It’s Good Friday. Do you know why?

Well, do you?

If you don’t, I suggest a reading of the Passion in all four Gospels.  That might give you a clue.  But beyond that it’s about how Christ conquered death and freed us from sin.  Jesus did something so incredibly fantastic that only God could have done it.  And God did do it. It’s entirely mind-boggling and yet so profoundly simple that for over 2000 years we’ve recognized that fact in the celebration of Christ’s death on Good Friday.  Death may be the end and yet it is only a beginning.  There’s more but I’m not going to spoil the rest of the story.

Catholics remember and celebrate this conquering of death every time at Mass.  We hear about a people waiting for a Savior, he is born, lived, we follow him into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, celebrate the Last Supper with Him and the Apostles, celebrate His death, and then His Resurrection all in an hour on Sunday.  Holy Week affords us the opportunity to slow it all down and meditate and contemplate all these events at a much slower pace.

Yet even the Catholic Church understands that this daily celebration isn’t enough.  We have to spend time meditating on each event individually rather than all together.  We can get lost or even forget why and who we are supposed to be focusing on.  Yet how many of really slow down and truly think about these events?  Think about them outside of Lent and Triduum, outside of Mass?  Do some of use even think of them at all?  For how many of us, is Mass just a chore, something to check off the list with no engagement mental, spiritual, and very basic physical input whatsoever?  Is it even something out of the ordinary or is it just like watching TV or playing a game on the computer?

We live in a world that lets us, hell encourages and orders us to, tune in, turn on, and completely drop out while posting inane information on Facebook and Twitter that makes it look like we are busy when in reality we’re so closed off from reality, from God, from other people.  We’re stuck in our little make-believe worlds and wonder when we temporarily come out of them why things don’t go the way we want and escape back into our digital make-believe worlds.  God, Jesus, people, faith all require actions from us not passive mindlessness that’s found in watching TV and posting on Facebook and Twitter.  We apply our digital make-believe worlds to God and Jesus and faith and religion and get upset when they don’t match.  They aren’t meant to match.  God and make-believe are so vastly different that they shouldn’t even be used in the same sentence.  So we find that we have trouble with conceiving of a God who would take on human flesh, become a baby, live in poverty, gather twelve men one of which would betray him, and die on a cross as criminal and abandoned by all his friends while his mother watched him die.  It’s no wonder that Jesus becomes more myth-like, more a figment of the imagination, than the real flesh and blood human who suffered to save humanity from itself.   We live in a world that doesn’t want truth as absolutes and where God would suffer the indignity and humiliation of being treated like a criminal so he could conquer death and free us to be with him for all eternity.  Sounds nuts, doesn’t it.  Yet that’s exactly what Jesus did 2000 years ago.  And that’s the world we live in.

We live with people who don’t believe in sin while they commit it.  Where people think killing unborn babies because it “inconveniences”  the mother is a good enough excuse for murder.  Where sex is advertised as god and children should be allowed to worship such a god at an early age.  Where vices are considered virtues and virtues are considered vices.  Where anger and hate for God is considered THE religion.  Where children are led to the slaughter by willing parents.  Where common sense is out and propaganda and feel good is is.

Yet that’s exactly why Jesus came and died on a cross.  For sinners.  For ALL OF US, not just a select few.  He wanted to save all of us yet so many reject the gift he gave of himself because they have been seduced by the Devil.  We are the ones that crucified him with our sins and our silence and our shouts of rejection and our support of evil.  He conquered death but we sure don’t want that gift.  That gift is free but it comes with a price.  Yet His yoke is easy and His burden light.  Yet so many would rather crucify him over and over and over again than put down the hammer and nails and accept what he did.

We need what Jesus did 2000 years ago now more than ever.  We need to remember why he did and for whom he did.  We can’t forget or trivialize or push it aside or put it off.  It’s here and it’s now.  It’s GOOD FRIDAY.

What? It’s Nearly Holy Week?

Yep.  Sunday is the beginning of Holy Week.  While I should write a post dedicated to that, I’m not.  Maybe in Holy Week?  We’ll see.

As you may have noticed, I haven’t been around much.  My job keeps me pretty busy (and pretty so that all I do when I get home is sleep).  But there have been a few issues that have come up that I want to mention.

The first: veiling.  I actually have a whole article written (first draft, needs typed and edited) about the subject and how women are using it as a means to bash and oppress, yes, oppress other women.  Especially Catholics and non-Catholic Christians. I need to post the article.  It will make more sense.  But I hate how some women are using something that is a personal preference (there is no mandatory rule though there is a suggestion by St.Paul who was dealing with a specific issue of the day and said that there was no custom) to force other women to do what they want and if they don’t, they resort to name calling, finger pointing, and even ostrisizing women who don’t follow their demands.  It can even resort in outright abuse.  By women.  But the article covers it more in depth.  It’s fine if it is personal choice but it cannot be imposed except by a competent and respected authority.  The Catholic Church does not require women to veil but allows women to veil as personal, private devotion.

The second: reading materials.  I’ve been able, with no working TV or DVD player, to read many books.  Several have been especially helpful in understanding how and why people act and think the way they do. A couple of recommends:

Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business by Neil Postman

Blues for Cannibals: The Notes from Underground by Charles Bowden

Healing the Scars of Emotional Abuse by Greg Jants, Ph.D. and Ann McMurray

Prisoners: A Story of Friendship and Terror by Jeffrey Goldberg

Soldiers and Slaves: American POWs trapped by the Nazis’ final gamble by Roger Cohen

Muslim Women Reformers: Inspiring Voices Against Oppression by Ida Lichter

Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books by Azar Nafisi

The Media Relations Department of Hizbollah Wishes You a Happy Birthday: Unexpected Encounters in the Middle East by Neil MacFaquhar

The third: politics, well stupid politics.  ”our” government in its infinite stupidity decided to pass a health care bill that hurts Americans and funds abortions while forcing people who probably can’t afford health insurance to buy it while the politicians who passed it exempted themselves from it.  Yeah, government of the people my ass.  Politicians don’t care because if they had they would of listened to us and not passed the bill.  This wasn’t a surprise to me.  We have such a pro-death anti-American government in power headed by the most pro-death anti-American pro-Arab terrorist president in history.  See why we’re in such a bad state. But this isn’t the end of the US, not if we don’t want it to be.

The fourth: the sex abuse scandals that have hit in Ireland, Italy, Germany, and Austria.  The thing is, sex abuse By ANYONE is bad.  However, the Lame Stream Media is specifically targeting the Catholic Church where the abuse, for the most part, happened 20, 20, 50 years ago.  At the time, psychologists and the those that listened to them including Bishops in the Church thought homosexuality and pedophilia were mental illnesses that could be treated.  So, yes, they covered up but that was the conventional wisdom at the time.  Plus, 50 years ago child abuse and spousal abuse and sex abuse and rape weren’t really considered crimes.  They weren’t talked about.  Now we know better and they are prosecuted.  However, by targeting one specific group denies the validity and the reality of the problem (sex abuse knows no boundaries and doesn’t discriminate by age, sex, gender, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, etc.; it’s a sick pervasion that needs to be stopped and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law) and ignores other victims who were abused but weren’t abused by Catholic clergy and religious.  Or tells these other victims that they really weren’t victims because their abusers didn’t fit a specific stereotype that the Lame Stream Media wants to hype.  Basically, if you aren’t abused by Catholic priests, you weren’t really a victim.  So go away because you won’t sell.

If there’s a fifth thing, I don’t remember it.

Have a blessed Holy Week.

Fifth Week of Lent??? How’d That Happen?

It’s the Fifth Week of Lent and boy, has time flown. This Lent has been one of my fastest and also seems to be my least productive.  I’ve haven’t been keeping up with this blog like I intended to.

Well, the best thing I can do at this point is wish all of you a productive and prayerful rest of Lent and Holy Week.  And Congratulations to those coming into the Church at Easter Vigil.  Hopefully this year, my parish won’t do the hippy-strung-out-on-weed music-like-at-the-Megachurch-sensitive-to-the-changes-of-entertainment-technology-so-we’ll-use-a-projector-and-guitars-and-music-with-Protestant-theology again like they did last year.  The only reason I’m going to my parish’s Easter Vigil is because I know someone who is completing her journey into the Church.  She was raised Catholic but did not receive all the Sacraments of Initiation.

Prayer

“I’m gonna have to heal you. We have got to pray! We have got to pray! We have got to pray to make it through the day!” License to Wed

While I actually haven’t seen this movie, the line does spark an important part of Lent: PRAYER.  Particulary the fact that we are called to pray without ceasing, as mentioned by St. Paul in his letter to…well, I have to look up which letter.  Prayer is something we all struggle with, either trying to find the time or the words or the desire to pray. 

Myself, I just don’t pray.  Oh, I pray before Mass and after receiving the Eucharist but that’s about it.  But I should be doing more.  We all want to do more.  I know of those that believe that everyone should be praying the same devotions and prayers that they are.  I know of people who told me that I needed to do was pray the Rosary.  Sorry, I’ve tried but then I spent years in Catholic school being forced to pray the Rosary and the Stations of the Cross.  I just never made the connection.  Now, I have no problem with the Blessed Virgin and the Rosary and people who feel called to that devotion are free to pray that devotion.  But it is not a mandatory prayer.  The only mandatory prayer in the Church is the Mass.  There are those that believe if you don’t pray this prayer or don’t do that devotion you aren’t really praying and are not really Catholic. 

The thing is, not everyone prays the same or is called to pray in the same way.  We each come to prayer and pray in our own way.  One way may work for one and not for another.  Or one way may not work for one and may work for another.  Forcing people to pray the exact same prayer in the exact same way (not talking about the Mass which will eventually a whole post to itself) makes prayer ineffective and forces the prayee to view prayer in a negative light.  Prayer then comes to mean something that is a chore instead of talking with God.

“Pray as you can, not as you can’t” and “If you can pray well do so. Otherwise pray badly like the rest of us.”

Just a thought.  Prayer is not something to be forced or done on someone else’s terms.  You pray as you will to do God’s will in whatever way you can.  Don’t use someone else’s way if it doesn’t work for you.  Use your own.  And if someone tells you you aren’t praying correctly, tell them to take it up with God because He doesn’t have a problem with you praying.

1st Sunday of Lent

Well, second attempt.  I forgot tags on the first attempt, went back and edited, and then lost the whole thing.  Great. Lovely. 

I had the intention of writing a reflection on the readings for the 1st Sunday of Lent.  It’s Tuesady.  I think I may not have met that objective.  I’ve been busy dealing with the last few weeks of the quarter at school and have several projects and lengthy essays to write.  Plus, the fact that I have limited computer access and time.

So here it goes, again.

1st Reading: Genesis 2

The Fall.  Here we learn about the entrance of sin and death into our lives.  All sin is caused by disobedience, disobeying God, God’s will.  We also see, through the eyes of those who know the rest of the story, about God’s plan to send His son to save us.

Responsorial Psalm: Psalm 51

The Miserere. The Penitential Psalm. “Be merciful, O Lord, for we have sinned.”  How very true.  True in the fact that we are sinners.  True in the fact that God is indeed merciful.  He sent His only Son.  His Son instituted the Sacrament of Reconciliation.  God is just in His Mercy.

2nd Reading: St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans 5

Here we have the history of salvation from Adam to Jesus.  We can also see the beginning and end of Lent in the same passage.   We learn of what Christ did for us on the Cross.

Gospel: Matthew

I love the fact that the 1st Sunday of Lent we always read about Jesus going into the desert to fast and pray.  Two of the three focuses of Lent we see Christ doing Himself before He ever started his ministry.  Even though the Devil tempts Him, Jesus resists. If Jesus, who is both God and Man, prayed, we should surely pray.

The readings for the First Sunday of Lent are a guideline, to Lent and to what Lent is about.  Genesis gives us the reason for a savior along with why sin and death entered the world.  The Psalm reminds us that we are sinners, yet God is indeed Merciful.  The Letter to the Romans summarizes the history of salvation while allowing us to see that Lent does indeed have a point.  And the Gospel reminds us that even Jesus fasted, prayed, and was tempted, all things we can do and have happen to us.

Have a blessed Lent.

The Four Final Things

I meant to start this much earlier so as to go into fuller depth but at this point I’ll just post what I intend to blog about and write the depth tomorrow.  Hopefully.

Yesterday morning as I was driving into school, waiting in traffic, and listening to Evanescence, I thought about the Four Final things: Death, Judgement, Heaven, and Hell.  We as Catholics do not give as much emphasis on these topics as we used to.  Now that is not to say they are never mentioned but rather the depth and consideration they are due have been lacking.

Now we will all die.  That’s a fact of life and cannot change, regardless of those that search after immortality and super long lives.  It ain’t gonna happen folks.  Now death is not something to be feared.  We should always be aware that at any moment we could die.  Everyone dies.  Jesus died and did so for us, to save us from death.  From the consequences of our sin.  To save us from ourselves.  Lent reminds us not only about physical death but about spiritual death caused by sin.  Lent is a season of repentence, penance.  We walk the path that Jesus did: through temptation (1st Sunday of Lent Gospel reading) which leads to sin, His entrance into Jerusalem (Passion/Palm Sunday), to the Institution of the Eucharist (Holy Thursday), His handing over to be crucified (Holy Thursday and Good Friday), His Crucifixion (Good Friday), and His Resurrection (Easter Vigil, Easter Sunday).  His Death broke death’s hold over us.

We are reminded that we are sinners in need of a Savior and that that Savior is Jesus who knew what it was like to be human, who understands our weaknesses.  We are called to celebrate the Sacrament of Reconciliation, to repair the damage, the death to our souls caused by sin.  Not only that but to repair the “death” in our relationship with Jesus that was caused by our sin.  When we sin, we kill our relationship with Christ.  His grace in the Sacrament of Reconciliation heals that death, that injury to make us whole again, to heal our relationship with Him.  He understands that there are temptations and that by making use of this Sacrament and of Holy Communion along with prayer He will give us the grace and ability to fight these temptations and for us not to choose sin.

Judgement comes when we die.  There is the Particular Judgement which we will face completely on our own and the Final Judgement comes when Jesus returns.  When we die it will not matter if we made millions of dollars or wore the latest fashions or belonged to the best clubs or attended the best schools.  It will come down to how we lived our lives.  Did we follow Jesus’s command to Love God and Love our Neighbors as Ourselves?  Did we clothe the naked, feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, visit the imprisoned, care for the sick?  In essence, did we just talk the talk or did we actually walk the walk?

Heaven and Hell are the two possible places we could end up.  We want Heaven, to be in God’s presence for eternity.  But there are those through their own choice who want to go to Hell because they do not want to be in the presence of the Loving God and God will not force His presence on those who do not want it.  We choose are destination through our actions, our desire to love God or our decision to be disobedient and reject God.  We have free will.  I suggest a reading of the Catechism for a better understanding of the Church’s teaching on Heaven and Hell.  We don’t know what Heaven or Hell will be like, only that they exist.  God desires us to be with Him but He won’t force us to love Him or follow Him.

As for Lent and Holy Week, which I briefly touched on earlier, they model many key events in our faith.  I hope to write about them in other posts.

I will clarify and add Catechism references tomorrow, hopefully.

Have a Blessed and Prayer-filled Lent.

Ash Wednesday

In a few short hours, we start the wonderful penitential season of Lent.  Forty days to focus on prayer, fasting, and almsgiving.  But more importantly, focusing on Jesus.  Focusing on our need for a Savior and that we are sinners who can do nothing without HIM.

It is so easy to forget about Jesus.  We get distracted.  We let other things become our focus.  We push Jesus to the sidelines or backburner or even push Him completely out of our minds. We let school or TV or work or the latest fad take over our minds and our daily lives.  Oh, we may think about Him from time to time, especially on Sundays but otherwise we put Him in a closet and take Him out only when we talk about our faith or need to demonstrate, Yeah, I know Jesus.

But do you really?  Many of us say we know Jesus, that we pray, that we receive Him body and blood, soul and divinity in the Eucharist.  But we pay lip service to Him.  We say what we don’t mean.  We can talk the talk but walking the walk is hard.  We don’t want to see Jesus 24/7.  We want Him on OUR terms, NOT HIS.  And from that way of thinking we lose terribly.  We sin.  We live without Jesus in our lives and we become shadows of what we truly are, what we are truly capable of.

Thankfully, the Church and Jesus understands that we are imperfect sinners and provides us the opportunities to repent, to turn towards Jesus again and again and again.  Lent as a liturgical season provides a forty days to take the blinders or other obstacles from our eyes and allows us again to focus on Jesus.  We can remove that log from our eye and see Jesus for what and who He truly is.  It won’t happen over night.  We can learn to live HIS will and not ours.  We can repent and start anew.  Lent is an opportunity for us to fast from the things that we put in the place of Jesus and remove them from our lives.  We can turn off the TV, turn off the computer, quit eating the sweets and drinking the soda that we used to hide ourselves from Christ.  We can take our eyes off the world and turn them back to Christ.

And not just Lent but the Sacrament of Reconciliation.  Such a wonderful sacrament that grants us grace and the ability to truly mend our relationship with Christ.  We offend and hurt Jesus when we sin but He gave us the means to come to Him and repair that damage.  And to give us His grace to become more holy, more like HIM.  Are we perfect and incapable of sin once we receive Reconciliation? No. We are sinners and we will unfortunately sin again.  And we can again receive Reconciliation.  We go, not to just make things right, but to truly reform ourselves with His grace and to repair our relationship with Him. 

The more often we partake of the Sacraments especially Reconciliation and Holy Communion, the more we connect to Christ, the more we are in Christ.  The graces we receive from those Sacraments helps us to be more Christ-like in our lives.  And we are called to be Christ-like.

So this Lent, clear the log from your eye, pray, and turn to Jesus.

What are you doing this Lent to turn towards Jesus and truly follow Him?