Catholic Dads » Rich

Something to Ponder

Rich — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 03:03:33 +0000

I happened upon this passage in Magnificat for the 2/18/10 readings. It was written by St. Catherine of Siena.

Oh blessed gentle Mary! She gave us the gentle Jesus as a blossom. And when did that blessed blossom produce fruit? When he was engrafted onto the wood of the most holy cross— then we received perfect life. And when we say that the seed’s husk remained in the earth, what do we mean? This husk was the will of God’s only-begotten Son. In so far as he was human, he was clothed in this will, in his desire for the Father’s honor and our salvation. So strong was this boundless desire that he ran like one in love, enduring pain, disgrace, and abuse, all the way to his shameful death on the cross. Mary did exactly the same, venerable father, for she could desire nothing but God’s honor and the salvation of his creatures. This is why the doctors tell us, referring to Mary’s immense love, that she would have made a ladder of her very self to put her Son on the cross if there had been no other way. All this was because her Son’s will remained within her.

A ladder of her very self. Magnificent!

A Young Man’s Homecoming

Rich — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 18:06:26 +0000

Homecoming was last night. The youngest two of my five sons looked great. They were well groomed and each had a wonderful young lady to escort. Everything was perfect. Except that the youngest called home in tears early into the evening. Things had changed. One of their classmates (who would have been at the homecoming dance) had been killed a few short hours before in a tragic accident. Another boy was seriously injured in the accident. Here is how the evening was described by the local paper:

School officials planned to break the news to Murphy’s teammates at the dance by pulling them aside. But word of the tragedy had already begun to spread as the dance began, and students instinctively made for the chapel a short walk from the gym on Lorain Avenue at West 30th Street.

Soon, most of the dance crowd had poured into the chapel, the young men in suits, their dates in summer dresses. Many expressed shock. Jesuit priests led them in prayer. A vigil emerged. Crew coach Matt Previts wept to see it.

A great tragedy. A time for prayer and reflection. A time to reinforce this idea that we need to prepare for our deaths in our everyday life. An occasion to remind ourselves and our children that God in His infinite wisdom and mercy may call even the youngest home to Himself at anytime. An opportunity to reorder priorities (yet again) and let the little things that distract us from loving our children fall away.

Please pray for this young man, his family and the injured.

In paradisum

In paradisum deducant te angeli:
in tuo adventu suscipiant te martyres,
et perducant te in civitatem sanctam Jerusalem.
May the Angels conduct you to Paradise: And at your coming may the Martyrs receive you. May they lead you to the holy City of Jerusalem.

Chorus angelorum te suscipiat, et cum Lazaro quondam paupere aeternam habeas requiem.
May a choir of Angels receive you. And may you, with Larzarus once a poor man, Possess eternal peace.

What Sort of Man

Rich — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 15:56:53 +0000

Surely what a man does when he is taken off his guard is the best evidence for what sort of a man he is? Surely what pops out before the man has time to put on a disguise is the truth? If there are rats in a cellar you are most likely to see them if you go in very suddenly. But the suddenness does not create the rats: it only prevents them from hiding. In the same way the suddenness of the provocation does not make me an ill-tempered man; it only shows me what an ill-tempered man I am. The rats are always there in the cellar, but if you go in shouting and noisily they will have taken cover before you switch on the light.
C.S. Lewis – Mere Christianity

On Going to Church

Rich — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 00:53:18 +0000

Peter Kreeft used this quotation in one of his lectures and I found it quite thought provoking.

On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return. Annie Dillard in Teaching a Stone to Talk

Goodbye Fr. Richard John Neuhaus

Rich — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 18:17:00 +0000

A friend of mine has died. I had never met Fr. Neuhaus but knew him through his various works of which First Things magazine was perhaps the best known. Fr. Neuhaus was a prominent Catholic and a man of immense intellect. He was a force of reason in an often unreasonable society. He will be missed by many.

Below is a bit of one of his better known essays. The entire essay can be read here.

We are born to die. Not that death is the purpose of our being born, but we are born toward death, and in each of our lives the work of dying is already underway. The work of dying well is, in largest part, the work of living well. Most of us are at ease in discussing what makes for a good life, but we typically become tongue-tied and nervous when the discussion turns to a good death. As children of a culture radically, even religiously, devoted to youth and health, many find it incomprehensible, indeed offensive, that the word “good” should in any way be associated with death. Death, it is thought, is an unmitigated evil, the very antithesis of all that is good.

Death is to be warded off by exercise, by healthy habits, by medical advances. What cannot be halted can be delayed, and what cannot forever be delayed can be denied. But all our progress and all our protest notwithstanding, the mortality rate holds steady at 100 percent.

Death is the most everyday of everyday things. It is not simply that thousands of people die every day, that thousands will die this day, although that too is true. Death is the warp and woof of existence in the ordinary, the quotidian, the way things are. It is the horizon against which we get up in the morning and go to bed at night, and the next morning we awake to find the horizon has drawn closer. From the twelfth-century Enchiridion Leonis comes the nighttime prayer of children of all ages: “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray thee Lord my soul to keep; if I should die before I wake, I pray thee Lord my soul to take.” Every going to sleep is a little death, a rehearsal for the real thing.

Such is the generality, the warp and woof of everyday existence with which the wise have learned to live. But then our wisdom is shattered, not by a sudden awareness of the generality but by the singularity of a death—by the death of someone we love with a love inseparable from life. Or it is shattered by the imminent prospect of our own dying. With the cultivated complacency of the mass murderer that he was, Josef Stalin observed, “One death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.” The generality is a buffer against both guilt and sorrow. It is death in the singular that shatters all we thought we knew about death. It is death in the singular that turns the problem of death into the catastrophe of death. Thus the lamentation of Dietrich von Hildebrand: “I am filled with disgust and emptiness over the rhythm of everyday life that goes relentlessly on—as though nothing had changed, as though I had not lost my precious beloved!”

The Spousal Mystery of Christmas

Rich — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 19:30:00 +0000

Christopher West of the Theology of the Body Institute has a nice piece on The Spousal Mystery of Christmas at his site which his linked here.

Christmas celebrates the marvels of the birth of the Son of God from the virgin womb of Mary. At Christmas pageants, at Mass, and in beloved Christmas carols we will hear the story told again and again this year: "The angel Gabriel was sent from God … to a virgin … and the virgin’s name was Mary. …And the angel said to her, ‘Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus" (Lk 1:26-31).

Perhaps our familiarity with the story has numbed us to the breath-taking, astounding, incredible mystery that is Christmas. I’d like to turn to the mystical insights of a certain saint in the hopes of waking us up a bit to the mind-blowing reality we celebrate (or should celebrate) at Christmas.

Something About United Way You Should Know

Rich — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 22:19:00 +0000

I have been given the duty of advocating for United Way at my place of work. And I’ll do my best to increase participation among my colleagues. However, in attending some of the preparatory meetings, I asked a question about contributing to specific charities instead of making an un-designated contribution to United Way. I am careful to avoid agencies which are funded (in part or whole) by United Way which promote or provide services which are contrary to my beliefs (for example, those that may refer to Planned Parenthood or similar.) What I found was that if you make a designated contribution (say to a Catholic charity) it does not increase the amount of money that that charity will receive. In other words, my designated contribution doesn’t do a damn thing to change how the “pie” is divided. So my designated donation just “frees up” funds that are then redirected to other agencies (including those I am trying to avoid funding.)

Look carefully at the agencies that your local United Way funds. Let them know about those that are unacceptable.

How have I responded? I’ve given to designated charities through UW, but I’ve given a lot less this year and will send the balance directly to worthy charities thus minimize indirectly funding or supporting those that would say… puncture children’s heads and suck their brains out.

Catholic Joke

Rich — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 01:06:00 +0000

The priest recently told this joke:

Joe was a new Catholic going to his first confession. He began, "Bless me Father for I have sinned. I have been stealing lumber from my employer." The priest asked, "How much lumber." Joe continued, "Enough to build my house and a house for my brother." The priest then asked, "Is that all?" "Well I also built a house for my sister and a brother-in-law." The priest thought about it for a while and then said, "Because of the extraordinary amount you have stolen, an extraordinary penance is required. I’d like you to make a novena to St. Joseph." Joe looked puzzled and then eagerly replied, "Well, being a new Catholic I don’t really know what a novena is, but if you have the blueprints, I have the lumber!"

The "Official" Democratic Catholic Teaching on Abortion

Rich — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 00:47:00 +0000

Here’s a great example of why thoughtful Catholics must despise the Democrats as a party. This lady is their elected speaker. Pelosi subverts Catholic teaching publicly under the self description of an "ardent, practicing Catholic."

Here’s how Archbishop Chaput has responded:

Ardent, practicing Catholics will quickly learn from the historical record that from apostolic times, the
Christian tradition overwhelmingly held that abortion was grievously evil. In the absence of modern
medical knowledge, some of the Early Fathers held that abortion was homicide; others that it was tantamount
to homicide; and various scholars theorized about when and how the unborn child might be
animated or "ensouled." But none diminished the unique evil of abortion as an attack on life itself, and
the early Church closely associated abortion with infanticide. In short, from the beginning, the believing
Christian community held that abortion was always, gravely wrong.

Of course, we now know with biological certainty exactly when human life begins. Thus, today’s religious
alibis for abortion and a so-called "right to choose" are nothing more than that – alibis that break
radically with historic Christian and Catholic belief.

Abortion kills an unborn, developing human life. It is always gravely evil, and so are the evasions
employed to justify it. Catholics who make excuses for it – whether they’re famous or not – fool only
themselves and abuse the fidelity of those Catholics who do sincerely seek to follow the Gospel and live
their Catholic faith.

The duty of the Church and other religious communities is moral witness. The duty of the state and its
officials is to serve the common good, which is always rooted in moral truth. A proper understanding
of the "separation of Church and state" does not imply a separation of faith from political life. But of
course, it’s always important to know what our faith actually teaches.

Most Rev. Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. Cap.
Archbishop of Denver
Addresses
Denver, CO – Monday, August 25, 2008

Prayers for a Young Man in Lourdes

Rich — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 00:50:00 +0000

If I may, I’d like to ask you and your family to say a rosary for a young man with advanced cancer who, with his family, has traveled to Lourdes France this week to beseech our Holy Mother for help. Here’s a link to his blog.