July 28, 2008
(This locution followed a conversation with someone involved in a religious community of women with different emphases than my Dedicated Widows of the Holy Family.)

Following Jesus
Holy Spirit:

July 27, 2008

“Out of the Depths I Cry…. " (Psalm130:1)

Holy Spirit:

Letter to a middle-aged friend: 
“Someday when you are my age, 78, you may remember that I like to say that whereas I imagined intellectual eros would diminish with bodily infirmity, in fact, it is now voracious, as I am even more eager than before to have more of a God's eye view of reality, before moving to my eternal home!!!!”

I plucked off the library shelf a book about General Sherman's son who became a Jesuit. He is advising his younger brother, who was studying at Yale:
"Never let your A Kempis get covered with dust, or your Beads grow rusty. We've got more wisdom than Yale knows and we must not be robbed while being enriched."

“Think of your essential self, the “me” which persisted from conception to the present. What is this self? It cannot just be the body, for biologists tell us that over a seven-year period, every cell in our bodies has been replaced. Yet you are the same person. If not, how explain memory, culpability, praise?  You do not say that the “you” of 1989 remembers a different “you” of 1979. You do not refuse to pay a traffic fine on the grounds that you are no longer the same person, or refuse an award because you have changed completely? But all such continuity of the self means that an immaterial (non-physical) self persists amidst change. This essential self could, then, in principle, continue to exist, even after the physical change we call death.

“A further proof that we have a part of us that is not physical is that we cannot measure the soul. (A philosopher does not have a five-pound soul and a truck-driver a one pound soul?) A thought in your mind is immaterial-a serious one weighs no more than a trivial one, a truth no more than a lie.

“What cannot be measured because it has no parts cannot fall apart as does the measurable body of many parts. In death the measurable physical part of us comes to pieces. And the soul? By nature, what is not matter cannot be destroyed by matter. That spirit is different from body and therefore capable of surviving death can also be shown by examining the soul's tenacity in the face of physical suffering.”

The body needs few things in order to be fully satisfied, simple food, warmth, exercise, rest and a partner of the opposite sex. My body had all these things (before conversion) but, notwithstanding this, I was not happy. My body sighed for something more. Who was this ‘I,’ dissatisfied when the body had plenty of all I needed? It was you, my soul. It was you who wished to know, out of purely scientific interest about galaxies far away, and about facts of prehistory which have absolutely no influence on my bodily state. It was you who took delight  in  art  and  philosophy,  but  also  in  exaggerations and refinements of bodily needs, even when these do harm to the body.

Don't you see, my soul, how right Jesus was in saying that 'man does not live by bread alone?' (Now in prison) I get one slice of bread every Tuesday. And what bread? But I do not just vegetate. I live. I sometimes laugh heartily at jokes which I tell myself, being alone in my cell. I think about politics, about how nations which I have never seen should be ruled. I remember works of art. I lead a life of worship. All this is you. Say, my soul, “I am.” You saw me dancing with heavy chains around my ankles. Who was that one who exuberantly rejoiced? It was not my body. My body had no reason to dance. There was no music to incite it to do so. It was you, my soul.

Take knowledge of yourself, my soul, and take knowledge of your incomparable value. The body will die. Around me prisoners are dying because of the great hunger, the cold, and the tortures, but who has ever seen a soul die? I have lost everything I had in the world, but if you are saved, I shall have kept the pearl of greatest price.

Wurmbrand's stunning argument links logic and experience. Others base their belief on interior experience alone or on exterior facts. For example, reports of patients pronounced clinically dead but later resuscitated tell of a journey toward a divine light or toward hellish darkness. Patients say they were given a choice to return to the world for a last chance.

On the very different theme from the last blogs,  
I had such a beautiful experience.
I was at, off all places, Starbucks, where some students of mine like to take me to talk “off the record.”  I was carefully watching an older student who is extremely spiritual.  Looking at his eyes which were focused not on me but on another person, 

I had this mystical sense that we were somehow in his heart; not just metaphorically, but in some more biological sense.

In a rush of metaphors I saw that when someone takes us into his or her heart, then what they tell us of truth has readier access past our usual defenses.  And that this is why in the Legion of Mary groups that go door to door they say first make friends if you can before trying to refute their erroneous ideas about our Church. 

It came out as this prose-poem:

 “Hide me in Your Heart”

“Make me an instrument of Your love…”

From mantra-like repetition

These phrases can seem no more than a tranquilizer.

Until suddenly You, our Jesus

seize and throw us into Your heart

then, the abandoned,

drawn to our small hearts,

are led into Your heart…

finally safe and sound.

Hope in the Darkness: From Hell’s Gate to Heavens Door is a remarkable book you will want to read and give to others.  It is written by Thomas R. Eades, III a man who used to be part of a Christian Writing group that such notables belonged to as your web-master Jim Ridley, my fellow writer Al Hughes, Dr. Michael Meaney and others when were together at Our Lady of Corpus Christi in Texas.
Tom was a big time bad-guy into every sin you can imagine, but prayed for incessantly by holy family members.  They brought him to the apparition site at Conyers, GA. where, suddenly the whole world went grey and allegedly Mary’s voice told him to convert immediately or he was going to hell. He did convert that went on to minister to street people, gang people, and even to Russians in Siberia.
You will love this story.  Go to Google www.hopeinthedarkness.org to see how to order it.

I was feeling very, very anxious about my daughter, Carla’s medical condition. You have been praying for healing of her T-cell cancer, now in remission, but leaving her with other just as bad problems! Here is what I wrote in my journal:



Ronda:  Tell me more about my anxiety, My Jesus?

Jesus: In your language it is the shadow side of maternal instinct to be anxious for your children. Would you rather not have had those incredible children and not have anxiety? But still I want you to keep enfolding them in My heart.  It wouldn’t be bad at all to right now spend the rest of your time with Me in quiet prayer, enfolding each one in My heart.  “When you’ve been there 10,000 years, bright shining in the sun” will you regret the pangs of empathy for them?” I am using this empathetic pain to open your heart to be more like Mine.

Laudato Si Second Round
It is being argued by some that even if over-all spiritual teachings in the Encyclical are good and poetically expressed, the fact remains that the document will be used by our enemies  as proof that even Catholics agree on these issues, to promote abortion, contraception, etc. for their usual agendas. 

This is probably true, however, to hark back to other eras:

In the time of Jesus, the Zealots wanted to overthrow Rome. Roman rule was certainly full of evils of many kinds. The Zealots thought maybe Jesus could overcome Rome , since he was getting so popular.  Does that mean Jesus should have been a Zealot instead of our spiritual savior? He condemned in His spiritual teaching what was wrong when Romans or anyone else did evil. Did that mean that He was really a Zealot in disguise? 

Now Pope Francis is condemning many things that are wrong in our world which are also condemned by some who are certainly not Catholic believers.  Does that mean that he has joined their ranks and we need to go into schism?  At the same time he condemns some of them for putting animal rights over the rights of unborn babies.  

Or, in the 19th century, there were Communists condemning the exploitation of the poor. They were dangerous enemies of the Church. Many communists were involved in the movement of labor unions.  Pope Leo XIII came out behind the union movement as a remedy.  Does that mean he was allying the Church with the Communists?  

Pope Francis Laudato Si – second Encyclical

I started to read it not expecting to like it.  Why not?  Well, I know almost nothing about facts concerning the environment or economics.  Also I was afraid it would feed into the ideas of those who are more concerned about whales than babies in the womb. In fact, Pope Francis chides such people for not understanding that if we are to protect the vulnerable the unborn babe in the womb surely comes first!
Reading it confirmed me how upset I get when some very strong magisterial Catholics go by web-sites instead of original sources and sometimes don’t even know what is taught in the Catechism of the Catholic Church! (Don’t we, on “our side of the Church” talk about how the famous ad in the NY Times dissenting from Humanae Vitae was written and signed before the final document came out!)

Just to clarify.  What is in Enyclicals is only infallible on faith and morals if it teaches what the Church has always taught. Infallibility doesn’t apply to applications concerning facts which can be changing with the times.  Dietrich Von Hildebrand used to explain that usury is still wrong! What changed is that banking made taking reasonable loans on interest something that helped the poor.  The applications of the principle change not the principle.
However, whether in certain circumstances and times capitalism helps the poor the most or not we can differ on.  My parents, ex-Communists, and right wing Republicans, loved the way capitalism helped the poor, but they certainly understood and taught us about the problem of poverty world-wide and never denied that unchecked capitalism can be exploitative of the poor as in industrial sweat-shops – the present applications such as trafficking mentioned by Pope Francis are certainly real. 

I would hope that readers, not of headlines, but of the whole document would not deny that capitalism can be a force for sins of greed as well as a force for good.  
What I loved was most of the Franciscan part of the Encyclical. To start, though, what I didn’t like was a way of talking about our relationship to the animals that leaves out that the Church has never taught vegetarianism, so, after all, slaughtering animals for meat is a huge part of our relationship to them!   
However, on the positive side, I never really considered environmentalism in relation to the Franciscan sense of nature as Creation or that a technological paradigm can cause some of us to only see nature as something for use and not for contemplation.

A third order Franciscan friend of mine who is also one of Fr. Hardon’s Marian Catechists, Gary McCabe, put it this way:    
Certainly in Chapter I, sec 1, the Holy Father gets into the politics of pollution and climate change.  Especially in the area of climate change, where he assumes the "settled nature of science" (which studies he does not specify), I think he'll receive some criticism.

 (Before sending you more comments on the Encyclical, for now, a hit tune from the 20's (the 1220's) by that really cool dude, Francis:

“The Canticle of Brother Sun

Most High, all powerful, good Lord, 
Yours are the praises, the glory, the honor, 
and all blessing.

To You alone, Most High, do they belong, 
and no man is worthy to mention Your name.

Be praised, my Lord, through all your creatures, 
especially through my lord Brother Sun, 
who brings the day; and you give light through him. 
And he is beautiful and radiant in all his splendor! 
Of you, Most High, he bears the likeness.

Praise be You, my Lord, through Sister Moon 
and the stars, in heaven you formed them 
clear and precious and beautiful.

Praised be You, my Lord, through Brother Wind, 
and through the air, cloudy and serene, 
and every kind of weather through which 
You give sustenance to Your creatures.

Praised be You, my Lord, through Sister Water, 
which is very useful and humble and precious and chaste.

Praised be You, my Lord, through Brother Fire, 
through whom you light the night and he is beautiful 
and playful and robust and strong.

Praised be You, my Lord, through Sister Mother Earth, 
who sustains us and governs us and who produces 
varied fruits with colored flowers and herbs.

Praised be You, my Lord, 
through those who give pardon for Your love, 
and bear infirmity and tribulation.

Blessed are those who endure in peace 
for by You, Most High, they shall be crowned.

Praised be You, my Lord, 
through our Sister Bodily Death, 
from whom no living man can escape.

Woe to those who die in mortal sin. 
Blessed are those whom death will 
find in Your most holy will, 
for the second death shall do them no harm.

Praise and bless my Lord, 
and give Him thanks 
and serve Him with great humility.

AMEN

“The Legend of Perugia, 43, narrates the circumstances of the composition of the first section of the Canticle, in which the saint invites all creation to praise its Creator. The author describes the intense suffering of the Poverello in that period after he had received the stigmata… the Little Poor Man does not lose himself in space or in the vastness of the created world. He becomes so intimate and familiar with the wonders of creation that he embraces them as "Brother" and "Sister," that is, members of one family. More than any other aspect of the Canticle, this unique feature has enhanced the spiritual tradition of Christian spirituality.”

(This introduction on the "Canticle" has been taken from: The Classics of Western Spirituality - Francis & Clare - Translation and Introduction by: Regis J. Armstrong, OFM, Cap. and Ignatius C. Brady, OFM).

July 25, 2008
“Thy Will be Done!”
Holy Spirit:

Your underlying motive for doing what is good can sometimes be to please others. Their pleasure in you makes you feel secure, that you won’t lose them.
It doesn’t work. Why not? You are not a clone or a slave. There are limits on how well you can meet every need and desire of another human. On the positive side, your own personhood seeks freedom to develop independently. Another person can reject you whenever you act not as a clone or as a slave. Then you feel devastated, cast out of relationship into a void.
When you say the Lord’s prayer: “Thy will be done,” and mean it, you break-through the dismal cycle of dependence on human affirmation. You seek a higher motive for your acts.
Jesus certainly didn’t please the powers of His time! In His human nature He had to be willing to accept the total rejection of most men to fulfill the will of His Father in heaven. It is because He knew Him so intimately as His Father that He could accept being crucified by men.
Do you see how the phrase in the prayer “Thy will be done” comes as a result of the first line “Our Father.” It is not a formula. It’s a reality. Through sacraments and prayer you become truly one with the Father. Then you have the strength to act out of the knowledge of being totally loved. More and more you are doing the will of the Father. You don’t have to look around all the time to see if you are pleasing the people around you.

The first step may be understanding this truth. That can happen in an instant. Only gradually, however, can We heal your hearts of the wounds of failed attempts at trying to find security in human love.
As this process continues, look at every choice you make and ask Us to help you answer questions such as these:
- Is this act good in itself?
- Am I doing it primarily because of its goodness (Thy will) or only to please a human? (How do you know? There are different ways but one way to see is whether if human approval is lessened or removed you still want to do it.)
Then ask Us to give you wisdom and prudence and fortitude to carry out Our will. Accept that when you throw yourself whole-heartedly into what you think is God’s will you may be rejected or the work may be stopped by opponents or just circumstances.

(Today the conflict with the close friend was resolved with mutual forgiveness. Thanks be to Jesus, Mary, Joseph, God the Father, the Holy Spirit and our angels. But I still felt kind of shattered and exhausted by it. This locution seemed as if the Holy Spirit was trying to bring truth out of it.)