Dave's Books

Gratitude

2010-03-29T21:20:00.003-04:00

As Holy Week begins, not least of my emotions is gratitude. Thankfulness for this God that came down from Heaven to save me; that emptied Himself, and took the form of a slave, to give me eternal life. And for you too; if Jesus knew that you yourself were the only person that would ever be saved by His passion and death, He would still do it. Each of us individually is worth all that He endured. Remember this, the next time you feel insignificant or invisible: the same God that created the world and everything in it feels that you yourself are worth all that He did!

My life changed when I began concentrating on thankfulness in my morning prayers. Each day I try to focus on all I have to be thankful for. I always run out of time; my blessings overwhelm my ability to count them. Consciously feeling gratitude makes a tremendous difference in my life. It helps correct my natural tendency to focus on everything that's wrong. I hope it's made me more positive and easier to be around.

My blessings come in three kinds:

First are the big-ticket items, the ones so huge they tend to fade into the background; my family, the Church, the faith, living in the United States, God's love for me, the angels and saints.... Like I said, my blessings overflow my time to count them.
Second are the daily benefits, whatever happened yesterday or today: recovering from a cold, surviving another day at work, reading a good book, the coming of springtime
Third is the hardest. St. Paul tells us to give thanks for everything ("Always rejoice. Pray without ceasing. In all things give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you all." - 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18). "All things" is unqualified. I have to give thanks for the very things I really don't want to be thankful for. The battle I lost at work; my dog's sore back; the temptations I suffer; the hurt inflicted on me by others, and the hurt I inflict on others. All these come under God's providence. And a funny thing happens when I truly give thanks for these difficulties: their sting is lessened, and my trust in God increases.

Most of all, gratitude is one of the best gifts we can offer God for all He has given to us. When we thank God, we acknowledge our dependence on Him and give Him glory. Remember the ten lepers who were healed? Only one of those ten took the time to thank Jesus for that tremendous gift. I am most deeply and humbly grateful to God for the opportunity to pray to Him every day.

The brazen serpent and the image of sin

2010-03-25T21:25:00.004-04:00

This past Tuesday (i.e., Tuesday of the 5th week of Lent), the first reading is the brazen serpent from Numbers.

Numbers 4:6-10:

Wherefore the Lord sent among the people fiery serpents, which bit them and killed many of them. Upon which they came to Moses, and said: We have sinned, because we have spoken against the Lord and thee: pray that he may take away these serpents from us. And Moses prayed for the people. And the Lord said to him: Make brazen serpent, and set it up for a sign: whosoever being struck shall look on it, shall live. Moses therefore made a brazen serpent, and set it up for a sign: which when they that were bitten looked upon, they were healed.

My pastor made two points that fascinated me. First: the people were healed by looking at the image of what made them sicken and die. Second: we are redeemed by looking at (i.e. believing in) Christ on the Cross: the very image of what makes us sicken and die: sin. 2 Corinthians 5:21: "Him, who knew no sin, he hath made sin for us, that we might be made the justice of God in him."

Christ took on all of our sins on the cross; Christ on the Cross made Himself the very image of all the sins that ever were/will be committed.

This idea clarified for me somewhat the whole question of the crucifixion. Why did Jesus have to die in that way? By making himself the image of all sin, He caused His death to become the death of all sin.

Then I took this idea in a whole new direction. If the Passion of Christ is how Christ made Himself the image of all sin, then what happened to Christ in the Passion is what happens to our souls when we sin.

Christ was mocked by the soldiers who said, "Hail the King of the Jews". All sin is rooted in pride; when we sin, we make ourselves our own king; we refuse to serve the Lord (our true King) and serve our own desires. This "kingship" over ourselves is a mockery, just as crude and shocking as the soldiers' mockery of Christ.

Christ wore a bloody crown of thorns. In sinning we crown ourselves king of our soul. This crown claws into our soul just as Christ's crown clawed into his skull.

Christ was scourged at the pillar; sin lashes our souls just as cruelly. Each sin marks our soul just as each stripe marked our Lord's flesh.

So the next time sin speaks to you (and sin does speak to all of us; in this life we will not escape temptation), remember what the Enemy wants. Our adversary doesn't want you to be like God; he doesn't want you to be happy, or experience pleasure, or be free. He wants you to be in constant torment (just like the torment he himself experiences). And even in this life, such constant torment is the natural result of sin.

So by sinning, we crucify ourselves. What do we do when we turn away from sin, beg forgiveness from the Lord, and live our lives in Him? Do we not share in His resurrection?

"abortion is the great evil of our age"

2010-03-25T20:52:00.002-04:00

Such is the reaction of Americans United for Life to the passing of the health care bill. Their e-mail alert is very eloquent. Since I can't find it on their website I will repeat most of it below:

After the last week of such intense work to try to keep funding and mandates for abortion out of health care, capped by the sudden collapse of “the Stupak bloc” which led to Sunday night’s tragic vote in favor of pro-abortion health care, the question on everyone’s minds right now is: what’s next? So I’d like to take a minute to tell you about AUL’s plans.

But first let me begin with a tremendous thank you for your support in the firestorm of this last week. The overwhelming response AUL received was deeply meaningful to the entire AUL team and a great encouragement. You are partners with us, so we work knowing that we are a team in the effort.

Together, we were able to really dig in during the lead up to the vote. AUL Action's “Life Counts” campaign was so significant that the New York Times and Politico both featured it.

I spent all of Saturday and much of Sunday at the Capitol while the AUL legal team was working at our offices near the White House and another part of our team was on the Hill making sure that the remaining “undecideds” had AUL’s legal analysis. In fact, the Washington Examiner ran an oped by our Sr. VP, Bill Saunders, about the Executive Order which was cited on the floor of the House by Congressman Sensenbrenner.

In the end, however, it came down to four votes. The bloc of Representatives led by Congressman Stupak, who had committed to casting a pro-life vote, failed to withstand the intense pressure from Speaker Pelosi and the President.

I cannot adequately express how heavy my heart was as I made my way back to the AUL office after Congressman Stupak’s press conference where he had announced that he cut an empty deal with the President.

When I arrived, however, I found our legal team already finishing up our newest piece of model legislation: a bill that would allow states to prohibit health plans offered through the Exchanges in their states from offering abortion coverage. I hope that encourages you as much as it did me!

We’ve already heard from legislators in Georgia and Kansas who want to get this legislation passed in their states. And let me assure you - we have more responses in the works, both on the state and the federal level. There is much more to come and a number of ways for us to respond pro-actively and aggressively. With AUL’s history working in the states with legislators across this country, and in the courts, we are uniquely positioned to respond to this new threat to Life. And we will.

On Monday, we spent some time together as a team, reviewing the events of the weekend; I told everyone assembled that we needed to focus on two central questions: What are we made of? And what do we believe?

The answer to the first question came in the form of that ready-to-roll piece of legislation. Our team may be tired, but we are relentless and we will press forward, creating a path toward restoring our culture of life.

The second question will keep us focused beyond this temporary setback. The answer is this: we believe that abortion is the great evil of our age. A surrender to complacency and discouragement is not an option. We are engaged in the great human rights struggle of our time. Our fight is waged with the abolitionist movement and the civil rights movement as our great heritage.

So let me conclude with a final reflection on that heritage. I had the privilege of beginning the day on Sunday at a non-denominational and bi-partisan service held in the Capitol Rotunda. It was awe-inspiring to sit in Statuary Hall, surrounded by statues of the great heroes of our history and the leaders of today.

The service was organized by a friend of mine and a friend of Life, Congressman Randy Forbes. We began by singing “Amazing Grace.”

This is a hymn that has deep meaning for many of us. I used it to sing my children to sleep all through the years when I paced the floor with restless babies. Those nights seemed endless then, but they are a sweet memory now.

Our times of challenge pass. History moves quickly and we have to seize the moment. “Amazing Grace” was written by the reformed slave-trader, John Newton, the friend and mentor of the great abolitionist, William Wilberforce. As I heard those beautiful words, sung a capella, in the soaring space of Statuary Hall, I knew a great peace about the day yet to unfold in front of us.

Of course the day ended in stunning disappointment. But Wilberforce and Newton knew those times too. Yet ultimately, they prevailed.

We have no promise that we will see the same triumphant outcome that they did. Although I believe that we will if we persevere.

A witness for confession

2010-03-21T17:50:00.002-04:00

What can I say about confession that hasn't already been said? Protestant arguments against it are well known; so are the Catholic apologetics in its defense. Anyone who's interested can drown themselves in rhetoric and argument.

I'm not interested right now in continuing that debate. But I can witness for how confession has brought me closer to Jesus our Lord, in the hope that others will follow my path.

10 or 11 years ago when I first came back to the Church, I confessed maybe a few times a year. The sacramental grace that always accompanies confession did, in fact, pour out onto my soul; but it didn't find much root there. Twice or three times a year is not often enough to make a good confession; you just can't keep track of the multitude of sins.

I began to go more often. The more often I went, the more often I wanted to go. Confession became a focus point; it focused my mind on my serious habitual sins. I had become so enmeshed, so habituated in sin that for the longest time I didn't even realize I was sinning; after that, for the longest time I didn't think the sin meant very much. The more often I confessed, the more I became aware of how serious my situation was, how much God wanted to heal me, and how much I depended on Him as the doctor of my soul.

Now, I confess (almost) every week; certainly every other week. My most serious sin is by and large behind me; God's grace has lifted me from the darkness into His light. Frequent confession attunes me to ever-smaller promptings of sin. Once I was out from under the weight of habitual mortal sin, I become that much more aware of the smaller and subtler promptings of pride, sloth, and anger.

Along the way two analogies have helped me.

First is the classic comparison of confession to the doctor's office. If the Eucharist is spiritual food (feeding our soul in just the same way physical food feeds our bodies), confession is spiritual medicine. No matter how deep, how painful, how deep-rooted my sins, confession is powerful enough to uproot them and heal my suffering soul.

Second is the comparison of the sacraments to a blacksmith's forge. The Eucharist is the hammer; confession is the anvil; my soul is the iron to be shaped. The Holy Spirit is the fire, and God is the smith. The sacraments change the recipient's soul; they orient the soul towards God; lifting the soul from self-absorption into union with Him.

All you Catholics out there, faithful and lapsed: take advantage of this tremendous opportunity for an outpouring of God's grace. All you non-Catholics: the Church is open to you, as it always has been and ever will be.

Aquinas, Ambler, Dante, Connelly, Baur

2009-09-27T21:55:00.002-04:00

I am a creature of habit. Especially during the work week, I do the same things at the same time almost every day. And I read books according to the time of day.

Over breakfast I read the Summa Theologica of St. Thomas. I'm in my third year of reading the Summa. Right now I'm in the middle of the "Second Part of the Second Part"; the Summa itself is in three parts, and the second part is itself divided into two parts. I'm reading the treatise about justice, specifically, "Question 77. Cheating, which is committed in buying and selling." Great stuff. It's hard to describe the peace and calm that come from reading St. Thomas, especially right after church and right before the work day starts.

Over lunch I usually read a work-related book, currently "The Object Primer: Agile Model-Driven Development with UML 2.0" by Scott Ambler. Next on my list is "Software Architecture in Practice" although I just noticed the 2nd edition is out, substantially updated over the 1st edition, which is what I have. Hmmm....

Over dinner I'm reading Dante's "Paradiso", the 3rd part of his Divine Comedy, following naturally after the Inferno and the Purgatorio. I hear many people read just the Inferno without moving on to the other two books, for its greater entertainment value. I don't understand this. The Inferno was hard for me to read; it's about souls in self-inflicted torment; all darkness and pain. The Paradiso is a greater accomplishment; from Scripture we know that the mind cannot conceive what awaits the blessed; so Dante can't come close to describing the real thing, but it is a noble attempt nonetheless.

When I have spare time in the evening I read a mystery or some other novel. Currently it's "Trunk Music" by Michael Connelly, part of a series featuring the detective Harry Bosch. I really like this series; I'm trying to read the whole series in order of publication. Previously I read "A Small Death in Lisbon" by Robert Wilson which is one of the finest mysteries I ever read.

At night I read a few pages from a spiritual book before falling asleep. Currently it's "In Silence With God" by Benedict Baur, another very good book about your personal relationship with God; something I continue to struggle with.

Stretching a metaphor until it breaks

2009-07-06T22:03:00.002-04:00

I baked two loaves of bread last weekend. They turned out great, thanks to Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book. But that's not the point of this post.

A few minutes after I began kneading the bread, I realized it was very hard to work with. Then I looked up and saw the bowl of yeast on my counter... not in the dough I was kneading, where it should have been! Many years ago I forgot the yeast in a bread maker; the bread came out like a brick, and that's what I was on my way to making.

So, I poured the yeast over my brick-in-the-making, and began to work it in. The gluten was pretty solid by then and didn't want to break up. I had to really squish and pull and press and mash. It kind of brought me back to my childhood days of playing in the sand and the mud. Finally everything was mixed into a very nice dough and the bread turned out just great.

That's the literal story. Now let's take an allegorical look... my allegory is a little goofy but it works in a weird kind of way.

The original brick I was kneading is like a dead human soul - lost in sin, immured in the world, unable to look up to Heaven or contemplate God's love and mercy, loving nothing, itself least of all. Such is the fate of the soul turned in upon itself, lacking faith, hope, and charity.

The yeast is like God's word, living and active in Scripture and the church. The yeast is capable of turning a brick (or to use more Scriptural language, a stony heart) into a pliant, life-giving, joyful substance.

But it takes some work. When I first poured the yeast on the brick, all I had was yeast and a brick; I had to do some work to break down the brick and work the yeast into it. That is the action of the Holy Spirit, transforming the stony heart into a living heart. The Spirit transforms us, operating on us even without our knowledge.

And the whole operation is pretty hard on the brick. Once a soul realizes it's in the midst of a dark wood (as Dante found himself at the start of The Inferno), there's a lot of hard work and pain ahead. Turning towards God means turning away from yourself; it's the hardest thing I've ever done. That first turning towards God suffices for your salvation; but God calls us to be holy, and so long as we remain in this vale of tears, we are called upon to let the Holy Spirit continue working on us.

Then you realize the truth about the horror you are leaving behind, and the truth about the glory you are approaching. And then you know it's worthwhile; you are on your way to becoming an aromatic offering to our Savior.

The Bostonians

2009-07-01T21:49:00.002-04:00

Last weekend I finished An Outcast of the Islands. How exhilarating it is to finish a great book, and how depressing to realize there is no more of said great book to read!

I am moving on to an author I'm still struggling with. I loved Henry James' book "Washington Square." But I didn't like "The Turn of the Screw" at all. And I've started a few other of his books, and not gotten very far.

But there's no denying that the man can write like nobody's business, and anyone who's books still fill a shelf at Border's a hundred years after he wrote them is a force to be reckoned with. So I've started The Bostonians. Reviews indicate it is a relatively light and satirical book; perhaps not so heavy as, say, "The Golden Bowl". Perhaps this will be the breakthrough book that The Reivers was for my reading of William Faulkner... "The Reivers" set me on fire.

The diocesan shuffle

2009-06-23T21:54:00.002-04:00

My diocese moves priests on a regular schedule. Pastors typically stay at a parish for 6 years (or maybe 10 - I forget). Parochial vicars (all priests other than the pastor) generally stay for 2 years.

At my parish our two parochial vicars came two years ago; so on July 1 they are moving on, and two new parochial vicars arrive.

I like the effects this has on the diocese as a corporate body, on the priests, and on the individual parishioners.

The diocese gets a flexible way to move priests to where they are needed, and a way to expose priests to all parts of the diocese, from the more rural to the near-city.

The priests get to know and work with more of their brethren. Parish priests tend to get tunnel-vision, seeing only their parish, so the regular reassignments broaden their horizons. Plus they meet more of the faithful.

Individual parishioners get to meet and work with more priests. This is very important for me. I've talked with people who've had the same pastor for 20+ years. Such a parish inevitably revolves around the person and personality of that one pastor. With priests coming and going relatively frequently, the faithful get to see that the Church's teachings remain the same, just expressed in a different style by each pastor. The focus is more on the person of Jesus Christ and the Catholic faith, less on any one priest.

I am always sorry to see my parish's priests leave, and at the same time I always look forward to meeting the new ones. What a great gift God has given us in the ordinary parish priest! The homilies, Masses, confessions, and counseling I've received from my humble parish priests have done more for my spiritual life than any other human interaction.

Too Many Curses

2009-06-17T21:44:00.002-04:00

"Too Many Curses" by A. Lee Martinez is the 5th book from this great fantasy writer - I've also read the previous 4. Almost unheard of for a modern fantasy writer is that all 5 books have different characters, plots, and styles. No trilogies, no series, no continuity from book to book. They are all totally different! How refreshing!

And they are all funny, lighthearted books; but not completely without depth, and internally logical and consistent. I had about decided there would be no more great fantasy writers - maybe I was wrong.

Our daily bread

2009-06-11T21:55:00.002-04:00

A few years ago I would get discouraged thinking about all the Masses and confessions I would be going to over the years. Isn't it possible just finally to become the ultimate Christian and stop having to invest the time and effort into driving to church day after day after day?

Then I read a story about an older gentleman who counted up the thousands of sermons he'd heard over the years. He couldn't remember the details of a single one. He thought they were all wasted! His pastor asked him if he could remember any of the thousands of meals his wife had made him, over the same number of years... He couldn't remember them either.

The lesson is clear. We eat three times a day (more or less) to keep up our physical strength and vitality. I attend Mass six times a week (more or less) to keep up my spiritual strength... The homily, the Eucharist, daily spiritual reading, is all food for the mind. On days I neglect Mass, prayer, and reading, my clarity of vision and focus on God suffers; just like my body suffers if I skip a few meals.

Viva Cristo Rey

2009-06-10T22:02:00.003-04:00

"Viva Cristo Rey!" - Long live Christ the King - was Miguel Pro's exclamation before his execution by firing squad in Mexico in 1927, during the terrible persecution of Catholics.

The government took this famous picture of the firing squad, intending it to belittle Pro's Catholicity, showing the weakness of the Faith compared to the government. His hands were not tied in that position - he deliberately spread his arms in imitation of the Crucifixion, just before he was shot and killed. Copies of the picture were distributed like postcards, to discourage the faithful. It had the opposite effect, inspiring the Catholics to such an extent the government soon outlawed the pictures.

At last year's Opus Dei retreat, they played Miguel Pro's story during the lunches. The story is hard to forget.

Recently I struggled with the real truth of my life in terms of pride and humility. The catchphrase - "Viva Cristo Rey!" - popped into my head and comforted me greatly. I still repeat it to myself from time to time during the day - when I'm tired, or discouraged, or just to remind myself of God. It clarifies my thoughts and gives me energy.

Long live Christ the King!

The Object Primer 3rd Edition

2009-06-08T21:41:00.002-04:00

The Object Primer: Agile Model Driven Development by Scott Ambler is the book I'm reading at work during lunch. In terms of introducing object-oriented concepts it is, in fact, a primer; very basic, starting off almost from scratch. Going back to basics is something everyone should do every once in a while... I have a definite tendency to make things as complicated as I can, and it's good to read a text that boils a topic down to the very basics.

It was written in 2004, and it's interesting how technology changes. One of the first chapters introduces the basic building blocks of business-oriented application development: object technology, relational databases, Web services, and XML. By "object technology" he means a rich domain model expressed in terms of the problem domain. I hardly ever see object technology applied in the disciplined way he describes... Maybe I've been working on the wrong projects. As for relational databases, they have certainly been everyone's bread and butter for over a generation now, but it is amazing how few programmers really know anything about them. The very largest Web sites don't seem to use traditional relational databases for the most part but every application I've written for over 20 years now is backed by one. Web services seem to be falling out of fashion in favor of plain old XML ("POX") and URL-driven interfaces.

But that is just the first chapter. I'm reading the book for practical experience and guidance on modeling - something I hardly ever do - I prefer writing paragraphs of text (much like this post that you are reading now), over boxes and arrows. But long and painful experience shows that modeling can be a huge help to team communication, team thought, communicating with the customer and management, etc. And it can help you write better software... All the problems arise from too much modeling, too early in the project; pro forma modeling done to fulfill a checklist by people who could care less about the model itself; and models that only partly reflect reality so they can't be trusted as a description of the actual software.

My hope from reading this book is to help me use models effectively, avoiding these traps.

Pride, humility, adherence to God's will

2009-06-07T21:22:00.002-04:00

It's been a while since I wrote about This Tremendous Lover. Like my retreat last November, it has caused tremendous upheaval in my spiritual life.

The upheaval came after I read the chapter on humility and adherence to God's will. Humility means having a clear understanding ourselves; adherence to God's will means losing ourselves to let God live in us.

In reading this chapter, I recognized myself in M. Eugene Boylan's description of the proud man who has hope only in himself.

One of the reasons why men are so anxious to exalt themselves -- to overestimate their own value and their own powers -- to resent anything that would tend to lower themselves in their own esteem or that of others -- is because they see no hope for their happiness save in themselves. That is often why they are so "touchy," so resentful of criticism, so impatient of opposition, so insistent on getting their own way, so eager be known, so anxious for praise, so determined on ruling their surroundings. They clutch at themselves like drowning men clutch at a straw. And as life goes on, and they are still far from being satisfied, their attitude borders on the feverish and the hysterical; whatever they may have got, they are certainly far from having found peace....

Some men are quite adroit in turning the conversation to topics in which they can display their knowledge or ability. The patronizing person is generally a a proud person.... There are those who insist upon maintaining their own opinion, those who cannot let any slip pass without correcting it, those who are only too glad to correct others.... Contemptuous sarcasm and mordant wit often come from pride.

I didn't recognize myself in any part of his description of the humble man who lives for God.

The attitude of the man who has true Christian humility is just the opposite. His hope is placed in God; he sees no hope in himself. He has not to worry about getting his own way; all that matters is that God should get His way. He knows that the less he has to do with the arranging of things, the more likely it is that things will turn out for the best. He is by no means spineless or inert. On the contrary, let him but once be certain that God wills him to undertake a certain work, and he will tackle it, no matter what it may be, because he knows his sufficiency is from God....

The avoidance of all those manifestations of pride which we mentioned above would be sound forms of practical humility. To speak as little of one's own self or affairs as possible; to mind one's own business; to avoid curiosity; not to want to manage other people's affairs; to accept contradiction or correction; not to insist upon one's own opinion unless truth or justice require it, and then to do so moderately, but with courage; to pass over the mistakes of others, to cover them up; to yield to will of others, where neither duty nor charity nor genuine Christian principle is involved; to hide one's own ability or talents; to avoid ostentation; all such are works of humility that are within the power of all.

I've known for some time the extent of my my problem with pride... But this was basically just an intellectual surface knowledge. Reading this chapter was enough to bring it home in a real, concrete fashion.

The fact is that standing on my own, being self-sufficient, is close to the heart of my personality. Turning my gaze from myself to God amounts to a leap into the unknown, a jump off the cliff, an embrace of the abyss. It means turning myself inside out.

It means trusting God, allowing His Word to re-shape me. For the word of God is living and effectual, and more piercing than any two edged sword; and reaching unto the division of the soul and the spirit, of the joints also and the marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. (Hebrews 4:12) I pray for the Word of God to twist between my soul and spirit, to scour me and turn me to Him.

An Outcast of the Islands

2009-06-04T21:22:00.002-04:00

This book is Joseph Conrad's second novel, published in 1886.

Conrad is quite an author; he was Polish, and didn't even learn English until his twenties, and yet became one of the finest novelists ever to write in English. The Wikipedia article I linked to above says he is a forerunner to modern writers, his style influencing everyone from D.H. Lawrence to Herman Melville. Personally I feel William Faulkner (another of my favorites) owes something to Conrad as well. Listening to Conrad's novel Nostromo on CD was a peak experience of my reading life.

"An Outcast of the Islands" depiction of obsession and alienation is so intense that I actually had to stop reading it for a few months. Even with the few month's gap, the story made such an impression on me that when I picked it back up last week, the whole story was still in my mind... In fact I never really stopped thinking about it. Not too many books have made such an impression on me.

The cover shown here is the cover of my copy. I can't find a better image online. I find the cover itself very evocative; it's from a painting called "Old Boathouse and Riverside Vegetation, Sarawak", by Marianne North.

But I'm not eloquent enough to explain Conrad's appeal. His sentences are simple and declarative, like Tolstoy's. The stories tend to shift back and forth in time and perspective, like Faulkner. But mainly, his stories are very interior; Conrad externalizes in narrative action the deepest functioning of the human soul.

There's a few authors that I've made a point of collecting and reading all their works that I could find... and they are an eclectic group. Donald Hamilton (espionage), William Faulkner (best writer ever), Glen Cook (fantasy), Robert E. Howard (fantasy), Ross MacDonald (mysteries), and Erich Maria Remarque (war). Conrad is well on his way to joining this group!

Exit Music

2009-05-28T22:42:00.002-04:00

This book by Ian Rankin is the 17th and last in Rankin's series featuring Detective Inspector John Rebus. Needless to say I've read all 17; just finished Exit Music last weekend. Just recently I wrote about the mini-depression that comes from finishing a great book. How much worse it is to finish a great series! Rebus is one of the most interesting and real characters I've ever come across. Totally different from Dashiell Hammett's Continental Op, but the same sense of life and struggle.

Rebus was an outsider, somebody that never fit in the police force or anywhere else; he sacrificed his marriage, most of his friendships, and his faith to the job itself. I'm not that kind of brooding obsessive; there's no way my work will expand to fill my entire life. Still I have the same sense of being an outsider. To really get ahead requires some devotion to consensus-building, to a quid-pro-quo maintenance of favors received vice favors given, and looking to advance your ally's self-interest and squelch your opponents. These are games John Rebus never played, and I've never succeeded at. One of the best things about Rankin's books is that he doesn't glamorize Rebus's iconoclasm and outsider-ness; a trap so many boring and tedious private eye writers fall into. The cost to his career and private life is pretty obvious.

And now it's all over... no more Rebus!

Standing down

2009-05-26T22:31:00.002-04:00

Tonight my Knights of Columbus council had the annual election of officers for the next fraternal year (which starts July 1). For the last 9 years I've been on the slate of incoming officers. This year breaks the streak - starting July 1 I will not be an officer in my council.

9 years ago I was a liberal Democrat cafeteria Catholic; while not so pro-death as our current President I was certainly not truly pro-life. Today I'm a life-voting orthodox Catholic. My experience as a Knights officer was part of this growth...

3 years ago my term as Grand Knight (chief officer of the council) was ending. My year as Grand Knight was very difficult for me personally; when my term started I was very active and gung-ho; at the end I was embittered and on my way to ending my involvement in the council programs. Even so, this experience was basically a good thing. Considering all that happened that year and contemplating exactly why I reacted so negatively taught me a lot about myself and how I affect other people and how they affect me.

So - I don't regret my time as an officer, but I would never repeat it!

Reasonable

2009-05-20T22:49:00.002-04:00

I meant to write about the President's ludicrous speech at Notre Dame, but Ann Coulter beat me to it.

I have been thinking how the baby killers like to portray themselves as the reasonable, tolerant people, and like to portray the pro-life crowd as humorless theocratic ideologues.

The following activities are fully endorsed by the pro-choice regime; when I say "fully endorsed" I mean the pro-choice regime will fiercely resist the slightest effort to place the slightest limit on any of these activities:

use a syringe to suck a baby's brain out of its skull
use a pair of pliers to crush a baby's skull
use a hacksaw to cut a baby's arms off
throw living babies in the trash; just imagine how dead babies are treated!
inject saline solution into the baby's sac, poisoning the baby; similar to how mean little boys kill garden slugs

Read about more ways to kill babies here. Planned Parenthood, NARAL, the Democratic Party, and the President of the United States support all of them!

Remember that it's the people that support these activities who are moral, tolerant, upright, and reasonable (at least, if you read the Washington Post). And remember it's the people who want to save, love, and treasure all babies who are intolerant, demonic, and bigoted; at least, if you listen to Fr. John Jenkins, the president of Notre Dame, a fine school that used to be Catholic.

How did this country end up like this? The U.S. gives equal weight to the life of a human child - and a garden slug.

The purpose of the Mass

2009-05-18T22:26:00.002-04:00

This Tremendous Lover has been tremendous reading. Chapter 11 is on the sacraments in general; Chapter 12, on the Eucharist; and I'm in the middle of Chapter 13, on the Mass. I wish I had the time and ability to write about all these topics! I certainly recommend everyone read this book.

Boylan presents the Mass with passion and clarity. The Mass is a sacrifice: the re-presentation of Jesus Christ's sacrifice of himself on Calvary. What is the purpose of sacrifice? To remind ourselves of our dependence on God; to provide an outward, sensible sign of our inward devotion. The outward sign means nothing without the inward turning towards God.

From page 183:

Our Lord's whole life was one long act of adoration and complete submission to God's will. His "interior" sacrifice was continual from the first moment of His life.... The external sacrifice on Calvary was the perfect expression of that interior sacrifice that was our Lord's whole life of submission to the will of God. That external sacrifice is given to us in the Mass, and we have to make our life one similar interior sacrifice.... There is the plan of the whole Christian life -- to live up to what we say in the action of the Mass.

So the purpose of the Mass is our sanctification (1 Thess 4:3 "This is the will of God, your sanctification"); to conform our will with God's will, for us to live with Him and in Him.

Such are the fruits of faithful participation in the Mass. What of faithless participation? As always it is easy, indeed easier now than ever, to attend the Mass and even partake of the Eucharist, without the inward consent of the will. This is the same outward piety and inward hard-heartedness condemned so often in both the Old and New Testaments. We must all strive for constant increase in our knowledge of God, in our faith and trust in Him, and in our conformance of our will to His.

5/8/77 Cornell University

2009-05-14T21:53:00.002-04:00

The Grateful Dead's concert on May 8, 1977 at Cornell University is widely regarded as the best ever. Mostly because of this show's impact on the tape trader community at the time. This show was the first high quality soundboard tape that got into wide circulation and really changed the entire Grateful Dead community.

So I downloaded the show from etree... etree has most all the GD concerts. It's the first time I downloaded a community-hosted show vice ordering from dead.net. Pretty easy all in all - the download comes in Shorten format, and the shn2make tool easily unpacks the Shorten files onto CD-R discs, complete with CD-Text.

It is, in fact, a very good show... May 1977 is about as good as it gets. But I prefer the Closing of Winterland concert on 12/31/78, and there's a couple other in my collection I like more. It is comforting to know that etree basically has as many concerts as I can stand to download... No worries about running out!

The Inferno - Canto I

2009-05-12T18:34:00.003-04:00

Finishing a book like Lord of the Silent Kingdom causes some problems.

Reading the book is exhilarating; finishing the book is depressing! No more pages to flip to!
What to read next? What could match the experience?

Fortunately The Inferno is a worthy followup! I read John Ciardi's translation before, but this translation is the classic Longfellow one, and plus, this is an oversize hardback edition with Gustave Dore's woodcuts! Truly a visual treat.

A few nights ago I read the famous first canto. Dante finds himself midway through his life's journey (35 of his Biblical 3-score-and-10), lost in a dark and thorny wood, with no recollection how he got there... just exactly like I found myself some 15 years ago, mired in sin. He sees a mountainous slope ahead - a way out! He starts climbing eagerly - just like I eagerly latched back onto the Faith. He finds himself trapped by his own sinful past! Try as he might he cannot escape. A trustworthy guide appears to show him the way - for Dante it is Virgil, the icon of human reason, who promises to guide him through Hell and Purgatory; but Virgil is not able to guide Dante through Paradise; a full understanding of revelation is beyond the reach of human reason. Needless to say, my trustworthy guide is the Holy Catholic Church!

Reading, reflection, prayer

2009-05-08T22:30:00.002-04:00

I've been reading more in this book about a basic plan for growth in the spiritual life. Boylan lays out three basic needs: reading, reflection, and prayer.

Reading is to learn more about our Lord and Savior; when we love someone, we want to know more about them, and we love our Lord more than our own lives! Plus, there is so much sentimental and malicious distortion of His life and teachings that it takes some time to root out our built-in misconceptions and replace them with the wonderful truth. Reading should be done every day, at least ten to fifteen minutes worth. We should read carefully, with the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

Reflection is to prayerfully consider what we have read, to turn it over in our minds, discuss it with Our Lord, and drive it deep into our subconscious. Reflection is how we root out the misconceptions and lies I mentioned above, and plant the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

Prayer is conversation with God, recalling Him to our mind and placing ourselves in His presence. We should get used to talking with Him from time to time throughout the day, and practice being aware of His presence. The phrase I use is "practicing the presence of God"; taking a few moments to become of aware of Him and recall Him to my mind.

All of these are closely intertwined. Reading can be a form of prayer, and many people mix in reflection during their prayer time. All three of them combined into a daily practice will have a singular effect: to make us Christ-centered, to put Him at the center of lives and thoughts. Josemaria Escriva, the founder of Opus Dei, used to say that we should be able to close our eyes and mentally play back scenes from our Savior's life, placing ourself in the scene. I often picture myself in the crowd when Christ was passing by. Reading, reflection, and prayer is what allows us to bury such scenes and images so deep into our souls that we can close our eyes at any time and find ourselves crying out for Jesus, like the tax collector that climbed the sycamore tree to see Him.

The need to excel vs. fortitude

2009-05-08T22:00:00.002-04:00

All my life I've wanted to do everything the way it should be done, and do it well. They aren't quite the same thing. The first part is to do things the way they should be done - by the book. In fact, the main way I learn new things is to read the classic book on the topic. The second part is to do things very well. From making popcorn to implementing customer requirements, I want to do it right, and do it well.

This approach is a big factor in whatever success I've had in life. To this day I still don't understand how people can put their names on work they know isn't very good. I still remember the shock when I realized it didn't bother my stepchildren to turn in shoddy homework, or even not turn in the homework at all.

But life is a hard problem, and any approach that gives you strength in some ways, makes you weaker than others. My weakness is fear to take on things where I might not succeed. When confronted with tasks that could well be beyond my abilities, I tend to freeze or become passive-aggressive.

This is where fortitude comes into play. Fortitude is the virtue that gives us the courage and energy to tackle problems that could overwhelm us. Josef Pieper's book on the four cardinal virtues includes an excellent, even life-changing, discussion of fortitude.

So with fortitude (one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit) to give me strength, and faith and trust in God to give me peace of mind, I hope to be more willing to try new things and very difficult things.

"This Tremendous Lover": a plan of life

2009-05-05T22:41:00.002-04:00

In This Tremendous Lover, Boylan discusses a methodical approach towards growth in our spiritual life. So far he recommends a daily plan that is pretty similar to other spiritual writers. As always, every element of the plan must be approached from the heart with faith! Every Old Testament prophet rails against empty ritual observances that are not animated by love for God. Every day our hearts must overflow with love for Him. That being said:

a daily short formal prayer spoken in a formal posture (i.e. kneeling). I say the Angelus every day, but not usually kneeling or in other formal posture.
"A habit of talking to our Lord frequently during the day, quite informally"
10 to 15 minutes of private prayer every day. This is contemplative prayer where we are loving and adoring God. 15 minutes is not a maximum; longer prayer always pays off. But I can say from practical experience that 10 minutes is a minimum. 10 minutes of loving and adoring God every day will change your life. Fewer than 10 just doesn't seem to accomplish anything. I hope to write more articles on private prayer...
10 to 15 minutes of spiritual reading every day; especially the Gospels and the Psalms

Boylan has much more to say on prayer and spiritual reading and our whole life with Christ and in Him... This little book is well worth the read.

Which direction to face?

2009-05-05T22:33:00.002-04:00

In my previous post I mentioned my struggle with sin and ways to resist my temptations. In a weird way this orientation towards sin is a big part of the problem. One of the priests at my parish had a saying: "When you face your shadow you can't see the sun; turn towards the sun and you can't see your shadow." The shadow is sin; the sun is the Son, our Lord and Savior. Being preoccupied with sin takes time away from being preoccupied with God. When we face in His direction our temptations become insubstantial shadows we can't even see.

Lifeless faith

2009-04-30T22:20:00.006-04:00

My pastor recently told me that while I have the Catholic faith, all too often I fail to live it; comparing my lifeless faith with my family members that don't have the faith at all. His comment struck a chord (as he meant it to).

It so happens I am reading the section of the Summa Theologica about charity. The link I just gave discusses whether charity can be lost through a single mortal sin. St. Thomas' answer is yes; "Charity denotes union with God", and mortal sin which destroys this union with God removes God's infusion of charity.

But faith remains after mortal sin, and faith without charity is the lifeless faith that I am discussing in this article. Faith that is not animated by charity is hard to live with. I mean this very concretely and literally; the man of faith that lacks charity is the caricature of the humorless, stiffnecked, hypocritical, joyless, angry dry husk of a man that popular culture paints all religious as being. If I lack sufficient love of God, my adherence to the Faith is a matter of will alone, while in my inner heart and deepest soul, I really prefer myself to God (which is the very definition of insufficient love of God). Outwardly, I can appear orthodox and pious, but in reality I am dry, sharp, and empty; in fact the very whited sepulchre our Lord condemned the Pharisees for being (Matthew 23:27 "Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites; because you are like to whited sepulchres, which outwardly appear to men beautiful, but within are full of dead men's bones, and of all filthiness.")

For years in my struggle with sin I've focused on lack of will as the problem - if only I had a stronger will I could best my temptations. But my pastor's directness opened up a new line of thought. The more I love God, the smaller my temptations will seem. I should fan the flames of my love for Him... If you read my posts from last December and January you may recall that friendship with God is not something to be taken lightly. Scripture is clear that our hearts should be on fire with love for Him: Deuteronomy 30:6, Matthew 22:37, Joshua 22:5, 1 John 4:19, etc, etc. Now it is clear that no man can love God as He ought to be loved. But I can certainly strive to love Him more!

The need for spiritual reading

2009-04-27T22:18:00.002-04:00

I'm reading in This Tremendous Lover about the need for spiritual reading to progress or even continue in the spiritual life. (Before my evangelistic friends get all excited, tops on his reading list is the Gospels, then the remaining Scripture.) Boylan thinks this is more necessary now than in the past, because:

people don't pay attention to homilies any more
our neighbors and friends aren't necessary Catholic or even Christians in their beliefs
magazines and books are carefully crafted to focus our minds on this passing world, specifically, those aspects of this passing world that are most ephemeral and least worthy of our attention
American culture itself is now a pagan culture; anyone merely imbibing the feeling of the times will not become Christian

The kicker is that he wrote all this in 1947! Television hadn't even been invented! Henry Miller's books were still banned in the United States!

Some Catholics nowadays look back at the 1950's as a highwater mark of Catholic culture in the U.S. That Boylan could describe the state of American Catholicism in 1947 with the same language I describe the current state of affairs just goes to show - something. But what? A modernist would say that both Boylan and I are filled with sound and fury, signifying nothing; orthodox believers have been decrying the current state of affairs for all of recorded history. And after all, in 1947 a black person couldn't drink from the same water fountain as me (a white person) in the capitol of the U.S. Isn't it much better nowadays?

Needless to say I don't buy the modernist position. More babies born out of wedlock; more babies killed in the womb; fewer strong families; fewer strong institutions; less willingness to sacrifice oneself for others; the overt sexualization of all relations. None of these are signs of healthy societies.

Well, I didn't plan to get so far away from my original point. The real goal of spiritual reading is to learn about Christ; about His life, the world He created, His desire for us, our desire for Him, His laws, His Passion. The more we know about Christ, the easier it is to grow in friendship with Him. And love for Christ is the basic commandment ("You shall love the Lord with all your heart, all your mind, all your strength; and your neighbor as yourself"). We can't love someone we don't know. We tend to sentimentalize the Gospel, to make Jesus into a nice guy that just wants us to be happy. Well, He does want us to be happy; but the happiness He has in mind for us is a far cry from the pleasant, pagan sensuality that so many of us mean by that word. He offers us joy. Spiritual reading helps us understand the difference between joy and pleasure; between the supernatural hope that Jesus calls us to share, and the faith in this world offered by all the multitudes that would lead us away from Him.

With my brothers

2009-04-25T22:54:00.003-04:00

At the end of the Dead's first concert on this year's tour, Phil Lesh said how great he felt to still be playing music "with - my brothers." He'd meant to say something about such fine musicians but switched midstream to "my brothers".

The phrase resonates with me. First, it's what I want in my career. In my last post I talked how I wanted to see my current project through to completion, despite all its problems. Well, part of that is to keep working with my teammates, who are my brothers in some sense. Constantly jumping from company to company and project to project amounts to breaking the web of shared work and common obligation that defines work on a project. And there might be a little more to it. The urge to bail out of a project a year or two after I start is partly a wish to escape my dependence on others - a need to break away from the ties that bind me to my fellow workers.

Obviously projects end and people leave projects all the time and sometimes leaving a project is the only rational thing to do (especially after you become aware it has a Cloud of Doom). But looking back over the years my decisions probably have more to do with preserving my Glorious Independence than anything else.

I want to touch on a larger topic for a minute. The communion of saints also forms a band of brothers; the Church Militant here in the world, the Church Suffering in Purgatory, and the Church Triumphant in Heaven. The Christian leads a life of communion with this entire Church; with the living on earth, and with all those who sleep in Christ. Grave sin ends this brotherhood. Grave sin's essence amounts to preferring a temporal good more than you prefer God - choosing to decide for yourself what is good and bad for yourself. Sometimes the choice to sin amounts to a desire to live in splendid isolation - the ego's desire to be its own end, its own all-in-all, refusing to submit to God who is the only being worthy of our adoration. Grave sin amounts to turning your back on the brotherhood of Christians. Christ Himself is our brother and the Head of the Church.

In my experience, sometimes I'm most tempted to sin when I face challenges in my relationships - with my family, or my friends, or at work. Sin is a way to step away from the world, to turn at right angles to reality and escape into a place where my ego is all there is. Most likely this somehow started as an emotional survival mechanism... I don't really know how it started. But it has to stop! My ego is not all there is; reality is not something to flee from; relationships are valuable because they are challenging.

We are our relationships; my wife is who I am, and God Himself is relationship, Three in One. I want to live, not in splendid isolation, not in glorious independence, but with - my brothers.

Perseverance, patience, and fortitude

2009-04-23T22:42:00.002-04:00

My career is organized into projects. I'm a consultant, so I join a project, work for a while, then leave. At some point in every project I become fully aware of all the irrationality, inefficiency, venality, incompetence, goldbricking, and laziness inherent in every large consulting project. I am at this point in my current project! Historically, this is when I get disgusted and leave. Things are different now; maybe maturity comes to us all, even me. Consider:

Every other project is also riddled with irrationality, inefficiency, venality, incompetence, goldbricking, and laziness
I myself from time to time exhibit these same vices; hopefully not so much venality and incompetence, certainly most of the others
Every project, even this one, also has clear thinking, productivity, prudence, competence, solid engineering, and hard work

In short, any place I go is likely to have the same problems (and same benefits) as here. There is no point in leaving!

So if I'm going to stick around, I should strive to make the project successful. Here is where the fortitude comes in. It's easy to keep working hard at what I've always done and wait for the project to fail (I still haven't decided whether the project has a Cloud of Doom). It's harder to think through what has to be done for the project to succeed, and what I can do to make it happen. Thinking more than a week or so in the future is a new thing for me...

Why people choose to be atheist

2009-04-22T22:29:00.003-04:00

This month's Homiletics and Pastoral Review has a short article discussing reasons people choose to not believe in God. Clearly none of these reasons is valid but it is good to have an idea of why people make the choices they do.

Intellectual integrity. "I can only believe in things once I see sufficient evidence; I see no such evidence for God's existence; hence I am forced to not believe in God."
The problem of evil. "How can an all-powerful, all-good, all-knowing God permit the vast, arbitrary pain and suffering that is such an evident part of life?"
The crimes of believers. "Theists have done bad things; therefore believing in God makes people do bad things; I don't want to do bad things; hence I will not believe in God."
Hatred of religion in general and Christianity in particular. "I just don't like religion period."
The Nietzschean reason. "Belief in God is the opiate of the masses; it makes the world comfortable to live in. But the world is really struggle and hardship and suffering."
Man is the measure of all things. "If there is a God, I am insignificant next to Him. But I am clearly the most intelligent and wonderful of all beings. Therefore there is no God."
Peace of mind. "Sin? Repentance? If I don't believe in God I don't have to feel sorry for my own behavior!"
Intellectual laziness. "Believing in God and making sense of my faith is too much hard work; I'd have to form a conception of a non-material being and follow many complicated arguments. I'll watch football instead."
Conspicuous noncomformity. "America is still basically Christian; to stand against conventional wisdom requires me to be atheist." (Personal note: this maybe true in the Midwest and Bible Belt; where I live on the East Coast, the opposite is true; the noncomformists are the orthodox Christians.)
Libertinism. "I want to eat, drink, be merry, and be sexually adventurous. It requires significant mental compartmentalization and rationalization to be promiscuous and orthodox at the same time. So I'll be atheist."
Hatred of God. "A nun was mean to me in 5th grade."

The Dead, Greensboro 4/12/2009

2009-04-22T22:07:00.003-04:00

So far I listened to most of the first set from this concert. It is not bad! The music is recognizably Grateful Dead music: the fat, fluid bass lines; the tempo shifts from pulsing jam to white-hot intensity to deep weirdness; the rhythmic complexity; the sense that each instrument is doing something interesting on its own, with the combination somehow powerful and resonant instead of discordant and noisy. The total fluidity isn't there yet; the original band played together for 30 years, and this incarnation only for a few months. 4/12/2009 is the first concert in the tour though; as time goes on they should get tighter.

Woman, behold your son

2009-04-21T22:50:00.002-04:00

On Good Friday this year, I attended the Tre Ore service at my parish. Tre Ore means "three hours" and is a traditional observance of the three hours Jesus hung on the cross. Scripture recounts seven phrases uttered by Jesus from the cross; during the Tre Ore service, 7 homilies are preached, one for each phrase.

Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do
This day thou shalt be with me in Paradise
Woman, behold thy son; son, behold thy mother
My God, My God, why have You forsaken me?
I thirst
It is finished
Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit

On this Good Friday I found the "Woman, behold thy son" homily especially memorable. The preacher connected this phrase with the visitation, when Mary visited her relative Elizabeth right after the Annunciation. Mary had just been told she would be the mother of the Christ; and the first thing she does is to hurry off to help her elderly relative in her confinement. No standing on her dignity for the mother of the Lord! Anyway, the preacher pointed out how this showed Mary's willingness to bring the Lord to humanity. On the Cross, by this phrase, Jesus gave His mother to humanity. By saying "woman" instead of "Mary" and "son" instead of "John" (by using the general, not the particular), Jesus established Mary as mother of the faithful.

Concert alerts

2009-04-21T22:38:00.002-04:00

I've missed one too many concerts by my favorites (Aimee Mann, Old Crow Medicine Show, Emmylou Harris, Lucinda Williams), just from not knowing they would be in the area... (Now the Dead I wouldn't miss by accident; I just missed them because I wanted to. Now I wish I'd gone; but that's another story). Anyway, back to the main point. I signed up to two concert alert sites: Pollstar and Eventful. Emmylou Harris will be at Wolf Trap in May, appearing with Shawn Colvin, Patty Griffin, and Buddy Miller... Should be a fun time.

Discernment

2009-04-20T22:42:00.002-04:00

I've been meditating on the whole prayer, sacraments, reading, God's will prescription for leading a Christian life. Prayer, sacraments, and reading have been my tools for conforming my will to God's... Prayer and conformance to the Father's will were prominent features of our Lord's humanity so I know I'm on the right track. But I'm not sure I've paid sufficient attention directly to strengthening my will to follow God. All too often my will is antithetical to God's and I am all too weak in turning away from myself to face Him. I will pray for the fortitude to keep my face turned toward my Lord and Savior.

So how can we know what God's will is, in any given situation? Our vocation is to love God with all our heart, and our neighbor as ourselves. Practically speaking the Decalogue (aka the Ten Commandments) is our guide for making this happen. If our will is guiding us to turn our back on God or on our neighbor (again, practically speaking, this means breaking a commandment) we know we are headed in the wrong direction.

This guidance may still be insufficient. Who is to say how the commandments should guide me in my particular situation? We live in a world where cohabitation, fornication, adultery, abortion, contraception, divorce, artificial fertility treatments, pornography, are all regarded as positive treasures... or if not actual treasures, then harmless ways to spend our time.

Scripture is an obvious start, and the only starting point. But our Adversary can use Scripture for his own ends; he quoted the Psalms to our Savior in the desert. Many reasonable people today feel that Scripture justifies activities ranging from female preachers to homosexual marriage. Look at the Anglican Church's debates over female ordination - each side had their historians, Scripture scholars, and logical arguments.

For Catholics this issue is resolved by the Church. Only the Catholic church can say definitively that it does not have the authority to ordain women and that homosexual marriage is a contradiction in terms, like "round square" or "cold heat". Only the Catholic church can make it stick. Other churches can only say we don't ordain women - yet; or, at this point in time, we don't marry gays; but who knows what next year will bring for our doctrine? The Church's teaching on faith and morals today is just the same as it was in the very beginning; just as Scripture is still the same.

Lord of the Silent Kingdom

2009-04-20T22:28:00.002-04:00

This book by Glen Cook is absorbing my reading time these days. For my money Cook is the best ever swords-and-sorcery author; even better than Robert E. Howard who founded the genre.

The problem with Glen Cook's books is they deprive me of sleep... I have to resolve not to start reading at bedtime!

Prayer, the sacraments, spiritual reading, doing God's will

2009-04-17T22:03:00.003-04:00

Yesterday's post laid out the reasoning for letting go of your own will and letting God's will drive your life. Sounds good! How do you do it? Suppose you decide it's time to try out this God's will thing... How do I know what God's will is? It is notoriously easy to deceive yourself into imagining that your own desires are synonymous with His.

Chapter 8 of This Tremendous Lover ("Seeking Christ in Prayer") begins to answer this question. "There are four great ways of getting in touch with Him; prayer, the sacraments, reading, and the doing of God's will. The latter, in fact, would include them all, but we are here thinking for the moment in terms of obedience to the commandments and the duties of one's station in life."

But first, the chapter starts off with good news on the possibility of a spiritual life. "We exclude no baptized person who is willing to avoid mortal sin. It does not matter what is his or her age, condition, or education, or what has been his or her history; it does not matter what sins he or she may have committed in the past, or what opportunities he or she may have neglected, or what graces he or she may have refused; as long as it is a case of a baptized person, who is willing to try and avoid mortal sin, all the doctrine we have outlined can be applied to his or her case." Boylan cites Matthew 1.21: "And thou shalt call his name Jesus. For he shall save his people from their sins."

The obvious way for such a person to get started is the imitation of Christ, and the way to start this is to get to know Him. "The obvious policy from the very start is to get into touch as soon as possible and as closely as possible with our Lord."

And this is where the prayers, sacraments, reading, and doing God's will come in. They are all intertwined. We need our own concept of God to pray to Him; hence the reading. We need grace to absorb the reading and learn about God; hence the sacraments and the prayer. Sincere prayer comes from sincerity in doing God's will; sincerity in doing God's will comes from praying for His grace.

So where do I stand in all this? I'm long in the sacraments: Mass attendance 6 times a week (OK, sometimes only 5); confession once or twice a month. Prayer is a little weak; I pray before Mass but on days I don't attend Mass I generally don't pray either. Not coincidentally these are the days that are exceptionally hard for me. Reading is a little weak; all too often I pick up a novel instead of spiritual reading. And willingness to do God's will? Mostly OK but sin is more a part of my life than I care to admit to myself.

So how to make some forward progress? I will strive to pray every single day and to read every single day, and to practice the presence of God. By this I mean to stop several times a day, quiet my thoughts, and make myself aware of God's presence in my soul.

Dead '09 Complete Recordings

2009-04-17T21:52:00.003-04:00

So the Dead (the Grateful Dead, minus Jerry Garcia, plus Warren Haynes and Jeff Chimenti) are touring this year... I missed them at Verizon Center this week. The tour is getting good reviews on dead.net. The band is selling downloads of every single show, within three or four days of each concert... or you can buy the entire tour, 22 shows, probably over 70 hours of music, for $310. I plan to get the first two shows (Greensboro and Washington DC; then I'll think about the full tour. Based on the set lists and the reviews they're doing pretty interesting things... not just rehashes of the glory days.

God's will

2009-04-16T22:09:00.002-04:00

This Tremendous Lover was written by M. Eugene Boylan in 1947. The title refers to Jesus Christ Who loves each of us so much that He would have died for any one of us, and Who wants all of us to love Him with all of our strength and passion. Each of us should be Christ's lover.

I just finished Chapter 7, "Seeking Christ Through Humility". Humility opposes pride. Pride was the sin of our first parents; Adam and Eve desired to choose what was good and evil for themselves, without regard to God's will. Pride still underscores every sin; the root of every sin is our turning away from God and to ourselves - choosing ourselves instead of God. Boylan says that pride is what stands in Christ's way; grace cannot permeate the soul that chooses itself over God. The humble soul accepts its need for redemption, for grace, for God.

The second part of the chapter is about conformance to God's will. Pride and humility play out in our daily choices. Pride leads us to choose our own will over God's; humility allows us to submit to God, to let our hearts be molded by Him.

From page 88:

Our position in His plan at any moment depends upon our will at that moment. If we reject His will, then we put ourselves outside His plan for us; if we conform our will to His, then all things work together for our good. For, as we have said, "God's will is of a piece" -- He wills our happiness, and His plan is to lead us to happiness through Christ. His plan, in fact, is to re-establish all things fully in Christ, and every single detail that He wills co-operates to that end. The one exception is the case of the unrepentant sinner, whose sin puts him outside that plan insofar as it provides for his happiness, but who falls immediately into another plan in which God's justice rules.

Take a second to re-read that last sentence about the unrepentant sinner and God's justice.

On page 91 is a very striking passage about how all things are re-established fully in Christ:

Our Lord compared Himself to a vine of which we were the branches; He also spoke of the seed which, being cast into the ground, had to die to itself in order to germinate and grow to fruit-bearing maturity. Let us think of Christ as a seed cast into the barren soil which we can consider to be the whole universe. The seed dies of itself and becomes a plant sending out roots in all directions. Each of these tiny roots embraces the particles of the soil, chooses out what is in harmony with its needs, absorbs and makes it part of itself. And so in the course of time all the good that is in the soil is transformed into the living tissue of the plant.... For indeed the world was barren of supernatural life, until Christ's death sowed the seed of His life in it. And it is by His life that we are made truly alive. He is not only the vine, He is the only vine; and there is no other life that really matters except that which is found in Him.

Awesome listening experience

2009-04-16T22:00:00.002-04:00

Three words: Sennheiser HD595 headphones. Just came in today's mail. I cringe to think of all the time I've wasted with lesser phones! Start with an iPod; fill it with great music (losslessly encoded, of course); add awesome headphones; and you have about as good a musical experience as you could wish! At least, without traveling back in time to a 1977 Grateful Dead show.

Sign the Notre Dame Scandal petition

2009-04-15T22:37:00.002-04:00

More than 285,000 people have signed the petition protesting Notre Dame's giving an honorary law degree to Barack Obama, and inviting him to speak at this year's commencement address. Please join them!

From the petition:

It has come to our attention that the University of Notre Dame will honor President Barack Obama as its commencement speaker on May 17.

It is an outrage and a scandal that “Our Lady’s University,” one of the premier Catholic universities in the United States, would bestow such an honor on President Obama given his clear support for policies and laws that directly contradict fundamental Catholic teachings on life and marriage.

One a day

2009-04-15T22:31:00.002-04:00

OK, so I'm in awe of my friend TJ's one-a-day posting schedule: In Search of a Minimalist Experience. I have to get myself back on the ball here. The trick is to work blog posting into my regular schedule... easier said than done. I hereby resolve to post more often. We'll see!

"Advancing Reproductive Rights and Health in a New Administration"

2009-01-04T21:07:00.002-05:00

Such is the title of the President-elect's change.gov page on "reproductive rights" (code phrase for abortion (code phrase for baby-killing)).

I do have to give props to the President-elect for making this page interactive. The whole purpose is to gather comments from us, the electorate. Happily, it seems many of the 3,500-plus comments are pro-life. Why not add your own pro-life comments? The web site is: http://change.gov/open_government/entry/advancing_reproductive_rights_and_health_in_a_new_administration.

Unfortunately, having just posted my own comment, I have to report the whole comment process is slow and tedious. But I feel my blog readers are intelligent and motivated enough to work though the process! Here is my own comment:

Dear Mr. Obama, please reconsider your support for this brutal piece of legislation. The FOCA would not only lead to many, many more abortions, but also contributes to the destruction of Constitutional order in this country. Please do not sign the FOCA.

It is worth noting that the document posted for discussion on this change.gov Web page amounts to 55 pages of instructions to the President-elect from the pro-death industry.

"Choose Life Virginia" license plates

2009-01-04T20:46:00.002-05:00

http://vachoose-life.org/ is asking for paid Department of Motor Vehicles applications in order to establish the sale of "Choose Life" license plates in Virginia. Proceeds from such plates would go to agencies that counsel for adoption, and not for abortion, and also to pro-life Pregnancy Resource Centers.

Please go to this Web site, print the application, and mail your paid application as directed. Wouldn't it be great to see Choose Life plates?

Please also go here to sign a corresponding online petition. I was only the 1,006th person to sign. Please join me!

Fear of the Lord

2009-01-04T20:20:00.002-05:00

I talked with my pastor this weekend about my struggle with being in a personal relationship with the Lord. The retreat I attended in November 2008 and the book "God and His Image" caused an earthquake in my spiritual life centered around the concept of divine filiation. Previously my real spiritual life (as opposed to my intellectual understanding) was based on God as an impersonal force whom it was just for me to worship, who was indeed all-beautiful, all-good, and all-truth, but still an impersonal force, like a forest or the sea, something to appreciate, even worship, but not something to relate to like I relate to my friends or my family.

The deep prayer offered by the retreat let me start to penetrate this shell and worship God because, and as, my Father. What a tremendous difference! The difference between joy and aesthetics.

But that joy touched something deep in me, and this something struck back, and then the struggle was on. The six or seven weeks since the retreat have been as great a period of spiritual warfare as any I've experienced. As always, the Church gives us the weapons: prayer, the sacraments, the Mass, the beauty of the faith.

Anyway, my pastor and I talked about all this. He says this reaction of fear to the Lord's gift of himself is very common. Knowing our own sinfulness, how can we not shrink from the Lord's light? The darkness in us wants to protect itself. My pastor pointed out Peter's reaction when he first became aware of the Lord's divinity: "Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man." (Luke 5:8) Well, unlike Peter, I didn't ask the Lord to leave; I ran as hard as I could in the other direction!

He also had a simple strategy for enlisting Divine help with this problem: just acknowledge my fear to the Lord. When I pray - and prayer is time spent specifically in talking with the Lord - just acknowledge to Him that I am afraid of His friendship, and ask for His help to dispel the fear. Dispelling this fear amounts to dispelling the darkness within me, which is specifically what Jesus wants.

At the November retreat the priest gave me a little formula for my prayers that I can easily adapt: "Lord, I love Thee, help me to love Thee more and more." Now I can say:

"Lord, I love Thee, help me to love Thee more and more."
"Lord, I fear Thee, help me to love Thee more and more."
"Lord, I love Thee, help me to love Thee more and more."
"Lord, I fear Thee, help me to love Thee more and more."
"Lord, I love Thee, help me to love Thee more and more."
"Lord, I fear Thee, help me to love Thee more and more."

Retreat, Day 4, 11:45 AM "The Eucharist"

2009-01-04T20:15:00.002-05:00

These are my last notes! From after the preached meditation on Sunday, November 16, 2008, at 11:45 AM - the last preached meditation of my retreat.

The Eucharist transforms us into what we consume - it conforms our soul to Jesus. So what have we become?

We must be as bread broken for the life of the world. The fruits of the Eucharist we consume should touch every aspect of our life. We have to love everyone as Christ loved them - Who came to save us when we were still His enemies. We must love and pray for those who hate us.

And we must pour out our love on everyone. Most especially those closest to us. Most especially our wives! [NOTE: this retreat was for men only.] Our task is to make our wife the happiest woman in the world. Be attentive to her in matters great and small. Anticipate her needs. Never a cross or harsh word - and apologize right away if such should cross your lips. Love your wife always.

Retreat, Day 4, 8:40 AM "Suffering"

2009-01-04T20:08:00.002-05:00

My notes after the preached meditation on Sunday, November 16, 2008, 8:40 AM:

Suffering unites us to Jesus on the cross. Revive the old custom of "offering it up": offer everything to God - every pinprick, every jab, every twist of fortune.

Suffering makes us human - and it allows us to console others. How can one who has never felt pain offer sympathy and comfort to the afflicted?

We love the suffering that comes to us. Our duty is to put things in order - to right the disorders of sin. It is hard work that will encounter great resistance. Embrace the suffering that comes to us.

Go back through your past life. Offer everything that you have not already offered to God. Christ gave meaning to suffering. By suffering we participate in the redemption of the world.

Remember the parable of the unjust judge and the pestering widow. It applies to our nation today. Do not let the President-elect, your Senators, your Congressmen rest in peace! And pray continually to God to bring about a culture of life.

1 John 2:27

2008-12-29T22:22:00.003-05:00

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

2008-12-29T21:55:00.002-05:00

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

2008-12-28T20:59:00.003-05:00

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

2008-12-28T20:13:00.002-05:00

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

2008-12-28T20:01:00.002-05:00

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

2008-12-27T20:58:00.002-05:00

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

2008-12-27T20:45:00.002-05:00

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

2008-12-25T10:04:00.002-05:00

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

2008-12-08T20:56:00.002-05:00

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

2008-12-08T20:51:00.002-05:00

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

2008-12-01T22:09:00.002-05:00

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

2008-12-01T22:05:00.002-05:00

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"

2008-12-01T21:57:00.002-05:00

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"

2008-12-01T20:55:00.002-05:00

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

2008-11-24T21:41:00.004-05:00

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"

2008-11-24T21:04:00.002-05:00

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

2008-11-23T20:32:00.002-05:00

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

2008-11-23T20:06:00.002-05:00

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

2008-11-23T19:49:00.002-05:00

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

2008-11-23T19:34:00.002-05:00

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

2008-11-20T20:37:00.002-05:00

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

2008-11-20T20:17:00.004-05:00

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.

George Weigel and logic

2007-06-20T20:28:00.000-04:00

"The Truth of Catholicism" is under 200 pages, but dense despite the brevity. Weigel's writing consists of simple, clear expositions of basic logic. Sometimes I think the disappearance of logic (along with Latin and the virtues) from the educational curriculum is the underlying root of the muddle-headed thinking so much in evidence today: there is no effort to teach people how to think.

Anyway, here are some examples of what I mean.

Abortion: (p 162) Weigel pronounces the simple syllogism I've longed to see in print.

Abortion is the end of an innocent life.
Ending an innocent life is always wrong.
Therefore, abortion is always wrong.

Then he goes on to defend the fact that abortion is, in fact, the end of an innocent life (as opposed to the "mere" destruction of a lifeless clump of cells).

Christianity and others: (p 145) While not such a straightforward exercise of logic, the Catholic position is expressed very tersely and succinctly: "The Church cannot believe that Christ is anything other than the unique savior of the world; the Church cannot but believe anything other than that God wills the salvation of all, whether or not they ever hear of Christ or the Catholic Church." The conflict is resolved as follows: everyone that is saved (even if they have never heard the name of Christ) is saved because of Christ and his redeeming death and resurrection. The value of missionary activity (bringing the word of God to non-believers) is two-fold: giving them the opportunity to lead a Christian life; and providing them with the ordinary means of salvation (participation in the Christian liturgy; salvation outside Christianity is extra-ordinary - beyond the ordinary).

Freedom, willfulness, and the law: (p 77) Chapter 10 "How Should We Live?" was the most powerful for me. Weigel considers how we can grow in virtue and become better human beings, and the real nature of freedom. He compares the act of living a fully human life with learning the arts. How do we extract beautiful music from a piano? Not by willfulness - just sitting at the keyboard and pounding away; an exercise in freedom as the world understands it, but productive of nothing but cacophony - much as the exercise of similar willfulness in all spheres of life has led to the chaotic situation of today's modern world! No; to produce beautiful sounds from a piano requires laborious exercise, discipline, and renunciation of perfect willfulness in order to become a masterful player. "After a while, though, what we once experienced as constraining seems liberating. Mastering those exercises has equipped me to play anything I want, including the most difficult compositions." Weigel calls the freedom of discipline and mastery "freedom for excellence", and contrasts it with "freedom as my way". The discipline of the Church (daily prayer, frequent reception of the Host, frequent Confession, spiritual reading...) gives you the freedom to live life as a follower of Christ, and frees you from your slavery to sin.

And make no mistake about it - we are all slaves, either slaves to sin and the devil, or slaves of Christ.

George Weigel "The Truth of Catholicism"

2007-06-13T21:34:00.000-04:00

The Truth of Catholicism: Ten Controversies Explored was recommended by a priest at my parish. I owe him, because it is quite good! It is very clearly and simply written, very powerful. It is meant for your average semi-articulate Catholic - such as myself - looking for good ways to explain the faith to others. I myself have a very hard time engaging my family in these matters.

Here is a selection of the first few quotes I recorded in my book journal:

"In these 3 respects - boredom, skepticism, the Church's own limitations - our contemporary situation replicates 2,000 years of Christian history.... The really new and distinctively modern change is that what [the Church] proclaims is inherently dehumanizing." (page 20)
"The doctrine of the Trinity reinforces the Christian claim that self-giving and receptivity are the road to human flourishing." (page 32)
[On Vatican II] "John XXIII had something different in mind [than earlier ecumenical councils].... Some of what John XXIII hoped for actually happened.... [but] Western Europe today is the most religiously arid place on the planet." (page 36)
"The story of salvation - the story of the Church, and the story of Israel that made the Church's story possible - is the world's story, rightly understood." (page 41)
"Sanctity, in Catholicism, is not just for the sanctuary." (page 44)
"Doctrine, those defined truths which mark the boundaries of Catholicism, is in fact liberating." (page 50)
"Authority in the Church exists to insure that Christians do not settle for mediocrity." (page 51)

The continuity of the Faith

2007-06-13T21:08:00.000-04:00

In the middle of the 20th century, Romano Guardini wrote these words:

God is the One of whom it can be said, that the more powerfully he activates an individual, and the more completely he penetrates his being, the more clearly that individual attains his own inherent personality.... all that I am, I am through him. The more intensively he directs his creative powers upon me, the more real I become. The more he gives me of his love, the fuller my self-realization in that love.... Not until he inhabits me, do I become the being God meant me to be.
Guardini, "The Lord", page 529

In the middle of the 13th century, Thomas Aquinas wrote:

As wisdom increases, and the subtle fragrance of holiness makes its unobtrusive way into the least crevices of the hours of a man's day, more and more hearts go out to him; he is a better man, a more lovable man, for he is more of a man. There is more to him, he is fuller, bigger; more of his powers have been put to work in completing the image of God within him. On the same count, every step downward a man takes in vice the more isolated he becomes.
Aquinas, "My Way of Life (Pocket Edition of St. Thomas)", p 9

My perception is that these two quotes are about the same concept, and I happened to read them within a day or two of each other! They are so close, that on the very next page, Guardini talks about the living Christ present in each baptized Christian (the same idea as St. Thomas' "image of God within him").

Last word on "The Lord"

2007-06-13T20:40:00.000-04:00

So I read the last third of this great book and didn't write here about it at all! For a fact there is just too much to write about. I repeat my blanket endorsement - any Christian should read it as soon as possible. Some semi-random final thoughts:

To go along with the Second Fall I wrote about earlier, Guardini sees the Resurrection as a Second Creation. This parallels St. Paul's teaching on the first Adam and the new Adam (Christ).
The whole book provides a panoramic overview of the Christian life, from first things, to ordinary life (marriage, society), to the life of faith, to the end times. Hardly any aspect of Christian life is left out.
One thing in particular that struck me was his discussion of property and wealth. The story of the rich young man always troubled me. Along with the apostles, I've always wondered, "Given such a standard, who can be saved?" From page 329:

Two legitimate Christian attitudes to property are revealed. First, that based on the commandments: to own property; to be grateful for it; to manage it well and achieve something with it; to avoid dishonesty and injustice; to be decent to others and help dispel need. This order of existence is acceptable to God and leads to eternal life.... Something in the young man yearned to surpass the Law, to enter the free realm of magnanimity, of spiritual creativeness and novelty. It was this that had driven him to Christ. Hence the Lord's encouragement: if this is really your desire, go ahead and follow through! Then a special order of things is valid for you, that will help you to concentrate all the power of your love on God, to serve him not only in justice, but in the absolute freedom of the heart that has stripped itself of everything that is not he. Then away with things and follow me!
That first calling is binding to everyone. The second path is a special vocation.
Similarly with marriage and virginity, Guardini says there meanings are bound up with the Lord: "Both Christian marriage and Christian virginity become incomprehensible the moment the Nazarene ceases to be their essence." (p 325)
Much of the last part of the book, especially his treatment of the Book of Revelation, talks about the Christian sense of history which has largely been lost. The history of salvation - Creation, the Fall, the promises, the prophets, the Incarnation, Crucifixion, and Resurrection, and the End Times - are the history of the world, and we don't know our place in the world unless we place ourselves in this arch of Christian history. In the Crucifixion Christ - the author of life, he who is life itself - descended into the depths of death and lifelessness. When he rose on the third day, he commenced to lift the world with him. As each of us grows in sanctity, as our faith matures, we rise along with Christ. In the end of times, when the world is made anew, this process will be complete - Christ will have lifted the whole world, and the world will be re-made in him (the new Heaven and new Jerusalem mentioned in Revelation).

This book more than any other I can think of, conveys the joy of the Faith - the sheer unbounded gratitude, happiness, clarity, joy of life in Christ - without hiding the demands and difficulties that go along with true Faith - being out of step with the world, the constant spiritual warfare. Only G.K. Chesterton's "Orthodoxy" conveys the same sense of superabundance in the face of God's limitless gifts to us. Read this book now!

Trusting in God

2007-06-03T18:24:00.000-04:00

Once again I want to reiterate that every Christian should read "The Lord". Since I last blogged I've read so much that I won't have the time to write about.

In the chapter "Belief in Christ, Imitation of Christ" Guardini talks about a transposition of values. At chapter's end he talks about the intellectual life of those who continue to believe only in themselves. The task of the Christian is to achieve "an ever more complete exchange of natural security, self-confidence, and self-righteousness, for confidence in God and his righteousness as it is voiced by Christ and the succession of his apostles".

Then he talks about what happens to the man that doesn't make this transposition. He describes perfectly how I found myself before I rediscovered the Faith; in fact he describes the fate of all those who find themselves alone without God, like Dante in the first cantos of "The Inferno". Guardini:

Until a man makes this transposition he will have no peace. He will realize how the years of his life unroll, and ask himself vainly what remains. He will make moral efforts to improve, only to become either hopelessly perplexed or priggish. He will work, only to discover that nothing he can do stills his heart. He will study, only to progress little beyond vague probabilities -- unless his intellectual watchfulness slackens, and he begins to accept possibility for truth or wishes for reality. He will fight, found, form this and that only to discover that millions have done the same before him and millions will continue after he is gone, without shaping the constantly running sand for more than an instant. He will explore religion, only to founder in the questionableness of all he finds. The world is an entity. Everything in it conditions everything else. Everything is transitory. No single thing helps, because the world as a whole has fallen from grace. One quest alone has an absolute sense: that of the Archimedes-point and lever which can lift the world back to God, and these are what Christ came to give.
(Guardini, p346)

Only Christ gives us the grace and the light to find our way out of this morass. Compare the above passage to the first canto in "The Inferno":

Midway upon the journey of our life
I found myself within a forest dark,
For the straightforward pathway had been lost.

Ah me! how hard a thing it is to say
What was this forest savage, rough, and stern,
Which in the very thought renews the fear.

So bitter is it, death is little more;
But of the good to treat, which there I found,
Speak will I of the other things I saw there.

I cannot well repeat how there I entered,
So full was I of slumber at the moment
In which I had abandoned the true way.
(Dante, Inferno Canto 1, lines 1-12)

The forest where Dante found himself is the same moral and intellectual swamp that Guardini describes. We are made in God's image and likeness; only Christ -- God that brought himself down to man's level -- can bring us to realize what that means and give us the grace to grow in his image. Only the Church gives us the foundations to accept all the world offers and remain strong in the Faith and true to ourselves.

The Second Fall

2007-05-24T21:24:00.000-04:00

Romano Guardini's concept of the "Second Fall" is a main theme in "The Lord". He tells the story of Christ's life in terms of how the people of the time (and by extension, of all times - our modern times included) reacted to him. He contrasts how the Hebrews should have responded to the Lord - gladly, with open arms and cheerful heart, ushering in the Kingdom on Earth - with how they did react - fearfully, with closed minds and stony hearts, accepting the hour of darkness to avoid coming to grips with the Lord's message.

He compares the rejection and murder of the Lord with our first Fall. The consequences of Adam's sin echo in every soul to this very day: the difficulty of controlling our desires, the wish to exalt our egos in lonely isolation instead of accepting God's rule. The consequences of this second Fall are still with us as well: the difficulty of establishing and maintaining our faith, the wish to exalt our individualistic understanding of Scripture over the deposit of faith as handed down by the Church.

This book is so interesting, so packed with insight, so clearly written, that like "The City of God" I recommend it for all Christian readers. Just today I read beautiful chapters on the Church, the nature of revelation, and the meaning of the little child parables ("unless you become as a little child..."). I wish I had time to write in detail on all of it!

Romano Guardini on being born again

2007-05-21T21:30:00.000-04:00

Today I read Part 2, Chapter 12: "Rebirth in Water and the Holy Spirit". The starting point is Christ's conversation with Nicodemus in John 3.

We can see only that for which we have an eye; can grasp only that which is somehow related to us. Therefore, he who would behold the kingdom must be reborn into a new existence.
(Guardini, p 168)

As so often in the Gospel of John, the words are not symbolic at all. Our Lord is not talking about a new point of view, or seeing things from a new perspective.

Christ insists: a new creation, a second birth must take place (naturally, in the spirit). However, "spirit" here does not mean the opposite of body. Nor is it recognition and wisdom, nor yet what later philosophy was to call objective spirit: culture in all shades of the word's meaning. In the language of Holy Scripture, man and everything concerned with him is "flesh" - 'from below'. The Spirit Jesus refers to comes 'from above', it is sent by the Father: Pneuma, Holy Spirit.
(Guardini, p168-169, emphasis his)

Guardini sees the Holy Spirit as bridging the divide between the Father and men, so that "the creature enjoys community of life and of heart with his Creator" (p 170). Love between men can break down the barriers between them, so that what was "I, mine", versus "you, yours", becomes a singular "ours"; not a mixture or a blending, but a new thing.

Something similar, however divinely different, happens between man and God, though here it is the love of God himself which is active, the Holy Spirit. He creates the new existence in which man lives in God, and God receives man into his own. Foundation of such love is Jesus Christ, the Son of God become man. Through faith and participation in the act of salvation any Christian may share in the divine love: that is the new birth and the new love which springs from it.
(Guardini, p 170)

Now we come to the heart of the passage. How is all this possible? How can we ever enjoy a communion of love with what is utterly holy?

There on the one hand stands Christ with his chosen ones, radiating the beauty and plenitude of God; and here am I, entangled in myself, heavily forged to my own dark paltriness; how can I ever cross over to him? How, ever escape from myself to share in all that is he? Jesus replies: You never will - alone. Do not hope to be able, however slowly, to comprehend. Do not reason thus: what he says is true, I must hasten to join him. That would measuring Christ by your own standards, and it would not be he you encountered 'over there', but yourself - you would have walked in a circle. No, you must let go, renounce all hope of self-illumination, fling the measuring rod of reason and experience to the winds and venture the call: Lord, come - send me your Spirit that I may be recreated! .... Our part is simply to let go. Confidence in our own understanding, purity of attitude, excellence of personal effort, faithfulness to character, the sterling quality of the historical or cultural elements of the past - all this has been preparatory and important. But now the moment has come to put it aside. To become a Christian means to go to Christ on the strength of his word alone; to trust solely in his testimony. Blind acceptance of what remains unclear, unreasonable is part of this step and belongs essentially to the "foolishness" of the crossing over (1 Cor. 1:23).
(Guardini, p 171-172, emphasis his)

I wrote earlier about the beauty and truth of the faith. And the Faith is both true and beautiful, and its beauty draws many people to it. But as Guardini points out, all that truth and beauty doesn't mean a thing if it doesn't lead to interior conversion. It is easily possible to appreciate the breadth and depth of Catholic philosophy without actually leading a Catholic life. So what does it take to drive out the Old Man, replacing him with the New (to use St. Paul's terminology)? I came to the Faith because I had a terrible burden of sin and the Faith held out the hope of overcoming it; although I didn't think precisely in those terms at the time. Joining the Catholic church requires only some study and a singular act of faith. With the act of faith made and membership in the Church established, what then?

The answer comes from all the saints and the prophets: constant prayer, and frequent reception of the sacraments. (And by this I mean frequent reception of the only 2 sacraments that can be received frequently: the Holy Eucharist, and Penance).

Prayer is how you drive the Faith into your subconscious. It is the tool I used (and still use) to wedge out my old thoughts, thought patterns, and ways of thinking; and invite Christ in the Holy Spirit to replace them. Daily prayer - 10 to 15 minutes of good solid contemplative prayer - is an essential part of my armor in this spiritual battle.

Frequent reception of the sacraments is how God lends us his strength. Frequent Confession leads us to desire only Christ in our lives, and helps root out our attachment to venial sin. I picture venial sin as weeds in a garden; you can still appreciate the garden - venial sin does not destroy the soul - but it takes away to vitality and beauty of the flowers. Frequent reception of the Adorable Sacrament conforms us ever closer to Christ and gives us a horror of sin that would separate us from Him who is all loving and deserving of all our love. I go to Confession every two or three weeks, and Mass usually 6 times a week (missing Saturday).

One last point Guardini makes in this wonderful, luminous chapter. Baptism - being re-born in the spirit - is the beginning of the journey. "To be borne again in God is also only a beginning, an infancy. We are children of God when we are "born of water and the Holy Spirit", but we have yet to become the sons and daughters of God that we have been empowered to become." (p172 - 173) This is one more thing I love about the Faith: the emphasis on growth in the Faith, continuous conversion, and the constant desire to imitate Christ more faithfully.

Romano Guardini: The Lord

2007-05-20T21:22:00.000-04:00

After finishing "The Hidden Manna", I have turned to Romano Guardini's beautiful book "The Lord". It is a set of extended meditations on Our Lord's life and teachings, written like a conversation or a homily rather than a technical theological treatise. In this way it is similar to the other two treatments of Our Lord's life that I've read (both written after "The Lord"): Fulton Sheen's "Life of Christ" and Frank Sheed's "To Know Christ Jesus".

Like any decent treatment of God's life on earth the book is so rich in insight and so critical to proper understanding of ourselves that I can't really do it justice in this blog. You will be well served to first read the gospels themselves, then get this book yourself (and the other two I mentioned). I'm now keeping a journal to help me keep track of passages I'd like to blog about, and every few pages I read of this book, I add another entry to my journal! Since I've already read the first 150 pages I have much to write about already.

One of the most striking passages is early on, in Guardini's treatment of Christ's temptation in the desert. I will quote extensively from Guardini's description of the effects of fasting (Jesus fasted for 40 days before his temptation):

At first only the lack of nourishment is felt; then, according to the strength and purity of the individual nature, the desire for food vanishes, not to return for several days. When the body receives no nourishment from without, it lives on its own substance; however, as soon as this self-calorification begins to attack the vital organs, a wild, elementary hunger is aroused, and life itself is threatened. Such was the hunger of Jesus in the wild.

Simultaneously, another, a psychic process takes place: the body becomes more supple, the spirit freer. Everything seems to grow lighter, detached. The burden of gravity itself grows less perceptible. The limits of reality begin to withdraw; the field of the possible to widen as the spirit takes things in hand. The enlightened conscience registers with greater sensitivity and power, and the will becomes increasingly decisive. The protective mechanisms of human nature which shield man from the hidden, threatening realms of existence beneath, above, and beyond him begin to fall away. The soul stands stripped, open to all forces. Consciousness of spiritual power increases, and the danger of overstepping the set limits of human existence, of confusing its dignity and its possibilities, grows acute: danger of presumption and magic, general vertigo of the spirit. When a deeply religious person undergoes these processes his soul can become involved in crises of extreme gravity and danger.

In just such a moment came the temptation by him who recognized in Jesus his greatest enemy.

(p 33-34, emphasis added)

This passage is about extensive fasting over several weeks but a shadow of such effects can be felt in ordinary fasting, even in the minor fast prescribed by the Church on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. That is the purpose of these minor fasts: to strengthen our will and align ourselves more closely with Christ.

The passage struck me especially because ascetic practice has diminished considerably in the Church, especially in America, with devastating consequences. The purpose of ascetic practice is to strengthen the will to enable it to rule the body with reason and moderation. It is especially important for those in the consecrated life to give them the strength to live their life of continence and total devotion to Christ and the Father's Will.

The fascinating book "After Asceticism: Sex, Prayer and Deviant Priests" makes the case that is the decline in ascetic discipline and the life of prayer, with the attendant rise in the therapeutic mindset, that led to the shocking violations of the Faith uncovered in recent years; with more revelations almost certain to come.

Ascetic discipline and the life of prayer lead to a life of friendship with God and a proper understanding of your place in the world; psychology and therapy lead to a life of egoism and focus on the self.

As for myself I have taken some (very) minor steps in this direction, with an eye to strengthening my own will. Soda and chocolate, which used to be major parts of my life, are so no longer. This is not the major and extensive fasting and ascetic discipline practiced by, say, John the Baptist, but it has been a good step for me.

Last words on The Hidden Manna

2007-05-15T22:17:00.000-04:00

I finished this wonderful book yesterday. The author talks about our (e.g., mine and yours) relationship with the Eucharist. The Eucharist is our physical link with Jesus; just like human friendship depends on at least occasional direct encounters with the other, our friendship with Christ derives from the physical intimacy with Christ in the Eucharist.

The flip side of this intimacy is the betrayal of unworthy reception of the Eucharist. Receiving the Eucharist while conscious of unconfessed grave sin is an act of adultery, a betrayal of the same friendship we were just discussing, just like a man continuing physical intimacy with his wife while partaking of an adulterous relationship with another.

This is why the Eucharist and Confession go hand in hand. The more we receive the Eucharist, the more conscious we are of God's great good will towards us, and the more conscious we become of when we fail to respond to the Lord's gift. Thus we feel more and more the need for frequent sacramental confession.

I personally used to go four, five, even six months at a time without Confession. During that time I committed the sacrilege of unworthy reception many times, although I hope the effect was mitigated due to the lack of clarity in my mind of the nature of my sin. Anyway, now I can hardly last three weeks without longing for the grace of Penance.

Mary and the Eucharist

The author's reflections on Mary and the Eucharist close the book.

First and most concretely, the Body we receive in the Eucharistic host is the same Body borne by Mary; the same Body that took its human flesh from her and that she nursed and cared for. In St. Augustine's words, she "gave milk to our Bread." Much of this book is taken up with the Church's path to this truth of the Faith and the various attempts to illuminate this mystery.

Second, Mary is an example of the devotion we all should feel when we approach the Eucharist. Like Jesus, Mary was unwaveringly faithful to the will of the Father. Such is the attitude that all of us should have when approaching the Eucharistic banquet. "Although it is equally fitting that those who receive Communion frequently or daily should be free from venial sin, at least from such as are fully deliberate, and from every affection thereto, nevertheless, it is sufficient that they be free from mortal sin, with the purpose of never sinning in the future; and if they have this sincere purpose, it is impossible but that daily communicants should gradually free themselves even from venial sins, and from all affection thereto." (from the decree Sacra Tridentina Synodus)

Third, Mary is chief among the saints, a leading light of the communion of saints, the Body of the Church that is formed by the Eucharistic communion. By partaking of the Eucharist we join in the Church Militant - the church on Earth, striving for sanctity; the Church Suffering - the poor souls in purgatory; and the Church Triumphant - the saints in heaven.

Faith and Reason

In closing I want to return to the most striking sentence in this book, halfway down page 123, speaking about the fourteenth century:

"The theological synthesis of the previous century was threatened by evidences of a strange and dangerous dichotomy between faith and reason." (Emphasis added)

This dichotomy, so much taken for granted today, is false. The Faith is reasonable; it is amenable to reason, can be explicated and illustrated by reason, and is in no way contradictory to reason. How can there be such a dichotomy? The one God made the earth and everything in it, including us men and our reasoning faculties; and he also gave us the divine Revelations in Sacred Scripture and handed down by Sacred Tradition. How can there be a dichotomy between what He made and what He revealed?

This means that the Faith is grounded in objective reality and that reasonable men can dispute, discuss, debate, rationally propose and oppose propositions of the Faith. Such is what men have been doing ever since there were men. Faith is not a matter of feelings, of what I feel like doing right now.

I have much more to say on this subject but it will have to wait for another day!

The beauty of the faith

2007-05-12T10:05:00.000-04:00

Previously I talked about the Faith and being both intellectually satisfying and objectively true. It is also beautiful; the beauty of the faith may be the most important proof of its truth.

Jack Vance wrote a science fiction story where a young man ended up in an isolated community where lived a woman who was reputed to be the most beautiful woman in the known universe. She looked very plain to him at first. After some time, he noticed that she was in fact very pretty. Some time later, he realized that she was in fact even more beautiful than her reputation.

My experience of the Church is like that. At first the Church and the faith looked very plain; in fact, according to popular wisdom, the Church is ugly and unfashionable. The more I dug into the doctrine of the Faith and more I experienced the liturgy of the Mass, the more I found that was profound and deep and fine. The more I learn about the Faith, the more beautiful it seems.

For more on the beauty of faith you can consult "The Beauty of Holiness and the Holiness of Beauty: Art, Sanctity, and the Truth of Catholicism" by John Saward, and also "The Evidential Power of Beauty" by Thomas Dubay. I have the first on my bookshelf but haven't read it yet.

The Eucharist, conformation to Christ, and salvation

2007-05-12T09:51:00.000-04:00

I'm coming to the end of "The Hidden Manna". The author's own reflections on the Eucharist comprise the last part of the book. A few things really stand out.

First, how the act of receiving the Eucharist conforms the receiver to Christ. The Church has always taught that, unlike natural food that becomes part of us, consuming the Eucharist results in us becoming like Christ. Christ's sacrifice on Calvary is an all-sufficent offering - good for all people at all times. But our hearts are not large enough to accept the offering all at once. Christ's gift is too big for any soul to accept. But each time we receive the Eucharist worthily, that reception enlarges our hearts and our souls so we can accept a little more of the gift - we can become a little more like Christ - a little less enslaved to the world. Once again this teaching conforms to my own experience. Attendance at each Mass - each reception at the host - is a blow against the hold of sin on me. Becoming like Christ requires constant efforts of the will; it is not a singular act of faith after which we can continue to live our lives the way we want, as so many Protestant faiths seem to preach. Each morning I try to make a new act of faith; a new turning of my soul towards the Lord and away from sin. A priest at my church used to say: When we face the sun, we can't see our shadow; when we face our shadows we can't see the sun.

The second thing that really caught my attention in the last part of this book is a continuation of the first: a discussion as to whether the Eucharist is necessary for salvation. The author holds that since reception of the Eucharist conforms us to Christ, and conformation to Christ is necessary for salvation, that for the most part, for most people, reception of the Eucharist is the normal path of salvation. It is the ordinary path that Christ meant for most people to follow. Certainly for me it is absolutely required. At this point in my life, for me to turn my back on the Church and the Mass would be equivalent to turning away from God, preferring myself to God. That would be a loss of salvation! The Church does teach that the Eucharist is not absolutely required for all people. It is the ordinary means but Christ also holds out the hope of extraordinary means; mostly this involves the intention and effort of the person to live according to God's law.

Trent and the Faith

2007-05-09T20:51:00.000-04:00

Today's readings from "The Hidden Manna" were an in-depth treatment of the Council of Trent, which was the Church's reaction to the Reformation. The challenge of the reformers was met by the Council. By the way, the Council of Trent is where the "Tridentine Mass" comes from: the old-style Latin Mass that was superseded by the Novus Ordo Mass after Vatican II. Anyway, the decrees from Trent are a precise teaching of the Faith that had already been held for 1,500 years, but never formulated so clearly: that the Eucharist is the Body and Blood of Christ; that the substance of the bread and wine no longer exists (only the accidents remain); that the sacrifice of the Mass is a true sacrifice; that only properly consecrated priests may confect the Eucharist; that those aware of being in a state of mortal sin should not partake of the Host.

This might be a good time to explain why these matters hold so much interest for me. "The Hidden Manna" continues a kind of tour of the sacraments, starting with marriage ("Love and Responsibility"); then Holy Orders ("The Case for Clerical Celibacy"); then Confession ("Frequent Confession"). Before that, I read St. Augustine's "City of God". These are all very wonderful books; "City of God" and "Love and Responsibility" should be read by every Christian.

For me the subject matter is interesting first of all because it is very challenging. The philosophy and theology that form the Faith are very deep, broad, and profound, and eminently rewards the lifetime of effort that faithful Catholics should put into understanding their faith.

It is also rewarding because it is true. No other faith or philosophy captures the whole truth about the world and about human nature. Do you want to understand yourself? Do you want to understand the world? There is no better place to start than understanding the fullness of the Catholic faith.

I'll write more about the Faith and its role in my life soon.

Me and my blog

2007-05-07T20:48:00.000-04:00

My name is David Miller, and the blog is about the books that I am reading. Typically I read a book about the Catholic faith on my commute, and a mystery / novel / fantasy at home.

Currently my Catholic book is "The Hidden Manna: A Theology of the Eucharist", an excellent history of Christian doctrine on the Blessed Sacrament. Today's reading considered the thinking of the Reformers: Martin Luther, John Calvin, and friends.

My other book is "Mosquitoes" by William Faulkner. Reading William Faulkner is the purest pleasure you can get from fiction. If you've never read Faulkner, do yourself a favor, and get your hands on "Flags in the Dust" or "The Reivers".

--
Dave