Meditation On Hell

I write this mediation on hell on Easter Sunday. This would not normally be the time to think about hell. Easter Sunday is the most joyous day of the year. Today we celebrate Jesus Christ gaining victory over sin, death and hell. Because of the great sacrifice and resurrection by God Himself, we sinful human beings, deserving only of death, have now had the Gates of Heaven flung open to us. There is nothing we can do to merit this. It is a free gift given to us by a Loving God. All we need to do is admit our sinfulness and accept the Love of Jesus Christ and allow that Love to grow within us. We gave death to God, and He gives us Eternal Life. And it is Eternal Life filled with such complete happiness and joy that our mortal human minds cannot begin to comprehend it.

God dying for man? It is absurd to our human minds. In all of man's religions, human beings must constantly strive to please their god, and be happy for any crumbs that may fall their way. No pagan gods ever did anything to save those who worshipped them. On the contrary, the Christian God knows how incapable we are of ever doing anything on our own that would be remotely pleasing to Him. So He came to earth as one of us, lived in our miserable sinful world as one of the lowliest of the low, and then allowed us to crucify Him as a common criminal in payment for our sins. In human terms, God's Way makes no sense at all. But as we are told in Isaiah 55:8, God's ways are not our ways. God's Way is Love - ultimate, totally giving, unselfish love of which no human being of and by himself is capable.

Obedience Is Not Enough

Ask most people who will get to heaven, and they will give you a succinct answer:  "Good people".  And ask most people if they are "good", and they will answer with little hesitation that, of course, they are good.  They don't kill, steal or do other terrible things.  Oh, sure, they're not perfect, but that doesn't mean they are bad.  They basically do all the right things.  So why shouldn't they go to heaven?

Mary's "Yes": The Shot Heard Throughout Eternity

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James Christensen - The Annunciation

Today is an important solemnity in the Catholic Church. Today is the story of true greatness unrecognized by a world dazzled only by outward pomp and glamour. It is the Feast of the Annunciation of the Lord in which the angel Gabriel appeared to the Virgin Mary.  Mary had no standing in the world. She lived in a despised little town, part of a slave people ruled over by the mighty Roman empire. She was a young woman in a world governed by men who saw women not as individuals but as mere property to use and dispose of as they desired.  In the eyes of the world, Mary was destined to live a life of insignificance and die unheralded and unnoticed.

But outside of Jesus Christ, Mary was the most powerful person in history.  The Roman Army, Alexander the Great, Napoleon - no great military leader could match the power of this young girl to defeat the enemies of God.  The devil - who had mankind firmly in his grip through his deceptions - was powerless before her.  It was through this lowly young girl that salvation was brought to a world condemned to die.

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What weapon did Mary possess that made her more powerful than any military the world has known? How did Mary conquer Satan, the one who controlled the most powerful men and women in history? Mary's weapon could not be seen, heard, felt, tasted or touched by the casual observer. In fact, to the average person, this most powerful of all weapons in history would be interpreted not as strength but just the opposite - as weakness and impotence.

And what is this weapon? It is humble, submissive obedience to the Creator of the Universe. Mary, the Mother of God and our Blessed Mother is the personification of Isaiah 66:2

But this is the one to whom I will look: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word.

Through Mary we learn that the world has it upside down.  The world thinks that we gain power and influence by "bettering" ourselves.  We must learn to be smarter, stronger, more cunning.  We have to always be one step ahead of the other guy.  The world teaches us to never be anyone's fool.  Stand up for yourself.  Assert yourself.  You have rights.  And don't let anyone tell you differently.

That is not the lesson we learn from this most powerful of all human beings to ever live.

Do I Allow God To Love Me?

The adoration of the shepherds

We are now in the Christmas season in which we celebrate the birth of our Savior.  God is born as a man, like His Creation in every way except sin.  And how did the great Creator choose to come into the world?  He was born in a dirty, vermin-infested manger surrounded by barn animals and greeted by the lowliest members of human society - shepherds, who spent their lives in the fields with their animals apart from everyone else.  These were men with little to no education who rarely even bathed and were shunned by all of "proper" society.  And not only did our Lord choose to announce His coming to these lowliest members of society, He said that He, too, was a shepherd.  Our Lord is the Good Shepherd who will go to any lengths to find His lost sheep and will even lay down His own precious life to save His sheep.

Moses the Shepherd
Credit:  bfmindia.blogspot.com

Anyone who has spent any amount of time studying the Bible and the Life of Christ knows that Our Lord never does anything in a way that we would expect.  As Pope Francis has told us, He is a God of surprises.  In the Old Testament The Lord tests the faith of the father of his people - Abraham - by demanding that Abraham kill his son.  He prepares the patriarch Joseph to save the known civilized world by allowing him to be falsely accused and thrown into prison for several years.  He chooses a slave nation - Israel - to be the ones by which He will make Himself known to the world.  He chooses Moses to lead this slave nation to freedom.  Moses had been driven from society because he had killed a man.  He then become a shepherd (yes, the lowliest member of society) and was prepared by God to lead the nation of Israel by spending 40 years shepherding sheep in the wilderness.  The Lord chose another shepherd - David - to be the great king of Israel.

We can never know the Mind of God. We can never assume that we know what He wants or how He will act among us. Yet, we continue to seek God on our own terms and in our own ways. The result is that we delude ourselves into thinking that we are serving God when in reality we are pushing God away and serving nothing more than our own egos. This was the warning that Pope Francis gave us in his Christmas message. The Holy Father told us that seeking God means that we must be open and allow God to find us. (Read the entire message HERE.)

On this holy night, while we contemplate the Infant Jesus just born and placed in the manger, we are invited to reflect. How do we welcome the tenderness of God? Do I allow myself to be taken up by God, to be embraced by him, or do I prevent him from drawing close? "But I am searching for the Lord" - we could respond. Nevertheless, what is most important is not seeking him, but rather allowing him to find me and caress me with tenderness. The question put to us simply by the Infant's presence is: do I allow God to love me?

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This very much echoes a statement made by the Venerable Fulton Sheen:

We always make the fatal mistake of thinking that it is what we do that matters, when really what matters is what we let God do to us.  God sent the angel to Mary, not to ask her to do something, but to let something be done. Since God is a better artisan than you, the more you abandon yourself to him, the happier he can make you.

In the great classic, "The Spiritual Combat" by Lorenzo Scupoli (a monk who lived from 1530 to 1610), the author begins his book by stating, "If you wish, beloved in Christ, to reach the height of perfection, and by drawing near to your God to become one spirit with Him (and no aim can be imagined or expressed which is greater, or nobler than this), you must before all else gain a true idea of what constitutes spiritual perfection." Dom Scupoli then gives examples of what does not constitute spiritual perfection. It does not consist of "outward mortification, in hair shirts and disciplines, in long watchings and fastings, and in other bodily sufferings and chastisements." Dom Scupoli warns against those "who think they have reached the climax of perfection when they say many prayers, attend many services and offices, and are regularly at Church and at Communion."

Dom Scupoli warns us that those who trust in external actions "are all deceived.  For although these practices are sometimes means of gaining the spirit of perfection, and sometimes are its fruits, yet in no sense can it ever be said that true spiritual perfection consists in these."  Dom Scupoli most certainly does not condemn these actions in and of themselves, for as he writes, these practices "are means most efficacious for obtaining spirituality, when they are properly and discreetly employed" and that "they are also fruits of the Spirit in truly spiritual persons" who follow these external practices "not for the sake of curiosity and devotional feeling, but that they may gain deeper knowledge of their own corruptness and of God's Mercy and Goodness."

This great author tells us that

"to others, however, who found perfection entirely on external practices, such works may bring greater ruin than open sins; not that these works are bad in themselves, for in themselves they are very good, but in consequence of the mistaken use which is made of them they have this sad result: because those who practice them are so wrapt up in what they do, that they leave their hearts a prey to their own evil inclinations and to the devices of Satan."

In other words, our trust in external practices causes us to start trusting in ourselves and our own goodness, and that makes us easy prey for the devil.

Dom Scupoli says those who vainly trust in outward practices

"may easily be gathered from their lives and conversation. For in everything, whether it be great or small, they seek their own advantage, and like to be preferred before others; they are self-willed and opinionated, blind to their own faults, sharp-sighted for the faults of others, and severely condemn the sayings and doings of other men. But if you touch only with your finger a certain vain reputation in which they hold themselves and are pleased to be held by others; if you bid them discontinue any of their regular and formal devotions, they are at once angry and exceedingly disturbed."

Dom Scupoli writes:

It is therefore quite evident that all such persons are in great danger. For since the inward eye is darkened, by which they see themselves and their outward actions which are good, they attribute to themselves a high degree of perfection, and so, becoming more and more puffed up, they readily pass judgment upon others; yet they themselves need a special miracle of grace to convert them, for nothing short of that would have effect. It is more easy to convert and bring back an open sinner to the path of truth, than the man whose sin is hidden and mantled with the semblance of virtue.

This, sadly, is what I find almost universally in the Catholic blogosphere, most especially among those who call themselves "traditionalists."  These bloggers hold themselves out as the models of Christian perfection, and forcefully condemn anyone who disagrees with them.  No one is excluded from this condemnation, from lay persons up to and including, and sometimes most especially, the Pope.

Dom Scupoli tells us what constitutes true spirituality:

You clearly and distinctly see, then, from what I have said, that the essence of the spiritual life does not lie in any of those things to which I have alluded. It consists in nothing else but the knowledge of the Divine Goodness and Greatness, of our own nothingness, and proneness to all evil; in the love of God and the hatred of self; in entire subjection not only to God Himself, but for the love of Him, to all creatures; in giving up our own will, and in completely resigning ourselves to the Divine Pleasure; moreover, in willing and doing all this with no other wish or aim than the glory and honor of God, the fulfillment of His Will because it is His Will, and because He deserves to be served and loved.

Pope Francis succinctly summarized this when he said, "Do I allow God to love me?"  Whenever we start trusting in ourselves and in our own actions, we are cutting ourselves off from the love of God. That is the danger of fundamentalism.  And that is the danger of both the liberal and traditional Catholic movements.  While liberal and traditional Catholics may seem like opposites, in reality they are two sides of the same coin because they are both trusting in themselves and their own righteousness.

And between the liberal and ultra-conservative traditionalists, the latter is actually far more spiritually dangerous. It is easy to point out the sin of the liberal because they are so obviously in contradiction to Church teaching. But those who call themselves "traditionalists" are involved in a much more insidious sin. They look very good and spiritual on the outside. But as Dom Scupoli writes, "It is more easy to convert and bring back an open sinner to the path of truth, than the man whose sin is hidden and mantled with the semblance of virtue."

As I have pointed out before, our ultimate role model is Mary, our Blessed Mother. Satan fears her above all other creatures. What is it that made her so dangerous to Satan? It was her complete abandonment of self, and her total and unquestioning reliance on God. "My soul does magnify the Lord, my spirit does rejoice in God my Savior." Mary accepted God's will into her life. She never resisted Him in any way. Therein lies spiritual perfection. How do we get there?

Dom Scupoli tells us this:

Now you see wherein the real perfection of a Christian lies, and that to obtain it you must enter upon a constant and sharp warfare against self.

Our greatest enemy is our own self will, our opinions, our "goodness."  That will cut us off from God faster and more completely than anything or anyone outside of us.  Yes, we are in a spiritual warfare, and the one we must fight more than any other is ourselves.

Dom Scupoli gives us the weapons we must use:

You must provide yourself with four very safe and highly necessary weapons, that you may win the palm, and be finally a conqueror in this spiritual conflict -- these are:

• Distrust in Self
• Trust in God
• Spiritual Exercises
• Prayer

Jesus Christ - the great Creator of the Universe - came to us as a small, defenseless infant.  He became the Sacrifice for our sins by dying as a condemned criminal on the Cross, again helpless and defenseless.  If we are to be like Christ, we too must become "helpless and defenseless."

In his Christmas homily, Pope Francis said the following:

When the angels announced the birth of the Redeemer to the shepherds, they did so with these words: "This will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger" (Lk 2:12).

The "sign" is the humility of God taken to the extreme; it is the love with which, that night, he assumed our frailty, our suffering, our anxieties, our desires and our limitations. The message that everyone was expecting, that everyone was searching for in the depths of their souls, was none other than the tenderness of God: God who looks upon us with eyes full of love, who accepts our poverty, God who is in love with our smallness.

This statement of Pope Francis echoes that of Our Blessed Mother in her great Magnificat:

He has scattered the proud in the conceit of their heart.
He has put down the mighty from their thrones,
and has exalted the lowly.
He has filled the hungry with good things,
and the rich He has sent away empty.

Truly, one of the most profound and penetrating questions we can ask ourselves is that posed by our Holy Father, "Do I Allow God To Love Me?"

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Pope Francis, the Blessed Mother and the Lesson of Silence

Pope Francis can never be accused of not getting people's attention.  He has done it once again with a statement regarding the Blessed Mother, and many of the traditional blogs have responded by calling the Pope "Protestant" or even "blasphemer".

Ebougis, in his continuing swipes against Pope Francis, tells us that "the Holy Father has decided to put a little arsenic in the collective egg nog." Ebougis links to The Eponymous Flower, who asks, "Is Pope Francis forming Marian theology? Mary not as co-redeemer, but as a rebel?" Angelqueen.org offered an article entitled, "Pope Francis Ignites Another Controversy?" One Catholic forum website entitled, "Suscipe Domine" had a thread entitled, "Pope Francis Insults Mary" with such comments as "In St. Nicholas fashion, is it ok if I imagine St. Louis de Montfort decking our Pope?" 

John Vennari of Catholic Family News was not to be left behind. He wrote an article entitled, "Pope Francis' Protestant Meditation On Our Lady."  Mr. Vennari states, "This meditation puts the Queen of Prophets on the same level as the blind Pharisees who had no idea of what Our Lord was talking about when Jesus told them He was establishing His Kingdom."  He goes on to write that  Pope Francis "continually utters confusing statements that leave Catholics reeling the world over. The above statement about Our Lady is certainly one of the most troublesome."

What is all the consternation about? Read on.

The Holy Father was reflecting on the Gospel from Friday, December 20, which was the story of the Annunciation of the Angel Gabriel to our Blessed Mother. Pope Francis talked about how important silence is in our spiritual lives, and how the Blessed Mother lived her life in silence. It is in the silence that we experience the great mystery of God.  God does not work in loud fanfare, but in silence, in the depths our hearts.  From Vatican Radio:

Only silence guards the mystery of the journey that a person walks with God, said Pope Francis in his homily at Mass on Friday morning at the Casa Santa Marta. May the Lord, the Pope added, give us “the grace to love the silence”, which needs to be guarded from all publicity.

In the history of salvation, neither in the clamour nor in the blatant, but the shadows and the silence are the places in which God chose to reveal himself to humankind.

The imperceptible reality from which his mystery, from time to time, took visible form, took flesh. The Pope’s reflections were inspired by the Annunciation, which was today’s Gospel reading, in particular the passage in which the angel tells Mary that the power of the Most High would “overshadow” her. The shadow, which has almost the same quality as the cloud, with which God protected the Jews in the desert, the Pope said.

“The Lord always took care of the mystery and hid the mystery. He did not publicize the mystery. A mystery that publicizes itself is not Christian; it is not the mystery of God: it is a fake mystery! And this is what happened to Our Lady, when she received her Son: the mystery of her virginal motherhood is hidden. It is hidden her whole life! And she knew it. This shadow of God in our lives helps us to discover our own mystery: the mystery of our encounter with the Lord, our mystery of our life’s journey with the Lord.”

“Each of us,” affirmed the Pope, “knows how mysteriously the Lord works in our hearts, in our souls.” And what is “the cloud, the power, the way the Holy Spirit covers our mystery?”

“This cloud in us, in our lives is called silence: the silence is exactly the cloud that covers the mystery of our relationship with the Lord, of our holiness and of our sins. This mystery that we cannot explain. But when there is no silence in our lives, the mystery is lost, it goes away. Guarding the mystery with silence! That is the cloud, that is the power of God for us, that is the strength of the Holy Spirit.”

The Mother of Jesus was the perfect icon of silence. From the proclamation of her exceptional maternity at Calvary. The Pope said he thinks about “how many times she remained quiet and how many times she did not say that which she felt in order to guard the mystery of her relationship with her Son,” up until the most raw silence “at the foot of the cross”.

These statements of Pope Francis are borne out in Luke 2:19. In telling the story of the birth of Christ and all of the miraculous events surrounding this birth, Luke tells us, "But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart." 

When Mary and Joseph brought the baby Jesus to the temple to present Him to the Lord, the holy Simeon blessed the Child and made the great pronouncement that "my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the sight of all nations: a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and the glory of your people Israel". However, Luke tells us that "The child’s father and mother marveled at what was said about him." Neither Mary nor Joseph understood the full import of Simeon's words, but they "marveled", pondering the words of Simeon in silence.

The only time we come even close to hearing Mary's commentary on the events of her Son's life of which she was an intimate part is when, after three days of not knowing where Jesus was, Mary found Him at the temple and said, to him, "Son, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been anxiously searching for you." (Luke 2:48). Our Blessed Mother was experiencing her own Dark Night of the Soul, and she wanted to know why her Son caused her so much angst. His response, "Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house?" gave no light to Mary's understanding, as scripture tells us: "But they [Joseph and Mary] did not understand what he was saying to them." (Luke 2:41-50). But as the Pope tells us, Mary remained "the perfect icon of silence".

These few scriptures make it evident that our Blessed Mother did not always, and in fact, may have never had a complete understanding of the events in her and her Son's life right up to and including the events at Calvary.  Continuing on with the words of Pope Francis:

“The Gospel does not tell us anything: if she spoke a word or not… She was silent, but in her heart, how many things told the Lord! ‘You, that day, this and the other that we read, you had told me that he would be great, you had told me that you would have given him the throne of David, his forefather, that he would have reigned forever and now I see him there!’ Our Lady was human! And perhaps she even had the desire to say: ‘Lies! I was deceived!’ John Paul II would say this, speaking about Our Lady in that moment. But she, with her silence, hid the mystery that she did not understand and with this silence allowed for this mystery to grow and blossom in hope.”

Is it really possible that Mary, the sinless Mother of God, could have been tempted to accuse God of deceiving her?  Has Pope Francis, as so many accuse him, stepped over the line with this statement?

Father Frederick Faber wrote a wonderful book which I highly recommend entitled, "The Foot of the Cross: or, The Sorrows of Mary" which explores the tremendous suffering Our Lady endured during her lifetime.  As Father Faber writes, "When we think how we can best describe our Lady's dolours, it gradually dawns on us that they are in fact indescribable."

Father Faber goes on to state:  "Whatever cruelty was exercised upon the bodies of the martyrs was light, or rather it was nothing, compared to the cruelty of Mary's passion.  St. Bernardine of Siena says that so great was the dolour of the Blessed Virgin that if it was subdivided and parceled out among all creatures capable of suffering, they would perish instantly"  and "Even in respect of corporal anguish Mary exceeded the martyrs.  Her whole being was drenched with bitterness.  The swords in her soul reached to every nerve and fibre in he frame, and we can hardly doubt but that her sinless body with its exquisite perfections was delicately framed for suffering beyond all others, but that of her Son."

Father Faber himself makes a pretty controversial statement in the following:  "Jesus, the joy of the martyrs, is the executioner of His Mother.  Twice over to say the least, if not a third time also, did He crucify her, once by His Human Nature, once by His Divine, if indeed Body and Soul did not make two crucifixions from the Human Nature only.  No martyrdom was ever like to this."   Father Faber calls Jesus the executioner of His Mother.  Can you imagine the uproar that would result if Pope Francis said this?

Outside of Jesus Christ, Mary was the most perfect human who ever lived, the only sinless human.  But the fact remains that she was human.  It is only logical that because she was human, she was subject to temptation, just as Jesus Himself was subject to temptation:  "For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are--yet he did not sin."  (Hebrews 4:15)  If Jesus was subject to temptation, why is it so controversial to believe that His Mother was also subject to temptation (yet without sin), especially in the incredible suffering she endured at Calvary along with her Son?

Those who take offense at Pope Francis' statement do so by saying that Mary had foreknowledge of the events at Calvary, so how could she possibly have been tempted to accuse God of lying?  (And please note, the Pope does not say or hint in any way that Mary gave into such a temptation.)  Jesus Christ, unlike His Mother, had complete and total understanding of the events in His Life, and knew even better than she did how vital Calvary was to the salvation of mankind.  Yet in the Garden of Gethsemane, He actually asked the Father to remove the cup of suffering.  And one of His last statements from the Cross was, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"  Did this mean that Jesus did not know what was going to happen when He was dying? That is absurd.

Pope Francis has given us a tremendous lesson that far too many are missing because of their judgmental attitude.  Pope Francis is telling us that our human side will always be subject to temptation and to rebellion.  The devil will always be whispering in our ears, just as He did with Our Lord and our Blessed Mother.  How do we not give in to these temptations?

Pope Francis tells us the best way to combat this is to remain in silence with God, just as Mary did. When Mary was confronted with events or circumstances she did not understand, she dealt with them in silence, taking them to God and letting Him sort it out.  "But she, with her silence, hid the mystery that she did not understand and with this silence allowed for this mystery to grow and blossom in hope." She "pondered in her heart."  Silence with God draws us close to him and reveals what we do not understand.  

Today, almost no one "ponders in their heart." They just go to the Internet and start accusing those with whom they disagree of being bad Catholics, heretics, etc., not hesitating even if that person they are accusing is the Vicar of Christ. They condemn anyone who disagrees with them, and as a result, they never come to any real understanding. How much better would it be if we took this in silence to the Lord and "allow the mystery to grow and blossom in hope"?

Yes, it is very possible that Mary was tempted when at the foot of the Cross.  If she was not actually tempted then, then certainly there was other times, but we know that she never once gave into any temptation.  Our Blessed Mother shows us the way to deal with the sometimes conflicting, confusing circumstances in our lives, when nothing seems to make sense and evil seems to be defeating good.  As Pope Francis explains, Mary "hid the mystery that she did not understand and with this silence allowed for this mystery to grow and blossom in hope."  

In order to hear God in our lives, in order to understand His Mystery, we must be quiet, we must withdraw into silence. Our Lord will never push His way into our lives. We, like our Blessed Mother, must always be saying "Yes" to Him, and we do this best when we are silent and allow the great mystery of God into our lives.

From Pope Francis:

“Silence is that which guards the mystery,” for which the mystery “of our relationship with God, of our journey, of our salvation cannot be… publicized,” the Pope repeated.

“May the Lord give all of us the grace to love the silence, to seek him and to have a heart that is guarded by the cloud of silence,” he said.

The Message of Pope Francis According to The New York Times

Without question, the most misunderstood person in the entire history of mankind is Jesus Christ. He was misunderstood at the time he lived when the religious leaders of the day called him a devil. Down through history both saints and sinners used his words and teachings to justify their actions, good or bad. Warmongers use the words of the Lord who preached love and mercy to justify war. His words of truth and justice have been used to browbeat people into submission. Rarely is our Lord presented as He truly was - our Creator who came to pour out His Blood for the salvation of mankind. The same has been true of the Church founded by Jesus Christ, the Catholic Church. As the late great Venerable Fulton Sheen once said, “There are not one hundred people in the United States who hate The Catholic Church, but there are millions who hate what they wrongly perceive the Catholic Church to be.”

I would submit that the most misunderstood person in the world today is Christ's representative and the head of the Catholic Church, our Holy Father, Pope Francis. This papacy could easily be labeled, "The Litmus Papacy". Listening to people talk about Pope Francis doesn't really give one as much insight into Pope Francis as it does into the person speaking about Pope Francis.

THE INTERVIEW (and if you don't know what I'm referring to, it can only be because you were either in a coma for the last couple of weeks or on another planet) is a prime example of how the world sees Pope Francis through their own individual ideas and prejudices.  The Pope covered many topics in this interview, but the one that almost everyone picked up on was the following statement:

We cannot insist only on issues related to abortion, gay marriage and the use of contraceptive methods. This is not possible.

NARAL got so excited over this remark that they posted the following on their Facebook page:

Chris Rock, hardly a conservative Christian, tweeted, "I might be crazy but I got this weird feeling that the new pope might be the greatest man alive."  On the opposite end of the spectrum, many conservative Catholics felt the Holy Father was going off the rails, just another example of the destruction wrought by Vatican II.

The truth is that Pope Francis was not saying anything new in this interview but merely echoing the words of Our Lord from 2000 years ago.  Pope Francis said we should not be concentrating on people's individual sins but more on their spiritual healing and bringing them to Christ.   In making this statement, he was merely following the lead of his Boss, Jesus Christ.

Our Lord with the woman caught in adultery

Our Lord rarely pointed out people's sins. We see this in the story of the woman taken in adultery, as told in John 8, when the Jews were demanding she be stoned. This is what the law demanded, but how does our Lord treat her? Jesus writes on the floor and one by one, the woman's accusers leave. Only then does Jesus address the woman:

Jesus straightened up and asked her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?”“No one, sir,” she said.“Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.”

While certainly acknowledging that the woman taken in adultery was a sinner, Jesus did not condemn her but instead showed compassion and mercy. His only acknowledgement of her sin was to tell her to sin no more. Our Lord did not see a sinner when he looked at this woman. He saw a human being in need of healing. There was no obvious sign of repentance from the woman, no indication that she intended to change her life, but that did not prevent Him from extending His Love and Forgiveness. Pope Francis echoes our Lord's words and actions with these words:

A person once asked me, in a provocative manner, if I approved of homosexuality. I replied with another question: ‘Tell me: when God looks at a gay person, does he endorse the existence of this person with love, or reject and condemn this person?’ We must always consider the person. Here we enter into the mystery of the human being. In life, God accompanies persons, and we must accompany them, starting from their situation. It is necessary to accompany them with mercy. When that happens, the Holy Spirit inspires the priest to say the right thing.

Matthew 9 relates the story of our Lord having dinner at the apostle Matthew's house, which was attended by many tax collectors and sinners.  Not only was he having dinner and socializing with these known sinners, I can assure you he was also not telling them that they were sinners and headed to hell. He was a charming and entertaining guest who made them feel very comfortable and accepted.

Credit:  newdaychurch.info

Think of our Lord having dinner with likes of the heads of Planned Parenthood, the leaders of the homosexual movement, etc. You think he would never do such a thing? From Matthew 9:11-13:

When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”

On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”

Our Holy Father, Pope Francis, summed up this sentiment exactly with these words:

“I see clearly that the thing the church needs most today is the ability to heal wounds and to warm the hearts of the faithful; it needs nearness, proximity. I see the church as a field hospital after battle. It is useless to ask a seriously injured person if he has high cholesterol and about the level of his blood sugars! You have to heal his wounds. Then we can talk about everything else. Heal the wounds, heal the wounds.... And you have to start from the ground up.”

Credit:  www.tillhecomes.org

One of the best interpretations of the Pope's remarks that I have read comes from what many call the Secular Bible, The New York Times. This is an opinion piece, entitled "The Pope’s Radical Whisper", written by Frank Bruni, a very traditional liberal. It can be found here, although I am reprinting the entire editorial below:

IT’S about time. The leader of the Roman Catholic Church has surveyed the haughty scolds in its ranks, noted their fixation on matters of sexual morality above all others and said enough is enough. I’m not being cheeky with this one-word response. Hallelujah.

But it wasn’t the particulars of Pope Francis’ groundbreaking message in an interview published last week that stopped me in my tracks, gave fresh hope to many embittered Catholics and caused hardened commentators to perk up.

It was the sweetness in his timbre, the meekness of his posture. It was the revelation that a man can wear the loftiest of miters without having his head swell to fit it, and can hold an office to which the term “infallible” is often attached without forgetting his failings. In the interview, Francis called himself naïve, worried that he’d been rash in the past and made clear that the flock harbored as much wisdom as the shepherds. Instead of commanding people to follow him, he invited them to join him. And did so gently, in what felt like a whisper.

What a surprising portrait of modesty in a church that had lost touch with it.

This is exactly what Pope Francis is talking about.  As I stated in a previous post, we live in a world in which people have completely lost their way.  Like the people of Nineveh in the Book of Jonah, the world today does not know their left hand from their right.   They are the walking wounded, lost in darkness and not even aware of it.  They feel something is not right, and in their moments of solitude and silence - which they try to avoid as much as possible - they keenly feel this sense of loss. They are not in need of our condemnation but like the woman taken in adultery, they need compassion and love to bring them to the only One who can heal them.

Mr. Bruni notes how different is the tone of Pope Francis compared with the rest of the world:

And what a refreshing example of humility in a world with too little of it.

That’s what stayed with me, not the olive branch he extended to gay people or the way he brushed aside the contraception wars but his personification of a virtue whose deficit in American life hit me full force when I spotted it here, in his disarming words. Reading and then rereading the interview, I felt like a bird-watcher who had just stumbled upon a dodo.

I’m hardly the first to flag this pope’s apparent humility or the fact that it extends beyond his preference for simple dress over regal costumes, for a Ford Focus over a papal chariot, for modest quarters over a monarch’s suite. Less than two months ago, when he answered a question about gay priests with a question of his own — “Who am I to judge?”— the self-effacement in that phrase was widely and rightly celebrated. Was a pope really acting and talking like this?  

But Francis’ tone so far is interesting not just as a departure for the church but as a counterpoint to the prevailing sensibility in our country, where humility is endangered if not quite extinct. It’s out of sync with all the relentless self-promotion, which has been deemed the very oxygen of success. It sits oddly with the cult of self-esteem.

Mr. Bruni continues to contrast Pope Francis with the ways of our contemporary world, and how deeply impressed he is with the humility and sincerity of the Holy Father.  Mr. Bruni doesn't realize it, but what he is really seeing is the difference between the ways of the world and the ways of Jesus Christ:

Humility has little place in the realm of social media, which is governed by a look-at-me ethos, by listen-to-me come-ons, by me, me, me. And humility is quaintly irrelevant to the defining entertainment genre of our time, reality television, which insists that every life is mesmerizing, if only in the manner of a train wreck, and that anyone is a latent star: the housewife, the hoarder, the teen mom, the tuna fisher. Just preen enough to catch an audience’s eye. Just beckon the cameras close.

Politics is most depressing of all. It rewards braggarts and bullies, who muscle their way onto center stage with the crazy certainty that they and only they are right, while we in the electorate and the news media lack the fortitude to shut them up or shoo them away. They disgust but divert us, or at a minimum wear us down. Maybe we get the showboats we deserve.

FOR a textbook case of humility gone missing, consider right-wing Republicans’ efforts to derail Obamacare by whatever crude and disruptive means necessary. The health care law has its flaws, some of them profound, but it was legitimately passed, in accordance with the rules, and to stray outside them in order to make it go away is to believe that they don’t apply to you, that your viewpoint trumps the process itself. It’s the summit of arrogance.

Humility doesn’t work in the cross-fire of our political combat. Certainty and single-mindedness are better fuels.

This is exactly what Pope Francis talked about in his interview when he told us we must always leave room for self doubt:  "Yes, in this quest to seek and find God in all things there is still an area of uncertainty. There must be. If a person says that he met God with total certainty and is not touched by a margin of uncertainty, then this is not good. For me, this is an important key. If one has the answers to all the questions—that is the proof that God is not with him. It means that he is a false prophet using religion for himself."

Mr. Bruni then contrasts Pope Francis with the liberal icon of our age, Barack Obama:

How exactly does President Obama fit in? While his Syria reversals may well have diminished him, they had a sort of humility to them, reflected a willingness to yield to the strong feelings of others and deserve some acknowledgment along those lines. Leadership, more art than science, should be a mix of rallying people to your cause and recognizing when you stand too far away from them.

But in Obama there’s a recurrent deflection of criticism and a refusal to abide certain political customs and efficiencies — the stroking, the rewarding, the mantra-style repetition of a simplified argument for a distracted populace — that work against his success and smack of excessive pride. He could take a page from this pope.

Credit:  www.driftwoodandcherry.com

Mr. Bruni next shows how the genuineness of Pope Francis has even helped to heal the wounds so recently inflicted upon the Church, at least in the eyes of the writer:

I never expected to write that. For too many years I watched the chieftains of the church wrap themselves in lavish pageantry and prioritize the protection of fellow clergy members over the welfare of parishioners. They allowed priests who sexually abused children to evade accountability and, in many cases, to abuse again. That cover-up was the very antithesis of humility, driven by the belief that shielding the church from public scandal mattered more than anything else.

For too many years I also watched and listened to imperious men around the pope hurl thunderbolts of judgment from the Olympus of Vatican City. But in his recent interview, Francis made a plea for quieter, calmer weather, suggesting that church leaders in Rome spend less energy on denunciations and censorship.

He cast himself as a struggling pastor determined to work in a collaborative fashion. He characterized himself as a sinner. “It is not a figure of speech, a literary genre,” he clarified. “I am a sinner.”

In his final paragraphs, Mr. Bruni makes it clear that he is not ready to convert, but he is ready to listen, and that is a huge step. Mr. Bruni, unlike too many Catholics, understands that the Pope is not going to change the teachings of the Church. However, he does see Pope Francis as someone who has something to give to the world, and he is open to this message:

He didn’t right past wrongs. Let’s be clear about that. Didn’t call for substantive change to church teachings and traditions that indeed demand re-examination, including the belief that homosexual acts themselves are sinful. Didn’t challenge the all-male, celibate priesthood. Didn’t speak as progressively — and fairly — about women’s roles in the church as he should.

But he also didn’t present himself as someone with all the answers. No, he stepped forward — shuffled forward, really — as someone willing to guide fellow questioners. In doing so he recognized that authority can come from a mix of sincerity and humility as much as from any blazing, blinding conviction, and that stature is a respect you earn, not a pedestal you grab. That’s a useful lesson in this grabby age of ours.

The message of Jesus Christ has mercy and forgiveness at its core, as shown above in the quote from Matthew 9.  Our job is not to condemn the world but to bring to it the healing message of Jesus Christ. That is exactly what Pope Francis has done, and Frank Bruni of The New York Times got this message loud and clear.   My prayer is that those who call themselves followers of Jesus Christ will hear this message as well.

Credit:  fr-fr.facebook.com

The Sorrowful Mysteries: Be It Done Unto Me According To Thy Word

Yesterday, August 3, was the First Saturday of the Month. The First Saturday Devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary was first mentioned by Our Lady of Fatima on July 13, 1917. After showing the three children a vision of hell she said, "You have seen hell where the souls of poor sinners go. To save them, God wishes to establish in the world devotion to my Immaculate Heart. If what I say to you is done, many souls will be saved and there will be peace... I shall come to ask for... the Communion of reparation on the first Saturdays..." The First Saturday devotion is as follows:

It consists in going to Confession, receiving Communion, reciting five decades of the Rosary and meditating for a quarter of an hour on the mysteries of the Rosary on the first Saturday of five consecutive months. The Confession may be made during the eight days preceding or following the first Saturday of each month, provided that Holy Communion be received in the state of grace. Should one forget to form the intention of making reparation to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, it may be formed at the next Confession, occasion to go to confession being taken at the first opportunity.

I normally take one mystery of the Rosary, e.g., The Second Sorrowful Mystery, and write a meditation on it.  Today I'm going to do something a little different and take all Five Sorrowful Mysteries and meditate on our Blessed Mother's Role in these mysteries.  The Five Sorrowful Mysteries are:

1. The Agony in the Garden:  Jesus goes to the Garden of Gethsemane pray and prepare himself for the great passion into which he is about to enter.  He contemplates the entire sin of the world, which causes him so much agony that he literally starts to sweat blood.  At this time, Judas, in the ultimate act of betrayal came into the Garden with the Temple guards to arrest Jesus.  Our Lord is arrested and treated as a common criminal.   


2. The Scourging at the Pillar:  In an effort to appease the blood hungry crowd, Pilate had Our Lord scourged at the pillar, a most inhumane and cruel punishment, using whips that literally tore into the skin, exposing bone.  Pilate knew Jesus was not guilty of any crime, but he nonetheless ordered Jesus to be scourged within an inch of his life.


3. The Crowning With Thorns:  In mocking our Lord as King of the Jews, the Roman Soldiers took a crown made from thorns and pushed it into our Blessed Lord's Sacred Head.  If you've ever stuck yourself with a rose thorn, you know how painful this is.  Imagine even larger thorns woven into a "crown" and smashed down upon your head and literally into your brain.  The pain must have been beyond excruciating.  


4. The Carrying of the Cross:  After being scourged and suffering a great loss of blood and enduring the pain and humiliation of the crown of thorns and losing even more blood, Jesus takes up his cross and walks among the taunting crowds to his place of execution.  Some of the women show great compassion for him, such as Veronica who braved the soldiers to wipe the blood from the face of our Lord.  Some of the women of Jerusalem openly wept for him.  But mostly our Lord had to endure such taunts as "Savior of the world, you can't even save yourself!"  No doubt many in the crowds threw things at him and spat upon our Dear Savior.  


5. The Crucifixion:  Our Lord was nailed to the Cross by his hands and feet where he hung naked for three hours, being bitten by flies and other insects, having to force himself up to breathe, and enduring even more taunting and insults from the crowds while the last of his blood poured out of his body from his innumerable wounds.  

What was the role of Mary, the mother of our Lord in all of this? How did she handle the tremendous cruelty and injustice endured by Her Son? There can be no doubt that she felt each blow herself. There can be no doubt that she would have gladly taken the place of Her Son to spare him this awful agony and torture.  But we can also be sure that our Lord spent a good part of His earthly life preparing His Mother for this moment, explaining to her, just as he tried to explain to his apostles, that this was the very reason he came into the world.  His purpose in life was to die.  Mary carried this pain within herself from the time she took her Son to the temple as a newborn babe and was told by the old man, Simeon, that a sword would pierce her heart.  

Mary suffered every step of the way along with Her Son, starting long before that first Good Friday. She understood in a way that no one else on earth did how those around them completely misunderstood and misinterpreted Jesus. She saw Judas who saw Jesus only as a way to enrich himself. She saw Peter who appeared in many ways to be nothing more than a blowhard, vowing his loyalty to the Lord and then running when there was true danger. She saw the Pharisees and Saducees, the religious leaders of the day, attack her Precious Son, wanting to destroy Him because He seemed to threaten their role in society. She knew, as no one else did, how completely pure and innocent Her Son was and how completely undeserving He was of the barbaric and tortuous death He was forced to endure at the hands of the very ones He had come to save.

If any of the rest of us had been in Mary's place and had to watch such cruelty visited upon our children, we most certainly would have wanted to strike out in some way against the perpetrators of that cruelty.  But we have no record anywhere of Mary ever complaining or speaking against anyone who betrayed her Son in any way.  She lived by her words of the consent she gave to the Angel Gabriel when asked to be the Mother of God: "Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it done to me according to thy word".

Mary was the first true disciple of Jesus.  She was the first one to give herself completely and without reserve to Jesus, accepting His rule in her life.  She recognized the Omnipotence of God, acknowledging that He was totally in charge of everything that happened.  No matter how dark and desperate situations in life may have seemed, even at that darkest moment when Our Lord was crucified on Calvary, Mary silently and stoically accepted the Will of God and never once lashed out at any of those who treated her Son so unjustly.  

I am seeing very little of this trusting and faithful attitude in the Catholic Church today.  This lack of trust is not surprising at all from those on the more liberal side.  Liberal is often all about "change" and wanting things the way we want them.  The problem is that far too many on the left want change that is not consistent with Church teaching, such as married priests and women priests.  They are not willing to listen to the Magesterium of the Church and allow the Holy Spirit to guide them but insist on pushing their own beliefs and desires.

What is surprising, at least to me, is that those who call themselves "Traditional Catholics" are really no different from their liberal counterparts. Many traditionalists have very specific ideas about how the Church should be run and they do not tolerate anyone who disagrees with them. Many seem to feel that they have a full and complete understanding of the Will of God and that they, literally, know better than the Pope what is right and wrong. Pope Francis has become a lightening rod to the traditionalists, and even those outside of the Church are becoming very aware of this. There have been more than a few articles in secular publications and websites noting how dissatisfied many Traditionalists are with Pope Francis. Many of these Traditionalists seem to feel that if things are not exactly to their liking, that means the sky is falling and, unlike our Blessed Mother who waited on the Lord, they feel they have to take matters into their own hands and make their own judgments.

Traditionalists are more and more reminding me of the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector.  From Luke 8:9-14:

9 To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else, Jesus told this parable: 10 “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11 The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. 12 I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’

13 “But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’ 

14 “I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”

I received an e-mail from a traditionalist friend recently in which she forwarded an e-mail from a friend discussing Pope Francis.  This is how the e-mail began:

Now, on to the Pope. It is a sad state when one wakes up every day filled with dread as to what horrific thing the Pope is going to say today. I called Bergoglio as a “disaster” literally on day one. And a disaster he is.

The author of this e-mail was very upset with Pope Francis' recent comments regarding "gay" priests in which he said that he cannot judge a homosexual priest who is trying to serve the Lord.  The Holy Father's exact words were "If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?"  The author of the e-mail called this comment "stupid".  She says she is not sedevacantist, and fully believes that Pope Francis is a legitimate pope, but she sees his role as a "chastisement" to the Church for all the wrong we have done.  And she feels no qualms at all about harshly criticizing him because he does not live up to her standards.  From the e-mail:

Pope Francis is the Vicar of Christ and is a chastisement. I am not a sede-vacantist (meaning the See of Peter is empty and Francis is not the Pope). That’s the coward’s way out. If I was a sede-vacantist I wouldn’t care what Bergoglio said or did in the same way I don’t care what the Anglican “archbishop” of Canterbury says or does. No. He’s the Pope alright, and he is an absolute disaster, as I said from the beginning. Expect things to get progressively worse.

The self righteousness and scorn in this e-mail is enough to make my skin crawl.  I am sure this person prays the Rosary on a daily basis, would never think of missing Sunday Mass and probably even goes to daily Mass, and from all outward appearances is an upstanding and faithful Catholic.  But her words belie that fact, just as did the Pharisee's words in the parable.

We don't have to understand everything that goes on around us.  Most likely we won't understand when we are in the middle of a storm, just as I am sure our Blessed Mother did not understand all of the trying and painful circumstances in her life, and most especially the horrendous events on the way to and at Calvary.  But she never struck out at others.  She placed herself completely and without reserve into the hands of God and let Him work it all out.  That is what we must also learn to do.  If we truly believe, as Catholics, that this is the Church founded by Jesus Christ, that the Catholic Church is His Mystical Body upon which the gates of Hell shall never prevail, and if we truly believe that the Pope is the Vicar of Christ, the physical representative of Christ on earth who cannot mislead us in faith and morals, then we have no right to sit as judge and jury over anyone or anything.  This is most especially true concerning the Pope.  We must follow the lead of our Blessed Mother in all things.

Many traditionalists are scornful of Pope Francis because he preaches love and acceptance of all people.  He believes in mercy, not judgment.  That does not mean accepting people's sin, but it does mean accepting people.  We are all sinners, and none of us have escaped our sin except through the mercy of God.  Even though we may not struggle with "big" sins such as homosexuality, we could actually be far worse sinners in the eyes of God than those who do struggle with the "big" sins.  Our Lord said to whom much is given, much is expected.  We who have been given and accepted the grace of God and forgiveness of our sins will be judged by a much harsher standard than those who have not received the Grace of God.  As Christ told the chief priests and elders of his time:  "Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you. For John came to you to show you the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes did."  (Matt. 21:31-32)

Jesus forgives the woman caught in adultery

When our Lord walked the earth, many sinners were attracted to Him and wanted to be with Him because he showed them love and acceptance. He didn't wait for them to repent and change. He reached out to them while they were still in their sins, as He did with the woman at the well and the woman caught in adultery.  With many of these people, once they felt the love of Christ, that gave them the courage and strength they need to turn away from their sins.  Pope Francis is following in the ways of our Lord in reaching out to the world, and the world is responding. They see in Pope Francis a man who truly loves them despite their sins, and I believe that many will turn away from their sins as the Pope leads them to the love of Jesus Christ.

You may not believe that.  You may be completely baffled by the actions of the Holy Father and not understand what is going on.  But you need to take the attitude of our Blessed Mother when she was in the midst of the storm of Calvary.  Trust in our Lord that He can work out everything.  Realize that it is not your job to save the Church from itself, it is not your job to sit as judge and juror over the Pope or anyone else.  It is your job to trust in the Lord and to allow His love to flow through you to others, just as our Holy Mother did.  

Be It Done Unto Me According To Thy Word.