The End Times?

Here's another post from the desk of Deacon Dave Wells... posted under my name while he learns to post on his own :)

The year is quickly coming to a close. Now, don’t run out and buy your noise makers, balloons, or champagne just yet, because the year I’m talking about is the liturgical year. The Church’s year begins with Advent and ends with the feast of Christ the King, which we celebrated this past Sunday. As we get towards the end of the year, the Sunday readings appropriately reflect the end times. They remind us that we are on a journey, that our ultimate goal is heaven, and that Christ will come again at the end of time.

In the second to last line in the whole Bible, in the Book of Revelation, Jesus promises, “Yes, I am coming soon.” The author of Revelation then responds, “Amen! Come, Lord Jesus!” Those should be our thoughts and words as well: “Amen, come Lord Jesus!”

A question that we might have is “What exactly is going to happen when he does come?” It’s important to follow the teaching of the Church here for two reasons. One reason is that the end hasn’t come yet, so this drives people to speculate, guess. I haven’t seen the movie, 2012, which came out this past weekend, but rest assured that the producers didn’t study Church teaching before producing it. I haven’t heard anything about the movie yet, but for as entertaining as it may be, it is probably fraught with errors. The second reason why we have to be careful is because what has been revealed to us about the end times is very symbolic. The language associated with the end times is called apocalyptic language. We see it today both in the first reading and in the Gospel. We don’t read apocalyptic language as we read Sports Illustrated or a science text book, but we realize it’s very symbolic language and we must interpret it in line with how the Church has always read it.

That being said, what do we know about the end times? Christ’s second coming will follow a period of great persecution for the Church. We see this in today’s first reading and Gospel. Many believers will have their faith shaken as the evil one futilely attempts a last gasp effort at defeating Christ’s Kingdom. Following this final trial, Christ will come again in glory at the end of time to judge the living and the dead. Christ says as much in today’s Gospel: “And then they will see the Son of Man coming in the clouds’ with great power and glory.” All of those who died before this time will receive their resurrected bodies, and those still living and those who have resurrected will either be punished for their sins by going body and soul into hell or rewarded for their faithfulness by going body and soul into heaven. This event won’t just affect us, but all of creation. We read in today’s Gospel, “the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from the sky.” This language, which we don’t necessarily read literally, does show that the end times will be a cosmic event. Christ will bring about a new heavens and a new earth, as Scripture relates. The universe will be transformed in a way unimaginable to us. This is what the Church teaches about the end times, which we must be prepared for always. There will be great persecution of the Church, followed by Christ’s coming in glory to judge the living and the dead, who will receive their resurrected bodies at this point; and, finally, his second coming will be a cosmic event, affecting all of the created universe.

“Good” you may say but, “Why hasn’t Christ come back yet?” “What’s taking so long for him to come in glory?” we might ask. One response is found in St. Peter’s second letter, “with the Lord one day is like a thousand years and a thousand years like one day.” It has been two thousand years since Christ ascended into heaven. In the grand scheme of things, two thousand years are a blink of the eye in a universe that’s billions of years old; and even less than a blink of the eye when considered from God’s perspective from eternity.

To think about this question from another way, imagine if Christ returned in glory five years ago. The world would have ended five years ago. That means that some of my youngest nieces and nephews or your sons or daughters or grandchildren wouldn’t have been born and hence, they wouldn’t have existed, much less been saved by Christ. With each passing day, new members are added to the human race, and these are people that God has willed to exist from all eternity and to be with him for all eternity. God doesn’t benefit from the passage of time before he comes in glory, because he’s already perfect; rather, we benefit because more people are brought to salvation every day. The end times won’t come until all the people God desires to save—and he desires to save all of us—have lived on earth.

Connected with this previous point, I have a third answer to our question about why Christ seems to delay in returning. It’s really an act of mercy on God’s part that he hasn’t come yet. An analogy might be helpful to explain this. As a kid, I hated getting up for school. My mom had to yell at me to get up about six or seven times a morning. Finally, I’d tumble out of bed, and take my good ol’ time in getting ready. I recall with nightmarish memories my mom sometimes yelling, “The carpool’s here to pick you up! I hope you’re ready!” And, of course, I wasn’t ready—homework wasn’t done, or teeth weren’t brushed, or one shoe was nowhere to be found. But guess what? It was too late. I couldn’t do anything more, or stall more; it was simply time to go. When Jesus comes suddenly at the end of time, it’s time to go. As the Gospel says, “He will send out the angels and gather his elect from the four winds.” Each day that Christ doesn’t come gives us another chance to grow in holiness. We have another day to improve a little more, to be a little bit nicer, to love God a little more sincerely. After Christ comes, there isn’t any chance to improve or amend our ways. So each day that Christ delays his return is a chance to grow a little bit holier so that we might be all the more fulfilled and joyful in heaven.

In answer to the question, “Why hasn’t Christ returned yet?” because one day for God is like a thousand years and a thousand years like one day; he hasn’t come because all the people he desires to save have not been saved yet; and also, each day he doesn’t come is an act of mercy for us, because it gives us a chance to improve and love God more.

Christ has accomplished his mission. God became a man, died to save us, resurrected from the dead, and ascended into heaven. The only thing that remains is for him to come again in glory. Our attitude should not be one of fear as long as we stay close to the Church and truly love God. God loves us and desires our salvation. Our attitude should be like that of the author of Revelation, who said, “Amen, come Lord Jesus!”

Why I Changed the Subtitle

Those paying close attention will have noted that the subtitle of this blog recently changed from "Meanderings in Faith From One Hoping To Grow In Charity" to "A Pilgrimage Of Faith For Those Hoping To Grow In Charity."  Why, you might ask.

Well there is an anterior reason and a proximal reason.  Lol.

The anterior (earlier) reason is that I have had a growing desire to somehow draw this blog into my Christian apostolate.  Huh?  Every Christian is called to have an apostolate, a way or ways of presenting Christ to the world.  Some apostolates are really the task of every Christian: virtuous living, for example.  Other apostolates, like teaching religion, need a bit of specialized training.  Some apostolates are apostolates-by-example: working in a soup kitchen, for example.  Other apostolates are more apostolates-by-proclamation: writing books about the Faith, etc.  One's personal apostolate is the way or collection of ways in which one presents the love of Jesus Christ to the world.  Clearly, different seasons of our life will include different sorts of apostolate.

Changing the subtitle from "from one hoping to grow in charity," to "for those hoping to grow in charity," is intended to indicate the shift I am getting at here: this blog started as my personal ramblings that might or might not have been interesting to others.  Now, I would like this blog to shift focus to be ramblings (perhaps from a variety of source) that may help people to understand the holy Catholic religion, and the way we think and see the world.

The proximal reason for the change in the subtitle is the homily that I recently posted on behalf of the Rev. Mr. David Wells.  He made the point that life is a pilgrimage.  That got me to thinking: pilgrimages have points.  Meandering means wandering aimlessly, or something like it.  I am a Christian, and while I get sidetracked and sometimes wander, I certainly am not wandering aimlessly.  At least, I hope not.  A pilgrimage, on the other hand, is "a journey, esp. a long one, made to some sacred place as an act of religious devotion."  I am, please God, on a pilgrimage to heaven, as Deacon Wells pointed out.  Thanks, Rev!

So I hope, dear reader, that you will stick with me, offer your contributions, and grow with us in faith, hope, and charity though clear thinking, experiencing beauty and goodness, and praising God.

All Called to Be Saints

Here is the first contribution of Rev. Mr. David Wells to this blog.  I have adapted slightly, with his permission, the homily that he gave on the Feast of All Saints, about two weeks ago.  Before long, his posts will appear with his own signature.  Enjoy!

The Marine Corps Marathon on a recent Sunday in D.C. and I know a few people who ran in the race.  One was a priest who used to be where I currently serve as deacon, at St. Jude’s, Rockville, Maryland; he goes by the name of Fr. Rob Walsh.  From what I hear, Fr. Walsh finished the marathon but it was not beautiful to behold.  Even with months of training, running a marathon is no easy feat.  Everyone who runs a marathon follows a training regimen, more or less strictly, so that when race day comes, they don’t get to mile seven and start looking for the nearest metro stop.  In other words, they have a goal—finishing the marathon—and a plan for how they will carry that out—their training regimen.

"My uncle was fond of saying that the goal of life is heaven.  “The goal of life is heaven.”  One spiritual writer puts it this way: “The ultimate failure in life is not to be a saint.”   Recently, the Church celebrated the Feast of All Saints.  We honor those who have reached that goal of heaven and we ask for their help and prayers to rally us on to the finish line.  The saints are like those people who cheer us on after they’ve finished the race, because they know that the award is well worth the struggle.  But even if we have the goal firmly established, how do we reach that goal?  The last thing we want is to be like that person who decides to run a marathon and has no plan for running it.

"Now the plan for going about reaching our goal of heaven is unique for each of us.  God has a distinct plan, a distinct mission, for each one of us.  But that being said, there are some things we all share in common.  There are certain things that if we keep them in mind and carry them out, will aid all of us in reaching our goal of heaven.  I’ve come up with three suggestions, but the Lord knows there are many other things.

"The first piece of advice I have is “keep your eye fixed on the prize.”  When you first begin training for the marathon and you’re sore and out of breath after a half mile; when it’s 95 degrees out and not a bit of shade on the route; and when those shoes everyone says you have to buy cost more than your last suit.  When you encounter all of these setbacks, if your goal is not fixed firmly in place—to run a marathon—you’ll soon give up and head back for the air conditioning.

"The saints recognized and always kept at the forefront that the goal of life is union with God in heaven.  This motivated not just their big decisions but was the motivating factor behind their small decisions as well.  We should think about heaven . . . a lot.  It should fascinate us.  The first reading from the Book of Revelation powerfully and symbolically illustrates the glory of the saints in heaven.  St. John asks who the persons wearing white robes and holding palm branches are.  He is told that these are the saints who suffered great tribulations on earth but whose robes have been washed by Christ’s blood and now glorify God forever.

"In the second reading, St. John reminds the community to whom he writes that they are God’s children now.  This great saint and mystic admits next, “What we shall be hasn’t been revealed.”  It’s beyond our wildest imagination and surpasses our greatest hopes what we shall be like in heaven.  And finally, in the Gospel, Jesus encourages his disciples to undergo suffering and face difficulties during this life, because they will enjoy great glory in heaven.  “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”  “Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”  The saints greatly look forward to heaven and to being with God forever.  We, too, must keep our eye fixed on the prize, and not get too distracted by our everyday problems.  This world is short, eternity is forever.

"The second thing we should keep in mind to reach our goal of heaven is that it’s possible.  It’s possible to be a saint.  No, this is too weak a statement.  It’s expected of us, it’s normal in God’s eyes.  Not only that, but God wants us to be saints and will give us every aid necessary in order to reach our goal.  Sometimes it feels like God is working against us, but this is never the case.  He’s our number one fan and supporter.   Pope John Paul II canonized more saints in his 25 years as pope than were canonized in the previous 450 years.  In doing this, he wanted to show us that not only is it possible to be a saint, it should be thought of as normal to be one.  We’re all called to be one.

"One of the things that makes this difficult is that we think the saints were superhuman and we could never equal their feats.  We don’t read souls, pray all day, talk with God in mystical prayer, or appear in two places at once.  Well, don’t worry, because the saints, apart from Mary, were far from perfect.  St. Padre Pio, an Italian, was known for being short-tempered.  St. John Marie Vianney failed out of seminary and was sent to the middle-of-nowhere city of Ars, France because it was thought there he could do the least damage.  St. Teresa of Avila got so mad at God once, she shouted at him, “if this is the way you treat your friends, no wonder you have so few!”  The saints weren’t great because they were superhuman or perfect, but because they realized they were sinners and relied totally on God.  Reaching our goal is possible, because God desires it, the saints root us on, and the Church is like our mother, giving us the spiritual nourishment to accomplish it.

"The third thing to keep in mind as we strive toward our goal is that we fail daily, but we should persevere nonetheless.  Discouragement is one of the most debilitating things for us as faithful Christians.  Scripture says that even the just man falls seven times a day.  Mother Teresa wisely said that she received so much grace because she was such a great sinner.  The great St. Paul tells us that he is the foremost of sinners.  But this doesn’t get him down.  He recognizes his sin, and then abandons himself to god’s infinite mercy.  After a century of two World Wars, countless other massacres, and many other evils, humanity is tempted to reflect and concentrate on its own sinfulness.  This couldn’t be any more false.  The message Christ gives us is that of mercy.  His mercy completely swallows up the worst of our sins if we turn to him with true contrition.  If we are faithful to the sacrament of confession, we are well on our way to reaching our goal.

"If we keep our eyes fixed on the prize of heaven, realize that it is not only possible but it’s expected of us, and if in spite of our failings we persevere in the race, we shall surely be among those who are with God forever in heaven.  This is our hope and this drives us on.  My brothers and sisters, let us enter the race, so that one day we may share the joy of the communion of saints in heaven.  My all the angels and saints pray for us and intercede for us."

Awesome, Deacon Dave! Thanks!

Losing Your Life

Before I put up posts on the priesthood, prophecy, and kingship of the Christian lay faithful, I have a brief observation to make.

"For whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit a man, if he gains the whole world and forfeits his life? Or what shall a man give in return for his life?" (Mt 16:25-26).

Many people may prance through life happily doping themselves up and dodging reality. They might try to do things their own way, and then find diversions and medications to cover up the pain - TV, sex, drugs, exercise, career, whatever. But we Christians do not have that option. We will either give up Christ's way or give up our own way. We can try to play it both ways, to serve both God and Mammon, but we will end up hating one or the other (Mt 6:24). Something has to give way, and if we continue to serve Christ, but have a hard time dying to ourselves, then Christ will kill us.

That sounds horrible, but I mean it, though not as it might sound. What I mean is that as we cling to him, he will will continue to work on us, to cut out the sick and cancerous parts of our souls. If we are recalcitrant and backslide, it will take longer to die to ourselves, but as long as we keep clinging to Christ, He will keep killing us, peeling away the things that we use to hide from Him, to hide from reality.

When we have finished dying to ourselves, or maybe even as we learn to die to ourselves (oh God, bring it sooner), a new sort of Life begins to grow in us. That Life is Christ in us, the engine (if you will) by which we are propelled into an eternity of joy. But the old way of living has got to die first.

Mmm, mmm, good.

Ok, so I'll be the first to admit that it is a small thing. Very small. But I made myself an omelet this morning for brunch after Mass, and man, was it good. It was stuffed with onions sauteed with garlic in butter, as well as a sampling of fresh red onion bits, some excellent Peruvian olives, and Swiss cheese. The egg shell was thin and even, with some fresh black pepper worked into it. I ate the omelet with some hot wild berry tea, heavily sweetened. I sat by the window, and the sun is just getting strong enough again that through the glass it warmed my skin. In the background a particular string quartet by Mozart played on my stereo, and the third movement, a mournful (but not overwrought) adagio, washed around my mind. I alternated between the tea, the omelet, my Hebrew homework (which is getting to be enjoyable), feeling the sunshine, and listening to the strings. My heart was at rest in the hours following my communion at the morning's Mass.

It was a little bit of what the Israelites would call hashamayim. Heaven.

Anyone else had little foretastes of heaven lately? Feel free to share. We need to think about heaven more.

SNOW DAY!

My niece experienced her first snow day today. School was cancelled for mommy and fun ensued. She even got to sled for the first time, down the hillock in front of their house, a drop of about four feet at a forty five degree angle. Do you remember the sheer joy of such things. It's distant for me.

Dear Jesus, please increase our virtue and wisdom so that we may be young in spirit again, and enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Amen.

The Birth of the Word that Made the World

When God created the world, according to Genesis 1, he did so by speaking a word. "Let there be light," He says, and again, "Let there be a firmament," and so on. The world that He made "very good," (Gn 1:31) quickly fell away from Him. It might be more accurately stated that Man, His finest creation, was seduced into a rebellion against Him by an evil spirit. Man, in his turn, brought the greater part of the material world with him.

God promised through the prophets to create a new creation, a new heavens and a new earth (Isa 65:17; 66:22), where justice and peace would "kiss," (Ps 85:10). Genesis recounts what we might consider a "false start" of sorts in this new creation: God floods the earth as if to wash away sin. The same account, of Noah and the flood, tells how the flood killed most human beings, but failed to kill sin living in each human being. A mere bathing of the world would not suffice - in this new creation, in which we would have not stony hearts, but soft hearts of living flesh (Ez 36:26), we would need a bathing of conscience (Heb 9:13-14).

The new creation would start with a new Man (Eph 2:14-16). And just as the first creation began with a word, so would the new creation. The new creation began when the Word became a man. So it is fitting that the first mass on Christmas day, at midnight, starts with an antiphon the first words of which are, "The Lord said..." The eternal Godhead, the divine origin of reality, the transcendent unmoved Mover became a little baby in the womb of a little woman in a little corner of a little province. And that virginal conception was the hidden beginning of the new creation. When He emerged from her womb, leaving intact her virginity unruptured by His miraculous conception therein, the new heavens truly made their first appearance on an earth being recreated by Him as His mother swaddled Him in her arms. The event was so momentous that heaven could not contain itself. Angels burst forth from heaven to celebrate and announce the fact.

St. Peter, after our Lord's death, resurrection, and ascension made more clear what sort of thing this new creation would be, continued speaking about it (2 Pet 3:13), echoing the very words of the prophet Isaiah before him. From the time of our Lord's ascension and the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Church, we have in the Church the means to share in our Lord's new way of existing, in the new creation. Baptism, firstly, is the sacrament by which we are scrubbed more deeply clean than the flood could manage. It washes us in the sacrificial blood of Jesus that wins the forgiveness of sins. Confirmation seals us and ratifies this new life in us. Penance restores that purification when we squander it, and the holy Eucharist sustains and strengthens it, and most perfectly unites us to Him. Marriage draws the otherwise-natural union of a man and woman into this supernatural way of living. Holy Orders configures men to represent Christ more perfectly to the rest of the Church. Anointing prepares us for the final transition from the last stages of this life, to the fullness of the life that Baptism begins in us.

This new creation in Christ, that every baptised person carries about in his soul, necessarily overturns the existing world order of sin, or else is overturned by it. The two cannot coexist forever. We must be standing with God and waging war, even if slow and faltering, against sin in our hearts and around us; or else we are standing in sin, and sinking, even if slow and faltering, into deeper and deeper sin until we can stand no more.

Christmas presents to us more than a new baby boy. It presents us with a challenge to choose between that Baby and all that He came to undo: sin, suffering, and death. We do ourselves a great disservice if, as we pay homage to the King, we neglect to mind His Kingdom.

That said, it's only a heavy thing if we do not want to choose Jesus. If we love goodness and are even willing to suffer a bit rather than sin, having God in our corner is very, very good news indeed. Merry Christmas.

All Souls' Day

(2 Nov)

The genealogies found in the Old and New Testaments are often the most "boring" parts for us. Not so for our ancestors. Our Litanies of Saints call to mind the saints we invoke, but also, we believe, make them more present in a real, and not just a subjective way. So it was with our ancestors. The litanies of their ancestors surrounded them with the "great cloud of witnesses" (Heb 12:1) that came before. By invoking, "Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers, and Judah the father of Perez and Zerah by Tamar, and Perez the father of Hezron, and Hezron the father of Ram, and Ram the father of Ammin'adab, and Ammin'adab the father of Nahshon, and Nahshon the father of Salmon..." the Jews were calling their ancestors to witness to their interaction with God.

We Christians call the saints to witness in like manner because of their heroic sanctity, we rely on their prayers and intercession and special favor with the Almighty. The Jews, in a sense, were at their best, even more humble, by calling all their ancestors to mind. Everyone descended of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob was called upon for assistance in this way, the good, the bad, and the ugly. They were not called in light of their heroic sanctity, but in light of the promise made to their Fathers, to Abraham, and to Isaac, and to Jacob, and their descendents forever. These fallen and fallible men were called upon in light of the simple fact of God's faithfulness to the promise, in light of the fact of His mercy.

Yesterday, we commemorated all the saints, who by grace have merited great favor with God, and whose aid will merit great grace for us. Today, let us not only pray for all the souls of those departed in Christ, but also call out to them for their prayers (CCC 958). They stand in purgatory, most of them, not as witness of God's justice, but undergoing His merciful cleansing, not because of their own merits, but because of His faithfulness to the promise.

Let's pray that we likewise be faithful to that same promise.

Holy Souls in Purgatory, pray for us who pray for you.

Encountering the Risen Christ in the Sacraments

In various ways, before ascending bodily into heaven, our Lord left for us concrete, tactile ways of making contact with Him: the sacraments. Sacrament is an interesting word. Sacramentum is what Roman soldiers called the branded tattoo on their shoulder, which read SPQR. It was a seal of loyalty to the Senate and People of Rome, and the physical manifestation of their permanent bond to their military unit. The seven sacraments of Christ have something of the same role in the life of a Christian: they seal and bind us to Him and His Church. The Eastern Christians call these same seven actions the seven mysteries. A mystery, for the ancient Greeks, was not a problem to be solved, but an interaction with the divine. In these mysteries, we Christians come face to face with the living God and share in His divine life. They are possible because in Jesus Christ, God already shares in our human life. This shared life of God is called grace, and is always freely given and only freely received. The Church defines the sacraments, the mysteries of the faith as “visible signs instituted by Christ to convey invisible grace.” It is important to note that sacraments do not merely represent grace in our life, but actually bring it into our life. This definition is not only words on a page, but it is the fabric of my spiritual life, and of the life in Christ of many, many others.

I don’t remember my baptism because I was just a few weeks old. I didn’t care much about my confirmation as a young teenager. My first communion, though, was important to me. I remember how even as a small boy, I felt drawn to the Eucharist, the sacrament by which Christians renew our relationship of intimate communion with Jesus. I couldn’t have told you why, and I know I didn’t fully understand, but I did desire it. I desired Him.

Nowadays, the Eucharist and its sister sacrament, Reconciliation, are key to my daily life. At first my thinking was, “If I botch it in life, or just need a spiritual checkup, I’ll go to Reconciliation, to make sure that I am tight with Jesus.” As time goes on now, even when I don’t have any egregious sins, I want to go to the sacrament of Reconciliation to make sure that there’s nothing between us. It’s maybe a little like a husband and wife touching bases just to make sure that nobody’s got some unvented frustration or anger. As time goes on, I find myself going more and more often. In the sacrament of Reconciliation, also called Confession, I bare my soul to the priest, and thereby give it away to the One he represents.

It’s a very small thing to give away the soul. At least, the degree to which I turn it over to Jesus is very small. I am trying, don’t get me wrong. Time after time, it seems, I confess the same sins. At any given confession I seem to confess five or six from the same pool of ten or fifteen sins. But something else deeper is happening – over years of regular confession, certain sins have dropped out, others that have been long-ingrained habits become somewhat dislodged, and still others previously undetected come to light. Each confession removes an obstacle in my relationship with Jesus, each confession uproots a rock in the soil of my soul that otherwise stunts the growth of the gospel there. Each confession confesses, in more specific language, “Jesus, I tried to do it my own way, but you’ve got a better grasp of reality than I have, and my way didn’t work, so I want to go back to your way; I tried to be like God, but you are Lord.” Every confession of sin is a confession of the humility of our condition and of the exalted Lordship of Jesus Christ. Every sincere confession of sin to one authorized to forgive on behalf of Jesus puts us back into right relationship with Him, and thus with all of creation that He is bringing, slowly but surely, into His authority. Every confession of sin unloads a burden and a weight to great for a mere mortal to bear. I along with hundreds of millions of other Catholics can attest to the relief and lifting, the ease of conscience and lightness of heart that follows a confession soaked in the genuine intention to go and sin no more, to be right with God and neighbor.

In return for kinda partly trying to give my little self to Jesus, He, the Lord and God of Heaven and Earth, fully and entirely gives Himself to me in the sacrament of the Eucharist, throwing in the beginnings of the life of heaven and a renewal of His promise to bequeath to me the whole world. It’s amazing and crazy, really. The Church fathers called it the commercium admirabilis – the wonderful exchange. In giving Himself to me, Jesus makes it possible not only for me to give myself to Him, but to discover myself, my who-I-am, in the process. In giving Himself to me, Jesus shows me in a tactile way His great love for me. He literally takes the self-sacrificial and unbounded love that led Him to Calvary, to death on a cross, and puts it into me, the way pretty much everything else is put into me: as food. Read John 6 for the most beautiful account of this reality that has ever been written.

Self-doubt riddles the fabric of my soul on so many levels, and the Eucharist, Jesus hidden behind the appearances of bread and wine, eager to dwell in my heart – so eager that He is willing to pass through my stomach – this Eucharist tells me that He loves me, that my doubts of my own worth and purpose can be set aside, because He does not doubt my worth, and for me, He has a purpose.

I am never so at piece during the day as when, after a time of hearing God’s word spoken to me, and prayerfully, quietly preparing myself, that Love that never ends makes His home in me again, unworthy tabernacle though I am. A day without the Eucharist is a waste. I plan my vacations, days off, and even hiking trips around it. This devotion to the Eucharist is not because I am a good man, but because I am a needy man. I need more Jesus in my life.

Each of the seven sacraments could have a volume written about it, but there’s no time for that. For now, I wish to make the point that the community of believers draws people into itself, and at the heart of the community of believers lay the seven sacraments, which institute the community, constitute it, and give it its shape and meaning. The sacraments bear the life of Christ using material, sensible signs to creatures made matter and endowed with senses to receive that matter. That life of Christ permeates us and, if we succeed well enough in our contest against sin – those things that oppose the life of Christ – that life will begin to radiate out from us and draw others into our company as well.

Subsequent installments of this series will address the sacred scriptures and prayer, by which Christ forms our minds and hearts more fully into the likeness of His own; and suffering, the process by which our transformative purification, started in the sacraments and guided by prayer and the scriptures, is made perfect.

...Click here for an addendum subsequently added to this post.

Assuming the Queen

This morning at Mass, Monsignor noted that in earlier days we were more aware that the Church celebrates the momentous occasion of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary bodily into heaven not only for one day, but for an entire eight-day octave (a week, including both the start and end day). The last day of that octave is today, the feast of the Queenship of Mary. Regular rosary-prayers (rosarizers, as I like to say!) will recognize these two events as the last two mysteries of the Rosary - the Assumption and Crowning of Mary. Just as Mary is the first payment on God's pledge to bring us to Himself, her coronation not only shows her utter preeminence among creation, but also His desire to glorify and ennoble us. Jesus Christ is King, and His deepest desire is to make us each princes and princesses in His Father's house.

Pause and think about that for a minute.

When I find myself anxious about the future, I try to remember the advice of my spiritual director. "You know rich people can buy pretty much anything, right? Well, remember your Father is loaded! Whatever the problem is, He's already got the solution worked out. Trust, Ryan, trust. Avoid sin and serve God, and let Him get His people to sort out the details."

The difficulty of faith, of trusting that the All-Powerful Lord of the Universe actually loves me and intends what is best for me, is that this world is so filled with crap sometimes. A line from the Hail Holy Queen says that we are "mourning and weeping in this valley of tears." It may be a bit dramatic, but not overly so. Life isn't easy. Sometimes the question, "God! Where were you!?" isn't entirely unreasonable. We need to ask God to increase our faith, as the man did whose daughter was gravely ill, "Lord, I believe! Help my unbelief," (Mk 9:24). That is because faith, hope, and charity are supernatural virtues - they have their origin in God, and directly lead us to Him. In fact, you might almost say that they are the stuff that the life of God is made of.

In the ancient near East, a king's wife wouldn't be queen - he had too many of them in his harem. Instead, his queen would be his mother, because she had been the wife of the previous king, and the one who secured her son's position as heir. Such women were naturally the objects of much more respect and affection than the king's wives would be - they were playthings or political maneuvers. The queen might approach her son, the king, on any number of topics with a much greater chance of a favorable hearing than almost anyone else in the realm. She was his mother, and raised him, and knew his heart. A little story at 1 Kings 2:13-19 shows an incident of this sort, in which Bathsheba approaches her son, King Solomon, on behalf of a man who has fallen from the King's favor.

The Lord Jesus is taking the whole Church to be His bride (Eph 5:32-33; Rev 19; inter al.) - that's a lot of woman! But He already has His queen, His mother, and she is always ready to approach Him on our behalf and to restore us to His favor. Of course, factually we know that Jesus loves us infinitely and is ever-ready to forgive us. Sometimes, though, we don't feel it, just as children sometimes fearing their father go to bury their heads in the skirts of their mother.

Next time you feel remote from Jesus, from God, and feel isolated and lost, ask Mama Mary, our Queen, to bring you to Him. She will.

Elijah and the Prophets of Baal

The 1st Mass reading proper to today's season (Wed after the 10th Sunday of Ordinary Time) was suppressed in favor of the Feast of St. Barnabas. The suppressed reading (1 Kngs 18:20-39) is one of my favorites, so I am going to post it below, with a few words to follow.

So Ahab sent to all the Israelites and had the prophets assemble on Mount Carmel. Elijah appealed to all the people and said, "How long will you straddle the issue? If the LORD is God, follow him; if Baal, follow him." The people, however, did not answer him. So Elijah said to the people, "I am the only surviving prophet of the LORD, and there are four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal. Give us two young bulls. Let them choose one, cut it into pieces, and place it on the wood, but start no fire. I shall prepare the other and place it on the wood, but shall start no fire. You shall call on the name of your gods, and I will call on the name of the LORD. The God who answers with fire is God."

All the people answered, "Agreed!"

Elijah then said to the prophets of Baal, "Choose one young bull and prepare it first, for there are more of you. Call upon your gods, but do not start the fire."

Taking the young bull that was turned over to them, they prepared it and called on Baal from morning to noon, saying, "Answer us, Baal!" But there was no sound, and no one answering. And they hopped around the altar they had prepared.

When it was noon, Elijah taunted them: "Call louder, for he is a god and may be meditating, or may have retired, or may be on a journey. Perhaps he is asleep and must be awakened." They called out louder and slashed themselves with swords and spears, as was their custom, until blood gushed over them. Noon passed and they remained in a prophetic state until the time for offering sacrifice. But there was not a sound; no one answered, and no one was listening.

Then Elijah said to all the people, "Come here to me." When they had done so, he repaired the altar of the LORD which had been destroyed. He took twelve stones, for the number of tribes of the sons of Jacob, to whom the LORD had said, "Your name shall be Israel." He built an altar in honor of the LORD with the stones, and made a trench around the altar large enough for two seahs of grain. When he had arranged the wood, he cut up the young bull and laid it on the wood. "Fill four jars with water," he said, "and pour it over the holocaust and over the wood." "Do it again," he said, and they did it again. "Do it a third time," he said, and they did it a third time. The water flowed around the altar, and the trench was filled with the water. At the time for offering sacrifice, the prophet Elijah came forward and said, "LORD, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, let it be known this day that you are God in Israel and that I am your servant and have done all these things by your command. Answer me, LORD! Answer me, that this people may know that you, LORD, are God and that you have brought them back to their senses."

The LORD'S fire came down and consumed the holocaust, wood, stones, and dust, and it lapped up the water in the trench. Seeing this, all the people fell prostrate and said, "The LORD is God! The LORD is God!"

Ok. A few thoughts:

1. Prophecy is not speaking the future, but speaking on behalf of God. The prophets of Ba'al claimed to speak on behalf of God, and in fact, they recognized Ba'al as the one and only God (kind of). But their 'god' was not the same as the One True God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who called himself Yahweh. Yahweh means "I am," and refers to the absolute necessity and eternity of God - He is the one and only thing that necessarily, must exist, and always has and always will exist. It is the same God that revealed himself to Abraham and to Moses and in love made lavish promises to them.

2. "Ba'al" on the other hand means "master," and refers to that demons desire for us, to master and dominate us through stealth or force. If not the same being that deceived Adam and Eve in the garden, to whom unredeemed Man has ever since been in bondage, the two beings are clearly closely related.

3. Discernment is the art of distinguishing what comes from God, and what does not. In this account we are given a model from discernment. No matter how hard the false prophets shouted, hopped, and gashed themselves with knives, the darn sacrifice wouldn't burn: there was no one to hear them. Their works, prayers, etc., were all futile because they were not from God and to God.

4. The Christian life might be seen as a sort of preparing oneself, or letting the Church prepare us, to be a living sacrifice. We must carefully discern the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives to conform ourselves to the will of God. Firstly me must learn to avoid sin. We must learn to fulfill the obligations of our state in life. We must allow our mixed motivations to be purged. Ultimately we must grow to let all our acts originate, be permeated by, and aim at love. As we are conformed to Christ, the Holy Spirit will descend on us like fire from on high and set us ablaze, but, like the Burning Bush that spoke to Moses, we will not be destroyed by what consumes us.

5. In the process, we will increasingly radiate God's love and show His people and the world the right way to follow the Lord.

In Paradisum Gramma

My Gramma Haber died today, two years ago. I was just finishing an eight-day silent retreat and so I received the news.

May the angels lead you into Paradise;
May the martyrs receive you at your coming
and lead you to the holy city of Jerusalem.
May the choir of angels receive you,
and with Lazarus, who once was poor,
May you have eternal rest. Amen.

We love you Gramma, and we'll see ya soon. But not yet.

The Trinity and the Meaning of Infinity

Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity

This past Sunday was the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity. The Trinity is one of those things that most Christians accept, few think about, and none understand. That's a shame, really, because then we can't work Him into our lives and consequently come to think of Him (God!) as irrelevant to us. That's a real pity, to say the least.

Why does It matter? Well, to understand why It matters, we have to understand a bit about It, first. And the first thing to understand is that we cannot understand It fully. That's because God is infinite and most of our brains are a just a bit bigger and, relatively speaking, more intelligent than softballs. God is infinite and we are not. We can understand sooo many things, and fit them into our mind's rational framework, but we cannot do that with God. If we could, He would less than us and not more.

For the ancient Greeks, a mysterion isn't a problem to solve, but an interaction between the human and the divine. It helps to think of mystery in that sense: not something to figure out, or something that can't be figured out - rather, it is something to interact with, something that we cannot finish figuring out. Like my grandpa. After over 50 years of married life together, I distinctly remember hearing my grandma, who knows him like the back of her hand, "Well John, I didn't know that about you!" Each human person is a mystery - how much more God! How little we know Him even after all He has taught us! Knowing a mystery is not about knowing facts, or knowing about a person, but knowing a person - God. It is also like seeing the sky. Lying on our backs on a clear blue day, we can only see bits of pieces of the sky at a time. We know all the bits of vision fit together somehow, or else the sky would crack up, as it were, in our vision - but we cannot see the thing all at once. It's too big. God is something like that. No wonder we look to the sky when we think of heaven.

So, the Scriptures tell us that Father, Son, and Spirit are all God. They are distinct from each other, and address and refer to each other in their speech, and are not the same. Yet they are all one - perfectly united. Thence the formula that the Church has handed down: the Three Persons of the Trinity are perfectly united in their innermost being, but never confused or conflated in their Persons - never mushed together or mixed up, as it were. On the other hand, they are completely distinct in their Persons, their "who-they-are," but never divided or separated in their innermost reality. They are not three sides or faces of the one God, but three full-fledged persons. Their distinct personalities do not divide Him. Nor does His unity eradicate their distinctiveness. What distinguishes Father from Son is that the Father begets and the Son is begotten, sired, from all eternity. The Father gives all that He has to the Son, Jesus tells us (Jn 17:22; Jn 6:38-40), and the Son surrenders all that He is to the Father (Lk 23:46), each in a co-eternal, co-existing act of love. The love between the Father and the Son is so intense, so immense, so real, that cannot be thought of as a thing, but is Himself a Person - the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit eternally issues forth from the union of the Father and the Son, and eternally returns to them. It is in this way that we can say not, "God loves," but "God is love," because from all eternity God is unchanging, and His nature has ever been to love. Love needs and object, but God needed nothing else, because being Three Persons, He could love Himself without being selfish, but rather, always self-sacrificing.

Heaven, then, consists in this: to enter into the life and love of the Most Holy Trinity, to experience a joy so complete and intense that words fall away and wonder overpowers. The greatest and most intense joys and pleasures of this earth are only foreshadows of the glory and life that God has in store for those who love Him (1 Cor 2:9). After the general resurrection of the dead we will experience it bodily as even now our Lord Jesus Christ experiences it in His Resurrected Body.

Everything that exists is ordered to helping us get "there." Society's purpose is to help the individual get to heaven. The ordained priesthood is to help the priest and his parish to get there, and to bring more people, the outside world, with them. A marriage's purpose is to help the husband and wife each help each other to get there, and to bring more people, their children and neighbors, with them. In fact, the human family is supposed to be a little school in which love is taught, practiced, and shared.

Oh, but how badly we fall short! Is your family a perfect school of love, a perfect image of the Trinity, showing the outside world the beauty and goodness of God wherever it goes? Is your family and community like a blueprint for how to live the Life of the Trinity? It certainly isn't if the Blessed Trinity isn't even your model, your blueprint for life. I know my family isn't perfect, and neither am I. Even trying to be good and holy, it's really, really hard.

We cannot experience heaven while there remains inside us anything that will block out love: fear, selfishness, pride, envy, rage, sluggishness, and the rest. We must be purged.

Good news: God wants to help us. Whenever we act, we act by our nature - I eat in the way humans eat, speak as humans speak, and so on. But it is not my nature that acts - it is me, my who-I-am, my being. Same thing with God. When God acts, He acts by means of His nature - divine and spiritual, and ever since the Incarnation of the Word in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary, human and material as well. But it is not JUST the Father or JUST the Son who acts - whenever He acts, He acts out of His being, His whole who-He-is. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, never do anything separately, even if it is convenient to speak of things that way. So when we receive Holy Communion by eating the Eucharist, the Body and Blood of the God-man Jesus of Nazareth, we receive not only Him, the Son into our stomachs and thence our hearts. We receive with Him also the Father and the Holy Spirit. The Whole Trinity comes into our heart.

The Gospel of John is instructive on this point: "So Jesus said to them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you; he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats me will live because of me," (Jn 6:53-57). Again, "Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in me, and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. If a man does not abide in me, he is cast forth as a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire and burned. If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you will, and it shall be done for you," (Jn 15:4-7).

So it is that this unfathomable Love of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit that we are called to imitate and conform to, to enter into and to enjoy, that is so far beyond us that we cannot imagine it - this same love will be enter into our hearts and change them, filling them with Faith, Hope, and Charity, cleansing them of fear, despair, and selfishness, providing the motor force to impel us into an eternity of joy and blessing. The Holy Trinity and His Heaven are not some abstract dogmas and distant, philosophical pipe-dreams - they are a new Life that can at least begin right here and now. But they are not unattainable and remote - He wants to be intimate and near us. In us. He wants to be our rocketship to bring us to Him, the nuclear reactor in us generating His life for the world, our blueprint for joy and the builder of the house He wants to give us.

"Unless the LORD build the house, they labor in vain who build. Unless the LORD guard the city, in vain does the guard keep watch. It is vain for you to rise early and put off your rest at night, To eat bread earned by hard toil-- all this God gives to his beloved in their sleep," (Ps 127:1-2).

And when we get there, we won't be disappeared like drops in the ocean, our personality lost in a cosmic soul ocean, as the Buddhists say. We will be, like the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, more perfectly ourselves than we ever have been before. Our union with Him and each other will no more lose us in the mix than they lose each other. And our distinctive individuality will no longer be a source of selfishness or separation as it is hear on earth, but a magnification of glory without ever dividing us one from the other again.

Is there a better way? I can't think of one.

St Francis and the Mother of God

I found these words, attributed to St. Francis, and was taken with their simplicity and devotion:

"When we speak the name of Mary, heaven becomes more beautiful, and earth rejoices. The demons are terrified, and vanish like dust in the wind," Saint Francis of Assisi ( 1181 - 1226).

Easter day might be over and Annunciation Day gone by, but that doesn't mean that we have to stop telling people about Christ the King, what He has done for us, and about the beautiful Queen-Mother He has given us!

Mourning and Weeping in Lent

Throughout much of our lifetime, we try to be big, strong, mature, and wise - whatever we understand those things to be. Usually it involves putting on an act for ourselves, for our neighbors, and even for God. All He wants is for us to be His little children, His little boys and girls. Lent is a special time for God to break through in our lives - to puncture our defenses, pull down the walls we've put up, irrigate the dry and barren field of our heart.

But breakthroughs mean that things get broken. Getting broken (or being made aware of our brokenness) hurts. "Christ, the final Adam, by the revelation of the mystery of the Father and His love, fully reveals man to man himself..." the Second Vatican Council teaches (Gaudium et Spes, #22), and being shown ourselves can be unpleasant. But He does not show us our flaws and failures in order to mock us. Quite to the contrary, according to the same document He does so in order to make "[our] supreme calling clear," in order to show us the great destiny He wants to impart to us.

For now we labor, "mourning and weeping in this valley of tears," but God will bring us out of the exile of sin and death if we permit Him to do so. While we do our penance, especially during this season of heightened penance, we have a great sign of hope. The Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Lord and our Mother, has already been crowned in glory after her long and patient wait. The Queen of Heaven knows what it is to make pilgrimage on earth. She knows what it is suffer in exile. We must not give up our hope, but fix our eyes firmly on heaven, ask God for help, and wait patiently for Him to fulfill His promises. He wants to purify and perfect us much more than we can imagine, and it is that painful purification that will enable us to enjoy heaven once we attain it. In the meantime, let us keep turning in prayer, especially to our gentle and loving Mother, so that she will help to smoothe our way and "show unto us the blessed fruit of [her] womb, Jesus."

Our exile is not forever (and neither is Lent).

Hail, Holy Queen, Mother of Mercy, our Life, our Sweetness, and our Hope, to thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve. To thee do we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this valley of tears. Turn then, most gracious Advocate, thine eyes of mercy toward us, and after this our exile, show unto us the blessed fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Oh clement, oh loving, oh sweet Virgin Mary. Pray for us, oh Holy Mother of God, that we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ. Amen.

Pilgrimage Spot

The National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception is located in Brookland, a neighborhood in the Northeast quadrant of Washington, D.C. It is also located in my heart. It's a little bit away from anywhere I've ever lived. My home in Rockville is about 35 minutes away - that's the closest, so it's always been a bit of a trip, a mini-pilgrimage if you will, to go there. The Shine has something like 53 chapels devoted to different images of Our Lady as well as its great main chapel and its beautiful and large, yet homely and intimate Crypt Chapel in the basement. It has a whole chapel for hearing confessions, and another for the Blessed Sacrament. It is a wonderful place to go to make a holy hour, preceded by Mass and confession, as I did today.

Sometimes I let the beautiful, emotional Mother of Sorrows chapel draw me in. It's Pieta, which I feel superior to Michaelangelo's (in effect if not technique) is absolutely gripping. A youngish Mary holds Jesus in her lap with his lance wound facing the penitent man at prayer before the altar. She leans over him with her chest heaving and her face plunging forward and upward, toward heaven, but her eyes are closed gently and she refuses to be consoled, because her Child is no more.

Sometimes I drift into the Virgin of Guadalupe chapel. The walls are all done in mosaics, showing the Virgin of Guadalupe flanked by processions of men, women, and children bearing her gifts and homage. Among them are recognizable saints, especially saints from the Americas: St. Juan Diego, St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, St. Katherine Drexel, St. Rose of Lima. But there are many more people whose identity is known only to the artist, if even to him. They are the nameless multitudes of Christians drawn into the life of holiness by the beauty of their Lord's mother.

Sometimes I make my way into the Our Lady of Lourdes chapel, which is a walk-in replica of the Grotto of Lourdes. It feels something like a cavern or a basement, and very much reminds me, when I close my eyes and let my heart see, of the Grotto. It is quiet and dark - the sort of place to which Jesus frequently retreated to pray. It never occured to me until this moment that on such nocturnal retreats He may have met His mother, already in prayer, praying for Him and His ministry. Perhaps they shared hopes and worries in those quiet, nearly wordless meetings. Sitting in that chapel, very much like at the Grotto, it is very easy for me to close my eyes, open my heart, and simply feel with Mary, my mother.

At the apse of the great chapel, there is a massive mosaic of our Lord, the Son of Man, returning in glory at the end of all things. He holds his muscular arms aloft like a traffic cop stopping cars. His blond hair is blonder than blond - it dazzles. His blue eyes are fiery and passionate. He has a halo made of flames blazing from his brow. Needless to say, He does not look happy at what He is finding at the end of all things. While few of us love Jesus the Just Judge as much as we love Jesus the Good Shepherd, the mosaic certainly is a reality check about our relationship with he who "will come to judge the living and the dead."

The liturgies at the Shrine are always conducted with the utmost reverence. Sometimes the singing is singable, and other times I, at least, cannot sing along - but then, the singing is beautiful enough that maybe it is better just to listen. The confessors have always been gentle and patient priests, prudent and straightforward, eager to help the penitent (well, in my experience at least) to change his ways. On the whole, each of my trips there (I must have made a hundred over my lifetime) has been spiritually restful.

I highly recommend a trip.

From Today's Mass

In case you weren't able to make Mass this morning, I highly recommend the readings (Jan 3: 1 Jn 2:29-3:6; Ps 98; Jn 1:29-34) to you. Especially the reading St. John's first epistle is very beautiful. Here is part of it:

The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we shall be has not yet been revealed. We do know that when it is revealed we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. Everyone who has this hope based on him makes himself pure, as he is pure.

Already we are adopted into being children of the Eternal Father, as brothers of Christ in the Holy Spirit. But what He wants to transform us into, if only we will let Him... that has yet to be seen. He wants to bring us from one glory to another, greater glory, as St. Paul says elsewhere (2 Cor 3:18). As we come to behold God more clearly, we are transformed in the beholding. At the end, when we "see him as he is," we will be fully, finally transformed. It is this hope of heaven that drives us Christians on in our thirst for sanctity. The purification of our hearts, our motivations, our desires, our goals, so that everything depraved is burnt out, everything extrinsic set on the back burner, and everything lesser made subject to the Greatest Good - this purification is the cause, path, and fruit of our sanctity.

Pray for the Dead and the Dead Will Pray for You

Feast of All Souls (Nov 2)

On the Feast of All Souls we commemorate and pray with special fervor for the souls of the all the Faithful Departed in Christ. We still hope for those whose whose life and death were not clearly marked by the sanctity of Christ because of the fact that they lived and died in Him. This union with Him continues to progress even after life on earth does not, precisely because their soul is immortal and because in Christ there is no death, no end - but only eternal life. The spiritual (and to us, unknown) process by which their sanctification and purification continues is commonly referred to as Purgatory.

Purgatory is necessary not because they must earn forgiveness for their sins. That can't be done. It is necessary because sinning isn't just breaking rules. Sinning harms things, which is why it is "against the rules". First and foremost, sin damages us, our ability to relate and love others, to share communion with them, to enter the Communion of Saints with God and all the Elect in Heaven. This damage must be undone.

Sin blinds us to its own nature, to our nature, and to our enmeshedness with it. Sin hardens the heart of the sinner against truth, beauty, and goodness - to reality itself, to transcendence, and to God. Sin makes us more prone to further sin. All these effects are added to the visible, material damage done by the sinful deed itself (the stolen money, the broken heart, etc.). People enmeshed in sin wouldn't enjoy heaven even if they somehow got there, any more than a rough street gangster would enjoy the opera or a museum of fine art. Preparation is needed.

For those of us unlikely to die completely transformed in Christ, completely united to Him, completely reconfigured to Him, the thought that the process can continue as long as necessary is a comforting one. There is comfort in the thought that, as our prayers on earth can assist in the conversion of our brothers and sisters on earth, so can our prayers can assist in this final purification of our brothers and sisters gone ahead of us. If we would like our brethren to assist our preparation to enter Eternal Paradise, we might begin by assisting in theirs.

Source of Christian Joy

"Christ in history is like the sun in a day that is just beginning, like the dawn. And a man who had never seen the sun, who had always lived in the night, would be full of wonder at seeing the dawn emerging. Things would start to take on their form, albeit in a blurred and still unclear way. And such a man, even if he cannot imagine the sun in its midday splendor, nonetheless begins to intuit that something new is happening, that the dawn is a beginning: the beginning of day.

The earth, existence, and history, for Christians, are like the beginning, the dawn of that full day to which God has destined us.

In the Christian experience of night, in which men are submerged and where they know things only by groping, something begins that makes everything start to have a meaning. And the clearest proof of this is that it happens even with the most ordinary things, everyday things. Thus our routine, too, takes on a dimension of greatness and gladness," Msgr. Luigi Giussani, Seeking the Human Face. See http://www.clonline.us/readings/formation-personality.cfm.

Looking Toward Heaven

All that is meant by "modern" these days is intended to keep us from thinking about God and Heaven. Science, as a quest to no longer need God rather than to learn about His creation, is intended to distract us from God. Obscenity, modern "art", the busyness of modern daily life, the loudness of televisions and radios, and the flashiness of billboards, the excitingness of video games, are all meant to fix our attention on themselves... never to point us to something more beautiful, more good, more true and real than themselves.

God has given us EVERYTHING to help draw us to Him. We should cultivate in our hearts an "eye" for seeing things as reminders of Him, as foretastes of Heaven. We must constantly battle to push out of our mind those things that infiltrate, distracting us from the realest reality: God and His good plan for us. A deep life of prayer is the only thing that can help us focus on the heavenly bliss that God has in store for us at the end of our journey through this life.

Learn to look at the things of this life and see what they might tell us of heaven. In heaven, we will not be mere spirits, or ghosts; nor will we be angels. God made us with bodies, and in Heaven we will be reunited with our transformed, resurrected body. In Heaven, there will be nothing to prevent us from playing frisbee with our pals, sitting under a shady tree with Jesus, eating yummy strawberries and cream, and bathing in the sunlight on a warm autumn afternoon.

Here, in this video, I've compiled some things that have given me glimpses of Heaven.