A DVD of the series and the book on which it is based
will be available at the
EWTN Religious Catalogue.
will be available at the
EWTN Religious Catalogue.
You can access the EWTN website by clicking on the image above.
 The Canonizations seen on EWTN: I loved seeing all the many international faces.
No Talent Show at Holy Apostles At the end of each semester we have a tradition of doing what the seminarians call the No Talent Show. It is always wonderful evening of fun, but this year it was even more terrific for reasons I will now explain. You have to realize this seminary is very, very, formal. No one “talks” before Mass, during Mass, or after Mass. The seminarians wear black clerical garb except on the weekend. Also many of them shave their heads and look more like monks than future parish priests. So when I am entitling this episode “When even Long Hairs Clap and Laugh and Dance” I mean long-hair in the sense of classical music lovers.
 Then came old Beatles songs by one of the seminarians who could easily be a night-club performer. I recalled the first time the Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan show. I had forgotten that “Let it be” has Mother Mary in it because by that time of my life I was a long-hair who didn’t listen to popular music any more as I had as a rebellious teen!  I glanced at the faces of some of the seminarians who I know were hippies before their reversion, which included Gregorian Chant having pride of place. Their eyes looked winsome. I thought, “heh, even if the Tridentine Mass is beautiful, it doesn’t mean that there was nothing wonderful about parts of that hippie culture!”  Next came a love-song on bended knee by a seminarian in a cassock addressed to one of the soon to be leaving for another post, Filipino Franciscan sister who cooks for us. He crooned about his undying love for the cheeseburgers that come every Wednesday noon. The audience of faculty, staff, other seminarians and lay students were laughing until we almost pee-ed in our pants.  Other acts included PDQ Bach songs with our professional organist John Cantius seminarian guys in playing exquisite pieces by Bach accompanied by our guys in Western cowboy costumes bleating out ditties about Leo and Lion, or, I am told, the famous Oedipus Tex with coyote calls.  A comic fairy tale had a Vietnamese sister encased in a paper yellow rock formation emerging from a spell as the other 26 sisters sang in Vietnamese.  Dishteam Blues featured a parody of a Johnny Cash song all the US people except me knew well depicting this chore as dish-team purgatory.  A lay student who composes contemporary type guitar songs changed the mood as he sang with quiet passion about the light of the Risen Lord. Again, I thought, okay it’s not Gregorian Chant, it’s not Palestrina, but it sure is the soul of some of our new century Catholic Underground type youth!  The double climax was accordion dancing music by our Irish seminarian, Br. Declan, from a new order who will do parish missions to encourage 24 hour adoration. A space was made in the packed cafeteria for people to dance as everyone clapped to the music. A few younger seminarians, all in black clerics, got up to dance. Seeing that none of the young lay women or the Vietnamese Sisters or the woman faculty seemed willing to join in the fun, I heaved up my old 77 year old body and joined them to applause from those who probably never thought I could even walk without a cane.  This released more women to come and join the dancers, including a 50 year old professor dancing with a 25 year old Vietnamese seminarian, and then the rector to be led up by a laughing sister, and then a priest who was formerly into folk dance to come up. I thought, so, at least these magisterial Catholics aren’t sour-pusses! The other part of the double-climax was when the 7 deacons who will be ordained this summer, leaving us often after 6 years of study, gathered to sing with original words and music a song of gratitude to all of us who helped them with friendship and mentoring.
One of the priests who teaches here was happy, yet also so sad, to see 3 of his spiritual sons off to be ordained. He wept when they sang their farewell song. I wrote him this prose-poem, hoping I had picked up what he was feeling and might have written to them himself: Tears of your Spiritual Father “My sons, If Jesu were not, the joy of my desiring, I could not send you out of the womb of this seminary each to your destined crucifixions! Resurrexit sicut dixit, alleluia”  Dear friends, I am glad to be back on the blog after a hiatus for Holy Week and last week of classes at Holy Apostles. The highlight of Holy Week was being at my grandson-in-law’s baptism. I told you about him – converting from being a total atheist to becoming a Catholic via an indigenous Jehovah’s Witness preacher in the rain forest of Malawi. He wept after his baptism/confirmation/first holy communion, that his sins were forgiven and after the 3 hour plus ceremony couldn’t wait to start going to daily Mass the next Sunday morning! Alleluia!  Our Priest: All priest! We think we understand Our priest When we've tamed him To be only friend That when to our bosoms we hug our fatal flaws He would only wink!  But if our priest Is all priest Then one day The hands, That plunged in the baptismal waters, That offered us the bread from heaven, That anointed our heads with oil, Must wield the two edged sword, To sever our egos from our precious souls.  And as we writhe, We must not forget, Our priest lies under that two-edged sword of another priest, To be shorn of his sins.
 Our Greatest Suffering One of the sermons during Holy Week was about how the disciples betrayed Jesus and all of us fail him. From the look of sadness in the eyes of the priest, it seemed to me that I understood how we all should experience that as our greatest suffering, that we are not yet holy in the sense of not betraying the one we love the most, our Jesus.  I was moved by some of the stories from this article: Cardinal O'Malley Laments 'Xenophobic Ranting,' Says Immigrants 'Contribute Mightily' to Wellbeing of USA. At Border Mass, Urges Americans to Learn 'Who Is My Neighbor?' WASHINGTON, D.C., April 03, 2014 (Zenit.org) * * * “For 20 years I worked in Washington D.C. with immigrants from El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua and from all over Latin America. The vast majority did not have the advantage of legal status. Many came to the States in great part fleeing the violence of the civil wars in Central America. I often share the story of my first days at the ‘Centro Católico’ when I was visited by a man from El Salvador who sat at my desk and burst into tears as he handed me a letter from his wife back in El Salvador who remonstrated him for having abandoned her and their six children to penury and starvation. When the man was able to compose himself, he explained to me that he came to Washington, like so many, because with the war raging in his country it was impossible to sustain his family by farming. So a coyote brought him to Washington where he shared a room with several other men in similar circumstances. He washed dishes in two restaurants, one at lunchtime and one at dinnertime. He ate the leftover food on the dirty plates so as to save money. He walked to work so as not to spend any money on transportation, so that he could send all the money he earned back to his family. He said he sent money each week, but now after six months, his wife had not received a single letter from him and accused him of abandoning her and the children. I asked him if he sent check or money orders. He told me that he sent cash. He said: “Each week I put all the money I earn into an envelope with the amount of stamps that I was told and I put it in that blue mailbox on the corner.” I looked out the window and I could see the blue mailbox, the problem was it was not a mailbox at all, but a fancy trash bin. This incident helped me to glimpse the hardships and humiliations of so many immigrants who come to the States fleeing from poverty and oppression, seeking a better life for their children. Sadly enough many immigrants spend years without the opportunity to see their loved ones. How many rural areas are peopled by grandparents taking care of little grandchildren because the parents are off in the United States working to send money back home? Many of the priests and bishops with me have much more experience of the border. However I did bury one of my parishioners in the desert near Ciudad Juárez who was murdered there. We know that the border is lined with unmarked graves of thousands who die alone and nameless… In Jesus’ day the term “Good Samaritan” was never used by the chosen people. Indeed it would seem a contradiction of terms. How could someone be both a Samaritan and good? The Samaritans were the despised foreigners, heretics and outcasts. Yet Jesus shows us how that foreigner, that Samaritan, becomes the protagonist, the hero who saves one of the native sons who is rescued not by his fellow countryman and coreligionists but by a stranger, an alien, a Samaritan. Who is my neighbor? Jesus changed the question from one of legal obligation (who deserves my love) to one of gift giving (to whom can I show myself a neighbor), and of this the despised Samaritan is the moral exemplar. Jesus is showing us that people who belong to God’s covenant community, show love that is not limited by friendship and propinquity but a love that has a universal scope and does not look for recompense. The parables function either to instruct or to shock. This parable was to jolt peoples’ imagination, to provoke, to challenge. The usual criteria for evaluating a person’s worth are replaced by that of unselfish attention to human need wherever one encounters it. …As a nation of immigrants we should feel a sense of identification with other immigrant groups seeking to enter our country. The United States is a nation of immigrants. Only the indigenous Native Americans are not from somewhere else. So the word of God reminds us today that our God wants justice for the orphan and the widow and our God loves the foreigners, the aliens and reminds us that we were aliens in Egypt. Because of the potato famine and political oppression, my people came from Ireland. Thousands upon thousands perished of starvation. On the coffin ships that brought the Irish immigrants, one third of the passengers starved. The sharks followed the ships waiting to devour the bodies of those “buried at sea”. I suspect that only the Africans brought on the slave ships had a worse passage. Frank McCourt of Angela’s Ashes fame wrote a play called: “The Irish… how they got that way.” In one of the scenes the Irish immigrants are reminiscing saying: “We came to America because we thought the streets were paved in gold. And when we got here we discovered the streets were not paved in gold, in fact they were not paved at all, and we found out we had to pave them.” The hard work and sacrifices of so many immigrant peoples is the secret of the success of this country. Despite the xenophobic ranting of a segment of the population, our immigrant population contributes mightily to the economy and wellbeing of the United States. Here in the desert of Arizona, we come to mourn the countless immigrants who risk their lives at the hands of the coyotes and the forces of nature to come to the United States. Every year four hundred bodies are found here at the border, bodies of men, women and children seeking to enter the United States. Those are only the bodies that are found. As the border crossings become more difficult, people take greater risks and more are perishing. Last year about 25,000 children, mostly from Central America arrived in the US, unaccompanied by an adult. Tens of thousands of families are separated in the midst of migration patterns. More than 10 million undocumented immigrants are exposed to exploitation and lack access to basic human services, and are living in constant fear. They contribute to our economy by their hard work, often by contributing billions of dollars each year to the social security fund and to Medicare programs that will never benefit them. The author of Hebrews urges us to practice hospitality, for through it some have unknowingly entertained angels. He urges us to be mindful of prisoners as if sharing their imprisonment. We have presently over 30,000 detainees, most of whom have no criminal connections. The cost of these detentions is about $2 billion a year. The system is broken and is causing untold suffering and a tenable waste of resources, human and material. We find in those prisoners, neighbors, fellow human beings who are separated from their families and communities. The sheer volume of the cases has led to many due process violations and arbitrary detentions. At Lampedusa Pope Francis warned of the globalization of indifference. Pope Francis, speaking at the borders of Europe, not a desert, but a sea, said: “We have lost a sense of responsibility for our brothers and sisters. We have fallen into the hypocrisy of the Priest and Levite whom Jesus described in the parable of the Good Samaritan: we see our brother half dead on the side of the road and perhaps we say to ourselves: ‘Poor soul’ and then go our way. It is not our responsibility, and with that we feel reassured, assuaged. The culture of comfort, which makes us think only of ourselves, makes us insensitive to the cries of other people living in a soap bubble, indifference to others.” Our country has been the beneficiary of so many immigrant groups that had the courage and the fortitude to come to America. They came fleeing horrific conditions and harboring a dream of a better life for the children. They were some of the most industrious, ambitious and enterprising citizens of their own countries and brought enormous energy and good will to their new homeland. Their hard work and sacrifices have made this country great. Often these immigrants have been met with suspicion and discrimination. The Irish were told “they need not apply”; our ethnicity and religion made us undesirable. But America at its best is not the bigotry and xenophobia of the no nothings, but the generous welcome of the New Colossus, that mighty woman with a Torch, the Statue of Liberty, the Mother of Exiles who proclaims to the world: “Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp,” cries she with silent lips, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me; I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” (Emma Lazarus) We must be vigilant that that lamp continues to burn brightly.”
I happen to have in one of my classes a South Korean writer and publisher studying for his Post Masters’ degree here in the US with us. Here is the terrible thing he wrote in a paper:  "The educational system in Korea today is an endless battlefield of competition. 'Winner takes it all' is the motto of Korean people; if you are the first in class, then you are considered a success in life. Because of this, children under highly competitive environment obviously grow up in all selfishness and parents support this as “right thing to do” only if their children can do better than others. In order to win over one another, students attend after school classes where Korean students pay significantly high fees to study more so that they can become top of the class. Because teachers can earn more money by teaching these private classes or at these private institutes, students know that the qualification of the teachers are far better in these private institutes than at school and, so, they have no respect for their teachers at school.  Simply put, in Korea there is no room for moral education. Rather, parents and students have no time for acquisition of virtue. Without a single doubt, you will hear back from students and parents in Korea working to become top of the class even if it meant giving away your virtue. Life’s goal for Korean student is simple. Become top of the class, enter best university and most money making career and you are the winner of life.  "Korean education makes that somebody dies..." However, such life is not granted for everyone. Children who grew up with this one goal, do not know how to make any decision on their own when they are faced with their challenging environments. The consequence of lack of proper moral education, is that the suicidal rate for Koreans between the age of 10 -19 increased by 57% over the past 10 years, ranking 2nd highest in all of OECD countries. Among this number, 39% of the reason is due to bad school performance and an uncertain future due to bad school grades. This is a serious problem in Korea.
Children of this age group do not have anywhere to rely and ask for help when they are cornered with difficulty because everywhere in society, in school and even at home, they are only expected to “do well”. Parents show extreme tolerance towards their children even in the wrongdoings only if they can be the top of the class. But no good intentions of the children is acknowledged but rather ignored when they do not perform well in school. There is a serious problem with the parents and the parenting standard in Korea today. They all want their children to become successful so that they can fulfill the dream parents failed to achieve. But as Carl Gustav Jung said, “the greatest tragedy of the family is the unlived lives of the parents.” 
The Korean Martyrs
How sad! Pray for them and for those tendencies here of parents to feel miserable if their children can’t out perform them in one form or another!  On a brighter note, I am off from Wed. – Easter Monday to Michigan where my grandson-in-law will be baptized. This is the one I probably wrote about who was an atheist socialist until he went to the Peace Corps to Malawi, African where a native Jehovah’s Witness gave him the New Testament and he prayed to Jesus, though he didn’t believe in God yet, but Jesus took away all his anger toward his family and others. So he figured Jesus must be God and remembered his wife’s old granny, me, and her love of the Catholic Church. He came back from Malawi last year eager to become a daily Mass Catholic.  I am going to practice detachment by not bringing “my precious” lap top and just getting into the Triduum instead, so you will get a report on this blog after Easter but maybe not before. May all you, dear readers, have a blessed Easter time no matter what crosses you are carrying. Let Him carry them with you. 
 Did you know that the Open Door, a Catholic radio talk show is doing a series of panel discussions based on my new book Toward a 21st Century Catholic World-View. If you go to the link that pops up the right whenever you hit RondaView called by that title, and scroll down below the bio of me, you will find the radio shows. They feature Bob and Evelyn Olson, lay evangelists, and Dr. Richard Geraghty, the philosopher on EWTN's Catholic Experts list you sometimes may see on short videos on that station.  Most of us love to give advice. When, for whatever reason, someone rejects our advice, another way is to pray a lot for that person and waits to see the graces that gradually lead to the other person’s transformation.
Lecturing about the spirituality of soon to be canonized John Paul II, Fr. Kolinski here at Holy Apostles College and Seminary, said: “Detachment doesn’t man not having any joy. It means to go toward things not with desire, but to enjoy them as gifts.” I would say that we are supposed to enjoy all the many, many, gifts of life, but not crave them in a ravenous kind of way, because God is first. One way I like to put it is that we should come to others with tenderness rather than thirst. In what psychologists call co-dependency, we come to others with thirst, an unbearable thirst. But by coming to Jesus in prayer with thirst, we are more able to be tender with others.
  Dear bloggers, I found this article extraordinary. I hope you will also like the passages I took out, with permission. I can’t wait to see the “yucky” graphics Jim Ridley will append to this blog! The Burden of Self Excerpted from an article by Br. Ben Harrison of the Missionaries of Charity. The whole article is in the Valyermo Chronicle.  Most of the prisoners were on visits or at work, but as I walked along the fourth floor landing on chaplaincy rounds, James emerged from his cell and said, “Hiya, Brother Ben, how’s things?” James was a tall young man, a good four inches taller than me, with a shaved head and big biceps. When he was not in prison he struggled with addiction and with the consequences of not taking the medicines prescribed for his mental health problems. I’m not very good at pretending, so I answered, “To tell the truth, James, things aren’t that great at the moment.” “Why? You should be happy, monn!” he said, playing on his Jamaican roots. “You can go home in a couple of hours. You can go to the pub. You can see women. You’re free! Why aren’t you happy?” With a trace of exasperation I found myself over-ruling my censor and responding, “James, you have no idea what a burden it is to be me!”  He blinked, surprised. Then slowly he reached his hand out and rested it on my shoulder, then gripped it and looked me steady in the eye with such tenderness and affection that I understood that, in fact, he knew exactly what I meant. We held our eyes locked for about three seconds, then he let go of my shoulder, we grinned a bit sheepishly at the intimacy of the moment and went our separate ways.  Of such little shared passions tiny Easters are made, the miniature seismic shifts that reduce the need of earthquakes as our personal tectonic plates slowly move, reconfiguring inner continents. I had felt that sense of burden many times before, but had never expressed it out loud. The truth of it continued to ring in my memory. I have thought often, since that day, of the recognition we shared in that moment, James and I. “The burden of self.” Is that the daily cross Our Lord tells us we must carry (Luke 9:23)?  Analysing the thought doesn’t help—if my self is my cross, who is crucified on it and who drives the nails? No, let’s not get into a discussion of Freudian, Jungian, transactional or other modes of compartmentalizing the psyche. That isn’t the point. The point is that I sometimes experience myself as a lump, a blob, an awkward, shifting bulk of muscles, nerves, thoughts, cravings, terrors, memories, aspirations, needs and sensations all kneaded together into one big ball of pitch like Br’er Rabbit’s tar-baby. And it is a burden, no question. And I don’t know what to do with it or about it.  …Whatever it is, this onus of self, I can feel the heaviness of it, the viscosity, the amorphousness. And I don’t seem to be able to get rid of it…  Acceptance Acceptance helps by reducing the friction, the drag—my inner resistance, my rebelliousness, my resentment at being lumbered with this specific load of self. Acceptance of what, though? Acceptance at least of the fact that I have a burden, this particular burden, and that it is my lot to carry it the best I can. I can accept the fact that I belong to a species that tends to get tangled, snarled and mired in messes, that tends to produce confusion and to need a lot of help resolving its problems.  Two people in very different situations once, independently, shared the same insight with me. One was a prison officer who had to retire early because he had a terminal degenerative illness. The other was the fraught mother of five whose youngest was seriously disabled. Both confessed that in anger and frustration they had initially cried out, “Why me?” But as time passed and acceptance settled in, they both changed that response to, “Why not me?” In effect they saw that many people had difficulties as great as theirs or greater and still managed to soldier on more or less graciously… Perhaps for some people the sequence matures one step further, from “why me?” to “why not me?” to “what me?” They discover that their struggle with the burden of self clarifies things for them. They see that much of what they thought was of the essence of their personal identity is in fact superficial, accidental or expendable, and that their deep self is something finer, stronger, simpler and more subtle—a mystery held in pledge by the Mysterium Tremendum, to be revealed in the fullness of time… Radical acceptance can sometimes seem as revolutionary as putting wheels on luggage or sled-runners on an arctic cargo.  Lightening the Load—Drying I may not be able to get rid of the burden of self, but I can lighten it. When I imagine my self as a burden, the flotsam and litter of my being seem to be held together by a sort of thick, clayey mud. Other times the load seems like a mass of sodden, tangled rags. So, one way to lighten the load is to dry it out. That means exposing it to air and sunlight. People in recovery from addictions learn that “we are only as sick as our secrets.” It helps immeasurably to find someone whom we trust with whom we can talk through our shameful secrets and our private terrors. We usually discover that our best-guarded treasures of guilt and weakness are not as shocking or as original as we imagined. Another result of this process is that we learn to take ourselves less seriously— even, with God’s grace, to laugh at ourselves. The reluctant chuckle, the hesitant sigh are palpable signs of healing.  The muck that binds our mud-ball of detritus is kept moist by our tears of self-pity, our spiteful spittle and our lustful drooling. As we expose all that phlegm and saliva to the light of day, bit by bit the clay dries, cracks and falls away, sometimes taking with it chunks of the debris embedded in it.  Lightening the Load—Dropping and Chopping One of the first times I visited St. Andrew’s, (a Benedictine monastery in Southern California) I was just beginning to discover the joys and consolations of a relationship with God. With the fervour of a novice I wanted to engage my whole being in that prayerful self-offering . My mind was popping with brilliant insights, my psyche was soaring with lofty inspirations, but my poor old body was feeling lonely and left out. Consequently, it was either sulking miserably out behind the kitchen, or plotting mayhem and rebellion in some dark corner. When I tried to please or appease my senses in the usual way, by indulging their desires, they took over and hijacked the whole operation. By trial and error I discovered that the best way for the body to participate in the spiritual life is not by letting it feel full but by letting it feel a certain salutary emptiness, unchaining it from its slavery to comfort and satiety. Lying in bed munching sweets isn’t the most effective spiritual practice.  Part of the program our Lord outlined for us to follow him was denying ourselves. In our soft age that can sound very primitive and masochistic. We tend to want to bargain with ourselves, or with God. We say, “Well, I’ll give up tobacco, but you’ll have to make up for it by giving me dark chocolate.” Or, “If I can’t comfort myself with whiskey, let me at least have wine.” Sometimes I have to recognize that it is good just to say no to myself. That’s what denying myself means—simply saying no to that insatiable, needy, demanding part of myself that always wants more. For many years I went running three or four times a week. First, let me make it clear that I didn’t do it because it was good for me. I did it because a friend made it look enjoyable and said it helped him feel more centered. That same friend advised me never to turn running into an obligation but to do it for the pleasure and only for as long as I enjoyed it. He knew that if it became a regime I would rebel. And for more than thirty years I continued to enjoy that exercise. Now that my knees no longer allow it, I sometimes have dreams that I am able to run again, and it is such a feeling of freedom, almost as good as my youthful dreams of flying. When I ran I wore shorts and a tee-shirt, or as little as colder weather would permit. When I swam I wore even less. We strip off all that impedes the flow of air or water around us. What the spiritual masters of old called asceticism is not primarily a way of subduing or punishing the body, but a way of lightening the load. It is a liberating discipline that allows us to chop off the snags and snarls that hook us, lets us drop the ballast that weighs us down, spiritually as well as physically. We can say no to heavy food and lying around on couches, but we can also say no to grumpiness and criticism of self and others. 
 Sharing the Load …A yoke is an instrument that allows a single load to be hauled by two oxen. So how is it that by taking up his burden as well as my own things will be easier and lighter? Strange math, that. Mind-boggling physics. But the fact is, when James and I linked eyes that day on the fours landing, we both felt free and we both continued our day lighter and more grateful. Was James my Simon of Cyrene that day, helping me carry my cross, my burden of self? And did I, somehow, revealing my own human weakness, help James carry his cross that day? Were we yoked together? Was Jesus himself the yoke? 
 It is a truism that sharing sorrows halves them and sharing joys doubles them. So it is not surprising that when we find a companion who is willing to help us carry our woes, our own burden becomes lighter. That is only reasonable. But the odd thing is when the position changes and it is I who help my friend carry his burden, her load. Then the true magic occurs. Because in doing so I experience a glorious lightness of spirit. At least for that moment I forget my own load because I am concentrating on my friend’s. And I don’t even experience my full share of my friend’s burden because it is not invested with that whole onerous ponderousness of being my burden of self.  For is it not precisely the “my-ness” of my burden that magnifies the weight of it? Maybe that is the hidden wisdom of Peter’s advice (1 Peter 5:7): “Cast all your worries on [the Lord], for he cares about you.” By divesting ourselves of our anxieties, by signing ownership over to him, we shed the onus of possession. Our proprietorship of our burden of self adds to it the weight of shame, guilt and responsibility. “Left luggage” and unclaimed mail are not actually a burden for anyone. They just occupy space, and the Lord has plenty of that.  Release The way of the cross, the valley of the burden, is our way home. As I have said too many times in this article, life often seems like a burden. It is only fair to say as well, however, that there are days when it is not a burden at all. There are times when I feel free and unencumbered, like a mountaineer on a long trek when he has taken off his backpack for the night. There are even rarer days when I have felt like a kite dancing in the air, flown by the one who made the wind. Those are the foretastes of what it means to be released from the burden of self. Jesus had his Transfiguration on the mountain, when the three disciples got a glimpse of the glory that would be his when his long haul was ended. Perhaps those moments of exultation are our own little flashes of the transformation, tastes of the metamorphosis to come." 
 Dear, dear, readers, Some of you have been following and praying for my daughter, Carla’s healing from lymphoma T-Cell. The good news is that she has been sent to an oncologist who is an expert in this and gives her good chances to survive. Thank you for your concern and prayers.  On the spiritual side, this woman who has not been going to Mass for 35 years, yet says that it is worth all the pain (she can’t take total pain pills because she is the bread-winner and has to do intricate computer work) because she feels Jesus so close to her and she says even in pain there is beauty in every moment of life!!!! She also, in her fear of death, called up old friends from years back she had been in conflict with to ask forgiveness. She also said she thought she should ask not for healing but for strength to bear the pain!!! It reminded me of St. Augustine saying never to look down on others because in one day with grace they can out-run you in the race. Since I am such a wimp I write poems about crucifixion in the dental chair! 
 Another related thought. Kierkegaard wrote that resignation is easier than hope. When we resign ourselves we feel relief to think the worst will happen, but to hope is a stretch toward accepting God’s will whatever happens but also retaining belief that it could go well. Of course “well” is always from our earthly standpoint since ourselves or a beloved person dying and going to at minimum to purgatory is better than being on earth. 
 I am very happy to announce that the wonderful TV Series I made with some of the late vocation priests and seminarians: LAST CALL: TWELVE MEN WHO DARED ANSWER will be shown on EWTN in May. Look for it May 12-15: 3:30 AM and 6:30 PM. These priests and one transitional deacon have marvelous grace-filled stories. Hope you will be able to see it. 
As any of you know who read my blogs I am big into simplicity of life. All I own now fits in 6 mailing boxes. But today I got a new insight:
If too much in the closet is contrary to simplicity of life, then, also, too much to do is not simplicity of life either. Of course I don’t refer to too much to do when it is a matter of working to feed the family and also spend lots of time with them, or spending lots of time in Church. I am thinking of all those extra things that work-aholics, like me, make into necessities by dint of unrealistic deadlines. Some spiritual mentors consider such patterns to come out pride vs. humble acceptance of limitations!  Someone wrote me this adage: "the devil you know is better than the angel you do not know".  The point is that disclosure is much better than passive aggression. What this priest-psychologist means is that sometimes in a conflict putting all the cards on the table is better than just grumbling inwardly and withdrawing from the friend or family member we might be angry at. 
“Evildoers….are more pained if their villa is poor than if their life is bad, as though man’s greatest good were to have everything good except himself.” St.Augustine, The City of God.
Insights coming from Bob Sizemore, Gestalt/Jungian therapist, who is also a spiritual director I am seeing:  We do not get what we could from what is in “the now” if we are always thinking of something else, such as the past or the future. It is wanting the ego to control to want to plan everything even to the last moment of life. Since my mother had dementia around 85 years old, if I live in the future instead of the present I have more fear of dementia!
 I am like Peter walking on the water toward Jesus, but then sinking periodically as I take my eyes off Him.  Some of my talents and problems come from my Jewish side but the solutions come from the Christian side. I am a wisdom figure. That is where my gifts lie.
Don’t push the river, let it flow. The walking speed is the right speed. My best is enough, not just in my work but also in daily life. Sometimes the shadow side endears others to us.
Hatred of smug men that I have: the therapist wonders if this is because smug men have no room for bright women.  One of the therapist’s sayings is: “Humor is the oil for the engine of success, for the friction of stress and for the wear and tear of ego.”  We had a wonderful “happening” at the seminary. To raise money for the starving, they arranged a dinner where 10% of us dined in luxury at a table, 30% sat on chairs and ate a bowl of stew and the rest sat on the floor and ate a bowl of rice. We reached into a bowl and picked a ticket. One color of ticket was for the banquet; another for the chairs, and another for the floor. I picked the ticket that put me on the floor. This was accompanied by all sorts of statistics about hunger and poverty and the 30% waste of all food in the world and then we had a talk by a Nigerian seminarian with slides showing this exploitation of the oil with people paid in bullets to ward off theft of the oil, etc. etc.  Spontaneous anger: How is it that we can express anger by a loud voice, a sarcastic retort, banging on the table, against some people but would never spontaneously do that with an authority figure who could penalize us? This used to be described by psychologists with the term “household Hitler” referring to men who had to keep their mouths shut under frustration at work, but then came home and took out their frustrations on their wives and kids. In connection with recent incidents, I decided that it is because it is safe to express anger against people we love who love us, because we expect them to forgive us, whereas the authority figures might not forgive us. It made for an unusually well thought out confession! 
 I wrote an e-mail to my spiritual director full of worries concerning my daughter’s lymphoma condition, not yet diagnosed as to what stage it is or prognosis. I am not sure at what point to visit her since she is overwhelmed with house guests at this time. I am putting part of his reply on this blog not just because I am a drama queen but because some readers might be able to make use of the same advice:  Ronda, It's good that you have made some preparations for a potential situation: mental, emotional, arrangements (about your students). But you have to keep telling yourself that this is still all speculation. Nobody knows anything certain, yet. Remember, that you have a tendency to analyze everything, create scenarios and draw conclusions, which may seem real to you but are, nonetheless, still speculation. It's because your mind tends to work on hyperdrive and this just sets your emotions into hyperdrive, which then has the possibility of clouding your judgment.  Slow down a bit. What you are getting anxious about is still only speculation. You yourself wrote that "it might turn out that the diagnosis is less drastic." You still don't know anything certain, yet. Stay calm. Don't speculate (as much as is possible for you). Pray for her and just wait. Getting worked up before the fact does no one (especially you) any good.  I asked a theologian about the resurrected body of Christ. For no special reason I started wondering if the hand of Doubting Thomas thrust into the wound in the side of Jesus after His resurrection came out bloody or not. I realized I didn’t really know too much about the Resurrected Body of Christ, picturing it as kind of diaphanous rather than concrete. This theologian responded this way: Of course, the Resurrected Body of Christ has blood! It wouldn't be a perfect living human body without blood and the Precious Blood that becomes present on the altar doesn't come from the air. If it did, then why do we adore something that is not part of Christ's Body? We say that the Eucharist is the total Christ, "Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity." What becomes present on the altar is the Glorified Body and Blood of Christ as it is in heaven at this moment. It just doesn't make sense to say that His Body would not have blood. 
 Christ's blood was poured out on the Cross. True. But then, His Body was dead, separated from His soul. But that all changed with the Resurrection. Using your logic one could then say that the Glorified Body of Christ could still be separated from His soul. But no. It's a living human body, just glorified. Glorified human bodies are like our mortal bodies in some respects but they are also different. Therefore, they have properties, which our bodies do not have now. That fact that Thomas' hand (might have) come out of Christ's side without blood on it means nothing. Wounds in a mortal human body bleed and are painful. They would not be such in a glorified body. Even Padre Pio's stigmata did not bleed all the time. 
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