◊ Saint Cletus, pray for us
Has someone’s courage ever made you look at yourself and ask what you’re afraid of, what you know of love?
Your pain has changed me
Your dreams inspire
Your face a memory
Your hope a fire
Your courage asks me what I’m afraid of
And what I know of love
And what I know of God— Sara Groves, from “I Saw What I Saw”
◊ Saint Leo IX, pray for us
Lord of the Starfields
Ancient of Days
Universe Maker
Here’s a song in your praiseWings of the storm cloud
Beginning and end
You make my heart leap
Like a banner in the windO Love that fires the sun keep me burning
Lord of the Starfields
Sower of Life
Heaven and earth are
Full of your lightVoice of the Nova
Smile of the dew
All of our yearning
Only comes home to YouO Love that fires the sun keep me burning
◊ Saint Peter Gonzales, pray for us
The other day in religion class, we were discussing the holy days of obligation with attending Mass. The discussion quickly moved from the focus of worship to the meaning of the word obligation. Unfortunately a dictionary was not at hand, and I felt slightly handicapped at the moment. Several students were heated in their defense that obligation meant something that one had to do (with extra emphatic emphasis on the word had). One should want to do it, not be made to do it. I and several other students tried to point out that their was much more to the notion of obligation, that is, it is primarily a label for a choice—one should want to do it, but doing the right thing is not about feelings.
At a loss for synonyms, I claimed to the most vocal student that she had family obligations. She emphatically shook her head no. I listed several things that a teenager might be obligated to do in regards to her family, like ask permission to go out at night, say thank you, etc. She still shook her head in denial that these were forms of obligations. She insisted that these are things one should want to do, not had to do.
I moved the lecture on, feeling slightly defeated. Some murmurings continued for a little more while I wrote the next topic on the board. After class, I asked another student his opinion of that discussion and he said that the students around him were much harder on her than I was about their opinion on the meaning of obligation.
Today’s test question is:
The word obligation means
a. a promise
b. commitment
c. duty
d. a responsibility
e. all of the above
f. none of the above
Does this make me passive aggressive?
Sorry Father for not steering the discussion back to You and to the idea of worship. I messed up. Please fix it and bring them all closer to You through this. Help me to inspire a Sabbath attitude of mind.
◊ Saint Peter Regulatus, pray for us
I was listening to the homily for today’s morning Mass on EWTN radio as I drove to work. The homilist, Fr. Joseph Mary, paraphrased Dietrich von Hildebrand:
The essence of purity is reverence.
Fr. Joseph Mary added, “…reverence for the person, reverence for my own dignity, and reverence for God. That is what the essential element of purity is.”
reverence = noun, a feeling or attitude of deep respect tinged with awe
To put it in the negative, impurity is irreverence (to the person, to my dignity, to God).
In other words, to be not pure means that I don’t care enough about the good of the other person. I am willing to use the other person for whatever I feel or want. This can be from the typical connotation of purity as lustful thoughts to outright sexual activity, but it also extends to how we treat other people in general—do I manipulate or exploit people, do I gossip about them, etc. It goes back to treating people as persons and not as objects. You use objects; you love persons. Purity is about the whole person, not just about their sexuality as most people refer to it.
Kierkegaard wrote, “Purity of heart is to will one thing.” It is to revere others, to will—to choose—the good for them. It is to be sensitive, mindful as the Buddhist would say, to the needs of others. It is to love them.
So what is missing in me—what hole am I trying to fill when I do not revere other people? I can be so selfish at times. Do I not trust God enough to know that He will indeed give what is needed, in other words, to feed me? Give us this day our daily bread.
Father, I believe. Help my unbelief. Help me to be more open, more mindful, more reverent.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
◊ Saint John Climacus, pray for us
God is everywhere. That’s easy to say, but do we really believe it? Are we willing to admit that God is present even in what looks nothing like holiness or love, i.e. in our sin—before, during, and after?
Here’s a powerful poem from Presence: An International Journal of Spiritual Direction, September, 2008.
After the storm, clouds like blown
milkweed lie in the widening sky.
I still don’t know how we surviveour youth, how in a matchstick boat
we cross the wind-clawed sea. When I
look back, I see no boat. I must havewalked on water, holding fast to false
beliefs: that I was strong;
that the worsthad already happened; that to commit
suicide would disgrace
the memory of my grandparents,who had survived Auschwitz,
so what excuse might I give
for not surviving America?Maybe it’s not truth that save us,
but a half-remembered image:
dimly seeing in the darka luminous, familiar
figure walking on the sea.
And like Peter, you stepout of doubt as out of a boat,
and start walking across the storm—
not on water, not on air,barely even on faith—
toward what you don’t dare
call love.— Joanna Warwick