Psalm 84

 My soul is longing and yearning,

is yearning for the courts of the Lord.

My heart and my soul ring out their joy

to God, the living God.

The sparrow herself finds a home

and the swallow a nest for her brood;

she lays her young by your altars,

Lord of hosts, my king and my God.

They are happy, who dwell in your house,

for ever singing your praise.

They are happy, whose strength is in you,

in whose hearts are the roads to Zion.

As they go through the Bitter Valley

they make it a place of springs,

the autumn rain covers it with blessings.

They walk with ever growing strength,

they will see the God of gods in Zion.

-Monday of Week III

Nary a whimper

from The Pillar, a pithy observation of synodality: 

The pope will not issue an apostolic exhortation, telling delegates that  “what we have approved is sufficient.”

It was a funny way to end things, because the 28,000 word text calls for changes to canon law, and the creation of offices, and other concrete initiatives, which have to actually be taken up and put into motion by someone with executive authority — namely, the pope himself. 

But rather than choose to receive those recommendations and then issue a text saying he’ll implement them, the pope instead formally promulgated a document — carrying his authority — calling on him to do things, which he may or may not do.

Quid est veritas

 This article lays out succinctly how we came to this highly anti-Ratzingerian moment in the history of the Church. What we need is a restored ecclesiology.

That will come about when we identify the roots of this distorted eccelesiology so prevalent in the Church currently. Many of those distortions, such as moral proportionalism, are being foisted upon the synodal process currently underway.

The Pretend Church

Oh, what a fisking!

The penitential service “is intended to direct the work of the Synod towards the beginning of a new way of being Church.”

It seems to have forgotten about an older way of being Church, even from just twenty-five years ago. 

I would add: Not forgotten- deliberately eschewed. 

Spot on

 Those adolescent liberal boomers strike again: 

https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2024/10/05/the-liberal-and-flawed-roots-of-tiresome-synodal-grievances/

Senseless

Chaput rhymes with 'slap-you' for good reason, as expressed so masterfully here:

We are called Christians because we believe Jesus Christ is God, the second person of the Trinity. From the beginning of our faith, followers of Christ were unique among world religions because they accepted as true Christ’s extraordinary claim that he is God—in part because of his miracles, in part because of his preaching, but ultimately because of his death and bodily resurrection. Christians have also always believed that this reality makes Christianity categorically distinct from all other religions, and in turn requires a total commitment of our lives. (For the Church’s Christology, see: the New Testament, the Council of Nicaea, the Council of Ephesus, the Council of Chalcedon, the Council of Trent, the Second Vatican Council, The Catechism of the Catholic Church, the Vatican’s document Dominus Jesus, which all, among many others, teach clearly the divinity of Christ and his unique role in salvation history.)

Well that's the tricky bit, isn't it? Dominus Iesus is precisely the kind of magisterial teaching from his predecessors that our current pontiff (and an entire generation of liberal dissent) has been slowly trying to undermine, having foamed at the mouth when Ratzinger first published it.

Interesting that Chaput's article showed up alongside this one:

In particular, it states: “The magisterium also judges with authority whether opinions which are present among the people of God, and which may seem to be the sensus fidelium, actually correspond to the truth of the Tradition received from the Apostles” (§77).

At the same time, the document acknowledges that there are historical examples where the sensus fidei—even specifically manifested in the laity—helped the magisterium in the formulation of doctrine (see Chapter One, part 2 and §72). It states: “Sometimes the people of God, and in particular the laity, intuitively felt in which direction the development of doctrine would go, even when theologians and bishops were divided on the issue” (§72). Such historical examples give warrant to the document’s insistence that “the magisterium has to be attentive to the sensus fidelium” (§74), properly understood, of course.

What is important for the purposes of this article is the centrality of the word faith or faithful in the terms sense of the faith or sense of the faithful. Faith is a supernatural virtue by which we believe that which has been revealed by God because it has been revealed by God. Nothing can be a part of a proper and authentic sensus fidei that is contrary to the deposit of faith. Anyone advocating the rejection of dogma or any other infallible teaching on faith and morals is not exhibiting a true sense of the faith. Unfortunately, despite this fact, there are Catholics who appeal to the term sensus fidei or sensus fidelium to do precisely that. They equate their sentiments and desires—which not coincidentally happen to correspond to debased elements of our society—with the working of the Holy Spirit to fundamentally change the Church into their image.

Having been raised among liberal dissent, I am only too familiar with this false image of the sensus fidei that pervades their entire ethos and its misapplication of Vatican II.

Chaput was generous when he observed:

The bishop of Rome is the spiritual and institutional head of the Catholic Church worldwide. This means, among other things, that he has the duty to teach the faith clearly and preach it evangelically. Loose comments can only confuse. Yet, too often, confusion infects and undermines the good will of this pontificate.

Not only do we have a pope who seems not to know what is a pope, he seems not to know what even is a Christian.

Christians hold that Jesus alone is the path to God. To suggest, imply, or allow others to infer otherwise is a failure to love because genuine love always wills the good of the other, and the good of all people is to know and love Jesus Christ, and through him the Father who created us.

Had he ever read his predecessor's writings with an open heart, he may have understood this. But the opponents of Benedict XVI never read his theology; they simply mortally opposed it and made a cariacature of it. I mean, Pope Francis only had to read the opening paragraph:

Charity in truth, to which Jesus Christ bore witness by his earthly life and especially by his death and resurrection, is the principal driving force behind the authentic development of every person and of all humanity. Love — caritas — is an extraordinary force which leads people to opt for courageous and generous engagement in the field of justice and peace. It is a force that has its origin in God, Eternal Love and Absolute Truth. Each person finds his good by adherence to God's plan for him, in order to realize it fully: in this plan, he finds his truth, and through adherence to this truth he becomes free (cf. Jn 8:32). To defend the truth, to articulate it with humility and conviction, and to bear witness to it in life are therefore exacting and indispensable forms of charity. Charity, in fact, “rejoices in the truth” (1 Cor 13:6). All people feel the interior impulse to love authentically: love and truth never abandon them completely, because these are the vocation planted by God in the heart and mind of every human person. The search for love and truth is purified and liberated by Jesus Christ from the impoverishment that our humanity brings to it, and he reveals to us in all its fullness the initiative of love and the plan for true life that God has prepared for us. In Christ, charity in truth becomes the Face of his Person, a vocation for us to love our brothers and sisters in the truth of his plan. Indeed, he himself is the Truth (cf. Jn 14:6).

Larry Chapp is more charitable than I: 

https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2024/09/16/the-many-and-sometimes-puzzling-paths-of-pope-francis/

Pearls again!!

First in the account of Juan Diego, this time from St. Faustina:

Today I saw the Crucified Lord Jesus. Precious pearls and diamonds were pouring forth from the wound in His Heart. I saw how a multitude of souls was gathering these gifts, but there was one soul who was closest to His Heart and she, knowing the greatness of these gifts, was gathering them with liberality, not only for herself, but for others as well. The Savior said to me, "Behold, the treasures of grace that flow down upon souls, but not all souls know how to take advantage of My generosity" (Diary, 1687).

Joy in Suffering

excellent reflection on Death as a mysterious alchemy of love and pain, from Katherine Bennett at Catholic Herald:

With life reduced to the material, and purpose replaced with comfort, one conclusion is to avoid the subject altogether. If there can be no value in suffering, or meaning in death, why would anyone want to talk about it, let alone see it? 

Why would anyone choose to give their life for a stranger as St Maximillian Kolbe did, choose to give birth to a disabled child, or to stay alive following a fatal diagnosis? The culture of death is the inevitable consequence of a society absent from Christ.

But as Catholics we know that life is not the result of blind chance, a bunch of cells hanging around waiting to return to the oblivion whence they arose.

We also know that death is an aberration, the result of the Fall; it was not meant to be this way. It is our recognition that God sent His Son into our brokenness – “by His wounds we are healed.” This means we can hold two things to be true at the same time. We experience the sadness of suffering and loss, but we do so with the joy of knowing that the battle has been won.

“O death, where is thy victory? O grave, where is thy sting?” (1 Cor 15:55-56). Christ’s death and resurrection gives  sense to the senselessness, brings hope in despair, joy in pain and life that will never end. Only Christians can truly understand that there is value in suffering and meaning in death, such that we can – in my best Dolly Parton – “laugh through the tears”.

“I do not wish you suffering” Peter Kreeft writes in a letter to his children – before adding an important caveat. “I wish you joy. But I wish you also the strange and beautiful sweetness of joy in suffering. It can come only from a suffering that comes from love and trust, a suffering that you know is God’s will for you and that you therefore accept in the simple trust that (1) He loves you and therefore wishes only your deepest joy, (2) that He knows exactly what He is doing and exactly what you need, and (3) that He is in control of every atom in the universe He created.

“When you know this, and when you turn to what you know, instead of ignoring it, God will sometimes give you the grace of a supernatural joy, a joy that seems to be irrational, a joy without a cause, an utterly unexpected and unexplainable gift.”

...

In his apostolic letter Salvifici Doloris (1984) Pope St John Paul II explores the Christian meaning of human suffering. In it he writes:

“As a result of Christ’s salvific work, man exists on earth with the hope of eternal life and holiness. And even though the victory over sin and death achieved by Christ in His Cross and Resurrection does not abolish temporal suffering from human life, nor free from suffering the whole historical dimension of human existence, it nevertheless throws a new light upon this dimension and upon every suffering: the light of salvation.

“Man ‘perishes’ when he loses ‘eternal life’. The opposite of salvation is not, therefore, only temporal suffering, any kind of suffering, but the definitive suffering: the loss of eternal life, being rejected by God, damnation.

“The only-begotten Son was given to humanity primarily to protect man against this definitive evil and against definitive suffering. In His salvific mission, the Son must therefore strike evil right at its transcendental roots from which it develops in human history.

“These transcendental roots of evil are grounded in sin and death: for they are at the basis of the loss of eternal life.”

The role of a husband

https://life-craft.org/a-husbands-place-forging-peace-in-the-home/

Speaking of the order we must all put in our own lives—in which order the love of God is first and the root of all else—Augustine emphasizes how for a married man there is this immediate implication: “He ought to make this endeavor in behalf of his wife, his children, his household, all within his reach…” He proceeds to hammer this home: “Primarily, therefore, his own household are his care, for the law of nature and of society gives him readier access to them and greater opportunity of serving them.”

The word ‘serving’ here is important, as it contextualizes Augustine’s use of the word ‘ruling’ for how the husband and father seeks to put right order into life in the home.

While this topic calls for extensive and careful consideration, here two things especially strike me. First, a husband’s care and so also ruling of others begins in his putting right order into his own affections and actions, starting in his relationship with God. Indeed, Augustine strikingly says ‘this endeavor’ is ‘in behalf’ of his loved ones. A man’s effort in his relationship with the Lord is the foundation of his relating well to his wife and children.

Second, by nature a married man’s first focus is how he can take care of his household. This implies that there is much that demands his ‘ordering.’ Seemingly countless disparate things must be woven together. Household life is like a garden; it is fundamentally a matter of arranging, prioritizing, and also weeding. Constantly.

St. Margaret, pray for us!

 A ribald hagiography from The Pillar for one of today's saints:

In line with English legal practice at the time, Margaret was laid atop sharp stones under a wooden platform, upon which weights were piled until she pled either guilty or not guilty, or she was crushed to death. She chose death.

Of course, had she pled “not guilty” I wouldn’t have fancied her chances for mounting a successful defense — she could hardly deny being Catholic, and they had found the priest holes in her house. And a guilty plea would have meant (equally) certain execution.

But by refusing to plead one way or another, she couldn’t be convicted, so the family home and assets couldn’t be seized, and her children and husband were spared (potentially self-incriminating) interrogation under oath during her trial.

I cannot say for sure if I admire most her witness of faith, her maternal concern for her family, or her faultless command of procedural law — but the combination of all three is surely saintly.

Her story is also, by the way, historically instructive. The absurd myth of the Spanish Inquisition as a bloodsoaked torture fest, with dank dungeons full of prelates with red hot pokers, is and always has been an Elizabethan invention and naked exercise in projection by Bloody Bess’s royal court.

St. Margaret’s treatment under English law was neither especially uncommon nor illegal; no such conduct existed in the canonical system. 

Some people would argue, in fact, that the Spanish Inquisition was more enlightened than any other European legal system of its time — and more than most for several centuries to come. 

How’s that for unexpected?

for Healing and Repentance

One of the most celebrated parts of the Eucharistic Congress was this Litany:

Breathe in the Holy Spirit...Come, Holy Spirit
Breathe out negativity
Breathe in the Holy Spirit...Come, Holy Spirit
Breathe out all that is not of Him
Notice your heartbeat
Each heartbeat is a gift
God wants you
He made you.
He knit you together with love, with His own hands in your mother’s womb
You are a masterpiece of His loving creativity
He has chosen you
He sees you
He gazes on you with love
He delights in you

Jesus, I believe in you.

Jesus, I believe in your Real Presence in the Eucharist.

Jesus, I believe you are here with me.

Jesus, I believe you are in my heart.

Jesus, I believe in your love for me.

Jesus, I believe your love is greater than every sin.

Jesus, I believe your love is greater than all evil.

Jesus, I believe your love can free me from my sin.

Let’s practice the response several times: Jesus, heal my heart with Your love

For the times I’ve felt abandoned...

For the times I’ve been betrayed...

For the times I’ve been rejected...

For the times I’ve been forgotten...

For the times I’ve been disappointed...

For the times I’ve been let down by the Church...

For the times I’ve been lonely...

For the times I’ve been desperate...

For the times I’ve been lost...

For the times I’ve been dejected...

For the times I’ve been used...

For the times I’ve been neglected...

For the times I’ve been starved for love...

For the times I’ve been deprived of affirmation...

For the times I’ve lost my my way...

For the times I’ve gone astray...

For the times I’ve made the wrong choice...

Let’s practice the response several times: Jesus, come close to me.

Whenever I feel unseen...

Whenever I feel ignored...

Whenever I feel unimportant...

Whenever I feel useless...

Whenever I feel alone...

Whenever I feel abandoned...

Whenever I feel like it would be better if I didn’t exist...

Whenever I feel misunderstood...

Whenever I feel used...

Whenever I feel forgotten...

Whenever I feel angry...

Whenever I feel anxious...

Whenever I feel depressed...

Whenever I feel envious...

Whenever I feel lustful...

Whenever I feel afraid...

Let’s practice the response several times: Please forgive me, Jesus

For the times I’ve used others...

For the times I’ve failed to see...

For the times I’ve hardened my heart to a person in need...

For the times I’ve failed to do the right thing...

For the times I’ve given in to peer pressure...

For the times I’ve lied when someone needed me to tell the truth...

For the times I’ve looked away when someone needed my help...

For the times I’ve closed my ears to the cries of the helpless...

For the times I’ve chosen comfort over courage...

For the times I’ve turned my back on someone who was hurting...

For the times I’ve ignored my feelings...

For the times I’ve silenced the cry of my heart...

For the times I haven’t been God’s mercy for others...

For the times I’ve invalidated my own feelings...

For the times I’ve believed the lies of others...

For the times I’ve repeated the lies of others...

For the times I’ve suppressed righteous anger...

For the times I’ve given up in despair...

For the times I’ve failed to share You with someone who needed Him...

For the times I’ve wrongly hid my faith from others...

For the times I’ve misrepresented You in my words and actions...

For the times I’ve caused scandal by my words or actions...

For the times I’ve brought hatred instead of love...

For the times I’ve brought division instead of peace...

For the times I’ve brought gossip instead of charity...

For the times I’ve torn down when I could have built up...

Let’s practice the response several times: Jesus, help me to believe

When I doubt the power of God’s love...

When I doubt God’s love for me...

When I struggle to trust...

When I doubt that I am worthy of love...

When I doubt that I have a place in anyone’s heart...

When I wonder if I am enough...

When I doubt I have what it takes...

When I feel helpless...

When I feel useless...

When I doubt that I have anything to offer...

When I doubt that I can make a change...

When I doubt that my efforts matter...

When I feel hopeless...

When I want to give up on my neighbor...

When I want to give up on my enemy...

When I want to give up on the Church...

When I want to give up on myself...

When I want to give up on God...

Jesus I need you.

Jesus I trust in you.

Jesus I love you.

Jesus, meek and humble of heart,

Make my heart like unto yours.

Let us pray.

Lord Jesus Christ, You are the Good Shepherd who rescues the lost. You are the Divine

Physician who heals the sick. You are the Savior Who washes away our sin in your Blood. You

are the Beloved Son who shares your sonship with us along with the love of the Father. We

know that even if we do not feel it, you will continue this work of healing in our hearts. We trust

that you love us and desire our wholeness and flourishing. Fill each of our hearts as we worship

you and receive You in all your love in this Holy Eucharist. We make this prayer in your Name,

Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen.

Pearls!

And then Juan Diego climbed the little hill, and when he reached the top, he marveled at how many flowers were spread out there, their blossoms were open, flowers of every kind, lovely and beautiful, like those of Castille, when it was not yet their season because it was when the frost was worst. The flowers were giving off an extremely soft fragrance, like precious pearls, as if filled with the night’s dew. Right away he began to cut them, gathered them all and put them in the hollow of his tilma. The top of the little hill was certainly not a place in which any flowers grew, because it was rocky, there were burs, thorny plants, prickly pear, and an abundance of mesquite bushes. And though some small grasses might grow, it was then the month of December, in which the ice eats everything up and destroys it. (Nican Mopohua, no. 127-133)

My daughters are both named from margarita, which means "pearl" and I never noticed that detail in the appartition account until now. How sweet!

Well, if it's just a cymbal

Amy Welborn highlights a quote that speaks of the Land of Grief:

Also – we always focus on the “to hell with it” part, but to me, the last part of O’Connor’s telling is just as powerful.

….this is all I will ever be able to say about it, outside a story…

Rereading that letter just now, I was struck hard by the succinct truth of another sentence, her description of another encounter, a phrasing that encapsulates not only the worldview of so many of her characters – before they are struck by grace, that is – and, well, us, right?

Most of them live in a world God never made.

You could take that in different ways: In their view, the existence of the world has nothing to do with God…or the life they lead – their priorities, the structures of their lives – are human, skewed creations, glittering and entertaining Towers of Babel?

It reinforces for me a sentiment that dogs me tirelessly, that I no longer want to live in this world, and to some degree, I never really have. It holds no more lustre.