Pope: Pray for those who have left the faith

Gee, it's like the Holy Father and Marian Press are on the same wavelength somehow!

The Holy Father has a specific prayer intention for July, the month that How Can You Still Be Catholic? is officially released.

Writes Crux:

In his prayer video for the month of July, Pope Francis has asked Christians to join him in praying for those who have strayed from the faith, providing hope to them through the witness of our joy and actions.

Yes, please pray with the Holy Father, especially through the daily Rosary for peace in the world and the Chaplet of Divine Mercy, for those who have left the faith, that they might return and become holy, great saints, and soon.

Pray for all of us who are in the Church, but who have grown old and weary in our sins, who need the grace and transformation of the Holy Spirit in order to bring life and light back into our lives and practice of the faith.

And pray for the living saints, that they may persevere to the end, not falling along the way, not beginning well and ending badly. For the battle rages around us here below, and we Christians are all too often wounded and fall, taking others down with us.

Pray, people of God! Spread the Good News, as the bishops have just called us to do and as Pope Francis has been summoning all the Mystical Body of Christ to do since the start of his pontificate.

Pray, and study the sources of our faith, and prepare yourselves to spread the Good News to all the world. Choose to answer the Holy Father's call to live a "missionary option" today, and enter into the Evangelical Catholicism described by George Weigel in his book of the same name, helping heal the wounds caused by the Bad Religion identified by Ross Douthat.

We have work to do. Now is not the time to give up in the face of the world's apparent indifference, or the sins and crimes of the clergy, or the apostasy of so many in the West. Now is the acceptable time to do again what St. Paul, and St. Peter, and so many great fathers and mothers in the faith have done across the ages, what we are all called to do, sometimes by words, but always by love--we are to share the Holy Spirit that is within us with the world, to speak the Word and be the face of the Father's mercy to all those in need, all those of us burning and dying in our sins. We are to work mercy and have faith, to live love and give ourselves generously for the salvation of all the world.

We are to love like Christ, and live like Mary, and serve like Joseph.

Now--now!--is the acceptable time.

A Good God is Everywhere — And Provides for Everything with Love

The best recounting of the sacrifice of Maximilian Kolbe I've ever read.  Excerpts:

...The Nazi commandant calls the first name, second, third, fourth. Franciszek Gajowniczek hopes hard that he would live to see 42… live to hold his children close again…seventh, eighth, ninth names…”

He’s only a few years older than I am. And he’s only one name away from seeing the sun rise tomorrow. We turn at Bobby Johnson’s corner.

“And then they barked the tenth name: Franciszek Gajowniczek. And Gajowniczek — he falls to the ground. Near starving, he peels back every shred of dignity and he flat out begs, ‘No, I am married! I have children! I am young! I beg of you!’

The kids are quiet.

“And behind Gajowniczek, a man breaks rank… And he steps forward so all can see his face —- Maximillian Kolbe — a Christian. A Christian who was known to give up his food rations to those less hungry than he was. A Christian known to give his blanket to those not as cold as he was. Maximilian Kolbe, he was known to these incarcerated Jews as the Christ of Auschwitz… and he steps forwards silently, takes off his cap, and before the commandant he says,

“Let me take his place. He has a wife and children. I am not married. I am not a father. He is young. I am old. Take me.” I turn around so that I can see the kids’ faces. “Maximilian Kolbe was only 6 years older than Gajowniczek — 47.”

Hope turns from me, looks out the window. Rain drops start to splat the windshield loud.

“And Gajowniczek, laying there on the dust on a July morning, he would later say, ‘I could only thank him with my eyes. I was stunned and could hardly grasp what was going on.’

And Kolbe, he was dragged off to a wire box like a dog kennel with the nine other men, left to starve.”

This is always the part of the story that gets hard, when the lump grows too large in my throat. The children say nothing and I push the words past the stinging in my throat.

“Kolbe spent the next 14 days singing hymns and praying with those nine other men, as one by one, all of them starved to death… And only one month prior to Kolbe being dragged off to starve, on June 15, 1941, — Maximilian Kolbe had written this to his mother:

‘Dear Mama, I am in the camp of Auschwitz. Everything is well in my regard. Be tranquil about me and about my health, because the good God is everywhere and provides for everything with love.’”

I had memorized that line of the letter. Because if a man in the midst of one the most hideous scenarios known in the history of the world could write a line like that — not from a bad day at the office or a hard day with the kids, but from the death stench of Auschwitz — how can anyone deny this ultimate iron-clad testimony : A Good God is everywhere — and provides for everything with love...

Her kids' reaction here. A reaction from the man whose life he saved. Excerpts:

...Gajowniczek later recalled:

'I could only thank him with my eyes. I was stunned and could hardly grasp what was going on. The immensity of it: I, the condemned, am to live and someone else willingly and voluntarily offers his life for me - a stranger. Is this some dream?

I was put back into my place without having had time to say anything to Maximilian Kolbe. I was saved. And I owe to him the fact that I could tell you all this. The news quickly spread all round the camp. It was the first and the last time that such an incident happened in the whole history of Auschwitz.

For a long time I felt remorse when I thought of Maximilian. By allowing myself to be saved, I had signed his death warrant. But now, on reflection, I understood that a man like him could not have done otherwise. Perhaps he thought that as a priest his place was beside the condemned men to help them keep hope. In fact he was with them to the last.'...

St. Maximilian Kolbe, Martyr for charity, pray for us!

The Laboure Society: "Delivering Vocations Which Would Otherwise be Lost"

A cause well worth supporting.  Excerpts:

...What Laurent discovered — and what few casual observers realize — is the roadblock debt presents to thousands of potential priestly and religious vocations. While guidelines vary by order, diocese and seminary as to what debt new members are allowed to carry, for many religious orders that number is zero.

...“We are a national organization with the specific purpose of serving the Church by delivering vocations which would otherwise be lost,” he said.

The Laboure Society assists aspiring religious in addressing their financial situation in several ways. Applicants are thoroughly vetted, including through the order they wish to join. Roughly every six months, those accepted are organized into classes, usually 10 to 15 members in size.

The class is brought together at a three-day financial boot camp where members are taught ethical fundraising skills and work through a strategic plan to tackle the accumulated student loans of the group (personal debt is not addressed by the society’s program).

Laurent said while class members then return to implement the fundraising plan in their home areas, they are not cut adrift. Each class is assigned a mentor who follows up to assess progress and provide support.

“This is a very well-thought out protocol,” he said. “The individual serves as accountability to the team members.”

Once the money has been collected, it is allocated to each team member in the form of grants with the exact amount each team member receives calculated by a comprehensive formula. The society doesn’t issue checks to team members, but takes over management of loan payment schedules. Individuals who don’t receive grants sufficient to wipe out their debt join a second team to participate in additional rounds of fundraising.

The group makes loan payments as long as the individual continues to advance through their vocational path and returns any unpaid principal if a person abandons their vocation. To date, the non-profit organization has helped more than 230 individuals into priestly and religious formation...

Their website here. See also Serra International.

The Thesis of Harry Potter

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the theme of Harry Potter!  Or, well, one of the many, many themes...anyway!

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.― C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves

Do I have proof that this is actually what Rowling had in mind? No, not really...oh, wait!

The Tales of Beedle the Bard:  "The Warlock's Hairy Heart "
Synopsis:  This dark, "gothic" tale tells of a young warlock who removes his own heart by terrible Dark Arts to protect himself from the foolishness of love. When he meets a witch who he wants to win for himself, his folly results in the both of their deaths.

Now, I would have to say that the ultimate thesis is love is stronger than death. But Lewis's quote is certainly another aspect of that overriding theme.

The Power of Prayer, Persistence, and Offering Up Pain

Monsignor Charles Pope has some encouraging words.  Excerpts:

...something tells me that a special joy of heaven will be to know and see what prayer did for us, and what our prayers did for others. For now, things can seem discouraging at times. The effects of our prayers may seem subtle or even non-existent. But God is working his purposes out and collecting and dispensing the fruits of our prayer in due season.

Anyway, I thought of all this yesterday as I was reading from The Dialogue of Catherine of Siena. And therein, the Lord speaks to her of what the prayers of the faithful do and how they release grace and set souls free. Here are some excerpts:

The sufferings you endure will, through the power of charity, suffice to win both atonement and reward for you and others…The stains of your foolishness will be blotted out, and I will no longer remember that you have ever offended me.

As for the others, because of your loving charity, I will pardon them in proportion to their receptiveness….They will come in this way to truly know and regret their sins, and so, because of my servants’ prayers they will receive the fruit of grace….They will receive both forgiveness and its gifts, unless their stubbornness is such that they despair….

I look on them and give them light. I rouse the dog of conscience within them. I make them sensitive to the perfume of virtue and give them delight in the fellowship of my servants. Sometimes I allow the world to show them its true colors….that they may know how inconstant it is and be more eager to seek their homeland in eternal life.

The eye cannot see nor the tongue tell, nor can the heart imagine how many paths and methods I have, solely for love and to lead them back to grace so that my truth may be realized in them. (Dialogue # 4)

Yes, here is what prayer and sacrifice unleash. Continue to pray and do not doubt the words of the Lord who says that our heart cannot imagine all the paths he can open for others back to grace, the Church and the Sacraments, back to Him...

For an example of the above, see here. Excerpts:

How is it that a Supreme Court Justice keeps two pictures drawn by a little girl who died six years ago on the desk of his office? Or that the head of an influential Washington D.C. think tank prayed to the same girl for his father to be saved from a brain tumor? Or, that a noted Washington thinker has a regular devotion to her?

Margaret Leo was painfully crippled from spina bifida, paralyzed from the waste down. Parts of her cerebellum and brain stem were pushed into the opening of her spinal column. A painful shunt in her brain ensured her spinal fluid circulated. Without it, her head would have swelled, causing death. Titanium rods were inserted to straighten her spine, but bent instead. Over time, one of the rods poked out of her neck...

But there was something that drew the powerful to her who had no power at all. And she drew total strangers, too.

Her special gift was joyful friendship. In an elevator, she would pepper strangers with questions, with a steady gaze and big smile. “What is your name?” “Where are you going?” “What is your birthday?” They sensed she really wanted to know. The girl had no artifice. Even Supreme Court Justices can be attracted to that.

What they did not know, because she never mentioned it, even to her family, was that she was likely in unimaginable pain. Think of a titanium rod being bent by your spine, and about to poke through the skin of your neck. Or a shunt inside your brain.

No one describes her as a “spiritual athlete.” Her faith was profoundly childlike. Her whole life she prayed out loud the simple prayer her mother taught her as a child, “Jesus, thank you for coming to me in the Eucharist.”...

The funeral Mass for this 14-year-old was packed to the rafters and stories about her began to circulate. Grown men left deeply moved. Some carry her prayer card to this day.

Then things began to happen. Some call them miracles...

The Great Gatsby, "Terrible...But Great," and True Greatness

Emily Stimpson has written an interesting  review of Baz Luhrman's The Great Gatsby.  I thought this bit was particularly telling, re: the meaning of life, the universe, and everything.  Excerpts:

..."Pretentions to divinity always end in death.”

You see, we are called to greatness, each and every one of us. We are called to be sons and daughters of God. That instinct—in Gatsby, in Millennials, in anyone—isn’t wrong. But power, wealth, and fame don’t make a person great. Love does that—love for God and love for one another. Likewise, we’re not born sons and daughters of God. We’re made that way by baptism. It’s a gift, not a given.

If we assume the gift without realizing how gracious it is, and then pursue greatness by trying to blaze through the sky on an ever-upward trajectory, we will crash and burn. There will be no life. There will be only death.

If it’s life we want, then it’s love we need to pursue—not the type of self-seeking, self-satisfied love the world glorifies, not the type of love which looks to another human person for meaning and fulfillment—but love which denies itself for the sake of the other and which knows true fulfillment and meaning can be found in only one Person, Jesus Christ...

Or, to put it another way, it's the difference between the Dark Lord of the Horcruxes and the Master of the Deathly Hallows:

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket-safe, dark, motionless, airless-it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside heaven you can be perfectly safe from all dangers and perturbations of love is hell. (C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves)

For more on the dynamic unleashed in creation's history by those who grasped for divinity and the antidote by the one who did not see divinity as something to be grasped but rather emptied himself, taking on the form of a slave (Philipians 2:5-11), see A Father Who Keeps His Promises: God's Covenant Love in Scripture, Bible Basics for Catholics: A New Picture of Salvation History, The Real Story: Understanding the Big Picture of the Bible, and/or Kinship by Covenant: A Canonical Approach to the Fulfillment of God's Saving Promises (The Anchor Yale Bible Reference Library).

Pray for the Cardinals Gathered in Conclave

An interesting piece of analysis here, by the way, and images of the Domus Sanctae Marthae (the place where the Cardinals are living for this conclave) here.  But pray, saints of God, Catholic and non-Catholic alike.

God the Father, have mercy on us.
Jesus Christ, have mercy on us.
Holy Spirit, have mercy on us.
Triune God, have mercy on us.

Mary, Mother of the Church, pray for us.
St. Joseph, Patron of the Church, pray for us.
St. Peter, rock on which the Church was founded, pray for us.
St. Paul, apostle to the Gentiles, pray for us.
All you holy Apostles and Evangelists, pray for us.

St. Benedict of Nursia, patron of Europe, pray for us.
St. Boniface, apostle to the Germans, pray for us.
St. Peter Canisius, great catechist, pray for us.
St. Robert Bellarmine, curial cardinal, pray for us.

Bl. John Paul II, predecessor to Benedict, pray for us.
Bl. John XXIII, convoker of Vatican II, pray for us.
St. Pius X, patron of pilgrims, pray for us.
All you holy popes and patriarchs, pray for us.

That we may have the pope of your choosing, Lord, hear our prayer.
That the cardinals may be attentive and open to the promptings of the Holy Spirit, Lord, hear our prayer.
That the universal church be guided, guarded, and suffused with divine life throughout this transition period, Lord, hear our prayer.
That the successor to Benedict be a man after God's own heart, Lord, hear our prayer.

Lord, have mercy.
Christ, have mercy.
Lord, have mercy.

Catholics! The Cardinals Have Called Us To Prayer!

Explained here.  Excerpts:

...There are times in any family when all hands need to be on deck, when everyone is called to pitch in. The clean up after my grandma’s epic St. Patrick’s Day parties comes to mind.

Our Church family's great uncles, the Cardinals who are gathering in Rome to elect the next Pope, seem to think that this is such a time. They have put out a request for all hands on deck, actually, more like all knees on deck.

They have called for prayers on Wednesday, March 6^th at 5pm Rome time (that’s 11am Eastern, 10am Central, 9am Mountain and 8am Pacific). The Cardinals will gather at the altar of the Chair of St. Peter in St. Peter’s Basilica and will pray the Glorious Mysteries of the Rosary followed by adoration of the Blessed Sacrament and Vespers.

So, what should you pray? The answer? Something. Anything. As long as you keep in mind the intentions of the Cardinal-Electors and the upcoming Conclave...

Pray, people of God!

Permanent Versus Perennial

One of the key features of modernity is a desire for permanent and total solutions. We want to deal with a problem once and be done, to completely resolve an issue and place it out of the concern of our old age or the time of our children. We do not simply try to reduce drug use. We have a war on drugs. We don't attempt to mitigate poverty. We go to war against poverty. We don't just talk about proper gun use in the wake of tragedies. We debate whether to ban guns or to have no restrictions on guns at all.

We are impatient this way, thinking in really broad strokes, making vast generalizations, aiming for the stars with all the subtlety and nuance of--well, of all totalitarians and dictators.  We want to triumph, you see.  We want to have our vision of the world win out once and for all, want to demand total surrender from the Nazis we face today, whoever those Nazis may be--conservatives or liberals; sexual revolutionaries or religious folks; them foreigners or the frightening "enemy" next door.  We want a total triumph for all that we believe to be right and true, even if what we believe to be right and true is that there is no such thing as an absolute truth and we are universally called to tolerance by that truth.

We want to win.  Kill those weeds!  All of them!  Let them never return in my garden again!  Those mosquitoes!  End them!  Exterminator!  Exterminator!  Each presidential election is framed in apocalyptic/messianic terms.  Their candidates are the anti-Christ, and our guys are chosen, anointed, destined.  If we win, it is the victory of all that is right and true.  If they win, it will be unspeakable.  But somehow we all survive each victory of the dreaded other side.  Somehow, we live on, watching the nation go further and further into debt under fiscally conservative Republicans and tax-and-spend Democrats alike.

We live in an age whose spirit is that of the via moderna, the modern way.  That way has led to a culture of death, to a culture which pursues the triumph of the will over reason, over truth, over any objective standard.  We have seen the long war of man versus nature, of neighbor versus neighbor, of flesh versus spirit, of man versus God taken to a hyper-efficient end.  To be free, it's every man for himself.  Either I have power or they have power--there is no middle way.

This has been destroying us for a very, very long time--working in these absolutes.  Why?  Because they are the wrong absolutes.

“[M]an has been accustomed, ever since he was a boy, to having a dozen incompatible philosophies dancing about together inside his head. He doesn't think of doctrines as primarily "true" or "false," but as "academic" or "practical," "outworn" or "contemporary," "conventional" or "ruthless." Jargon, not argument, is your best ally in keeping him from the Church. Don't waste time trying to make him think that materialism is true! Make him think it is strong or stark or courageous—that it is the philosophy of the future. That's the sort of thing he cares about."--C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters, 

Put mind over master for a time. Put first principles over power, the intellect over the will, truth over action.  Submit yourself to the mastery of the natural law, of the Creator of all things, of the truth, the good, the beautiful, of life and love, of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  It's a road that is as hard as the road to Calvary, as hard as iron nails and the wood of the Cross--but it leads to life through death, to One Threesome who love you eternally.  Love yourself because you are beloved by omniscient omnibenevolent omnipotency, by God, and love those whom your Beloved loves.  Accept the rhythms of the seasons, of human life, of the liturgy, of love, rather than grasping for power and perfect control.  Accept community, and charity, and the love of your "lesser" fellow man--the annoying, the weak, the foolish, the sinful, the sorrowful, the stupid.  Many of these are your betters.   As Pope Benedict once said, part of the reason for the commandment to love our neighbor is that they have to put up with us.  Love, and forgive, and forbear, and find yourself borne up on a great tide of loving, forgiving forbearance in your turn.

Follow the way of the Cross, sowing yourself in love, bearing up underneath the weight of your burden by the abiding power and presence of the Trinity in your heart, by the force and fire of the Holy Spirit.  Life will explode from you like the sun.

Lent Teaches How to Give Yourself Away

At once the Spirit drove him out into the desert, and he remained in the desert for forty days, tempted by Satan. He was among wild beasts, and the angels ministered to him.--Mark 1:12-13

Lent often seems like an imposition, an exercise in pointless self-denial and suffering. Why does it matter whether or not I eat chocolate for 40 days? If I wanted to diet, I'd do it rather differently. Why do we put ourselves through this exercise in frustration and little irritations?  What's the point?

The point reaches right outside us into the heart of God.  The Trinity is a communion of persons, whose life at its core consists of eternal, total self-gift.  The Father gives himself utterly to the Son; the Son gives himself utterly to the Father; and the gift given is the Holy Spirit.  This level of self-gift is natural only for the Trinity.  It is truly supernatural--above our nature--for humanity.  When we give ourselves so utterly, we die.

Then he said to all, “If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. What profit is there for one to gain the whole world yet lose or forfeit himself? Whoever is ashamed of me and of my words, the Son of Man will be ashamed of when he comes in his glory and in the glory of the Father and of the holy angels. Truly I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God.”--Luke 9:23-27

But to give ourselves so utterly to Christ is to receive life eternal, for Christ is utterly generous with himself, pouring out the last of his blood for us and our salvation.  He offers to graft us onto himself so that we may share in his divinity.

Remain in me, as I remain in you. Just as a branch cannot bear fruit on its own unless it remains on the vine, so neither can you unless you remain in me.  I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit, because without me you can do nothing.  Anyone who does not remain in me will be thrown out like a branch and wither; people will gather them and throw them into a fire and they will be burned.--John 15:4-6

We come to live his life and share in his death. We come to the fullness of life by giving our lives away.

...The retreat examined this connection between sacrifice and agape love by expounding on two images Jesus used, "sowing" and "pruning." Both are practicable ways to follow Jesus's command to lose our lives. The divine way led to Christ's crucifixion and resurrection. "The cross is thought to be one of the less pleasing parts of Christianity," Father Hugo said. "But the cross is the most positive part of Christianity. Because Jesus died out of love." In sowing and pruning, we do the same.

Sowing is rooted in the idea of detachment from the love of worldly goods: the decision to let loose the goods of this world in order to clasp the love of God. The retreat treated Jesus's parable of the farmer to show this. We are like the farmer sowing wheat. The wheat is good, just as many of our possessions and activities are good. But the farmer still must throw away the wheat in order to gain a harvest, and the seed must die to bear fruit. Just like Jesus, we must "throw away" the good things of our lives in order to gain something better: divine life. "It is the law of life," Father Hugo said. "To gain life, you must first lose it."

Father Hugo taught that the holy sacrifice of the Mass is central to our work of sowing. The only true response to it is to lose our own lives. If we don't offer our lives along with Christ's sacramental sacrifice, Monsignor Meenan said, "the liturgy for us is, well, kind of phony."--"The Catholic Worker Retreat of Father Hugo changed my Life" by Rosemary Hugo

The Authority of Catholic Social Teaching

Interesting series of qualifications in the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Catholic Church. Excerpts:

...The Church's social doctrine was not initially thought of as an organic system but was formed over the course of time, through the numerous interventions of the Magisterium on social issues. The fact that it came about in this manner makes it understandable that certain changes may have taken place with regard to its nature, method and epistemological structure. With significant allusions already being made in Laborem Exercens[100], a decisive clarification in this regard was made in the Encyclical Sollicitudo Rei Socialis: the Church's social doctrine “belongs to the field, not of ideology, but of theology and particularly of moral theology”[101]. It cannot be defined according to socio-economic parameters. It is not an ideological or pragmatic system intended to define and generate economic, political and social relationships, but is a category unto itself. It is “the accurate formulation of the results of a careful reflection on the complex realities of human existence, in society and in the international order, in the light of faith and of the Church's tradition. Its main aim is to interpret these realities, determining their conformity with or divergence from the lines of the Gospel teaching on man and his vocation, a vocation which is at once earthly and transcendent; its aim is thus to guide Christian behaviour”[102]

The Church's social doctrine is therefore of a theological nature, specifically theological-moral, “since it is a doctrine aimed at guiding people's behaviour”[103]. “This teaching ... is to be found at the crossroads where Christian life and conscience come into contact with the real world. [It] is seen in the efforts of individuals, families, people involved in cultural and social life, as well as politicians and statesmen to give it a concrete form and application in history”[104]. In fact, this social doctrine reflects three levels of theological-moral teaching: the foundational level of motivations; the directive level of norms for life in society; the deliberative level of consciences, called to mediate objective and general norms in concrete and particular social situations. These three levels implicitly define also the proper method and specific epistemological structure of the social doctrine of the Church.

The Church's social doctrine finds its essential foundation in biblical revelation and in the tradition of the Church. From this source, which comes from above, it draws inspiration and light to understand, judge and guide human experience and history. Before anything else and above everything else is God's plan for the created world and, in particular, for the life and destiny of men and women, called to Trinitarian communion.

Faith, which receives the divine word and puts it into practice, effectively interacts with reason. The understanding of faith, especially faith leading to practical action, is structured by reason and makes use of every contribution that reason has to offer. Social doctrine too, insofar as it is knowledge applied to the circumstantial and historical aspects of praxis, brings “fides et ratio” [105] together and is an eloquent expression of that rich relationship.

Faith and reason represent the two cognitive paths of the Church's social doctrine: Revelation and human nature. The “knowing” of faith understands and directs the life of men and women according to the light of the historical-salvific mystery, God's revelation and gift of himself to us in Christ. This understanding of faith includes reason, by means of which — insofar as possible — it unravels and comprehends revealed truth and integrates it with the truth of human nature, found in the divine plan expressed in creation[106]. This is the integral truth of the human person as a spiritual and corporeal being, in relationship with God, with other human beings and with other creatures[107].

Being centred on the mystery of Christ, moreover, does not weaken or exclude the role of reason and hence does not deprive the Church's social doctrine of rationality or, therefore, of universal applicability. Since the mystery of Christ illuminates the mystery of man, it gives fullness of meaning to human dignity and to the ethical requirements which defend it. The Church's social doctrine is knowledge enlightened by faith, which, as such, is the expression of a greater capacity for knowledge. It explains to all people the truths that it affirms and the duties that it demands; it can be accepted and shared by all...

In the Church's social doctrine the Magisterium is at work in all its various components and expressions. Of primary importance is the universal Magisterium of the Pope and the Council: this is the Magisterium that determines the direction and gives marks of the development of this social doctrine. This doctrine in turn is integrated into the Magisterium of the Bishops who, in the concrete and particular situations of the many different local circumstances, give precise definition to this teaching, translating it and putting it into practice[114]. The social teaching of the Bishops offers valid contributions and impetus to the Magisterium of the Roman Pontiff. In this way, there is a circulating at work that in fact expresses the collegiality of the Church's Pastors united to the Pope in the Church's social teaching. The doctrinal body that emerges includes and integrates in this fashion the universal teaching of the Popes and the particular teaching of the Bishops...(articles 72-75, 80)

For more on the relationship between faith and reason, see Fides et Ratio. For more on the nature and content of divine revelation, see Dei Verbum.

On When You're Actually, You Know, Suffering

Jennifer Fulwiler offers hope to modern mothers (and the rest of us.)  Excerpts:

...December was a hard month. I couldn’t seem to stay on top of anything, and my inability to deal with life seemed to get worse by the week. Three days before Christmas I cleared off an entire evening to wrap presents, and quickly became so angry and overwhelmed that I went to bed in disgust instead. I felt like I barely survived the chaos of Christmas day, and in the week before New Year’s Eve I hardly lifted a finger around the house. I was unmotivated to do anything. I began backing out of social events, and felt exhausted by even the simplest tasks around the house.

I was aware of my abysmal state, and knew what the problem was: I’m lazy. And kind of a whiner. Not to mention not being fully dedicated to my vocation, and unwilling to carry my (small) crosses. Christ asks a few simple things of me, and even gives me this lavish, first-world life surrounded by luxuries, and I let a little pregnancy fatigue keep me from getting the job done! If only I were more open to God’s grace, I’d be able to unload the dishwasher without feeling like it was such a big deal.

I’m ungrateful.

I’m spoiled.

I’m lazy.

These are the thoughts that were going through my head for the better part of a month. And so when the doctor at the Emergency Room sat me down and told me that my lungs were full of blood clots, some of them large, and that he was astounded that I’d been able to function at all, I almost cried with relief. To be completely honest, I was more relieved than I was scared. I know the facts about pulmonary embolisms and know how dangerous they are. Later, I did experience worry and fear. But first, relief.

There is truth to the accusations that I’m ungrateful, spoiled, and lazy. No false humility here — I really do posses all those attributes to some degree or another. But it was simply not true to say that those faults alone were the cause of my suffering. I was struggling against a terribly difficult physical condition, and my body was running in the red zone for all of my waking hours. In those weeks when I was unaware of the reality of my situation, I worked under the incorrect assumption that my circumstances were normal, and that therefore the problems must come down to spiritual and mental character defects on my part. Not surprisingly, this caused me to be in a state of constant inner turmoil. In fact, it was reminiscent of the buried angst that simmered silently within me when I was an atheist: whenever you live under false assumptions about reality, you will live in anguish. It may be buried and only pop up occasionally, or it may burst to the surface in explosions of acute despair, but whenever you try to jam a square peg of your perception of reality into the round hole of actual reality, there will always be friction.

And you know why I bring this up? Because I think I’m not the only one who could benefit from an outlook-shattering diagnosis.

Once I felt like I had permission to admit that one area of my life was legitimately hard, I began to look at other areas as well. And in the process I’ve been reminded of something I’d known for a while, but had slowly forgotten: that 21st-century motherhood is really hard, whether or not you have clots in your lungs...

Les Miserables, the Bishop of Digne, and Holiness

What a bishop ought to be.  Excerpts:

...Thirty years earlier, Hugo had solidified his anticlerical credentials by crafting the repulsive, licentious Archdeacon Claude Frollo in "Notre Dame de Paris." It was time to try a new approach in "Les Misérables," so he rendered an ideal priest against whom clergy could measure their fidelity to tenderness and mercy. His expectation—as we know from the contemporaneous diary of his wife, Adele—was that corrupt priests would be shamed and indicted by comparison with a good one.

With Bienvenue, Hugo created a no-frills bishop who lived in a modest cottage, having surrendered his episcopal palace to the hospital next door. There were no locks on the doors; a simple push of the latch allowed entry.

The bishop subsisted on less than one-tenth of his state entitlements, with the remaining funds dispensed to provide for the release of fathers in debtors' prisons, meat for the soup of people in the hospital, and other unpopular charities. He had a sliding scale to officiate at marriages and preside at funerals. From the rich he exacted more, from the poor nothing at all.

Fearless, Bienvenue rode into territories overrun by bandits to visit his people. Without complaint, he assumed responsibilities that lazy curates chose not to. He agonized over the guillotine, and having accompanied a prisoner to his execution he was certain—as was Hugo himself—that anyone witnessing the death penalty would declare it a barbaric act unworthy of a civilized society.

The cleric in Hugo's novel was without the entourage nurtured by other bishops. There were no opportunistic seminarians eager to latch onto his coattails and ride into the corridors of power. It was clear to everyone that his star wasn't in ascendance. Bienvenue mused about seminaries that bred sycophants, where ambition was mistaken for vocation and upward mobility—from a modest biretta to a bishop's mitre to a pope's tiara—was the prized trajectory.

The greatest fear of young priest recruits, Hugo explains, was that merely associating with the virtuous Bienvenue could unwittingly cause one to convert to his lifestyle. It was widely known that virtue was contagious and no inoculation against it existed.

The trade-off for Bienvenue was that he was loved by his people. They had a bishop whose center of gravity was a compassionate God attuned to the sound of suffering, never repelled by deformities of body or soul, who occupied himself by dispensing balm and dressing wounds wherever he found them.

He found them in a town called Digne, a name conveniently derived from the Latin dignus, the root of the word we know in English as "dignity." Bishop Bienvenue conferred dignity with abandon on those whose dignity was robbed by others. He had an endless supply of his own to share and a lot of practice when Jean Valjean knocked on his door...

The Meaning of Suffering

From Jeff Cavins.  Excerpts:

Suffering, unlike anything else, causes us to reflect on life. Where is God in my suffering? Did I do something wrong? What will be the quality of my life from here on out? Simply, we want to make sense out of that which doesn't seem to make sense.

Understanding the meaning of suffering became an urgent personal concern for me not too long ago when I began to develop excruciating pain in my neck and arm. I discovered after repeated visits to the doctor that the cause of my pain was a split disk in my neck, and I would need a cervical spine fusion. Previous to my injury, I was well acquainted with Catholic Church teaching on redemptive suffering, but I found that in the midst of my pain, my clear theological understanding was reduced to sloppy, emotional and inconsistent application. To say the least, I wrestled day and night with this issue of suffering and pain, disappointed with my level of courage and trust in God. After months of prayer, questions, and many books, my quest for answers led me right into the very heart of the Trinity. It was only then, when my heart was in union with God, that my suffering took on significance...

When we fail to find meaning in our suffering, we can easily fall into despair. But once we find meaning in our suffering, it is astounding what we can endure, both mentally and physically. The key is not the suffering itself, but the meaning found within it. At the beginning of my ordeal my faith was inconsistent, focusing more on myself than the opportunity Christ had given me to join myself to Him. As the months rolled on, I spent more time before the Blessed Sacrament, more time in prayer and study. I longed for answers that would make my suffering meaningful. I desperately wanted a revelation of the meaning of suffering that would result in one of those "aha" moments. I was not disappointed...

In his Apostolic Letter "On the Christian Meaning of Human Suffering," Pope John Paul II speaks of two types of suffering; temporal and definitive. We experience temporal suffering, both moral and physical, as a consequence of sin. But there is a suffering that goes much deeper than depression or cancer, a definitive suffering. Concerning this definitive suffering Pope John Paul II says, "Man perishes when he loses 'eternal life.' The opposite of salvation is not, therefore, only temporal suffering, and kind of suffering, but the definitive suffering: the loss of eternal life, being rejected by God - damnation. The only-begotten Son was given to humanity primarily to protect man against this definitive evil and against definitive suffering" (Salvifici Doloris 14). In temporal suffering "there is concealed a particular power that draws a person interiorly close to Christ, a special grace" (Salvifici Doloris 26) that acquaints us with pure love.

The work of Christ doesn't guarantee an escape from suffering. No-instead, He has changed the meaning of suffering. We are now joined through baptism with Christ in His death and resurrection, and we have become intimately united to Him, so much so that we are His Body. Because of our union with Christ, even our suffering is changed; it becomes redemptive. Because Christ loves us so much, He invites us to participate in His redeeming work by allowing us to offer up our sufferings in union with His...

St. Paul understood that our life is a cooperation with the work of Christ when he wrote: "Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the Church" (Colossians 1:24). Think about that: Paul said that something is lacking in Christ's afflictions. What could possibly be lacking in Christ's afflictions? Our part!...

Today, Jesus tells us that if we are to follow Him we must deny ourselves and take up our cross daily (see Luke 9:23). Our lives become an imitation of and participation in the love of the Trinity when we offer up our complete lives in union with Christ...

The Way to Heaven

The way of the cross.  Excerpts:

...On August 15, the Imperial Rescript which put an end to the fighting was formally promulgated, and the whole world welcomed a day of peace. This day was also the great feast of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary. It is significant to reflect that Urakami Cathedral was dedicated to her. And we must ask if this convergence of events—the ending of the war and the celebration of her feast—was merely coincidental or if there was here some mysterious providence of God.

I have heard that the second atomic bomb, calculated to deal a deadly blow to the war potential of Japan, was originally destined for another city. But since the sky over that city was covered with clouds, the American pilots found it impossible to aim at their target. Consequently, they suddenly changed their plans and decided to drop the bomb on Nagasaki, the secondary target. However, yet another hitch occurred. As the bomb fell, cloud and wind carried it slightly north of the munitions factories over which it was supposed to explode and it exploded above the cathedral. 

This is what I have heard. If it is true, the American pilots did not aim at Urakami. It was the providence of God that carried the bomb to that destination.

Is there not a profound relationship between the destruction of Nagasaki and the end of the war? Nagasaki, the only holy place in all Japan—was it not chosen as a victim, a pure lamb, to be slaughtered and burned on the altar of sacrifice to expiate the sins committed by humanity in the Second World War?...

The man writing this was a survivor who lost family and friends in the bombing of Nagasaki. The whole piece is shocking and beautiful and redolent with mystery.

Joy In Suffering

Jennifer Fulwiler has a book recommendation for you.  Excerpts:

...Would you believe that Dan’s father went on to experience profound joy in his life, thanks to his relationship with God? Using his father’s story as a launching point, Dan spends the rest of the book pondering that most pressing of human questions:

How do we find joy when our earthly circumstances are miserable?

And — here’s what I loved — he first takes a hard look at what joy is. This is an important question for those of us whose default state is a spiritual dry spell, who don’t often have emotionally powerful experiences of God. For a long time I thought that that mean that I just wouldn’t get to experience the whole “Christian joy” thing, but I’ve slowly come to understand something that Dan hits home in his book: that joy is not the same thing as a surface-level emotion; that it’s possible to have all sorts of mental or physical tribulations on the surface, yet still have true joy deep within your heart...

Les Miserables Looks Gorgeous

Fans are already excited.

The Key to the New Evangelization

From a magnificent, challenging book, The Soul of the Apostolate. Excerpts:

...If the priest is a saint (the saying goes), the people will be fervent; if the priest is fervent, the people will be pious; if the priest is pious, the people will at least be decent. But if the priest is only decent, the people will be godless. The spiritual generation is always one degree less intense in its life than those who beget it in Christ.

James Caviezel Talks Jesus Christ

Saint Jean Vianney and Satan

A match made in...wait...excerpts:

...In 1829, a young priest, the son of the good widow whose acquaintance we made in the first pages of this book--the Abbe Bibost--came to Ars, in order to make a retreat in the parish of the man he so highly revered. M. Vianney, who had directed his first steps in the priesthood, received him with much kindness, and offered him a room in his house.

"I was intimately acquainted with this priest," says the Abbe Renard, "and it happened that Providence also led me to my native parish at the time of his stay there. In our first interview the conversation turned upon the extraordinary events which were occurring at Ars, and of which the whole country were talking.

"'You sleep at the presbytery,' said I, 'tell me, is it true that the devil makes all this clamour at night?'