Put on the Armor of the Holy Trinity

In his letter to the Ephesians, Saint Paul told us to put on the armor of God (6:10-20).  Saint Patrick, whose feast we celebrate today, sublimated beneath the celebration of Passion Week (on the old Roman rite calendar), gave us a beautiful prayer called his Lorica, the Latin word for breastplate.  His prayer is indeed a fitting spiritual breastplate, for it is putting on the power of God.  There is no greater power than Christ.  Let us place Him today then upon us, praying with Saint Patrick through an invocation of the Holy Trinity.

Seven years ago, I shared a bit of that prayer through the version in my hymnal and reflected upon how this prayer was written in imitation of the invocations of the druids: In Honor of Saint Patrick.  Today I want to share with you all the verses to the best of my ability, sung for you as a prayer for His protection upon you.

The Rough Ice of Life

If God gives you ice, go ice skating.

Thus my paraphrase of the classic lemon phrase.  Allow me to pause there for a moment, however, and suggest that rather than make lemonade with one's lemons, it might be more suitable simply to drink them in hot water or tea, as that is an excellent remedy for fighting off colds, as a former Russian roommate of mine once taught me.  Hence, if life gives you lemons, it might just be that you need them as a remedy against illness.

In context of that, let me return to my paraphrase with ice.  The thought arose yesterday because once again freezing rain fell upon the Northwest.  Now previously, I had discovered the marvels of roads being turned into an excellent place to ice skate, so I was determined that should such weather return, I would certainly take advantage of it again.

Road conditions, however, as you may perhaps be able to discern from the above picture, differed substantially from the previous thick, smooth layer of solid ice that seemed designed for anyone who happened to have a pair of skates.  Snow had fallen first this year and melted irregularly, leaving rough layers in stripes across the road.  The ice had further been torn up by the chains of vehicles that had driven by already that morning.  Furthermore, many places had not frozen sufficiently, but remained more snow than ice.  It looked quite treacherous.

Stubbornly, I insisted upon venturing out, determined that I would once again ice skate.  As I did, it occurred to me that most people would have given up at once simply from looking at the state of the icy road.  Any who had failed to assess accurately might have been the less cautious sort and therefore found themselves fallen upon the ice, leading them to quickly abandon their eagerness.

I, however, took it slowly, learning how to work with the rough ice.  Much of the time I had only one skate on solid ice while the other broke through, still providing leverage forward.  Sometimes I had short bits of smooth ice where I could really skate.  Yet I always had to be on my guard for the next place where the tire tracks crisscrossed the road with ice pebbles.  I kept low, ready to flail my arms about to catch my balance when I hit a place with more friction.

Miraculously, I returned to the house without having fallen once.

While I skated, though, in this unconventional manner, I thought of some of my favorite lines of poetry from Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken" that seemed to apply in a similar fashion:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

For I had taken that way less traveled (even though that is not in fact the point of the poem)—the way that few, if any, would have taken.  Yet that also seemed to me an analogy for the proper approach to life.  All too often in our lives we wait for the perfect smooth ice.  If I had done so, however, I would have missed a good morning of exercise and the excitement and adventure of doing what no one else would have done—and the story to tell of it afterward.

You Are Church: Consecrate Yourself to the Immaculate Heart

Happy Hypostatic Union Day!

(Otherwise known as the Solemnity of the Annunciation.)

"Fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum."

The Annunciation by Carl Heinrich Bloch

Our Holy Father out of his devotion to our Blessed Mother has sought to answer again the request of Our Lady of Fatima for the consecration of Russia to her Immaculate Heart.  I have seen many debates regarding whether her request was satisfied by any of the previous consecrations that have been made.  I have heard specifically that it cannot be satisfied until every single Bishop throughout the world in union with the Pope makes this consecration.

The debate around private revelation often seems to me to wander far too near the realm of superstition for my comfort.  However, I do want to bring your attention to one important point regarding that stipulation for the request to be fulfilled: think of the state the Church would be in if all of the Bishops were in that kind of union with the Bishop of Rome.  What then would the Church herself look like?

Remember, though, that every baptized person is part of the Mystical Body of Christ.  If you belong to the Church, you are in a sense Church.  For the Church is not some abstraction beyond us, but a physically enfleshment of a spiritual reality, which is the gift of Christ to us and to His Father: we are Church.

Therefore, it is on my heart this day to ask you, if you have not already done so today, to consecrate yourself as Church and on behalf of the Church, to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.  All that you give to her she will give to Christ and He will accept most graciously this fiat of your heart as He did that of His Mother, allowing Him to become Man in her womb: by your consecration, then, you invite Him to reside more fully in your soul.

For that consecration, I propose you use first the words of the prayer given by our Holy Father, and then a personal consecration of yourself, which follows:

ACT OF CONSECRATION TO THE IMMACULATE HEART OF MARY

by Pope Francis

O Mary, Mother of God and our Mother, in this time of trial we turn to you.  As our Mother, you love us and know us: no concern of our hearts is hidden from you.  Mother of mercy, how often we have experienced your watchful care and your peaceful presence!  You never cease to guide us to Jesus, the Prince of Peace.

Yet we have strayed from that path of peace.  We have forgotten the lesson learned from the tragedies of the last century, the sacrifice of the millions who fell in two world wars.  We have disregarded the commitments we made as a community of nations.  We have betrayed peoples’ dreams of peace and the hopes of the young.  We grew sick with greed, we thought only of our own nations and their interests, we grew indifferent and caught up in our selfish needs and concerns.  We chose to ignore God, to be satisfied with our illusions, to grow arrogant and aggressive, to suppress innocent lives and to stockpile weapons.  We stopped being our neighbour’s keepers and stewards of our common home.  We have ravaged the garden of the earth with war and by our sins we have broken the heart of our heavenly Father, who desires us to be brothers and sisters.  We grew indifferent to everyone and everything except ourselves.  Now with shame we cry out: Forgive us, Lord!

Holy Mother, amid the misery of our sinfulness, amid our struggles and weaknesses, amid the mystery of iniquity that is evil and war, you remind us that God never abandons us, but continues to look upon us with love, ever ready to forgive us and raise us up to new life.  He has given you to us and made your Immaculate Heart a refuge for the Church and for all humanity.  By God’s gracious will, you are ever with us; even in the most troubled moments of our history, you are there to guide us with tender love.

We now turn to you and knock at the door of your heart.  We are your beloved children.  In every age you make yourself known to us, calling us to conversion.  At this dark hour, help us and grant us your comfort.  Say to us once more: “Am I not here, I who am your Mother?”  You are able to untie the knots of our hearts and of our times.  In you we place our trust.  We are confident that, especially in moments of trial, you will not be deaf to our supplication and will come to our aid.

That is what you did at Cana in Galilee, when you interceded with Jesus and he worked the first of his signs.  To preserve the joy of the wedding feast, you said to him: “They have no wine” (Jn 2:3).  Now, O Mother, repeat those words and that prayer, for in our own day we have run out of the wine of hope, joy has fled, fraternity has faded.  We have forgotten our humanity and squandered the gift of peace.  We opened our hearts to violence and destructiveness.  How greatly we need your maternal help!

Therefore, O Mother, hear our prayer.

Star of the Sea, do not let us be shipwrecked in the tempest of war.

Ark of the New Covenant, inspire projects and paths of reconciliation.

Queen of Heaven, restore God’s peace to the world.

Eliminate hatred and the thirst for revenge, and teach us forgiveness.

Free us from war, protect our world from the menace of nuclear weapons.

Queen of the Rosary, make us realize our need to pray and to love.

Queen of the Human Family, show people the path of fraternity.

Queen of Peace, obtain peace for our world.

O Mother, may your sorrowful plea stir our hardened hearts.  May the tears you shed for us make this valley parched by our hatred blossom anew.  Amid the thunder of weapons, may your prayer turn our thoughts to peace.  May your maternal touch soothe those who suffer and flee from the rain of bombs.  May your motherly embrace comfort those forced to leave their homes and their native land.  May your Sorrowful Heart move us to compassion and inspire us to open our doors and to care for our brothers and sisters who are injured and cast aside.

Holy Mother of God, as you stood beneath the cross, Jesus, seeing the disciple at your side, said: “Behold your son” (Jn 19:26).  In this way he entrusted each of us to you.  To the disciple, and to each of us, he said: “Behold, your Mother” (v. 27).  Mother Mary, we now desire to welcome you into our lives and our history.  At this hour, a weary and distraught humanity stands with you beneath the cross, needing to entrust itself to you and, through you, to consecrate itself to Christ.  The people of Ukraine and Russia, who venerate you with great love, now turn to you, even as your heart beats with compassion for them and for all those peoples decimated by war, hunger, injustice and poverty.

Therefore, Mother of God and our Mother, to your Immaculate Heart we solemnly entrust and consecrate ourselves, the Church and all humanity, especially Russia and Ukraine.  Accept this act that we carry out with confidence and love.  Grant that war may end and peace spread throughout the world.  The “Fiat” that arose from your heart opened the doors of history to the Prince of Peace.  We trust that, through your heart, peace will dawn once more.  To you we consecrate the future of the whole human family, the needs and expectations of every people, the anxieties and hopes of the world.

Through your intercession, may God’s mercy be poured out on the earth and the gentle rhythm of peace return to mark our days.  Our Lady of the “Fiat”, on whom the Holy Spirit descended, restore among us the harmony that comes from God.  May you, our “living fountain of hope”, water the dryness of our hearts.  In your womb Jesus took flesh; help us to foster the growth of communion.  You once trod the streets of our world; lead us now on the paths of peace.  Amen.

ACT OF PERSONAL CONSECRATION TO THE IMMACULATE HEART OF MARY

Once more I say to you, Holy Mother, to whom it was announced by the Archangel Gabriel that you would bear the Son of God in your womb, that I consecrate myself today to your Immaculate Heart.  I make this total offering of myself to you as part of the Church and on behalf of the Church that my life may serve to build up the Kingdom of God in this world and draw all souls to heaven by His mercy.  Receive, Loving Mother, this consecration for the glory of God my Father, as I trust my life entirely to His providence in union with Christ and in the power of the Holy Spirit through your intercession this day and forever.  Amen.

If Jesus Came in the Days of Covid-19....

N.B.: The following passages represent re-imagined moments from Scripture to speak to our present situation living with the repercussions of covid-19 and are meant primarily for the sake of humor.  No irreverence is intended.  The same cannot be said, however, for satire.

Jesus healed a woman who had been infirm for eighteen years and was criticized for it by the authorities who were afraid because He challenged the authority of their medical practice.  He then said to them:

"To what shall I compare the kingdom of God?  It is like to a coronavirus, which men took and released into the world, and it grew and spread through all the world and none could wipe it out, and wherever people went there were remembrances of it and it was the thought on everyone's mind and the first topic of every conversation." (cf. Luke 13:18-19)

Another time, Jesus was speaking to His disciples, instructing them that they must be prepared for scandals to come, but urging them not to scandalize anyone and to forgive everyone even should someone repeat the same sin seven times a day against them.  The disciples, not liking the hard work of virtue this would require, pretended to accept its reality and said to Him:

"Increase our faith."

He, however, recognizing how His words would lead to an explosion of virtue signaling as all began to speak of how they would forgive anyone without touching the forgiveness they indeed needed to offer, spoke again to bring their minds back to the true realities:

"If you had faith the size of a coronavirus, you might say to this skyscraper: 'Be lifted up and be transported into the desert,' and so it would happen." (cf. Luke 17:6)

Then as Jesus gathered for His last party with His disciples before He would suffer and be put to death and after giving them His body and blood under the form of bread and wine, He gave them instructions on how to live so they would not need to turn to self-help manuals.  He urged them not to seek positions of power and elected offices, but rather to be of no more regard than the homeless on the street, serving others and not thinking of themselves.

Seeing Simon Peter bursting with ideas for social reform and protests in favor of justice, Jesus said to him:

"Simon, Simon, behold Satan desires to have you that he may sift you all as with the testing for covid-19.  But I have prayed for you that your faith should not turn to fear of what may happen in this world and you, when you have been converted, must turn and strengthen your brethren." (Luke 22: 31-32)

Why I Like Dr. Jordan Peterson

 "Why do people like Jordan Peterson?"

I did not have a ready answer in response to that question, but it led me to ponder more deeply why I like him so I could at least respond in that way.  Of course it is nearly impossible to answer why we like things, for our preferences seem to arise without any conscious effort, grounded in who we are and what we have experienced.  Still, however, it is possible to speak somewhat to our conscious appreciation.

So let me try to say why I like Dr. Jordan Peterson.  Perhaps I can best put it this way: he has given me hope.

I have always found it so easy to grow discouraged when I fail to see the results I want.  I have looked about me and seen others apparently more confident and skilled than I am and felt insignificant and inferior.  I have felt like people only wanted to spend time with me if no one more interesting was available.  I have felt like a burden.  I could go on about all the ways I have felt like I did not belong and did not matter and so on.  Add to that the fruitlessness of my efforts to answer the needs of the world or even just the needs of those about me and you have an excellent recipe for hopelessness.  In short, sometimes it has felt as if life is not worth the suffering.

Enter Dr. Jordan Peterson.  There is one video in particular I listened to many times when I was in a dark place and it never failed to remind me of important truths.  If I bluntly summarized those words I would put it this way: of course you're a wreck and the world is a catastrophe and you're going to be terrible at anything you attempt to do and you're going to suffer, but that is the very groundwork of humility that is the rock foundation for becoming a hero and making yourself and the world a better place.

Here is that video, titled, fittingly, "Stumble Toward the Light":

So I guess in the end what I am saying is that what I like about Peterson is that he is a prophet: speaking the word of God to me.  I like him for a similar reason to why I like Catholicism.  For both remind me that the fact that I am a sinner is not a matter for condemnation, but rather the ashes from which the phoenix rises, to speak metaphorically.

"O happy fault!"  "O necessary sin of Adam!"

It is so easy for a perfectionist like myself to condemn myself for failures or to look for things to blame for my brokenness or to otherwise try to escape the human condition.  It is so easy to feel guilty if I do not act perfectly.  Yet what I need to do is to quit fleeing from myself and to accept that I am my own cross to carry and that through being crucified to myself in love, Christ will bring me to resurrection.  I am called not to look at myself and my sins so much as to look at the Light, to stumble toward that Light, letting myself be transformed in Love.

Dr. Peterson has spoken those words to my heart.  For that I am grateful.

There are others, too, of course who have done so and have helped the seeds of hope to burst up and bloom within me so that now I also can speak words of hope to others.  Because I have received these words that have helped me to accept myself as I am, I can help others learn to accept themselves as they are and to let themselves receive love that they may also give it.

How to Be with People in Their Suffering

Sometimes it seems that what we fear most is suffering and that we will go to any lengths to avoid it.  That reality applies not just to our own suffering, but also to that of others.  It is incredibly difficult to be with people in their suffering because it means entering into their suffering with them.  That is what the word compassion means: its linguistic roots literally mean to suffer with.

When we refuse to accept the suffering of others, we are unable to be compassionate.  Instead of entering into their suffering with them and showing them that they are loved, thereby giving them hope in their suffering, we too often side with the voice of condemnation.  We become like Job's friends.  We try to fix the problem or point out the errors rather than loving others.

Job's friends looked at his suffering and assumed that he must have done something wrong to deserve such evil to fall upon him.  His friends rebuked him for being weak in the face of his suffering and for questioning the ways of God.  They told him he must have sinned against God to be thus condemned to suffer.  With each monologue, they became more and more severe in their words against him.

Why?

Is it because they wanted it to be Job's fault so that they could believe that such evil would never befall them so long as they persist in what they believe to be a just way of life?

If we believe that others suffer as a result of their sins and failings, it allows us to exalt ourselves and to give ourselves the security that such suffering would never happen to us.  We are not humble enough to accept that we also could suffer at any time.  We are not humble enough simply to enter in to their suffering.

Think then of Christ on His journey to Calvary.  He deserved compassion even more than Job.  Who offered it to Him?

Simon was forced to help Him carry the Cross and rendered him that service with great reluctance.  Veronica rushed out of the crowd to wipe His eyes with her veil, a tiny offering in the face of such great suffering.  The women of Jerusalem wept for Him, showing they were willing to enter into His suffering with Him.  Yet it was His Mother who did most for Him on that journey.

Our Lady did nothing if you think in terms of worldly actions.  She did not help Him carry His cross, she did not wipe His eyes, perhaps she did not even weep for Him.  What then did she do?

She offered herself to Him.  She gave Him the gift of her presence, full and entire, holding nothing back.  She was not afraid to look at Him in His suffering.  She was not afraid to accept His suffering as the will of the Father, joining herself to that sacrifice of love to the Father.

We likewise can offer ourselves, giving the gift of our presence—and of Christ's presence within us—to those who suffer.  We can see them in their suffering, giving them hope to carry on.  When we cannot take away their suffering, we can lighten it by our love, accepting it with them as the will of the Father that will bring them to their own resurrection.

Feel Guilty? Do Penance.

Recently a priest I know preached on guilt, which sent me pondering that subject in light of my psychological studies.  His bringing up the widespread idea of Catholic guilt which he said he had not experienced (nor have I) reminded me of the distinction between true guilt (when one feels bad for doing something wrong) versus false guilt (feeling bad for something one has not done or simply for existing or any other irrational reason).

Now his proposed answer to guilt was simple and direct: do penance.

I have never heard it put in quite the way he expressed it: that guilt is one's conscience saying that justice has not been satisfied and therefore one ought to do penance until the guilt is gone, which means that justice has been satisfied.

Naturally that makes sense for true guilt.  If one has committed a wrong against another then doing penance to satisfy justice and make reparation for the harm done seems the best response.

What about for false guilt, however?  Often false guilt is taking on another person's guilt, so perhaps doing penance in response to false guilt might also be a way to satisfy justice.  Perhaps penance could be as satisfactory a way to remove that false guilt as unveiling the irrational beliefs that lead one to feel guilty without deserving those feelings of guilt.

I have no specific convictions here, but am merely pondering.  Here I must make one important caveat, however: this theory would hold true only so long as said penance was indeed penance and not self-punishment.  It is far too easy for one not in a healthy psychological frame of mind to undertake penance as a way to punish the self for not being good enough and consequently to view penance as making the self suffer, which is not at all the essence of penance.

What is penance then?

The Catechism of the Catholic Church says the following:

1434 The interior penance of the Christian can be expressed in many and various ways. Scripture and the Fathers insist above all on three forms, fasting, prayer, and almsgiving, which express conversion in relation to oneself, to God, and to others. Alongside the radical purification brought about by Baptism or martyrdom they cite as means of obtaining forgiveness of sins: effort at reconciliation with one's neighbor, tears of repentance, concern for the salvation of one's neighbor, the intercession of the saints, and the practice of charity "which covers a multitude of sins."

1435 Conversion is accomplished in daily life by gestures of reconciliation, concern for the poor, the exercise and defense of justice and right, by the admission of faults to one's brethren, fraternal correction, revision of life, examination of conscience, spiritual direction, acceptance of suffering, endurance of persecution for the sake of righteousness. Taking up one's cross each day and following Jesus is the surest way of penance.

Charity and the Cross.  Those are the surest signs of true penance and two expressions of the same reality: following the example of Christ.

Anything therefore could be penance.  Saint Therese could pick up a pin for love of God, which is the essence of penance.  Even eating chocolate might be a form of penance.  Now that may seem strange, but some people have so many wounds from their childhood that they cannot love themselves and sometimes in order to believe that they are worthy of receiving good things and being loved by God they need to give themselves good things, such as chocolate.

Is it not beautiful how many opportunities we have to show God that we love Him—which is in the end what penance truly is?  There is nothing except sin that we cannot make a penance—an act of love for God who has loved us first.  That love then will cover a multitude of sins.