1 John 2:27

My evangelical friends James (CPZM) and D.P. think that 1 John 2:27 is a proof text against the teaching authority of the Church. From the Douay-Rheims translation:

26 These things have I written to you, concerning them that seduce you. 27 And as for you, let the unction, which you have received from him, abide in you. And you have no need that any man teach you; but as his unction teacheth you of all things, and is truth, and is no lie. And as it hath taught you, abide in him. 28 And now, little children, abide in him, that when he shall appear, we may have confidence, and not be confounded by him at his coming. 29 If you know, that he is just, know ye, that every one also, who doth justice, is born of him.

It is obviously true that human teachers only plant and water, God gives the increase; Paul says so himself. Paul's epistles themselves fall into this category; Paul describes himself as the planter; God gives the increase to the seeds sown by Paul. So, if we are to reject all human teachers, as James (CPZM) and D.P. seem to advocate, what shall we do with the Johannine and Pauline epistles themselves? Does Paul lie when he describes himself as the planter, with God to give the growth?

But I don't suppose simple logic will sway my evangelical friends. I could go on to explain how the Holy Spirit works through people; for one example, parents should not leave their children's instruction in the Faith solely to the direct intervention of the Holy Spirit; parents are responsible for their children's education in the Faith. Or does 1 John 2:27 apply only to teachers employed by the Church, and not to parents? But I've had this conversation with my friends before. Jesus sent the Holy Spirit to guide the Church. We can tell that our human teachers are guiding us along the correct path based on the orthodoxy of their teaching.

All our teachers can only provide the seed; the Holy Spirit gives the growth; we can count on the Church to give us the proper seeds. Such is the essence of the Catholic faith.

I will close with an excerpt from St. Augustine's homily on 1 John:

"And you have no need that any man teach you, because His unction teaches you concerning all things." (1 John 2:27) Then to what purpose is it that "we," my brethren, teach you? If "His unction teaches you concerning all things," it seems we labor without a cause. And what mean we, to cry out as we do? Let us leave you to His unction, and let His unction teach you. But this is putting the question only to myself: I put it also to that same apostle: let him deign to hear a babe that asks of him: to John himself I say, Had those the unction to whom you were speaking? You have said, "His unction teaches you concerning all things." To what purpose have you written an Epistle like this? what teaching did "you" give them? what instruction? what edification? See here now, brethren, see a mighty mystery. The sound of our words strikes the ears, the Master is within. Do not suppose that any man learns ought from man. We can admonish by the sound of our voice; if there be not One within that shall teach, vain is the noise we make. Aye, brethren, have ye a mind to know it? Have ye not all heard this present discourse? And yet how many will go from this place untaught! I, for my part, have spoken to all; but they to whom that Unction within speaks not, they whom the Holy Ghost within teaches not, those go back untaught. The teachings of the master from without are a sort of aids and admonitions. He that teaches the hearts, has His chair in heaven. Therefore says He also Himself in the Gospel: "Call no man your master upon earth; One is your Master, even Christ." (Matthew 23:8-9) Let Him therefore Himself speak to you within, when not one of mankind is there: for though there be some one at your side, there is none in your heart. Yet let there not be none in your heart: let Christ be in your heart: let His unction be in the heart, lest it be a heart thirsting in the wilderness, and having no fountains to be watered withal. There is then, I say, a Master within that teaches: Christ teaches; His inspiration teaches. Where His inspiration and His unction is not, in vain do words make a noise from without. So are the words, brethren, which we speak from without, as is the husbandman to the tree: from without he works, applies water and diligence of culture; let him from without apply what he will, does he form the apples? does he clothe the nakedness of the wood with a shady covering of leaves? does he do any thing like this from within? But whose doing is this? Hear the husbandman, the apostle: both see what we are, and hear the Master within: "I have planted, Apollos has watered; but God gave the increase: neither he that plants is any thing, neither he that waters, but He that gives the increase, even God." (1 Corinthians 3:6-7) This then we say to you: whether we plant, or whether we water, by speaking we are not any thing; but He that gives the increase, even God: that is, "His unction which teaches you concerning all things."

Retreat, Day 3 - 7:30 PM Human Nature

My notes written after the preached meditation on Saturday, November 15, 2008, at 7:30 PM:

Who are "we"? Who is it that Jesus desires such a friendship with? We have a soul and a body - our body being in integral part of ourselves. Hence the need for purity. What we do with our bodies matters. With our fallen nature we can be pure only by struggle and God's grace; but (with struggle and God's grace) we can be pure.

But who am I really? I am "I", me; "I" is the thing that is self-aware. The "I" is the life force - the animator - of the body. The "I" continues after the body is gone. "I" is eternal.

The "I" has a power of knowing - a rational intellect. With the "I"'s intellect, I can know the good and discern between good and evil. I am responsible for my intellect.

The "I" has a will with which to choose the good. I am responsible for choosing - to choose that which is good and virtuous, and reject the evil and vicious. I must train and strengthen the will and point it to the virtuous.

The "I" has appetites and passions. These are goods. Our appetite for food and drink maintains our body. Our appetite for sexual pleasure maintains the human race. I am responsible for my appetites - to keep them in proper bounds. My sexual appetite is the instrument of holy matrimony to bring new life on the earth and bring that life to the height of sanctity.

The "I" has feelings and emotions. These are goods. Our feelings draw us to the good and pleasurable and pull us away from harm. I am responsible for my feelings. My feelings and emotions are like a pack of wild dogs that I must master. Dogs are wonderful! Dogs are treasures indeed. But if they control you - if they slip off the leash and run wild - what a mess!

The "I" has a memory. I am responsible for my memory - to recall to memory only that which leads to virtue. I should recall a hurt only long enough to pray for the people involved. I recall a past sin only long enough to renew my sorrow, or decide whether it needs to be confessed.

The "I" has five senses by which it learns about the world. I am responsible for the sense impressions I let in.

The "I" has an imagination which considers the input of the senses and can augment them - invent sights, sounds that the eye has not seen nor the ear heard. I am responsible for my imagination.

These are the aspects of my self - who I am. I am called to Christian self-mastery over the whole.

Certainly not least - the "I" has the grace of God, an indwelling of the Holy Spirit - so long as I do not reject Him.

Revelation 17

My evangelical friend James (CPZM) claims to believe that Revelation 17 is about the Catholic Church, apparently along with many other evangelicals, if this article is anything to go by.

Since we know that the Catholic Church was founded by Jesus and He promised to defend it against doctrinal error, we know this interpretation must be illogical and misguided, if not mendacious. And in fact, simple Web searches produce articles with sound logic and deep scholarship explaining the true state of affairs:

http://www.defendingthebride.com/ch/whore2.html

http://www.catholic.com/library/Hunting_the_Whore_of_Babylon.asp

It is too bad that evangelicals aren't really interested in sound logic and scholarship when it comes to the true Faith. They are much too interested in powerful images and demagoguery.

Spiritual Warfare

So after long labor and many trials I have reached the earth-shattering conclusion that every second of my life is a choice between light and darkness - between good and evil. This I've known intellectually for years, but only recently has it sank into the core of my being. My theory is that intellectual understanding is easy, quick, and facile, but only skin deep - the tip of the iceberg. Getting the below-the-surface part to go along with the intellect is real work. Or maybe I'm just slow.

This choice is ongoing. Every day requires a new conversion - a reaffirmation of the choice to follow God. Every morning I should turn my heart to Him.

Notice how the above paragraph is phrased. Turning to God. Not specifically away from sin. This is something else that took me years to learn. When we turn to face sin and fight it directly we have already lost the battle. The darkness - Satan, our adversary - is smarter, stronger, and more experienced than we are. I cannot defeat him in direct combat.

However, as my parish priest used to say, when you look into the sun, your shadow is behind you. When we run to God He will take us under His wing. In that shelter we can rest secure from our Enemy.

How do we turn to God and rest in the shelter of His arms? The same way a child runs to his mother for comfort, or his father for help. The same way my dog runs to me when I come home. We fly to His arms with total confidence and total abandonment to Him. We hold nothing back.

More specifically, I have noticed inverse correlations in my patterns of turning to God, then running away from Him.

• The longer the time between confessions, the less I turn to God, and the more I run from Him. My resolution is to confess at least every two weeks, if not weekly.
  
• The less time spent reading spiritual books, the less I turn to God, and the more I run from Him. My resolution is to read spiritual books every day, if only for a few minutes before going to sleep.
  
• When I don't pray in the morning, I don't think about God during the day. For me the main problem here is Saturday and Sunday morning. During the week I attend daily Mass in the morning, and I pray before Mass. On Saturday I don't attend Mass, and on Sunday I attend in the evening. My resolution is to pray every single morning.
  

My evangelical friend James (CPZM) would take me to task for not including scripture reading in the above list. Clearly spiritual reading includes the scriptures. I think I will spend some time with detailed commentary on specific books, versus reading the entire Bible all the way through as I've done twice before. Fr. Barthelemy's book is a stirring interpretation of how God draws man to himself; reading this book made me realize how far off I was in my spirituality and brought on my current spiritual crisis. Next up on my list is Adrienne von Speyr's commentary on St. John's gospel.

Retreat, Day 3 - 5:15 PM Be With Jesus

My notes written after the preached meditation on Saturday, November 15, 2008, at 5:15 PM:

Jesus is with us. He desires our friendship. Open wide the doors of your heart to Him! Are you content to see Him pass by? Are you satisfied with occasional encounters?

It can be scary to contemplate spending every second in His presence. Won't he take something from me?

He takes nothing. He gives everything. Superabundance! Do I desire justice? Christ is justice. Truth? He is truth. Am I oppressed by darkness? Christ is the light. Do I desire peace? Christ gave His peace to the apostles.

Jesus is here today. He is in my soul - so long as I am in the state of grace. He sustains our very being. We see Him in the tabernacle. We hear Him - through the priest - at confession. We taste Him in the Eucharist.

Be with Him. Thank Him - for everything. Ask for His help - with everything. Pray constantly. He is more attentive to our thoughts, needs, hopes, desires than any human spouse or parent.

Hold nothing back from His light. Allow Him to shine into every corner of your soul.

Light and Darkness

On Christmas Day I attended the 11:00 AM Mass at my parish. This Christmas, at this Mass, I felt much more intensely the joy of the service. Everyone was happy, of course, but I think this was more like joy - something deeper, stronger, and more permanent than mere happiness. Joy is what we feel as Christians. Joy distinguishes the Christian from the secularist, who only feels pleasure.

If you have read my Friendship with God post you will not be surprised at my reaction to this rare feeling of joy, communion, and friendship with my fellow parishioners, the priests and deacons, and the Child Jesus. I turned back to hedonism, pleasure seeking, and self-absorption.

So what is it that is happening with me? Some force deep within me is opposed to all that is good for me. Within the past year or two I've become intensely aware that this force is more than natural pleasure seeking, more than a reaction to my parents' divorce, more than simple blindness or hardness of heart, though all these certainly play a part. But what is this force, fundamentally?

The clue is in the Gospel reading for the Mass on Christmas Day, from the famous introduction to the Gospel According to St. John (Douay-Rheims translation):

In him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.... That was the true light, which enlighteneth every man that cometh into this world. He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not.

And the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it. The darkness fears the light, flies from it, and tries to overcome it. The darkness tries to convince me that the darkness itself is light, and that those who live in darkness are the smart people who understand we are all just bags of protein and genes, and that those who live in the true light are fools that believe in love and friendship and communion.

So I will put a name to what has tormented me through the years; or more precisely, how I have tormented and enslaved myself, and bound myself in chains. This name is darkness. It's not ignorance, or pleasure-seeking, or the flesh, or freedom from other people, or the cold light of the intellectual life; these are all only tools of darkness.

And I will put a name to what has tried to call me out of darkness, drawing me out of myself, pulling me to other people, making me aware of my limitations, making me aware of my radical dependence on a transcendent, wholly holy Other. This name is light. The Way, the Truth, and the Life; Jesus Christ, a man born in Nazareth 2,000 years ago, source of all life, the light of the world, reborn in my heart on Christmas morning.

The preamble to St. John's gospel is not just poetic language, not just high flying words that don't have anything to do with real life. Like so much else in the Bible, it is rock hard, bonecrushing, totally solid reality. The light shineth in the darkness. My task is to flee the darkness and run to the light.

Retreat, Day 3 - 11:30 Heaven

My notes after the preached meditation at 11:30 AM on Saturday, November 15:

Heaven is not an extension of the physical pleasures we experience on Earth. Heaven is not eternal rest in the Earthly sense of repose - a cessation of activity - an eternal sleep. The souls in Heaven are part of the communion of saints - with the souls in Purgatory, and the souls here on earth. The souls in Heaven are in communion with us - our friends - powerful allies who want us to join them. When we reach Heaven we too will work for and intercede on behalf of the souls still struggling on Earth. Make use of this communion. Pray for the souls in Purgatory, and they will pray for us. Pray for the intercession of all the souls in Heaven. They want us to be like them. Jesus compared Heaven to a wedding banquet - a royal meal - a thanksgiving feast.

Our family meals on Earth are an echo of the Heavenly banquet. How important it is to have places set - a nice meal - the lights just right - and most important, conversation with everyone. Everyone interested in and attentive to everyone else. In Heaven all souls are in direct communion with God, and so with one another. We should begin such a trend here on Earth. Everyone concerned about - in love with - caring for - desiring the best for - everyone else.

Retreat, Day 3 - 10:00 Mental Prayer

These notes are from a retreat member reading from a spiritual book about mental prayer - I didn't catch the title of the book. From Saturday 11/15/2008 at 10:00:

Mental prayer is a grace from God - not a matter of technique. Prayer does not boil down simply to breathing, posture, concentration, and mental tricks. In consequence - mental prayer is open to all. Any mere technique is accessible only to those who can master the technique. Since mental prayer is from God it is open to everyone.

What is required for mental prayer? First and foremost: faith that God is there, in the room with you, listening to you, loving you in particular. Never doubt this. Even when you feel abandoned by God - He is with you, always.

Friendship with God

Friendship with God was a major theme of my retreat. It sounds good, doesn't it? Who better to be friends with than God Himself, Source of the universe, Creator of all, the engine that drives reality?

Well, I'll tell you, there's hardly anything scarier than that friendship. In "Man and His Image" Fr. Barthelemy posits that the Fall itself was driven by fear of God's friendship; that Eve's sin lay in considering God a watchful, vengeful, jealous overlord, rather than a loving Father. He sees the whole story of salvation as God's plan to reveal His true nature to us and draw us back to Him.

My growth in the Faith, such as it is, has hardly breached this subject. I worship God because of the beauty of the Truth, the self-evidence of the Faith, because God is super-evident and worship of Him is the natural thing for a man to do; worshipping God is what makes us men.

But I can't see God as my Father. I can't feel Him as a friend, somebody to share my day with, somebody to spend every moment of every day with, for all eternity. I know it's true in my head; any child reading the Bible knows that God is deeply involved in His creation. But in my heart I can't make it so.

The last few weeks I've been praying very hard about this. My mental prayer is very visual and I've been visualizing walking with Him, talking with Him. It's very difficult to picture making eye contact with Jesus; the concept that He would focus his attention on me is too scary to contemplate. But I can tell you, driving awareness of a personal relationship - a friendship with God into your soul - that makes the world a different place to live. Living in the world as a friend of God is totally different than living in a world where I can skate by beneath God's attention.

Back when I started to turn towards God and away from sin, the major effort was to allow consciousness of Him to sink into my soul. That was world-changing enough, it is hard to describe how hard it was to turn away from my ego and worldly satisfactions to face the living God - and impossible to articulate the joy and freedom that grew and grew so long as I faced Him, away from myself.

But all that was just the beginning. I always pictured God as a semi-abstract Force that I could send my love to, and ask for help from, and ask to irradiate my soul with His energy and Spirit, but I could never picture Him as a living soul personally interested in me. In these last few weeks when I was really concentrating on personalizing my love for Him (to coin a phrase), it really touched some part of me that I can't really describe.

Then the backlash hit. My old self, my old man is still there, that part of me that is a mocker, that discounts every good feeling, that discounts the possibility that God - the living God, the pure Good, He who Is - could find anything worthwhile in me - sinner that I am. The mocker came out in force this weekend. The body blows from the struggle left their mark... I prevailed to the extent that I was finally able to turn my back on sin (again) and subdue the mocker (again) and turn back to God (again). But that personal feeling is gone, a candle snuffed out in the maelstrom.

Well, the major lesson from my struggle against sin is just not to give up. No matter how often our adversary prevails, just get back up, go to church, pray, go to confession, pray, and repeat that interior conversion every single day. My brain knows for a fact that God does want me very much; I just have to let that knowledge sink into my self, day after day after day.

That's the wonderful thing about growth in the Faith - it never stops.

Retreat, Day 3 - 8:40 AM The Power of the Moment

My notes from the preached meditation on Saturday, 11/15/2008 at 8:40 AM:

The power of the moment - which is all we have. The importance of each second!

Hell is real - we have Our Lord's words to prove it. Jesus spoke much of the reality of Hell. He loves us, and doesn't want us to choose Hell over Him. And it is our own choices that lead us to our final destination. That is part of our freedom and dignity - gifts of God. Our thoughts, decisions, and choices have an eternal effect. Second by second we make the choice. Do we love the truth and live for God? Or do we embrace the lie and live for ourselves?

Because I created you and I love you, for goodness' sake. --GOD

I Believe Too is a site organized to counter the American Humanist Association's atheistic ads in the Washington Metro system. Their message? "Why believe in a god? Just be good for goodness' sake."

See the hoped-for response ad.

Heifer International

Heifer International is a way for you to give livestock to people in desperate need. My favorite is the flock of chicks for $20.

Retreat, Day 2 - 7:30 PM "Death"

My notes from the preached meditation on Friday, 11/14/2008, 7:30 PM:

Death - judgement - heaven - hell. Death is a big sister to us. "Only unloving children don't long to meet their parents." We live in order to die; Jesus shows us how to live well, so we can die well. The approach of death is the best time in our lives - God is very close to us and we hasten to meet Him. God wants us to be with Him after death - God wants us to die a saint - and will give us every opportunity to do so.

The devils are also very attentive as death approaches. But we don't listen to them.

Reflecting on our own death helps us appreciate the value of time. How many hours wasted on TV or putzing around on the Internet! We must value time and use it well - with our family, at work, with our friends.

Reflecting on our death helps us be charitable. When you leave the house, or leave anyone - know that you might never see them again. Never part with harsh words or unkind thoughts.

Retreat, Day 2 - 5:15 PM "We are God's"

Notes from the preached meditation on Friday 11/15/2008 at 5:15 PM...

We are God's... and God is within us. Hence the need to confront sin and lukewarmness which divide us from God.

Lukewarmness - lack of warmth and ardor for god - vomit (Revelation). Indifference to God will lead us to sin.

Mortal sin - the doorway to Hell - the crucifixion of Christ. Christ bore the weight of all mortal sign during the Passion - including mine. Do not let so much as 24 hours go by with mortal sin separating you from God.

Venial sin - accidental venial sin is unavoidable in this world. Semi-deliberate: we have made a purpose of amendment or plan of prayer, and now we are too lazy or lukewarm to follow through. Deliberate: we push God off into a corner of our life.

No amount of deliberate venial sin adds up to one single mortal sin. But continued deliberate habitual venial sin leaves the door open and eventually we will fall into mortal sin.

We have to help the ones we care about in their struggles with sin - otherwise we don't love them - as if we saw them fall into a well, and didn't help them climb out.

Liberty is subjection to God

Dominique Barthélemy's book "God and His Image" is filled with striking passages, so much so I almost want to copy the entire chapter I'm reading now. Chapter 4, "A People Condemned to Liberty", is about the implications of the Hebrews being subjected to God alone. As usual, the story of the Jewish people is a type of the story of each individual soul. Our liberty as human beings depends on our subjection to God, and God alone. When we throw off God's yoke, another and much more onerous yoke must inevitably take its place. From page 73ff:

Only he who made man enables him to fulfill himself truly. It is in his hands that man passes from the germinal state of a dreamed-of destiny to birth, fulfillment and fruition. It is in these same hands that he proceeds on his way, and if he does not try to escape from them, man will achieve his liberty. If he abandons them, he finds himself in a state of privation and distress. For man must never imagine that what he needs is to be his own master. The only man to let himself be deceived by such a dream is the slave of false masters, even though the influence of the false master has been as discreet as that of the tempter himself. What man really wants is to be in the hands of a master who has real rights over his being, who does not usurp this almighty sovereignty. If a man finds he has no master once he has driven out the false masters he very soon discovers he is like a demagnetized compass and that any harvest he gathers is worthless. Not knowing the true fruit that it should be his to bear, man once again looks for other masters who, even if they fail to bring him real and total fruitfulness for his perfection, help him nonetheless to drive out a certain anxiety and fear of emptiness that assail him. At least these other masters will enable him to realize something, even if illusory and inauspicious, which will save him from being an isolated atom and will incorporate him into some organism that works and from which there comes a certain dignity that he likes to think of as influential. And that "something" which is preferable to solitude may be the grinding system of the totalitarian state. Even if it crushes him, it frees man from that obscure giddiness of his useless nothingness.

Impressive! A single paragraph that analyses the false appeal of existentialism and atheism and all the other ism's; and provides the real solution, the one real thing that we only find when we turn to our loving God and Father. "Our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee" (St. Augustine).

Retreat, Day 2 - 4:00 PM "Frequent Confession"

Friday at 4:00 PM; this talk was by the retreat master (a lay person), not the priest that gave the preached meditations.

Frequent confession. How could so many putative Catholics vote for such a dedicated abortionist? Have they - materially or formally - cooperated with evil? Perhaps their consciences have been blinded or obscured so they imagine that economic issues are more important than killing babies.

In fact we do have a duty to act according to our convictions; even our erroneous and mistaken convictions. But this does not absolve us from our sinful actions - since we have a prior duty to form our consciences and shape our convictions in the light of God's revelation. So voting for a dedicated baby killer is not the immediate problem. The immediate or deeper problem is having a conscience formed in such a way that such a vote seems reasonable.

Frequent confession and a firm purpose of resolution against habitual, willed venial sin is a powerful means to reform our conduct, shape our conscience, and love God more every day.

My letter to Barack Obama

Below is the text of the letter I wrote to Barack Obama at his transition web site: http://www.change.gov/page/s/yourstory:

Dear President-Elect Obama,

You have been in my daily prayers since you won the election. I pray for you to have a change of heart with regard to the right to life. Please reconsider your support for the Freedom of Choice Act which seeks to override the conscience of thousands of caregivers at hundreds of Catholic hospitals across the country, as well as pharmacists and many others.

You have spoken eloquently about the audacity of hope and the need to protect our country's most vulnerable citizens. Please consider that no person is so vulnerable as an unborn child in its mother's womb. A mother's right to choose to have an abortion has to be outweighed by the child's right to life. The right to life is the fundamental right. If an unborn child has no right to life, then none of us has any rights.

Please prayerfully reconsider your support for FOCA in particular, and abortion in general. I used to be a died-in-the-wool Democrat; the party's support for this one issue has caused me to become a died-in-the-wool Republican.

Thanks for your attention,
David Miller

God is with us: Retreat Day 2, 11:30 AM

My notes from Day 2 of my retreat, Friday at 11:30 AM:

God is with us. Each of us is worth so much to God that He gave His life for us; even if only I were to ever be saved, He would have done the same. The central fact about ourselves is that God is our Father. This is true for everyone! Everyone is worthy of the dignity of sons of God.

How do we help others? By being one - "at-one-ness" - with God; our sanctity (which is a gift from God) connects us to God Who connects us to everyone. Our love for ourselves, for our neighbors, and for God are all connected. They grow and shrink as one. If I don't love my neighbor, I can't love either myself or God.

So our life is to grow in love for God - and help others to do the same. Sanctity in how we rest; we don't rest from our families, we rest with them. Sanctity at work where everyone is an image of God. Sanctity in our country - we must strive to bring about a culture of life and combat the evils of the present day. Sanctity in our eating and drinking. Be God for your fellows. Remember they are the image of God. Strive to ignite in them the spark which you have received.

Fight FOCA

FOCA is the Freedom of Choice Act; an Act that would sweep away all restrictions on abortions, all parental notification laws, all rights of hospitals and doctors to not perform abortions.

It is the duty of every Christian to resist the enactment of this brutal, vile piece of legislation.

Fight FOCA is a good place to start. Over 250,000 people have signed their petition so far.

This post from the "Between Two Worlds" blog shows a graph comparing the increase of abortions in Maryland (which passed its own version of FOCA in 1991) with the nationwide decline of abortions.

Americans United for Life's page on FOCA is another required read.

Never again can we doubt the impact of a President on the number of abortions. It turns out FOCA has been around for years - over a decade. Only with the election of a President that would sign the thing, has it become a major issue. Even Bill Clinton's public stance was to keep abortions "safe, legal, and rare". That is our President-Elect for you: even worse than Bill Clinton.

Retreat, Day 2 - 8:40 AM

My notes after the first preached meditation at my retreat, given at 8:40 AM on Friday (day 2):

Grow in God - in knowledge of Him, in understanding and love. We can always know, love, and serve God better - we can always grow in Him. God is my Father - directly and personally, most interested in me - He lives in my soul, so long as I don't evict Him by mortal sin. God never abuses our freedom... Trust in God - negativity and unhappiness are signs of something - lack of faith? Lack of trust in God? God's providence and will are what counts.

Remember the parable of the invited guests who chose to look after their cow - their farm - their bride instead of attending the banquet. Do not let material comfort or the press of life lull you into slumber, or passivity. Remember divine filiation - you are a son of God.

Retreat, Day 1

I went to my first retreat last weekend: Thursday night, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday morning. Two and half days of prayer, preached meditations, rosaries, examinations of conscience, and (it goes without saying) daily Mass and opportunities for confession.

What a great experience. How many times do you get such a break from daily life to concentrate on God? To really sink into prayer, to lift your heart up to Him who deserves all our love?

After so many years of growth the knowledge and practice of the Faith it is still very hard to believe in my heart that Jesus loves me personally by name; obviously I know this with my head but in my heart I can't draw a picture of Jesus reaching out to save me like He reached out to Peter when Peter failed to walk on the water. During one the prayers at this retreat I may have had a breakthrough. I pictured myself talking to Jesus like I would talk to my father, and said that I loved Him and wanted to love Him more, and I heard Him tell me that He loved me.

God as loving Father was a major theme of the retreat; that He feels for us all the tender love, the deep concern, the personal interest that our fathers had in us when we were infants.

Anyway I took notes after each of the preached meditations... not during the meditation, as if the meditation was a lecture in college; but later on, back in my room, after I'd had time to reflect. I want to post each of my notes just the way I wrote them on paper.

Following are my notes after the first preached meditation, given at 9:30 PM on Thursday night:

Friendship with God - intimacy with Jesus. Being with Him all the time - not once a week, not once a day, not even 10x a day - constantly. He wants to talk with us about our struggles, plans, fears, & much else besides.

Abortion - Barack Obama - Cdl. George's letter to the President-Elect - "abortion kills Constitutional order". Our duty to resist FOCA. The coming horrors - our responsibility to grow in sanctity.

Page 52 of "God and His Image": "Man prefers this hand that destroys and this mouth that promises but does not promise for the immediate future, that does not promise something to fill man with joy today, but will dig deep into him so that there may be born in him the man whom God intends eventually to shower with gifts. This is the hand man loves better than any other known to him."

Later I will post my other notes.

Summa Theologica and Man and His Image

These are the Catholic books I'm reading now. The Summa, and God and His Image.

Everyone has heard of the Summa. It reads very well, after getting used to the rhythm of the language (and the century-old translation). I've gotten so used to the precision and logic and depth of treatment that it is almost hard to read less well-structured books. They just seem less solid than the Summa. It requires a definite time commitment - I started this thing over a year ago and it'll probably take another year anyway to finish - just reading about 20 minutes a morning, over breakfast.

God and His Image is a wonderful book by a very well known Old Testament scholar. It is about the history of man's relationship with God. He feels the Fall changed our concept of God from loving father to unforgiving taskmaster - a change that still echoes to our own day. Richard Dawkins' atheist group's fundraiser in England involved a poster with the message "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy yourself." This reflects just the same mistaken image of God as unforgiving judge that the author of this book describes from the earliest beginnings of the Hebrew people. He then goes on to trace the story of salvation as God's efforts to lead people to the fuller understanding espoused by the Church today. It is people that turn away from God; He never turns His back on us.