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Featured Article
Mar
31
Allow Me to Introduce Myself!
Filed Under Contributors, Michelle Friery | 2 Comments
Hello to everyone!
It is an honor and a privilege to be able to share my thoughts with all of you. I am an adult convert and have gone through the Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults (RCIA) class, so I share Reynor’s conviction that we have much to learn about God from one another. Learning about God from books such as the Scriptures and the writings of the Saints is critically important, however we also need to see how God is at work right now in the lives of our friends and neighbors - and even of our enemies. Muslims identify Christians as “People of the Book,” but this is not sufficient. We are first and foremost the People of the Eucharist, the People of the God Who Dwells Among Us. Ours is a living, visible, vibrant faith in and relationship with Jesus Christ, who lives in the Blessed Sacrament reserved in every Tabernacle of every Catholic parish in the world.
Since this is my first post, I thought I should introduce myself. As I said, I am a convert. I was received into the Church during the Easter Vigil of 1999, two months shy of my 31st birthday. This was the result of a 20-year search for The Truth about life and the mysteries of the universe. I intend to share the details of my conversion in future posts (at least the important parts - 20 years is a long time!), but I will give you the highlights.
I was reared as a generic, unchurched Protestant although I was dragged off to church a few times. My mother gave me a King James Bible when I was 7 years old, and I started to see that what I was taught about God at church and elsewhere didn’t match what the Bible said. I started asking questions, but no one gave me any good answers. For example, I was taught that salvation is by faith alone, but Jesus said “If you do not forgive others, neither will your heavenly Father forgive you.” The answer I received for this (and for many other conflicts between doctrine and Scripture) was, “That’s what it says, but that’s not what it means.”
By the time I was 15 years old, I came to the conclusion that even though I didn’t know what WAS true, I knew what was NOT true: Christianity. I spent the next 11 years looking everywhere for The Truth. I wanted very much to be an Atheist, but I was never able to shake my belief that someone, somewhere was in charge of this mess called life and the universe. I believe God was able to use this very thin thread of quasi-belief to draw me to Himself and His Church. I began studying the Catholic Church in 1994, and started RCIA in September of 1997.
As for other details about myself, I served in the U.S. Navy as an aircraft structural mechanic for 5 years, and I am a veteran of Operation Desert Shield. I started college after leaving the Navy, but had to quit due to extenuating circumstances. I have held a variety of odd jobs over the years - everything from selling candy bars to inmates at one of our local jails to working as a floral designer. I am now back in school at West Virginia State University, pursuing a B.A. in Art. I hope to eventually obtain a master’s degree in Theology because I love the Church, and I would like to be able to teach the Faith to others.
I am grateful to Reynor for giving me this opportunity, and I am looking forward to being able to talk about God with all of you!
Mar
31
Co-Workers of the Truth 3/31
Filed Under Co-Workers of the Truth, Quotes & Excerpts | Leave a Comment
In his writings while in prison, Bonhoeffer once remarked that even the Christian must live today quasi Deus non daretur - as if there were no God. He must not involve God in the perplexities of his everyday life, but must assume responsibility himself for the course of that life. Personally, I would prefer to state this thought in exactly the opposite way: in practice, even one for whom the existence of God, the world of faith, has grown dim, should live today quasi Deus esset - as if God really exists.
He should live under the standard of justice, which is not just a product of our own minds, but the norm by which we ourselves our measured. He should live subject to the love that awaits us ad that loves even us. He should love under the challenge of eternity.
In fact, one who consciously lets himself be formed by this concept will see that it is the only way that the human race can be saved. God - and the he alone- is our salvation. This unprecedented truth, which we so long regarded as a scarcely tenable theory, has become the most practical formula for our present history. And one who - even if perhaps at first only hesitantly - entrusts himself to this difficult yet inescapable as if, who lives as if there were a God, will become ever more aware that this as if is the only reality. He will perceive its justification, its inner strength. And he will know profoundly and indelibly why Christianity is still necessary today as the genuinely good news by which we are redeemed.
From: Dogma und Verkundigung, p. 449
Mar
31
John 11: 45 - 56
Filed Under Today's Gospel | 1 Comment
45 Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what he did, believed in him;
46 but some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done.
47 So the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered the council, and said, “What are we to do? For this man performs many signs.
48 If we let him go on thus, every one will believe in him, and the Romans will come and destroy both our holy place and our nation.”
49 But one of them, Ca’iaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, “You know nothing at all;
50 you do not understand that it is expedient for you that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation should not perish.”
51 He did not say this of his own accord, but being high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus should die for the nation,
52 and not for the nation only, but to gather into one the children of God who are scattered abroad.
53 So from that day on they took counsel how to put him to death.
54 Jesus therefore no longer went about openly among the Jews, but went from there to the country near the wilderness, to a town called E’phraim; and there he stayed with the disciples.
55 Now the Passover of the Jews was at hand, and many went up from the country to Jerusalem before the Passover, to purify themselves.
56 They were looking for Jesus and saying to one another as they stood in the temple, “What do you think? That he will not come to the feast?”
Mar
30
John 10: 31 - 42
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31 The Jews took up stones again to stone him. Read more
Mar
30
Co-Workers of the Truth 3/30
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“The Church comes awake in our souls.” This sentence of Romano Guardini was formulated after much reflection, for what he was really saying was that the Church is recognized and experienced as something interior that does not stand outside us like something material, but actually lives within us. If the Church has therefore been regarded primarily as structure and organization, we have now a new insight: we ourselves are the Church, which is more than just an organization: she is an organism of the Holy Spirit, something living that has an interior claim on all of us. This new awareness of the Church found its verbal expression in the words “the Mystical Body of Christ”. A new and liberating experience of the Church was expressed in this formula, which Guardini; toward the end of his life, in the year in which Vatican Council II promulgated the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, reformulated in the words: the Church “…is not a contrived and constructed institution…, but a living being…She lives on through all time; becoming, as living things become; changing…and yet in her essence remaining always the same, and her heart is Christ…” It is hard to convey the excitement, the joy, that this concept aroused in souls at that time. It was once again evident that the Church is much more than we had realized; that we support her by our living faith just as she supports us. It had once again become evident that the Church is an organic growth that continues through the ages even to today. It had once again become evident that the mystery of the Incarnation remains present in the Church: Christ will live forever through all the ages of ages.
From: L’Osservatore Romano 15, no.46 (1985), p.4
Mar
29
Do Women Want Too Much?
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By Laraine Bennett March 28, 2007
There are two sides to everything.
Quite a few men who read my article “What Women Want” graciously accepted the criticism I presented on behalf of single women. However, a few were more trenchant (one fellow was downright angry) and challenged my premise that women want heroes.
“I disagree that women want heroes,” said one gentleman. “Women want servants.” He goes on to write, “They will never admit it, and it can certainly ‘translate’ to ‘hero’ in a limited concept, but women of all ages want young, attractive men to wait on them and make them happy. Women might be initially attracted to brave and strong men but the relationship endures only if the income level of the ‘hero’ is sufficient to satisfy the woman’s long-term expectations.”
“What happens,” he asks, “When the hero gets old, fat and bald?” Read more
Mar
29
The Theology of Kneeling
From Cardinal Ratzinger’s The Spirit of the Liturgy
There are groups, of no small influence, who are trying to talk us out of kneeling. “It doesn’t suit our culture”, they say (which culture?) “It’s not right for a grown man to do this — he should face God on his feet”. Or again: “It’s not appropriate for redeemed man — he has been set free by Christ and doesn’t need to kneel any more”.
If we look at history, we can see that the Greeks and Romans rejected kneeling. In view of the squabbling, partisan deities described in mythology, this attitude was thoroughly justified. It was only too obvious that these gods were not God, even if you were dependent on their capricious power and had to make sure that, whenever possible, you enjoyed their favor. And so they said that kneeling was unworthy of a free man, unsuitable for the culture of Greece, something the barbarians went in for. Plutarch and Theophrastus regarded kneeling as an expression of superstition. Read more
Mar
29
John 8: 51 - 59
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51 Truly, truly, I say to you, if any one keeps my word, he will never see death.” Read more
Mar
29
Co-Workers of the Truth 3/29
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Faith and life, truth and life, I and we are inseparable , and it is only in the context of a life shared with a “we” of believers in the “we” of the Church that faith reveals its logic, its organic structure. Doubtless the question will arise here: Where do I find the Church? Where can I experience her as she really is, apart from her official teaching and her sacramental system?
This question can cause genuine anguish. And yet-today, beside the parish, where the Church is normally so experienced, there are also arising in increasing numbers newly formed communities that are direct offshoots of the jointly held faith to which they give in return the freshness of immediate experience. Communio e Liberazione is one such group where the Church is experienced as Church, where the way is laid open for a closer association with Jesus and a deeper understanding of his teaching.
If such a movement is to remain healthy and become truly fruitful, two aspects must be held in equal balance. On the one hand, such a community must be genuinely Catholic that is, it must bear within itself the life and faith of the universal Church of every time and place and must let itself be formed according to this model. If its roots are not deep in this common ground, it will become sectarian and meaningless. On the other hand, however, the universal Church will become abstract and lacking in reality if, here and now, in this time and place, she is not represented in a concrete living community. It is, then, the task of such movements to live a true and deep Catholicism in their individual “communities”, of whatever kind they may be, even if this necessarily imposes restrictions on what they regard as peculiar to themselves. If they do this, they will bear fruit because they will themselves be Church, a place where faith is born and, consequently, a place where it is also reborn into the truth.
From: Auf Christus schauen, pp.40-41
Mar
28
John 8: 31 - 42
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31 Jesus then said to the Jews who had believed in him, “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples,
32 and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”
33 They answered him, “We are descendants of Abraham, and have never been in bondage to any one. How is it that you say, `You will be made free’?”
34 Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, every one who commits sin is a slave to sin.
35 The slave does not continue in the house for ever; the son continues for ever.
36 So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.
37 I know that you are descendants of Abraham; yet you seek to kill me, because my word finds no place in you.
38 I speak of what I have seen with my Father, and you do what you have heard from your father.”
39 They answered him, “Abraham is our father.” Jesus said to them, “If you were Abraham’s children, you would do what Abraham did,
40 but now you seek to kill me, a man who has told you the truth which I heard from God; this is not what Abraham did.
41 You do what your father did.” They said to him, “We were not born of fornication; we have one Father, even God.”
42 Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I proceeded and came forth from God; I came not of my own accord, but he sent me.
