Christian funerals, heaven and hell.

                                                                                                                                                                                                   
A great homily today, on heaven and hell, and on Christian funerals and praying for souls.

And so I am reminded of one of my old blog posts. Of which I will re-post  ...in part... Because we all need reminders.

" Since I moved to Sydney I have been to more funerals than ever. Funerals for people I have met through church; relatives of friends; fellow parishioners.

 I Corinthians 15:51-58 "Behold, I tell you a mystery. We shall all indeed rise again: but we shall not all be changed. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet: for the trumpet shall sound and the dead shall rise again incorruptible. And we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption: and this mortal must put on immortality. And when this mortal hath put on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy victory? O death, where is thy sting? Now the sting of death is sin: and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who hath given us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye steadfast and unmoveable: always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your labour is not in vain in the Lord."


Some of these have been solemn funerals, beautiful if one can call a Requiem Mass beautiful. Sad but reverent and prayerful, remembering the dead, remembering to pray for the dead. With the priest using this opportunity to catechise the faithful on the Church's teaching on repentance, purgatory, heaven.

 After a recent funeral, a funeral that I attended with my youngest two still homeschooling sons, a funeral at which one son served, well, while eating a late lunch at a coffee shop, we talked about funerals. About praying for the dead. And we made up little verbal lists of things we don't want at our funerals. No power points, no eulogies, no modern music, no platitudes, no slide show...just the requiem mass, please.

 My kids laughed and I laughed. But we all got the point.

 The thing to remember is that, at funerals, we are not celebrating life and loves, we are praying for a soul; our relationship with our dead Christian loved ones isn't dissolved by death; we pray for our dead in case they are in Purgatory for a while, and we ask them to pray for us.

 If anyone wants to eulogize the dead, the Vigil or, especially, the after-burial gathering are the times to do it; eulogies really are not allowed at a traditional Requiem Mass.

 This seems to anger some people but eulogies in a church often lead to serious problems. Really. I mean... the word, "eulogy," means "high praise" -- but what if the deceased wasn't so holy and wonderful and especially wasn't repentant? Should we speak the truth of the dead by speaking ill ( not a good idea, I guess, at such an emotional time) , or should we lie, in a church, for the sake of politeness and decorum? I am not a puritan when it comes to lying in general and outside a church service..a little white lie is sometimes, almost, a god-send. But lying in church? Glossing over sins? And encouraging a theologically incorrect thought.. with typical words that imply that the person is most definitely, without a doubt in Heaven, right now, even though we know that may not be the case..not that we judge the state of another's soul ... Eulogizers are often theologically incorrect , saying things that are simply not consistent with Catholic doctrine or that can lead the congregation to believe that Purgatory and Hell do not exist.

 And, to be honest, eulogies are often quite personal , personal and weird, with the deceased having requested in life that pop music be played , and similar things, things that are best left for the intimacy of a wake or post-burial gathering. Not to be present in the liturgy, for the public worship and an act of the Church.

 Ultimately, of course, how can we give "high praise" to an unglorified human being when, in a church, we are in the presence of the glory of the Blessed Sacrament?

 A traditional Catholic funeral consists of three main parts: the Vigil ,the Requiem Mass, and the Burial ...and then, perhaps, informal after-burial gatherings. The kids and I have decided that we would prefer sticking to this traditional formula, for our funerals. Sounds morbid but actually it was a good discussion, over steak burgers and chicken and avocado sandwiches.

 Better to talk about these things now, of heaven and earth and hell, than to tuck the topics away until later..a later that may be too late.

 Better to talk about liturgy and Church teaching than to hope that such things are picked up by osmosis."

Fast Food and Holy Mass - A re-post.

I originally posted this in 2010.


And a friend asked me to re-post it. Today. 


Apparently liturgies are not much better in her parish...




Have you ever eaten a meal at McDonalds? Come on, 'fess up!

I have. Today actually.

And what do I find? Well, at first, I ate the pancakes with Vegemite because I was physically hungry after mass and a workout. And they tasted good. And then I ate the hash brown because I was feeling sad and food helps.

And then, that pleasantly satiated feeling moved to a queasy stomach feeling.

And, later, I felt hungry again. For real food. A piece of fruit. Some pasta. Anything that would fill that emptiness.

That emptiness caused by the fast food...too many calories in too short a time, fast food that fills you up, temporarily. But doesn't feed you, satisfy you, sustain you...it leaves you wanting more.

Leaves you searching for something else. Something more real.

And it occurred to me that this was an answer to a question I heard yesterday.

The question was asked over morning tea. The others present had been to morning mass in their parish. And talked with surprise at how the innovations to the mass that their new parish priest had instituted had not brought more people to mass.

These ladies had been all in favour of liturgical dance in mass, giving out pens; handing out baptismal certificates as part of mass for all the children baptised that month; having children receiving the sacraments this year wearing a stole so they are noticed and feel important, and having a commitment card signed each Sunday...to get the families to mass.

Yet, no-one turned up to mass to receive their certificates. They had their babies baptised. They had been to mass and to the classes. They weren't interested in being forced to come to mass again, forced to be part of a false man constructed community just to receive the certificates.

Mass maybe was not that important to them. Or perhaps the false community building and false enforcement irked. (It would irk me).

The co-ordinator (a woman of course - God forbid that we have priests make announcements) apparently read out the myriad of names. Welcomed everyone to the community. Everyone who...was not there. Everyone who did not attend, do not attend mass, that is.

And then , at our discussion, the ladies said they were flabbergasted . 'You were right", they said.. "Getting kids to have a commitment card signed doesn't bring them to weekly mass as we thought. They just tick the box" .

"Why?" I asked, however. ( Why was I suddenly right?)

After mass, one woman said that she saw a family pull into the church car park of their parish. Mum and daughter got out, dad turned the car around in the car park. Daughter was wearing the purple stole, showing she was one of the candidates for first Holy Communion later this year. Mum and daughter ran up to the priest, who was chatting to people after mass ...and they had their commitment card signed. To say that daughter had been to weekly Sunday mass. They promptly ran back to the car and left. Without attending mass.

The priest signed the card - how was he to know, in a very large parish,. who had or had not been to mass? Although he was the priest who instituted this signing of cards in the parish, saying it had been a great success in his last parish. A great success in collecting signatures?

And so, these ladies , over a cup of coffee at Gloria Jeans, told me I was right when I said that we don 't get people to come to mass by making them tick boxes. They tick their boxes while they have to and then they leave.

The ladies asked - "How do we get these people to mass? How do we make mass more interesting?"

To be honest, I think that question is part of the problem.

We are not fast food purveyors, needing to change and add innovations to our menu and market ourselves. Our parishes are the Church. Christ's bride.

And sadly, sometimes in these people's parish, and in many parishes, this fact appears to have been forgotten. Instead, the people are fed junk food, with me-centred liturgies and banal homilies and modern, pop culture hymns ( although we have a hoard of centuries of sacred music from which to pull hymns...but that is another post) ...and people leave, barely fed, certainly not sustained, still searching for real food.

The very sad thing is, we have the real food. We have the Eucharist, the Real Presence. Yet, in some parishes , the Eucharist is not the main focus, God is not the main focus of the mass....in many parishes, the homily is no more than an Oprah-style monologue , the focus is the priest and the lay people at the altar, the jokes, the laughter, the schmaltz ( "Wasn't it lovely when Fr told that story about the baby? There wasn't a dry eye in the house???".....I'm sorry, dear, but I can have a good cry over an excellent romantic comedy and I get better music, too).

People come to mass, many times, searching or struggling. Perhaps it was a struggle to get there, to get the baby ready, to rush there before work. Perhaps, in their busy lives they are looking for some solace. They come with their joys. They come with their sorrows. They come with their hassles.

They are looking for something more. They are fulfilling a Sunday obligation.

Astonishingly they come, in spite of the liturgy that, in the parish my friends discussed, is often trivialized and banal...akin to a sad re-run of bad sit-coms. It is stultifying. It is uninspiring.

It is even capable of sapping your faith.

Just as a diet of junk food fails, ultimately, to feed us well, to meet all our nutritional needs, to develop our palates and help us discern flavours and textures..so, a diet of brain zapping, me centred, almost anything goes liturgy fails to satisfy. The focus becomes less on God and the Sacrament of the Eucharist and more on me, on you, the priest, on innovations, on being relevant...and, in trying to catch up with popular culture and in trying to force community, it fails.

Fails us by not creating real community, built on love of God and neighbour and natural bonds. Fails us by not being as good at pop culture as the rest of the world ( I last heard that song, Morning Has Broken, in the 70s and it was played much better then. By Cat Stevens. You know?) .

Fails us by not reminding us of Whom it it that we receive and why He died for us and why we receive Him and why we should go to mass.

Ultimately, the fast food, junk food mentality of many liturgies in this day and age, in our Western culture, leaves us wanting.

And this is why people don t go to mass. Well, one of the reasons. Why drag yourself out of bed to face banalities and a priest in polyester vestments telling the same jokes over and over again ( "I've heard the peanut one three times now, Fr" ), why listen to popular music , why hear what Dr Phil has to say from the mouth of that laywoman . Why push yourself to get to mass to hear talk back radio sentiments from the priest...unless we really, truly, believe that Jesus is present on our altars.

He is.

But not many know that any more, as that speck of the Eucharist on the altar has become just that..a speck, hardly noticed in the general hoo-ha of the happy, clappy banal liturgy.

So, they don't come to mass. Unless they have to.

How, then, do we get people to go to mass?

Not by jokes.

Not by making them come to receive certificates.

Not by having cups of tea after every mass, every week ..

Not by making them have commitment cards signed.

Not even by having multicultural processions.

But by prayerful liturgies. By offering something different to that which the world offers - silence, reverence, prayer, good music, adoration of God. Answers. Sacraments.

By following the rubrics carefully, for heaven's sake. So people know, without a doubt, that Jesus is present under the appearance of bread and wine. That He died for our sins, so we might receive eternal life. That He is there to heal wounds, to love, to forgive sins.

We get people to mass by prayer and education.

By being counter-cultural.

By being what we are..

The Church. Christ's bride. The Truth. Love.

We get people to church by being the Church and not impressing them with our egos ( me, me, it's all about me!).

This morning I went to mass. I prayed at mass. A reverent, solemn mass for the feast today, St Francis of Assisi. Careful attention paid to the rubrics. Careful attention paid to the liturgical arts. Gold vestments. Great homily on St Francis, and on his love and obedience. On Christ's humanity.

With the focus of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, on Jesus coming to us, on the altar, under the appearance of bread and wine.

Reading the words of St Paul to the Galations in my missal, I thought of this mass and the mass described to me yesterday.

One glories in Our Lord; one, sadly, almost glories in man.

But far be it from me to glory except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. 
For neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation. 
Peace and mercy be upon all who walk by this rule, upon the Israel of God. 
Henceforth let no man trouble me; for I bear on my body the marks of Jesus. 
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit, brethren. Amen Galations 6:14-18
To my mind, people need masses that speak to the whys of life (glorifying in the cross) and they are tired of more fast food , in their masses..and in their diets.

A letter to a parish priest

Dear Father,


I respect the priesthood.. I respect Holy Mass. I respect freedom of speech. I like jokes, even off colour jokes, as much as the next person.

Just not in Mass.


No, not even at the end before the final blessing.


And as if jokes aren't bad enough, distracting us from the liturgy, off colour jokes about nuns and the human body are really distracting.


It does not lift our minds and hearts towards God to hear a joke in mass about a nun lifting a fig leaf to look at you-know-what.


It is inappropriate. It demeans religious. It demeans Holy Mass. It makes a mockery of the term custody of the eyes. It may even make the expression of curiousity seem justified to that thirteen year old boy searching the internet and finding a porn site. 


Please.


Just stick to the final blessing. A smile and a thank you.


Leave the off colour jokes to a different setting.


In charity, I thank you.

They don't wear rose vestments any more?

In a parish I attended on Laetare Sunday ( mid Lent, rejoice!) the commentator read at the start of Holy Mass.."Today is what used to be called Laetare Sunday. In days gone past, priests would wear rose coloured vestments ." 


Really? In days gone past?

Then someone better explain that to our Cardinal, Cardinal Pell, celebrating Holy Mass  last week on Laetare Sunday, at the installation of a new parish priest. 

They don't wear rose vestments anymore?

O Good and Faithful Servant

We read in Scripture of the blessing of the good and faithful servant.

So why don't we reward or bless the good and faithful servant in practice, in our lives or communities and yes, even in our parishes and dioceses?

A lot of coverage is given to those amazing conversion stories, to those fantastic testimonies, the Johnny Come Lately who allegedly rose from the ashes.

Very little coverage is given to those faithful, tireless workers, lay people and priests, who serve well, day in and day out, who are fulfilling their vocations with patience and diligence and prayer. Who may not have stories of riches from adversity but who do have stories of faithfulness.

In a society where faithfulness is often decried, where the spectacular is raised on a pedestal and the ordinary is ignored, where wives are encouraged to leave loveless marriages, where people are encouraged to live for the now, who knows what tomorrow may bring, to have fun, to put themselves first, in this society we need examples of faithfulness put before us.

We need the stories of the faithful parish priest, celebrating mass, hearing confession, listening to parishioners, praying, teaching catechism...so that wife in despair can see why faithfulness to her vocation is important, too. So that the parent tied down to a mortgage and a job sees the value of faithfulness to their vocation.

Ordinary people living ordinary lives need to see how faithfulness is a blessing, a reward, a virtue.

They need to see not only the story of the poor boy turned priest or bad boy turned priest, but also the story of the good and faithful shepherd, leading an ordinary life in an extraordinary fashion, with faith and with faithfulness.

Catechesis

Absolute quiet.


Peace.


Everyone facing one way.


Priest.
Deacon.

Servers.
The faithful.


We all prayed in sacred silence at the consecration and elevation during Holy Mass.


In adoration.


It was all about Our Lord.


And so I prayed at Mass  on Candlemas.


In direct contrast to a conversation awhile back. wherein a friend mentioned that we needed the children to perform liturgical dance in a mass that was being planned, so the "children would feel special and that it's all about them."


But it's not. I'ts not all about them. Or us. 


It's about God.


And in our busy, entertainment oriented world, how nice it is for children to be given a sacred space, a quiet place, a place to learn that they are special, with God, in adoration of God. . 


How important, too, for catechesis. 


The  sacred liturgy, the formal worship of God the Father, through the Son and in the Holy Spirit, is indeed "the privileged place for catechizing the people of God." (CCC 1074)

To ad lib....

To ad lib.

To add our own words, our own thoughts, to an occasion.


The ability to ad lib can be considered good, when one is a situation that requires us to wing it.. When a mishap occurs during a presentation, when I have to explain a little further in one of my public talks or presentations.


But even then I have to be careful that my ad libbing stays on topic, is relevant even if amusing, is not self indulgent patter but has a purpose. I am not there to deviate from the set topic.


And so, just as there are limitations to ad lib commentary in my public speaking, how much more are there limitations to ad lib commentary in Holy Mass?


You know where I am going with this.


The new translation of the missal is very clear... The priest says this. The priest says that. The rubrics do not say that one can say words of similar meaning or what one thinks is of similar effect .


It is annoying to have a priest ad lib throughout mass. To add his own words prior to and post the consecration. Even well meaning words.


No, it is more than annoying. It leads to liturgical problems, to pave the way for other priests to administer what constitutes liturgical abuse, to misguided words that can be misinterpreted and that can thus lead to misunderstandings of the faith on the part of the faithful. It can lead to something akin to heresy.


And it's downright banal and trivial and to be honest, a pain to sit through ad lib comments ad infinitum in mass, when you are trying to pray and to worship, as an individual and as part of a community.


"Liturgy is never anyone's private property, be it of the celebrant or of the community in which the mysteries are celebrated.... Priests who faithfully celebrate Mass according to the liturgical norms, and communities which conform to those norms, quietly but eloquently demonstrate their love for the Church". ( Ecclesia Eucharistia (52), Pope John Paul II )

Learning from St Agnes

"Today is the birthday of a virgin, let is imitate her purity." (St Ambrose on St Agnes)

I read the Office of Readings on my bus trip last Saturday.

And I wondered what it is that I, a married woman, a wife, teacher and mother, can learn from St Agnes.

I think the Church venerates the saints for us, not that we become discouraged by the distance we see between their virtuous lives and our own life of mundane struggles.

But that we are uplifted by the lives of sanctity,  of hope, of faith. 

Even in times of turmoil, of fear, of temptation.

St Ambrose wrote of the trembling and hesitation and yes, even awe on the part of the executioner, he who was given the task of executing  St Agnes, aged twelve or so. 

This is the trembling and hesitation and awe we can feel when we read of the saints.. Trembling at the thought of living an extraordinary life, hesitation at the thought of living our ordinary lives extraordinarily, awe and wonder in our faith and worship.

What can we learn from St Agnes? This faith, this awe, this trembling.

And this is why the Church reminds us of the saints 

To give us mentors and encouragement. To inspire awe and virtue.

Contemplation

Contemplation

What is the role of contemplation in the life of a layperson?

It is both interior and active.

What do I mean?

There is a point in St  Bonaventure's Itinerarium that describes this contemplative life. And I  think it applies comfortably to the lives of we laity, praying and living in the world, so to speak. 

St Bonaventure discusses a moment when he was praying at the spot where St Francis of Assisi received the stigmata.  St Bonaventure saw the significance of this event in the light of humanity, of the world, of the history of the Church.  At this spot, at the point of receiving the stigmata, says St Bonaventure, "...Saint Francis passed over into God ( in Deum transit) in the ecstasy (excessus) of contemplation and thus he was set up as an example of perfect contemplation just as he had previously been an example of perfection in the active life in order that God, through him, might draw all truly spiritual men to this kind of passing over ( transitus) and  ecstasy, less by word than by example." (Itinerarium)

This is  what Thomas Merton calls  the "only one vocation". 

Wherein we are called to an interior life, to prayer, to prayerand work, to a relationship with our Creator. And then to share, pass on, the fruits of contemplation, His Love, to others. Be they our children, our family, our spouses, our friends, fellow parishioners, our work colleagues, our neighbours.

We may do this  imperfectly.  God knows I do.

We are called, in the words of Merton, " to become fused into one spirit with Christ in the furnace of contemplation and then go forth and cast upon the earth that same fire which Christ wills to see enkindled." ( The Seven Storey Mountain)

Praying the Divine Office

"I did not even reflect how the Breviary, the Canonical Office, was the most powerful and effective prayer I could have possibly chosen , since it is the prayer of the whole Church, and concentrates in itself all the power of the Church's impetration, centered around the infinitely  mighty Sacrifice of the Mass - the jewel of which the rest of the Liturgy is the setting: the soul which is the life of the whole Liturgy and of all the Sacramentals. ....

Yes, and from the secret places of His essence, God began to fill my soul with grace in those days, grace that sprung from deep within me, I could not know how or where. But yet I would be able, after not so many months, to realize what was there, in the peace and the strength that were growing in me through my constant immersion in this tremendous, unending cycle of prayer, ever renewing its vitality, it's inexhaustible, sweet energies, from hour to hour, from season to season in its returning round. And I, drawn into that Atmosphere, into that deep, vast universal movement of vitalizing prayer, which is Christ praying in men to His Father, could not help but being at last to live, and to know that I was alive."

I want to write like Thomas Merton.. Taken from his Seven Storey Mountain, this so vey eloquently describes my experience of praying the Divine Office  these last eighteen months or so.

The seasons change, I move from chilly icy winter mornings before work to warm and  snug summer evenings, from a snatched prayer in my bedroom to quiet prayer in a church, to praying the Office relaxing on the green  sofa. 

And the time passes I feel the daily prayers, joining with the mind of the Church, the prayer if the Church, praying with others praying the Office throughout the world. I feel it. I mentally comprehend it. My soul stirs.  My heart softens . And I let down those little barriers. The ones I build to protect myself, to stop being vulnerable to hurt. As if those barriers are always a good thing. 

These fences come down. Bit by bit, as I pray the Office, the Psalms, as I ponder the Readings.

Of course, my daily life happens. And the little walls start building again, to protect myself and to protect others. 

But I come back each morning, each night, to the Divine Office. And the scales, the walls, the fences, the barriers, are removed once again.

And that's why a mother should pray the Office. Even if prayed imperfectly. 

For the chance to know and adore God and to know and love others and to know  herself. 

For His Grace in her every day, never stopping life. 

Sleeping for a week!

"I'm not so far gone that I can't grasp there has to be more to life than forging pastries at midnight. And tiredness. Deep-sea diver tiredness, voyage to the bottom of fatigue tiredness.." ..from "I Don't Know How She Does It" by Allison Pearson.

I think mothers all know this type of tiredness.

And homeschooling mothers perhaps more so.

And working mothers.

And homeschooling working mothers...

What keeps us going?

Vision.

And prayer.

And a prayerful vision of our role and meaning in life.

To know, love and serve God. In our vocations as women...

"The intrinsic value of woman consists essentially in exceptional receptivity for God's work in the soul, and this value comes to unalloyed development if we abandon ourselves confidently and unresistingly to this work." .. From Woman by St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein)

I attended a retreat for women today.

And the result? I felt like I had slept for a week. Refreshed.

Me. She who lives in an almost constant state of tiredness.

The Sisters of Life spoke of living the freedom of the feminine heart.

In the words of Sister Mariae Agnus Dei... Receptivity, sensitivity, generosity.

Freedom for and not freedom from.

"If you are what you should be, then you will set the world on fire." St Catherine of Sienna.

Not striving to meet someone else's standards , not forging pies at midnight, not forging anything, really, but living true to our vocation and our dignity.

This is what keeps us going. We give and we receive. We receive and we give.

We love because we are loved.

And we mother as we were mothered, as we wish we were mothered, as Our Lady mothers us.

"Everywhere the need exists for maternal sympathy and help, and thus we are able to recapitulate in the one word motherliness that which we have developed as the characteristic value of woman. Only, the motherliness must be that which does not remain within the narrow circle of blood relations or of personal friends; but in accordance with the model of the Mother of Mercy, it must have its root in universal divine love for all who are there, belabored and burdened."... Woman by St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross

Ecclesiastical Alzheimer's

Ecclesiastical Alzheimer's.

You know what I'm talking about.

Those people, yes clergy included, who deride the "Church of the past" .

As if there were two Churches..pre and post Vatican II.

As if there was no discussion by the Holy Father on the hermeneutic of continuity...or do these people even read Church documents?

As if everything was bad in the past...priest not facing the people? Gasp! No participation! People left Holy Mass as soon as they could after Holy Communjon as it was all meaningless to them. To quote some comments recently made in my presence. By those who should know better.

Yeah, right.

It seems these people have suffered a memory loss. Or a comprehension loss. They forget about the strong faith of laity in our past, praying with the priest, all facing Our Lord and not each other. They forget about Catholic sodalities and the active participation of the laity in Holy Mass, in the life of the Church, in bringing Catholic, Christian thought to the world.

They look at the Church through self fashioned glasses..fashioned by their own ideas of church, by historicism and not history itself or education or reading with the mind of the Church.

The cure for ecclesiastical Alzheimer's?

Might I suggest reading...reading about liturgy...starting with The Spirit of the Liturgy by our Holy Father, then Cardinal Ratzinger..

The Christian faith can never be separated from the soil of sacred events, from the choice made by God, who wanted to speak to us, to become man, to die and rise again, in a particular place and at a particular time. “Always” can only come from “once for all”. The Church does not pray in some kind of mythical omnitemporality. She cannot forsake her roots. She recognizes the true utterance of God precisely in the concreteness of its history, in time and place: to these God ties us, and by these we are all tied together. The diachronic aspect, praying with the Fathers and the apostles, is part of what we mean by rite, but it also in­cludes a local aspect, extending from Jerusalem to Antioch, Rome, Alexandria, and Constantinople. Rites are not, therefore, just the products of inculturation, how­ever much they may have incorporated elements from different cultures. They are forms of the apostolic Tradition and of its unfolding in the great places of the Tradition.  [The Spirit of the Liturgy, (SF, CA: Ignatius, 2000), p. 164]

The Twenty-four Days Before Christmas

"Everybody in the Austin family is excited on the first day of December because every day for twenty-four days they will do something special to prepare for the twenty-fifth day, Christmas Day, the most joyful day in the whole year."

And so begins The Twenty-four Days Before Christmas by Madeleine L'engle.

I read an old copy of this book as child ( it was published in 1964) and the memories of Mother and her Advent preparations, her Advent activities, stayed with me.

When I became a mother myself, I had a vision for Advent already in mind. Preparing as a family for Christmas. Making and pulling out an Advent calendar. Making cookies. Assembling a crèche or nativity scene. Crafts. Cooking. Carols. Books. Music.

And prayers and masses and movies,  in a modern Catholic family twist.

There is a danger, however, that Advent can become yet another time of busy-ness. Of being task oriented. Of endless to do lists.

"Advent, John could tell you, is the name for the four weeks of preparation and thought that lead up to Christmas day."

Preparation and thought. Not necessarily frantic activity and compulsion to do everything that Mrs Austin, Mother in the book, does.

"The kitchen is a big wandery room that turns corners and as kinds of unexpected nooks and crannies. In the dining room end a fire is crackling merrily, and the smell of applewood mingles with the smell of pancakes and maple syrup, and hot chocolate with marshmallows."

In our current house, our kitchen opens onto our dining area, it is light and symmetrical. The teens woke this morning to freshly made pikelets, tea in my variety of cute and fanciful teapots and our basket of Advent books. We lit the first candle in the Advent wreath.

So, yes, I do the Mrs Austin-ish Advent things. Well, some of them. Well, my own version.

But ultimately I know that Advent preparation and thought and prayer should be interior as well as exterior...Holy Mass, the Novena for the Immaculate Conception, the sacrament of penance, the rosary.

Being faithful.

Even if we don't do all the Advent activities, the crafts, the cooking, the books...

We prepare and think and pray.

We find that star, the Light of Christ, in our faithfulness . In His Love.

"One star is brighter and more sparkling than any of the others. 'The Christmas star,' Vicky whispers. Its light seems to shine right down into her heart."

Tradition

"Sacred Scripture is the speech of God as it is put down in writing under the breath of the Holy Spirit...And [Holy] Tradition transmits in its entirety the Word of God which has been entrusted to the apostles by Christ the Lord and the Holy Spirit. It transmits it to the successors of the apostles so that, enlightened by the Spirit of truth, they may faithfully preserve, expound and spread it abroad by their preaching." Catechism of the Catholic Church 81.

"What earlier generations held as sacred, remains sacred and great for us too, and it cannot be all of a sudden entirely forbidden or even considered harmful. It behooves all of us to preserve the riches which have developed in the Church’s faith and prayer, and to give them their proper place." Pope Benedict XVI, Letter to the Bishops that accompanied the Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum

This is an example of our understanding, as Catholics, of Tradition.

Now contrast this with a parish reflection on the parable of the employer, the three servants, the talents. " This (parable) is a criticism of religious tradition. ...In our Church today, there are people who do not want to change anything, who want to go back to the old way of doing things. The want to bury the Spirit of God in the napkin of Tradition."

Mm. I don't think that our Holy Father would agree. We are to hold sacred that which earlier generations held as sacred. This is not a refusal to change at whim but an obedience to the Church, who has authority to change discipline but who has also respect for our heritage.

We do not bury talents in Tradition..we follow the Church, we respect what has gone before us, we build our talents, our faith, in obedience to Church teaching. Not in obedience to a subjective spirit of the law. An obedience to to the Church, to Tradition, and with a prayerful respect of those little traditions, too.

That October Challenge!

"I had at last become a true child of the modern world,completely tangled up in petty and useless concerns with myself.." Thomas Merton, in The Seven Storey Mountain.

And so I consider these words as I continue with my October Challenge. I want to be healthier and fitter, and lets face it , look better .... I want it all... Fitness and holiness, without concern for self.

Can the two mesh together?

And is this a dilemma of the modern age?

It has cast a new slant on my October Challenge.

As Merton before me, I could be in danger of .."worrying about a lot of imaginary rules of health, standards of food value...."

My October Challenge is attempting to eat with some balance...not often achieved but those days that I do are glorious. And I note that these days are more often weekends, days that are busy and full but without my crazy work schedules.

My fitness has been that walking/jogging rotation...and I am loving it! I am singing, I am walking and jogging and dancing and I am enjoying not feeling so worn out after a workout...you know, when I am often busy and sleep deprived, adding a push myself to my limits workout can be fun..but exhausting. Walking and jogging every day, with a little bit of strength training, makes me feel less tired right now...and it's great to do cardio every day...great fun and good for health and body...and mind ( those prayers while working out). And I can push myself and feel worked out, nicely tired...not I-can't-make-it-up-the-stairs tired.

One more week of the October Challenge to go!

Duty and Love

"Falling in love while I was still a nun complicated things and helped me think about myself in a different way" Mary Johnson, in "An Unquenchable Thirst."


Mary Johnson describes her life as a nun...and her falling in love with someone other than God...and her surprise at this. And yes, this "falling in love" was one of the reasons she left her religious order.


Yet we shouldn't be surprised by falling in love. If we love God, when we feel His Love for us, then we love even more..we love Him more and our capacity for love of others is heightened.


This is not a romantic love but a selfless love. 

Fr James Martin, in his book of his priestly vocation,  In Good Company,  writes of celibacy and chastity...As a Jesuit, he discusses his vows of chastity, poverty, obedience and says " ...even chastity does not preclude one from falling into love..Falling in love and being in love are both gifts from God. Its a question of what you do....A chaste person tries, like Jesus did, to love as many people as possible."


I think the same could be said of those of us in the vocation of marriage...we love our spouses, we love our children and we also love others. First we are loved by God, then we love others. 


It has  taken that awhile to dawn on me...


Where am I going with this? 


A son and I discussed love and duty. How the two are intertwined. We love . Sometimes we act solely out of Love. Sometimes we act because we feel loved, and we feel His Love. And sometimes we act out of duty.


We act regardless of falling in or falling out of love. 


As Fr Martin says...it's a question of what we do. 

"Our Lord has created persons for all states in life, and in all of them we see people who who achieved sanctity by fulfilling their obligations well." St Anthony Mary Claret

There hasn't been a lot of talk lately about duty..we talk instead of love, of doing things out of love. 

I find the two go hand in hand..we live and act out of love and out of duty.

Duty need not be negative..it can be a result of love, it can lead to love or to enhancing love. 

Love and duty keep our lives in order..I love and I do what I ought. 

The Catechism of the Catholic Church reminds us of this positive bent...the 'commandment is expressed in positive terms of duties to be fulfilled.' (2198)


Positive duties. 

Dead people as friends...St Teresa of Avila

"The highest perfection consists not in interior favours or in great rapture, but in bringing of our wills so closely into conformity with the will of God that as soon as we realize that He wills anything, we desire it ourselves with all our might."

St Teresa is one of my "mentor" saints. I read her writings, I look to her for inspiration.

She is my friend.

Yes, dead people as friends...read my post here.

I think St Teresa may be horrified at parts of who I am, a modern techi-devoted, Singstar and workout devoted,  working and homeschooling, wife and mother...but I like to think we would share the same sense of humour, sense of duty, love for our Faith, love for God.

And so we cooked a Spanish flavoured dinner for St Teresa's feast day, October 12. I shared the recipes in my regular food- for -the -liturgical -year "column" on the Australian Catholic Families blog.

Pope Benedict XVI wrote that St Teresa had a " a profound and articulate spirituality" and reminds us to emulate St Teresa, in  seeking God's friendship every day, in prayer...for time spent in prayer is not time wasted. ( Blog of the MI Australia).

What are we cooking today, Mum?

We cook our way through the liturgical year.

I change our dining table centerpiece to reflect the liturgical year.

This week, we have had a statue of St Michael the archangel on the dining table. Our saints book open for the day. The Dhouay Rheims Bible for St Jerome. The Story of a Soul for St Therese of Lisieux. Today a statue of St Francis.

And our ongoing feature for this month, the month of the Holy Rosary, is a statue of Our Lady, some rosary beads and a missal open to the indulgenced prayer to St Joseph for the month of October.

This week, we have made Devil's Food Cake for the Archangels, quiche for St Vincent de Paul, my grandmother's toffee for St Jerome, a strawberries and cream cake for both St Therese and for the guardian angles...and today for St Framcis?

Well, check out my post on the ACF blog.... Cooking for the Feast of St Francis.

Why Ms Keneally is wrong...Love and Responsibility

Kristina Keneally, former premier of New South Wales, a self professing Catholic politician, writes a piece on Why I Support Gay Marriages.

Now, I could refute her article on many terms...Church teaching, dissidence, informed conscience, sacramentality of marriage, importance of marriage laws for the protection of women and of children, fallacious and emotive argument ....I will, however, restrict myself, to one of the many inaccuracies contained in her argument.

"....homosexual acts are preferable to living a life where one can never give expression to one's sexuality."

Oh dear. Herein lies the inaccuracy. That expression of sexuality relies solely on the sexual act itself.

This is a purely a utilitarian point of view of sexuality.

The sexual urge...is a natural drive born in all human beings, a

vector of aspiration along which their whole existence develops

e for enjoyment this inner life of the person

and perfects itself from within... If...the sexual urge is understood

as...a drive for enjoyment this inner life of the person

is almost totally negated... The sexual urge in man is a fact

which he must...welcome as a source of natural energy. Pope John Paul II,Love and Responsibility

The sexual urge, our sexuality, is not to be used ..for us or for others. It is a gift from God. It is expressed in our love for others, our natural creative energy, our passions...and not only strictly in a physical sense.

I can be chaste and yet still express my sexuality..by my life, my creativity, my

vocation, my love.

Love between persons...must possess a clear-cut objective

purpose... Man’s capacity for love depends on his willingness

consciously to seek a good together with others... From the

desire for the ‘unlimited’ good of another ‘I’ springs the whole

creative drive of true love. Ibid

Man's creativity is often fueled by love. not by requiring a physical sexual union or by a burying of love nor by a lack of expression of sexuality.

If we limit the expression of our sexuality to the physical act of sex, we miss out on the fullness of our expression of humanity, our passions, we deny whole sections of our sexuality and creativity .....simply in order to reduce human sexuality to a mere physical act.

Even if we never experience the physical act of sexuality, we still experience our sexuality, we still express it, in our love and actions, for the greater good.

The dignity of the person demands control of concupiscence. If

the person does not exercise such control it...allows an

inferior...part of itself to enjoy freedom of action, and indeed

subjects itself to this lesser self... Control of concupiscence has

as its objective not only the perfection of the person who attempts

to achieve it, but also the realization of love in the world of persons. Ibid

This is the danger of this part of Keneally's argument , that one cannot live a full life without expressing one's sexuality via open acts of sexual union, via changing marriage laws to adapt to a person's desires and not for the good of society. Her statement reduces sexual orientation and sexuality to one element alone..the physical sense..and this denies the ultimate good of individuals and of society. This denies love itself. Love which means thinking of another, not having to express sexuality on our own terms, not having to form society to fit my desires, my carnal desires, my concupiscence.

Only the chaste..are capable of true love...

Chastity frees their association...from

that tendency to use a person which

is...incompatible with ‘loving kindness’...

The essence of chastity

consists in quickness to affirm the

value of the person in every situation...

Chastity...does involve a certain

humility of the body. Ibid

We can express our sexuality in our chastity, in affirming the value of ourselves and of others.

Ms Keneally, with her degree in theology, needs to read Love and Responsibility. And the Catechism of the Catholic Church. With logic and reasoning. And prayer and love.

.

Transcendent in awe.

One of the feast days this week was that of St John Chrysostom.

Pope Benedict XVI, in 2007, on the anniversary of the saint's death, wrote of St John and the Divine Liturgy.

"St John understood that the Divine Liturgy situated the believer spiritually between his life on earth and the heavenly reality which was promised to him by the Lord.....

These sacred rites, says St John, ?are not only marvelous to behold, but transcendent in awe. There stands the priest ... bringing down the Holy Spirit, and he prays at length ... that grace descending on the sacrifice may thereby enlighten the minds of all and render them more resplendent than silver purified by fire.""

Transcendent. Between heaven and earth. Out of the ordinary experience. Exceptional.

Not lacklustre liturgy.

Not banal trite catechism for children and adults.

But a chance to bridge that gap between the ordinary and the sacred.

To enlighten minds and souls.

In liturgy. And in our teaching.

You could have heard a pin drop in catechism class this week when we talked about the Mass, when we looked at sacred vessels, at crystal cruets, at polished bells. A ripple of a sigh, of awe, at the beauty ...not for the ordinary but for the special, for the celebration of mass, for preparing to receive Jesus in the Eucharist.

The need for sacred, for ritual, for beauty, for intellect, ideas out of the ordinary (transubstantiation,...the children rolled the words on their tongues, nodded as we spoke of the Body and of the Blood).. These needs were all fed, not by simplistic, euphemistic terms, not by garish drawings but by Truth and Beauty.

We build our Catholic identity, in ourselves and in the children, through sacred liturgy and an understanding of the liturgy. All senses are filled. Heart, mind, body, soul. We build a relationship with Our Lord...and this is shared with others. In true education. In true evangelization . In true ecumenism. In true social justice.

Emanating from that awe at transcendence.