@pinktiger335 asked, “Why they don’t mention the Virgin Mary too much but we have so much faith in her? And a lil about her appearances… like the one she made in Mexico with Juan Diego.

On a similar topic @DraculVanHelsing asked, “Also maybe a couple of posts on the Marian dogmas of the Catholic Church- the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption as I’m always being asked by my Protestant friends about those 2 doctrines.”

 

It was when I was a student at the University of Northern Iowa that I was first called a “Marian worshipper,” and ever since then whenever I enter into an apologetics dialogue with another Christian or am “attacked” for being Catholic, the first stone flung against Catholicism is aimed right at poor Mary’s head. So I thought that as I go about offering my thoughts as they relate to your previously-asked questions, I would start with Mary since she tends to be, for some reason, so controversial. My goal is not to convince anyone of anything mind you, but merely to offer my thoughts and, where I can, the teaching of the Church for the benefit of those who did not know anything before and those who want to know a bit more. Oftentimes those same people who charge me with worshiping Mary are surprised when I tell them that, yes, I would be just as angry about someone worshiping Mary as they are because, in fact, Catholics do not worship Mary.

To go about this I will try and address DraculVanHelsing’s questions as best I can and then talk about Mary’s role in the prayer and devotional life of the Church, followed by some of her better-known appearances at Guadalupe, Lourdes and Fatima in part II.

 

The New Eve: the Doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of Mary

It is so fitting that I would at least start writing this post on the Feast of Joachim and Anne, traditionally believed to be the parents of Mary.

What is the basic idea of this doctrine of the Immaculate Conception? Basically that Mary was conceived without Original Sin. Here’s a synopsis of the teaching straight from the Catechism:

490: To become the mother of the Savior, Mary “was enriched by God with gifts appropriate to such a role.” The angel Gabriel at the moment of the annunciation salutes her as “full of grace.” In fact, in order for Mary to be able to give the free assent of her faith to the announcement of her vocation, it was necessary that she be wholly borne by God’s grace.

491: Through the centuries the Church has become ever more aware that Mary, “full of grace” through God, was redeemed from the moment of her conception. That is what the dogma of the Immaculate Conception confesses, as Pope Pius IX proclaimed in 1854: 

“The most Blessed Virgin Mary was, from the first moment of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege of almighty God and by virtue of the merits of Jesus Christ, Savior of the human race, preserved immune from all stain of original sin.”

492: The “splendor of an entirely unique holiness” by which Mary is “enriched from the first instant of her conception” comes wholly from Christ: she is “redeemed, in a more exalted fashion, by reason of the merits of her Son.” The Father blessed Mary more than any other created person “in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places” and chose her “in Christ before the foundation of the world, to be holy and blameless before him in love.”

493: The Fathers of the Eastern tradition call the Mother of God “the All-Holy” (Panagia) and celebrate her as “free from any stain of sin, as though fashioned by the Holy Spirit and formed as a new creature.” By the grace of God Mary remained free of every personal sin her whole life long.

 

The first charge often thrown at this teaching is that it isn’t found in Scripture and is therefore made up. However, a Scriptural basis for the Trinity is a bit fuzzy as well, so let us not jump the gun!

We recall that when the archangel Gabriel appears to Mary and speaks to her on God’s behalf, he says, “Hail Mary, full of grace!” So we see right off that this Mary is considerably special, for the angel is not speaking his own message here, but God’s; through the angel, God Himself is saying, “Hail Mary, full of grace!” In the Greek the word for “full of grace” is kecharitomene which literally means “having been blessed” or “having been filled with grace,” implying that the angel is referring to something that has already taken place as opposed to something that is happening in that very same moment or will happen soon. Likewise the Church points out in this first paragraph that in order to give that complete “yes” to God’s will, she would need to be completely and perfectly in the grace of God; would a sinner be able to give the perfect, complete consent needed to conceive the very Word of God not only in her heart and mind, but in her very body?

Let us continue on with the following general rule: when you are learning about something the Church teaches regarding Mary, realize that everything the Church believes, knows or teaches about Mary comes from what the Church believes, knows or teaches about Jesus Christ.

Working on this presupposition, then, we can move on to the second paragraph which quotes Pope Pius IX’s proclamation. The importance of Mary’s unfallen nature is because of Christ’s sinlessness; remember that original sin–our fallen human nature–is an inherited condition! Jesus was conceived in Mary’s womb as a single-cell, attached to the wall of her uterus and all that just as you and I did at one time; save for His miraculous conception everything else went as normal. The immaterial God took His flesh, His human nature from Mary; if she was “just a sinner like everyone else” as some Christians contend, then Jesus would inherit that sin from her as well. 

“Not so fast!” they tell me, “for couldn’t Christ have been conceived immaculately? Why did it have to be her?” True, I suppose He could have conceived Himself immaculately and been born of a sinner without Himself being one, but realize a few things here. First in becoming human God subjected Himself to His own laws, including the commandment to honor one’s father and mother as well as loving another as you love yourself, etc. What better way to honor His mother than to save her from sin the moment she was conceived? After all, God is unique among all that He created His own mother; would not a loving God who was to take on flesh for the redemption of all people not start first with His mother? Notice, too, that the Church does not teach she was conceived free of sin because of anything she did or was about to do; she was saved by Jesus Christ just as we all are save for the fact she was saved in her first moment. Likewise if it is Jesus Christ that saves us from sin, then if He conceived Himself immaculately we would see Him basically saving Himself. Does this seem like something He would do considering He refused obstinately to do so when captured by the officials of Jerusalem and beaten, or when He refused to come down off of the Cross? I think not! But would Jesus save His own mother? I think so, and so have Christians for a very long time! And this is what paragraph three is getting at. 

Finally in paragraph four the Church holds up the example of our ancient Eastern brethren, stating also that Mary not only began sinless, but ended sinless as well. This only makes sense given what we’ve previously discussed; had she fallen into sin later she would not have been able to give her perfect consent to the will of God at the Annunciation, and who could possibly sin with the Son of God in their very womb, in their home? And remember, too, that she was very much the mother of Christ in every sense of the word “mother;” she nursed Him, clothed Him, burped Him, bathed Him and, yes, taught Him right and wrong. Would you trust a sinner to teach the little Jesus right from wrong? And if you think that little Jesus just knew such things because He is the Son of God so we needn’t worry about it, then why would the Devil bother tempting Jesus in the desert? Just a thought…

 

Besides all of this we must also remember that Mary’s Immaculate Conception is not all that much an aberration; after all, where not Adam and Eve conceived without original sin? Granted they were crafted by the very hand of God but remember that human beings, truly, were meant to be free of sin period. Mary is simply a human being as human beings were always meant to be; in fact there is an ancient, ancient tradition in which Jesus is seen as the New Adam (hinted at in 1 Cor. 15:45-49). Paired with this tradition is seeing Mary as the New Eve; for example Justin Martyr states around the year 155AD:

“[Jesus] became man by the Virgin so that the course that was taken by disobedience in the beginning through the agency of the serpent might be also the very course by which it would be put down. Eve, a virgin and undefiled, conceived the word of the serpent and bore disobedience and death. But the Virgin Mary received faith and joy when the angel Gabriel announced to her the glad tidings that the Spirit of the Lord would come upon her and the power of the Most High would overshadow her, for which reason the Holy One being born of her is the Son of God. And she replied, “Be it done unto me according to your word” (Luke 1:38) (Dialogue with Trypho 100).

Similarly St. Ambrose (a Doctor of the Church no less!) wrote in the fourth century:

“See how the selfsame knots that were tied in condemnation are now undone, and how the old footprints are trodden again in the work of salvation: Adam was from the virgin earth, Christ from a virgin; Adam was made in the image of God, Christ is the image of God…; folly came from a woman, wisdom from a virgin; from the tree came death, from the Cross came life.”

 

 A Safe Assumption

From here we can move on to the Doctrine of Mary’s Assumption into Heaven. Again the Catechism offers:

966 ”Finally the Immaculate Virgin, preserved free from all stain of original sin, when the course of her earthly life was finished, was taken up body and soul into heavenly glory, and exalted by the Lord as Queen over all things, so that she might be the more fully conformed to her Son, the Lord of lords and conqueror of sin and death.”The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin is a singular participation in her Son’s Resurrection and an anticipation of the resurrection of other Christians:

‘In giving birth you kept your virginity; in your Dormition you did not leave the world, O Mother of God, but were joined to the source of Life. You conceived the living God and, by your prayers, will deliver our souls from death.’ (From the Byzantine Liturgy)

 

What we see in this doctrine is the Church’s belief that Mary was taken, body and soul, into heaven without dying (or, as some of the Eastern traditions belief, she simply fell asleep). 

Again the charge of not-being-in-the-Bible is levied, but we must recall that in Matthew 27:52-53 we read that after Christ was crucified many who were dead came back to life and wandered around Jerusalem (no, not a zombie invasion or anything), and in 2 Kings 2:11 we read that Elijah was caught up, body and soul, into heaven via a fiery chariot. Also it is important to note the link between the end of Revelations 11 and the beginning of 12 in which we read:

“Then God’s temple in heaven was opened, and the ark of his covenant could be seen in the temple. There were flashes of lightning, rumblings, and peals of thunder, an earthquake, and a violent hailstorm.” Then: “A great sign appeared in the sky, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. She was with child…She gave birth to a son, a male child, destined to rule all the nations with an iron rod…”

It is important to note that the chapter/verse feature of Scripture is a fairly recent convention, the New Testament in particular only really being solidly divided into chapters around the 13th century and divided into verses in the 16th. In the earliest centuries of Christianity–before the Bible was even assembled as we know it today–the Gospels, letters and Revelations of the New Testament were simply pages and pages of text. They were, after all, meant to be read aloud so what did it matter if things were divided into chapters? 

When we read chapter 11 right into 12 without pause, we read: “Then God’s temple in heaven was opened, and the ark of his covenant could be seen in the temple. There were flashes of lightning, rumblings, and peals of thunder, an earthquake, and a violent hailstorm. A great sign appeared in the sky, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. She was with child…She gave birth to a son, a male child, destined to rule all the nations with an iron rod…” Makes sense, doesn’t it? Consider this as well: is not Christ Himself the New Covenant?

Think back to the Old Covenant and its signs. We remember the Ark that contained a jar of manna, the Ten Commandments and Aaron’s staff. Christ, however, is not merely a sign of the New Covenant but is the Covenant itself and is He not also the new manna, the bread come down from heaven? Is He not the Living Law of God, the Law fulfilled? Is He not the High Priest, the fulfillment of Aaron’s own priesthood? Christ is the fullness of all the signs of the Old Covenant, and what (or who) was the ark, the vessel that contained the signs of the promise? Mary, a pure and living vessel far more precious than gold! In John’s vision was seen Mary, the Ark of the New Covenant, praying for her children–all of us–as they were being persecuted by the beast. 

 

We also, based on our earlier discussion regarding her origin as being sinless can see why early Christians could believe (besides being taught it by those who likely witnessed it) she would be assumed into heaven, for it is by our fallen human nature (“through Adam,” so to speak) that we come to die (1 Cor. 15:21-22, Romans 5:12-12. But if Mary did not inherit a fallen human nature but rather never knew sin period, she would not be subject to death at all. Given the Church’s belief in her Immaculate Conception, her belief also in Mary’s Assumption into heaven follows. Besides, there is no record in history or tradition of her grave, tomb or bones; one would think that if such things ever existed it would be a major site for pilgrimage, one that would rival St. Peter’s in Rome, St. James’ in Spain and others!

 

In the upcoming part II I will offer thoughts on Mary’s place in the prayer and devotional life of the Church. I hope part I proves helpful for everyone!

 

John 15:2

“He takes away every branch in me that does not bear fruit, and everyone that does he prunes so that it bears more fruit.”

6/25/11

 

God has, in the past several years, selected those branches in me that bore the most fruit and, out of love for me, invited me to offer them freely to His shears that they might bear even more fruit.

First He beheld how my heart swelled in love for Laura (think back to the Mystery Girl “saga” of Xanga yesteryears) and the fruit this “branch” bore. But He saw, in His wisdom, the fruit that same branch could bear if I would offer it to be pruned. And though the pain was nearly the death of me, I could never have foreseen the fruit that has come of it thus far. All because I said “Yes” to Christ offering His very own Bride, the Church, to love as I would my own, I am already the father of many daughters (older and younger than myself!), the son of so many mothers (again, older and younger than myself!) and brother to countless sisters. But ever and always my Bride will be eternally young, eternally virgin, will bring me joy, will call me to be all the man I can possibly be, will demand my very life day in and day out, will grant me so many children through baptism to care for, protect and raise, to feed with the Bread and Wine that grants them everlasting life…I could never have imagined at the time what fruit I would bear by letting God prune that one branch, and I have never known a greater joy.

He asked of me the branch upon which I bore nearly every friend, including my best friend (who now will soon be betrothed to Christ!), and He pruned nearly every single one of them away, but never in all my life have I been surrounded by so many true friends. Wherever I go in the world now there are people who know me at least to some degree, will help me and care for me. And I have made so many friends within and without the Order as well, so many I cannot keep track of them all. As before, I could not imagine earlier how many friends would be granted me when I permitted God to prune that branch of me; I lost all my high school friends save one (though two more have, by His grace, begun to sprout anew) and in their stead a whole army of friends have filled in the gap.

He asked me for my family, and likewise I cannot believe how He has replenished me by granting me so many more mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, aunts and uncles, and even in His mercy He has renewed or deepened many existing relationships I had with my kin.

He has even asked for seemingly silly things, such as my past love of Star Wars, in order to prune it and turn that interest into an even deeper love for and fascination with the ancient Catholic faith, the sacraments and so much else, that my pursuits might not only be for my benefit but the benefit–ETERNAL benefit!–of others as well.

He most recently asked for me father (whenever my father, brothers, friends and I play Settlers of Catan, one must ALWAYS wear a silly hat)…

…and lastly He has asked to prune away my childhood home of 25 years, now to be put up for rent as my father moves away.

What has God given me in place of my father and my home?

Himself.

 

How could I have even imagined?

 

John 20:21-22- Trinity. Jesus invites the disciples into the Trinity, initiating it just as the Father “spoke” the Son (the Word) into being on the breath of the Holy Spirit. We live Trinitarian love among one another through forgiveness. 

 

The resurrected Christ is not recognized because the glorified are not seen but known, as God “knew” Adam and Eve before the Fall, before they were “clothed” and became opaque. Notice in all the appearances of the Risen Lord it is when a meaningful memory of their past life with Christ is triggered (the call of Mary’s name, the celebration of the Eucharist, the showing of His wounds, etc.) that they realize who He is.

 

In Christ’s baptism He makes Himself as much like we are as possible, identifying with us sinners though He is not a sinner Himself. With this the only difference between us is His sinless nature and our fallen one. But it is good, for from this height He is able to pour Himself into us as the Father–being higher than the Son by the Son’s humility and obedience–pours Himself into Christ.

 

While in the chapel tonight I was sitting before the tabernacle talking to Jesus and during a quiet moment I thought of how much I would love to see Him. It then struck me that He promised if I asked anything in His name, He would do it. I had never before felt such an absolute conviction in my faith so powerful as this, and I realized that if I asked Him then and there, in His name, to show Himself He absolutely would; I had no doubts about this whatsoever.

I was terrified and overwhelmed at how powerful I felt and thought, “Lord, you have given me so much power over you…I would so love to see you with these eyes, the same by which I look on others with so little love…but I am afraid…I don’t think I am ready to see you yet. I hope that someday I am and then it can be an invitation rather than a command.”

My eyes were blurry with tears, but what a gift to be that much more in awe of God. Now only is He Almighty, but in the love of the Trinity which He extends to me, He gives me even a little power over Himself because His love for me compels Him to obey me; He does what I ask not because He must, but because He chooses to. I can hardly comprehend this kind of love.

How terrifying and consoling and heart-achingly beautiful all at once!

Hey all! Say hello to my friend, Rachel:

She and I were instant and close friends my first year in St. Louis. She was at the time very much in love with the finest man I have ever before met and likely ever will and I just watched via streaming live video her becoming engaged!

My Rachel, whom I walked through the rain, with whom I sang in the choir, with whom we would go on and on about how awesome St. Athanasius’ “On the Incarnation Is” and so much else that year, is now SISTER Rachel Marie of the Eucharistic Lamb! She has received her habit, donned her new veil and will, God-willing wear her bridal dress for all her life. She still has several years left before she is finally professed and wed to Our Lord, but she is well on her way and my goodness, was her face BEAMING! I’ve never seen a more thrilled and happy bride-to-be in all my life. 

 

Not that I’ve had a lot of life to boast of yet, I suppose!

 

So congrats, Sr. Rachel! I’m sure the two of you will be very, very happy together, perpetually poor (but eternally rich, having Christ!), perpetually virgin (but never lacking in love and companionship in Him!), and perpetually obedient (yet being completely free in Him!)!

 

In a couple of days I will try and wrap up my retreat synopsis and after that get started on all your great questions!

 

The following are thoughts and such that I recorded in my journal from when I was on retreat. Once I unloaded my heart and had the freedom to let God do the work He wanted to do in there, my director had me take John 14-18 to prayer over the next few days, and so I noted verses that stuck out to me, especially as they pertained to my desire to better know the Father.

John 14:4- I know the Way to the Father, since I know Christ.

14:9- If I ask Jesus anything in His name, He will do it, because the Father loves me and desires to provide for me, and Jesus never fails to do the Father’s will.

14:18- He will not leave me an orphan; the Father cares for me through Christ’s work in my life.

14:21- If I love Christ I will also be loved by the Father, since my heart and the Father’s heart would be one in our shared love for His Son.

15:23- I am being pruned constantly not in punishment but so that I might bear even more fruit; any suffering in my life is the Father’s work for my own good and His greater glory.

15:8- A father is glorified, or not, by the life of the son. A good, obedient son glorifies his father; a poor, disobedient son shames him.

15:10- A son is known by his obedience, his self-forgetfulness toward his own father, choosing his father’s will over his own so that the father, in a sense, lives through the life of the son in the world. 

15:16- HE chooses ME!

 

The greatest failure of my life is also my greatest joy: that I can never repay the Lord for the kindness He has shown me.

 

Jesus is the model of the Father’s desire for me; Trinitarian love in the most human of terms. The right desire for me is not for Jesus to teach me about the Father but to know the Father by knowing Jesus better, since I cannot know God as Father without being a son and I cannot thus know myself as a son without knowing Christ.

 

John 16:24- By asking in Jesus’ name we ask as God’s son–in persona Christi, in a sense–and not merely through Him. Thus we cannot be refused our request, since the Father would be refusing His own Begotten.

16:32- I am not alone, ever, because I am united to Christ and the Father is never apart from Him.

17:16- I do not belong to the world but God shares me with the world.

17:24- (This was one of the key graces of my retreat and has totally changed my life. Let it change yours; read the verse!) I am the Father’s GIFT to Jesus! Jesus’ desire is that wherever He is, I am also. This means I was the Father’s to begin with and now I belong to both He and the Son. Salvation is Christ’s care for that gift and His preparing mankind to be given anew to the Father, through the Holy Spirit: this is the essence of Love in the Trinity. 

 

The crucifixion reveals Christ loving us in the same way He loves the Father–total self-emptying into the other. The Eucharist is the here-and-now continuation of this self-offering and self-emptying.

 

John 18:8- HE’S the one I’m looking for!

 

I am a gift to Christ from the Father. Vocation, then, is the Spirit’s invitation to me so that I can offer myself to Christ and be a willing participant in this exchange. Christ came so that we can know the One to Whom we have been given and love Him. His work within us is His way of preparing us as new gifts to the Father. We are caught in this great exchange of love between the Father and the Son. No wonder the Holy Spirit is of such importance in our Christian life, for we are completely immersed in Him from the moment we exist, since the Holy Spirit is the very Love that is exchanged–just as WE have been–between the Father and the Son. Christ on the cross is Trinitatian love made human. Because this love is CONSTANT and not merely a historic, single moment He establishes the Eucharist so that He is constantly offering Himself to the Father and to us, always emptying and pouring Himself into our whole person: food for the body, nourishment for the mind and life for the soul. This perpetual offering is made through the power of the Holy Spirit, as the Son makes His continual self-offering to the Father and has from all eternity. The Sacrament of the Eucharist–the mystery of Christ’s Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity that we truly receive under the appearance of bread and wine–, praise God, is our participation in the very life of the Holy Trinity.

From June 19th until June 27th I was at the Sacred Heart Jesuit Retreat House just outside of little Sedalia, Colorado. Every year each Jesuit is expected to make an eight-day silent retreat, so this is when and where I chose to make mine. My goodness, I don’t know if I could have chosen a more beautiful place!

Here are a few of the many, many pictures I took of the splendid scenery, trails and spectacular sunsets. And praise God for hammocks!!!

Sorry if your computer took forever to load these, but hopefully they were worth the wait!

The first day of my retreat I spent just quieting myself. I went for a walk, took a nap, etc. and in the afternoon I met with my spiritual director. He asked me a couple of questions about who I was, where I was from and how I came to enter the Society. These are all important things for a director to know; the more he knows about how God tends to work in my heart the better he can help to guide me through my retreat. Once I had shared the short-version of all that he asked what I was looking for in this retreat, what graces I was seeking. This set up what would characterize the rest of my days of silence: relationships.

I first talked to him about my father (link up for a basic explanation) and how all that was weighing on my heart, especially since after the retreat I was headed home to Iowa for his wedding. While in my past retreat (read the posts following the link for the scoop on that) God the Father brought me tremendous comfort and peace with things, still the events looming ahead weighed on me. Next I talked about my best friend who back in August entered a convent. She and I were very, very close and it has been hard to let go of her in my heart like I want to, to give her entirely over to Christ. I don’t want to hold anything back from Him; I want her to be totally His! I was exhausted being so selfish and wanted Jesus’ help in opening my heart to the freedom He offered. After all, we have so much trouble “giving up,” don’t we? We must give things up again and again, a little more each time, until we have nothing of our own save what God gives back to us and when He does it is even more wonderful than when we “lost it.” Anyways, that was where I started.

My director encouraged me to take some time that evening to go look for rocks (yes, my thoughts exactly!). He suggested I find a rock for each my father and my friend and then spend some time in prayer talking to Christ about each of them. When I feel ready I should then go to this enormous statue of the Ascension and entrust my father and my relationship with him to Christ, leaving the rock at the statue as a symbol of that surrender, and I should do the same with my friend at the statue of Our Lady (who I’m sure would turn it right over to her Son, as she ALWAYS does!). Then he suggested that when I was finished I ought to spend some time by that statue of the Ascension and just ponder that event prayerfully and imagine what it was like for the Apostles to “let go” of Christ in that moment, mere weeks after they had thought He had been taken away forever. 

So I did all that. I hunted for a couple of little stones and took time in the little side chapel of the retreat house to think first about my father and then about my friend. I tried recalling some of my earliest and most-cherished memories of my father and was greeted with a whole flood of them. I remember when I was three and we moved from our first house to the one I would live in for the next twenty-five years, and how I sat in the front of the big U-Haul with him and waved goodbye to my mother while he drove the first load of our things to the new house. I remember our upright grand piano that my dad bought at a church auction for $10; it was banana-yellow and if we begged him he would plunk out the themesongs for “Transformers” and “Ghostbusters.” I remembered fishing trips, Christmas mornings, building forts, hunting (including a time where I proudly marched along with my cap rifle and eventually got too tired to keep up and he had to turn around and take me home, spoiling his whole excursion! But he didn’t frown or complain at all), and so much more. I was just filled with gratitude for my father, regardless of the weight and suffering he had unknowingly been putting me through for the last many months. The next morning I went for a walk and brought all these memories to mind before hiding the stone beneath the statue and entrusting Him even moreso to Christ. Oh the chains that fell off when I had done that!

Similarly I spent time in the chapel calling to mind memories with my best friend. I remembered how nervous and skittish she always was, hesitant to do anything spur-of-the-moment (ah, college freshmen!). I remembered how she would never get any of the jokes our friends would tell amongst ourselves, and how I taught her to play games on the XBox like HALO, Star Wars: The Knights of the Old Republic (and the look on her face when she found out SHE was Darth Revan!!), or how we went camping at Backbone State Park for her birthday one year. I remembered how her roommate came to visit me in the novitiate and without telling me had brought my friend along too. The roommate arrived and said that she had some things in the trunk if I wouldn’t mind getting them, since she was tired. I thought it was a very unusual request since it wasn’t like she was going to spend the night or anything (her parents lived a short drive away) and so I said, “Well, I’ll bet (my friend) is hiding in there,” and sure enough I opened the trunk and immediately she popped out and beat her fists on my chest saying, “You ALWAYS ruin my surprises!” (She is TERRIBLE at surprises; I can see right through her every attempt to hide them). I remember hanging out with her at her apartment when she came to St. Louis for her masters and how we were gym buddies (otherwise neither of us would go at all), went to movies, Mass on Sunday mornings at the Basilica, visiting friends, etc. I remember especially the deep conversations we would have about the work Christ was doing in her heart and how she found herself falling more and more in love with Him and feeling that she could not be happy with any other man but the Son of Man Himself, how terrifying it was to think of her sins and that He still desired her to be totally His, and how she would weep sometimes after receiving the Eucharist just thinking about all of that. I remember in particular when we were sitting down at the Moolah Temple (a neat movie theater just off campus) getting ready to watch a midnight showing of “The Ghostbusters” and she suddenly had a little panic attack thinking about entering religious life and I had to calm her down a little bit. While it was bittersweet I also recalled our many little “last hurrahs” in the months leading up to her entrance, in particular the last time she brought me home to Iowa for my family visit. I could go on for pages and pages but, needless to say (funny how we always use that expression and continue writing/speaking regardless!) I was filled with so much gratitude for my friend.

The next morning I went on a little walk and first stopped by the statue of St. Francis of Assisi and spent some time in prayer with him (not talking to the statue of course; that is just silly!) and asking for his help, since he went through a similar experience with his close friend, St. Clare of Assisi. Then I went to the statue of Our Lady and set my little stone at her feet, asking for her prayers and her help in more perfectly giving my dear friend over to Christ. As with my father, I felt so much better afterwards, and after I spent some time later that day thinking about the Ascension of Our Lord I really felt ready to dive into my retreat with a heart ready and open. I figured these two burdens, having been laid down, would not really pop up in the retreat later, but little did I know they were merely the first lesson in understanding better the greatest mystery of them all: the Trinity.

Hello all!

Thank you for your patience and, for some of you, your messages of concern/curiosity for my extended absence from Xanga! Since my last post I graduated college (finally!). I remind myself of the line from Tommy Boy– Chris Farley: ”A lot of people go to college for seven years.” David Spade: “I know. They’re called doctors.” Well, even Tommy Boy got out of college before I did; I was in school for nine! Granted, God had all sorts of other plans but, needless to say, I’m glad to be taking a break from the books. 

After graduating I spent a couple of weeks at home tearing down our old chicken shed:

First my brother and I removed the side walls and then we just pushed the thing over. Last week when I was home again I tore the front and back walls and roof apart and now all that remains is a cement foundation and naught else.

After time at home I flew out to Cincinnati for a big gathering of all the Jesuits in my province as well as the Jesuits of the two provinces we are eventually combining with. It was great to see many of my brothers I hadn’t seen in well over a year.

Next I jetted down to New Orleans for a conference called “The Ministry of Management,” where we learned about business principles regarding human resources, finances, etc. and how to apply them to parish administration and non-profit organizations. I also got to see the French Quarter and the infamous Bourbon Street which, after around 4pm, gets pretty “sketch” as the kids are saying these days. However, late at night I looked down an alley and saw the back of the Cathedral. Though my pic is a bit blurry (given it was a night shot without a tripod) I think you can get the gist of just how encouraging and touching a reminder it was to see amidst the drunkeness, smelliness and mostly-undressed-ness of the neighborhood:

Finishing up after about a week I flew out to Sedalia, Colorado for an eight-day silent retreat. I am hoping to have time tomorrow to write at least the first part of a blog on my experience of that retreat, since such past posts have proven enlightening and/or helpful to people here on Xanga. After my retreat I was home for another week for my dad’s wedding (his second).

But before I do that I thought I would petition you all for suggestions regarding future posts. Besides blogging about my retreat, I thought I might do a series on the Seven Sacraments; besides that, though, I haven’t any ideas. 

Is there anything about myself or Catholicism or something else you would all like my thoughts on? This blog is for you! Were it simply a place for me to talk about myself, goodness, I’d have shut it down when I entered the Order!