Pick your seat … Monday, March 4

Mary crowned with stars. A reflection of the biblical image in Revelation 12. Biblical proof of the seat reserved for her by God. Begin reserving your seat now. Statue by Attard (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A Rosary Meditation … The Second Joyful Mystery, the Visitation. “And Mary said, ‘My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior; for he has regarded the lowliness of his handmaid.'” Luke 1:46-48. Mary praises God, her Savior. Some might pose the question, “If Mary was sinless why did she need a savior?” And that’s a good question. Mary was born without original sin in order to prepare a fit vessel to contain the Son of God. But it was God that made this immaculate conception happen. It was God who saved Mary from the stain of original sin. So she had been saved by God. And after her birth, coming into the world sinless, by her own free will she maintained, with God’s help and by His grace, this relationship with Him. So He was always her Savior. And Mary, for her part, did what Eve should have done but didn’t. She obeyed. Mary seems to have counted her obedience as nothing.  ” … the lowliness of His handmaid.” Mary took to heart the truth about obedience and our own worth as a result. “So you also, when you shall have done all these things that are commanded you, say: We are unprofitable servants; we have done that which we ought to do.” Luke 17:10. Mary took this truth to heart. So should we. If Mary, being perfect before God, was humble and understood her need of Him as her Savior, how much more should we? And if we take this truth to heart, if we follow Mother’s example, the result will be what exactly? What results did God allow for her? She rules now, seated at His right hand, as Queen of Heaven and Earth. Remember what Jesus said in Luke 14:10. ” … sit down in the lowest place; that when he who invited thee, cometh, he may say to thee: Friend, go up higher. Then shalt thou have glory before them that sit at table with thee.” It worked for Mother, didn’t it? As her children it will work for us. Lets try, and pray, trust God for this, to live the example she left us. Who knows? We may get a better seat if we do.

Today … St. Owen was a Benedictine monk. Once a steward in the household of St. Etheldreda, he entered a Benedictine monastery at Lastingham, England, under St. Chad. He later migrated to Lichfield, following St. Chad. A steward. He was a servant. A monk. He was a follower. An example. He is a saint. I’d say God gave him a good seat, wouldn’t you?

Saints … For a person to be saintly doesn’t mean that God waved a magic wand and, !POOF!, instant holiness. It means that the saintly person set their will aside in preference for God’s. And that’s not magic. That’s work.

The First Sunday of Lent … Sunday, February 17

Triumph is sure. But until then it ain’t over til it’s over. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In today’s Gospel reading, Luke 4:1-13, we see Jesus forty days fasting in the desert and then tempted by Satan. “When the devil had finished every temptation,
he departed from him for a time.” And its this, Satan tempting and then leaving, that I want to dwell on for a few minutes.

Have you ever wrestled with a temptation, or a personality defect, some inner flaw? Have you ever mastered it? Really? I smoked for years. I decided to stop and I did. For nine years I didn’t smoke. Then one day, just because it was there and because I felt justified in celebrating at the time, I picked up a cigar. Just one, and a small one at that. Of course that’s all it took, just one. I’ve noticed other things too, attitudes I thought I’d grown past, ideas I thought I’d left behind, etc. pop up again at the most unexpected moments. Which has made me wonder if these things are ever truly overcome. My personal answer, seriously, is that short of a real miracle the answer is no they aren’t. They are at best kept at bay by constant effort and vigilance.

“For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood; but against principalities and power, against the rulers of the world of this darkness, against the spirits of wickedness in the high places.” Ephesians 6:12.

Satan left Jesus for a time. “For a time.” Why should I expect anything else? Once the enemy sees a weak spot he may hold off for a while but not forever. Leaving us alone for a time can actually work in Satan’s favor. We gain self-confidence instead of God-confidence. We rest on our laurels. We get caught off guard.

So what do we do? Live in fear? Dread the future because we know whats coming? No, none of those. We do what Jesus did. We go about our Father’s business, keeping our focus on His strength while acknowledging our own weakness. Proper perspective and a right ordering of things. It’s not complicated but it can be hard to keep sight of because we are so easily distracted. So how do we maintain our focus? How do we look to God and not to self? Again, we follow the example Jesus gives us. During those forty days in the desert He prayed and fasted. This maintains the focus needed.

Welcome to Lent. Forty days to practice all of the above. Forty days to fine tune our focus. Forty days to get ready for the next 325. Then, after the 325 days following Lent, well, another Lent and more practice. Always practice. Because the enemy that left is guaranteed to be back. We’ll get to rest in Eternity. Now its warfare. Once again, welcome to Lent.

FYI: The Worlds Greatist Hearing Aid … Thursday, February 7

LISTEN (Photo credit: elycefeliz)

A Rosary Meditation … The Fifth Joyful Mystery, the Finding in the Temple. “He was setting in the midst of the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions.” Luke 2:46. Jesus listened when He already knew what was in the mind and heart of the other. He asked questions when He already knew the answers better than the other person ever could. Why? There’s a lady in our parish whose husband died about a year ago. If she corners you she’ll talk. And talk, and talk, and etc. You can’t get a word in edge ways and if you do she’ll talk over you. She talks “to” people, or “at” them, never “with” them. Shes alone with no one to listen, and she’s probably scared. I have a friend I go to with “stuff”. I tell them, “I don’t need advise, and I don’t want input. I just need to say this.” They understand. I talk, they listen, and when I’m done I feel better. Sometimes I feel better just listening to myself because once I hear the “stuff” verbalized I realize just how asinine it actually is. Talk, conversation, communication, hearing, listening, being heard. Why did Jesus ask when he already knew? Well, you know, sometimes its okay to ask a question just to let the other person know you’re listening and that you care. Is that why Jesus asked when He already knew the answer? Why did He listen? Certainly His creatures couldn’t add anything to His wisdom or knowledge. If we can understand why Jesus asked and why He listened when He already knew we’ll have a leg up on communication skills from now on. So, bottom line, why did He ask when He already knew? And why did He listen when He already knew? Why listen to the lady at church? Why would my friend listen to me? Simple. Because at times knowing isn’t nearly as important as loving.

Today … Every saint that was a priest. Something different for today. Think about every saint who was a priest. Think about your own priest. Think about confession. Do they listen? Do they ask questions? Why? Answer that and be thankful.

And … “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”

Who gets in our way the most? … Sunday, February 3

Christ the Savior (Pantokrator), a 6th-century encaustic icon from Saint Catherine’s Monastery, Mount Sinai. NB – slightly cut down – for full size see here (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In today’s Gospel reading, Luke 4:21-30, once again we see Jesus rejected by those who should’ve been the first to accept Him, His own people, the Jews, who had waited for Him for centuries. But He wasn’t what they expected.

Expectations. One word that can be either a blessing, if we look with hope for God’s will and not our own, or a curse, if we’re so caught up in what we think things ought to be that we miss them when they come. It’s a good way to miss miracles, a good way to suffer with one disappointment after another, a good way to acquire an attitude of gloom, and a good way to sow seeds of doubt that can lead us to anyplace and everyplace but God.

The difference between the blessing of right expectation and the curse of wrong expectation is simple. So is the cure. “Self” is the problem and all I need to do in order to have the one and not the other, all I need to do to have right expectations and the joys that go with them, is to get self out-of-the-way. It’s the simplest thing in the world. No complicated formulas, just a simple “Not my will, but Yours be done.” Simplest thing in the world. Also the hardest. Happily, with God all things are possible.

Now my “self”, for better or worse, will always be with me. So, whats to do? Again, simplicity. But work, time-consuming work. The answer? Pray (Thought: Do you realize that the Rosary, our greatest prayer after Holy Mass, isn’t limited to ANY number of Mysteries? You can, for example, consider with each decade, one of the parables Jesus told and what YOUR part in it is.) and trust (“Trust”, aka “faith”, without which it is impossible to please God. Faith, or trust in God, is also something you can ask for in prayer.) and the Sacraments (Our God-given access to the Grace provided us by Jesus.). And after that? More of the same, daily until the Christ that came the first time and was rejected by His own comes the second time, at the end of the world or at the end of my life, and finds me in accepting expectation of Him.

There is another thing that we can each add to the prayer and trust and frequent participation in the Sacraments. (Consider: “Frequent” participation. Whats the downside of weekly confession? Getting to Mass, oh, maybe forty minutes early once a week? And the downside to spending those extra few minutes with Jesus is what?) That other thing is help. Being there for each other. Support. Prayer support being primary. Because if I try to help you that’s fine and all but do I really know what’s needed? Maybe and maybe not. If I’m there for you and pray that His will be done in your life does He know what you need? Of course. So even in being supportive, even in the offering of help, we each need to get our self out-of-the-way.

The short version of all this? The more time I spend trusting Him, talking with Him, and partaking of the Sacraments, the more of Him I’ll experience. The more of Him I experience the more of Jesus I’ll see. The more I see of Jesus, the more time I give to Him, the less time I’ll have to dote on “self”. Its called being “Christ centered” instead of “self-centered”.

Does the Son light hurt your eyes? … Sunday, January 27

Does the sun light hurt your eyes? (Photo credit: Balaji.B)

Today’s Gospel reading is found in Luke 1:1-4, 4:14-21. Luke shares with us what God has given him pertaining to the Gospel of Christ, and here is a part of it. We’re told about how Jesus stood up in the synagogue and read a portion of scripture, prophecy pertaining to Himself, and its fulfillment that very day. We might think of this as Jesus presenting Himself to His people, the Jews, as their long-awaited Messiah. Luke records His “coming out”. This was a sort of beginning for Jesus, a public proclamation, one of the first, of His official standing. Just prior to this He had been tempted by Satan in the desert. Just after this proclamation by Him the people rejected Him. It would seem that His ministry was off to a flying stop.

Have you ever tried to do a thing, an honestly good thing, and been foiled at every turn? If you’re sincerely trying to live a Godly life the answer almost has to be “Yes”. Try doing a good deed and it starts out hard, like His temptation in the wilderness, and then gets harder when the folks who ought to be joyful over the effort and the act trample it underfoot with their doubt and negativity. And there you are, standing outside the synagogue because they threw you out, wondering what went wrong. Don’t they understand? Can’t they see what it is you’re trying to do? And the answer is no, they can’t.

Like it or not we live in a world darkened by sin. The darkness blinds people to the light. Have you ever walked outside after having been in a really dark room? Didn’t your eyes hurt? Did you shield your eyes, protecting yourself from the light that hurt? And this is exactly what people have been doing for nearly two thousand years now. Bring them out of the darkness, or try to, into His marvelous light and see what happens. So, whats to do?

Whats to do? Well, what did He do? You don’t put out the light just because it hurts someones eyes. The truth can be painful and I don’t know of any real way around that. Not a way that works without denial anyway. So we do what He did. Keep letting our little light shine and pray that someone somewhere stands in the light long enough for their eyes to adjust. Because some will. And this is called conversion. This is what we work for, without to great a concern for the downside because the eternity of those who WILL come to the light is more important than any downside. Whats a little discomfort on our part compared with another persons eternity? How comfortable was the crucifixion? We probably won’t be called to anything nearly as uncomfortable. We should be able to withstand a few snide remarks, a few dirty looks, a little personal discomfort. Jesus put up with bad treatment, we’re supposed to follow Him.

Being cast out of a synagogue isn’t so bad if it keeps another from being cast into hell.