Our Catholicity in the World As We Enter the Season of Incarnation

I do not typically post politically oriented content on this blog. That said, sometimes I encounter something that cries out to be put forth.

Earlier this morning I was watching a video from America magazine, which if you don't know, is a Jesuit publication. It is one of my favorite magazines.  The video I was watching was of James Martin, SJ. Then I saw another video in their "library" and that was from Kevin Clarke, who is also an editor at America.

The video discusses the recent resignation of former U.S. Foreign Service official, Matthew Hoh. Hoh sees Afghanistan as a conflict that cannot end; you can go to the link on his name to read more about him and why he resigned. Then watch the video, which is linked here. (And at only 2:42 seconds, you won't need to allot so much time to watch it.)

As Catholic Americans I think we have many moral matters to consider. I am not saying that we should or should not be in Afghanistan, but rather that we should really be engaged in thinking about what is happening there and elsewhere in the world. (For the record, I personally would love to say that we should not be in that war; I do not find it an easy quandry to answer however.)

Something that really caught my ear were words used near the end of the video. Do we have "the ruthlessness and patience" to stay in Afghanistan?

Ruthlessness. Patience. Interesting and provocative terms.

Our Catholicity demands that we be in and of the world and not shrink from it. Our Catholicity demands that we see beyond our own boundaries. Often "seeing beyond" is interpreted as compromise. A gift of our faith is that nothing could be further from the truth. Thank God for the Jesuits who are masters as the exploration of thought and knowledge and bringing it right back to the fullness of our Roman Catholic viewpoints.

Watch the video, pray, read, think, ponder.  We are about to begin the very season of incarnational theology as God comes to earth as a baby.  We are very much in the world and God came to join us. Pretty astounding!

Poetry Tuesday - St. Anthony by Donald G. Harmande

St. Anthony

Dear St. Anthony,

A traveller far and wide,

Please listen to my plea,

Become my daily guide.

Remain by my side to help me

Walk the righteous road.

The world's an uphill path,

Help me bear this heavy load.

Your magnetic charm on earth

Softened the hardened soul,

Allow me to know your true worth

And compel my heart to be whole.

You spoke in inspired tongue

The Divine One had blessed.

I humbly seek this insight,

Come and grant me rest.

Renew my resolve,

Render to me intuition

And beseech for me the Spirit

Through the Father and the Son.

Donald G. Harmande

Advent Reflections - Read, Write, Pray With Us

In 2007 we began a tradition at St. Edwards when Father Pat suggested that we ask members of our community to offer reflections based on daily scripture for the Advent/Christmas season and again during Lent and Easter.

We were graced to have many parishioners step forth and offer their insights for this project, which was featured on our parish website. You can have a look at the archives here on the parish website. Click the bulletin tab on the left, you will find the Reflections are archived there.

Many people think that they cannot write, but this is not about literary talent, but about sharing our faith with one another, so please give your prayerful thought to participating. 

This year we are shifting publication from our parish website to the blog and we hope you will join us in prayer and by sending in your own reflection.

To participate all you need to do is look at the readings for any day between November 29 and January 6, which you can access at the US Catholic Bishops website or by using your own missal or other approved source. (For some reason, the USCCB has not extended their calendar past Dec. 31, 2009 yet!)

Once you choose a day, please send your choice to me in an email. I will let you know if that date is available and ask you to send me the reflection within 24 hours of its publication date. If you have links or visuals that you would like included, that can be done easily; if not I will add artwork of my own choosing to each post.

Note: if the date you select already taken, I will let you know asap via email.  If you want to do more than one day that is fine.

Please consider writing a few words and sharing them with us. Not a part of our parish? No problem - all appropriate content will be posted if you wish to pray and walk with us online this Advent.

Thank you and God Bless!

God's Love

The harmony of life

Discloses

A deep understanding of free will.

Though one would wish

To try to perform in a better way,

The physical aspects of living

Get involved.

And all the plans

And honorable intentions

Fall by the wayside

To reveal how dependent

On God's love we shall always be.

Donald G. Harmande

Sacrificial Giving - The Widows, My Trip to DC and A Gospel Lesson

While I had written a prelude to the readings for this weekend the other day, I was away for the weekend and did not get to post any further.

I am back and will offer this anecdote from my trip which I think relates to what we heard if we went to mass this weekend.

The reason that I was away was because I was invited to a meeting for a group of bloggers that meets in DC each November. This group is generous and pays for my flight and hotel room on Saturday and for a nice dinner as well.

I actually arrived on Friday and was very generously welcomed to DC by my cousin and his family. We can go years without seeing each other, but this is the third time we have been together this year and it has been great. We spent part of Friday together, starting with coffee and then having lunch with his son, also my cousin of course! Jeff (my cousin) treated me to both my coffee and my lunch.

In the afternoon, I was so grateful to spend an hour with the journalist Melinda Henneberger. Melinda is known for many things, (maybe you've seen her on Hardball with Chris Matthews recently) such as writing for the Dallas Morning News, the New York Times, Newsweek and other publications. She now edits Politics Daily a great online magazine. All of this is quite wonderful, but what I especially have loved are Melinda's columns for Commonweal.

Recently I "friended" her on Facebook and we have enjoyed some brief interchange and comments. She said to let her know if I was ever coming to DC and I was, so she suggested that we meet up. I could not believe my good fortune!

She is a busy woman and I was basically on a vacation day. That said, she kept juggling things so that we could meet. Melinda was generous with her time and also bought me tea.

As you can see - I was the recipient of a lot of generosity this weekend!

Right after I said good-bye to Melinda, I headed into the Metro, feeling deeply grateful for the rich bounty that I have in my life. Not money - I actually have very little of that, but I am rich in family, friends, love, faith and experiences. It is really almost unbelievable if I think about it.

In my cloud of gratitude I happened by a man who was standing on the Metro platform saying in a low voice "do you have a dollar, do you have a dollar, do you have a dollar" to no one in particular. He did not seem mentally ill or even frightening, just ignorable, so everyone kept walking.

So did I.

Three steps beyond him it hit me - I have received such amazing gifts and here I am, acting with complete indifference towards another human being in need. I felt horrified at what I had done - or not done.

I walked back and gave the man a dollar. He told me that his name was Michael and that he was homeless and very hungry and that the dollar was so that he could get out of the Metro station. Then he asked if I had any food. My hand went into my bag and fished out a package of almonds, which he took with gratitude and a smile. You would think I had just handed him a steak or something.

This is not written to point out what a great gal I am... rather the contrary. My giving was not sacrificial, it was not even spontaneous. All my talk about seeing Christ in others and all my heady thoughts about how generous life is to me and I walk by a hungry man with complete indifference.

The widows in today's readings both gave from a sacrificial place. It was all they had. I had to be reminded to do something. The words of Jack London came to me; “A bone to the dog is not charity. Charity is the bone shared with the dog when you are just as hungry as the dog.” I was not in the least challenged to give $1 or a bag of almonds. I gave, but from my abundance. In terms of what I gave from my heart, it felt compromised and it still does.

Sometimes I wonder if indifference is the greatest sin of all. It just might be.

Read, Ponder and Pray

The readings are headed toward Christ the King and Advent. The liturgical season is about to turn and we are brought more deeply into the Gospel of Mark, with this Sunday's Gospel.

There are some lessons to be learned, as always, from each of the readings. If you want to have a look, click here. Do you find it helpful to spend time with the readings before hearing them on Sunday?

This week we will hear the story of the "widow's mite" and all the great treasure that it reveals. There are many things we can learn about giving from our heart and giving sacrificially. I hope to have more to say about that in a few days!

In the meantime, read, ponder and pray.

Poetry Tuesday - Canada Geese Seven, and Twenty-Three by Donald G. Harmande

CANADA GEESE

SEVEN, AND TWENTY-THREE

From afar I heard the piercing sound

With thundering chants soon to abound.

My heart was aflutter in anticipation, straining

To view a great sensation.

My soulful eyes did squint to see

Nature's glory meant to be.

As the geese came into view

Heading south into the blue,

I began not once but twice to count

To be quite certain and not to doubt.

In the first batch were seven caroling loud

Then twenty-three making quite a crowd.

How thoughtful I mused on that October day

They numbered the date of my Summer birthday.

Donald G. Harmande

All Souls Day

On Monday November 2, we remember our beloved deceased on All Souls Day. Let us pray for those who have fallen asleep in the Lord. We wait in joyful hope always, in prayer, in love and in community.

Please leave your prayers for the dead along with their names in the comments if you wish. Let us all pray for those who have gone before us on this day and always.

From the Preface for Christian Death I: [The hope of rising in Christ]

Father, all-powerful and ever-living God,

we do well always and everywhere to give you thanks

through Jesus Christ our Lord.

In him, who rose from the dead,

our hope of resurrection dawned.

The sadness of death gives way

to the bright promise of immortality.

Lord, for your faithful people life is changed, not ended.

When the body of our earthly dwelling lies in death

we gain an everlasting dwelling place in heaven.

And so, with all the choirs of angels in heaven

we proclaim your glory

and join in their unending hymn of praise:

Holy, holy, holy Lord...

Sanctorum Communio - The Communion of the Saints

 (Yes, everyone who reads my blogs knows that I have an obsession with John Nava's Communion of the Saints tapestries at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, Los Angeles.)

Sanctorum Communio is Latin for the Communion of the Saints.  While I don't get to daily mass like I used to, now that I am working, I remain influenced by Father Pat's references to common union. (He makes these references on Sundays too, but that is not as frequent, at least not overtly!)

This morning I happened by one of my favorite spots in the blogosphere, dotCommonweal, the blog of Commonweal magazine. This is a rich place to read about all manner of things and I highly recommend it.

Today, Commonweal blogger, Father Robert Imbelli posted this:

Appropriately for this liturgical season, my graduate seminar has been reading Joseph Ratzinger’s great work, Eschatology: Death and Eternal Life. Here is a passage:

In all human love there is an implicit appeal to eternity, even though love between two human beings can never satisfy that appeal. In Christ, God enters our search for love and its ultimate meaning, and does so in a human way. God’s dialogue with us becomes truly human, since God conducts his part as man. Conversely, the dialogue of human beings with each other now becomes a vehicle for the life everlasting, since in the communion of saints it is drawn up into the dialogue of the Trinity itself.


This is why the communion of saints is the locus where eternity becomes accessible for us. Eternal life does not isolate a person, but leads him or her out of isolation into true unity with their brothers and sisters and the whole of God’s creation.

I thought that it was a great reminder of faith and community - our "common union."  We are called to life in community and to live in relationship to and with one another.

What better illustration of this than the images of the Communion of Saints?

It is so easy to want to have a "God-and-me" experience, at least it has been for me. I am slowly, now that I am in "second half" of life, learning otherwise however. God is not linear and so often as humans, linear is where we are at. Go here. Do this. Get that. Learn this. Be this. It is all endless binary code in our lives.

Our faith practice as Christians, and in particular as Catholics invites us into community. The Trinity itself is relational and dynamic, not linear. We have our Trinitarian God, we have our Sanctorum Communio, we have each other.

Saints is what we all are in some fashion. You call me to my sainthood and I call you, we all call each other.  This not only precludes but rather prevents (or should prevent) this need to isolate or to reject that so many of us possess.

Well listen to me ramble on... Many paragraphs as I useless try to explain the words of Father Imbelli and Joseph Ratzinger.

Today I wish you prayers of hope that is found in community with God and one another, with the saints, canonized and otherwise, leading our way to the Lord.

Thanks be to God for that!  Have a blessed All Saints Day.

All You Holy Men and Women Pray for Us

The church gathers on November 1 each year to celebrate All Saints Day, which is coming up this Sunday. (The readings can be found here if you want to pray with them in advance.)

I was talking to a friend about the saints and what this means. While Catholic today, she grew up in another Christian denomination. As a result, her childhood experiences of the saints was quite different from my own, which was awash in Catholicism of both the reverent as well as the kitchsy.

What saints are your personal favorites? Maybe your patron, the saint who inspired your name? Or a saint that has helped you at different times of your life? We discussed this very topic in a small faith sharing gathering last night.

There were many troubled years in which I leaned heavily upon St. Dymphna, when I felt mentally stressed . St. Teresa of Avila has always been a great favorite saint of mine as has St. Therese of the Child Jesus, also known as St. Therese of Lisieux; They were strong women in different ways and this inspired me. St. Francis, my own patron has a special place in my heart. There was a time when I often turned to Blessed Margaret of Castello in great need, because I felt abandoned. Of course there is St. Anthony of Padua... If you are Catholic and of a certain age and have ever lost something, you have called upon him!

As you can see, I could go on and on. Our saints are a beautiful and beloved tradition of the Roman Catholic Church. The illustration above is from the tapestries of saints that you will find if you go to the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in Los Angeles. To say that this is a stunning representation of the saints would be an understatement. The first time I saw them there, I wept.

Want to learn more about the saints? There are no shortage of books, go to O'Connor's here in Albany to have a look. One of my favorite books about the saints, as seen through the years of the author's life is, My Life with the Saints by James Martin, SJ. You can see that the tapestries from the Cathedral have touched many of us as they are on the front of this book.

I will close with this Litany of the Saints for you to listen to if you wish. It is so beautiful.

Litany of the Saints - St Marys Music

Poetry Tuesday - Stained Glass Window

Stained Glass Window

Comparatively speaking we are like

Stained glass windows;

Each individual gleaming

With highs and lows.

God ordains

These diverse pieces

Creating rainbows of color

As He alone pleases. 

Each one has separate reason

To glow

With life force

To discover and grow.

Positively certain to shine

Our rays

And reflect His glory

In our own special way.

                                            by Donald G. Harmande

Jesus, Son of David, have pity on me...

The readings are as provocative as usual, as we wind our way through the Gospel of Mark. I hope you had a chance to read them and pray with them before mass.

It was my intention to return and write about these readings, but I am taking a departure, yet not. The line from the Gospel, as spoken by Bartimaeus is our title - "Jesus, Son of David, have pity on me."

He is pleading with Jesus, he is sure that Jesus will heal him. Of course Jesus does. But that is not what I am going to write about today.

We had a visiting priest at mass as Fr. Pat is away. Father White, from Food for the Poor came to preside and to speak with us about his mission.

This brings me right back to Bartimaeus, yelling out for Jesus to have pity and help him. And that is exactly what Jesus did,  even though the rest of the crowd pretty much told him to just shut up.

The people that Food for the Poor serves might not even yell out. They eke out livings where there is none to be eked out. We think we have it tough due to a bad economy. Maybe this means not taking a flying vacation or maybe just not going out to dinner as often. Poor us, how we suffer.

I don't mean to sound overarching, but think about it. What "poor" means to us personally and what "poor" means in the US in general is not really so poor. That is not to say that we don't have many US citizens living in poverty. The reality is that many of them are looked down upon as having done something to deserve this.

Which brings me straight back to Bartimaeus, our blind friend in the Gospel.  Thanks to my blogging Catholic friend, Mike Hayes, I was reminded that Bartimaeus meant "son of the defiled."

In those days it was commonly believed that if you were blind or lame, something happened that meant you deserved this.

We now feel that way about the poor. How sad for us - we are impoverished in our own hearts by this kind of thinking.

Father spoke with eloquence and passion about the people he sees when he goes to Haiti and other places. It is not pretty. He spoke of a garbage dump that smelled worse than anything he had ever encountered. And that garbage dump was home to many people, who along with dogs, cats, rats, mice and birds, all scavenged the mountains of trash for things to eat or sell.

In our country, especially lately, we hear a lot of talk about how government should stay out of taking care of people. Well - there are lots of countries where this is the case and Haiti is one of them. And since Haiti is so poor, no one can really take care of anyone.

We are here on this earth to care for one another. That means giving out of our wealth and giving out of our sacrificial heart. The rich person giving $2500 is great, but the poorer person who gives their last $5 is great too. The amount is one thing and your transformation is another. They are dynamic and must go hand in hand.

Father shared a figure with us and I will close with this along with some urging to go to Food for the Poor and make a donation.

How many people a day die from starvation?

5000?
15,000?
3983?
17,023?

How about this - 50,000 people die from starvation a day! That is one small city a day, lost for hunger.

Food for the Poor. Give from your heart. And Jesus, Son of David - have pity on us all.