The Catholic Envelope

The Visitation

2006-02-09T23:40:00.000-08:00

The church never ceases to surprise me.

I went to St. Michael's Abbey tonight expecting to spend some time with Jesus in the Eucharist. Instead, I spent time with the late Father Clement Adalbert Rudney, O.Praem.

I had no idea how this was going to work because usually, at 8:00 P.M., Compline and Eucharistic Adoration begins. Still being relatively new to the church I wondered if Adoration would still take place. It didn't.

It was a blessing to be there, however, because I witnessed a beautiful thing:

Father Hubert Szanto is getting up there in years. He needs a walker and an assistant to get around and his steps are slow and steady. I watched as he made his way up to the casket to pray over Father Clement. Slow and steady Father Szanto made his way around the altar up to the kneeler.

He raised his arm over Father Clement to bless him. Then Father Szanto took his hand and placed it over his own heart and prayed. After his prayer, he finnagled his way around the kneeler to touch Father Clement on the face. The entire scene was such a wonderful, beautiful act of brotherly, familial love. I thanked God over and over that I was there to witness this show of sweet grace.

I spent about an hour-and-a-half in the sanctuary. I prayed the rosary, read the beginning chapters of Luke and decided to browse various sections of the Catechism on death, dying and heaven.

Holy Hour was not what I had expected and I am thankful for this new experience.

For another take, see my other blog.

The Wandering Flock

2006-02-03T23:21:00.000-08:00

I returned home last Friday night with a heavy heart and a sense of deep disappointment. My wife and I had just finished our third Marriage in the Lord class and had received some pretty negative reviews from some of the engaged couples taking the class.

Marriage in the Lord is a requirement for engaged couples in the Diocese of Orange. Each couple must complete the class prior to getting married in the church. Since much of the Family Life ministry was decentralized to save money, each parish works together to facilitate the classes in their respective areas. My wife and I joined with several other married couples to talk about many important ingredients in a strong marriage: communication, finances, arguments, goals and priorities, family planning and forming a conscience as a couple.

My wife and I facilitate the section on sex communication, forming a conscience as a couple, and natural family planning.

Arguably the most difficult talk, we use humor and honesty as well our experiences to reach the couples. We also use the bible, the catechism, and many encyclicals, including Humanae Vitae.

We use the teachings of the church.

Up to this point we were pleasantly surprised by the number of couples who seemed genuinely interested in what we had to say. They may not all have agreed, but they listened. And those who were interested seemed excited about what we had to say -- we had validated their feelings about children and family and reminded them that our culture and our media is almost always wrong on such matters.

That was, until, this last class.

Nothing felt right the night we spoke. We were off. We weren't connecting. And we knew it. The group didn't seem engaged or very interested and, what we heard later was that many of them were offended by what we had to say.

What surprises me about their so-called "offense" is that we weren't telling them anything that they should not have heard before. At least 50 percent of the class is Catholic so they should have at least a wink of an idea about what the church teaches on such matters.

Hmmm, let's take a quick look: Birth control is a no. Natural family planning is a yes. Even Christians outside of the Catholic Church know this is what the Catholic Church teaches. It's not a secret and yet, the comments we received were shocking:

"You should be careful before you start attacking birth control," "I found it really offensive," and my personal favorite, "You shouldn't be so paternalistic."

God forbid we talked about the blessings of children. God forbid we talked about the fact that birth control wasn't widely popular until the 1960's. God forbid we talked about how most Christian churches were in communion with the teachings of birth control until the 1960's.

As first my wife and I took it personally but after some thought and prayer on the matter we realized we must have hit a nerve. Maybe we planted a seed that will grow in the years ahead.

But this doesn't take any of the responsibility off of our leaders in the church. I feel like we are a flock without any strong shepherds out here. I feel like our leaders -- our priests and bishops -- are too worried that we might get angry and stray if they said anything that we might find offensive to actually lead us to any nourishing food for our soul.

Jesus told the truth when he spoke to his followers and he made sure that if there were any question of lingering doubts about anything he said, he clarified so no one would go astray on account of their misinterpretation of his words.

There is much in this world that works to lead us astray. We should expect that those of us who consider ourselves Catholic have a basic understanding of the teachings of the church - "offensive" or not. None of us should get to the point in our lives when it is a surprise to learn what the church has to say on important issues such as nurturing a strong and healthy marriage and family.

The seeming lack of knowledge on what I consider basic teachings and the reaction from those in our class was shocking and saddening and more than a little embarrassing.

The Shadow of His Wings

2006-01-31T11:46:00.000-08:00

Although frustrated with the fact that I couldn't run or do much of anything while mending my body, many blessings flowed last week, too.

The mandatory rest period allowed more time than I would give myself for reading and sleeping. I slept a lot.

Thursday, after waking from a nap after work, a book I purchased many months ago practically leapt from the bookshelf, begging to be read. The Shadow of His Wings: The True Story of Fr. Gereon Goldmann, OFM, tells the story of a young German seminarian who was drafted into the SS at the beginning of World War II.

I have read many books on World War II; however, a majority of them have been written from a non-German perspective. The Shadow of His Wings is told from a German-Christian perspective.

The balancing act Father Goldmann must maintain between the ugly realities of the Nazi's and his own faith is as unbelievable as it is beautiful in that many amazing miracles were born from faithful and devoted prayer -- not only his own prayer, but the prayers of many others. Here's an excerpt from the beginning of the book:

After mother’s death, Sister Solana May, the sacristan, said: “I will take the place of your mother.” But she did not tell me how she proposed to do it. Later I learned that her superior granted her permission to pray for me that I might become a Franciscan priest.
Nineteen years later,

My little “foster mother” had recognized me at once, and she asked me to come to the sacristy to talk. It turned out to be one of the more memorable conversations of my life.

She asked me sharply, “Do you pray devoutly?”

Though it was, on the face of it, a rather strange question to ask a soldier, I replied, “You say how I prayed in the chapel, Sister.”

“And do you pray that you will be ordained a priest in a year?” I was stunned.

“Sister, me? A priest? And next year? That is impossible!”

Gently, she asked, “Why impossible, my son?”

“I have not yet studied theology! I had just finished philosophy when I was drafted, and what I have since studies on the leaves of absence is far from theology. I still have at least four more years in the seminary, after the war, before I can be ordained—if I come out of this alive.”

She looked as me with a soft, confident smile. “Do not worry—you will be ordained a priest next year.”

My mind told me she was talking nonsense, and I asked her how she could have such a notion.

To my astonishment, she said, “But you are an exceptional case!” She took a book from a drawer and gave it to me to examine. There I found written that, on the day of my mother’s death, she began to pray for me, that I should become a priest at the end of twenty years. She reckoned exactly the my years in school, from stat to finish, would take twenty years. She had prayed to our Lord and made sacrifices for nineteen years to the end that I should be ordained a priest of the Franciscan Order. She had offered up all her prayers during the day, the night—in fact, every singe act of devotion during that enrie time had been offered for the single purpose of making me a priest! And, since she considered her own prayers alone too weak, she had asked the other Sisters—280 of them—to join in, and they promised to add their prayers to hers.

Still smiling, she took the amazing document from me and said, “You see, you are an exceptional case. And since the Holy Scripture assures us that our prayers are heard, there is no doubt that you will be a priest next year.”

I answered, somewhat sadly, “But Sister, when you began to pray, you could not know that this unholy war would break out and all your plans would be changed.”

Shaking her head, she replied with great assurance, “War? The Bible says nothing of War. It does not say, “All these things are true, except in the case of war, in which even the Bible has no validity.” It says our prayers are heard and will be answered. The answer to our prayers does not hinge on such a foolish thing like war.”

I had to laugh. Such childlike faith—almost childish faith! She saw me laughing and asked, “Do you not believe that God is mightier than the war?”

Father Goldmann escaped from certain death many, many times because of God's commitment to His word. Before the end of her life, Sister Solana May received all that she prayed for, even though it seemed that the entire world was working against her.

As I finished The Shadow of His Wings, I was reminded of another book. How to Pray Always teaches the reader to pray without ceasing. I am nearly finished and, although this is a book that will have to be re-read, I have truly enjoyed it and look forward to growing in faith and devotion in my own prayer life.

How to Pray Always

2006-01-31T10:45:00.000-08:00

We wouldn't be asked to do that which we could not do. Anyone who has struggled with prayer, however, finds the words Paul wrote to the Thessalonians quite challenging.

"Pray without ceasing," he charges those who wish to live as our Lord would have us live.

Easier said than done. My prayers rarely reach that which I think would be most deep and meaningful to God. And that's when I remember to pray.

So surely Paul couldn't have meant it. Right? It just doesn't seem possible. Truth is, I have a long way to go to get to the "unceasing" part of prayer.
I pictured such prayer coming from those who devoted their lives to such treasures. The rest of us have families and bill and responsibilities. We gotta pay the rent, you know.

Therefore, I was interested - and reluctant - to finally pick up a copy of Father Raoul Plus's How to Pray Always. I can't begin to count the times I had walked past this particular book noting that while it might be worthwhile, it might also be far too difficult to practice. The title alone indicated to me that I would be more of a failure than a promise in its premise of Praying Always.

So it begins. The first line in the introduction begins, "Our Lord taught us to pray without ceasing." Oh great, I thought. I've already hit the first hurdle.

But, by the end of the introduction, Father Plus had removed the obstacles inhibiting my prayers by disqualifying the very points that I had found the most limiting -- those things that stopped me from taking Paul’s' words seriously.

Using three basic principles, Father Plus dispels the barriers:

A principle of psychology (sorry “Dr.” Tom Cruise): it is impossible (exceptional cases apart) to fix our minds always on God.

A moral principle: to be one with God in will is better than continual recollection.

A principle of ascetic theology: the frequent though of God is of great assistance in reaching the intimate union of our will with God's.

Expressed briefly, Father Plus writes:

To think always of God is impossible.

To think always of God is not necessary.

It is more profitable to think often of God.

Thus, the book begins, "The practice of a life of perfect recollection":

1. To pray well

2. To turn everything into prayer

3. To develop a spirit of prayer

The book requires more than a single read. However, How to Pray Always is also circular, meaning that which is difficult to understand in the beginning is clear in the end. The difficult topics begin and end at the same place ----> God is within us.

As God is within us, Father Plus writes, "The whole of a man is in the will that lies behind the thoughts and affections, and not in the broom, the brush, or the pen. Happy is the life beyond the veil, where true values will be made plain..."

The point: no matter where we are, there is God. To pray unceasingly does not mean to make us constantly kneeling in front of an altar, thoughts upon the Lord as our thought-out prayers rise like incense to heaven. To pray always is a state of grace wherein we find God and our ability to bless him in everything we do.

"I am busy because it is my duty. But I do not work without God, because the Most High God never leaves me alone."

If we are right with God, all things we do can become prayer. If all things we do become prayer, we pray always.

Simple. Right?

Well, not quite, actually, but as with anything else we wish to do, trust in God along with strong doses of self-discipline can get us to the goal.

The barriers are removed. I need not confine myself to a cave or a church. My hands are prayer, if only I can use them, along with my mind, in a worthy manner, offering up praise along the way.

Next books: The Imitation of Christ and The Genesis of Sex: Sexual Relationships in the First Book of the Bible