Daily Archives: March 13, 2012

Episode #37 (March 12, 2012): Conferences, et cetera!

Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Episode #37 (March 12, 2012): Conferences, et cetera!

Posted onMarch 13, 2012byAndy

Episode #37 (March 12, 2012): Conferences, et cetera![ 31:14 ]Play Now

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Alleluia! It’s Lent! (Or so say our Eastern peeps.) And so here we go…

Hashtag of the Week: #iliketurtles (explanation)

Song of the Week: Four Chord Song by Axis of Awesome (which gave Take On Me by A-Ha the boot).

Question of the Week: How did you spend your weekend?

We welcome your input! Please comment below or send us feedback at feedback@hotcupofministry.ca. We can also be found on Facebook at facebook.com/hotcupofministry or the Twitter as @hotcupministry. Feel free to send new hard drives to Andy.

About Andy

Andy likes websites but never updates them. Favorite hobbies include StarCraft, brewing beer and wine, and not updating websites. Andy is married to Jane.

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Episode #37 (March 12, 2012): Conferences, et cetera!

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Parents Will Save The World

Tuesday, March 13, 2012

We get so worried these days about the state of the modern family and
wonder how the concept of the Catholic Family is going to survive
with all the threats in our society against it. We need to remember
our past and learn from our history it will survive as long as
parents do their part.

In the 1540′s St. Francis Xavier and
the Jesuits were missionaries in Nagasaki Japan and were responsible
for over 100,000 converts. But by 1587 Christianity
was repressed in Japan as a threat to national unity and ceased to
exist publicy and had to go underground.


By 1610, 1 out of 6 Japanese were
Catholic. But in 1611 and 1613 the priests were expelled and
thousands of Catholics were put to death. When the priests left Japan
though they told the people to keep the faith and pass it on to your
children, and eventually they would return.


After 250 years, 10 generations, when
Japan was open up to the west again, the priests did return. The
priests would walk through the streets, dressed very conspicuously
with the hope of finding some remaining Catholics. Eventually a
group of the faithful approached the priests and asked them some
questions their parents had taught them on how to know a priest.
They had to figure out if they were celibate, if they loved the
mother of God and if they loved the Holy Man in Rome.

The priests soon discovered that there
were 30,000 Catholics remaining in Japan after the 250 years. With
only 2 sacraments, Baptism and Marriage, and in spite of great
persecution, the parents had been able to pass on the faith to their
children and keep the Church alive in Japan. The Church survived
because of the parents.


Family life is the primary training
ground for Catholics. With the concept of family rapidly changing in
our society (redefinition of marriage in law, same sex marriage,
cohabitation, casual sex, easy no-fault divorce), along with
individualism, secularism, materialism, agnosticism, hedonism,
rationalism and relativism, parents have their work cut out for them.
Abortion, reproductive technologies and manipulation, euthanasia,
destruction of human life for scientific advancement, rampant
pornography and gratuitous violence, all make it seem like we have
lost the battle to raise our children Catholic.


Sure if we focus on these destructive
influences we could lose hope. So instead we have to stand firm and
not be afraid of these influences or the people who have fallen for
them and remember we have the truth on our side. We have to study our
faith and know it well and lead by our example.


Healthy Christian
marriages are the foundation of healthy families; and healthy
families are the foundation of society. It is up to us to help
restore this understanding by how we live our family life.


To begin with we must be clear that
the family; mother, father, and any children(or no children for those
who cannot have children) is the basic cell of any society. We must
be very clear as to what a family is and what it is meant to be. We
have to be able to explain what is the family’s full purpose and we
need a profound understanding of God’s plan for the family.

The family is the only true natural
institution. It is made by God and ordered to the care of the
children. Through living out family life an individual develops and
grows towards maturity.

If we look at the purpose of an
acorn we can see that an acorn already contains all of the
information necessary to form itself into an oak tree. All it needs
is for certain conditions to be met, such as the absorption of water,
sunlight, and nutrients. In essence, then, an acorn is an oak tree in
a state of underdevelopment. The “Oak-tree-ness” is
already written within the genetic code of the acorn. The acorn
already is an oak tree, and that is how it is able to manifest itself
as an oak tree when its conditions (for water, sunlight, and
nutrients) are met.

It is the same with the family. The
husband and wife are already a family but they have to be developed.
The parents need to form the virtues in themselves and in any
children they have, so like the acorn their family can reach its full
potential.

Our
job as parents is not to keep our children busy and amused,
nor just to keep them out of trouble and make them behave. The real
job of family life is to lead children by example, directed practice,
and explanation, so that they grow up to be competent, responsible,
considerate men and women who are committed to live by Catholic
principles all their lives.

To this end it is imperative that
all parents should have a copy of the Apostolic Exhortation
Familiaris Consortio(On the Role of the Christian Family in the
Modern World) from Pope John Paul II on their bedside and be
reading and reflecting on it regularly. It is mandatory reading for
all couples. This document opens the mind and heart to what God wants
for the family.

It is no accident that Jesus grew up
in a family. His public ministry did not arise out of the blue. It
was in the hidden and uncelebrated years of family life, growing up
in the home of Joseph and Mary, that the foundations of his ministry
were laid. We see from the Holy Family’s great example that family
love can change the world. We have to have confidence in the love
which lies hidden in our own families and its bearing on the future
of the world.

All married couples have to have a
strong understanding of what the family is and be able to articulate
it to their children, their grandchildren and all those around them.
Weak thought will lead to weak families. We have to be able to give a
rational explanation for our understanding of the family if we expect
the family to survive in this age of technology and an overabundance
of information. We must know the problems, know the enemy, know the
tactics and know the answers.

Our Catholic
Faith is one of faith and reason. We must truly understand the
dignity of the person, the problems with modern materialism,
relativism, new ageism, hedonism etc and be able to explain this
simply enough for a child to understand.

If we do not really understand what
the role of the family is and what God intended for it, then we float
or are blown around by almost every and any cultural breeze that
arises. We must be grounded in the truth, be able to explain to our
children the rational reasons for the importance of why marriage as
permanent, that God is everlasting, and His truths are everlasting.
We must show our children how truth cannot change.

Sure it seems like the boat is
bouncing on the waves but as long as Jesus is on the boat we do not
have to be afraid. But when we take out eyes off Jesus we will sink.
We must grow in the faith that all battles have been won. We must
continue to pray. We must continue to study our faith and know it
well and know the reasons for the truth.

Only the Church stands solidly
against these inhumane trends that attack the dignity of the human
person and the family. But keep in mind that Jesus is not an
“against” type of person. He is a person, he is the incarnate
truth, he is incarnate love, he is the way. We must know and revere
what the Church teaches so we can live those teachings and share them
with others.

Raising a family is an adventure and
God designed it to live that way. We cannot lose heart in the
strength of the family for then we lose heart in the truth. We have
to pray for an ever increasing amount of the virtue of prudence. The
Cardinal virtue of Prudence is the virtue that requires us to see
things the way God sees them, in reality, and then to act in a manner
coherent with that reality. We have to be grounded in reality. If we
do not attempt to act in accordance with the truth, we are at risk to
be swept away by every modern distortion of the truth.

God is counting on all parents to
pass on the faith to our children like the people of Japan did in
spite of persecutions. God is counting on all parents to save the
world through our hard work and efforts in teaching our children the
truth. We cannot let life get us down and give up. We have to just
keep getting up and starting again.

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Parents Will Save The World

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New heights for anti-Catholicism in America

Tuesday, March 13, 2012
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WASHINGTON, DC – In the long history of anti-Catholicism, the epithets vomited at the Church and Catholics are numerous and colourful: Whore of Babylon, anti-Christ, mother of harlots, heretical, pagan, idolatrous, satanic, alien, ignorant, anti-intellectual, slavish and a personal favourite, the “two-horned monster of Rome,” which is how a few rabid Orthodox monks protested Blessed John Paul’s visit to Greece.

So it was a novelty to encounter another anti-Catholic image: the battered woman. Last week Catholics were told: “You’re better than your Church, so why stay? Apparently, you’re like the battered woman who, after being beaten down every Sunday, feels she has no place else to go.”

Perhaps you think I have been researching obscure tracks published in the darker corners of the most backward parts of America, crudely photocopied and distributed by ill-bathed people with bad clothes and worse teeth. But no, for real anti-Catholicism, one need go no farther than the great tribune of enlightened American opinion, The New York Times. Not for nothing is the conclusion of the celebrated American historian Arthur Schlesinger Sr., often quoted: “Anti-Catholicism is the deepest-held bias in the history of the American people.”

So it was that a group of atheist fundamentalists took out a full-page in The New York Times March 9, inviting Catholics to leave the Church. The supposed issue was the American bishops’ protest against the unconstitutional policies of the Obama administration, but the ad included all the greatest hits of anti-Catholicism — ignorance of the liturgy, hatred of the priesthood and rebellion against the Magisterium: “We invite you to free yourself from incense-fogged ritual, from ideas uttered long ago by ignorant men, from blind obedience to illusory religious authority.”

That the Times is anti-Catholic is so well-established that it is boring to note it, as it would be to observe that the Times would never run an advertisement that so targeted any other group. As for taking money — $52,000 reportedly — for trafficking in bigotry, one need not look far for the right word for one who sells her virtue for money. “No whore like an old whore,” as Brian Mulroney said in a different context. The Times has been at it longer than most.

I am here in Washington this week as a consultant to the American bishops’ special committee on religious liberty. Encroachments on religious liberty are not unrelated to the anti-Catholic bigotry one finds in the Times ad, even if that degree of hatred is not usually expressed openly.

Anti-Catholicism — both in Canada and in the United States — used to be the poisoned fruit of disunity in the Church, i.e., rivalry between Christians. Catholics were subject to hostility because they were not proper Christians; there was some wrong with their religious belief and practice. Today, we encounter a secular mindset which is hostile to all religion, with the Catholic Church bearing the brunt of the attack.

What Protestants at a certain time thought about Catholics is now what secularists here think about religion in general; it is alien, anti-American and dangerous. Hence the confusions promoted by the Obama administration, which has decided that those things it likes about religion — teaching children, caring for the poor, healing the sick — are not really religious activities at all, even if done by the St. Vincent de Paul Society or the Little Sisters of the Poor.

It’s not only the Obama administration of course. That mindset is at work all over the United States (and Canada). Just recently, New York City banned religious groups from renting space in public schools. It won’t affect Catholics in New York, as parishes usually have their own churches and halls, but will have a serious impact on small congregations who use schools to meet for worship and study. Why would religious groups be banned when everyone else is allowed to rent the space? Because religion is alien, anti-American and dangerous. The anti-Catholic spirit of old has now been given wider application.

Yet the Catholic Church remains a special target. White House officials have told the bishops that they don’t adequately understand Catholic teaching and should follow the lead of those Catholic institutions which are more partisan than faithful. It’s not as crude as the Times ad, but the message is the same — leave the Church, one, holy, catholic and apostolic, and become something rather different made in the image and likeness of those who hold political power and cultural influence.

America’s proud tradition of religious liberty and tolerance is being betrayed by an old prejudice being applied in new ways, not by the backward and the brutish, but by the White House and The New York Times.

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New heights for anti-Catholicism in America

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Saying sorry to Goustan

Tuesday, March 13, 2012
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St Goustan with a fish

It all started like this. There was a chap here called Goustan, and I refused to believe that it was a name. That’s not strictly true… I refused to believe that it was a proper name. I just thought that his parents had had fun with anagrams of the word ‘nougats’ and other confectionary based delights. He had vehemently asserted that Goustan was a proper Breton name and that I was an uncultured peasant for not knowing about him.

The Church of St Sauveur in Port de Saint Goustan

So this Monday I went to a shrine of Saint Anne, more of which later, near Auray in Brittany. And there in the city is

Port de Saint Goustan

. ‘Hmmm’ thought I, ‘that’s a bit rum’, so I went to investigate. The Church is dedicated to St Sauveur but there he is, standing in the pulpit! St Goustan and a fish. Looking all reproachful and ‘so I don’t exist, eh?’ and accusatory.

A very nice Church with a ship in a case almost obscuring St Joseph.

I’m not entirely convinced about the meaningful Lenten sand and stones bit…

Meaningful sand and stones

…but Our Lady rescuing souls from the flames of Purgatory is surely good.

Our Lady rescuing sinners from Purgatory

So to all you Goustans out there, I apologise, your holy patron does exist. And he seems to be rather fond of fish.

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Saying sorry to Goustan

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NEO-TOTALITARIANISM

Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Absolute control by the state or a governing branch of a highly centralized institution is the basic definition of totalitarianism and, neo is a fancy way of saying ‘new’.

I mention this at the outset because the Allies fought a multi-year war against the Axis powers in WWII to overcome such horror and waged the cold war for the same reason and rail, rightly, against those governments which continue to oppress their people.

Yet here is what is truly an Alice through the looking glass experience of daily life, more and more in particular in the United States and Canada: national, state, provincial government policies which are truly totalitarian: for example in the US the Obama government imposition upon the hospitals of people of faith to insure contraceptive and abortion drugs; in Canada, one example, the Supreme Court upholding provincial legislation which denies parents the right to exempt their children from classes which impose anti-Christian teaching.

I am reminded of a word from the great Father of the Desert, Abba Anthony, who when asked by his monks what the future held said: “The day will come when the world will go mad. They will come to us and tell us WE must be mad because we are not like them.”

Western Europe, Russia, North, Central, South America in particular are rooted in what is commonly known as Christian civilization and, along with our brothers and sisters of the Jewish and Islamic faiths, share a common heritage rooted in faith in the one true God, the God of our fathers Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

We not only dishonour our ancestors in faith, but also the countless men and women who past and present have laid down their lives to retain our freedom from totalitarianism, when we abandon the clear command of God for our lives and society in favour of a totally disordered, evil and totalitarian assault on freedom of belief and practice.

Bl. Pope John Paul in his homily at St. Catherine’s Monastery on Mount Sinai during the Jubilee 2000 reminds us that “…our faith leads us to become pilgrims in the footsteps of God.”

Where does He lead us?

To FREEDOM!

“…..He is indeed the God who does set His people free as He promised….God seals His love by making the Covenant that He will never renounce….The encounter of God and Moses…enshrines at the heart of our religion the mystery of liberating obedience, which finds its fulfilment in the perfect obedience of Christ in the Incarnation and on the Cross…We too shall be truly free if we learn to obey as Jesus did.”

If we allow governments to take away our freedom we have chosen to become slaves.

It is fundamental, as Bl. John Paul teaches that: “To keep the Commandments is to be faithful to God, but it is also to be faithful to ourselves, to our true nature, to our deepest aspirations.”

There are two ways of becoming an enslaved and oppressed people: 1] an individual or government by sheer force of military might conquer and enslaves a nation; 2] silent acquiescence in the face of totalitarian legislation.

Attributed to the German Christian Pastor Niemoller: “First they came for the Jews and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. They came for the communists and I did not speak out because I was not a communist. Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me.”

They have come for the Catholics and all believers, they have come for parents: who will speak out?

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NEO-TOTALITARIANISM

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Why "Good"?

Tuesday, March 13, 2012
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Why "Good"?

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Why "Good"?

Tuesday, March 13, 2012
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“Good Friday, called Feria VI in Parasceve in the Roman Missal, he hagia kai megale paraskeue (the Holy and Great Friday) in the Greek Liturgy, Holy Friday in Romance Languages, Charfreitag (Sorrowful Friday) in German, is the English designation of Friday in Holy Week — that is, the Friday on which the Church keeps the anniversary of the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ….

…The origin of the term Good is not clear. Some say it is from “God’s Friday” (Gottes Freitag); others maintain that it is from the German Gute Freitag, and not specially English. Sometimes, too, the day was called Long Friday by the Anglo-Saxons; so today in Denmark.” – (http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06643a.htm)

Good. That’s what we call the day our Lord Jesus suffered and died. Why?

If you look forward three days you know that Jesus rose from the dead leading us into eternal life with God the Father. There is no doubt about the goodness of that Easter Sunday yet even as Christians we still sometimes struggle to see the goodness of the Friday that led to that glorious resurrection.

How difficult it is to recognize the goodness of suffering, of pain, of humiliation, of death. In such times we can’t always see the Easter Sunday awaiting us. But because of Jesus, because of the witness of his followers, we can know, we can believe, we can hope, and we can endure. We have faith that our sufferings are not endured in vain, that offered to God they are transformed into blessings, into gifts for us, for others, for the entire world!

“Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church…” - (Colossians 1:24)

God doesn’t promise that our Good Fridays will be easy, they won’t be, but He does promise that they are in fact “good”. Not happy, not joyous, not blissful, but

good

. Let us expect, embrace, and endure our sufferings for our good and the good of the whole world. Uniting our sacrifice to our Lord Jesus may we continue in faith and hope of the coming resurrection.



“For as we share abundantly in Christ’s sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too. If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation; and if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which you experience when you patiently endure the same sufferings that we suffer. Our hope for you is unshaken; for we know that as you share in our sufferings, you will also share in our comfort.” - (2 Corinthians 1:5-7)

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Some Contemporary Myths Debunked

Tuesday, March 13, 2012
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The catalyst of this post is a discussion I have been having with someone in the comments of one of my posts over at the

SCCB

. But it’s handy apologetics any time of the year!

1. Christianity makes one worse, or at least hasn’t made the world better.

2. It doesn’t matter whether you are religious or not. You can be a perfectly good person without ‘God.’

3. All religions are the same.

4. The Church is about power and money.

5. The Church’s teaching on sex is (a) harmful (b) motivated by the psychological dysfunctions of its leaders.

6. The Church has corrupted Jesus’ teaching.

7. Faith is irrational and thus misanthropic.

I could go on and on, but these are some of the big contemporary criticisms. Let’s examin each briefly.

General Point

What all of these assertions have in common is that they are not based on data, but are conclusions drawn from thin air. The intellectual daring (timerity!) by which these are maintained by people who have no background in history, theology, sociology, etc., is truly astonishing.

Particulars

1. How does one measure worse and better? This was one of the essential problems with Dawkin’s famous book, The God Delusion, he was trying to play both sides simultaneously: there is no objective right and wrong, there is an objective right and wrong. So, how can he say that the Church / Bible is wrong about x, y, and z? He appeals to emotional reaction of people biased by their own presuppositions. Does he accept the possibility, for instance, that homosexuality is unhealthy? He does not. When contemplating the question – has Christianity made the world better? – if we do not know what better looks like, we are incapable of answering it. I say that a world with saints is better than one without. I say that a world personified by St. Francis better than that personified by Pliny the Elder, Plotinus, or Aristotle.

2. Logically you can be, but statistically you won’t be. Religion is the only real assurance that people will do things non-categorically, i.e. without some selfish motive. Secular people often start out altruistically, but perseverence is another matter. Let’s contrast here Doctors without Boarders and missionaries. A missionary will never move on to another career, one purchased from ones gnawing conscience by a few years of good, selfless work.

3. No, they are not. In what sense are they supposed to be the same?

Same morality?

Christianity’s turn the other cheek somehow matches up with its polar-opposite, eye-for-an-eye?

Same epistemology?

Luther left the Church is no small part because of its committment to reason (against faith, he said). Buddhism does not have a place for faith in God or in creeds.

4. Some of what has happened in the history of the Church can be explained this way, an important element cannot. Thus, as a descriptive statement it is pretty shallow. If what is meant is that there is sin in the Church, no one would argue that. That’s the whole point: we are sinners in need of a Saviour.

5. How is it harmful? Usually it is said because it fosters guilt. Ever meet a non-Christian suffering from guilt associated with sex? Of course. Sex is by nature a difficult and delicate thing, as it focused on the good of the very fragile heart. Thus, guilt that is oriented to healing the heart is good. Of course, as in (4) above, error and sin does creep in and ruins the good that the Church’s teaching is meant to secure. We need better catechesis, certainly, and human formation. The answer is not to call that which is bad for people good. The harm of objectively destructive practices is far worse than the unpleasant effects of healthy guilt. If we called these things good we would only be fooling ourselves for a short while, as the APA is currently fooling itself.

Our leaders can have sexual dysfunctions: they are free, fallen beings just as in need of salvation as the rest of us. There is nothing about church leadership and celibacy that foster dysfunction. Ever meet a healthy, loving spinster? A Roman Collar does not intrinsically corrupt; a piece of plastic is incapable of such an effect.

6. If so it is doing a very poor job of it. There have always been notions of this ilk circulating. A funny thing is, secular religion critics don’t realize that they have actually entered into the Protestant polemic against Catholicism with this one. Nice job at getting sucked in you victim of others’ thinking! If the Church is attempting to hide Jesus’ teaching, is this a formally stated plan? If so, I have not been informed. Is it an intrinsic tendency – we just do and say what is better for us, and this has led to the abandonment of His teaching, again, this might explain certain elements of the Church’s history, but leaves great explanatory gaps: martyrs, ancient, modern, 16th century, 18th century, and especially 20th century. And how does the Church’s extremely unpopular stance on contraception help it politically?

7. A logical failure here. In fact, I would assert that reason alone is extremely misanthropic. How does one derive morality from reason? If you can answer that, there’s a professorship at Oxford waiting for you. How does one conduct family life, civic life, marital life on the principles of reason alone? Good luck with that. Love, mercy, kindness, trust – these are greater when not calculated. It is just as true that reason is misanthropic as it is to say faith is.

In conclusion, this is a dispute with partially educated critics of the Church. They have bought into the current myths of our secular culture. It’s time they assess the data for themselves. I know they will be surprised by what they will see.

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Some Contemporary Myths Debunked

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Beauty, Where Art Thou?

Tuesday, March 13, 2012
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By Artur Suski, S.J.

When I was pondering about what to write for my next blog entry, I happened to be listening to Mozart’s Symphony no. 41 in C major (“Jupiter”). There I was, listening to the first movement, with its interplay of upbeat rhythms led by a choir of violins, amidst the slow and lofty themes; all that kept coming to my mind was “what beauty!” I often do not have such reactions – surely a sign that I should listen to more Mozart – which made me reflect upon why this was so. Is it because I don’t intentionally seek out the beautiful? Or is it because today’s human-made world has lost its splendour and beauty? After all, how often do we hear people complementing anything today as ‘beautiful’? Perhaps I am out of touch with today’s culture of pop music, but I haven’t heard anyone describe any recent hits as ‘beautiful’.

Take architecture as another example. Are there any contemporary buildings that can be described as ‘beautiful’? ‘Interesting’ would be a better word. A friend of mine recently took a course on aesthetics, and the professor asked the students what they thought of the new design of the Royal Ontario Museum (the ROM). For those of you who have walked down Bloor Street in downtown Toronto, you may have noticed a somewhat older building with recently-added glass protrusions…what does it look like? Can one describe it as beautiful? (Un)surprisingly, no one in the class was able to describe the edifice as such.

The ROM

I may be completely wrong about this – as I await your comments – but it seems to me that today our contemporary culture has abandoned the ‘beautiful’ and embraced the practical or that which looks provocative; that is, what attracts attention to itself. Others say that they go for the symbolic: their creations ‘transcend’ beauty in order to express something more, an idea, or a message. It is assumed that they need to make their

oeuvre

stand out in some way; otherwise beauty is simply looked upon and quickly passed by, without being given another thought.


It would be helpful to ask ourselves: why is beauty important? And what exactly is beauty? Perhaps it is as they say: the beautiful is ‘old style’, ‘boring’, only to be quickly dismissed. It may be because we have lost the ability to truly see the beautiful. To illustrate my point: someone who’s been listening to death metal for his whole life will not likely find Mozart’s Symphony no. 41 beautiful. His sense for the beautiful has been literally deafened.

I imagine that there is a certain disposition needed to see the beautiful; for as many a philosopher has pointed out, the beautiful is a transcendental, something that goes beyond the mere material. The beautiful, being a transcendental, goes hand-in-hand with the true and the good. These also go beyond mere matter and somehow touch our very souls.

To take it even a step further, the beautiful, the true, and the good are of God: the radiance of God shining through His Creation, a foretaste of pure bliss that is God Himself. God makes Himself felt in His creation, through the beautiful, the true, and the good; and as anything spiritual, a spiritual ‘sense’ is needed to pick it up. But in a society that has mostly opted for the material senses – and do we ever delight in these, for better and for worse – how can its members notice a spiritual reality such as beauty? Can a non-believer discern the beautiful? Surely there are atheists that marvel at the beauty of nature, the arts, and especially Mozart’s 41st symphony?

Even if they do not believe in God and the spiritual sense, if they have an interior freedom and openness to an ‘interior life’, a place within themselves where silence reigns and where there is space for reflecting upon and pondering about the mysterious, there God is waiting for them, to touch them, to awe them. Dare I say that even these moments somehow lead them into contact with God, though they may not be aware of it yet.

The Lord of all glory and splendour does indeed show Himself to us today; all we have to do is recognize His Presence pouring forth through all creation. May His awesome beauty inspire in us a deep sense of gratitude.

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Beauty, Where Art Thou?

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Video: How To Register a Group

Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Video: How To Register a Group Register Your GroupIn honour of our early registration deadline (coming up on March 31, 2012) and the new group leaders we have this year (Welcome!) we have made a short video on how to register a group. This is just the bare bones, basic method for registering

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Video: How To Register a Group

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Still tripping

Tuesday, March 13, 2012
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Do you ever play the game of “If I won the lottery, I’d…”?

If you won the big jackpot (it has to be the big one, ’cause a million bucks doesn’t go as far as it used to) what would you do with it? Let’s skip right to the part after you’ve given money to the charities closest to your heart and the family members you want to help and you’ve got a big ol’ pile of the stuff that doesn’t buy happiness but sure would be fun to play with. Now what?

For sure I’d like to travel, and Italy is right at the top of my list, very closely followed by just about the rest of Europe (I’m not feeling too friendly about Greece just now). I’d like to travel in a drifting sort of way – no pressure of itineraries, no ‘if this is Tuesday I must be in Lichtenschtein’ – just the freedom to stay where I like until the customs folks drag me out or I feel like returning home.

Everyone dreams of travelling, don’t they? I’m sure you can all name three places you’d like to see at the drop of a hat. Do you choose the beautiful or do you go for heat and beaches? Maybe you’d make a pilgrimage of it, to visit the sites of your favourite British authors or the Saints of Italy. Perhaps you’d like to explore the Orient, follow the ancient spice route, or traverse the Outback. Do you go by planes, trains, or automobiles? Do you document every moment of your voyage with camera or journal, or do you live every moment and trust the experience to infuse your very being?

Travel is a given. The greatest luxury item I can think of for at home is black-out blinds. If I had money to play with, I would buy black-out blinds. Here, on the second stop of The Great Northern Road Trip, my room (most graciously loaned to me by Noah) is kitted out with a very remarkable window covering. It looks like an ordinary sort of contraption but when it is fully in place, not one beam of light comes through – save for a tiny sliver at the very edge, meaning the room is perfectly… well, womb-like. Fantastic! No seeping vapours from street lights nor even any stray gleam of stars. I haven’t slept so deeply in a very long time, even though I feel like I’m bobbing on a raft when I roll over in bed. Not even the threat of motion sickness diminishes the magical power of these blinds.

Having a lovely time; wish you were here.
t.

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Still tripping

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A Couple of Prayers for Today

Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Heavenly Father,

maker of heaven and earth,

we praise you for your glory.

Bless us as we continue to do our work,

and bless all that we do for you.

Help us to carry out all our activities

for your honor and glory

and for the salvation of your people.

Guide us in all we do,

and help us build your kingdom

and come to our reward

through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen.

Lord Jesus, as I prepare for the coming of Easter during this Lenten season, I turn to you in prayer. You have been merciful to me. Many times you have pardoned the great debt I owe. I trust in your merciful love and wish to transmit your love to many others faithfully. Here I am, Lord, ready to learn from your tender heart.

Original source: 

A Couple of Prayers for Today

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KONY 2012 AND PEACE

Tuesday, March 13, 2012

So millions of people have already viewed the KONY 2012 film yet numerous are the warmongers.

Millions of our brothers and sisters suffer violence daily.

If we start in Asia, for example being aware of the suffering people of Tibet, North Korea, Burma, then move further on and become aware of people suffering in places like Central Africa, Somalia, even consider the tens of thousands of families in Mexico suffering the death or wounding of loved ones, or simply living in fear, glance at the Middle East and the continuous conflict between the people of Israel, the people of Palestine, then as horrific as the violent Kony is, the daily horror Bashar al-Assad inflicts on his people no less evil, ……well I confess it is difficult to pray for peace without interiorly being filled with a combination of rage and weariness.

When O Lord will You grant us peace?

When will hatred be banished from the face of the earth?

Most of all when will I embrace with a repentant heart, begging the grace to be converted into a man of peace, a true heart of love for every human being, understanding that here within my own heart, my own being, lie the seeds of conflict, of failure to forgive, of harsh judgment, the seeds of war?

So long as I need to have a sense of control in relationships, put any of my emotional, material, even spiritual needs ahead of those of my brothers and sisters, so long as even a hint of resentment is within me, because of a perceived slight or even a blatant aggressive, hateful act against me, then I am part of every disorder and conflict, of every war and hatred.

To be a true person of peace, to plea for an end to war, hatred, anywhere on the face of the earth I must, approaching to stand before the face of the Father in the Name of Jesus to make the plea for an end, for example to the suffering of my brothers and sisters in Syria, I must beg the Holy Spirit to purify me of everything within me that is not Christlike.

Twelve years on since the Great Jubilee I admit, perhaps not unlike most people, rarely do I return to mediate upon the critical teachings of Pope John Paul connected to the Great Jubilee.

The documents of Vatican II continue to be a template for the Church, for all of us, moving in pilgrimage across the ages.

I believe the various teachings of Pope John Paul, in particular his teachings specifically related to the Jubilee are templates for this new millennia, new century.

So I have been meditating on Bl. John Paul’s message for the World Day of Peace, 2000, of which just a few quotes:

“….To everyone I affirm peace is possible….a need deeply rooted in the heart of every man and woman…humanity, however much marred by sin, hatred and violence, is called by God to be a single family…..” [cf. Message of His Holiness Pope John Paul II, January 1, 2000, para. 2]

This understanding of shared humanity, personhood, making us one single family, is critical for if I understand every human being is indeed my brother and sister then whatever happens to them becomes very personal and to intervene to protect them when they suffer becomes truly urgent.

“Clearly, when a civilian population risks being overcome by attacks of an unjust aggressor and political efforts and non-violent defence prove to be of no avail, it is legitimate and even obligatory to take concrete measures to disarm the aggressor.” [cf. para. 11]

It may seem at bid at odds with a message of peace to discover this papal endorsement for such intervention!

It should be noted that later in 2000, coming from an initiative of the government of Canada, which established the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty and first proposed “ responsibility to protect”, in 2006, the United Nations Security Council formally adopted this duty to our suffering brothers and sisters.

How we need to pray the UN will fulfill its duty!

Bl. John Paul teaches for each of us: “….there remains a fundamental duty for all men and women of goodwill…to commit themselves personally to the cause of peace….” [cf. para. 12]

So certain questions then pose themselves, for example: Am I truly at peace with everyone? Is there anyone I fail to love, be patient with, compassionate to? How do I love Kony, al-Assad …whomever?

Our emotions may appear to contradict our hearts.

Love is not a feeling in the first instance but a choice.

Do I choose to love?

Do I choose to be a peacemaker?

Jesus [Mark 9:29] teaches some evil spirits are not easily cast out; there must be prayer and fasting.

Lent is a good time to pray and fast for peace.

Regina Pacis come and help us!

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KONY 2012 AND PEACE

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