Selfies

On Saturday, I drove two hours to attend the mass at which two sisters made their Profession of Perpetual Vows.  Invited by the men from the Fund for Vocations which I support, it was a blessing to be asked to attend --- an opportunity to do God’s will, I thought.

The drive began with my body feeling anxious --- perhaps I had too much coffee with breakfast.  I took a pill to relax, which worked after a while.  Despite printed directions, I had some further anxieties as I watched for the proper exits and turning points --- but they were needless worries.  I arrived in plenty of time, entering the parking lot just as those who invited me were also arriving, and so we entered the small cathedral in Saginaw Michigan together.

The mass and commitment ceremony were attended by Cardinal Rigali and two bishops, along with the forty or so sisters of the order.  The parents of the two young ladies and about a hundred or so others also attended.  The ceremony itself was very moving and brought tears of joy to my eyes.  It was good that I was there.

In his homily, the bishop spoke about commitment to community and its importance --- and its decline in our society.  “’Selfie’ is a new word added to Webster’s Dictionary this year,” he said; they’re pictures we take of our self, alone or with people around us.  “It used to be,” he lamented, “that we’d ask a neighbor or even a stranger to take our picture, but we don’t talk much to strangers, or even our neighbors anymore.  We do so much alone.”  He didn’t say so, but I perceived in him sadness to some degree, that it now takes a special vow to live in community, replacing that which was once called “just being neighborly” and caring about one another.

After the mass and ceremony, all were invited to a reception in the building across the street.  My friends asked me to go with them.  “No,” I said.  “I don’t know anyone there, and I have chores to do at home.”  (I felt going there would be to partake in food and gratuitous socializing, and an unnecessary focusing on me on this day of the sisters’ joy.)  And so I said a goodbye to my friends and drove home to cut the grass.

I now think I was wrong in my declining to attend that social gathering.

In the quiet of the adoration chapel late Saturday night, I again thanked God for the two new sisters, and prayed for their joy, and God’s, at their vows.  But as I lay before the Lord my thoughts drifted to the journal I had begun this week.  “Yes,” I thought, “this attendance at the vows ceremony was a great ‘God Opportunity’ presented to me.”  I would make note of it in my journal writings for today, with a check mark next to it --- an opportunity given me, and correctly answered.  But then, unbidden, came further thoughts, about the question inviting me to the reception.  Someone had asked me to go somewhere, and I turned down their request.  Was this too a God Opportunity, but one I hadn’t considered?  Why had I turned it down?  And looking at my response, I saw I turned it down because of me --- my desires and, perhaps, my false humility.

I thought I was being humble, not wanting to attend and have anyone waste any focus on me, feeling compelled to make polite conversation with me, a stranger in their midst.  Excusing myself, I thought enabled greater focus on the sisters.  “I’m just being humble,” I thought.

What an egoist am I!

There, in the quiet of the chapel, my eyes were opened.  Going to the reception I was afraid would cause people to focus on me?!  No!  Going to the reception was an opportunity for ME to focus on people, and on those two sisters in particular.  The invite offered for me wasn’t God’s Opportunity for me to receive some pleasure for myself, but to GIVE some pleasure to others.

Opportunities from God, true opportunities, aren’t there so I can receive some love, but so that I can GIVE some love.  Giving love requires someone be there besides me --- but I chose to go home, alone.  My eyes were opened, I think, to better being aware of real “God Opportunities” in my life.  They are first and foremost opportunities to be with other people, people whom God has put in my life, and I should willingly accept invites to be with other people.  Whether I am tired, or it is noisy, or even if they are people I don’t particularly like being around, how can I love my neighbor if I first consider myself?  How can I love my neighbor if I avoid him, choosing to be alone?

If I ever had an opportunity to see Christ’s presence in my neighbor, surely it would have been in the eyes of those two sisters.  And I passed it by.

I thought back on the bishop’s homily on “selfies.”  I didn’t use a camera, but surely I had focused a selfie that afternoon.  In my journal I’ll include a note on the reception invite, and categorize it under God Opportunities I had that day, and give myself a failing grade.  Did I really fail in an opportunity to love someone, to encourage someone, or perhaps to just smile at someone --- someone who may have needed to be smiled at?  I’ll never know, because I turned down that opportunity for a community gathering, for a selfie.

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If I love my neighbor because he is congenial, renders me service or sympathizes with me, or because I enjoy his friendship, if I love him because of his fine qualities and pleasing manners, my love is merely human, and is not the love of charity.  If I am good to my neighbor and help him because I am sorry for him or feel bound to him by human ties, my love may be called sympathy or philanthropy, but it cannot be called charity, because the characteristic of charity is to love one’s neighbor “propter Deum,” for God.  My love becomes the virtue of charity only to the degree in which the love of God enters into it, only insofar as this love is inspired by my love for God.  The more my love is based on human motives alone --- like congeniality, natural gifts, ties of blood --- the more it is simply human love which has nothing of  the merit and value of charity.  “If I should distribute all my goods to feed the poor --- and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.”  (1Cor 13:3)

                                    Divine Intimacy, (p.752)

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Pope Paul VI in his apostolic exhortation Evangelii Nuntiandi described the Church as “a community which is in its turn evangelizing, meaning that those who have experienced the love of Jesus and live within the Church can and must communicate and spread it.:

                                    Encountering Jesus, by Peter J. Vaghi (p. ix)

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Lord, let me see Your presence in every person I meet.  Let me desire to be in the company of others, in community, for there I can love and serve You, present in every human being.  Let me see every encounter as an opportunity for You to sow Your seed, through me.  And let me be aware that You wait for me, in every person You place in my path.

The Government Supports Catholics

Well, actually, as Fr Ed explained at mass today, the government supports all religions.  He cited a federal law which requires employers to make reasonable accommodations to their employees for the requirements of religious holy days.   In the Catholic Church, religious holy days are considered Sundays and Holy Days of Obligation (like today’s Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary), which are treated as Sundays.  Accommodating Catholics’ holy day requirements means that they are able to attend mass AND focus the day on the Lord --- including abstaining from unnecessary work.  He suggested that telling your employer early in the year about the four Catholic holy days of obligation which may fall on weekdays and that requesting vacation days would allow them “to make reasonable accommodations” for your absence.

For Catholics confused about the requirements of Holy Days, he suggested the reading of John Paul II’s Apostolic Letter Deus Domini, the Day of the Lord.

Fr Ed also noted that the State of Michigan public schools allow for religious absences similar to the federal law.

He concluded by noting that ignorance of the Church requirements is no sin, so please don’t rush to the confessional for past lapses, if you were not aware.

But you are now.

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Yesterday afternoon I was visited by Corey Huber and Tom Cronquist, from the Matre Ecclesiae Fund For Vocations, which I support.  We had an enjoyable chat and dinner in downtown Plymouth.  Coming from a much busier metropolis, they greatly enjoyed the atmosphere of small town America, and we had some wonderful conversation about their work, and God’s work in our lives.

The Fund For Vocations assumes the college debt payments of men and women seeking to enter religious life, and if they make their final vows, pays off the debt entirely.  It is a great non-profit, and supporting it enables me to back up my prayers for priests with more concrete actions.  It’s not exactly buying a new priest, but I like to think of it that way ---- my sacrificing of my more selfish purchases, and participating in God’s answering of my prayers.

Tomorrow morning, after my usual Saturday morning breakfast with a friend, I’ll drive a couple of hours up to Saginaw, Michigan.  There I’ll join Corey and Tom at mass in the Cathedral of Mary of the Assumption, where Sister Mary Micaela Hoffman will be taking vows of the Religious Sisters of Mercy of Alma, Michigan.  She is an MEFV grant recipient.  I look forward to the blessing of seeing something I was a part of being brought to fruition. 

What I did was a little thing, but as I’ll witness tomorrow, little things can make a big difference.

The Adoration Chapel Was Dark

Yeh!  It rained at my house!

These are the railroad ties which were by my curb, holding in the mulch which used to be around the flowers planted there.

 These are the kids swimming in the street.

And this is the last car which made it down the street (the little mini stalled out)

And this is the yard where I won’t have to water, for a long while

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And as I drove up at 1AM, the adoration chapel was dark.

The waters had dropped on my neighborhood streets, but obviously impacts remained elsewhere.  I saw a couple of cars in the parking lot, and then the few candles in the chapel.  Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament was continuing; God waited for me in the darkness.

I was alone with God for my hour.  I took the candle which had stood at the sign-in book and held it as I prayed the rosary, reading and meditating on the Joyful Mystery meditations I had written.  In the darkness, it was one of the most enlightening adoration hours I had ever spent.

In the quiet, which seemed even quieter in the darkness, the presence of God felt so much more real, and the mysteries I meditated upon seemed almost like a movie playing in a darkened theater.  It all made so much sense; it all was so beautiful, and I was part of it all.  I had numerous great insights, as I reflected on the Joyful events.  Like, did you ever think about the Birth of Jesus, and what Mary was thinking and doing?  I felt that she, like many faithful --- and scared --- first-time mothers, must have been crying out, in pain and in prayer:  “Oh Lord!  Be with me!!!”

And then for her, like no one else ever, He was.

How neat was that!?

I laughed aloud at that insight, even as I thought on Mary’s pains --- and I knew she would understand.  I thought a lot about good things, and painful things this night, as God and I discussed things, as I prayed aloud to Him my thoughts.  And I knew He was there with me, even as He was presented in the Temple that first time to His Father, and then later as a youth, when He went to be about His Father’s business.

It really was a surprise to me when I saw the lights light up the chapel altar and chairs, as a car slowly toured the parking lot, its lights pointing toward me.  My hour was over, and a couple were entering the parking lot wondering, as I had:  “Is anyone there?”

I had barely begun that last Joyful Mystery when they softly tapped on the chapel door to be let in.

I stayed and finished that rosary, that time alone with God, in the darkness.  I felt wide awake, refreshed.

For that night, I had seen a great light.  

Nazarene! Marked For Death

This is the Arabic Letter “N.”  It is being marked on doors of Iraqi Christians
designating them to convert or die. 

You can read the story by Fr. Steve in the Our Lady of Good Counsel
August 3 Bulletin here: 

http://192.168.1.1:8181/http://www.thecatholicdirectory.com/bulletins/59371/Aug-03-2014.pdf

or you can read the article by the blogger Elizabeth Scalia here:

 http://www.patheos.com/blogs/theanchoress/

I just arrived home from a prayer and adoration vigil at Our Lady of Good Counsel for the Christians in the Middle East.  It was a good prayer time, attended by about 100 people.  At the end, Fr. Steve announced that one of the people present had printed up some bumper stickers, with the above symbol on it.  They are meant to show our unity with Christians around the world, our willing to be noticed --- and marked.

I thought that was a wonderful idea, and put my bumper sticker on before I left the parking lot.  I dropped off others to friends.   More will be printed for distribution to the parish on Sunday.  The mass and the Eucharist are visible signs in the church that we are together, in Christ.  This bumper sticker is for the world to see the same message. 

I like that.