Thursday, February 15, 2007

If there is one thing I had to say that I like about the Divine Mercy Chaplet is it's memorizability. I don't have to memorize 4 different Mysteries, but the opening and closing prayers. It's portable ... its okay if I forget my Rosary at home, I can just use my fingers and not worry about accidentally skipping a fruit of a Mystery. I can use the different "beads" as articulations through out the day as well.
***
If there were to be just one struggle about Christian, it's that everyone expects you to be perfect, and promptly forget that we are all sinners. Last time I checked, only God Triune is perfect. Not even Mary. Everyone needs salvation. So, why are we treated like we are supposed to be perfect. We all have that desire, but we will inevitably fail and thus, the purpose behind His Cruxifiction & Resurrection. But my parents and family quickly ignore that fact, since I am the only practicing Catholic at home, and hold me up to this impeccable standard. They lecture me when I stray from it. It's not a big deal if they themselves stray from it because, heck, it doesn't apply to them in thier minds!
***
Sirach 2
My son, when you come to serve the LORD,
prepare yourself for trials.
Be sincere of heart and steadfast,
undisturbed in time of adversity.
Cling to Him, forsake Him not;
thus will your future be great.
Accept whatever befalls you, in crushing misfortune be patient;
For in fire gold is tested,
and worthy men in the crucible of
humiliation.
Trust God and He will help you;
make straight your ways and hope in Him.

You who fear the LORD, wait for His mercy,
turn not away lest you fall.
You who fear the LORD, trust Him,
and your reward will not be lost.
you who fear the LORD, hope for good
things,
for lasting joy and mercy.
Study the generations long past and understand;
has anyone hoped in the LORD and been
disappointed?
Has anyone persevered in his fear and been
forsaken?
has anyone called upon him and been
rebuffed?
Compassionate and merciful is the LORD;
he forgives sins, he saves in time of
trouble.

Woe to craven hearts and drooping hands,
to the sinner who treads a double path!
Woe to the faint of heart who trust not,
who therefore will have no shelter!
Woe to yu who have lost hope!
what will you do at the visitation of the LORD?
Those who fear the LORD disobey not his words;
those who fear him seek to please him,
those who love him are filled with his
law.
Those who fear the LORD prepare their
hearts
and humble themselves before him.
Let us fall into the hands of the LORD.
and not into the hands of men,
For equal to his majesty is the mercy that he shows.
Amen.

Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Happy Valentine's Day

Hark! my lover-here he comes
springing across the mountains,
leaping across the hills.
My lover is like a gazelle
or a young stag.
Here he stands behind our wall,
gazing through the windows,
peering through the lattices.
My lover speaks; he says to me,
"Arise, my beloved, my beautiful one,
and come!
"For see, the winter is past,
the rains are over and gone.
The flowers appear on the earth,
the time of pruning the vines has come,
and the song of the dove is heard in our land.
The fig tree puts forth its figs,
and the vines, in bloom, give forth fragrance.
Arise, my beloved, my beautiful one,and come!
Song of Songs 2:8-13
Rejoice in the joyful perfection and everlasting love of the Lord!

Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Why Wait?

A commenter left me a question in an old post. She writes:

I know how you feel on this. I can't bring myself to even tell my mother half of the religious activities I partake in and get great joy out of (but that's facilitated by going to school 1.5k miles away). I too am looking at orders that have education apostolates; this is because I feel called to teach. I also want an order that still wears a habit. It doesn't have to be a very traditional habit with a scapular and everything, but please let me wear a veil. If you feel so strongly about your call to religious life, why are you putting it off until after you go to graduate school? I am not sure that I want to wait to finish graduate school. (I have about 3 years left.)

I feel an urgency to find an order. I am very scared that the longer I stay in this world, the less I will want to enter the world that God is leading me to. I don't want to be a slave to this world. I don't want a husband, I don't want children of my own. I want to wear a veil and essentially my wedding gown every day. I want to lose it all for Him. I want to do at the most 2 years of graduate school, but the only way for me to get an MA in my field is to apply to the PhD programs becuase these degrees are consolatory for those who don't cut it. I do enjoy school, but some parts of the PhD process are over my head, like the mathematical analyses that I would have to make. I truly don't understand that at all. So I want a Masters, but I also want to enter a convent.

For me entering a convent has been in interesting thought and desire to process. I cannot walk down a hall on campus without a single man looking at me; I know I'm pretty. It took me awhile to understand why God would create and call someone like me who's an academic, is pretty, and has the body configuration that would be best for carrying children (wide hips) for a vocation as a Sister. Then the Spirit showed me that everything fades except the Father's love for us. Half of my physical attributes will not matter in 20 years. My mind will always grow since theology is just as interesting to me as my two majors. I can lose my family, because I gain a much larger, like-minded one. That is not to say that losing anything isn't without its struggle, but I willingly want it.

Why do I wait for graduate school other than education? My parents. I currently live at home. In order for me to just be my own person. I need to burn my own food, wash my clothes in the washer, and burn a hole in my blouse while ironing. I need to attend Mass on my own schedule. I need to get out so I can more freely and happily explore different orders. I need to get out of the house during grad school in order to easily enter the order of my choice without aggression and verbally abuse outlashes.

Papal Lenten 2007 Address

MESSAGE OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVIFOR LENT 2007
“They shall look on Him whom they have pierced” (Jn 19:37)
Dear Brothers and Sisters!

“They shall look on Him whom they have pierced” (Jn 19:37). This is the biblical theme that this year guides our Lenten reflection. Lent is a favourable time to learn to stay with Mary and John, the beloved disciple, close to Him who on the Cross, consummated for all mankind the sacrifice of His life (cf. Jn 19:25). With a more fervent participation let us direct our gaze, therefore, in this time of penance and prayer, at Christ crucified who, dying on Calvary, revealed fully for us the love of God. In the Encyclical Deus caritas est, I dwelt upon this theme of love, highlighting its two fundamental forms: agape and eros.

God’s love: agape and eros

The term agape, which appears many times in the New Testament, indicates the self-giving love of one who looks exclusively for the good of the other. The word eros, on the other hand, denotes the love of one who desires to possess what he or she lacks and yearns for union with the beloved. The love with which God surrounds us is undoubtedly agape. Indeed, can man give to God some good that He does not already possess? All that the human creature is and has is divine gift. It is the creature then, who is in need of God in everything. But God’s love is also eros. In the Old Testament, the Creator of the universe manifests toward the people whom He has chosen as His own a predilection that transcends every human motivation. The prophet Hosea expresses this divine passion with daring images such as the love of a man for an adulterous woman (cf. 3:1-3). For his part, Ezekiel, speaking of God’s relationship with the people of Israel, is not afraid to use strong and passionate language (cf. 16:1-22). These biblical texts indicate that eros is part of God’s very heart: the Almighty awaits the “yes” of His creatures as a young bridegroom that of his bride. Unfortunately, from its very origins, mankind, seduced by the lies of the Evil One, rejected God’s love in the illusion of a self-sufficiency that is impossible (cf. Gn 3:1-7). Turning in on himself, Adam withdrew from that source of life who is God Himself, and became the first of “those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong bondage” (Heb 2:15). God, however, did not give up. On the contrary, man’s “no” was the decisive impulse that moved Him to manifest His love in all of its redeeming strength.

The Cross reveals the fullness of God’s love

It is in the mystery of the Cross that the overwhelming power of the heavenly Father’s mercy is revealed in all of its fullness. In order to win back the love of His creature, He accepted to pay a very high price: the blood of His only begotten Son. Death, which for the first Adam was an extreme sign of loneliness and powerlessness, was thus transformed in the supreme act of love and freedom of the new Adam. One could very well assert, therefore, together with Saint Maximus the Confessor, that Christ “died, if one could say so, divinely, because He died freely” (Ambigua, 91, 1956). On the Cross, God’s eros for us is made manifest. Eros is indeed – as Pseudo-Dionysius expresses it – that force “that does not allow the lover to remain in himself but moves him to become one with the beloved” (De divinis nominibus, IV, 13: PG 3, 712). Is there more “mad eros” (N. Cabasilas, Vita in Cristo, 648) than that which led the Son of God to make Himself one with us even to the point of suffering as His own the consequences of our offences?

Him whom they have pierced

Dear brothers and sisters, let us look at Christ pierced in the Cross! He is the unsurpassing revelation of God’s love, a love in which eros and agape, far from being opposed, enlighten each other. On the Cross, it is God Himself who begs the love of His creature: He is thirsty for the love of every one of us. The Apostle Thomas recognized Jesus as “Lord and God” when he put his hand into the wound of His side. Not surprisingly, many of the saints found in the Heart of Jesus the deepest expression of this mystery of love. One could rightly say that the revelation of God’s eros toward man is, in reality, the supreme expression of His agape. In all truth, only the love that unites the free gift of oneself with the impassioned desire for reciprocity instills a joy, which eases the heaviest of burdens. Jesus said: “When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all men to myself” (Jn 12:32). The response the Lord ardently desires of us is above all that we welcome His love and allow ourselves to be drawn to Him. Accepting His love, however, is not enough. We need to respond to such love and devote ourselves to communicating it to others. Christ “draws me to Himself” in order to unite Himself to me, so that I learn to love the brothers with His own love.

Blood and water

They shall look on Him whom they have pierced.” Let us look with trust at the pierced side of Jesus from which flow “blood and water” (Jn 19:34)! The Fathers of the Church considered these elements as symbols of the sacraments of Baptism and the Eucharist. Through the water of Baptism, thanks to the action of the Holy Spirit, we are given access to the intimacy of Trinitarian love. In the Lenten journey, memorial of our Baptism, we are exhorted to come out of ourselves in order to open ourselves, in trustful abandonment, to the merciful embrace of the Father (cf. Saint John Chrysostom, Catecheses, 3,14ff). Blood, symbol of the love of the Good Shepherd, flows into us especially in the Eucharistic mystery: “The Eucharist draws us into Jesus’ act of self-oblation … we enter into the very dynamic of His self-giving” (Encyclical Deus caritas est, 13). Let us live Lent then, as a “Eucharistic” time in which, welcoming the love of Jesus, we learn to spread it around us with every word and deed. Contemplating “Him whom they have pierced” moves us in this way to open our hearts to others, recognizing the wounds inflicted upon the dignity of the human person; it moves us, in particular, to fight every form of contempt for life and human exploitation and to alleviate the tragedies of loneliness and abandonment of so many people. May Lent be for every Christian a renewed experience of God’s love given to us in Christ, a love that each day we, in turn, must “regive” to our neighbour, especially to the one who suffers most and is in need. Only in this way will we be able to participate fully in the joy of Easter. May Mary, Mother of Beautiful Love, guide us in this Lenten journey, a journey of authentic conversion to the love of Christ. I wish you, dear brothers and sisters, a fruitful Lenten journey, imparting with affection to all of you, a special Apostolic Blessing.