I just received a message from a fellow Xangan that moved me to share with everyone, very briefly, why I have remained on Xanga for nearly ten years now, bearing through the good times and bad, in spite of the intensity of entering a religious order, working hard for my degree in philosophy, and now teaching full-time at a high school (hence the severe lack of updates!).

I cannot share the contents of the message of course, but here’s what I have to say:

 

Brothers and sisters I have remained on Xanga for chiefly these reasons-

 

1. To reach out to and console those who are alone and in pain.

2. To educate people about the Catholic faith, and likewise to encourage those who are Catholic to continue growing in the ancient faith. Coupled with this is the desire to inform misunderstanding, speak out against deliberate misinformation or slander (fortunately a rare thing) and correct error regarding the Church and what she teaches and believes.

3. To pray for those who request prayer, to promise prayer for those who need it, and to pray for those who have no idea I am praying for them.

 

The message I received today, and she likely will know who she is if she reads my blog, made me realize a fourth reason I remain on Xanga.

 

4. Because saints are being made here.

 

Like Xanga, hate Xanga, see it as trash and immaturity or see it as a place for deep discussion and honest revelation of hearts and souls: the Holy Spirit is at work in all of it somehow, and I’ve had such a graced privilege over the years of seeing the inner-workings of His labor in some amazing souls. Messages like today and instances I’ve experienced on Xanga in the past make all the inappropriate language and images, immaturity, trolling, insults, ignorance and all else that sometimes seems to take over Xanga completely worthwhile.

God bless all of you, and please take to heart with all seriousness that I do, really, love all of you very, very much, and that I pray for every single one of you in one way or another, many of you by name, every single day.

 

Sincerely and most humbly, 

 

Ancient_Scribe

 

Today on the Feast of the Queenship of Mary I offer a series of paired Scripture readings–one from each Testament–to help us reflect on Mary’s special role in our Christian life, a role that was foreshadowed in the Old Testament and sees its fulfillment, through Christ, in the New.

 

 

 

“This one, at last, is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; this one shall be called ‘woman,’ for out of man this one has been taken…” (Genesis 2:23)

“But when the fullness of time had come, God sent His Son, born of a woman…” (Galatians 4:4)

 

 

 

Then the Lord said to the snake, “…I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will strike at your head, while you strike at his heel…” (Genesis 3:15)

“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…Then another sign appeared in the sky; it was a huge red dragon…the dragon stood before the woman about to give birth, to devour her child…She gave birth to a son, a male child, destined to rule the nations with an iron rod…The huge dragon, the ancient serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan, who deceived the whole world, was thrown down to the earth, and its angels were thrown down with it…” (Revelations 12:1-9)

 

 

 

“The man gave his wife the name ‘Eve,’ because she was the mother of all the living.” (Genesis 3:20)

“When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple there whom he loved, he said to his mother, ‘Woman, behold your son.’ Then he said to the disciple, ‘Behold, your mother.’” (John 19:26-27)

 

 

 

“On the third day there was a wedding in Cana in Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus and his disciples were also invited to the wedding. When the wine ran short, the mother of Jesus said to him, ‘They have no wine.’ And Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, how does your concern affect me? My hour has not yet come.’ His mother said to the servers, ‘Do whatever he tells you.’ (John 2:1-5)

“Bathsheba replied, ‘Very well, I will speak to the king for you.’ Then Bathsheba went to King Solomon to speak to him for Adonijah, and the king stood up to meet her and paid her homage. Then he sat down upon his throne, and a throne was provided for the king’s mother, who sat as this right. She said, ‘There is one small favor I would ask you. Do not refuse me.’ The king said to her, “Ask it, my mother, for I will not refuse you…” (1 Kings 2:18-20)

“…and there is something greater than Solomon here…” (Matthew 12:42)

 

 

Hail, O Queen of Heaven!

Hail, O Lady of Angels!

Hail, thou root! Hail, thou gate

from whom unto the world a light has arisen!

Rejoice, O glorious Virgin,

lovely beyond all others.

Farewell, most beautiful maiden,

and pray for us to Christ. Amen.

 

 

So Datingish has impressed me again with a profound question that reminded me of two posts I’ve done in the past that I think were also responses to equally profound Datingish posts.

When I saw the title on the Xanga front page I just cringed; yes, I know what kind of a culture we live in today but it speaks to me of how narrow our vision is when it comes to love and the beauty of the human being. When I go to the grocery store, for example, and walk to the meat section, I am looking for a particular cut of beef because I have in mind a recipe that calls for such specificity. However when I love someone, how could you be equally so exclusive?

As I mention in one of my previous posts:

 

Secondly, and this pertains particularly to the recent phenomenon on Xanga (way back in 2010!), when you seek out and display images merely of this genital or that one, you detract immensely from its beauty. Why? You have removed it from its context, from the very reality that makes it beautiful in the first place. Who would find a severed penis lying on the ground beautiful, or take a picture of it to later view for some pleasure? Likewise a vagina or even a woman’s breasts? It is one thing to idolize the human body in its wholeness, but to idolize a mere part? Some might argue that we do the same thing with hands and heads; this is entirely different. When there is a picture of a hand, it is often being employed to model something (jewelry for example) or convey a message (a hand outstretched expressing an opportunity to help); the hand isolated and pictured is rarely the main focus. With the image of a face or head we are not viewing it for its own sake but recognizing that the face, of all the parts of the human body, conveys the reality of the person in a way that we can connect with. Can you tell by looking at a leg what a person is feeling? In contrast, what can you tell of a person by looking at pictures of their genitals, save for perhaps a judgment as to why they may have chosen to exhibit this part of themselves, as opposed to something that is, of itself, beautiful?

 The long and short of it (absolutely no pun intended) is this: our genitalia is limited and dependent when it comes to its own beauty. These parts of our human bodies serve a higher reality than what we find in them individually. It is by these parts, for example, that the human race continues onward and the image and likeness of God endures in this world. These parts of our bodies allow a husband and wife to express their love for each other in a way that cannot be fully expressed by any other. But nothing in these parts alone is beautiful; cut apart from the person they are just awkward bits of flesh. To idolize or to make pornographic the human genitalia is to greatly insult the beauty and dignity of each and every human being alive, whether they realize the insult or not. 

 

I can only hope and wish that people will, one day, realize that they could not love this boy’s whatever and that girl’s what’s-it without the whole person being there, too; some guy may claim to love breasts but I guarantee he would be absolutely repulsed, disgusted and terrified if Saint Agatha appeared to him with her virgin breasts on a plate. He would likely find that the manliness he thought he possessed quickly fled in the face of such a courageous woman and he might, in that moment of terror, come to see that a woman’s breasts are nothing if they do not belong to a woman, and the woman herself is surpassingly beautiful when compared to any singular part of her body. What needs to happen to such people who have an inordinate fascination with or attraction to a particular part of the human body is the real healing of their view of the human person. I’m not talking about a Frankenstein-esque sewing-together of the parts in such a way that we look at a person as an assemblage.

In any depiction, even this rather muscular one, Frankenstein’s creature is always seen as an object (rarely a subject) of horror because it is not only unnatural in origin but is a hideous assemblage of parts; any attraction or sympathy the reader might have relates to the one part of the creature that could truly, of itself, be remotely beautiful: its “heart”.

What needs to happen rather is something akin to this beautiful painting by Giovanni Lanfranco titled “St. Peter Healing St. Agatha:”

According to the ancient tradition a vision of St. Peter came to St. Agatha while she was in prison, after she had been tortured and her breasts torn off (yes, you read that correctly) with metal pincers. When the guards came in the morning to get her, she had been miraculously healed. 

Look at this painting and see the tenderness here and, really, the radiant beauty not of the breast being restored but of the woman to whom the breast belongs. This painting–like the amazing story–is not about a woman’s breasts but rather about the woman. Is she not so beautiful?

If we are going to let ourselves become obsessed with one particular part of our SO, then why does it matter if it is our SO’s part or someone else’s? If we must choose one “part” of our SO to love, let us choose the one part that truly matters, the one part that endures long after a butt sinks or flattens, after breasts sag, figures bulge, legs splotch, hair falls out and grays, eyes dim, lips thin, muscles fade, and manhoods fail to rise to the occasion. There is one part of a loved one that does not return to dust and that is the heart, hence why I posted my “favorite part of my SO’s body” at the beginning of this post. 

The heart!

The heart, if anything, has the potential to become even more beautiful as it becomes ancient, and no part of a person is so dearly missed by those who came to love it when it has moved on to its eternal place. Yet, as a very popular song once sang, the heart goes on. Does anyone write poems, sing songs or sigh in lamentation for a particular part of someone who has passed on? Of course not; they sigh after the heart whose song no longer beats such that human ears could hear it.

The Heart of Jesus–that heart pierced for love of us–is still literally sung of some two thousand years after it ceased to beat for three days. Songs have been sung, poems written, litanies prayed, great masterpieces carved or painted, whole liturgies celebrated and even a feast of great solemnity is celebrated for this heart-of-hearts! To think that of all the religions in the world OUR GOD HAS A HUMAN HEART!

Certainly we see pictures of Jesus’ hands, but no one is looking at such images for the sake of His hands alone, for the scars draw us closer to the heart that chose to permit the nails. Likewise His feet. There is no part of my SO that stands alone in beauty save for His heart, and if the Incarnation teaches us anything about our own bodies it is that the same truth pertains to us: nothing stands alone in beauty save for the heart. To idolize one part of the human body is to instantly make it repulsive (just imagine your “favorite part” on a plate) but if we think of the heart–not merely the organ mind you but what the image of the organ draws us to–we think of the person that bears it. The person, whole and entire and not a Frankenstein, is what we love.

 

Let’s love our SO for who they are as complete and beautiful, and we find ourselves weak for a time, focus then on their heart so that in loving one part, you may love them wholly.

Seventy years ago today, in a gas chamber at Auschwitz, a remarkable woman died.

Please say hello to St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, a Carmelite nun.

You might be asking yourself, “Now why would the Nazis want to gas a cloistered Carmelite nun who wasn’t doing them any harm?”

Well that is because, like all nuns, monks, brothers, sisters and priests, they had a life before God called them. Before she was a nun, she was Edith Stein.

Edith Stein was born in 1891 to an observant Jewish family in Germany. By the time she was a teenager she was a firm atheist in spite of the strong and traditional example of faith given by her mother that she herself admired greatly. The death of her father when she was two years old proved to great a challenge to her and in spite of her mother’s efforts she gave up prayer and the practice of religion altogether. She went on in life to serve as a nurse in an Austrian field hospital (the tyhpus ward to be precise) and then to receive a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Göttingen, her dissertation being done under the tutelage of Edmund Husserl, a philosopher famous for founding the school of thought known as “phenomenology,” which promotes the idea that all knowledge is based primarily in our own experience. She had a strong desire to know the truth of things and saw philosophy as the way to seek the truth and understand reality is it really was. She was a sort of pioneer in the world of higher education, being part of the earliest efforts to break through the glass ceiling that kept women from becoming full professors and holding other levels of leadership in a university setting.

(Edith Stein as a nurse during WWI)

It was, however, her encounter with an elderly woman in a Catholic Church that changed everything. A biographical account provides the following:

“During this period she went to Frankfurt Cathedral and saw a woman with a shopping basket going in to kneel for a brief prayer. “This was something totally new to me. In the synagogues and Protestant churches I had visited people simply went to the services. Here, however, I saw someone coming straight from the busy marketplace into this empty church, as if she was going to have an intimate conversation. It was something I never forgot.” A visit with the widow of a friend, whose husband had died at Flanders in WWI, poured what waters of grace on the seed planted in that empty church. The woman and her husband had been Jewish converts to Protestantism, and though Edith was nervous about meeting her friend’s young widow, she was surprised at the woman’s faith and wrote:  “This was my first encounter with the Cross and the divine power it imparts to those who bear it … it was the moment when my unbelief collapsed and Christ began to shine his light on me – Christ in the mystery of the Cross.” “Things were in God’s plan which I had not planned at all. I am coming to the living faith and conviction that – from God’s point of view – there is no chance and that the whole of my life, down to every detail, has been mapped out in God’s divine providence and makes complete and perfect sense in God’s all-seeing eyes.” A few years later she spend a summer with a friend who had also converted to Protestantism from Judaism. While there Edith happened upon the autobiography of St. Teresa of Avila and spent the entire night reading the whole thing. When she had finished the book she said to herself, “This is the truth…my longing for the truth was a single prayer.”   Edith Stein was baptized into the Catholic Church on January 1st of 1922, saying, “I had given up practicing my Jewish religion when I was a 14-year-old girl and did not begin to feel Jewish again until I had returned to God. She expressed a continual awareness that she belonged totally to Christ not only spiritually, but by blood as well since both she and the Christ she loved were Jewish. Though she wanted to join a Carmelite monastery immediately–no doubt inspired by St. Teresa, she was discouraged from doing so and thus continued on with her career in academia. She taught at a school in Speyer from 1923-1931. In 1932 she because a lecturer at the Institute for Pedagogy at Münster but soon afterward new laws, passed by the Nazi government in Germany, made it so that people of Jewish descent could not teach in schools, and thus she was forced to resign in 1933. She wrote: “I had heard of severe measures against Jews before. But now it dawned on me that God had laid his hand heavily on His people, and that the destiny of these people would also be mine.” The Aryan Law of the Nazis made it impossible for Edith Stein to continue teaching. “If I can’t go on here, then there are no longer any opportunities for me in Germany,” she wrote; “I had become a stranger in the world.” Having received permission to enter the Carmelite Order, Edith met with the prioress of the convent in Cologne, saying to her, “Human activities cannot help us, but only the suffering of Christ. It is my desire to share in it.” A few years after she received her habit and religious name, she wrote: “I understood the cross as the destiny of God’s people, which was beginning to be apparent at the time (1933). I felt that those who understood the Cross of Christ should take it upon themselves on everybody’s behalf. Of course, I know better now what it means to be wedded to the Lord in the sign of the cross. However, one can never comprehend it, because it is a mystery.” (Edith Stein just before receiving her habit and religious name) “Those who join the Carmelite Order are not lost to their near and dear ones, but have been won for them, because it is our vocation to intercede to God for everyone.” In particular, she interceded to God for her people: “I keep thinking of Queen Esther who was taken away from her people precisely because God wanted her to plead with the king on behalf of her nation. I am a very poor and powerless little Esther, but the King who has chosen me is infinitely great and merciful. This is great comfort.” On New Year’s Eve in 1938 Sr. Teresa was smuggled out of Germany into the Netherlands in an effort to save her from being taken away by the Nazis. She wrote in her will a year and a half later: “Even now I accept the death that God has prepared for me in complete submission and with joy as being his most holy will for me. I ask the Lord to accept my life and my death … so that the Lord will be accepted by His people and that His Kingdom may come in glory, for the salvation of Germany and the peace of the world.” About two years later, in 1941, she wrote to a friend in an almost prophetic way:   “One can only gain a scientia crucis (knowledge of the cross) if one has thoroughly experienced the cross. I have been convinced of this from the first moment onwards and have said with all my heart: ‘Ave, Crux, Spes unica’ (I welcome you, Cross, our only hope).” For a year later, on August 2nd, 1942, the Gestapo came to the convent to arrest her and her sister, Rosa, who had also become Catholic and was serving the nuns of the convent. The last words that anyone heard Sr. Teresa say were to her sister, “Come, we are going for our people.” She and her sister were deported to Auschwitz on August 7th along with over 900 other Jews taken from the Netherlands in response to a letter written by the Dutch Catholic Bishops against the Nazi treatment of Jews. Jews who had converted to Christianity had, up to that point, been for the most part spared, but the boldness of the Dutch bishops spurred the Nazis into retaliation. While there are no records to absolutely confirm this, she is believed to have been executed in the gas chambers of Auschwitz on this day, August 9th or 1942. A professor who knew her well wrote later, “She is a witness to God’s presence in a world where God is absent.”   St. Teresa fell in love with the Truth–Jesus Christ–after a lifelong pursuit of Him, and thus came to follow His Way to everlasting Life.   St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, pray for us.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hello again everyone!

My goodness have I been away, and over there, here, and yonder, and various places betwixt others. Here’s a diagram:

On June 7th I drove with my brothers here to St. Paul, MN to attend a big gathering of all the Jesuits in the Midwest. The highlight of the event was the ordination of two of our men; that will be me in five more years!

A view from the University of St. Thomas looking toward the Minneapolis skyline at sunset.

After attending a beautiful First Mass by one of the new priests I flew south to St. Louis to attend a conference with about twenty other Jesuits about Devotion to the Sacred Heart and the Apostleship of Prayer. It was so nice to be “back in town” since I’d recently spent three years there. I got to visit a few friends, including Sr. Mary Thoma as well as a family I became well acquainted with (eight kids!).

(Sr. Mary is all the way to to the right on the bottom. Another friend, Sr. Stella Maris, is on the bottom all the way to the left. This is an old picture; they both have black veils now!)

After a very good and edifying conference I flew all the way out to Connecticut to meet my dear penpal, Mother Dolores Hart, a former Hollywood actress-turned-Benedictine nun!

She and I have been writing for a few years now and this was my first opportunity to finally meet in person. It was an absolutely beautiful experience to stay at the abbey. Pictures weren’t permitted, so I don’t have any for you. The abbey itself is in the middle of the woods of Connecticut and is a working farm, meaning they raise a good deal of their own food and do all the work normally expected of a farm. I even helped with a big hay harvest on the weekend; three fields had been bailed and so I helped put the bails on trucks and haul them off to barns, unload and stack. We worked from 2-9pm! It was so good to do some good hard work outside, and the nuns were a pure joy to labor with. Mother Dolores and I had our visit the next day, and it was such a blessing to meet face-to-face, albeit through a wooden lattice (they are cloistered after all). We talked about so many different things, from my family to her writing her autobiography (can’t WAIT to read it!), to her thoughts of Jesus as an actor, taking on a multitude of different roles so to enter into the story of our own life, and even a funny story from her days in novitiate. I wish we could have spoken together for hours but, alas, we only had one!

After four blessed days at the abbey I flew down to Maryland for a gathering of all those Jesuits in the same stage of formation as I. We met and shared our experiences of the past year (most of us taught in a high school, but not all of us), and then we all had our eight-day silent retreat together. The whole thing took place at our retreat house, Loyola on the Potomac, and it, too, was a blessed time. The retreat house is on a high bluff overlooking the Potomac River and it surrounded by forests, which I eagerly explored.

 

Once I had finished with the retreat I flew all the way out to Denver, rented a car, and then drove up to Laramie, Wyoming to spend some time with my dad and stepmom. My dad and I did some arrowhead hunting (I found a few pieces but nothing spectacular), I visited other relatives in town, visited a friend down in Ft. Collins and had dinner with my aunt and uncle in that area, and I even took my dad and stepmom out to the Indian Reservation I had served on while I was a novice.

Above you’ll see some of the places I hunted for arrowheads, plus a picture of my dear friend Amanda and I in Ft. Collins, my stepmom Maureen holding a little horned toad she found, Sacajawea’s grave, images of the Shoshone Cemetery (there was a time when they literally buried people in their beds, hence the cast-iron bed frame sticking out of the ground).

When all was said and done in Wyoming I drove back to Denver for one of the highlights of my summer: finally meeting @semper_medusa in person! We ate pizza at Old Chicago and visited; it was so wonderful to meet her after Xanga and email for over a year now. Xanga meets are awfully special, aren’t they? Unfortunately for stupid me, even though I had a camera with me I FORGOT to take pictures!

I then returned to Milwaukee and moved down the street to my new residence. For the next two years I will be teaching sophomore and junior boys at Marquette University High School. The sophomores will be learning about the Sacraments and the juniors will learn about the social teaching of the Church, and who knows what else I’ll be doing!

Recently I also spent a week at our villa near Waupaca, WI, just catching up on rest, kayaking and visiting with my Jesuit brothers. I also went on a pilgrimage with three busloads of Catholics to the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Lacrosse, WI, where I had the privilege of serving the Mass for Cardinal Raymond Burke! I had some wonderful conversations both on the way up and on the way back. Last week I drove out to Ann Arbor, MI to visit my friend (as you saw in my last post) and then to Iowa for my ten-year high school reunion. It sure was interesting to see where some of my classmates were at–for better or for worse–and to realize how much I myself had changed in that time.

(Meeting the Cardinal and then a view of the Home Country!)

Finally on Sunday I returned to Milwaukee, and now I have fifteen days to get my classes prepared to teach! Pray for me this year as I begin this new mission!

 

 

 

Yes, it has been AGES since I have updated! But starting on June 7th I’ve been traveling all over the place, moving to a new community and preparing for a new ministry so unfortunately Xanga has had to wait!

 

I am hoping that this week I will be able to at least post about my summer adventures, but I wanted to take this opportunity to give you a long overdue update on a former Xangan, maje_charis (most of you probably don’t remember her).

Two years ago this August she joined a religious order and thus had to leave Xanga. I was able to see her a couple of times afterward, but the last time I saw her was New Year’s Day of 2011.

However Jesus has been very, very kind and I was able to visit the convent this past Wednesday on August 1st.

Hey Xanga, say hello to Sister Maria Canisius!

She is doing very well and is still very much in love with Jesus! She prays for all of you along with her other 100+ sisters!