these significant others don’t see them quite the way they think they do, and they are shocked and hurt. But then other people, looking at the shocked and hurt people, don't know the hurt that is there, don't see their inner workings.

 
What I’m trying to say, I think, is that even though we are the Body of Christ, we are not fully united here on earth because of our fallen human nature and our separation from God and from His will. It's a lonely place, and people are always looking for someone to be their companion, one way or another, aren't they? But Christ is the only perfect companion, and the perfection of that relationship will only be realized for us in Heaven... 

At least, that's how it seems to me. So when I see people “looking for love”, but failing to realize that their first love needs to be the Lord, I am saddened. I just see all those people...full of sorrow...but in some ways not even aware of the sadness of their lives. They don’t know how far they are from Christ, and they don’t know that the path to holiness – and therefore true happiness – lies with Him.

My spiritual director noted that the masters of the spiritual life all agree that, apart from Christ, we grow increasingly apart from one another, isolated in our own little worlds. Conversely, the more closely each of us conforms himself to Christ, the closer we come to one another; it’s like spokes on a wheel: are we approaching the rim, or the Hub?

Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me.

The Evil Among Us

The other day there was a news story about two 12-year-old girls who tried to stab their 12-year-old friend to death (I can hear my mother saying, “With friends like that, you don’t need enemies.”). They were doing it to please the “Slender Man” – a fictional figure who is depicted in drawings as having no face, and who apparently preys on children and adolescents. The girls believed he was real and that they would be able to go and live in his mansion in the woods.

Maybe it’s just me, but that has Satan’s name written all over it. Satan will kill our children one way or another; if not by abortion, then by other types of murder. Satan’s got mothers killing their unborn babies, mothers dumping their just-born babies into toilets and dumpsters, and now children attempting to kill children. Is the “Slender Man” real? Well, I would say probably not in the sense of a physical being we would call a man. But in the demonic realm…

Fr. Chad Ripperger has suggested that we are entering a time when our younger generations are seeing an increase in graces given to them by God. The flip side of that is that there is an increase of evil that those graces are meant to combat.  I think we will see (and are seeing) more and more of the weird evil things that used to remain hidden; they are slinking out of the darkness ever more boldly. For instance, yesterday, I saw a news story about a healthy cow that was apparently killed for no reason other than for the perpetrator to cut out the cow’s tongue and leave it. That may seem like it has no relation to a story about 12-year-old girls trying to murder their companion, but to my mind it does. People under satanic influence do a lot of weird things, especially to animals. No, I’ve never heard of a satanic practice of cutting a cow’s tongue out, but it’s just weird. And gruesome.

The sad thing is that so many people seem to fail to notice what is happening. My husband and I were talking about the steep decline of our society over the last few years. Of course, the decline has been in the making for some time, but in the last several years, it seems we are just about jumping off a cliff rather than sliding down a slippery slope. The slippery slope is behind us. We’re holding onto the edge of the cliff by a fragile root stuck in the ground.

The US bishops have put out a little 1-1/2 minute video encouraging everyone to pray and fast for “life, marriage, and religious liberty”.  Well, those are all good things to pray for, of course. But the bishops are forgetting that they have not properly trained the people as to what exactly those principles mean, and why they are important. Just as many Catholics are currently praying for gay “marriage” as are praying against it; many Catholics think social justice causes are more important than the abortion issue; and the vast majority of Catholics use artificial contraception. A friend described the bishops’ well-intended video exhortation as “the functional equivalent of using a Hostess Twinkie to combat a raging bull elephant”. It's almost as if they are just going through the motions, with no real conviction behind their words. I am starting to think that most people don't really know what it means to pray any more...it's all about good wishes and happy thoughts. (Of course, the bishops’ little ad does mention fasting and abstinence - credit where credit is due, I guess.)

Sigh.  

Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me.