Honesty

As I grow older, I find more and more people, in all fields of life, who seem more and more trapped and unfree. They seem unable to adjust to their own growing truth. The price is just too high, and so they choose security over honesty. In my field, I see bishops, priests, and ministers, who in moments of private honesty, reveal they do not really believe this or that any more, but they have to pretend to believe it to be faithful to the persona they built and created in their first 40-50 years. After a while, they actually think they DO believe it, but their lack of enthusiasm, commitment, or joy shows you that they do not. It is so much easier to repeat formulas and keep everybody–and your own soul–at bay. I would say this pattern represents the norm not the exception, at least in the church. So many are split personalities. And why wouldn’t they be? In fact, it would seemingly be predictable with the mystery of God always unfolding and leading us to ever further depths. If you do go to the depths, the price of speaking your honest truth from that level is just too high. Imagine all the people you would upset! It will call your job and self image into question. Plus, it is like throwing your previous life script out the window and admitting that much of it was mistaken. But that should be a given–if we are at all growing! THE STEPS TOWARD MATURITY ARE NECESSARILY IMMATURE.

Fr Richard Rohr - richardrohr.wordpress.com

The Cross - The Ultimate Barrier Breaker.

I am doing a short study of the Letter to the Ephesians on this lovely Sunday morning, and have had time to absorb some of its amazing insights. Paul, or whoever wrote it, says that the exact meaning of the cross is that “Jesus destroyed in his own person the hostility” between groups (In fact, he repeats it twice in both 2:14 and 2:16) Jesus did not take sides with his Jewish religion against the pagans, but instead he did a most amazing thing, which we have yet to comprehend. The author says that he destroyed the hostility “THAT WAS CAUSED BY THE RULES AND DECREES OF THE LAW”. In other words, the very identification of his group (or any group) with its own customs and practices is what justifies their hostility toward another group, and maintains their own superiority system–which is always violent in maintaining itself.

Is this not the core historical problem that continues to justify most hostility to this day? My group versus your group thinking? We do it this way and you do it the wrong way? Think of the genocides of the last century, which were usually in Christian based cultures, to realize how we have missed the message. Ephesians says that Jesus “killed” or “destroyed” the very ground of this hostility by himself being killed “under the law” (with the blessing of both religion and state), and thus revealing the limitations, blindness, and often complicity in evil of what are usually nothing more than cultural customs passing for divine law. Our “sacred order” is usually maintained at someone else’s expense. This is so much of a surprise that most of us still refuse to be surprised–and also disappointed in our capacity for missing the profound revelation from the cross of Jesus. Ephesians goes on to say that Jesus is trying to “create one single New Humanity” (2:15). We are still waiting for this new single humanity. It could still change history, and it eventually will, but probably we have to hit bottom first–and see how our sacralized beliefs and customs are themselves much of the problem.

richardrohr.wordpress.com

When we walk Without the Cross

First Homily

"When we walk without the Cross...." by Pope Francis

 In these three readings, I see that there is something in common :  it is movement. In the first reading, in the second reading, movement in the building up of the church; in the third in the Gospel, movement in confession.

To walk, to build up, to confess.

To walk. "House of Jacob, come let us walk in the light of the lord. " this is the first thing that God said to Abraham: Walk in my presence and be without reproach. To walk: our life is a journeyand when we stop it is no good. To walk always, in the presence of the Lord, in the light of the Lord, seeking to live with that irreproachability which God which God asked of Abraham, in his promise.

To build up: to build up the church, stones are spoken of.: the stoneshave substance; but living stones, stones anointed by the Holy Spirit. To build up the church, the Bride of Christ, on that cornerstone which is the Lord Himself. This is another movement of our lives - to build up.

Third, to confess. We can walk as much as we wish, we can build many things, but if we do not confess Jesus Christ, it is NO GOOD. We will become a humanitairian N.G.O., but not the church, the bride of the Lord.

When one does walk, one halts. When one does not build on stone, what happens? That happens which happens to children on the beach when they make sand castles, it al comes down, it is without substance. When one does not confess to Jesus Christ , I am reminded of the expression of Leon Bloy: "He who does not pray to the Lord prays to the Devil." When one does not confess Jesus Christ, one confesses the worldliness of the devil, the worldliness of the demon.

To walk to build/construct, to confess. But the matter is not so easy, because in walking, in building, in confessing, at times there are shocks, there are movements that are not properly movements of the journey : they are movements that set us back.

This Gospel continues with a special situation. The same Peter  who has confessed Jesus Christ says to him: "You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God. I will follow YOU but let us NOT speak pf the Cross. This has nothing to do with it. I will follow you with other possibilities, without the Cross."

When we walk around the Cross, when we build without the Cross, and when we confess Christ without the Cross, we are not disciples of the Lord: we are Worldly, we are Bishops, priests, cardinals, popes, but NOT disciples of the LORD.

I would like that everyone, after these days of grace, should have the courage, truly the courage, to walk in the presence of the LORD, with the Cross of the LORD; to build up the Church upon the Blood of the Lord that  was shed upon the cross; and to confess the only glory: CHRIST CRUCIFIED. And in this way the Church will move FORWARD.

I hope for all of us that the Holy Spirit, through the prayer of the Virgin Mary, our Mother, may grant us this grace: to walk, to build up, to confess Jesus Christ CRUCIFIED.

So may it be. 

Amen.

Mary Our Mother - By My Wife

Our Blessed Mother is most certainly the prime example of following Our Lord. In complete trust, love and surrender to the Will of God. So what do we know about Our Blessed Mother - the Mother of all Mothers?

We know that Mary treasures and ponders in her heart all that is said by and about Her Son (Luke 2).   We too seek our understanding and intimacy with Christ, we can do this by following in Her Footsteps. "In her journey of faith and always to her credit, she travelled always and everywhere in hope. We are called to do the same (Archbishop Vincent Nichols)."

On rare occasions the voice of Our Blessed Mother breaks through in Scripture. We hear this in John 2 :1-12 (wedding feast at Cana) and (the Annunciation) Luke 1:26- 38. When she speaks it is not to claim something for herself but to praise God who has done Great things for her. She reminds us that he will do Great things for us , she points us to Christ. "Do whatever he tells you," she commands the servants at the wedding feast. This command is for all of us.

Mary's huminility should not be confused as simpering or "yellow bellied." Her silence shows an abundance of courage. She had the courage to let go of her own plans for her life, to plough on through ridicule, evento endure when the disciples themselves walked away.

Silence has many meanings and can speak volumes. A signal of affirmation or protest. It can be a welcome respite or an uneasy truce. It can be a familiar understanding betwenn friends or a void between strangers.

In her silence, Mary grew for and in the Love of God, despite Her suffering and all the Trials that She endured. Reflection on the life of Mary should draw us to the Real Presence of Christ. Asa pure fine example of true love, Mary as Spouse of the Spirit, Mother of the Son and Faithful daughter of the Father is one certain example of Holiness, Trust and Complete Surrender.

Let us find a way through Jesus through Mary.

Ad Jesus per Mariam.

By My Wife handmadebymo.org

Salvation is From the Jews

Roy H Schueman

I have known my wife for fifteen years but we startred to court in a capacity of more than friends at "New Dawn," Walsingham some five years ago. This is where I heard mr. Schoeman speak for the first time. I have often noted to my Sergeant that our lectures on attack formation and defence strategies are the only that I have not fallen asleep in for 20 years ! Enjoying the beachfires and thespian opportunities of St Andrews far too much meant that I emerged after three fascinating years with a 'special,' one below an honours degree. Although my first love will always be religion my intellect is mush more perceptive than systematic. I find libraries as soporific as lectures. 

On a hot Kent day in an equally stuffy tent in July listening to Mr Schoeman was an exception to the rule that only military incisiveness has broken. Born an orthodox Jew he prayed the Talmud diligently every day. Claiming His God's Scriptural promises that those who ask for the Truth will be shown it he prayed diligently on his knees every night for illumination. After a full year a woman appeared to him who he knew to be Mary of Nazareth. She said not a word, but Roy "followed" her to the local Protestant church. To Schoeman all Christian churches were the same. He was promptly told, "We dont do Mary here," until his search brought him to Catholicism, where the once devout Jew stayed.

Schoeman is on the board of Harvard business school and his talks are touted, "Salvation Comes From the Jews." After John Paul II's historic moves towards "Our Older Brothers and Sisters in the Faith." I will be absolutely facinated to ask this abviously rational, religous man what he thinks of Jewish influence on capital hill and the evangelical inability to see the obvious semitic salvation story of sin and redemption repeating itself in the oppressed becoming the oppressor.

Queen Margaret Union Religion and Politics Debate

I am very much looking forward to this debate and hearing what "both sides" have to say.

As with most things many of these questions come back to having an Adequate Anthropology.

If we deny the transcendent we deny a ver large part of OURSELVES.

As such I look forward to asking the question:

Is it not true that religion as a systematic view or reality affects everyone and it is therefore 

inevitable that it will affect those in public life ? 

As such does this not make Atheistic creeds (such as militant socialism) more deadly as these 

adhereants have no higher moral reference point than themselves ?

Brennan Manning

A two-year leave of absence from the Franciscans took Brennan to Spain in the late sixties. He joined the Little Brothers of Jesus of Charles de Foucauld, an Order committed to an uncloistered, contemplative life among the poor — a lifestyle of days spent in manual labor and nights wrapped in silence and prayer. Among his many and varied assignments, Brennan became an aguador (water carrier), transporting water to rural villages via donkey and buckboard; a mason’s assistant, shoveling mud and straw in the blazing Spanish heat; a dishwasher in France; a voluntary prisoner in a Swiss jail, his identity as a priest known only to the warden; a solitary contemplative secluded in a remote cave for six months in the Zaragoza desert.

During his retreat in the isolated cave, Brennan was once again powerfully convicted by the revelation of God’s love in the crucified Christ. On a midwinter’s night, he received this word from the Lord: “For love of you I left my Father’s side.  I came to you who ran from me, who fled me, who did not want to hear my name. For love of you I was covered with spit, punched and beaten, and fixed to the wood of the cross.” Brennan would later reflect, “Those words are burned into my life. That night, I learned what a wise old Franciscan told me the day I joined the Order — ‘Once you come to know the love of Jesus Christ, nothing else in the world will seem as beautiful or desirable.’ “

http://brennanmanning.com/

Tilted Halos

A man walked into the doctor's office and said,"Doctor I have this awful headache that never leaves me. Could you give me something for it? '

"I will said the doctor, "but I want to check a few things out first. Tell me, do you drink alot of liquor?"
"Liquor?" said the man indignantly. "I never touch the filthy stuff."
   "How about smoking/"
   "I think smoking is disgusting. I've never in my life touched tobacco."
"I'm a bit embarrased to ask this, but - you know the way some men are - do you do any running around at night?"

"of course not. What do you take me for? I'm in bed by ten o'clock every night"

"Well what sort of pain is it?"

"Its kind of a shooting pain"

"you know what I think is wrong with you?"

"whats that doctor?"

"YOUR HALO IS SLIPPING !! "


from The Ragamuffin Gospel by Brennan Manning.

The Final Quest.

In a recent excellent article for The Times Allan Massie said that Atheistic Communism was the Catholic Church's most recent opponent for religous global dominance. He goes on to say that the Eternal Church has weathered much more violent Tempests. As a religion Communism was flawed in that it did not provide a view of the eternal and as such was anti human. As Catholic Christians we must not neglect this element of our faith either.


Rick Joyner's The Final Quest answers this question as well as any 158 page paperback could.


This Protestant Pastor was given a series of visions lasting some months in which he was given a "tour" of Heaven in the context of our Age.

Among other gracious names Louis Marie de Montford gives the Blessed Mother the Title of "Eternal Wisdom," she that leads us directly to Christ. Throughout the narrative, despite the ecclesiastical status of the author, The Final Quest provides many similar paradigms , which take place in the form of a continuous stream of spiritual consciousness.

In this vein two anecdotes particularly stand out. One in which the author is subjected to a vision of himself giving out religous tracts while a homeless man languishes. Later, in Heaven the temporaly poor man of the anecdote is seen to be one of the highest saints in Heaven, owing to the fact that he was dealt a much harder hand in life than Warren, not having to unburden himself at the Eye of the Needle.

Secondly Jesus' parable of the Foolish Virgins is shown to be an eschatological narrative. As Joiner is taken by Eternal Wisdom closer and closer to the Throne of Christ in Heaven everything gets more and more brilliant. But the wailing and gnashing of teeth is not in fact Hell but a part of Heaven that is dark compared to the Throne but when one is there one is nonetheless in an ecstacy the like of which could not be found in any purely temporal reality.