As the Jubilee Year for Priests begins, allow me to offer a brief reflection on the beauty and dignity of the priesthood. I write as one who has lived in this state of life for more than twenty years and who has regular contact with many good priests from around the world. Pope Benedict’s call to dedicate a year to deepening our appreciation for the priesthood is an invitation to reflect deeply on the mystery of priestly grace being lived in our midst. We have all been blessed, literally or figuratively, by the ministry of priests, and we all must thank God for this great gift to our Church and our world.

Some realism about the priestly vocation has to both enlighten our view of priests and dampen our expectations of them. Catholic priests are not worldly leaders, they are not perfect and they are not God. Rather, they are God’s chosen servants given the duty of blessing, teaching and leading souls to heaven, and for that reason they have a fierce reckoning to go through on the Day of Judgment. On the final day, the High Priest Himself will weigh His black-robed servants in the scales against the souls that were sent them for care, and the scales will not lie.

The failure of a priest is sad and hurtful, but that just proves that the priest is immersed in the woundedness of the human condition and given to the people for their welfare. He always bears the scars of battle and sometimes fails. He always has to apologize more than the average man for his failures because they have a greater impact on people, and if his public profile is higher than most, his humiliation is often much greater because his faults and failings are usually seen in living color by thousands. That is the tremendous risk of being a priest, but he knows about it ahead of time and he takes it for the sake of the souls he is called to serve. The priest has to throw away everything to serve God’s people, including his comfort, his ambitions and his ego.

Even though priests don’t ask it enough, every priest needs the prayers of his people to support him against the wiles of the world, the flesh and the devil. More than anything, however, he needs prayers to strengthen and confirm him in the grace that he has been given to be that shining light of faith to the world. The grace from these prayers always returns to the one who prays because everyone who prays for priests is served better by them. Prayers for the priesthood in general add more soldiers to the ranks of the clergy and keep some of the failing ones from leaving. Prayers for individual priests and their souls are enormously helpful to a priest’s integrity and his generosity of service. We must never underestimate the power of prayer for God’s servants. They are always fruitful for the Kingdom of God.

People can sometimes be very generous to priests in a material way, and I can say from a personal standpoint that such generosity is always appreciated by us. However, priests really don’t need material gifts or homes offered to us as substitutes for the sacrifices we make for the Kingdom. The Church takes care of us in these aspects of life. What we need is spiritual support for our spiritual work and every once in a while a healthy reminder from the laity that our vocation is not of this world. The prayers of the faithful have gone a long way to sustaining priests in their commitment to the salvation of souls just as the prayers of priests bring so many of the laity the strength they need to overcome the difficulties of life and be fortified for our ongoing spiritual combat.

Just as every soldier deserves good leadership in war because his life will depend on it, so God’s people deserve good priests who are spiritual warriors fighting for their souls, because if these are lost, everything else is, indeed, lost.

Sincerely,

Rev. Thomas J. Euteneuer,
President, Human Life International

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Proverbs 23: 17-18

I see him out of the corner of my eye. He’s fidgeting. He’s bored. He could blow at any minute.

We’re in church. It’s during the Consecration. The priest is saying the words “… Take this, all of you, and eat it. This is My Body …” To my 4-year-old’s ears, these words ­ words that changed the world ­ might as well be “blah, blah, blah, …”

I blame myself. Really, I do. And I write about this now because I know it’s a situation many parents face. We love our children. Our love is pure. We desire what’s best for them and most beautiful for them. And, as a priest friend of mine says, “What is most beautiful is to receive an awareness of ­ and a life with ­ God.”

So what can we do to help our children get it, to make the celebration of Holy Mass meaningful for them?

I posed the question to Fr. Seraphim Michalenko, MIC, one of the world’s leading expert on Divine Mercy. He, of course, not only had some good advice to share, but advice given through the lens of the life of St. Faustina, the Apostle of Divine Mercy.

He gave two especially good tips:

One: “Children have to believe in what’s happening in Mass,” he said, “otherwise it means nothing and it’s of no value.”

Two: “You cannot teach children religion. You have to infect them with it. They have to see faith shining through you.”

Let’s delve into these two tips.

It’s Real!
Pope John Paul II said back in 1996, “How will young people be able to know the Lord if they are not introduced to the mystery of His Presence?”

Indeed, by believing in “what’s happening in Mass,” Fr. Seraphim means that children must be led to accept as truth that Christ is alive in the Host. “Take this, all of you, and eat it. This is My Body …” These aren’t just words. The Host is special, tangible: It is Christ, Himself, alive in our midst, in all His fullness, bestowing all His grace and mercy.

We need to help our children understand this. A look at Saint Faustina’s life can help us see the fruits of such understanding.

“Throughout her life, she embraced this mysterious truth ­ of Christ’s Real Presence in the Eucharist,” said Fr. Seraphim, who worked as vice-postulator in North America for the canonization cause of St. Faustina.

Father Seraphim related how an event two years before St. Faustina’s birth may well have had an enormous impact on the young Helen Kowalska (“Helen Kowalska” was St. Faustina’s birth name). During a celebration of 40 hours of devotion in her family’s parish in rural Poland, two altar boys who were taking turns adoring the Blessed Sacrament reported a miracle. Gazing at the Host, they said they saw the face of Jesus with His head crowned with thorns. Word spread to the nearby villages, and crowds poured into the church inspired to adore Jesus in the Eucharist.

“Whether what the altar boys saw represented a supernatural occurrence or a coincidental play of shadows was never resolved,” Fr. Seraphim said. “Nonetheless, pilgrims continued to visit the church even during Helen’s childhood. Witnesses who later spoke on behalf of her beatification speculated that St. Faustina must have been deeply affected by the story as a young girl.”

After St. Faustina’s death, one of the nuns with whom St. Faustina served recounted an incident that highlights how St. Faustina saw the Lord’s abiding presence in the Holy Eucharist. It was just before the Feast of Corpus Christi, during which a procession would make its way from a nearby parish. Along the way, four altars were set up from which particular Gospel passages concerning the Eucharist would be read. One of the altars was in the courtyard of the Sisters’ convent, and so Sr. Faustina was given the task to help in decorating that altar upon which the monstrance was to stand.

Saint Faustina didn’t undertake the task lightly. Instead of merely decorating the altar, she took a broom and commenced sweeping the entire courtyard! When one of the nuns saw what she was doing, that nun chastised her, telling her she was engaging in nonsense. But Sr. Faustina responded, “The King of Kings is coming. The place has to be spic and span!”

That, too, is how we are called to view the Holy Eucharist, and that is how our children are called to view the Eucharist. Through the Eucharist, the King of Kings comes, giving Himself completely to us so that we may completely dedicate ourselves to Him.

From her earliest memories, St. Faustina conceived the Eucharist as the “source and summit of the Christian life,” as Vatican II teaches.

“The psychologists tell us that what children learn by the age of 5, they hold as truth for the rest of their lives,” says Fr. Seraphim. “They may stray from it, but they will eventually come back to it.”

How can we instill this love for the Eucharist in our children? It’s simple, really. We must tell them about it! They trust us. If they can believe in each night becoming day, they can certainly believe in Jesus. We can read to them the story of the Last Supper. Tell them how on the night before He died, Jesus chose the Eucharist as His way of remaining close to us, and how He was driven by love and a desire for us not to forget Him.

Living it ourselves
But we cannot “teach” children how to be religious, says Fr. Seraphim. They must see faith shining through us. They have to witness living faith.

Father Seraphim read a passage from a book titled Lectures in Orthodox Religious Education, by Sophie S. Koulomzin, in which the author writes:

If the child’s environment is penetrated by a living spirit of faith and love the child will discover it, just as it discovers parental love and security. …

Just as the parents expect the children to learn the words of the adult language they hear, just as they help them to learn their environment ­ that fire burns, and water is wet, and snow is cold ­ just so should they let them imbide religious impressions and ideas. Let the children see the parents pray, let the parents give religious interpretations of what the children see, let the children attend Church services, see religious pictures and objects.

That’s certainly what St. Faustina experienced in her upbringing. Saint Faustina – the daughter of Stanislaus and Marianna Kowalska, born 102 years ago in the Polish village of Glogowiec ­ received her strong foundation of faith through her father, a farmer and carpenter.

Sister Sophia Michalenko, CMGT, tells a great story in her book, The Life of Faustina Kowalska. She writes:

Stanislaus was known to rise very early and begin each day with the singing of the traditional Little Hours of the Immaculate Conception, popularly known as “Godzinki.” During Lent he would substitute these prayers with the Lamentations of the Lord’s Passion, called “Gorzkie Zale.”

When Marianna would try to silence him with, “Stop your singing. You will awaken everyone,” he paid no attention to her.

“The first duty is to God,” he would sometimes retort.

It was Stanislaus who gave the young Helen her first inkling of the lives of religious through the stories he read to her about hermits and monks who were living on acorns and roots. “She’d say, ‘When I grow up, I’m going to be one of those,’” Fr. Seraphim said.

Her father once encircled their pear tree with a little shrine to Our Lady, and young Helen would gather the other children around it to sing hymns.

All this, no doubt, helped give St. Faustina a deep foundation of faith. Indeed, attending Mass was a big treat for her. Yet, because she and her sisters had but one dress to share, they had to take turns accompanying their father to church, said Fr. Seraphim.

On the Sundays St. Faustina was unable to attend church, she took matters into her own hands. While she was supposed to help her mother with chores, she went out into the garden and prayed until the Mass was over. Then she returned to the house and asked her mother for forgiveness and explained how she had to fulfill her obligation to God first.

On one occasion, her father told the children that whoever was first to wake up in the morning and begin chores would accompany him to church. So, Helen left a window open that night in the small house the family shared. Then, in the early morning, she snuck out and commenced tending to the cows. When her father awoke and saw the barn door open, first he suspected someone had broken into the barn to steal the cows.

Then, all the sudden, he heard singing in the fields and saw little Helen leading three cows on a single rope along a narrow path bordered by his neighbor’s crops. He became fearful the cows would trample the crops, yet none of the crops were touched. This was a story he often repeated, so marveled was he. He just couldn’t understand how this little girl could manage those three cows without causing any damage. (Incidentally, Fr. Seraphim recalled how when filming Divine Mercy, No Escape, produced in 1987 by the Marians, they tried to reenact the scene with a little girl leading only a cow and quickly learned just how truly difficult a task it was!)

Needless to say, young Helen went to Mass that Sunday!

Following St. Faustina’s death, one of her brothers stated, “As to religion, Father was very demanding of us and of Helen, for which we are now very grateful.”

‘Head over heals’
What Stanislaus “proved” is that we can make Holy Mass meaningful for our children by, first, showing them how we, ourselves, are in love with God.

As another priest friend of mine said, “What we are head over heels in love with is what defines us. It’s important for children to see and understand what motivates us, to see our love for God.”

While I probably won’t be singing “Godzinki” in the morning (maybe after a cup of coffee, we’ll see), what I am now doing is speaking on a regular basis about Jesus and the saints with my son. (Speaking of which, it’s amazing how smoothly I can now redirect a conversation about Spider-Man to one about St. Francis or Padre Pio! … talk about super heroes!)

One more nugget of wisdom from that priest friend of mine: By making Mass mandatory for our children, we are not telling them what to do. Rather, we are trying to instill in them a dream of what they can be.

They’ll get it. Children’s minds are hardwired for the miraculous. That’s probably why Jesus said, “Let the children come to me” (Mt 19:14).

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You call me Lord, to come to You,
You tell me in Your arms to cast
All my weariness in a life that’s hard,
To find the true peace that will last.

Here I hand You all the burden
All the fears that burn within,
Here I give You all my sadness,
A life that’s marked with my own sin

In Your eyes I see Your welcome,
in Your touch, I find my rest
healing in the sound of Your voice,
In Your presence I am blessed.

In Your rest, I find my hope.
In Your peace, tomorrow’s way
and in the joy You whisper in my heart
You are the dawning of my day.

You are the one good thing I need,
And when all other pleasant things fall
Friends turn away, and things wear out,
You will still be there, my all in all.

Sue Stone

As a teenager, I was taught to value my virginity by my parents and my Catholic school teachers (who were nuns from the Congregation of Notre Dame, for the most part); however, when I moved outside of that protective, sheltered environment, and began college, that wasn’t the message I received at all. In fact, it was just the opposite. You’re an adult now – you’re free to do whatever you want – and believe me, the temptations were at times overwhelming.

Today, young men and women are bombarded with sexual temptations by the media and our sex-crazed culture. The messages are stronger than they ever were before and sex has lost its sacredness for many.

In my work as a crisis pregnancy counselor, I am seeing women who are becoming more sexually active at younger ages. And, not only are they more active, but they are involved with more partners, increasing their chances of contracting an STD.

Many young adults are unhappy and end up being dangerously hurt by the delusion that the media has created about sex in our society. They find momentary pleasure in exchange for contracting a sexual transmitted disease which often has a life-time of adverse effects emotionally, physically, psychologically and spiritually. Human papilloma virus (the main cause of cervical cancer) and chlamydia (the leading cause of infertility) are contracted and carried by at least one of every three sexually active teenagers. Instead of developing a permanent, lasting love commitment, they find themselves alone, feeling used. A break-up following a sexually involved relationship can result in deep depression, hopelessness, and suicide.

Secondary virginity is a way to start over. I’m not talking about hymen replacement here (which is also becoming more common today, especially among cultures who value virginity.) but changing your perceptions of sex, your bad habits, and healing your past wounds. It is a way of increasing not only your self-esteem, but also your self-respect. When you exercise self-control, you will see many things in a different way – you will be more optimistic about your life and your future. Secondary virginity involves recognizing that sex is sacred and is meant to be part of a loving marriage relationship involving commitment. It means saving yourself for the wedding night – when you will be viewed as a precious gift for your spouse.

How do you make this happen?

Make a commitment today that you will save yourself for your wedding night.

Avoid people, places, things, and situations that will weaken or break down your self-control. You may have to stop hanging around with that person whom you can’t seem to resist who is leading you down the wrong path.

Avoid intense hugging, passionate kissing, heavy petting, and anything else that leads to lustful thoughts or out of control behavior.

Find non-physical ways to show your love and appreciation for one another.

Start over. When you focus on commitment and self-discipline, you can control your impulses. When you focus on your long-term goals and future plans, you will be able to see the purpose of waiting until marriage.

From a spiritual viewpoint, secondary virginity is when a person has had sexual relations outside of marriage, but then repents, converts, and commits him/herself to Jesus (and the Blessed Mother), in a newfound way until marriage; otherwise the person remains chaste because Christ is their Spouse.

Saints you can pray to who will help you remain chaste:

St. Agatha of Rome, is the patron saint of bodily purity. Shortly before she became a teenager, she was ordered by a pagan ruler to give up her virginity. When she refused, she was tortured and murdered for her beliefs.

St. Mary Magdalene is the patron saint of sexual temptation. Traditionally, she has been viewed as a prostitute, (we know that she was a “great sinner”) but because of Our Lord’s compassion and tender mercy toward her, she completely transformed her way of life and became one of his most devoted disciples.

St. Maria Goretti, the patron saint of purity and chastity was a young Italian girl, attractive, who chose death (in 1902) rather than submit her body to a lustful attacker. She fought for her chastity and thus, gives us all courage to stand up for our beliefs when we are tempted by those who persist in forcing their immodest attacks or perverted perceptions of sexuality upon us. We can pray for her intercession and she will help us resist those people who want to attack us or the world which attempts to devalue our sexuality.

St. Augustine lost his Christian faith in youth and led a wild life. He lived with a woman from the age of 15 through 30, who bore him a son. After many years of this lifestyle, he converted to Christianity as a result of the prayers of his mother, St. Monica.

The Blessed Virgin Mary is the perfect model of chastity and modesty. When we consecrate ourselves totally to her, she will protect and guard us as her precious possession.

Jean M. Heimann

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Saint John of the Cross, Discalced Carmelite

From: The Collected Works Of St. John Of The Cross, translated by Kieran Kavanaugh, OCD, and Otilio Rodriguez, OCD, revised edition (1991),

Introduction To The Precautions

John of the Cross wrote the Precautions for the nuns in Beas while he lived at El Calvario (1578-79), after he had escaped from prison in Toledo. These warnings represented some of the fruits of his years as spiritual director in Avila. The nuns, in turn, made copies and sent them to other houses. From the adaptations in gender that appear in some manuscripts, it seems that the friars, too, must have laid hands on the material and made copies for themselves.

The work is brief, with much doctrine condensed into a small amount of space. Written for nuns influenced personally by St. Teresa, the lean statements spoke to women who were ardent in their embrace of the spiritual journey. They wanted to reach poverty of spirit, union with God, and “the peaceful comfort of the Holy Spirit” in a short time. Love has little use for delay. The objective, then, is to overcome any obstacles interfering with rapid progress. People less passionate about their goals have other alternatives. The aspiration to avoid any stumbling blocks accounts for the negative tone of the work.

The condensed character and particular objective of this writing, then, require a reading in the doctrinal light of John s other works. In these he describes in detail how union with God comes about not through the observance of precautions but by adapting to God s communication through the theological life of faith, hope, and love. The precautions take any value they may have from their ability to promote this adaptation.

Christian spirituality, rooted in Scripture, spoke commonly of three spiritual enemies: the world, the flesh, and the devil. Within this tradition, John finds the structure for his work: three precautions against each of the three enemies. Building from this framework, he formulates the kind of behavior one must adopt as a precaution with respect to particular areas of life; he describes the harm and dangers that arise from not observing the specific precaution; and extols the advantages and benefits that follow from practicing it. If overlapping occurs in the presentation of the material it is because, as the friar himself points out, vanquishing one enemy means vanquishing the others also, and weakening one means weakening the others as well.

The text editors prefer is the autograph copy made by Alonso de la Madre de Dios conserved in the National Library of Madrid.

THE PRECAUTIONS

Instruction and precautions necessary for anyone desiring to be a true religious and reach perfection.

1. The soul must practice the following instructions if it wishes to attain in a short time holy recollection and spiritual silence, nakedness, and poverty of spirit, where one enjoys the peaceful comfort of the Holy Spirit, reaches union with God, is freed of all the obstacles incurred from the creatures of this world, defended against the wiles and deceits of the devil, and liberated from one’s own self.

2. It should be noted, then, that all the harm the soul receives is born of its enemies, mentioned above: the world, the devil, and the flesh. The world is the enemy least difficult to conquer; the devil is the hardest to understand; but the flesh is the most tenacious, and its attacks continue as long as the old self lasts.

3. To gain complete mastery over any of these three enemies, one must vanquish all three of them; and in the weakening of one, the other two are weakened also. When all three are overpowered, no further war remains for the soul.

Against the World

4. To free yourself from the harm the world can do you, you should practice three precautions.

The first precaution

5. The first is that you should have an equal love for and an equal forgetfulness of all persons, whether relatives or not, and withdraw your heart from relatives as much as from others, and in some ways even more for fear that flesh and blood might be quickened by the natural love that is ever alive among kin, and must always be mortified for the sake of spiritual perfection.

6. Regard all as strangers, and you will fulfill your duty toward them better than by giving them the affection you owe God. Do not love one person more than another, for you will err;1 the person who loves God more is the one more worthy of love, and you do not know who this is. But forgetting everyone alike, as is necessary for holy recollection, you will free yourself from this error of loving one person more or less than another.

Do not think about others, neither good things nor bad. Flee them inasmuch as possible. And if you do not observe this practice, you will not know how to be a religious, nor will you be able to reach holy recollection or deliver yourself from imperfections. And if you should wish to allow yourself some freedom in this matter, the devil will deceive you in one way or another, or you will deceive yourself under some guise of good or evil.

In doing what we said, you will have security, for in no other way will you be capable of freeing yourself from the imperfections and harm derived from creatures.

The second precaution

7. The second precaution against the world concerns temporal goods. To free yourself truly of the harm stemming from this kind of good and to moderate the excess of your appetite, you should abhor all manner of possessions and not allow yourself to worry about these goods, neither for food, nor for clothing, nor for any other created thing, nor for tomorrow, and direct this care to something higher — to seeking the kingdom of God (seeking not to fail God); and the rest, as His Majesty says, will be added unto us [Mt. 6:33], for he who looks after the beasts will not be forgetful of you. By this practice you will attain silence and peace in the senses.

The third precaution

8. The third precaution is very necessary so you may know how to guard yourself in the community against all harm that may arise in regard to the religious.

Many, by not observing it, not only have lost the peace and good of their souls but have fallen and ordinarily continue to fall into many evils and sins.

It is that you very carefully guard yourself against thinking about what happens in the community, and even more against speaking of it, of anything in the past or present concerning a particular religious: nothing about his or her character or conduct or deeds no matter how serious any of this seems. Do not say anything under the color of zeal or of correcting a wrong, unless at the proper time to whomever by right you ought to tell. Never be scandalized or astonished at anything you happen to see or learn of, endeavoring to preserve your soul in forgetfulness of all that.

9. For, should you desire to pay heed to things, many will seem wrong, even were you to live among angels, because of your not understanding the substance of them. Take Lot’s wife as an example: Because she was troubled at the destruction of the Sodomites and turned her head to watch what was happening, God punished her by converting her into a pillar of salt [Gn. 19:26]. You are thus to understand God’s will: that even were you to live among devils you should not turn the head of your thoughts to their affairs, but forget these things entirely and strive to keep your soul occupied purely and entirely in God, and not let the thought of this thing or that hinder you from so doing.

And to achieve this, be convinced that in monasteries and communities there is never a lack of stumbling blocks, since there is never a lack of devils who seek to overthrow the saints; God permits this in order to prove and try religious.

And if you do not guard yourself, acting as though you were not in the house, you will not know how to be a religious no matter how much you do, nor will you attain holy denudation and recollection or free yourself of the harm arising from these thoughts. If you are not cautious in this manner, no matter how good your intention and zeal, the devil will catch you in one way or another. And you are already fully captive when you allow yourself distractions of this sort.

Recall what the Apostle St. James asserts: If anyone thinks he is religious, not restraining the tongue, that one’s religion is vain [Jas. 1:26]. This applies as much to the interior as to the exterior tongue.

Against the Devil

10. The one who aspires to perfection should use three precautions to be delivered from the devil, one’s second enemy. It should be noted that among the many wiles of the devil for deceiving spiritual persons, the most common is deceiving them under the appearance of good rather than of evil, for the devil already knows that they will scarcely choose a recognized evil. Thus you should always be suspicious of what appears good, especially when not obliged by obedience. To do the right thing, and be safe in such a matter, you ought to take the proper counsel.

The first precaution

11. Let, then, the first precaution be that, without the command of obedience, you never take upon yourself any work — apart from the obligations of your state — however good and full of charity it may seem, whether for yourself or for anyone else inside or outside the house. By such a practice you will win merit and security, avoid possession, and flee from harm and evils unknown to you, for God will one day demand an account. If you do not observe this precaution in little things as well as big, you will be unable to avoid the devil’s deceiving you to a small or great degree, no matter how right you think you are.

Even if your negligence amounts to no more than not being governed by obedience in all things, you culpably err, since God wants obedience more than sacrifice [1 Sm. 15:22]. The actions of religious are not their own, but belong to obedience, and if you withdraw them from obedience, you will have to count them as lost.

The second precaution

12. Let the second precaution be that you always look on the superior as though on God, no matter who he happens to be, for he takes God’s place. And note that the devil, humility’s enemy, is a great and crafty meddler in this area. Much profit and gain come from considering the superior in this light, but serious loss and harm lie in not doing so. Watch, therefore, with singular care that you not dwell on your superior’s character, mode of behavior, ability, or any other methods of procedure, for you will so harm yourself as to change your obedience from divine to human, being motivated only by the visible traits of the superior, and not by the invisible God whom you serve through him.

Your obedience is vain and all the more fruitless in the measure that you allow the superior’s unpleasant character to annoy you or his good and pleasing manners to make you happy. For I tell you that by inducing religious to consider these modes of conduct, the devil has ruined a vast number of them in their journey toward perfection. Their acts of obedience are worth little in God’s sight, since they allow these considerations to interfere with obedience.

If you do not strive, with respect to your personal feelings, to be unconcerned about whether this one or another be superior, you will by no means be a spiritual person, nor will you keep your vows well.2

The third precaution

13. The third precaution, directly against the devil, is that you ever seek with all your heart to humble yourself in word and in deed, rejoicing in the good of others as if it were your own, desiring that they be given precedence over you in all things; and this you should do wholeheartedly. You will thereby overcome evil with good [Rom. 12:21], banish the devil, and possess a happy heart. Try to practice this more with those who least attract you. Realize that if you do not train yourself in this way, you will not attain real charity or make any progress in it.

And ever prefer to be taught by all rather than desire to teach even the least of all.

Against Oneself and the Shrewdness of Sensuality

14. The other three precautions to be practiced in the wish to conquer one’s own self and sensuality, the third enemy.

The first precaution

15. The first precaution is to understand that you have come to the monastery so that all may fashion you and try you. Thus, to free yourself from the imperfections and disturbances that can be engendered by the mannerisms and attitudes of the religious and draw profit from every occurrence, you should think that all in the community are artisans — as indeed they are — present there in order to prove you; that some will fashion you with words, others by deeds, and others with thoughts against you; and that in all this you must be submissive as is the statue to the craftsman who molds it, to the artist who paints it, and to the gilder who embellishes it.

If you fail to observe this precaution, you will not know how to overcome your sensuality and feelings, nor will you get along well in the community with the religious or attain holy peace or free yourself from many stumbling blocks and evils.

The second precaution

16. The second precaution is that you should never give up your works because of a want of satisfaction and delight in them, if they are fitting for the service of God. Neither should you carry out these works merely because of the satisfaction or delight they accord you, but you should do them just as you would the disagreeable ones. Otherwise it will be impossible for you to gain constancy and conquer your weakness.

The third precaution

17. The third precaution is that the interior person should never set eyes on the pleasant feelings found in spiritual exercises, becoming attached to them and carrying out these practices only for the sake of this satisfaction. Nor should such a person run from the bitterness that may be found in them, but rather seek the arduous and distasteful and embrace it. By this practice, sensuality is held in check; without this practice you will never lose self-love or gain the love of God.

Copyright ICS Publications. Permission is hereby granted for any non-commercial use, if this copyright notice is included. http://www.icspublications.com/

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Our actions have a tongue of their own;
they have an eloquence of their own,
even when the tongue is silent.
For deeds prove the lover more than words.

St. Cyril of Jerusalem (315-386)

We must nourish a great love for God and our neighbors;
a strong love, an ardent love, a love that burns away imperfections,
a love that gently bears an act of impatience, or a bitter word,
a love that lets an inadvertence or act of neglect pass without comment,
a love that lends itself readily to an act of charity.

Bl. Mary Elizabeth Hesselblad (1870-1957)

Prof. Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira

All the extraordinary graces Our Lady received and corresponded to made her a unique creature in the universe and in the economy of salvation. The starting point of all those graces, however, lies in the fact that she was the Mother of Our Lord Jesus Christ, which means, according to Catholic doctrine, that she is the Mother of God.

In the work of God everything is nuanced and hierarchical. The revolutionary spirit loves to simplify everything. The counter-revolutionary spirit, on the contrary, loves the nuances in Creation and in the Catholic Church. When a counter-revolutionary sees something difficult to understand, something that apparently contradicts the rule he knows, he loves that point, because he knows that in the work of God and in the Catholic Church nothing is contradictory. When something appears to contradict the order we know, it is because often it conceals something more beautiful than the rule, which God permits in order to reveal to us another order of reality.

The waves that wash the sands of a beach leave a smooth and shining mirror of wet sand between one wave and the next. A child who admires the beauty and uniformity of that mirror may be surprised to find an air bubble here and there that appears on its glassy surface. He may think it strange, and certainly he does not know why it is there. But when the wave recedes, if he goes to the spot and quickly digs a bit, he realizes that the bubble marks the spot where a clam is living. Something strange in appearance is explained after a proper investigation, and it opens the mind to another order of reality that is not visible at first glance.

What affirmation can appear more absurd to a Cartesian and revolutionary spirit than that of the Mother of God? For a person unfamiliar with Catholic doctrine, he would think it absurd that God, an eternal and pure spirit, has a Mother. The complication intensifies when he realizes that this Mother is a human being. How can a finite creature generate Infinity? How can someone set in mutable time engender the Eternal? In the affirmation that Our Lady is Mother of God there are many apparent contradictions. There is, however, a profound and superior harmony beneath the surface for one who seeks to understand.

Why did God make the hypostatic union with the human instead of the angelic nature? Would it not have been more perfect to do the latter? No, by establishing His hypostatic union with a less elevated degree in the hierarchy of Creation, God did something more wondrous than if He had established it with the Angels.

In fact, if He would have chosen to unite Himself with the Angels, He would have dignified only the angelic nature. Instead, by uniting with the human nature, He dignified all Creation. For since man has a soul, he participates in the spiritual dignity of the Angels, and since he has body he also participates in the material kingdoms – animal, vegetal, and mineral. So, by making the hypostatic union with the human rather than angelic nature, God dignified all of the created universe. The apparent incongruence reveals a more beautiful and wise decision of God.

The Second Person of the Divine Trinity decided to become incarnate taking on human nature. But He desired to depend on the consent of the one who would give Him this nature. Doing this, He placed Our Lady in the most privileged place in the created hierarchy, because with her acceptance, the whole universe would be glorified. She accepted, and for that reason, she became the universal mediatrix between God and the rest of Creation. She became the necessary link of alliance between rational creatures – Angels and men – and God. It is for this reason that she is properly called Queen of Angels, Queen of all Men, Queen of the Universe, and Queen of Heaven and Earth.

Once a Catholic with progressivist tendencies told me that the only thing that mattered to him about Our Lady was that she is Mother of God, nothing else. I thought, “Something is wrong here.”

It was his progressivist and revolutionary simplification. Without a doubt Mother of God is the most important title of Our Lady. But since from all eternity God had the intention to make her Mother of God, she was prepared as His masterpiece of Creation. She was, therefore, the most perfect creature ever to exist, noble enough to give Him the human nature He received from her. To disregard all the other qualities, virtues, and titles of Our Lady is to simplify things in a wrong way.

A tree is not only its trunk or its roots. It is an ensemble composed of roots, trunk, branches, leaves, flowers, and fruit. In Our Lady we should consider each one of the different aspects that make up her inestimable personality. The Catholic spirit venerates Our Lady principally under the title of Mother of God, but it also venerates the roots, branches, leaves, flowers, and fruit that grow out of this most essential trunk. That is, we should venerate her under the countless different invocations she rightly has, each one of which reflects a different aspect of her mission, even though all of them flow from her Divine Maternity.

An important point that applies especially to us is that since she is the Mother of God, she is also the Mother of all men, and, therefore, she is Our Mother. One of the most precious graces we can receive regarding devotion to Our Lady is when she condescends to establish a relation that is truly maternal with us. This can happen in a thousand different ways.

Sometimes she reveals herself as Our Mother when she saves us from a danger in a way that becomes unforgettable. Other times, she forgives some particularly unpardonable fault, exercising a goodness that only a mother has. Nothing merited the pardon, nothing should have attenuated its punishment, we deserved the wrath of God. However, since she is a mother, she entered with her sovereign power and indulged us as only a mother can do. With a tender smile she wiped away the bad past, and made it forgotten.

Our Lady concedes such graces in a way that often they remain manifest in the soul like a blaze of fire, a fire that comes from Heaven and the Holy Ghost, not an earthly fire, and still less the infernal fire. It gives birth in our souls to the conviction that we can have recourse to her in any circumstance, even the most indefensible ones, and that she will forgive us again, because she opens to us a door of mercy that no one can close.

We who fight for the defense of the Holy Church in the present day crisis and for the Reign of Mary as a new Christendom to come, we receive an unlimited credit of mercy from Our Lady. It would seem that the passage of the Apocalypse could be applied to the mercy of Our Lady for us:

“I have given before thee an open door, which no man can shut: because thou hast a little strength, and hast kept My word, and hast not denied My name” (Apoc 3:8).

I think that it is more than legitimate to apply these words to the relations of the Immaculate Heart of Mary with us.

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I see that the smallest things done by a soul that loves God sincerely have an enormous value in His eyes.
­ From the Diary of St. Faustina, 340

Jesus does not demand great actions from us but simply surrender and gratitude.
­ Saint Theresa of Lisieux

Recently, I heard of a father who punished his 3-year-old daughter for wasting a roll of expensive gold wrapping paper. He had meager finances and became even angrier when the child tried to hide the box from him. Little did he know that it was to be a present for his birthday the following day.

Trying to appease her father, the little girl couldn’t wait and gave the box to him immediately and said: “Daddy, this is for you!” The father was obviously embarrassed by his over reacting but his rage flared up again when he discovered the box was empty. He hollered at her, ‘Don’t you know that when you give someone a present there’s supposed to be something it?”

With tears in her eyes the little girl said: “But Daddy, it’s not empty. I blew kisses into the box. All for you, Daddy.” The father was crushed. He put his arms around his little girl and begged for forgiveness.

The father kept the box in his room for years. Whenever he was discouraged, he would take out one imaginary kiss, and remember with gratitude the love of the child that put it there.

That little girl represents Jesus for me, and I could easily be the father. Just like him, I really couldn’t grasp the gift of His greatest attribute that is His mercy. Through God’s mercy, you and I have been given a similar box, which symbolizes our souls, totally filled with limitless love, forgiveness and compassion.

During this Lenten period, Jesus reminds us again of the degree He suffered so that we would accept the gift of mercy and be united with Him one day. You and I were worth the whole price that He paid to remain with us for eternity. Our lives are never empty. They can be filled with grateful memories of what He accomplished for us on the cross.

Like this father, I hollered at God for a variety of issues that confused and caused me great anguish. I blamed Him for so many things that went wrong. Then realized late in life, just like St. Augustine, how long it took me to recognize Him. Now, when I am overwhelmed with issues, I realize how clearly God can make Himself present. This is especially true in regard to the sacraments of the Catholic Church. They all fit us like a glove; each one specifically assisting us with tremendous graces throughout life.

Like the sacraments, there are other memorable events in the life of Jesus that can instill great peace within our souls. This is especially true when reflecting upon His Passion and praying the Chaplet of The Divine Mercy. We have a whole treasure house of inspiring memories representing His love manifested by His wounds. There are multiple lessons learned from each one of them.

Jesus told St. Faustina:
“Meditation on My Passion will help you rise above all things” (Diary, 1184). “You please me most when you meditate on My Sorrowful Passion” (Diary, 1512).

Once, when praying the Chaplet of The Divine Mercy, I thought I heard a very gentle voice say: “It will take you 300 years to understand one wound.” That’s how I hope to spend my eternity!

We may not be called to do great penances during Lent. However, our willingness to respond in gratitude to whatever the Lord sends us, even small things that no one will ever notice, can be of tremendous worth for our eventual union with Him and can benefit other souls as well. Jesus told St. Faustina:
“Join your little sufferings to My Sorrowful Passion, so that they may have infinite value before My Majesty” (Diary, 1512).

Saint Faustina gives us an incredible insight because of the fact she grasps the notion of why Jesus had to suffer and endure all that grief. She shows us how a soul prays who has grown in a deeper understanding of Christ’s life. And she shows us how willing she was to prove her gratitude:

Jesus, I thank You for the little daily crosses, for opposition to my endeavors, for the hardships of communal life, for the misinterpretations of my intentions, for humiliations at the hands of others, for the harsh way in which we are treated, for false suspicions, for poor health and loss of strength, for self-denial, for dying to myself, for lack of recognition in everything, for the upsetting of all my plans.

Thank You, Jesus, for interior sufferings, for dryness of spirit, for terrors, fears and incertitude’s, for the darkness and the deep interior night, for temptations and various ordeals, for torments too difficult to describe, especially for those which no one will understand, for the hour of death with its fierce struggle and all its bitterness.

I thank You, Jesus, You who first drank the cup of bitterness before You gave it to me, in a much milder form. I put my lips to this cup of Your holy will. Let all be done according to Your good pleasure; let that which Your wisdom ordained before the ages be done to me. I want to drink the cup to its last drop, and not seek to know the reason why. In bitterness is my joy, in hopelessness is my trust.

In You, O Lord, all is good, all is a gift of Your paternal Heart. I do not prefer consolations over bitterness or bitterness over consolations, but thank You, O Jesus, for everything! It is my delight to fix my gaze upon You, O incomprehensible God! My spirit abides in these mysterious dwelling places, and there I am at home. I know very well the dwelling place of my Spouse. I feel there is not a single drop of blood in me that does not burn with love for You.

O Uncreated Beauty, whoever comes to know You once cannot love anything else. I can feel the bottomless abyss of my soul, and nothing will fill it but God himself. I feel that I am drowned in Him like a single grain of sand in a bottomless ocean (Diary, 343).

Brother Leonard Konopka, MIC, is on the staff of the Marian Seminary in Washington, D.C. He also provides spiritual direction, retreats, and seminars.

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[tags]Catechesis + Devotion, Jesus, Mercy[/tags]