Thirty Days Prayer to St Joseph

Ever blessed and glorious St. Joseph, kind and loving father, and helpful friend of all in sorrow! Thou art the good father and protector of orphans, the defender of the defenseless, the patron of those in need and sorrow. Look kindly on my request. My sins have drawn down on me the just displeasure of my God, and so I am surrounded with unhappiness. To thee, O loving guardian of the Family of Nazareth, do I go for help and protection. 

Listen, then, I beg of thee, with fatherly concern, to my earnest prayers, and obtain for me the favor I ask. (Here make your request.)

I ask it by the infinite mercy of the Eternal Son of God, which moved Him to take our nature and to be born into this world of sorrow. 

I ask it by the weariness and suffering thou didst endure when thou didst find no shelter at the inn of Bethlehem for the Holy Virgin, nor a place where the Son of God could be born. Then, being everywhere refused, thou hadst to allow the Queen of Heaven to give birth to the world’s Redeemer in a cave. 

I ask it by the loveliness and power of that sacred Name, Jesus, which thou didst confer on the adorable Infant. I ask it by that painful torture thou didst feel at the prophecy of holy Simeon, which declared the Child Jesus and His holy Mother future victims of our sins and of their great love for us. 

I ask it through thy sorrow and pain of soul when the Angel declared to thee that the life of the Child Jesus was sought by His enemies. From their evil plan thou hadst to flee with Him and His Blessed Mother into Egypt. I ask it by all the suffering, weariness and labors of that long and dangerous journey. 

I ask it by all thy care to protect the Sacred Child and His Immaculate Mother during thy second journey, when thou wert ordered to return to thine own country. 

I ask it by thy peaceful life in Nazareth, where thou didst meet with so many joys and sorrows. I ask it by thy great distress when the adorable Child was lost to thee and His Mother for three days. 

I ask it by thy joy at finding Him in the Temple, and by the comfort thou didst find at Nazareth, while living in the company of the Child Jesus. I ask it by the wonderful submission He showed in His obedience to thee. 

I ask it by the perfect love and conformity thou didst show in accepting the Divine order to depart from this life and from the company of Jesus and Mary. 

I ask it by the joy which filled thy soul when the Redeemer of the world, triumphant over death and Hell, entered into the possession of His kingdom and led thee into it with special honors. 

I ask it through Mary’s glorious Assumption and through that endless happiness thou hast with her in the presence of God. 

O good Father! I beg of thee, by all thy sufferings, sorrows and joys, to hear me and obtain for me what I ask. (Here mention your petitions or think of them.) 

Obtain for all those who have asked my prayers everything that is useful to them in the plan of God. Finally, my dear Patron and Father, be with me and all who are dear to me in our last moments, that we may eternally sing the praises of Jesus, Mary and Joseph! 

A blameless life, O St. Joseph, may we lead, by thy kind patronage from danger freed. Amen.

Thirty Days Prayer to St. Joseph

Source: Favorite Prayers to St Joseph

Rant on Homo-judgementalism

Unless you're in those circles that are drawn together precisely because of these issues, anything related to homosexuality is pretty much taboo.  If it NEEDS to be mentioned in a given setting for some reason, it might be glossed over briefly before being left behind in relief.

Why is it that so many of us are so terrified to be perceived as condoning another's public sin?  One dear friend always used to say that he was a much worse person than all these who were publicly living in sin, in reference to his pride and judgement and other interior vices, for which he was so much more responsible. The epic poet Dante would agree. He placed fornicators (including, I would presume, sodomites) in the ninth circle of his hell, the least painful part.  Their sin is so much lesser...

Heck, I would say that even St Augustine would agree.  "Love, and do as thou wilt," was how he summed up the law.  In that order - love first, and /then/ do other things, because when one loves first, everything else will fall in line.

But we're afraid.  I think part of it is that those of us who are theologically orthodox have been so scarred by our more progressive brethren that we're offended to be clumped in with them, afraid to come across as like them.  In an effort to avoid compromising ourselves, we project our prejudices and make our voices known.  And sometimes it is important for our voices to be heard.

But we can't be in ministry mode all the time.  Sometimes, we have to just accept people where they're at.  Is a man living with another man really all that different from a man living with another woman?  If someone is living in some other sinful way, do we feel morally obligated to make it known that their sin discomforts us?  Usually not.

Another college friend was discussing with me tonight two mutual friends who have quite flamboyantly come out of the closet since their graduations a few years ago, and how these men just felt so alone, so shamed into themselves on our conservative Catholic campus.  Sure, it's great that most people around you are striving for holiness with all their being, but how can you strive for holiness if you're barred from ministry positions because an adult you trusted spilled the beans that you struggle with homosexual temptations?  That's a far cry from blatantly living a lifestyle at odds with Church teaching, and yet it's often treated the same way.  Who can blame people with such temptations for holding them in and then exploding once they were allowed to let out that forbidden breath?

In the end, we straight folks fall into the same pernicious trap that ensnares anyone who's faced homosexuality in their own life: placing so much emphasis on the homosexuality that it overshadows absolutely everything else about a person.  It's uncomfortable, but you can live in harmony with those with whom you disagree on important things.  Get used to it and get over it.

That nun.  She really does have it right.  I respect her a lot, and I hope to one day achieve a balance like what she has.  May the Lord bless her, her cousin, all people anywhere on the LGBTQA continuum who feel rejected by Holy Mother Church, and all those in the Church (myself included) who reject them, from time to time).

None of us dare to even hope for heaven save for God's great mercy.  And if it's mercy that brings up both the biggest sinners and the dearest saints, who are we to judge who neeeds His mercy/

What are Religion, Sex, and Politics?

The answer is: Things you’re not supposed to discuss in polite company.

Politics never held any interest for me anyway.  In fact, I excuse myself and get far away from political conversation whenever possible.

Sex...  Well, I really have little interest in hearing about other people’s sex lives.  Especially at family gatherings.

Religion.  It’s usually a subject that’s left alone (at least, in my family gatherings, where nearly everyone there outside of my immediate family and the grandparents is a lapsed Catholic), and every now and again I’m reminded why.

Maybe it’s just because I’m innately a people pleaser, but I’ve found that I don’t really mind the conversations wherein I tell someone that my career goal (outside of raising children, of course) is to offer to your average Sunday Catholics the treasures of the Church that tend to lay just beyond their reach in this day and age, and they say that sounds worthwhile, and so long as I’m passionate about it, ‘cuz that’s all that really matters.

The more troublesome conversations come when people (i.e., relatives and family friends of my parents’ generation) know that I’m religious and that I want to work in the Church, and they talk to me about religious things, expecting there to be common ground.  Things like how great it was when the Mass was English, and they could have guitar Mass (I chant in the schola for Latin Mass).  Things like the exciting possibility of women priests (I would sooner die than “become” one, despite my fervor for the Liturgy).  Things like how personable it is when the priest’s personality shows through in the way he celebrates Mass (I try to block that out because it distracts me from the sacrifice at hand).  Things like the little doilies the girls had to wear on their heads, and how they shrunk in size until they weren’t required anymore (I’ve been wearing the veil for nine months).  Not that they know any of this, because I don’t tell them (well, my immediate family knows some, but not much).

Yesterday I received a letter stating that I’ve been accepted to the Liturgical Institute, where I will study *surprise!* the Sacred Liturgy.  Naturally, this leads most people to question whether I intend to become a priest.  My two stock answers are “I like all the Church’s teachings just the way they are” and “Jesus had the perfect woman right in front of Him and didn’t ordain her, so who are we to ordain women?”  Uncle B’s response tonight was, “Well, how do we know He didn’t?” after which he began to ramble about the gnostic gospels.

I studied Biblical theology, inerrancy, all that.  I believe that the Bible is the Word of God, and the books in the canon were accurately written, and the canon itself was chosen via the influence of the Holy Spirit, just as Mother Church teaches.  I studied all that once, and I know that it is more reasonable to believe in the historicity of the Gospels than to disbelieve in them.  But I don’t remember all the arguments!  That has never been the part of faith that has interested me.  I’ve recalled what I need in order to move on with my life.  And yet I find myself unable to do anything but smile so as to give some (but not full) assent, and feel awkward.

At the end of the day, it’s days like this that remind me of the irrational aspect of our faith.  Sure, fides is built up by ratio, but our belief in “Christ crucified [is] a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles” (1 Cor 1:23 ).  It wouldn’t be called faith if were entirely knowable by reason only.  There is something laudatory about placing our trust in the God of our fathers and just leaving it there, even when we can’t remember enough to explain it to others.

I’ve studied our faith so thoroughly for so long that it’s very easy to forget about the irrational side of things.  But uncomfortable-for-me conversations like tonight’s remind me that I’m not in control, no matter how much knowledge is at my fingertips, and I never will be.  Faith is a virtue, one upon which I should place greater value.

After all the great works he had written (keep in mind that it was once said of him by a pope that no miracles were needed through his intercession for his sainthood, because every article he wrote of the Summa was a miracle), St. Thomas Aquinas had a vision of heaven and stopped writing, because “All this is so much straw!”

I should pay less attention to the straw and more attention to Him Who created said straw, beautiful though it may be.

On God Showing Off

'Cuz really, that's exactly what it is: unnecessary yet awesome.  I read the following this morning, in today's selection for the Proper of Saints from Dr. Pius Parsch's Year of Grace:

"The Breviary relates the following incident from [St. Stanislaus'] life.  King Boleslaus of Poland summoned the bishop before a solemn gathering of the nation's rulers and falsely accused him of illegally holding certain property that had, in fact, been purchased and paid for by him in the name of the Church.  But when he could not prove the transaction by documents and the witnesses were afraid to speak the truth, Stanislaus promised to bring before the court within three days the person from whom he had bought the ground, a certain Peter who had died three years previously.  His proposal was accepted with derisive laughter.

"Then the man of God spent three days in fasting and prayer; and after he had offered the Sacrifice of holy Mass on the third day, the day he was to re-appear in court, Stanislaus commanded Peter to rise from his grave.  Upon hearing the bishop's command, Peter immediately came to life, abandoned his tomb, and accompanied the bishop to the royal tribunal.  There to the consternation and utter amazement of the king and all his attendants, Peter gave testimony to the sale of the land in question and to the full and lawful payment made by the bishop.  Then he again fell asleep in the Lord."

On Passion, Balance, and Not Selling Out

Warning: This is liable to be a very long post. I've been chewing on these ideas for some weeks, and I'm still not even sure I can spit it out intelligibly. But I'm ready to try.

One of the biggest compliments one can receive from a high schooler is to be recognized as "hardcore". This is approximately the "cool" word for one who is passionate about and devoted to something in a way that is worthy of respect (as opposed to pathetic). Teens in particular are searching for what is real and true, and when they see someone so fired up, they almost can't help but admire.

Passion excites. That's just in its nature. I don't mean the passions, as in philosophy, or Christ's Passion, as in theology. For the remainder of this post, the word "passion" refers to the noun form of the adjective "passionate", whose meaning you've all known since long before you began to study the loftier sciences.

Returning to my point: Passion excites. By definition, passion is intimately connected with strong emotions. When a passion is shared with another, the other is invited into the speaker's awe or outrage or whatever. The other then is able to experience the speaker's passion, even if he cannot understand. I was dining with friends recently when a musician, was asked what his degree was in. He responded "Math," and our tablemates were surprised. He then went on to briefly explain the particular discipline in which he'd specialized, and he did it with an affection and intimacy that brought it to life. Now, I'm not a math person, and I couldn't tell you anything about Abstract Algebra that I didn't just learn right now from skimming the Wikipedia article, but I walked away from that evening with a feeling that his undergrad studies had been in something beautiful, little though I understood it.

Think back to temperance. Not the Prohibition kind, but the virtue. Temperance is a balance, the mean between two extremes. As such, it is inextricably connected to truth: not to say that truth is the mean between two extremes, but that extremes develop on either side of the truth. Consequently, we very easily step aside from the narrow road that is the Way and lean toward the Left or the Right, if you will. But leaving aside politically charged metaphors: Isn't much of life about balance? Don't we want to be neither a teetotaler nor a drunkard? Neither a "sexually enlightened" free lover nor a virgin from prudishness alone? Neither an manipulative control freak nor a pathetic doormat? Neither obese nor anorexic?

You get the idea. We want our lives to be balanced. And we're certainly not attracted to people who've lost their balance. Addicts are an easy example. So are most people with whom we disagree politically or philosophically. But there's another way one's passion can be undermined.

Think back to high school. What was the worst "sin" one could commit? (I'm speaking in an irreligious context here.) Selling out. Calling someone a sellout is possibly the strongest invective known to teenager. And it was used a lot. The teens in question, of course, were not the sellouts themselves. Selling out is something that happened to an unfortunate number of people with age or fame. Let me back up a bit.

A sellout is someone who compromises their values for any number of reasons: money, fame, convenience, lack of zeal. It's usually someone who was particularly hardcore in some way or had a strong driving passion, but has normalled out, if you will, or gone soft (or mainstream). When someone sells out you lose respect for them.

My problem, however, is that a humble man sometimes looks like a sellout. And the catch-22 is that, in his humility, he won't correct the calumny. For instance: If one is a catechist just beginning to build relationships at a parish, and a guest speaker or higher-up catechist speaks some doctrinal error (major or minor), immediate confrontation is not usually the best course of action (for charity's sake). True, the scandal of the false teaching persists, but it's not the responsibility of the new catechist to coldly correct others' factual errors so much as to live the truth in charity and draw them to Christ (and to greater truth) in love. However, this makes the new guy look like he's just being a doormat. And perhaps he is, in humility, responding as did Christ to Pilate or Herod. And very probably, the fact that he's letting this obvious injustice go uncorrected, though by so doing he stops himself from committing worse injustices, pains him on top of his self-reflective realization that, to an outside eye, he looks like a coward at best.

That's only one of many possible examples, but they all serve the same point: Though becoming like Christ makes one more fully onesself, taking on His intense humility and accepting injustice as if it were deserved serves also to hide the self from others for the sake of glorifying God.

When one's primary driving passion is loving the Lord, lessons like the above are very important, because what's given up is a valuable gift to our divine Lover. Still, what must be hidden is often what's most important to us: St. Faustina, for instance, was forced to hide from her peers her intimate conversations with the Lord and to accept instead their complaints and belief that she was responsible for their errors.

Therein lies the essential difference between humility and selling out: The humble man has hidden his passions, whereas the sellout has simply laid them aside. And no reason for laying aside a passion like that can match with the gift of pure love that is humility. After all, since the days of St. Paul the Church has preached "Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God" (1 Cor 1:23-24).

Still, Christianity is a religion of contradictions. How else do you explain a simple illiterate visionary like St. Bernadette Soubirous meriting heaven right alongside a pillar of Western philosophy like St. Thomas Aquinas? What about a great mystic like St. Gemma Galgani, who hardly left her own house, along with Bl. Teresa of Calcutta, whose missionary charity is world-renowned? So, while humility is a pretty basic essential in the preparation for holiness, it must still be possible to wear one's passion on one's sleeve even when not surrounded by those who share such a love for Christ.

Because when people who care at all ask what you want to do with your life, they're less concerned with what your plans might be, because they realize those plans will change. Sure, they want to see that your life-plan is fairly rational, that you're not going to starve in the streets because you're so set on being an Elvis impersonator in Vegas that you refuse to start off with smaller gigs, but more than that they want to see your love for what you do.

Especially at our age. If we don't take advantage of the passion of youth now, how will we expect to ever retain such passion later on in life, when it no longer comes so naturally?

In short: I feel like I've lost the ability to relay to others with no base in faith and tradition the things that really fire me up and to which I wish to devote my life, which is a shame, because I would very much like for others to be able to see the joy and zeal that the Lord brings to my life.

Still, if I won't be remembered for the strong passions I held and the crazy things I did, I'd be quite content if what was said of my co-worker's grandmother at her funeral was said of me at mine: "She never said a bad word about anyone." It's not an absolutely unique way to be remembered, but I still think it's a pretty good goal.

And if you stuck through this all the way to the bottom, you deserve a gold star. If I could figure out how to make one appear next to your username every time you comment me, I would totally do it.

On Saints and Symbols

Admit it: When you were standing outside those magnificent French gothic Cathedrals with saints linings the outside, St. Denis is the only one you could identify. How hard is it to mistake a guy holding his own head?

But think about this: It didn't used to be that way! Catholics used to be able to recognize all sorts of saints from their symbols (not just St. Denis, St. Thérèse, St. Patrick, and St. Anthony).

I think it's irrelevant to ask "What happened?" That's been answered so many times, I don't imagine I could bring anything new to the table. No, what I wonder instead is "How to fix this?" (Not that this hasn't been answered a million times as well, but bear with me.)

Even when I was younger, my mom and I discussed the idea of designing a saints matching game - where St. Agnes matched the lamb, St. Peter matched the keys, etc. We never actually made such a game, but as I got older and more interested in Church architecture, I found myself playing this same game almost constantly! There's a nun holding a monstrance - St. Clare. What about that monk with the dog? St. Dominic, of course. But those are the easy ones. Is there a resource where it's explained which saint is depicted with which symbols and why? This is reportedly the most comprehensive saint resource on the web, and while I haven't examined it thoroughly, I somehow doubt it has such information. Certainly it would be nigh impossible to search by symbols.

So those few of us who really care will have to keep plowing on through, playing the guessing games, though we have no one to bounce our ideas against, and hoping to learn more brick by brick, as the saying goes. Perhaps I'll learn more when I take Liturgical Art and Architecture with Dr. Denis McNamara. *swoons* Look at that - just thinking about my future classes at the Liturgical Institute makes me weak in the knees!