It is a good thing that...

we have a teaching on infallibility which limits it.

Here are the limits.

1. When the Pope is actually teaching and not making comments to the press.
2. When the subject is on faith and morals, not dogs.
3. When he is addressing the entire Church, not individuals including children.

My New Flatmates

Two of these little creatures joined me in my flat. I stepped on one in the middle of the night. Eieieieuuu. One was crawling up the wall between the bathroom and the kitchen. These are the slugs of Malta, a special kind not found outside the countries around the Mediterranean.

Now, stepping on a mollusk in the middle of the night is not something I would wish on anyone. I put salt down by the two doors and a window. Of course, I keep the windows closed at night, but there are cracks underneath both doors.

I guess I should be glad these fellows are not brown recluse spiders or the HUGE cockroaches of Malta.

They must be cold, but if they understood English, I would tell them it is actually colder inside the flat than outside.

Photos both from wiki...http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lehmannia_melitensis

On Baptism, Again

Dear Readers,

Do you remember when I wrote that I could spend the rest of my life teaching on the sacrament of baptism?

Well, today I met a very holy and erudite priest who is head of the theology department at the university here. At the end of a wonderful conversation, I ask him if he could tell me what he thought the pressing need for scholarship and teaching in the Church was at this time.

Without hesitation, the priest answered, "baptism".

That Catholics simply do not understand how baptism changes us and makes us different than everyone else is clear.

That Catholics think it is a formality rather than a change in who the baptized person is, seems to be the commonly held opinion.

We are different than those who are not baptized.

Follow the tags. I shall write about this again. And, pray for me, as many things have been coming up in my life. Some people want me to write some children's books, which sounds like great fun as well as hard work, and some friends want me to do a doctorate, something I have tried to do in the past but was blocked four times for good reasons, outside my control.

At this stage, I do not do anything for vainglory and only pray that God's Will be done in my life.

For Seminarians to Read Today

The spirituality of priestly celibacy Divo Barsotti Theologian Christian perfection is perfection of charity. Just as faith is sure and peaceful adhesion to the truth and does not involve doubts, so charity is the fruit of the Spirit and in each of even its lowest degrees involves an absolute adhesion to God. There is no charity where God is not loved as supreme good: if you think you can share love for him with love for others, you do not love. The order of charity is that God is to be loved with a total love: with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your strength. And as faith excluding all doubt is a gift from God, so too is that charity a gift from God that excludes all division. But how is a spiritual journey possible, if right from the start of the journey we are within God? On the other hand, were we not in God, how could we be saved, not having reached perfection of charity? But clearly no spiritual life is possible that does not entail the overcoming of human conditions. How otherwise could we transcend ourselves and all created things, so as to reach God and cling to him in faith and love? Faith is a gift from God, and charity is a gift from God. So we must find which route to take to lead us to spiritual perfection. The Spirit does not operate in our nature as an external force, beyond our powers, but in our own gifts. He moves our powers in such wise that our whole nature becomes God’s instrument. If we are in grace, we are already in God, but God requires us to cooperate in his activity, and the way we must cooperate in God’s activity is by consenting and being docile to the activity of the Spirit. God transfers us into himself, but in God we can complete ‘our’ journey, which can be without end in a God without end. What happens in the spiritual life is rather like what happens in ordinary life. At birth we are already human beings, but what a long way we have to go before we can live like human beings! The progress we make in the spiritual life depends on how docile we are to God’s activity. Practising the moral virtues then is only the actual expression of a spiritual life, since the practice of these virtues, which depends on the activity of the Spirit, is as it were transparent, is as it were leavened by love. For the virtues of a Christian are enlivened by charity; if not enlivened by charity, they cannot be called Christian. So it may be said, the virtues are, as it were, a kind of embodiment of love and, as there is no Christian virtue without love, so there is no charity in a Christian without the virtues in which charity lives. There is a journey in the virtues which bespeaks the soul’s progress in docility to the Spirit. In this docility, all human behaviour becomes transformed. So, the spiritual life involves all the virtues.. In the moral life of human beings you might find one virtue without another, but in the spiritual life of Christians you cannot have one virtue without all the rest. In the spiritual life of the priest, there is one virtue which postulates all the others but nonetheless seems particularly significant of his state and mission. To speak of the spirituality of the priesthood is particularly to consider this virtue. It is ecclesiastical celibacy. In the practice of this virtue are we then to recognize the priest’s particular route towards his own perfection of charity? It might seem that celibacy was not an expression of love; of itself it seems only to speak of renunciation, and besides celibacy is not essentially linked to priesthood. The term indeed is not a happy one: ‘celibacy’ as it stands says something negative, that is to say renunciation of marriage, and could even mean a state of life that excludes love and shuts a man in on himself. Quite the reverse: the celibacy of the priest is not intended to mean something negative: by celibacy, the Church desires the perfect chastity of the priest. Priestly spirituality has its truest expression precisely in perfect chastity, since chastity, in the priest, is the actual expression of his charity. We have said, one virtue postulates all the others, but in any given state of life there is one particular virtue which seems to express and reveal charity best. Were chastity not enlivened by charity, it would be rejection of love. But by celibacy, contrariwise, the Church manifests the desire for its priests to be holy. Chastity in the priesthood, contrary to being a defence against love, is the charism of perfect love, of a love which, like God’s, is prevenient, gratuitous, universal. For the priest’s devotion to his mission is not his response to being loved by the brethren: the priest too, like the Lord, has to love first. If he can name any reason for his love, it is because he is particularly drawn by the wretchedness of those he has to save. True, the unique Saviour of all is Jesus the Son of God, but the salvation he has won for all in point of fact reaches each individual through the priestly service of those whom Christ associates with himself in his mission. The gives his life for the brethren; priestly ordination consecrates him to a service from which henceforth he may never be freed: a service demanding the total gift of self. And to no one per se can he refuse his love. How could the priest live this love, were Jesus not living within him? Priesthood demands and at the same time postulates the most intimate union, indeed a certain unity, with Christ: Christ himself must live within him, and Christ’s life is love to the point of sacrifice, love till death. This unity with Christ, for whom there is only one life and only one love, cannot be lived without perfect chastity. Priestly chastity is therefore, as it were, the sacramental sign of the priest’s union with Christ. It has often been said and we say it again: the priest is ‘another Christ’. In the exercise of the priesthood, every priest acts in the person of Christ, but that which comes about by the power conferred on him in ordination, though per se assuring the efficacity of his sacramental acts, nonetheless demands that the priest’s life — lest it be a lie —be one with Christ’s. So, contrary to living the rejection of love, in chastity the priest realizes that nuptial union which, according to the greatest spiritual masters, is indeed the very perfection of spiritual life. Were it not so, chastity could not become a condition of loving, and would instead become a condition of self-centredness, closing the priest’s soul and heart, making his life empty and sterile. For marriage was raised by Christ to the dignity of a sacrament because the love of men and women prefigured the union of Christ with the Church. The perfect chastity of the priest is not only a figure of that union, but its more or less perfect fulfilment. Only thus, by becoming one sole Spirit with Christ will the priest live a true participation in Christ’s prevenient and gratuitous love and be Christ personified, in him to live his same passion of love, his mission of universal salvation. Exclusive love for Christ, for whose sake the priest freely renounces having a family of his own, so dilates his heart as to make him capable of a love that knows no bounds. His family is the universe. True, human conditioning persists. Even Jesus was only sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, but this did not prevent him from being in fact the Saviour of the world. If on the visible and social plane a limit is set to a man’s activity, charity knows no limit other than its own imperfection. This is why the priest too receives a canonical mission limited in time and space, but the charity that inspires him, of itself, knows no bounds, is eternal and cannot exclude anyone. One and indivisible is the mission of Christ, and each of us Christians lives it in the state of life in which the Lord has placed us and in those conditions of time and place which Providence has assigned for us to live in. But more than the ordinary Christian, the priest, in the chastity uniting him to Christ in an indivisible charity, is committed to living Christ’s own mission. Indeed, it is perfect chastity which opens him to universal charity: nothing and no one ties him down and divides him from others. He is one with Christ, to become one with all. This union is only accomplished in Christ and involves all humanity, all creation, in a manner being assumed by the Word and becoming one sole Christ in him. Thus the Person of the Word, by whom all things were made, becomes the principle of unity for the whole human race and for the whole creation too; but none of this happens without the priesthood. The priesthood is God’s instrument for accomplishing this marvellous design. True, this is mainly by means of the sacraments that we priests administer, but more important still by the witness of our whole lives. We are taught that Holy Order sets a seal on the nature of the priest. Character does not radically transform human nature but makes it so that each activity of this nature cannot be other than a priestly activity. With all his life, the priest is at the service of the Word, to lead human beings and the world back to Him. For this to be done, the physical world must be subjected to the spirit and the spirit to God. Chastity is the force that brings our emotional life back to obeying the spirit; and therefore in chastity lie the first means for freeing us from the slavery of the senses and for ordering us to the spiritual life. The priest should set an example of this liberation in himself, and be our guide. For, as regards chastity, we are all summoned to begin our journey of healing for a human nature fragmented by sin. Hence the importance of chastity in the life of every Christian, but hence the exceptional importance this virtue ought to have in the life of the priest, who is more directly called to live Christ’s mission, so that all physical nature too may be ordered to God. This salvation which is meant to heal the rupture between human beings and God, between human beings among themselves, between human beings and the creation and, lastly, within human beings themselves, which has been brought about by sin, requires that before all else the unity of the human personality be restored. How can the priest be the messenger of and witness to salvation, if he does not by his own life show that he has himself been saved? Once the flesh has been subjected to the spirit, we can then order ourselves Godwards and be safe in God. But salvation cannot isolate, cannot divide us from our fellow-beings and, for the priestly mission, even less can it divide the priest from all the people to whom he has been sent. Chastity, which heals human nature fragmented by sin, is, in the priest, also a commitment to healing the division sin has caused between human beings, and between human beings and the creation. Perfect chastity is that divine force not only raising human nature up to God but raising the whole creation, by ordering it to him. Important for his sanctification, chastity is supremely important for the priest’s ministry. In his freedom from all family ties, he is entirely available for his ministry: nothing can or should divert him from that self-giving to which he was consecrated by priestly ordination. He can no longer lead a life of his own, have a profession of his own, have even a name of his own: he belongs to Christ alone. And in him, Christ lives a mission which the priest can say he has accomplished if Christ asks him for the gift of his whole life. The celibacy the Church wants of him would be a mutilation, were it not, on the contrary, the condition through which the mystery of Christ becomes present in him: the mystery of Christ’s life and death for the salvation of the world. To deny there is a sacrifice on the natural plane is to deny the obvious, but the celibacy of the priest is not loneliness if it is union with Christ, nor sterility if it is loving service. Although it is union with Christ, faithfulness to the pledge of celibacy needs prayer to nourish love, a lively prayer in the priest’s personal relationship with Christ. If it is to be loving service, the priest must not shut himself up in himself but feel more and more intensely that he lives for others, that others are his life. Thus we may sum up the spirituality of the priest: he ought to live in intimate union with Christ, with him to be one act of praise to the Father and to be together too in serving others. He will live his union with Christ in self-giving to the brethren. Holiness and mission will thus be inseparable and their union will be the fruit of a chaste love. Celibacy, which might seem to isolate him, becomes the sign of a love which, by uniting him to Christ, also makes him a man for all.http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cclergy/documents/rc_con_cclergy_doc_01011993_spiri_en.html

Happy Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe

Patroness of the Americas and Patroness of Life.

Litany of Our Lady of Guadalupe for your private use only

Lord, have mercy on us.
Christ, have mercy on us.
Lord, have mercy on us.
Christ, hear us.
Christ, graciously hear us.
God our Heavenly Father, Creator through whom we live,
have mercy on us.
God the Son, the One who owns what is near and beyond,
have mercy on us.
God the Holy Spirit,
have mercy on us.
Holy Trinity, one God,
have mercy of us.
Holy Mary of Guadalupe,
pray for us.*
Holy Mary, Mother of America,
Holy Mary, Star of the New Evangelization,
Holy Mary, Perfect and Ever Virgin,
Holy Mary, Mother of the True God,
Holy Mary, Mother worthy of honor and veneration,
Holy Mary, Mother most merciful,
Holy Mary, Mother of those who love you and have confidence in you,
Holy Mary, Mother of those who cry to you and search for you,
Holy Mary, Mother who cures all our pains, miseries, and sorrows,
Holy Mary, Mother who remedies and alleviates our sufferings,
Holy Mary, Mother who keeps us within her compassionate and merciful gaze,
Holy Mary, Mother who shows us her help, love and compassion,
Holy Mary, Mother who chooses those who are humble and simple,
Holy Mary, Mother who graciously repays all who serve her,
Holy Mary, Mother who has us under her shadow and protection,
Holy Mary, Mother who carries us in her embrace,
Holy Mary, Fountain of our joy,
Lamb of God, who take away the sins of the world,
spare us, O Lord.
Lamb of God, who take away the sins of the world,
graciously hear us, O Lord.
Lamb of God, who take away the sins of the world,
have mercy on us.
Pray for us, O Holy Mother of God, that we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.

Let Us Pray

Almighty and Eternal God, your message of mercy, entrusted to Our Lady of Guadalupe, invites all your children to place all their trust in you. Through the intercession of the mother of your Son, may your message of Merciful Love inflame our hearts that we may be faithful heralds and instruments of this Divine Mercy to the world.

We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever.

Amen.

Ecclesiastical Approval for Private Use Only by Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke

Army Chaplain Punished for Sharing Faith

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2014/12/09/chaplain-punished-for-sharing-his-faith-in-suicide-prevention-class/

http://www.persecution.org/2014/12/11/us-army-chaplain-reprimanded-for-sharing-faith/

Persecution in America-Loss of Rights of Conscience

http://www.persecution.org/2014/12/11/christian-florist-may-lose-business-personal-assets-for-refusing-service-to-gay-wedding/

Persecution of Christians in India Grows

http://www.persecution.org/

http://www.persecution.org/2014/12/11/radicals-convert-indias-churches-into-hindu-temple-as-they-attempt-to-make-uttar-pradesh-christian-free/

Spanish Law Stops Google News

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20141211/eu--google-spain-460415ef18.html

bad sign of the times....read the entire article, but here is a bit of it...

"This new legislation requires every Spanish publication to charge services like Google News for showing even the smallest snippet from their publications, whether they want to or not," Gingras wrote in a blog. "As Google News itself makes no money (we do not show any advertising on the site) this new approach is simply not sustainable."

Google News has long irked newspaper publishers and other content providers, who contend the service tramples on copyrights by creating a digital kiosk of headlines and story snippets gathered from other websites. Most criticism has likened Google to a freeloader, but there have been attempts to force the company to change its ways through the courts.

Google maintains it obeys all copyright laws while sending more people to websites highlighted in its News services. The company also allows publishers to prevent material from being displayed in Google News, an option few websites choose because the service is an important traffic source to sell ads.

Alejandro Tourino, a Madrid-based lawyer who specializes in media issues and has worked for The Associated Press on several legal cases, said Spanish news publishers may "have shot themselves out of the market. Time will tell."

After Germany revised its copyright laws last year to allow — but not force — Google News to make royalty payments, Google required publishers there to give their consent for summarizing content. Most did.

Google last year agreed to help French news organizations increase their online advertising revenue and fund digital publishing innovations to settle a dispute over whether the company should pay for news content in its search results.

Google also had to respond to a ruling this year from Europe's highest court, which decided that Europeans have a right to scrub unflattering or outdated information from Google's search engine that pops up in a search of their names. That case started in Spain.

Update 29 Referendum Challenge -- Children's Rights

From Kathy Sinnot in Ireland.

Last week, the Supreme Court hearing began  in the appeal to the High Court findings in the Jordan challenge to the so called "Childrens Rights" referendum. (This is an unnecessary and dangerous possible law which would take authority away from parents and give it to the Irish government.)

I was able to attend on Monday 1st December  the first day. it went on until Thursday and as it did not finish, the court has granted a few more hours on December 18 at 11:15 am. All welcome.

Joanna Jordan has kindly sent a summary of the four days of hearing which you will find  below.

All those who attended last week seem to feel that the judges were taking the matter very seriously.  From my day in court and the reports of the others days, I am hopeful that the Supreme Court will uphold our right to fair and free referenda and recognize that the referendum of November 2012 was anything but fair and free.

If so we have to be prepared to engage in a rerun. All to prepare and pray for....

Joanna Jordan's  eyewitness account of the  Supreme Court hearing December 1 to 4, 2014.

"Day 1: The case is being judged by seven Justices, three woman and four men. Looking at the dais from left to right sits Justices Laffroy, Clark, Hardeman, Chief Justice Denham, O’ Donnell, MacMeniman and Dunne. These are the people who hold the fate of all Irish families in their hands. Please pray for them. They are the most important people in the country at the moment.

Our Senior Council is up first, Paul Sreenan. The judges asked for the books of extracts which we promised. We had them prepared but the offices of the Supreme Court refused to accept them. Now we were able to hand them up after lunch.

The Chief Justice asked; “what did we want the court to look at?” Paul outlined the three High Court judgements which went against us. All three of these, were what we wanted looked at by the Supreme Court. The petition, because the judgement was too severe, expecting evidence to be “convincing and definitive”. This is a higher standard than the balance of probabilities requirement. The Plenary because the burden of proof was unfairly placed on our side where it is almost impossible to achieve. We said it should be shifted to the proven wrong doers, the Minister for Children. Also the cost judgement, where no cost were awarded in the plenary and 1/3 in the petition. This makes it very difficult for an average citizen to take a case in the public interest.

In the afternoon Mr. Sreenan went through the history of the Referendum and Electoral Acts.

Day 2 Paul Sreenan S.C. continued. As the law stands, we can only win the Petition, if we can prove that the wrong doing ; “materially affected the result of the referendum as a whole”. If we win in this  the Judges would have to order a rerun and set a date for same. Proving this is really difficult if not impossible. Paul put forward the argument that material affect is only needed at the leave stage that is the point at which the High Court gives us permission to take the petition case because it accepts a serious breach of referendum protocol took place that. (We were grant leave by the High Court) He also brought to the attention of the judges that, in the discovery documents, there was a email from RTE stating that some of the phrases in the preposed government booklet and advertising “ could breach the broadcasting Act”. In other words the Minister for Children had been warned that her so called information campaign was problematic.

After lunch Niamh Hyland S.C. Told the judges about the survey conducted by the Referendum Commission after the vote and the B&A surveys taken in 2012 before the Referendum commissioned by the Dept. of Children. She reviewed some of the evidence and brought out the unfairness of the burden of proof being laid on the citizen as we were not the ones who did wrong.

Day 3: Michael Collins S.C. For the Minister for Children stood up. He reiterated that the Minister  did wrong but not intentionally and maintained that the wrong doing did not affect the outcome of the Referendum as a whole. He went into detail about all the judgements in the unsuccessful Hanafin referendum challenge. Implying that this case was the definitive case and no change was needed after that. There was talk about an Annulment of the Referendum Certificate.This could happen if the Referendum Act could be shown to be unconstitutional. Much talk of the statistics casting doubt over the results.

Day 4:Michael Collins finishing. Continuing to knock the evidence of our experts. Pointing out that the department had not intended to break the McKenna Principles.

Maurice Collins S.C. for Dept. of Children next. Went into great details about judgements prior to and including Hanafin. Read lots of these out in court. Did not finish on time. The Judges have given us another half day on th 18^th of December at 11.15 to finish up Mr. Collins and our summation.

All through out the four days the Judges asked very good and probing questions. They are very much engaged with the case and aware of it's importance. Please keep praying for them, that they will come up with the best possible judgement for our country and all the present and future families in it."

To Donate for the Case

By Post.

Referendum Challenge
C/o Kathy Sinnott
St Joseph
Ballinabearna
Ballinhassig

Co Cork
Ireland

more here....http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty-first_Amendment_of_the_Constitution_%28Children%29_Bill_2012

St. Augustine and St. Monica

Raissa makes the comment that too many Catholics do not believe that people can be as holy as those in the early Church.  This is not true. We look at the lives of the saints, states Raissa, in order to emulate them and ask for God's grace to be saints as well.

Yesterday, I was thinking of Monica and Augustine's road to God.

We usually think that St. Monica's long years of prayers were for St. Augustine's conversion. And, they were.

But, those long years were also, if not primarily, for St. Monica's conversion.

This dawned on me looking at my own life of praying for a son in the seminary. Daily, I pray for him and also offer up all kinds of sufferings for his holiness.

As you all know, we need holy priests. I pray for four seminarians specifically, daily, to become holy priests, by name.

The physical suffering I experience daily is part of this prayer for my son's perfection.

St. Monica had to pray for her son for two main reasons. One, his own upbringing was incomplete and he had to convert. She helped him by helping him end his long relationship with his concubine. But, the prayers of this mother helped him convert.

However, when one prays for another person, one is changed as well, especially if this prayer occurs over a long period of time. St. Monica learned to hope, to trust in Divine Providence, and she was purified of her own desires as well.

In her society, she most likely had most things her way. But, not in the plan of God for her son's conversion. Praying for Augustine was part of Monica's long purgatory, her purgation and Dark Night.

In fact, it was only in meeting St. Ambrose, that Monica entered into her time of Illumination. She was taught as well as Augustine by this Doctor of the Church on how to finally give all to God in love and trust.

Shortly after the completion of this illumination and union with God, Monica died.

She and Augustine had long talks about God. They were united in the common love they shared for Christ and His Church.

It is interesting how God uses children to purify parents of unholy love and selfishness. Monica's long journey mirrored that of Augustine. And, when God decided the time was right, He gave all involved the graces necessary to say "yes" to His will.

So it is for all parents....I am being purified in my years of prayers for my son, as I am sure is true for most good parents who want their children to follow God in truth and virtue. One learns to trust, to persevere, to hope, to love, to have faith.

One never stops praying if one is a parent. St. Monica's last entreating was for St. Augustine to remember her at Mass. She most likely did not need that grace, but her humility to the end teaches all of us to not be presumptuous about the graces at the time of death.

That she is a saint indicated that she, indeed, reached union with God before she died. And, one of her ways to that state was constant prayer.

Perfection Series VIII Part XX On The Truth of Conversions

Years ago, my spiritual director at the time told me that he personally knew the priest who brought Jean-Paul Sartre back to the Church just before he died.

The two priests were friends.

In Raissa's diary, on October 24th, 1924, she writes of finding out that her and Jacques's good friend Pere Clerissac was the priest who was there when another priest brought Oscar Wilde back to the Church.

Here is the entry from Jacques in the footnote to the journal note: 

" Pere Clerissac never spoke to us about Wilde. But he told on of our friends, who repeated it to us, that he was sure that Wilde died a Catholic, for he was there at his death. In the Revue Hebdomadaire (November 28, 1925), Mr. Robert Ross names Father Cuthbert Dunn, of the Passionists, as having given Wilde Baptism and Extreme Unction. In this case, Father Clerissac would doubtless have assisted. Father Dunn." (We Have Been Friends Together, Adventures in Grace, Doubleday Image Books, p. 177). I have a hardbound of that book and loved reading it years ago-STM.

The world wants us to believe that such conversions are either false or a sign of failing mental powers. On the contrary, these conversions, and others, reaffirm our faith in God's goodness and the fact that grace for salvation is available to all men.

Raissa and I had similar experiences of finding out about the conversion of a famous sinner when it was important for us to know this mercy. Shortly after this entry was written, God plunged Raissa into a new and deeper suffering. She was made to be detached from all her friends. Shortly after I found out, a serious thing happened in my life as well. Mercy in the lives of others should lead us to believe in the way of holiness for ourselves. This is why we read the lives of the saints and why we rejoice in conversions. Hope is necessary in the purgative times.

This week for five days, I spoke with no one deeply about anything. Talking to bus divers or shop keepers was a necessity, as well as answering e-mails. But, the realization that I was totally isolated from anyone who could understand me and where my journey was taking me was a heavy burden. To know that intimacy may be denied me for my entire earthly life caused me great grief and dying to self-will. This has been growing for a long time...for three years to be exact. God has denied me close companionship.

It was alleviated somewhat by my long talk with my friend last night and a talk with my son this evening.

But, not to have companionship or anyone who intimately cares about one is a huge suffering brought about by God's Hand.

The reason for this is suffering is that the soul is being prepared for more love from God. Here are Raissa's own words.

...I do not call it living to suffer as I have suffered these last days,. It ought rather to be called wandering on the threshold of death, experiencing nothingness, measuring the abyss of our solitude.

God allows one to grieve, to love without return, to be misunderstood, to be alone with creativity and nothingness side-by-side.

I perfectly understand this entry of November 10th, 1924.

"The demands of the contemplative life: not to seek consolation from any creature. And consolations not sought, 'use them as if not using them.'"

For a long time, I thought this lack of human consolation was owing to my imperfections and sins, but in reality the lack of consolation is a gift to see one's imperfection and to highlight one's sins, but move beyond to the realization of God's love. Only in the nothingness does one really see one's self. as much as God wants to show one one's self. When one begins to see what and who one is, love is really possible.

Sometimes, for reasons of learning humility, God blinds us and waits.

Here is the real sign of the call at this state of purification:

"And then the luckiest thing that can happen to this soul is that God, in order to keep it entirely to Himself in spite of itself, causes every creature from whom it asks consolation to fail it. Then, they all become, at least in appearance, enemies. Where it seeks counsel, it finds silence. Where it seeks a friendly heart, it finds deafness. Where it seeks rest, it finds more rigid restraints than those of God's commandments--which are all lovable. And that the soul suffer thus is a very great grace. If God loved it less, he would allow creatures to console it. It must recognize its error as soon as possible. For in looking thus to right and left, it is following a zig-zag path which perhaps will weary God's patience. The straight way that leads to God is infinitely short, for He is as close as our own soul. The straight way is the magnanimous way without the errors and faint-heartedness of childhood, but with the simplicity and trust of a child."

This passage reminds one of the episode in St. Therese the Little Flower's life when he overheard her father complaining that she was still acting like a child at fourteen, instead of growing up and not expecting childish attentions. So it is with God. for years, I fought this and sought my own consolations. Finally, in God's mercy and forgiveness, I gave up. In this giving up, I have crossed a line into a new realization of the love of God and that peace which passes all understanding.

Raissa continues with something which those of my readers who have experienced this will recognize, as I do.

"...God only grants the soul what it does not ask, apart from what charity itself makes it a duty for it to ask. A truth experienced a hundred times. Above all, he refuses what it desires too much. On the contrary, he appears to grant everything one asks in an impulse of charity, even material things, daily bread, fine weather."

The big things are denied until the will is absolutely purified. One become resigned to how God wants to work in one and let Him determine one's life. One stops playing God.

I remind all that none of this happens without much pain and the sorrow of letting go of earthly loves and joys unless God directly brings these about. And, He may not at all.

A note for this evening....

The internet connection is going off and on and I am losing too much work. I shall continue this tomorrow.

Perfection Series VII Part XIX The Inner Life

One of the things which has struck me in my own life is the fact that I really do not care about outward things. I must care about eating, drinking, clothing myself, hygiene, and trying to find a way to make money, but there are only two things which really matter to me.

The interior life and souls...when I talk to people for some good reason, in kindness or explanation of the Faith, or being friendly, or listening, I am sincere.

But, everything else tires me. This is because my energies are going to the interior life.

I was hard on myself over these facts until I re-read Raissa on her own sense of insincerity about most things except God. Her comments freed me.

The world does violence to the soul which is concentrating on God within. The "inner treasure" she describes, demands all one's attentions and energies. One seeks solitude, even among others.

God purposefully separates the person seeking Him from all others. Raissa calls Him a jealous God. He truly wants to know that a person puts Him first.

This total focusing on God makes one realize how little one has to give to God. One is more and more aware of one's nothingness.

But, that does not matter, as God is all in all.

By the time she was 41, Raissa was in the Illuminative State. No longer did images, reflections, meditations, favours, or symbols mean anything to her. She was communicating in and with sheer Light. In this state of Light, Raissa saw that God gives all activity, thought, feeling to the purified person.

In this Light, one no longer desires anything, lives totally on love from God and wills nothing but God's Will. One can even rest in the unknown will of God.

But, like St. John of the Cross, Raissa writes that this Light makes all things dark as well. This is because God cannot be understood by one's own imagination, symbols, images, thoughts. In this darkness, there is complete trust in God and love for God. One experiences God indwelling in the soul constantly, but in a type of unknowing.  The author ofThe Cloud of Unknowing, another book I read a long time ago, understood this state.

For thou hast brought me with thy question into that same darkness, and into that
same cloud of unknowing, that I would thou wert in thyself. For of all other creatures and
their works, yea, and of the works of God’s self, may a man through grace have fullhead of
knowing, and well he can think of them: but of God Himself can no man think. And therefore
I would leave all that thing that I can think, and choose to my love that thing that I cannot
think. For why; He may well be loved, but not thought. By love may He be gotten and
holden; but by thought never. And therefore, although it be good sometime to think of the
kindness and the worthiness of God in special, and although it be a light and a part of contemplation:
nevertheless yet in this work it shall be cast down and covered with a cloud of
forgetting. And thou shalt step above it stalwartly, but Mistily, with a devout and a pleasing
stirring of love, and try for to pierce that darkness above thee. And smite upon that thick
cloud of unknowing with a sharp dart of longing love; and go not thence for thing that befalleth.

Love just "is".

Love only desires the other, the good of the other, and the will of the other. Love, if it is true, makes no demands.

In this year, Raissa began to experience what St. Teresa of Avila defined as the "sleep of the faculties".  This prayer succeeds the prayer of quiet and precedes the state of union. This sleep of the faculties is a time when all the person's abilities and senses, as well as the spirit, concentrate on God.

One is still active in this state. The prayer of quiet is preparation, but the total passivity of receiving God in the mystical marriage, in union, is yet to come.

It is hard to come to the realization that God does not care about what most of us do. He only cares that we love Him and that we are faithful to Him. Raissa writes this from experience.

I ask at the end of this post that my readers pray for me to have stability in my life, a place to continue to pursue active contemplation.

I had a set-back in my plans today, another interference from the evil one who has attacked some friends of mine who were helping me with immigration to England. This attack is too serious to put on the blog, but it shows the great evils which are building up daily against those in the Church who are holy and praying.

Remind God, with me, that even the sparrows have a home. I rest in God, but to do more is almost impossible.

to be continued....

For the heck of it

http://www.express.co.uk/travel/shortbreaks/532961/What-to-do-in-Sherborne

Thoughts on Today's Readings

Today in the Old World, this is the Thursday in the Second Week of Advent.

The readings at Mass included one which is a favorite of mine...

Jesus means that those who do violence to their own wills and desires, will seize the Kingdom of God. Like a good Jewish Rabbi, Christ plays on words. The Kingdom of God suffers violence from the outside, but those who allow the inside to be purged of sin and tendencies to sin, those saints will triumph over the exterior violence and hatred. John the Baptist, the patron saint of the Knights of Malta, is a prime example of one, who although without sin himself, suffered violence by choice, in fasting, prayer, and preaching, and incurred the violence of the establishment.

This is the way to holiness.

Here is today's Gospel.

Matthew 11:11-15Douay-Rheims

11 Amen I say to you, there hath not risen among them that are born of women a greater than John the Baptist: yet he that is the lesser in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.

12 And from the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent bear it away.

13 For all the prophets and the law prophesied until John:

14 And if you will receive it, he is Elias that is to come.

15 He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.

If only.....

...Father Barron would watch fifteen minutes of the E channel, and 15 minutes of a typical music video channel, even with the old ones, he would change his mind as to whether there are people in hell.

I was bombarded by porn, sex, greed, and the occult within a half hour or so sitting in a restaurant today.

Does he understand the great evils in the world?

I missed seeing the 1980s videos, as I was studying, teaching, and raising a baby....to think that satan has just taken over the entertainment industry since 2000 is very naive. I think most readers would agree with that assessment. The few I saw earlier today were horrid.

To Be A Catholic

For almost two hours, one of my mentors in this world and I discussed poetry, from Gawain and the Pearl, to Morte d'Arthur, the five virtues of chivalry, the nature of the soul in time and out of time, the Last Supper, the Passion, the great councils of the Church, fairy tales of six or seven authors, swans, snakes, Celtic art, Chesterton, Julian of Norwich, Thomas More, John Fisher, Suarez, the Jesuits, Rahner, Benedict XVI, Pope Francis, the Pilgrimage of Grace, Richard III, the Five Wounds of Christ, the Throckmortons, Sherborne's Old Castle, Sir Walter Raleigh, Arundel Castle, the Duchess of Norfolk, the last Plantagenet Margaret Pole, Cardinal Pole, fantasy novels, The Phantom of the Opera, the Passionists, St. Alphonsus, Glastonbury, Avalon, Merlin, Robert Hugh Benson, the book of Revelation, Dante's Inferno, Napoleon, the Vendee, Marseilles and legends, Pugin and the Victorian revival of Catholic architecture, the True Presence, the martyrs of Otranto, the Knights of Malta, the Knights of Jerusalem, Isaiah, Ezechiel, Jeremiah, Nehemiah, Mary the Mystical Rose, the myth of Psyche, Thomas Aquinas, the Jansenists, grace, Garrigou-Lagrange, desert experiences and other sundry things, including Littlehampton, and Norwich.

At the end of this conversation, which did not end, my friend stated that what we experienced was a soaking in Catholic identity. There are only three people in the world I can speak with at such a level of history, literature, myth, philosophy, theology, art, music, and architecture. Sadly, these people are separated by thousands of miles. We are all Catholics who love our Faith and the Church. We identify first and foremost as Catholics.

But, Catholic identity sixty, seventy years ago could be part of one's life just by being Catholic.

What has been lost is so scattered, that I feel like a person combing a beach after a shipwreck for pieces of identity....a  rosary here, a medal there, a piece of a poem, a chant, a candlestick, all washed up on the shore of modern man's empty world.

For years, I tried to set up schools in classical education, knowing that the liberal arts were part of our identity. For years, I taught a combination of history, music, philosophy, literature and art to students who thought they were in a religion class. They got it-that Christianity created Western culture, that Europe was the Faith and the Faith was Europe. To think like a Catholic was to immerse one's self in a Catholic identity. One could understand the Penny Catechism better if one knew the bare ruined choirs of Yorkshire.

One does not separate knowledge, which is connected by the great and beautiful Catholic religion.

I passed some of this identity to my son, who, once in awhile, notes that he has no one to talk to about such things, neither do I, except for my three friends, far away, in other countries.

The remnant must stop and pick up the detritus of Catholic identity before this identity completely disappears into the sea of time.

I hope it is not too late, that the tide of utilitarianism has not wiped away all traces of true civilization based on Christ and His Church. What has been lost can be found again.

Sonnet 73

That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou see'st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west;
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire,
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed, whereon it must expire,
Consumed with that which it was nourish'd by.
   This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,
   To love that well, which thou must leave ere long.

Great site and thanks to a reader for heads up

http://medjugorjedocuments.blogspot.com/2013/11/2013-cdf-twice-to-us-bishops-on.html

Nice...on the Syllabus of Errors

http://voiceofthefamily.info/wordpress/?p=599

Getting Back to Raissa Perfection Series VIII Part XVIII Simplicity and Unity

A key truth about why we must cooperate with grace to become perfect could not be more easy to understand. Three stages demand simplicity of soul. One is the Dark Night of the spirit, which is the time of humility. The second stage which needs simplicity is the Illuminative Stage. The gifts and graces of energy, zeal and virtues need a basis of simplicity. The third stage, that of unity, must be based on simplicity.

Why? Because God is Simple, we must meet Him in simplicity. The same is true for the virtue of unity, which is integrity. One must have unity is self, soul, mind, heart, intellect in order to become one with Unity, Who is God.

Why is it that the Maritain's get simplicity? Why is it that Garrigou-Lagrange gets simplicity?

Because of the intellect being purified, these geniuses have pierced the mind of God to a certain extent.

But, Raissa had to suffer, she had to pray in contemplative prayer in order to get to this point of simplicity.

Holiness is the only way to simplicity. Humility is the only way to simplicity. Conversion of heart, mind, and soul are the only ways to simplicity.

Here is the rub. Most of the leaders of the Church are NOT seeking simplicity and unity. That is why some cardinals are pushing gradualism, which is a heresy, period.

Here is an old article which may shock you. Gradualism cannot keep the integrity of a person, which means that a person moves completely away from sin-unity must be sought if one wants to meet God.

http://jimmyakin.com/2010/05/fr-fessios-update-on-cardinal-schonborn.html

Today, Schonborn again pushed gradualism. Do not be confused. DO NOT BE CONFUSED.

Those who support this position do not understand Christ's call to metanoia, about which I have written in the past month.

Gradualism denies grace, denies the call to holiness.

Gradualism denies that God wants us to be one with Him.

This is Raissa's great insight--that we must be simple and unified in ourselves in order to meet God in simplicity and unity.

to be continued...