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Of Temperaments and Temptations

4/8/2015

An old Irish prayer kind of apt for Passion Week!

Of Christ is the Seed
Of Christ is the Harvest
Into God's barn
May we be brought.

Of Christ is the sea
Of Christ is the fish
Into the nets of God
May we be caught.

From Birth to old age
and from old age unto death,
May your two arms, O Christ
be around us.

From Death unto the end
Not the end but the rebirth,
Into the Paradise of Graces
May we be brought.

The Four Temperaments

I’m big into the Four Temperaments.

In myself, I think the combination of Choleric and Melancholic makes me likely to be angry and then pessimistic in the same instances, so that I go into rage followed by fantasies of flight. The devil plays on this all the time. On the good side is hard work and seriousness. If I only think about what is in my control, that is the simplest way to be home free vs. meddling in all sorts of general problems I have no control over.

More from God Alone
( For an explanation of these “thoughts from the Holy Spirit” see this blog December 18, 2014.)

June 16, 2008
Pace and Openness
Holy Spirit:

Imagine a sight-seeing procession. Ideally it is timed for the right amount of contact with what is to be viewed. The tourists are not jostled quickly past the most important sites.
Rural life was paced by nature: dawn, midday sun, twilight, nightfall, seasons. There was ample time to absorb the nature of trees and animals and weather in the midst of the work cycle. Think of cooking (as an example of absorbing the nature of each food). Think also of the pace of monastic hours of prayer.
In your era, you think instead of spirituality as leaping out of time, out of nature, into the eternal. You think of being saved from the realities you have made, into our eternal now.
More Catholic, universal, is a rhythm of the created with the Uncreated, in and out, out and in, like breath. When you release yourself into Us in prayer, we fill you and then send you back into your world to be open to it and transform it. The pace is liturgical, not rushed.

“There will be a new heaven and a new earth.” (Revelation 21:1)

June 17, 2008
Acceptance?
Holy Spirit:
Your sins nail others to the cross. Obvious are the victims when the sins are theft, scorn, babies torn from their mother’s wombs, terrorized innocents in wars. Less obvious are the victims when they are in complicity as when the victims of lust short-change each other willingly. And is the exploited laborer who wants the job not still a victim? The victims don’t always look like Christ on the cross but they feel the nails in their hearts.

How can you both fight sin, your own and those of others, and yet accept having to live in a world that is full of sin?
Picture a fleeing mob coming upon a launching pad. They see battered but viable helicopters descending to rescue them. Some, wounded in battle, slink away rejecting helping hands. Most let themselves be carried on board. Once safely on board they spy their pursuers on the ground. Some throw things out of the planes to hit their enemies, but one calls out:
“Surrender! If you surrender, after we land in safety we will send back rescue planes for you, too.”
“O happy fault, that led to such a Savior.”
Which choice will you make? Can you see your enemy as one as desperate as you?
You are not called to accept sin, but “to love the sinner.”

Note from Ronda: As a member of the board of directors at Flynn House (a group home for men addicted to alcohol and drugs) I thought I should know more about what the AA meetings are actually like. I was astounded. Here were all these “tough guys” – quite a number on motorcycles, coming in and being so warm to each other and open and honest and needy of each other. I thought, my God, does it take reaching a bottom that low before men can relate in a heart-felt manner to each other? I am now thinking that these locutions from the Holy Spirit are supposed to be related to my experiences during the day, partly to train me through deeper insights. So I am including the context of some of them where that context seems relevant.

Pride of Life
(“For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eye and the pride of life, is not of the Father but of the world.” 1 John 2)
Holy Spirit:
You like to see energy in people: in sport, dance, building, climbing, bringing powerful music out of an organ. In nature you like to see the power of the ocean or in a tiger. Adam and Eve were full of such life. Then you see the bad side of power: arrogance, dominance, cruelty: Cain killing Abel. In every situation after the fall there are the two sides: the happy joy of life and the bad pride of life of feeling superior. That pride must be crushed before We can make the “new man in Christ.” One must lose the bad pride of life, for instance, because of ill-fortune or the grim consequences of sin, before one can be molded as soft dough into a person who can love and show the need for being loved. To pray is to acknowledge that your life-force was not and is not enough to bring the happiness you crave. Through your surrender to Us in prayers, we can transform the bad pride of life into energy for building the kingdom of God, on earth as it is in heaven.

June 18, 2008
Leaning
Holy Spirit:
It takes defeat for most men to become humble and willing to accept the help of God and of other men. For most women it takes disillusionment to lean less on men and stand upright in the strength of the Spirit.
Hand in hand, walking with God, the redeemed men and women can go forward. Hand in hand is not one dominating and the other leaning. That is the ideal. You see it in Mary and Joseph. Think of the journey to Egypt. Joseph had been broken in his pride by the people thinking the baby in Mary’s womb was not his. Mary could not lean on Joseph during his time of uncertainty. Now, together, they go off to Egypt, a new land for them, hand in hand with the God-man, little Jesus. Between the unredeemed and the redeemed is a long process of life together for you men and women with all the conflicts. You cannot go forward without the essential element of forgiveness.
Parents want to be as gods to their children. The children take all their strength, drink up all their love. All that time they need to be taught to find strength and love in the divine Father and, in a different way, in Mary, their spiritual mother.
Children need to grow up; that is up-ward, toward their heavenly destiny. When they have outgrown their intense neediness, they don’t lean, but join hand in hand with you.
The way is strewn with crosses, but leads to the promised land.

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Rise and Follow

3/29/2015

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I WOKE UP FROM A NAP WITH THIS IMAGE OF HUMILITY: WHAT WOULD IT BE LIKE IF I HOBBLED INTO EACH MOMENT LEANING ON THE ARM OF MY JESUS, LETTING HIM BRING ME INTO EACH MOMENT?

JESUS SEEMED TO SAY, IF YOU ARE REALLY WEAK AND HUMBLE YOU WOULD LET ME LEAD YOU THIS WAY.

Here is more from God Alone - there is an explanation of these thoughts in my heart given in 2008 on December 18th of this blog.

June 11, 2008 3 AM
Breaking Through
Holy Spirit:
You observe around you graveyards of the dreams of others. You can choose between ridicule and grief. You can train a critical eye on defects to score points or you can weep for those whose plans have crashed under the weight of their defects. Which path is right? The critic’s path is justified. Didn’t Jesus scathingly condemn the evils choking his country? This He did to make room for a new way that was harder but better.

He also wept for those trapping themselves and manipulating others in power strategies. He wanted to gather the great and the weak under His wings to rescue them. The break-through is both deeper and higher than the bleak alternatives between which you think you have to chose (in your daily decisions). Do the beatitudes look like a plan for success in the world? The break-through is in the heart. Ask Us moment by moment to give you the love to see through all exterior evils into the disillusioned hearts of others. Is that not how We used Our followers to win your heart? “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” (Matthew 6:12)

June 12, 2008
Waiting to See
Holy Spirit:
You want to pre-judge situations to flee from the pain of disappointment. But, in this way, you cut off what is not full grown, or, as Jesus said, you ‘pull out the wheat with the chaff.” We would like you to be willing to wait more to see what We have planted in souls that might need something from you. Every possibility is doomed if success is measured by a perfect score in reaching only one person’s goals. Do children drop out of team sports unless they are the star players? Not if they love the game. So, do what you love and bring along as many as respond for as long as they wish. Have gratitude for what comes that is good, but less measurement during the process. See how tense it makes you when you measure each activity every day? Trust in Us that We will draw you in and lead you out of the situations that come along. Loosen your grip. We have given you models such as St. Paul and St. Teresa of Avila who went many places and tried many things. ‘Let nothing disturb you, let nothing….”

June 14, 2008
The Promised Land
Holy Spirit:
The promised land is a prophecy, a dream, a rest stop, a foretaste, and finally your eternal home. All of it is Our gift and you open the gift and enjoy it when you are willing to dwell in the land. To dwell is to enjoy the milk and honey in company with other pilgrims. How can you enjoy the promised land if you are more like a looter rushing through the land, dragging on your back more than you can carry?
n the Eucharist, Mother Church gives you the bread from heaven, a miniature form for the Eternal who entered time. In Confession, the priest, your travel agent, so to speak, rids you of the excess baggage you took on in fear and greed. In each moment, through the lesser gifts of life on earth, We want to expand your hearts. Please notice. “That your joy may be full.” (John 15:11)

June 14, 2008
Islands of Peace
Holy Spirit:
In war, unconditional surrender leads to a time of peace. In a similar way,
when many of you have been struggling within yourselves you can give up all your ways of trying to win and then We can enter and bring a time of peace. Remember how often Jesus says, “Be not afraid,” and “Peace be with you.” It is not that We want to see you humiliated in your battles with yourselves and others. It is that there is no real winning on the human fields of battle you create, despite the beauty of your flags. We want to bury the dead and something new and unexpected rises from the ashes. The resurrection of Jesus: what is important is that it happened, not your analysis of how. So, too, in those little resurrections of hope after bitter tears. What is important is that you are there on a small island of peace. Take it in. “Peace be with you.” (John 20:19)

June 15, 2008
The Prize
Holy Spirit:
What do you really want, my children? More? More life, more joy, more love, more success?
Your whole being is created to want more. You are not like rocks in the sun. You are always in motion toward some prized reward – short and long term wishes and goals. It is a sort of race. It tires you out always running toward prizes but to sit still also tires you out. You can experience this as a rhythm of work and Sabbath, running to rest; resting to run again. What do We really want for our children? More life, more joy, more love, more of the right kind of success. (Note from Ronda: I thought this meant how success is being a good sport sometimes vs. winning a game.) Jesus told you before He left this earth that He would send Me to guide you. The guide book is the Bible and the teachings of our Church. Also, Me speaking in each of your hearts. The light shines through. We look for docile eager students who we can teach to run toward the good and also to rest in it. We have chosen you; do you want to pledge yourself to Us? “I have finished the race.” (2 Timothy 4:7)

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Lenten Etudes

3/21/2015

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Maybe you haven’t come across this, but I have. Sometimes when I have acquaintances or friends who are evangelical non-Catholic Christians, they are surprised at how, according to them, even serious Catholics rarely talk about the Lord or their Christian experiences but use social times almost exclusively to talking about politics, griping about their work situations, or gossiping!

In my own case, I tend to become argumentative in social situations because I am always analyzing everything people say or sometimes teasing in a way that while certainly not being sinful can have an edge that isn’t exactly the right tone either. Certainly it is not edifying, as St. Paul urges us to exhibit. I gave up argumentativeness for Lent and now I am giving up the wrong kind of teasing. Soon I will appear to be a nun with a vow of silence! Seriously, I am praying to see how to be playful instead of teasing. My godfather, Professor Schwarz, was like this. He was always punning in playful ways. If you can spare a prayer, pray for me on this.

A Jewish lawyer picked me out of a list of Catholics someone gave him because he wanted to do Inter-Faith Dialogue. I was surprised because usually Jews don’t want to meet those of Jewish background who became Catholic, just as we would not like to meet a Pastor of a non-Catholic Protestant Church who used to be a Catholic priest! We have had a rocky go even though lawyer is super-loving and has become a friend because reform Jews are usually pro-Choice. He invited me to a reform Jewish Shabbat service and dinner in exchange for which he will come to Holy Thursday. I prayed not to get upset with anyone or bring up Pro-Life, or anything controversial. He prayed I would not feel threatened. It was a wonderful evening and because I joined the woman rabbi when some danced to Israeli music she said she would like to join our inter-faith conversational group! What an illustration of God saving me from the “pit” of my argumentativeness and their sometimes closed-mindedness to Jews who become Catholics!

Thinking about spiritual friendship, this prayer-poem came to me. It seemed to me to be universalizable, actually:

How high can a priest lift up with trembling awe
that host You have made into Yourself?
How high can I lift the soul of my friend
That the bond may be of You?
That what is sown on earth
May flower in heaven.
Only the Christ can make
from the passing the sublime.

I teach Vietnamese Sisters here in the US to learn English and then get degrees in English so they can teach in Vietnam someday if the political restrictions lift, or in the meantime teach in their convents which sometimes have therein 500 Sisters!!!!! All in habits, which they can only wear indoors. One of these Sisters was telling me about her childhood. In her family and most of the families in her village, they children had to awaken at 4 AM to get ready to go to 5 AM Mass. The grandmother lit an oil lamp the night before so they could find their way to the Church. They were taught that the angels were at Mass with them. After Mass they could play with their friends before going to the public school at 7:30 AM.

Vietnamese Martyrs

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Clean Up

3/9/2015

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Yesterday, in a lull in the snow storms here in Connecticut, I spent a lot of time cleaning out my little one room "cell" here at Holy Apostles College and Seminary where I live and teach. I woke up, today, with this thought that seems like a little parable:
Just as we move the furniture into the middle of the room to see and clean out the ingrained dirt that lay hidden, so the Holy Spirit "invented" Lent as a way to see in His light the hidden sins in our souls, and to let our priests sweep out the dirt in confession so there can be more room for the light of the world in our souls to radiate out.

“Humor is oil for the engine of success, for the friction of stress, and for the wear and tear of ego!” Saying of Bob Sizemore, a Professor and Counselor.

A beautiful booklet has been made of all the thoughts I allegedly received from the Holy Spirit that you have been getting snippets of for a while on this blog. They are now available in an easy to meditate on booklet under the title of God Alone! Solo Dios Basta - Thoughts Received by Ronda Chervin. This booklet is not published, just printed. If you are interested you can send a check for $10 to cover costs to Dr. Ronda Chervin, 33 Prospect Hill Road, Cromwell, CT. 06416.
Of course, someday our wonderful graphic designer, Jim Ridley, web-master of this web may publish it with his graphics included, but this one is nice even without pictures.

Here are some more snippets from those writings:

June 5, 2008
Spiritual Warfare

Holy Spirit:

You cannot help wishing for rest from the combat and you are startled to have to go back to the battlefield when you thought that victory was won. Only in heaven will that battle be over. On earth, how can you win at all if your guard is down? If you don’t call for reinforcements? That doesn’t mean that you need to be tense. More that you must be aware. The sign that the enemy is near is that sense of disequilibrium; unexpected hostile winds; change of moods in those usually friendly. But your weapon is not the sword, or the shield; but sacraments and prayer; unexpected love piercing through another’s defenses as We pierce through yours. All these weapons we give you for free, for We are an army of liberation from your fear and theirs.“You know not the day nor the hour.”( Revelation: 3:3)

St. Therese of Lisieux as St. Joan of Arc

I have been impressed by how often in Scripture and in the prayers of the Liturgy of the Hours there are references to being guided in life by God. Before receiving this steady stream of locutions I would have been inclined to think that these words about being guided meant the guidance already given in Revelation in scripture and tradition, but now I am thinking they could also be alerting us to the possibility of the kinds of “words in the heart” I have been receiving.
Here are some of these passages for you to ponder if you have similar messages or if you want to pray something like: “Holy Spirit, I am reading these messages Ronda thinks are from you. If it would help to make me more holy, that is, more full of love of God and neighbor, to receive closer guidance through messages, please open me to receiving them.”

From the Psalms:

Psalm 43
ring me to your holy mountain, to the place where you dwell.
Psalm Prayer, Tuesday, Morning Prayer, Week II:
Almighty Father, source of everlasting light, send forth your truth into our hearts and pour over us the brightness of your light.

Psalm 49:
y lips will speak words of wisdom, my heart is full of insight. I will turn my mind to a parable…
Psalm Prayer for Psalm 49 Tuesday Evening Prayer Week II:
Make our mouths speak your wisdom, Lord Jesus…

Psalm 86:
urn your ear, O Lord, and give answer for I am poor and needy…Show
me, Lord, your way so that I may walk in your truth.

Psalm Prayer for Psalm 142 Sunday Evening Prayer II, Week 4
ord God, you are the eternal light which illumines the hearts of good people.

Isaiah 2:2-5…
ome let us climb the Lord’s mountain, to the house of the God of Jacob, that he may instruct us in his ways and we may walk in his paths. For from Zion shall go forth instruction and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.

2 Peter 1:19-21
en impelled by the Holy Spirit have spoken under God’s influence.

Hymn Tuesday Week II Evening prayer: Day is Done includes the words
ou are with us ever lending new strength to sight.

Hymn Friday, Morning Prayer Week II
peak to the soul of all the human race…Defeat out Babel with your Pentecost.

Antiphon Saturday Morning Prayer, Week II
et us listen to the voice of God…
Saturday Morning Prayer Week II Canticle Antiphon:
Lord, guide our feet into the way of peace.

Hymn Friday Week III Morning Prayer:
s we worship grant us vision, till your love’s revealing light, till the height and depth and greatness, dawns upon our human sight…stirring us to faithful service, your abundant life to share.

Common of Holy Men, Morning Prayer Responsory:
n the depth of his heart, the law of God is his guide…

Prayer, Office of Readings, Saturday, Tenth Week in Ordinary Time:
od of wisdom and love, source of all good, send your Spirit to teach us our truth and guide our actions…

St. Augustine from Office of Readings June 26:
f I lack either the time or ability to study the implications of so profound a mystery, he who speaks within you even when I am not here will teach you better.

Some other reflections on the nature of these locutions:
When we read in Scripture in Acts about the gifts of the Holy Spirit, of which teaching is one, we may assume this means only teachings arrived at in the usual way by analysis of Scripture and Tradition, but the context could also suggest that these teachings could have been more infused knowledge. A Methodist Scripture scholar in my Christian Writing Group, Dr. Pat Looper, pointed out that her research shows that each of the prophets inthe Old Testament is relating what God wants us to hear but in their own individual voice.

Here is a delightful collection of stories by Dr. Looper

June 6, 2008 6 AM
Receptivity

(Note from Ronda: some of this is directed to me, personally, but the message fits many others, so I am including it.)

Holy Spirit:

There is so much We wish to show you each moment. Right now you hear the birds chirping outside the window and each picture on your wall glows with the meanings theyhave conveyed to you – some for 45 years. Don’t you see that these unexpected post-60th birthday years are expanding your tight little soul? We understand how hard it is to release into a more contemplative way of life for those who have been so active. So we offer you less and more busy times; we let you see the contrast, each mode with its pluses and minuses. The goal, always, that all may be received and given in peace and love. Look forward each day with joy and hope to the Mass and your quiet prayer time, for this is where you, in a focused way, let Us “melt and mold you, then fill you and use you,” as your song goes. It is your receiving time. Humbly offer to Us those snarled up moments where you don’t see your way forward. Wool is still useful after it is unravelled of knots. Bring those knots to Us in trust.
“For those who love God all things work for the good.” (Romans 8;28)

June 7, 2008
Surrender

Holy Spirit:

Everything. Yes, surrender everything to Us, because We are your real future. Do you see how your cats, even though they want to go out the door to a wider world, wait cautiously just outside the open door to check things out. Much more so do you look upward to heaven but then cringe backward shading your eyes from the sun. Surrender seems supine, but is really a courageous leap into the better but less known. You could practice surrendering each day, not just as a set prayer you could do making the motions of surrender but not the act of surrender. Instead make a real act of surrender many times a day. Ask your angel to help you. Think of it as a dancer’s leap. You stay in the air longer and longer and one day you don’t come down. That is the end and the beginning.

June 9, 2008
Surviving

Holy Spirit:

You are torn between the instinct of survival and the desire to leave this world. As Mary Magdalene clung to the feet of Jesus after the resurrection and He said “Do not touch me,” she would have wanted to be raised in the Ascension clinging to His feet. But Peter tried to flee from martyrdom and Jesus had to ask Him “Quo vadis?” When it is time for you to leave the earth We will do it in you. Until then We let the survival instinct push you through the obstacles in life that otherwise might daunt you. Each morning is a sort of resurrection from the nightly death of your powers. Part of surrender is accepting this rhythm in your body/soul humanness. “Behold the handmaid of the Lord.” That prayer of Mary is so perfect. See how she is clinging onto the Angel of the Annunciation, to Me, the Holy Spirit, who will conceive in her, and by pledging the future in her surrender, clinging to the Jesus, conceived in her, who she will serve. So must you in the morning self-offering bind heaven and earth by choosing to survive not for earthly goals only, but surviving to do God’s will “on earth as it is in heaven.” (Matthew 6:10) Are you seeing how the themes of each of these messages are joined? And, yes, as you suspect, they are linked to themes in each day’s liturgical readings.
Courage!

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Catholic Realism

2/23/2015

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Catholic Realism: A Framework for Refuting Atheism and for the Evangelization of Atheists is a new book by me, Dr. Ronda, and Dr.Sebastian Mahfood, published by En Route Books. I wrote chapters coming out of my atheist background such as Types of Atheism and Stories of Converts from Atheism, and about Catholic Ethics and how there can be a God of Love with all the Suffering in the world. Dr. Sebastian who is familiar with the New Atheism wrote chapters about Science and Theism.

Check it out.

On horror of ISIS pictures of Christians being de-capitated, of course, I think it is horrible, but I keep asking around “If we saw photos of all the babies being chopped up in the womb in US each day would we dare to present out horror of ISIS as if we are the good country? And, if there was such a thing as a country with no abortions (I think Malta is the only one) would we think they should fly into the US to rescue the babies? I do think we should fly in and rescue the Christians about to be martyred but I don’t like the look on people’s faces talking about ISIS as if we are the good guys!!!

Haj Amin al-Husseini and Heinrich Himmler

Andre Dubus, a 20th century Catholic writer, in a tale called “A Father’s Story,” has a daily communicant with many distractions in prayer, musing this way: “I can receive at Mass and at other times, moments and even minutes of contemplation. But I cannot achieve contemplation, as some can; and so, having to face and forgive my own failures, I have learned from them both the necessity and the wonder of ritual. For ritual allows those who cannot will themselves out of the secular to perform the spiritual, as dancing allows the tongue-tied man a ceremony of love.”

Read the Stoty

Here is a comment on this quotation ( "Ritual allows those who cannot will themselves out of the secular to perform the spiritual." ) from Rev. Dennis Kolinski of the Canons Regular of St. John Cantius who teaches and resides at Holy Apostles College and Seminary where I teach also:

“This is not just a 'fascinating analogy.' It is a profound truth. That's why the ritual of the Mass is so important and cannot be left to the whims of whomever to do whatever. It must lift one out of the secular and be eminently transcendent in nature. If not it is not fulfilling its purpose--an encounter with God, who is not of this world. But if, on the other hand, it doesn't lift one out of the secular because it wraps itself in forms that evoke only things of this world, then it just keeps those people in the secular 'who cannot will themselves out of the secular.' A great tragedy!”

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The Poetry of Rigorism

2/16/2015

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Sometime ago I put in my blog quotes from Heschel, one of the most famous orthodox Jewish sages of the 20th century, who left Europe right before the Holocaust and lives in New York City most of the rest of his life. Here is something else I found provocative (writing about how the orthodox rabbis are mocked by other Jews for paying so much attention to details):
"The poetry of rigorism jars on the ears of the cynic. But, perhaps, the question of what benediction to pronounce upon a certain type of food, the problem of matching the material with the spiritual, is more important than is generally imagined."

"Man has not advanced very far from the coast of chaos. A frantic call to disorder shrieks in the world. Where is the power that can offset the effect of that alluring call? The world cannot remain a vacuum. We are all either ministers of the sacred or slaves of evil. The only safeguard against constant danger is constant vigilance, constant guidance."

I found this passage helped me understand the way those who are trying to restore a sense of the sacredness of the Mass in our Church now put so much effort into getting the details perfect of how it is to be celebrated.

The Rector of the Los Angeles Seminary where I taught years ago used to warn me not to write people off as swiftly as I tend to do. For example, priest professors with whom I disagreed about certain teachings of the Church showed enormous love to me and the family at the death of my son and of my husband, which took place while I was teaching there.

Another instance came up this week. For various reasons I had a conflict with the moral views of a medical doctor in the parish in North Carolina. He is presently the doctor of the daughter in remission from cancer but still with great pain from other ailments. My daughter told me that he told the parish priest to pray more for Carla since she was suffering so much. He also begged one of the pharmacists who had left work and was cooking dinner to come back and give Carla’s husband the medicine she needed for pain on Saturday night so she wouldn’t have to wait until Monday.

Centurian

Syro-Phoenician

More from God Alone,
thoughts I allegedly received from the Holy Spirit in the summer of 2008. (For an explanation of how to judge such thoughts, see my blog here of 12/18/2014.)

June 2, 2008 6:30 AM
Family

Jacob and Esau Reconciled

Abel and Cain Conflicted

Holy Spirit:

You would like it to be all the good part: the long understandings from proximity through the generations; the physical closeness; the built-up gratitude for all the helps. We understand that, after all, we created the family. But, then, there are the swift judgments born of long knowledge; the resistance to compromise as each digs in with prideful self-defense; the love dished out in spoonsful that more be not demanded. And from this you flee back to friendship love, lighter, less painful but less primordial, less of the gut.
We understand, We created friendship. You hope your own marriage and children would have all the best of family and friendship; in the image and likeness of what was best in your past families, but free from all the tangled grief and disappointments. We don’t dash your hope. We wanted, by Our grace, to transform everything natural, through supernatural virtues and gifts into its best form. Each time anyone in the family opens to grace there is more love, more joy, more peace. Each time one in the family closes the heart to the others and to us, there is less love, joy and peace. We urge you into the arms of forgiveness, to heal the rifts, and to make new beginnings. Even when on earth the bonds break, we aim for final restoration in our home, which is called heaven.

June 3, 2008
Closeness

Holy Spirit:

You are ambivalent about closeness. Sometimes two of you can work together, your gifts complementing each other, but very often to try to do things together is to clash; each one slowed down by the resistance of the other, such as trying to put the collar on the cat’s head while she is trying to keep it off. You transfer this ambivalence to your relationship to Us. You think if you get closer to the Father He will try to make you do what doesn’t fit your personality, as your human fathers sometimes did. You think if you get closer to God the Son you will be crucified; you think if you let Me guide you moment by moment My fire will burn up all your own precious goals.

Try to think of it more like a cello and a violin in a duet. Yes, there is a score, but the violin has a different part than the cello. It is not drowned out by the cello and there comes about a beautiful harmony when each one does its own part well; much more beautiful than if the violin player just plays his or her own melody unrelated in any way to the will of the composer. To avoid frightening you, We don’t tell you moment by moment what Our part is in your thoughts, words and deeds. We want you to learn the main pieces We can play together “by ear.” We want you to hear when you are playing off key: reacting instead of responding, lashing out rather than forgiving…Yet We have no trouble with the harsh notes, We can gather them up into a high harmony if you let Us. To see if you are playing with Us, listen. When you are playing with Us the sound is called love.
“The greatest of these is love.” (1 Corinthians 13:13)

June 4, 2008
Means and Ends

Holy Spirit:

You become insecure often because you make means into ends. These messages are a means, not an end. Think of St. Faustina, told that the new order would be founded before she died. (It wasn’t physically founded but it was spiritually founded and then started after her death.) We propose a means and if you accept, we move with that, but if there is too big an obstacle, then we try another means. Other possibilities are other means for furthering the end, which is union with Us. So, you must become closer to Us right now and not cling to specific means. The messages are good means, but they might not go on the rest of your life. Jesus wasn’t on earth until the end of time!
We understand that you cling to a means because you experience closeness to Us through it or you think you will get closer through it. That is fine, but We don’t want you to be frightened if there is a change.
(Ronda: But the sacraments and the Church aren’t just changeable means, are they?)

Holy Spirit:

No, they are Us. However, we also work through other paths as John Paul II explained in Threshold of Hope with the Catholic Church being the direct beam of light to the world but other rays off it participating in that light. “That all may be one.” (John 17:11)

June 5, 2008
Spiritual Warfare

Holy Spirit:

You cannot help wishing for rest from the combat and you are startled to
have to go back to the battlefield when you thought that victory was won. Only in heaven will that battle be over. On earth, how can you win at all if your guard is down? If you don’t call for reinforcements? That doesn’t mean that you need to be tense. More that you must be aware. The sign that the enemy is near is that sense of disequilibrium; unexpected hostile winds; change of moods in those usually friendly. But your weapon is not the sword, or the shield; but sacraments and prayer; unexpected love piercing through another’s defenses as we pierce through yours. All these weapons we give you for free, for we are an army of liberation; liberation from your fear and theirs. “You know not the day nor the hour.”( Revelation: 3:3)

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Super bowl Seminary Style

2/2/2015

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How hilarious to see 90 seminarians dressed in clerics with white collars drinking beer and yelling at the Super Bowl game in our cafeteria! It happens that they came right after evening prayer where seminary formal is required so they didn’t change into civies, which they probably could have.

Best news is birth of my first great grand-daughter, Teresa, nickname Katsi in Michigan last week. She is the daughter of the grand-daughter whose husband was converted from atheism in the Peace Corps in Malawi, Africa. You have read some about him on previous blogs. It was a 34 hour labor!!! This was partly due to slow down methods such as labor in a bathtub.

My daughter Diana was present during this long labor and birth. I asked her if she noticed that when you give your whole self to help those you love, you feel the most fulfilled. Saint Pope John Paul II puts it that the purpose of this life on earth is "the sincere gift of self."

Go to 12/18/2014 for more about these “words in the heart” I am adding at the end of each blog.

May 30, 2008

Breaking Down Barriers

Holy Spirit:
In the Trinity and in Paradise there were no barriers. Satan created the first barrier in his revolt and then Adam and Eve set up a barrier by disobeying God.
They exiled themselves from Us in this way. The physical exile was an outward barrier, the closed gates guarded by angels. Jesus’ “all will be one” prophecy and vision removes the exile. “The veil of the Temple cracks” at the moment of His crucified death. You, as humans experience this pattern in microcosm. You begin a friendship with joy, feeling kinship and openness. Then come the surprising negatives and you exile yourself from each other. Instead you are to run to the heart of Jesus, dragging your image of your friend with you, and beg for healing love. Beg that the love of God in both your hearts can leap over the barriers or break them down.

Simply, you could pray: O God, I delighted so much in the light and goodness I saw in my friend. Now he or she seems like a knot of anger and fear with no room for me. I feel pushed out. I don’t know how to be with this person. And, perhaps, you could hear Us say something like: Keep lifting him or her into our light and trust that either now, soon, or in eternity, the love you had for one another will be purified and free of all barriers. Then forgive whatever part the other one has in that barrier and ask forgiveness if you are at fault, also. Then ask simply: Today is there anything I can do to show love and understanding to my friend? A prayer, a word of empathy if nothing else? And when you see your friend, ask Us for a clue about what is still possible between you. For example, you might not be best friends, but occasionally you can be an oasis of understanding for each other. Love is a gift from Us, not a bargain the other failed to fulfill, where you got damaged goods for a high price! In a way it is like that, but you were also damaged goods. (As the poet Auden wrote) “Thou shalt love thy crooked neighbor with thy crooked heart.”

May 31, 2008
Retirement
Holy Spirit:
You think of this with emotions that waver between relief and doubt. We think of it as a big time of preparing you for your eternity. For many of you it is a time of increased physical pain and woes. These we use as purifications and ways to detach you from the earth and ready you for your

voyage to your true home. It shortens the time of purgatory which is a purging of the vileness that narrowed your hearts. You need so much more space for graced love for your hearts to be ready for heaven. It is a wonderful time for witnessing to those younger than you. By your joyful eagerness to be united to us in heaven, they get to see the deeper meaning of life, beyond survival and coping.
Of course, they cannot see this if they think of Our faces as filled with judgment of them. When you cannot avoid seeing their sins and faults, let that look from you be more sad rather than angry. “Dominus flevit.” (The Lord wept -looking over Jerusalem) (Luke 19:41)
Think often of the older days in the lives of our saints.
(Ronda: I thought of Teresa of Avila dying with her head on the lap of her favorite Sister-friend. I thought of old Cardinal Newman doggedly persisting, hearing confessions for hours in cold confessionals, of Mother Teresa on her death bed telling us to be grateful for the beautiful things in life such as being able to walk. I thought of John Paul II asked why he still showed himself to Audiences in such terrible condition saying: They must see how I suffer for them.)

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Online courses at Holy Apostles

2/2/2015

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Click here for info

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Some insights about old age

1/25/2015

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As some of you know I wrote a book called Seeking Christ in the Crosses and Joys of Aging when I was 60 years old. Now at 77 I have lots of new insights. I am finding that older age comes with a certain fragility, even though I am hardly yet disabled. But this fragility, on the positive side, leads to loss of what in Scripture is called “pride of life” – a certain pride in my powers which Christian teaching says can be vain. It also diminishes, at least a little, my tendencies to bossiness, since it is often I who am being taken care of. Isn’t it good if gratitude for being taken care of replaces bossiness?

Do whatever He tells you as He does whatever I tell Him.

I have been meditating on the need that most women have to rely on strong male leaders. This makes us insecure when we are widows, especially if the men we want to lean on we realize have clay feet. Jesus seems to be telling me that it is okay to lean on strong Catholic men a little but not so that it is excessive and takes away from really leaning on Him, my bridegroom as a dedicated widow.

In an opposite way, I was reading a book by Sheila Kaye-Smith, whose Catholic novels I have mentioned before on this blog. Her most famous one was called Joanna Godden. It is about a flamboyant, bossy woman and has telling descriptions of how badly men react to this kind of woman. It rang home because I am somewhat like Joanna in certain ways and there are certainly men who are allergic to these traits, but whose allergies I don’t always get. One of them said to me the other day when I was trying to force him to do something I thought was good, “You know, Ronda, you’re not my Mama!”
Women readers, take note, if the shoe fits…..!

More from locutions allegedly received by me, Ronda, in the year 2008. For more explanation of such “words in the heart” see 12/18/2014 on this blog.

May 24, 2008
Poverty of Spirit in Battle
Holy Spirit:

When you are in a battle for the cause of truth, for Christendom; or to witness to your own personal values, you have an arsenal of words, your favorite weapons, that worked when others tried to convince you; that give you symbolic victory, words of Ours to bolster your truth with authority, sometimes taken out of context.

I am the Spirit of Truth. When in conflict, I want you to come to Me with the openness of the poor in spirit. This is not because there is no truth, but only what works in the present (that is Pilate’s ‘what is truth?”) There is personal truth as well as present day application. But, to let the truth shine through you, you have to be less defensive and really seek Me to give you the words that pierce, not like a dagger of hate, but like a two edged sword of LIGHT.

Zacharia silenced

May 27, 2008
Light and Darkness
Holy Spirit:
(Context: I have being trying to be more silent. I think when I am being my usual chatterbox self, it keeps me from seeing things in other people and in myself I don’t like to see. So, whereas silence is generally positive for many people, for me it has the difficulties that the Holy Spirit is addressing.)

When you become more silent you can see in yourself and in others the twisted rays of light and dark in ways of life and character. You feel frightened, as you would say, alienated, from others and from yourself.

When you feel alienated from others, you want to hide in yourself, but then when you feel alienated from yourself, where do you go?
You have to run past any limiting images of Us, to the real God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and Mary, to our real presences so that you can hide in us and become more like us to get light and love for others with less darkness and fear (defensiveness).

This process of transforming you, doesn’t take place in a way that is clear to you. That is why trust is so important. Often what you consider darkness is shadow and what you run to as light is glitter. But We don’t sit on high laughing at your struggles. We are cheering you on for each tiny victory when you see goodness where previously you were too defensive to notice or where someone you think is critical and unappreciative ratifies what youare doing.

The closer you come to us, the Light, the greater will be your yearning that others and you, yourself, can be only light. This is the Cross of those who are given more of a foretaste of heaven. Don’t “kick against the goad.” Trust.

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Special Grace

1/19/2015

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Just to encourage you readers who are younger, I think that for us old faithful Catholics there can come a time when God simply increases our love for others exponentially. I seem to be in this time. I just look at the faces of family members, friends, students and colleagues and waves of love pour through me in appreciation for their good points and the strivings of their souls.

I think it is somewhat related to how we don’t like our own faces so much as they age, except when some ingenious photographer shows us to be better looking than we thought.

And so we treasure more the beauty we see around us.

I happened to have to go through awful pain of itching for a whole month – not quite over yet. Still not diagnosed for sure! It was actually the worst long term pain I have had since labor pains of childbirth. The only way I could get through the worst bouts that occurred even after different remedies from doctors was by just cling to Jesus on the Cross and identifying with Him.

Now, pro-life apologists against euthanasia claim that no one need by in pain. We need doctors who give us the pain-killers that will help. But since the side-effect might be to sleep all day, many of us wouldn’t want to take so much!
Many of my readers have chronic worse pain than I am having with the itch. I don’t think it is wrong at such times to pray: Let me die or give me more grace to bear the physical pain, or to accept being numbed out!
In some cases where there is no way to avoid pain our choice can be whine, suck it up, or offer it up. Let’s offer it up!

Noli Me Tangere

A new sin you probably never thought about! We all know that harsh judgments are sinful as in damning a driver to hell for speeding! But here is another type of much more subtle harsh judgment. My boss doesn’t smile at me. Instead of thinking maybe he/she is preoccupied or has a headache, I think “what a cold person who is so unfriendly.” Isn’t that a harsh judgment?
I was running this idea past a friend who said that in a way it comes from having “default” psychological buttons where the minute someone does anything that displeases us we rush to the worst interpretation.
If the shoe fits…..

A priest told this story. He was in Korea ministering at a leper colony. One day came toward him a blind man carrying a leper on his shoulders since the leper no longer had legs to walk on. This image of the man without eyes carrying the man without legs the priest used to tell us that we can’t receive the Body and Blood of Jesus without being dependent on others, the priest who consecrates, the builder who constructed the Church, the janitor who cleans the Church. Are we too critical of other members of the Mystical Body to appreciate this help?

This week’s news included the horrible incident of terrorists killing journalists at a Paris magazine. The paper carried caricatures of Mohammed. Even though our focus has to be on the horrors of terrorism and praying for victims and their enemies, there is another angle.
Are caricatures really any kind of form of charity that we think they are essential???? Augustine claimed that Christians shouldn’t write in a dull style where their enemies wrote in an interesting sometimes sarcastic style. And Jesus was surely sometimes sarcastic, for example about some Pharisees. However, Jesus didn’t make this His hallmark. Neither did Augustine.

During the vacation I was reading novels of famous authors partly just to dialogue better with literary members of my family. Two of these were Milan Kundera and Elia Kazan. The plots in both novels involved desperate self-redemption: i.e we have to save ourselves and there is no redemption from God. As well they both involved torrid sex scenes. I was impressed by how contraception was never mention but no babies came from this sex. How much of the despair of these characters came from this life-style.

Here is more from God Alone of my journals of 2008 – to understand more about these alleged locutions, go back to 12/18 on these blogs.

May 23, 2008
The World Around You

Holy Spirit:

Begin to link your own heart to all the pain and joy in the world in a cosmic yet personal sense. We don’t want our children to be insular or global but deep and at the core and in touch with the hearts of others suffering and joyful.
You tend either to groveling despair or grandiose pride. But Jesus is high and lifted up on the cross with the seed of resurrection real but hidden.
When you cleave to Jesus, Mary and Joseph in prayer, you are mystically in touch with everything at the core. You are not narrowly chained to the local or national, but this is not for the sake of making theories about the past, present and future, but to be able to love everyone through loving each individual who appears in your life.

By talking to you in this way, we want to unite your head and heart and will, imagination, and spirit. We can simultaneously stretch and deepen you when you truly surrender in trust.
Fear constricts and pride of ambition gives a false transcendence. Trustingly walk slowly, taking in, responding and then, as Jesus proclaimed, all will be one as I and the Father are one.

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