Lin Wilder's Blog

Yes and No message on street signs with arrow with stormy sky 3D IllustrationThe world: The Great Yes and the Great No

It���s a cryptic but arresting phrase, isn���t it: The great yes and the great no?

I tripped on it while searching for something online a couple of weeks ago. After listening twice to a twelve-year-old homily of Bishop Barron���s called���you guessed it���The Great Yes and the Great No, POW! The ongoing battlefield between good and evil is reduced to these seven words: The Great Yes and the Great No.

Although the Bishop intended the homily for the Sunday readings of August 4th, 2013, his words pack a whallop today���every day.

It���s a message to every one of the over 8 billion souls on this planet. But one that���s anathema in our dangerously adolescent black and white culture.

Genesis:

I remember reading it when I first read the Bible following my decision to become a Catholic Christian. And how struck I was by the beauty of the words, more than prose, they���re lyrical, almost poetic.

Years later, I followed a friend���s suggestion that I read a novel called Havah .

And then I read Genesis again and again.

And realized I could read it a hundred times and still not plumb its depths.

Just so, Tosca Lee���s novel, Havah (the Hebrew name for Eve,) captures the extraordinary, supernatural lives of our first parents brilliantly. She doesn���t simply write an ordinary story. Instead, she immerses us into the psyche of the first woman called Eve and her flights on the wings of the wind with Him.

Here���s how the author begins:

A whisper in my ear: Wake!

Blue.

A sea awash with nothing but a drifting bit of down carried on an invisible current. I closed my eyes.

Light illuminated the thin tissues of my eyelids. A bird trilled. The percussive buzz of an insect sounded near my ear. Overhead, tree boughs rustled in the warming air���

I could feel the thrum of sap in the stem���the pulsing veins of the vine, the movement of the earth a thousand miles beneath, the beat of my heart in harmony with it all���

Then, like a gush of water from a rock, gladness thrilled my heart. But its source was not me. At last! It came, unspoken���a different source than that first waking whisper���and then the voice thrust aloud, jubilantly to the sky: ���At last!���

He was up on legs like the trunks of sturdy saplings, beating the earth with his feet���Flesh of my flesh���

At last. I heard the timbre of his voice in my head. Marvel and wonder were on his lips as he kissed my closing eyes. I knew then he would do anything for me.

Havah

The echoes of Eden

is a phrase that appeared in my head when I stopped running away from God. Reading Genesis that first time as a believer felt as if I were reading the history of mankind���our genesis. When we risk opening ourselves up to the power of those words they can���t help but evoke wonder and awe.

And every now and then galvanize an echo of Eden.

Maybe with the love of a dog.

Or watching a sunrise.

Or merely remembering how to communicate with animals��� when I/we knew more.

In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth,
the earth was a formless wasteland, and darkness covered the abyss,
while a mighty wind swept over the waters.

Then God said,
���Let there be light,��� and there was light.
God saw how good the light was.
God then separated the light from the darkness.
God called the light ���day,��� and the darkness he called ���night.���
Thus evening came, and morning followed���the first day���..

���Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.
Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea,
the birds of the air, and the cattle,
and over all the wild animals
and all the creatures that crawl on the ground.���

God created man in his image;
in the divine image he created him;
male and female he created them.

God blessed them, saying:
���Be fertile and multiply;
fill the earth and subdue it.

We can get lost in the wonder of it,

those beginning chapters, the astounding beauty of creation and its creatures.

We���re not Puritans, Dualists or Gnostics, Barron sharply exhorts us in his twelve-year-old homily. We Catholics believe that the world and everything in it is GOOD! Just so, we know that our bodies and our sexuality are Good! This is the reason our Church is so very passionate about marriage. About chastity. And also priestly celibacy.

Chastity and celibacy.

In these twenty-first century days, chastity is a word that evokes the 18th century. We don’t hear about the excellence of virtues like chastity from priests, ministers, parents or one another. Instead, we hear “Prolife.” Sexual intercourse outside of marriage is a mortal sin requiring confession after each lapse, but do our young know they must do this?

Are they told?

“Chastity is the most unpopular of the Christian virtues. There is no getting away from it; the Christian rule is, ���Either marriage, with complete faithfulness to your partner, or else total abstinence.��� Now this is so difficult and so contrary to our instincts, that obviously either Christianity is wrong or our sexual instinct, as it now is, has gone wrong. One or the other. Of course, being a Christian, I think it is the instinct which has gone wrong …

God knows our situation; He will not judge us as if we had no difficulties to overcome. What matters is the sincerity and perseverance of our will to overcome them. Before we can be cured we must want to be cured. Those who really wish for help will get it; but for many modern people even the wish is difficult … We may, indeed, be sure that perfect chastity���like perfect charity���will not be attained by any merely human efforts. You must ask for God���s help. Even when you have done so, it may seem to you for a long time that no help, or less help than you need, is being given.

Never mind. After each failure, ask forgiveness, pick yourself up and try again. Very often what God first helps us towards is not the virtue itself but just this power of always trying again. For however important chastity (or courage, or truthfulness, or any other virtue) may be, this process trains us in habits of the soul which are more important still. It cures our illusions about ourselves and teaches us to depend on God. We learn, on the one hand, that we cannot trust ourselves even in our best moments, and, on the other, that we need not despair even in our worst, for our failures are forgiven. The only fatal thing is to sit down content with anything less than perfection.”

���C. S. Lewis, p. 95 Mere Christianity

Eve knew her God had said ���No!��� but she did it anyway. Attracted by the beauty of the fruit and the specious wisdom of the serpent. And then, of course, she had to share it with her husband.

The serpent was ���the most cunning of all the animals.���

The first time I read Genesis seriously���prayerfully, I stopped there, at the wily serpent: he knew to approach Eve.

And not Adam.

The awful heartbreak of it.

The LORD God called to Adam and asked him, ���Where are you?���
He answered, ���I heard you in the garden;
but I was afraid, because I was naked,
so I hid myself.���
Then he asked, ���Who told you that you were naked?
You have eaten, then,
from the tree of which I had forbidden you to eat!���
The man replied, ���The woman whom you put here with me���
she gave me fruit from the tree, and so I ate it.���
The LORD God then asked the woman,
���Why did you do such a thing?���
The woman answered, ���The serpent tricked me into it, so I ate it.���

What might have happened, we must wonder, if fear and shame hadn���t prevented Adam from answering truthfully? Or if Eve had taken responsibility:

���It was I! I was the one who perverted your law and the Adam!���

But the power of that serpent is supernatural, his hatred for humanity a thing that even the most vicious of humans cannot conceive of. Tosca Lee writes in Havah:

���.How deftly the human finger pointed at me was returned to its owner. But greater than that was the sorrow behind it���a sorrow made deeper by a history of love.

Did God weep?

Was the One capable of tears?

Dust you are . . . to dust you will return. The light faded like a back that turns to walk away.

Havah

St. Pope John Paul ll once referred to Genesis as holding the answer to every human question.

The Great Yes and the Great No.

To live in the only safe space that exists, we live between the two extremes: the dualistic, puritanical hatred of the world and the idolization of it.

For however important chastity (or courage, or truthfulness, or any other virtue) may be, this process trains us in habits of the soul which are more important still. It cures our illusions about ourselves and teaches us to depend on God. We learn, on the one hand, that we cannot trust ourselves even in our best moments, and, on the other, that we need not despair even in our worst, for our failures are forgiven. The only fatal thing is to sit down content with anything less than perfection.���
CS Lewis

Mere Christianity

Yom Kippur

To those believing confession to be a thing invented by the Catholic Church, I offer this past week’s Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur and sage remarks from the Jewish Voice. The Viduy list warrants our time, attention and prayer.

Confessing Our Sin

When we placed our faith in Yeshua (Jesus), the Messiah, He fully paid for our sin. However, the wrongs we do as Believers interfere with our relationship with the Lord.

Confession of sin is agreeing with the Lord about the wrongs we���ve done. It speaks the truth about our sin and brings us to a place of humility before the God who sent His Son to die for our sinful selves. Confession sets us on the path of choosing to join our wills with the Holy Spirit���s work of conforming us into the image of Yeshua.

You may have heard sayings like, ���Confession is good for the soul,��� or ���We���re as sick as our secrets.��� David, King of Israel, wrote in the Psalms that when he kept silent about his sin, it tormented him, but when he acknowledged it, he received relief and forgiveness (Psalm 32:3���5). …

The Viduy is a tool to help us see ourselves honestly. It includes 24 verbal confessions. We���ve provided a sampling below and encourage you to use it as you spend time listening to the Lord and humbly confessing to Him. Keep in mind that the Lord wants to heal you through confession. He wants you to live unhindered in your relationship with Him and set you free to be shaped into the image of Yeshua.

Ashamnu ��� We have sinned against God and man.

Bagadnu ��� We have betrayed and been disloyal and ungrateful.

Gazalnu ��� We have stolen or robbed.

Dibarnu Dofi ��� We have sinned with our speech.

V���hirshanu ��� We have caused others to sin.

Taflnu Sheker ��� We have associated ourselves with falsehood and wrongdoing.

Ya���atznu Ra ��� We have advised others wrongly to their harm.

Kizavnu ��� We have lied and failed to keep our word.

Latznu ��� We have taken serious matters lightly, scoffed, and ridiculed.

Maradnu ��� We have disbelieved and rebelled against God and His Word, preferring our own way.

Sararnu ��� We have turned our hearts away from serving God.

Avinu ��� We have knowingly and intentionally sinned.

Tzararnu ��� We have caused suffering.

Kishinu Oref ��� We have stubbornly refused to see God���s hand in suffering, choosing to blame Him rather than repent of our sin or learn from suffering.

Confessing Yeshua���s Gift of Atonement

Confessing our sin with such intense focus might leave us feeling discouraged. As Believers, we have the privilege of also seeing the picture Yom Kippur holds of what Jesus accomplished for us through His death and resurrection.

In Temple days, every Yom Kippur, the High Priest brought the blood of animals into the Holy of Holies. This blood covered the sins committed by the priest himself and all Israel over the past year.

However, when Yeshua died as the sacrifice for our sin, He also served as the perfect High Priest, taking His own blood into the heavenly Holy of Holies as a once-and-for-all atonement (covering) for our sin. He not only covered our sins, but He removed them forever from before the Father.

Yeshua���s atonement accomplished wonderful things for those who place their faith in Him. Confess these truths as well as you observe Yom Kippur.

The post The World: The Great Yes and the Great No. appeared first on Lin Weeks Wilder.

Photo Courtesy Mont Saint Michel

Saints Michael, Gabriel and Raphael

The stunning image is of Mont Saint Michel Abbey in Normandy, France, takes me back to a journey there before my conversion. That trip comes to mind because after my friend and I climbed the 350 steps to enter into the Abbey, we’d no idea we were witnessing the celebration of a Catholic Mass. Nor had I any idea of who Mont Saint Michel was honoring. Or even what an Abbey was.

And yet, within ten years, I’d become Catholic and a Benedictine Oblate. I must remind myself periodically, that I was just as lost as the people I write about below, those living in deadly fear of followers of Christ. It looks and sounds like anger, even rage, but it’s fear. I know, I used to live there.

The Christian liturgy celebrates the feast of Saints Michael, Gabriel and Raphael on September 29th. Three days later on October 2nd, we celebrate our Guardian angels. Catholics of a certain age were brought up believing, even trusting and praying to their Guardian Angels. For the rest of us, the notion of such heavenly beings is fitting fodder for television and fantasy. In this post-Christian-now, anti-Christian age, the notion of heavenly beings is comedic. Like John Travolta playing Michael.

More recently, however, we read that satanists are drawing members because of a “real fear of Christian nationalism,” Religious studies professor Joseph Laycock’s statement prompted my look into this new label, Christian nationalist and its insistence on the intrinsic evil of “whiteness.”

We dearly love our labels for they take us by the hand to lure us into the facile, perhaps demonic, categories of Us vs Them

The content and number of hits for Christian nationalism is startling and sobering.

From Time Magazine:

The term ���white Christian nationalism��� has recently emerged in the social sciences and the media as a way of describing the worldview [of Trumpism] … The toxic blend of ethno-religious identity politics has become central to the trajectory of the contemporary Republican Party, two thirds of whom identify as white and Christian….

We white Christians no longer represent the majority of Americans. We are no longer capable of setting the nation���s course by sheer cultural and political dominance. But there are still more than enough of us to decisively derail the future of democracy in America.

Excerpt adapted from The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy and a Path to a Shared American Future by Robert P. Jones, Time Magazine

And from PBS:

Brad Onishi, Co-Host, “Straight White American Jesus”: Christian nationalism is an ideology that is based around the idea that this is a Christian nation, that this was founded as a Christian nation, and, therefore, it should be a Christian nation today and should be so in the future.

According to survey data, Christian nationalists agree with statements like the federal government should declare the United States of America a Christian nation. Our laws should be based on Christian values. being a Christian is important if you want to be a real American….

They also are deeply invested in the notion of spiritual warfare, the idea that we are called as Christians to fight a cosmic battle between good and evil, and that it’s our duty to be boots on the ground for God in that conflict. What this has led to some decades later is, the New Apostolic Reformation leaders, the apostles and the prophets that are really at the head of this movement were some of the earliest to support Donald Trump in 2016.

And they have remained steadfast in that support. They were at the very avant-garde of trying to get the 2020 election overturned in the wake of Joe Biden’s victory and mobilizing folks to be at January 6. There were hundreds, if not thousands, of New Apostolic Reformation Christians at January 6, as an example.

What is Christian Nationalism and Why it Threatens Democracy

Back to the angels,

Modern physics lends credence to other realities:

Most likely, you have  have read the startling findings of what physicists call dark energy and dark matter. That over ninety six percent of the universe is composed of ‘dark energy’ and ‘dark matter.’  That’s worth a repeat. We perceive only 4 percent of what surrounds us.

In his book The 4 Percent Universe, physicist Richard  Panek writes about the puzzling riddles that remain unsolved. 

“”Dark,” cosmologists call it, in what could go down in history as the ultimate semantic surrender. This is not “dark” as in distant or invisible. This is not “dark” as in black holes or deep space. This is “dark” as in unknown for now, and possibly forever: 23 percent something mysterious that they call dark matter, 73 percent something even more mysterious that they call dark energy. Which leaves only 4 percent the stuff of us. As one theorist likes to say at public lectures, “We’re just a bit of pollution.” Get rid of us and of everything else we’ve ever thought of as the universe, and very little would change. “We’re completely irrelevant,” he adds, cheerfully….

The overwhelming majority of the universe is: who knows?”

The 4 Percent Uiniverse

Statements like his cast some doubt on our prevailing sense of reality.

Or should.

But ignorance doesn’t stop us.

Especially if we’ve expended gazillion dollars, effort and energy in obtaining terminal degrees. I doubled over laughing when I got Dr. Brian Keating’s lastest piece, “Why Your PhD Makes You More Likely to Believe Nonsense. Not for the first time, I reflected on the events surrounding completing my doctorate as gift. Although at the time, it was harrowing.

On the morning I was to defend my dissertation, I came to work early. And found my boss, a man I admired deeply, packing his office. Despite his astounding success in saving Hermann Hospital in the Texas Medical Center from financial insolvency, the Board of Trustrees fired him. Three hours later, the fourth member of my dissertation committee arrived thirty minutes late. And proceeded to rant that my dissertation was a shambles, full of inconsistencies and error and he could not sign off on it. And then stormed out of the room.

My advisor and the two remaining members of my committee were fittingly distressed and apologetic. Apparently, the physician was an alcoholic and was lilely drunk. But I was numb and barely remember my advisor Steve quietly telling me not to worry, He would get me registered for the next semester and would ‘fix’ what was necessary. I would graduate in June.

He did.

And I did.

Arrogant ignorance

is a brilliant definition of pride that I read somewhere recently. The phrase explains the blessings of my anguish upon completing my forty-five chapter textbook and later, the doctorate. At the time, however, they felt more like curses.

These humiliations are imperative:

I suspect I���m one of the few people who, upon finishing their doctorate at the University of Texas School of Public Health in Housto, sat on the steps of the school and sobbed.

It took close to ten years to complete the course work, the qualifying exams and the dissertation-while working full time.

So why not joyous celebration?

A very simple answer. My goal had been wisdom, in undergrad and then the doctoral program. But with each degree I knew less and less. I couldn���t find what I searched for in a classroom or a professor���s theory or the receipt of letters after my name. At the time, it felt that all that study, sacrifice and energy had been an exercise in futility.

Of course this humiliation was ginormous grace from God.

I had to be flattened to get back on my knees.And see there is just one source of wisdom.I had to understand there are just two answers to the questions imposed on us in this life:

Joseph Ratzinger and the Divine Project

Essential warriors?

Just as we’ve no concept of the depth of our ignorance, we’re equally blind and deaf to satan’s superior cunning and undiluted hatred of humanity. I’d not considered before how cleverly American politics have been demonically perverted, nor had I thought about the dangers of my faith to those compelling writers and their followers who are convinced that I’m not just another idealogue. I’m a very dangerous one.

And I understand-sort of-the profound hatred of some to all that Charlie Kirk stood for.

Mine and clearly Kirk’s are no ideology, CatholicChristianity was founded by Jesus who placed Saint Peter as the head of his Church:

“And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it”

The longer I’m given the privilege of participating in the Mass and sacraments, the deeper I feel my obligation to offer reparation, penance and fasting for those who don’t know Jesus. Those who are as lost as I once was.

These are not mere word games- we’re talking about our eternal souls.

Of course we need Saints Michael, Gabriel and Raphael: Essential Warriors!

Let us pray, “Saint Michael, free me from confusion, let the light of Christ guide my thoughts and decisions, we beg you for the grace of spiritual clarity. Let His light be a lamp to my feet on this my pilgrimmage of the Christian life.”…

“Saint Michael your name is a question filled with awe:

“Who is like God?”

Your vocation is to reveal His power and His

wisdom and so your name teaches us that

nothing can compare with His might

and goodness. What is there that we cannot hope to

receive from God’s hand through your intercession and care?

We entrust to you the intentions we bring to you in this

Novena: for Holy Church in her trials, for our

homelamds so much in need of healing and grace, for our families….

Saint Michael novena Day seven

In conclusion, Chris Stefanick’s twenty-minute video warrants our close attention;

“I don’t care who you voted for!”

Chris Stefanick

 

The post Saints Michael, Gabriel and Raphael: Essential Warriors? appeared first on Lin Weeks Wilder.

Who, me?Don’t blame the devil

Soon after my conversion to Catholic Christianity, I discovered Saint Teresa of Avila. And I fell in love with her. Upon examining that statement, I realize it’s not hyperbole, but truth.

Why?

Among countless reasons, at this writing, it’s Saint Teresa’s admonition against blaming the devil for my weakness, laziness, and cowardice. In her autobiography, she wrote, “I do not understand those terrors which make us cry out, Satan, Satan! when we may say, God, God! and make Satan tremble. Do we not know that he cannot stir without the permission of God? What does it mean? I am really much more afraid of those people who have so great a fear of the devil, than I am of the devil himself. Satan can do me no harm whatever, but they can trouble me very much, particularly if they be confessors”.

That phrase began whispering in my heart on the four hundredth–yes, that is overstatement– time I prayed and pondered this murdered man. I barely knew who he was before this terrible murder, but Charlie Kirk feels like a dear friend whom I’ve lost. I suspect that’s how many of us perceive him now that we know about the extraordinary life of Charlie Kirk, an apologist in the tradition of the great Ravi Zacharias. A lover of truth in the ilk of the ancient Greeks.

Rather than avoiding all the articles about him as I normally do, when awful things happen, I read them. Initially, I agreed with the demonic narratives opined by writers like Daniel O’Connor and Bud MacFarland. However, upon further reflection, I see the implicit danger of that which Saint Teresa of Avila writes of. Don’t blame the devil: what, blame me?

I despise precipitous judgement, made with an incomplete knowledge of facts, context, injustice. When I do it, I feel shame at my unfairness to others-at my rush to judgement. Because, of course, it���s the me I cannot stand that stares back at me. It has nothing at all to do with them.
We find , if willing to look and then listen, that those��most justifiable��of feeling moral outrage���. don���t. Consider�� Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn���s comments about his horrendous treatment in the Gulag by Russian officials.

���If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?���

Indeed.

Us vs Them

What blame me?

Yes.

All of us.

For decades, Americans have watched academia devolve into atheistic Marxism and radical activism; still, we continue to send our kids to people who not just negate, but castigate the founding principles of our nation and faith.Although the secular media promote ideologies contrary to most of our beliefs, we continue to watch and read it.Despite an understanding of the dangers lurking in social media apps and the dark web, many parents give their six and seven-year-olds their own cell phones and tablets.We prefer chemicals to natural ways to control our emotions and health; therefore, we seek a pill for our overactive eight-year-old son or anxious nine-year-old daughter.Closer to our Christian hearts, we lead our kids to fornication. Our priests and ministers are silent about abortifacient use among our Christian and Catholic youth. Mentors and priests stay silent about the mortal sin of “cohabitation” when young Catholics seek pre-marriage preparation.We pretend not to notice the blasphemy of the ubiquitous “OMG.”And invite a wide array of immoral visual and reading materials into our hearts and minds.And so we declare, like Claude Raines in Casablanca, “I’m shocked, Shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!”

The list is endless, I’ve named only a smidgen of the filth that permeates us inside and out.

Monday’s Office of Readings from the Prophet Ezekiel pierces these twenty-first-century rebellious hearts of ours:

���Son of man, go to the House of Israel and tell them what I have said. You are not being sent to a nation that speaks a difficult foreign language; you are being sent to the House of Israel. Not to big nations that speak difficult foreign languages, and whose words you would not understand ��� if I sent you to them, they would listen to you; but the House of Israel will not listen to you because it will not listen to me. The whole House of Israel is stubborn and obstinate. But now, I will make you as defiant as they are, and as obstinate as they are; I am going to make your resolution as hard as a diamond and diamond is harder than flint. So do not be afraid of them, do not be overawed by them for they are a set of rebels.���

The Call of Ezekiel

Is there nothing we can do?

Indeed, it feels overwhelming, this realization that Kirk’s killer is who he is in part because of me.

Accepting responsibility for others’ sins is an essential, imperative step into the mind of God and our journey to heaven. The difficulty of doing so reminds us of our need to repent and follow Christ, who came to redeem all souls without exception., including, perhaps especially, murderers. At times, that first step must be made daily or even moment by moment.

We forget so readily that we can do nothing without Jesus, nothing but sin.

In one of her remarkable pieces, Jennifer Borek offers wisdom.

Oftentimes I would use the trip home to bring up things that were troubling me, since anything I asked at home was promptly answered by the aunts. Once, I must have been 10 or 11, I asked father about a poem we had read at school the winter before. One line had described ���a young man whose face was not shadowed by sexsin.��� I had been far too shy to ask the teacher what it meant, and mama had blushed scarlet when I consulted her. In those days just after the turn of the century sex was never discussed, even at home.  So, the line had stuck in my head. ���Sex,��� I was pretty sure, meant whether you were a boy or a girl, and ���sin��� made Tante (Aunt) Jans very angry, but what the two together meant I could not imagine. And so, seated next to Father in the train compartment, I suddenly asked, ���Father, what is sexsin?���

He turned to look at me, as he always did when answering a question, but to my surprise he said nothing.  At last, he stood up, lifted his traveling case from the rack over our heads, and set it on the floor.

���Will you carry it off the train, Corrie?��� he said. I stood up and tugged at it. It was crammed with the watches and spare parts he had purchased that morning.

���It���s too heavy,��� I said.

���Yes,��� he said. ���And it would be a pretty poor father who would ask his little daughter to carry such a load.  It���s the same way, Corrie, with knowledge. Some knowledge is too heavy for children. When you are older and stronger you can bear it. For now, you must trust me to carry it for you.���

And I was satisfied. More than satisfied, wonderfully at peace. There were answers to this and all my hard questions, for now I was content to leave them in my father���s keeping. from:

Who is he who forgives even sinners?

Thursday’s Gospel reading eloquently speaks to the terrible dangers of withholding love from those most in need of it. We’re reminded as we ponder the reading, that it was the great sinner, Mary Magdalene, who was the first to see and speak with the Risen Christ. Not the beloved John the Evangelist or Simon Peter, upon whom he will build his church.

She was the apostle of the apostles.

A certain Pharisee invited Jesus to dine with him,
and he entered the Pharisee’s house and reclined at table.
Now there was a sinful woman in the city
who learned that he was at table in the house of the Pharisee.
Bringing an alabaster flask of ointment,
she stood behind him at his feet weeping
and began to bathe his feet with her tears.
Then she wiped them with her hair,
kissed them, and anointed them with the ointment.
When the Pharisee who had invited him saw this he said to himself,
“If this man were a prophet,
he would know who and what sort of woman this is who is touching him,
that she is a sinner.”
Jesus said to him in reply,
“Simon, I have something to say to you.”
“Tell me, teacher,” he said.
“Two people were in debt to a certain creditor;
one owed five hundred days’ wages and the other owed fifty.
Since they were unable to repay the debt, he forgave it for both.
Which of them will love him more?”
Simon said in reply,
“The one, I suppose, whose larger debt was forgiven.”
He said to him, “You have judged rightly.”
Then he turned to the woman and said to Simon,
“Do you see this woman?
When I entered your house, you did not give me water for my feet,
but she has bathed them with her tears
and wiped them with her hair.
You did not give me a kiss,
but she has not ceased kissing my feet since the time I entered.
You did not anoint my head with oil,
but she anointed my feet with ointment.
So I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven;
hence, she has shown great love.
But the one to whom little is forgiven, loves little.”
He said to her, “Your sins are forgiven.”
The others at table said to themselves,
“Who is this who even forgives sins?”
But he said to the woman,
“Your faith has saved you; go in peace.”

I should like to ask you
urgently, from now on, that you never let your past
sins be an obstacle between you and Jesus. It is a ruse
of the devil to keep putting our sins before our eyes in
order to make them like a screen between the Savior
and us…
He will cast all
our sins into the bottom of the sea (Mic 7:19).
Do not go looking for them at the bottom of the
sea! He has wiped them out; he has forgotten them.
His blood has been shed; the flames of his mercy have
done their work: they have burned up all of them, con
sumed them all while renewing you. Our faults must
remain for us a source of humility and repentance, but
especially a source of immense thankfulness…

Father Jean du C��ur de J��sus d���Elb��e

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The problem with the Catholic Church

���So why did you become Catholic?���

After listening to my abbreviated conversion story, Bob explained that he���d born a Catholic but was now an evangelical Christian. Apparently feeling the need to defend his decision to leave Catholicism to a new convert, Bob declared that the crucifix is depressing and too focused on pain and suffering. After thinking another moment or two, Bob looked at at me and said, ���The problem with the Catholic Church is the crucifix.���

Today, September 14th, is the feast of the Triumph of the Cross. My friend Bob���s repugnance at the horror of our Savior���s suffering and death is understandable in our world that considers suffering barbaric, especially that of the Creator of the Universe. In most Catholic Churches, that crucifix is displayed prominently, making it difficult to ignore. Without the crucifix, it���s tempting to believe the gospel of prosperity. And to think that all the blessings of our lives are merited. Just like Jesus’ thousands of followers who left him upon his declarations of the cost of discipleship, we too, choose cheap grace.

Bob���s pithy statement appears in my first novel:

Lindsey could not deny the sense of peace she had felt upon walking into St. Vincent de Paul Catholic Church at six-thirty that next morning. Kneeling next to Julie, who was deep in communion with her God, she felt the silence as a tangible thing. Lindsey finally risked a look up at the huge crucifix dominating the altar of the church, realizing that she had looked everywhere but up at that cross. As she stared at that quintessence of agony and sacrifice, she thought of a paper Julie had written the year before for her theology class.
Julie had started her paper with the sentence ���The problem with the Catholic church is the crucifix���.”

Lindsey thought of the lovely filigreed gold cross her mother always wore; the cross without the dying Christ was the sanitized version, much more comfortable to contemplate than this God-man displayed in an attitude of such shocking powerlessness and hideousness. And she had found herself asking what on earth could require such pain and suffering and wondering what kind of God would require such an agonizing death from his own son.

The Fragrance Shed By A Violet: Murder in the Medical Center

Why the crucifix and not just His cross?

Because the Apostle of the Apostles tells us to do so! St Paul tells us that we preach Christ crucified in the first and second chapters of Corinthians. ���I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified.��� John Martignoni reminds us of St. Paul���s exhortation: ������O foolish Galatians!  Who has bewitched you, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified?��� 

The reading for the liturgy of the Exaltation of the Cross prefigures Christ���s crucifixion. We travel back to the nation of Israel���s escape from 400 years of slavery in Egypt to a forty-year desert journey. And we hear the Israelites complaining.

Again.

Ignoring the fact that their clothes and sandals are not worn out. Or recalling how they walked through the sea with walls of water on each side, saved from the pursuing Egyptians. Or that water appears out of a rock when needed by them and their livestock.

More and more, these readings about the ancient Israelites are like looking into a mirror. One that reveals my image and that of almost everyone around me. The complaints of the Israelites provoked God���s wrath until finally they see.

���We have sinned in complaining against the LORD and you.
Pray the LORD to take the serpents from us.���
So Moses prayed for the people, and the LORD said to Moses,
���Make a seraph and mount it on a pole,
and if any who have been bitten look at it, they will live.���

Strange medicine

Monsignor Charles Pope answers replies to my friend’s comment with his piece, Strange Medicine and the Gaze that Saves.

���Now remember it was God who had said earlier in the Ten Commandments Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth(Ex 20:4). Yet here he commands a graven (a carved) image. Moses made it of bronze and showed it to the people who looking at it became well (Nm 21:9)

In a way, it is almost as if God were saying to Moses, ���The people, in rejecting the Bread from Heaven have chosen Satan and what he offers. They have rejected me. Let them look into the depth of their sin and face their choice and the fears it has set loose. Let them look upon a serpent. Having looked, let them repent and be healed, let the fear of what the serpent can do depart.���

When we adore the crucifix, we face the awful cost of sin. Mine, yours and those of the whole world: The problem with the Catholic Church is the crucifix.

���There is something about facing our sins, our shortcomings, and our anxieties and fears. There is something about looking into the face of them in order to find healing.  One of the glories of the Catholic Faith is that we have never hidden the cross. We have never run from it

There it is, at the head of our processions. There it is, displayed in our homes. And we are bid to look upon it daily. Displayed there is everything we most fear: suffering, torment, loss, humiliation, nakedness, hatred, scorn, mockery,  ridicule, rejection, and death.

And the Lord and the Church say: ���Look! Don���t turn away. Do not hide this. Look! Behold! Face the crucifix and all it means. Stare into the face of your worst fears, confront them, and begin to experience healing. Do not fear the worst the world and the devil can do for Christ has triumphed overwhelmingly. He has cast off death like a garment and said to us, In this world, ye shall have tribulation. But have courage! I have overcome the world. 

Monsignor Pope

The problem with the Catholic Church is the crucifix.

On this Triumph of the Cross Sunday,

I think about Bob’s candid appraisal of the Catholic Church he’d left behind, and the profound power of questions. Looking back on that long-ago conversation, it was my zeal that prompted his brutally honest response. He and I were speaking across a chasm: After decades of atheism and a life without any ground, I’d found the home I’d searched for ever since I walked away from God at seventeen. We were speaking two different languages without a translator.

The memories recall how it all began, with a question. The business of our lives eclipses the most important things unless we’re asked a question. One that pierces through the garbage. Like this one did me.

“What are you looking for?”

We were talking on the phone, getting to know one another, but his question startled me.

Where did that come from?

Indeed!

What are you looking for?

Recalling my journeys to Delphi, Greece, and Kyoto, Japan, beautiful but somehow disappointing, I replied, “I’m looking for a sacred place.”

John replied, “I know this monastery,…”

It wasn’t a place or a religion that I found, but a person, one I could worship, adore, and give myself to.

Saint Benedict’s Monastery

Suddenly I was there

    On my knees with

    Quiet tears coursing down

    My cheeks in response

    To feelings which were

    So long suppressed and

    Now foreign and exquisitely

    Incisive as they pierced

    Through the years of

    Protective armor donned so

    Long ago when I

Walked away from God

    How did I arrive here?

    And why was I deserving

    Of such pure faith appearing

    Without preamble or good works?

    And why God, have you found

    Me worthy enough to know you?

    Once more forgiving this oh, so

    Grateful recipient of unmerited grace.

A Search for the Sacred

Discipleship is hard.

The enthusiasm of faith fades. Just like the Israelites did, we forget the miracles. Consolations disappear as our faith matures, at times, leaving in their stead only desolation. When events conspire into chaos, and we can’t even pray, all we can do is endure. This fact is one of the countless reasons that I’ve read Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s The Cost of Discipleship three times. The German martyr writes about the essential, critical decision to obey. Furthermore, he declares, Jesus’ call to faith comes only after obedience.

Pondering this, we realize, “How could it be otherwise?” Throughout his public ministry, Jesus, the Lord of the Universe, unequivocally and repeatedly declares that he does nothing but the Father’s will.

Obedience.

Unless we submit our whole selves, body, mind, and spirit, daily, this faith will be merely another in an endless series of meaningless phases.

���The response of the disciples is an act of obedience, not a confession of faith in Jesus. How could the call immediately evoke obedience? The story is a stumbling-block for the natural reason���

Christianity without the living Christ is inevitably Christianity without discipleship, and Christianity without discipleship is always Christianity without Christ. It remains an abstract idea, a myth which has a place for the Fatherhood of God, but omits Christ as the living Son. And a Christianity of that kind is nothing more or less than the end of discipleship. In such a religion there is trust in God, but no following of Christ���.
Discipleship without Jesus Christ is a way of our own choosing. It may be the ideal way. It may even lead to martyrdom, but it is devoid of all promise. Jesus will certainly reject it���.���

The Cost of Discipleship

Saint John Cardinal Newman wrote that obedience has a value that is recognized by reason and natural conscience. For Newman, like Bonhoeffer, faith and obedience are one. We’re wired with an innate desire to find objects to revere.

“Man,” he declared, “is born to obey as much as command.” Newman urged his parishioners to practice obedience through three methods:

Offering to God the responsible performance of mundane duties, tasks that are neither important nor interesting. Next, in yielding to others when we need not yield and doing unpleasant service, that we could otherwise avoid. These, Newman argued, “sharpen the virtue of obedience.” And last to obey the Magisterium.

���God knows what is my greatest happiness, but I do not. There is no rule about what is happy and good; what suits one would not suit another. And the ways by which perfection is reached vary very much; the medicines necessary for our souls are very different from each other. Thus God leads us by strange ways; we know He wills our happiness, but we neither know what our happiness is, nor the way. We are blind; left to ourselves we should take the wrong way; we must leave it to Him.���
��� John Henry Newman

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Young woman with poster in front of people protesting about climate changing on the street… climate emergency.Climate Change: The Activists are both right and wrong

The activists are right: our created world and everything in it is suffering and in danger. But the climate change activists are wholly wrong in their belief that ending fossil fuels, all carbon dioxide emissions, eating meat, or decreasing the population will fix us. No government, institution, or law can save the planet and its inhabitants.

So, what, then?

We’re done for, like climate change activists predict? And there’s nothing we can do?

Hardly, in fact, we’re far more in control than we think. Much has already been done, but it isn’t packaged the way fixers prefer: gigantic windfarms or solar energy costing billions: tangibles.

First, some background.

We must recall that all of humanity’s problems began with our first parents’ disobedience.

The human urge to build runs deep. Archaeologists trace our race���s history through the evidence of settlements, whether dwellings for the living or tombs for the dead. Scripture, too, shows man forth as builder, but this trait is acquired, not original. 

���In the beginning��� there were no houses. Primordial man lived in a garden, at ease with a creation well disposed to him. Boundaries between himself and other creatures were uncalled-for. In Eden, all Adam needed to thrive was laid out before him. For food he had ���every plant yielding seed���. He drank from a paradisal river, the sweetness of whose waters we, poor banished children of Eve, cannot imagine. 

In the first stage of man���s existence, that of innocence, Eden was a congenial habitat; at the same time, it symbolised a more vital harmony. What truly gave life to man, and joy, was not just the abundance of the land; it was his Godlikeness. 

Later sages would celebrate this mode of being by virtue of dim remembrance when they spoke of it as an indwelling. A Psalm titled, ���A Prayer of Moses, the man of God���, begins with the line, ���Lord, you have been our dwelling place���. Centuries later, St Paul spoke of God as the ultimate reality in which ���we live and move and have our being���, citing Greek poetry���s best intuitions back to the Athenians. Moses and Paul had known divine intimacy. The first had been enveloped by God���s Presence, remaining aglow with a radiance not of this earth. The second had been caught up to the third heaven. Neither, though, had known, like Adam, a state of being in which God was an all-sufficient principle of subsistence. The communion with God which for man before the fall was the human condition as such is known to us now only in graced flashes. It remains, though, the norm towards which we strive as humanity rises towards the eschaton where God shall again be ���all in all���. 

Coram Fratibus: On a Couplet by T.S. Eliot

Earth and moon on the background of outer space with a beautiful nebula, 3d illustrationDay of Prayer for the Care of Creation.

Monday wasn’t just Labor Day; it was the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation. A couple of months after releasing his encyclical, Laudato Si in 2015, Pope Francis established September 1st as the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation. He did so at the suggestion of Orthodox bishop John Zizioulas of Pergamon.

The great Zizioulas took advantage of the opportunity to introduce the significance of September 1 as the first day of their liturgical year and as a moment to pray and reflect on creation. He reminded the audience that it was in 1989 that the Orthodox first invited ���the whole Christian world��� to pray together on that special day. Unexpectedly, he renewed the invitation: ���Might this not become a date for such prayer for all Christians?��� The Holy Father was quick to accept. A month later, he officially proclaimed September 1 as World Day of Prayer for the Catholic Church. 

Creation Day: A Gift from the Orthodox Church

Pope Francis’s and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew’s brief message warrants reflection, zealous prayer, and our reparations:

JOINT MESSAGE of  Pope Francis and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew on the World Day of Prayer for Creation

The story of creation presents us with a panoramic view of the world. Scripture reveals that, ���in the beginning���, God intended humanity to cooperate in the preservation and protection of the natural environment. At first, as we read in Genesis, ���no plant of the field was yet in the earth and no herb of the field had yet sprung up ��� for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was no one to till the ground��� (2:5). The earth was entrusted to us as a sublime gift and legacy, for which all of us share responsibility until, ���in the end���, all things in heaven and on earth will be restored in Christ (cf. Eph 1:10). Our human dignity and welfare are deeply connected to our care for the whole of creation.

However, ���in the meantime���, the history of the world presents a very different context. It reveals a morally decaying scenario where our attitude and behaviour towards creation obscures our calling as God���s co-operators. Our propensity to interrupt the world���s delicate and balanced ecosystems, our insatiable desire to manipulate and control the planet���s limited resources, and our greed for limitless profit in markets ��� all these have alienated us from the original purpose of creation. We no longer respect nature as a shared gift; instead, we regard it as a private possession. We no longer associate with nature in order to sustain it; instead, we lord over it to support our own constructs.

The consequences of this alternative worldview are tragic and lasting. The human environment and the natural environment are deteriorating together, and this deterioration of the planet weighs upon the most vulnerable of its people. The impact of climate change affects, first and foremost, those who live in poverty in every corner of the globe. Our obligation to use the earth���s goods responsibly implies the recognition of and respect for all people and all living creatures. The urgent call and challenge to care for creation are an invitation for all of humanity to work towards sustainable and integral development.

Therefore, united by the same concern for God���s creation and acknowledging the earth as a shared good, we fervently invite all people of goodwill to dedicate a time of prayer for the environment on 1 September.  On this occasion, we wish to offer thanks to the loving Creator for the noble gift of creation and to pledge commitment to its care and preservation for the sake of future generations. After all, we know that we labour in vain if the Lord is not by our side (cf. Ps 126-127), if prayer is not at the centre of our reflection and celebration. Indeed, an objective of our prayer is to change the way we perceive the world in order to change the way we relate to the world. The goal of our promise is to be courageous in embracing greater simplicity and solidarity in our lives.

We urgently appeal to those in positions of social and economic, as well as political and cultural, responsibility to hear the cry of the earth and to attend to the needs of the marginalized, but above all to respond to the plea of millions and support the consensus of the world for the healing of our wounded creation. We are convinced that there can be no sincere and enduring resolution to the challenge of the ecological crisis and climate change unless the response is concerted and collective, unless the responsibility is shared and accountable, unless we give priority to solidarity and service.

What does God want?

In a masterful homily, Be Opened, last October, Bishop Barron rhetorically answers the question,

“What Does God Want?”

“”He wants his creation to recover its lost integrity…”Jesus,” says Bishop Barron, is the icon of the invisible God, the visible representation of the God of Israel…whatever he’s saying or doing is explaining who God is and what God is about.”

“And it’s not just an anthropological problem. No. Sin affects all of creation.”

Climate change: the activists are both right and wrong.

How does my sin affect all of creation?

I am imagining a progressive environmentalist asking that question, “How does my sin affect all of creation?” maybe sardonically. She would be puzzled on two levels. First, the concept of sin would be alien. Secondly, a claim that her bad actions negatively affect others would seem absurd.

Modern Woman and Her Psyche

Sin is not in my lexicon, dear friend���
I do what���s good, defined my way. The end.

No sense of sin? Friend, then how do you know
the right, the wrong, the which-way-to-go?

Honey, I simply do what I think right:
I never harm, I give no spit, no fight.

Darling, how do you know your ���right��� is right?
Which one authority supports this might?

Authority? Why ask me that? My might
is right! My kindness clearly guides my sight.

What about consequence, sorrow, remorse?
Sacrifices, mercy, and love, full course.

Love? You fool, what are you talking about?

Oh God, you want me to believe, no doubt.

Beloved dear, I���m praying that you know,
it���s sin in lexicon that lets love show.

-Maura Harrison, 09.28.2021

Where does this leave us believers?

Indeed where?

For years following my conversion, my newfound faith functioned, at times, I was told, as a hammer to my friend’s anvil of unbelief. And so I learned, painfully, that my words alone could not convert unless, of course, they’re inspired. Each moment of our lives is imbued with sanctity; we make them holy by remaining in Jesus. It’s taken me a lifetime to learn this. But some learn all they need to know far earlier. Like twenty-four-year-old Carlos Frassati (at the time of his death), who is being canonized today. Pope John Paul called him “The Man of the Beatitudes” because of the clarity and purity of his focus. Two years before he died, Carlos spoke to fellow young Catholics. His words are those of a desert father.

…Prayer is the noble supplication which we lift up to the throne of God.   It is the most efficient means to obtain from God the graces which we need, and especially the strength of persevering in these times, in which the hatred of the sons of the devil is breaking out violently against the sheep who are faithful to the fold.

In recommending heartfelt prayer to you, I am including all the practices of piety, first of all the most Holy Eucharist.

And remembering that apostle of the Holy Eucharist, the Holy Father Pius X2 of venerable memory, I urge you with all the strength of my soul to approach the Eucharistic Table as often as possible.   Feed on this Bread of the Angels from which you will draw the strength to fight inner struggles, the struggles against passions and against all adversities, because Jesus Christ has promised to those who feed themselves with the most Holy Eucharist, eternal life and the necessary graces to obtain it…

And when you become totally consumed by this Eucharistic Fire, then you will be able to thank with greater awareness the Lord God who has called you to be part of his flock and you will enjoy that peace which those who are happy according to the world have never tasted.  Because true happiness, young people, does not consist in the pleasures of the world and in earthly things, but in peace of conscience which we can have only if we are pure in heart and in mind…

And in order to bring these poor words of mine to an end, let me cry out with you:   Long live Jesus Christ!  Long live the Pope!

Pier Giorgio Frassati

From: “Pier Giorgio Frassati, Letters to his Friends and Family”
ST PAULS/Alba House, 2009 ….

The post Climate Change: The Activists are Both Right and Wrong appeared first on Lin Weeks Wilder.

Caravaggio Salom�� with the Head of John the BaptistLittle Great Friday…

Among them that are born of women there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist��� (Matthew 11: 11).

Each year, on August 29th, the Christian liturgy celebrates the Feast of the Beheading of John the Baptist. Herod arrested John, “on account of Herodias,” his brother’s wife. The Baptizer publicly censured the King and his wife, proclaiming that “it was not lawful to have your brother’s wife.” Saint Mark writes that Herodias “harbored a grudge against John and wanted to kill him, but was unable to do so.”

In our sister Eastern church, the Feast of the Beheading of John is a “little Great Friday.”

On Great Friday, people murdered God, crucified God. On today���s holy great feast, people murdered the greatest of all men. It is not I who chose to use the expression ���the greatest.��� What are my praises of the great and glorious Forerunner of the Lord, whom the Lord praised more than anyone among men, more than any of the apostles, the Angels, the Prophets, the Righteous Ones, the Sages? For the Lord declared of him:

Among them that are born of women there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist��� (Matthew 11: 11).

In all Creation, there exists no greater praise.

Homily on the Feast of the Beheading of John the Baptist

This King, who “was very much perplexed” by John, if we let him, can cause us unease. Saint Mark writes that Herod feared John: he knew John to be a righteous and holy man. When he heard him speak, he liked to listen to him. The King recognizes just who John the Baptizer is.

He knew, didn’t he, that marrying his brother’s wife was a sin?

We feel unease.

Carravagio’s stunning painting eloquently depicts the effects of Herodias’ horrific command. Our gaze stills on the face of her daughter, often called Salome. And imagine the lost joy and perhaps innocence of a young girl, filled with delight at the reception of her dance.

“Mother, what shall I ask for?”

Before pondering the girl’s horrifically cruel, selfish mother, I think of the man, Herod. All too easily, I can place myself in his shoes. It’s a party, after all, with all the most influential people I know partaking of the largess of my kingdom, and it’s my birthday! The wine is flowing liberally, and I am drinking far more than my portion when suddenly I see something so beautiful that it stops my heart. And when I open my mouth, reason disappears, leaving behind only foolishness and an unbridled tongue. The minute I made the promise, I regretted it, knowing that it would come back and demand far more than I am prepared to give.

These stories aren’t just another Bible story. Rather, they are always mirrors. Like Herod, each of us has placed ourselves in a corner with promises that never should have been made. And worse? Like Herod, foolishly delivering on the promise.

What of Herodias?

Indeed, what of the sister-in-law of a king?

We can assume that the demons of most of the seven deadly sins controlled her. How else could she have counseled her daughter in such a way? Herodias’ “harboring a grudge” against John for speaking the truth recalls a disturbing essay written by CS Lewis. It was an opinion piece written in The Saturday Evening Post shortly before he died on the same day President Kennedy was killed. And it turned out to be the last words he wrote. His title?

“We have no right to happiness.”

Lewis’s last words pierce these last self-absorbed decades of the Western world. And reach all the way back to King Herod and his unlawful union with his sister-in-law.

���After all,��� said Clare. ���they had a right to happiness.���

We were discussing something that once happened in our own neighborhood. Mr. A. had deserted Mrs. A. and got his divorce in order to marry Mrs. B., who had likewise got her divorce in order to marry Mr. A. And there was certainly no doubt that Mr. A. and Mrs. B. were very much in love with one another. If they continued to be in love, and if nothing went wrong with their health or their income, they might reasonably expect to be very happy.

It was equally clear that they were not happy with their old partners. Mrs. B. had adored her husband at the outset. But then he got smashed up in the war. It was thought he had lost his virility, and it was known that he had lost his job. Life with him was no longer what Mrs. B. had bargained for. Poor Mrs. A., too. She had lost her looks���and all her liveliness. It might be true, as some said, that she consumed herself by bearing his children and nursing him through the long illness that overshadowed their earlier married life.

You mustn���t, by the way, imagine that A. was the sort of man who nonchalantly threw a wife away like the peel of an orange he���d sucked dry. Her suicide was a terrible shock to him. We all knew this, for he told us so himself. ���But what could I do?��� he said. ���A man has a right to happiness. I had to take my one chance when it came….���

…The ancestry of Clare���s maxim, ���They have a right to happiness,��� is august. In words that are cherished by all civilized men, but especially by Americans, it has been laid down that one of the rights of man is a right to ���the pursuit of happiness.��� And now we get to the real point.

What did the writers of that august declaration mean?

Read the entire piece here.

Saint Simon Popovich– Saint Justin

is the author of the explanation of the Little Great Friday that began this piece. The homily of the recent Orthodox saint is long, but it warrants our attention.

My brethren, a great Mystery is taking place through this Feast, a Mystery like unto threads stretching through and making He, the All-merciful Miracle Worker, looks upon the unfortunate widowed mother, and resurrects her son, someone unknown to anyone but the mother and Himself. Yet here, Lord, Your Forerunner lies dead, destroyed. Why don���t You resurrect him? You resurrected the daughter of Jairus, head of the synagogue. Yet here is the one whom You called the greatest among those born of women, beheaded by the malefactor- king. Lord, guard Your Truth, defend Your first Apostle, Your first Martyr, Your first Evangelist, Your first Angel in the flesh, Your first Prophet, Your first Confessor. Resurrect him! Yet the Savior remains silent, and retreats to a desert place to pray to God. Why, O Lord?… In today���s Gospel reading, you heard the disciples announce to the Savior that the Forerunner has been beheaded…

Because the Holy Forerunner must also become the first Apostle to Hades, to death���s kingdom. The Holy Forerunner appeared in death���s kingdom as the first Evangelist, in order to preach the Good News of Christ to all of the souls in the kingdom of death. He appeared as well to all of them as the first Martyr, to show that people will joyously go to their deaths for True God, the Lord Jesus Christ, Savior of the world, until death is defeated and destroyed. They will not fear death, for they will be more powerful than death. Through his bodily Resurrection, the Lord grants the body victory over death. The glorious Forerunner also entered into the kingdom of death as the Forerunner of all of the true Confessors of Christ in the world, all of the true Prophets in the world, to announce to all of the souls in the kingdom of death: Lo, death is defeated, the demons destroyed, the kingdom of death will be destroyed when, in a little while, the Lord appears here, and you will be led out of this horror and into heavenly joy, into the Kingdom On High.

This was why the Lord remained silent, why he did not resurrect the greatest man among those born of women, for that man was to complete his apostolic, evangelistic, martyric, confessor���s spiritual struggle in Hades, in the kingdom of death. ��� to which had departed the souls of all people from Adam to the time of the coming of the Savior into this world…

Homily on the Feast of the Beheading of John the Baptist

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The battle over health:

Health isn’t a word that should invoke military imagery. However, the number of Americans dying from heart disease, specifically, President Franklin Roosevelt’s death from heart disease, led President Harry Truman to pass the National Heart Act and fund the largest epidemiological study to date: The Framingham Heart Study. From that data came the understanding that lifestyle: diet, exercise, and measures to mitigate stress were keys to longevity.

With his first heart attack at forty-six, President Lyndon Johnson announced the “War against heart disease” and established Medicare and Medicaid. Over the next several decades, death from heart disease dropped by seventy percent.

Each successive President added his personal touch:

Carter empowered the originally weak and ineffective Federal Drug Administration,With Reagan’s passage of the Bayh-Dole Act, pharmaceutical companies could patent drugs, formerly public domain.With successive massive infusions of federal money to fund research, the formerly cottage industry of medicine transformed into big business.So it’s a battle won, right?

Wrong.

Business and money are closely intertwined.

“The rise of reason did not take power into account.”

The Social Transformation of American Medicine

The twentieth century saw the professions of law and medicine enjoying an extended alliance where medical decision-making was awarded with more and more autonomy by the state and federal governments, such that the profession of medicine was infused with more self-rule than had ever before been granted. This new alliance was deserving of a new concept and new language by the sociologists studying the dizzying speed with which medicine was gaining political and cultural power.

The word profession describes a group of individuals whose knowledge, education, vocabulary, decision-making and yes, even poor outcomes, could be evaluated only by one another. Individuals who lacked specialized training could not reasonably judge the practice of the physician.

Doctors were individuals who were above the common law because their specialized knowledge and expertise placed them outside of the usual human foibles of greed, immorality, corruption and ignorance; only other doctors were permitted to testify for or against physicians accused of malpractice or negligence. Such was the agreement between medicine and law for much of the last century.”

The Fragrance Shed By A Violet

Remember Tom Brady?

Famed quarterback Tom Brady’s claims that soft drinks like Coke and fast foods were poison, along with his announcement that a holistic practitioner, not a physician, helped heal his ACL and MCL injuries, have ignited a new battle. Brady’s alliance is with a holistic practitioner named Alex Guerrero, a quack, liar, and charlatan, if you believe the detractors. 

The new battle is sparked by people intent on controlling their health and helping others do the same. Tom Brady and, most recently, Robert Kennedy, Jr. are famed examples.

“I had doctors with the highest and best education in our country tell me that I wouldn’t be able to play football again, that I would need multiple surgeries on my knee for my staph infection, that I would need a new ALC, a new MCL, and that I wouldn’t be able to play with my kids when I’m older….I’ve chosen a different approach, and that’s what I’m providing to other athletes.”

Ten years later, we know what Brady’s health regimen accomplished. The only NFL quarterback to win seven Super Bowls, Tom Brady won his last one at the age of forty-three.

Make America healthy again.

With Robert Kennedy Jr. as head of Health and Human Services, we have an ally in improving our health; all that is lacking is the will and the discipline. The overhauls in his “Make America Healthy Again” may read like Trumpian hyperbole to many. But the data are there.

The COVID pandemic highlighted the high risks of obesity and diabetes. The incidence of which is soaring, as are deaths from heart disease, wiping out the gains from the last century.“The U.S. continues to outspend other nations on health care, devoting nearly twice as much of its GDP��as the average OECD country. U.S. health spending reached nearly 17 percent of GDP in 2019, far above the 10 other countries compared in this report. Moreover, high U.S. out-of-pocket health spending per person, the��second-highest��in the OECD, makes it difficult for many Americans to access needed care.”Despite all the money, the American medical outcomes rank lowest when compared to other nations. Our health status is inferior to others’ from birth to an earlier death.A quick scan of “Make Our Children Healthy Again” compels our attention.Stress

When I decided to add a chapter on stress in my textbook, the Chief of Cardiology at the hospital where I was working scoffed. Like too many doctors, he dismissed Hans Selye’s brilliant research, most likely because he didn’t understand it.

“I am so….stressed out right now!”

Usually when we think or say this, our problem isn’t stress but rather frustration, anger or confusion. Stress, however is no fleeting emotion but a condition which when experienced by animals and humans alike, can kill. 

The chronic insomnia, loss of purpose in our lives, anxiety about the future, or any of the myriad of reasons our psyches can harm us are tragically underestimated. While in graduate school, I encountered Hans Selye. And then Norman Cousins, before and during the years he taught at the Stanford Medical School. And I learned that the power we have for harming or healing ourselves is almost unlimited.

A story of my personal experience:

While walking rapidly down the hall of the new hospital, in the new city, new state…new everything, three days after the move I had never planned to make, I was delighted to see the face of a good friend from Houston. I never questioned why this physician would be in Massachusetts on a Monday morning in November. Doubling my speed to catch up with him, his name Steve! was about to burst out of my mouth. But the stranger turned to look quizzically at me and extended his hand to say, ���Hi, aren���t you the new Hospital Director? Welcome, my name is…��� I knew then that my level of stress was off the charts, certainly greater than I had ever experienced.

My visual ���hallucination��� that day signaled me that I needed to do something. And quickly to deal with the emotions that I had successfully boxed up during the summer my life blew up. Already, I was working out like a maniac. I started my long days with a minimum of an hour workout. And I did several-mile runs on the weekends with the Doberman puppy who was saving my life. I had learned meditation during the few years I had flirted with Buddhism, but I simply could not do it; the mind chatter was loud and unceasing.

So I began to write poetry. As an undergrad English major, poets like EE Cummings, TS Eliot, Auden, and Rilke were opaque to me. I never understood the allegories, my mind far too literal and concrete. Over time, I gathered enough material to compile into a book, which I self-published years ago: Searching for the Sacred.

Someone once called poetry the language of the heart. It is as good a definition as I have ever found.

Certain things are in our control.

Norman Cousins’s fame had been assured as editor of the Saturday Review. But his experiences with American medicine led to a second career: teaching in a medical school. Told he would be dead within six months to a year from ankylosing spondylitis, Cousins researched Selye’s concepts of stress and eustress. He intuited that his hectic travel schedule, along with environmental pollutants, had caused adrenal exhaustion. Cousins reasoned that eustress could combat the autoimmune storm that was killing him, persuading his doctor to partner with him in his treatment.

He published his compelling story in Anatomy of An Illness.

I have learned never to underestimate the capacity of the human mind and body to regenerate — even when prospects seem most wretched. The life force may be the least understood force on earth.

Anatomy of an Illness

Two decades later, Cousins suffered an occlusion of his left coronary artery, the “widow maker.” In The Healing Heart, the author discloses how, once again, he was able to summon his body’s natural healing responses. This time, however, Cousins writes of his inability to create a partnership with his doctor, the Chief of Cardiology at UCLA. The cardiologist did not believe Cousins when told that the incessant treadmill tests were far more dangerous than playing tennis. Playing tennis, Cousins knew, created physiologic relief, eustress, while anticipation of the treadmill caused an alarming sense of ‘pass/fail.’ Despite countless attempts to convey what he’d learned about stress and his own body, the doctor was intractable.

Therefore, Cousins fired him.

These two men, Norman Cousins and Tom Brady, demonstrate that even among elite practitioners, medical judgment can be flawed and that our bodies possess inherent wisdom.

A last caveat

Neither Cousins nor Brady mentions God as the guarantor of our lives, from birth to death. However, this piece would be incomplete without that truth. Stephen White’s What Makes the Man? beautifully explains, “The answer provided by Gaudium et Spes is as complete as any you���re ever likely to find. But the answer is not a what, it is a Who: ���The truth is that only in the mystery of the incarnate Word does the mystery of man take on light.���

Meanwhile every man remains to himself an unsolved puzzle, however obscurely he may perceive it. . . .To this questioning only God fully and most certainly provides an answer as He summons man to higher knowledge and humbler probing.���

Gaudium Et Spes

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The razor���s edge of forgiveness

���Forgive your enemies. ���

Since forgiveness was just as unnatural 2100 years ago as it is now, the Apostle Peter seeks to bind it. You will recall that Peter was a pious Jew and knew the Mosaic law. The law from Leviticus, ���Love your neighbor as yourself,��� and in both Deuteronomy and Exodus denounced the hatred of fellow countrymen ���in your heart,��� and commanded the loving of ���even the stranger.���

And yet, Peter asked, ���Lord, how many times must I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?���

Jesus answered, ���I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.��� According to the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus explains further, lest there be any mitigation of His command to love even -perhaps especially- our enemies. He spells out the awful consequences of hatred, bitterness, refusal to endure all things.

Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand bags of gold was brought to him. Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt.

���At this the servant fell on his knees before him. ���Be patient with me,��� he begged, ���and I will pay back everything.��� The servant���s master took pity on him, canceled the debt and let him go.

���But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred silver coins. He grabbed him and began to choke him. ���Pay back what you owe me!��� he demanded.

���His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, ���Be patient with me, and I will pay it back.���

���But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt���

���This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart.���

The Gospel of Matthew

It is a razor���s edge, isn���t it?

Because surely there are people whose actions warrant punishment, right?

Serial killers?

Pedophiles?

Abortionists?

The people who managed to overlook the coarse, arrogant, boorish behavior of President Trump and voted for him again?

Bringing it closer to home, the neighbor who borrowed my brand new truck and scratched the heck out of it?

The ���best friend��� who seduced my husband?

The doctor whose mistaken diagnosis caused the death of my only son?

The uncle who raped me when I was four?

The list is long; in fact, it is never-ending. Our innate response is a yearning for vengeance���justice, when faced with patent evil- evoking the razor���s edge of forgiveness. But Jesus instructs us to forgive “from the heart.”

What does that mean?

Remember the beautiful and brilliant film, The Shack?

Strangely, for me, the film clarified several aspects of this magnificent story of unbearable pain, guilt, loss, and redemption. Until I saw the movie, I had not considered the significance of the title or why the wounded father was brought to a shack.

Mack: Why did you bring me back here?
Papa: Because here is where you got stuck.

The Shack: Valuable Lessons About Opinion

A talk on forgiveness,

Shortly after my conversion, I was invited to do a talk for a women’s conference on forgiveness. One of those flattering invitations we agree to. Until the date approaches and then the meltdown..

“I have an hour talk to do this coming Saturday! Holy ###%%%&&&!!!” 

Panic- pure and unadulterated.

What could I say to a few hundred Catholic women?

Women who had been Catholic far longer than my meager two years?

And who seemed far holier than I would ever be?

But my husband’s Christian talk radio came to the rescue when I heard a story. Borrowing his car for an errand less than a week before the conference, I listened to the radio show he had programmed. In that providential mercy of God the subject of that show was forgiveness.

An 1829 court case functions as an allegory for us who are incapable of forgiveness. After refusing President Andrew Jackson’s pardon, Wilson’s case was appealed to the Supreme Court. Wilson claimed that he committed the crime and therefore he deserved to die.

Eureka!, I thought, this is what I’ll discuss…excited, psyched. This is precisely what happens between humanity and God; no one can miss the parallels.

However, I was the last speaker of the day. Listening to the five other speakers, my self-confidence evaporated. None of their talks was even remotely related to my subject matter.

How could I have misunderstood this topic so completely?

The speaker right before me is a well-known Catholic writer and activist. Her topics were gender inequality, the economics of women in the workplace, and verbal and sexual abuse of women by men. Forgiveness wasn’t mentioned. Without looking at me, my friend Kate reached over to squeeze my hand, hard. By the time I stood to walk to the lectern, my knees were shaking, literally.

In my former career, I’d done countless talks before large audiences. Therefore, I knew my fear would pass. I had worked hard on this talk, had prayed hard, and believed the points I was making were useful���Chief Justice John Marshall’s words couldn’t fail to pierce all hearts.

���The court cannot give the prisoner the benefit of the pardon, unless he claims the benefit of it���. It is a grant to him: it is his property, and he may accept it or not as he pleases.
A pardon is an act of grace, proceeding from the power entrusted with the execution of the laws���.
(But) delivery is not completed without acceptance. It may then be rejected by the person to whom it is tendered, and���we have no power in a court to force it.”

Chief Justice John Marshall

Suddenly, it was over. The applause was sustained, and a line of women waited to speak to me about what I’d said. It was a very long line. 

But there was one woman near the end of the line who flattened me. The woman smiled broadly at me. Then she said,

“I stood here in line to wait to talk with you because I thought you should know four angels were standing behind you during your entire talk.”

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How can they do that?

The woman in the above image personifies the reaction we’re intended to have when reading, or listening, and then discussing the news.

“How can they do that?”

The “that” being any of the dismally long list of politicians’ alleged conspiracies and criminal acts. Add to that the wealth amassed by certain American legislators above and beyond their salaries, eliciting our judgment along with jealousy and envy. Or maybe it’s a “newsworthy” story: a gruesome murder of an infant or family. If we cannot resist discussing all this, we commit sins of detraction and calumny.

A couple of years ago, probably during Lent, I resolved to “speak only of what is good, true, and noble. Of things that can help people.” It’s Saint Paul’s parting advice to the Philippians:

Rejoice in the Lord always. I shall say it again: rejoice!

Your kindness should be known to all. The Lord is near.

Have no anxiety at all, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, make your requests known to God.

Then the peace of God that surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.

Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.

Keep on doing what you have learned and received and heard and seen in me. Then the God of peace will be with you.

Letter to the Phillipians

I fail at this vow frequently. But each morning, I plan to speak only of that which can help people. Eventually, I trust, it will be habitual.

Saint Padre Pio

called the news, “The Gospel of the devil.” Before he died in 1968, Saint Padre Pio perceived the subtle goal of “breaking news”: To destroy our peace. Decades ago, the saint could see the fingerprints of the enemy: division, enmity, hatred, violence. Today, the subtlety has been erased, revealing the real motive-fear.

“I study the ecology of thought,” Hoffman said. “And how it has led to a State of Fear.” Professor Hoffman is a fictional character in Michael Crichton’s State of Fear. The book is far more than a fun read. No state of mind is more welcome to our ancient enemy, Satan, than fear. Doubt is not the opposite of faith; fear is.

Shortly after my conversion, while living on the East Coast, I did a series of talks about what it was like converting from atheism to Catholic Christianity. In an attempt to explain what atheism felt like, I would stomp my foot as hard as I could, raise my voice, and declare, “There’s no ground! Everything is possible!” If nothing else, my device woke people up.

This year, 2025, is the 1700th anniversary of the Nicene Creed.

Should that matter to us?

We believe in one God the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth,
of all things visible and invisible,
And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the only-begotten,
who was begotten of the Father before all ages, light from light,
true God from true God, begotten not created, consubstantial with the Father,
by whom all things were made; […]
And in the Holy Spirit, who is the Lord and giver of life, who proceeds from the Father,
who with the Father and the Son is co-adored and co-glorified,
who has spoken through the prophets […]. [10]

International Theological Commission

Let’s make dogma great again!

The phrase isn’t mine, but that of Father Benedict Kiely’s podcast in early January of this year. Father Kiely asks rhetorically why we should care about “fusty seventeen-hundred-year-old words” of the Nicene Creed. Quoting G.K. Cheaterton, Father Keily quips, “There are two kinds of people, the conscious dogmatists and the unconscious. I’ve always found the unconscious to be the most dogmatic.”

It’s no happenstance that John Henry Cardinal Newman is now a Doctor of the Church. The Oxford intellectual risked his entire career when he converted from the Anglican to the Roman Catholic Church in 1845. Newman spent his life at Oxford and witnessed the decline into liberalism by faculty who considered themselves superior. Beginning with honest zeal, these men “reformed” Oxford while falling victim to the “pride of reason.”

Father Kiely writes in a recent article that “Newman stated, as the most important point of his speech and apologia, that there was “one great mischief,” which he had from the “first opposed – the spirit of liberalism in religion….Sadly, and prophetically, he feared that, in his native land, it would have “formidable success.” Fast forward to a country where the monarch is still the head of the National Church, a theatre prop or stage-set with a vacuum behind it, passing legislation to kill the elderly and the sick, and murder the unborn up to the moment of birth. Truly, the great apostasia has been formidably successful in a post-Christian, or anti-Christian, England.”

“Liberalism in religion is the doctrine that there is no positive truth in religion, but that one creed is as good as another, and this is the teaching which is gaining substance and force daily. It is inconsistent with any recognition of any religion, as true. It teaches that all are to be tolerated, for all are matters of opinion.

Revealed religion is not a truth, but a sentiment and a taste; not an objective fact, not miraculous; and it is the right of each individual to make it say just what strikes his fancy. Devotion is not necessarily founded on faith…it must be borne in mind, that there is much in the liberalistic theory which is good and true; for example, not to say more, the precepts of justice, truthfulness, sobriety, self-command, benevolence, which, as I have already noted, are among its avowed principles, and the natural laws of society.

It is not till we find that this array of principles is intended to supersede, to block out, religion, that we pronounce it to be evil. There never was a device of the Enemy so cleverly framed and with such promise of success.”

Newman Centers: Lighthouses of Grace

And so, what?

Right.

Father Dino Vanin’s recent piece in the Catholic Journal warrants our attention.

By the time his gospel was available, Luke was writing to the grandchildren of those who physically saw Jesus. The enthusiasm and the expectation of their grandfathers and fathers must have faded away, replaced by lukewarm piety, resignation, aloofness…

Luke pointed out repeatedly that Jesus came to serve and to give his life in ransom for all people. He was among his disciple as the most insignificant slave. He had washed his disciples’ feet, therefore, as he said in Luke 22:27: “I am among you as the one who serves. He had served his disciples with his teachings, his example, his healing touch and, most importantly, by showing them how to live with unfading hope and how “to die” for one’s friends.  But Luke’s congregation had already forgotten most of it…

They had also forgotten how patiently, as the Book of Wisdom (18:6-9) indicates, their ancestors waited for the salvation of the just and the destruction of their foes. (Wisdom 18:7) Jesus waited 30 years in silence and obscurity before his service began. His teaching about being vigilant, attentive servants are placed by Luke (12:32-48) just after the stories of Martha, who was anxious about many things, instead of being anxious about the gifts that God had in store for her as Mary had done.

They are found also after the story of the foolish rich man who was anxious about piling up more earthly goods instead of piling up treasures of loving concern and care for his eternal life. Today, Jesus is saying to us all: If you want to be anxious, be anxious about God’s judgement on your performance as a servant; be anxious about vigilance, attentiveness and the availability of your service.

Thus, we have reasons to be concerned here. Unlike our ancestors, unlike Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Jacob, we have sudden bursts of enthusiasm followed by at least partial disengagement. We have times of intense caring, followed by quasi-indifference. We dream of a much brighter future for us and for the people around us, then we turn cynical and distant. The trouble lies with the length of time.

Apparently, we cannot keep up our hope, our attentiveness, our caring, our vigilance, and our dedication until the Lord comes again.  

The proclamation of the mystery of faith after the consecration of the bread and wine: We proclaim your Death, O Lord, and profess your resurrection Until the Lord comes again, means until the TOTAL CHRIST, Head and members, is served with constant, tender, loving care; until everyone is free from anguish, pain and sorrow; until love has conquered the last traces of selfishness and indifference; until God’s Kingdom is perfected. (Emphasis mine.)

Whenever need arises, we ought to be ready to pull up “our long tunics of piety and spirituality” to be svelte and prompt in the service of our neighbor. The lamp of our faith and trust in the Lord must be always bright enough for us to be directed to wherever someone needs our loving concern. They must also be burning ready because it is faith that enables us to see the Lord in the less fortunate, the lowly, the sorrowing, the needy, the least of his suffering members. 

The Lord is about to give us a stirring example of his disposition as servant; he will feed us his own flesh to eat; he will do it for a twofold purpose: as the key to prompt, loving and joyous service of each other, and as the key to entering his eternal Kingdom. Hence, since our Heavenly Father wants all of us to be reunited around the wedding table at the Supper of the Lamb, we shall pray for each other in earnest so that no one may be left out. And we shall approach this eucharistic table with eagerness to acquire the Lord’s inner disposition to prompt, loving and joyous service and to fill our hearts with unwavering hope of what awaits all faithful servants in heaven.

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King David, you, me and idlenessKing David, You, Me and Idleness

It isn’t as if King David opened his eyes that morning to ask, “What are the 3 most effective ways I can take this blessed God-Given-Life and invoke the worst conceivable miseries upon me and my beloved nation?”

Or “How can I best take the sacred anointing I was gifted with and immerse it in the depths of depravity?”

Every time I read the tragic account of David, I feel profound sympathy for this courageous warrior, this great leader consecrated by God as he falls victim to momentary temptation, for the horrifying dispersion of the consequences of his acts upon Israel and for each one of us.

I muse frequently about those first words, in the book of Samuel.

 ‘It was the new year and the month that the Kings went to battle but David sent Joab and all his officers and all of Israel and remained in Jerusalem.’

This image by Balage Balogh conveys a man with time on his hands, idly viewing his domain. Pregnant with those first few moments before his gaze lands on another man’s wife. Beautiful Bathsheeba, oblivious of the King standing high above the city on his veranda, seeing and desiring her, as she stripped. But could there be a motive for her decision to bathe on her roof during the day when she could be seen? She and every citizen in Jerusalem would know where King David lived. They would have followed his movements, in this case, his decision to stay away from the battlefield. Secure in her desirability, could a bored Bathsheeba have deliberately enticed the king?

David’s story isn’t just history, but if we ponder it, it can become allegorical, even functioning as a mirror.

It was the month the kings went to battle but

From my very first reading of Samuel’s words they evoke more than sadness. Instead, there is recognition: A profoundly heartrending understanding of his actions. I see myself…all of us, perhaps even you. Although his duty as a King was to be with his soldiers, David decided not to go with them. Most likely, he had never stayed back before; perhaps he was feeling his age, had a touch of the flu, or merely gave in to ennui.

I can easily place myself in the shoes of this man. As can you. If we listen, we hear echoes of our voices crying out, “I deserve this!”��

Which of us has never callously disregarded what we know to be right for reasons which even the noonday sun can never illuminate?

And then stood horrified at the consequences?

Aghast at what we have done, because of one single misstep?

One decision to relax, enjoy, forget, a momentary lapse to reward ourselves?

King David feels like a friend.

So much so that the ancient Israeli King appears in two of my novels. He helped me win an inner battle of putting flesh and bone to a character so far outside my experience that writing about him felt impossible. The notion of the ancient warrior’s interest in and friendship for another warrior did not seem far-fetched. Risky, I knew, but fitting.

The assassin named Joe Cairns, antagonist in The Price of Genius and Malthus Revisited, the third and fourth books in the Lindsey McCall mystery series, became one of my very favorite characters. The eerie friendship between King David and Joe makes Joe’s decision to become a hired killer almost comprehensible.

Furthermore, upon the completion of Plausible Liars last year, the title One Smooth Stone, a novel about the early life of King David, announced itself as my next book. Therefore, the pile of research books on David, Saul, and Samuel is deepening my friendship with the ancient king of Israel.

If you wonder at this peculiar jockeying between the modern and ancient worlds, I understand. When I tackled my first ancient novel, I, Claudia, I was disoriented and overwhelmed. What did I know about historical fiction? However, returning to cultures and religions that valued truth and life now feels normal.

Returning to idleness,

Long before I converted to Christianity, there was something dark and dangerous, even ominous about too much time on my hands. My mother’s inability to find meaning once her children had left taught me. Bored and depressed, she could not find her way out. Unhappiness seemed to haunt my mother; the key to happiness eluded her, and therefore served as a magnet to me. Over time, inactivity and idleness became habitual and caused her horrendous medical and psychological problems.

St. Benedict takes it so seriously that he writes this:

Idleness is the enemy of the soul. 

Rule of Benedict

It is the first sentence of Chapter 48: On the Daily Manual Labor in the Rule of Benedict. Note his choice of article. Back in the fifth century, the saint knew the problem of too much time on our hands was not one of many but the singular enemy of our souls.

Imagine it!

In Saint Benedict’s Rome, water had to be carried in buckets from communal wells that were manually dug. Sanitation did not exist. Infectious diseases were endemic because of contamination and contagion.In twenty-first-century America, we see around us the dreadful consequences of large numbers of people with too much time on their hands and too much food in their bellies.

Although there are some baby boomers over 60 or ���over 65ers��� who would be content with a life of leisure: sleeping as late as they please with all the time in the world ��� most of us are happiest when we are working, studying, learning, risking, making a difference and using our gifts, regardless of our age…

If, while reading this piece, idle thoughts have been drifting across your brain, thoughts like:

���Could I really write a book?��� or ���I���m x-y years old, I���m way too old to start learning a, b or c��� or ��� I always wanted to…���

Please know the voice has a name: Stephen Pressfield calls it ���Resistance��� in his splendid book. The War of Art.��It could be the voice of your long-dead mother or first husband who always said you were stupid. The source of the voice does not matter. What matters is only this: That dream, hope may be the reason you are here.��

Is Retirement a Cancer of the Soul?

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