Beginning Easter Sunday

Catholic catechism dialogue blog, a new group blog, is being launched with the hope of inspiring people to become consistent, daily readers of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. You can read all about it here.

I really am honored to be included in the writers of the blog. This will be especially good for me as reading the entire Catechism is something that I've always meant to do. Of course, I never have though I have a great copy of the Catechism sitting on my bookshelves as a reference.

I am so looking forward to printing out that schedule Owen mentions and getting into a daily routine of the CCC to supplement the Bible. Also, there is a crack team of diverse writers assembled. I can't wait to see what insights they have to share. This is definitely gonna keep me on my toes!

It Really Happened

Mk 11:1-10

When Jesus and his disciples drew near to Jerusalem
to Bethphage and Bethany at the Mount of Olives,
he sent two of his disciples and said to them,
“Go into the village opposite you,
and immediately on entering it,
you will find a colt tethered on which no one has ever sat.
Untie it and bring it here.
If anyone should say to you,
‘Why are you doing this?’ reply,
‘The Master has need of it
and will send it back here at once.’”
So they went off
and found a colt tethered at a gate outside on the street,
and they untied it.
Some of the bystanders said to them,
“What are you doing, untying the colt?”
They answered them just as Jesus had told them to,
and they permitted them to do it.
So they brought the colt to Jesus
and put their cloaks over it.
And he sat on it.
Many people spread their cloaks on the road,
and others spread leafy branches
that they had cut from the fields.
Those preceding him as well as those following kept crying out:
“Hosanna!
Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!
Blessed is the kingdom of our father David that is to come!
Hosanna in the highest!”

This was the opening Gospel, read when we were all facing the cross in the center of the church.

Our pastor made a brief commentary after it was read before processing behind the cross throughout the rest of the church. He said, "Why is this in the Gospel?" and read this part again.

If anyone should say to you,
‘Why are you doing this?’ reply,
‘The Master has need of it
and will send it back here at once.’”
So they went off
and found a colt tethered at a gate outside on the street,
and they untied it.
Some of the bystanders said to them,
“What are you doing, untying the colt?”
They answered them just as Jesus had told them to,
and they permitted them to do it.

He said that no scholars have puzzled over the hidden meanings of those simple words. Why were they even included? Because they are the little details that are remembered and told by someone who was there. An eyewitness.

He said, "This really happened. It is not some ancient mythology with which we fool ourselves. It is not made up. It really happened. Jesus really died for our sins to bring us salvation. He is real. It really happened."

That was the first time I cried at today's Mass. The second was when I had to read aloud, "Crucify him!"

Because it really happened.

My Crush on Cardinal Arinze Continues

Y'all may remember my full-fledged crush.

I see no sign of it abating. In fact, it might be getting worse.

The Mass is the supreme act of adoration, praise and thanksgiving which humanity can offer to God. We owe everything to God: life, family, talents, work, country. Moreover God has sent us his only-begotten Son for our salvation. At Mass we offer God this supreme acknowledgment of his transcendent majesty and thanksgiving for his magnificent goodness towards us. Moreover, at Mass we associate ourselves with all creation in acknowledging the greatness of God. God is not our equal. He is not our colleague. He is our Creator. Without him we would not exist at all. He is the only necessary being. It is normal that we acknowledge this fact. Those who refuse to adore God must not decorate themselves with the apparently nice title of liberal intellectuals.

If we are to call a spade a spade, we shall inform such people that they are unreasonable, ignorant and blind to most obvious facts. A child who refuses to recognise his parents is not a liberal. He is a brat. Would it be wrong to call him stupid, and unaware of common sense, and even of his own best interest? And God is to us much more than parents are to their children. On the other hand, God is not a rival to us human beings. He is not a threat. He is not a killjoy.

God is our loving Father. He is Providence. He takes care of every detail regarding our life. When we adore him, praise him and thank him, we not only do not demean ourselves. Rather we begin to realise our greatness. Our acknowledgment of God's transcendent reality elevates us. The shepherds in Bethlehem and the Magi were all the better because they adore the Child Jesus. St Anselm, St Augustine, St Thomas Aquinas, St Teresa of Avila, St Therese of the Holy Child Jesus, St Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein) and Albert Einstein were all the greater because they offered the sacrifice of t eir intelligence to God the Creator. Christians must not allow themselves to be misled by the errors of a secularistic mentality which lives as if God did not exist. Man is not the centre of reality. God is. By adoring God through the Holy Eucharist, we pay this due tribute to God's transcendence.

Read the full text of his speech here. Thanks to Fr. Stephanos for the scoop and link.

You HAVE to See This

Watch this all the way through.

And make sure you have the sound on.

Thanks to SC&A for the heads up. How does Siggy always know what I'll like?

Eaking-Spay Ussian-Ray

Disputations mentions Pig Latin which reminds me of this funny story about my brother.

Once upon a time, he and some other Americans were learning Russian on the U.S. Army's dime (he later went into Military Intelligence, but that's another story). The other students at the language school were all German. The instructors were Russian.

The instructors would not allow the Americans to speak anything except Russian. However, they would allow the Germans to also speak German.

Naturally, this unfair discrimination angered the Americans. With native ingenuity, they came upon the answer. They spoke Russian ... in Pig Latin.

This confused and enraged the instructors. They could tell it was some sort of Russian but couldn't figure it out. They also never could understand how all the Americans instantly knew this new language.

Who knew that the "talent" every American schoolchild picks up with so little trouble would be used to such good effect?

My brother. He's a clever one all right!

APB on John B.

Anyone seen The Catholic Packer Fan lately?

Or have did I just miss something?

Bryan and I are wondering where he is.

A Trend in the Making

Via Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam comes this warning label generator.

I found the street sign generator on my own
(ok, so the link was at the bottom of the other generator...).

I found this poster generator so long ago that I forgot it until Jules reminded me.

The Miraculous Haul

To me this addresses so perfectly that feeling of astonishment and directness we feel when God suddenly addresses us ... in a way that means more to us than anyone else around, because it is a message tailored for us specifically. And, then, suddenly we can see.

He told Peter to row out into the deep and lower the nets again. And now for the first time we hear Peter speak: he must have said a good deal before this, for he was almost too ready a talker; but this is the first utterance of his that the Holy Spirit thought worth recording. "Master," he said, "we have labored all the night, and have taken nothing; but at thy word I will let down the net." All Peter's discipleship was in that answer — "It seems impossible, but if you say so —!"

We know what followed — a haul of fish that burst the net. Peter and Andrew called to James and John, their partners, who were in another boat near by, and both boats were loaded with fish to the gunwales, nearly sinking under the weight. What was the exact nature of the miracle? Either Jesus knew that the fish would be there — if so, it was by no natural knowledge that a carpenter would read signs that the fishermen missed; or he willed them to be there.

Peter's reaction is fascinating: "Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord." After all, this was not the first miracle Peter has seen Jesus work. He had been there when his new Master spoke to Nathanael of an incident that his bodily eyes had not seen — Peter may well have thought that he was reading the other's mind. He had been at the wedding feast in Cana when the water was changed into wine, he had been there all through the week of miracles following Passover in Jerusalem. Only recently his mother-in-law had been cured of fever at a touch of Christ's hand and a word from his lips. But reading minds and healing bodies, even making wine — such things lay outside his experience: even without miracle, these were mysteries to Peter. But fish were different: he knew all about fish. This miracle hit home to him as the others had not.

So we understand the special intensity of his astonishment. But why the fear? Why was his first reaction to a vast haul of fish an overpowering sense of his own sinfulness?He had see the money-changers scourged from the Temple — and probably was delighted to see it, feeling that they were getting what they deserved. Evidently it had not occurred to him that he was a sinner himself. This time, precisely because the miracle hit home to him in all the reality of its miraculousness, he suddenly saw Christ for the first time. Seeing Christ, he at last saw himself.

To Know Christ Jesus by Frank Sheed

Thanks Be to God

Ron Rolling's latest update. God is good and so are y'all for answering the call.

Water Into Wine

This excerpt is talking about when Jesus turned water into wine at the wedding at Cana.

But how could he work a miracle immediately after he had said, "My hour is not yet come"? In those words is the mystery of Cana. What did he mean by his hour? Once he has begun his public teaching, it always means the time when he should die and be glorified by his Father. That meaning would not fit here. Evidently he means that the moment has not yet come to show his power to the eyes of men. Then two surprises: Mary knows that he will show it all the same. One minute his hour had not come, the next it had.

Surely the Holy Spirit was at work. We know that Jesus went into the desert to be tempted by the devil because the Holy Spirit sent him there. His certainty that his hour had not yet come would have meant that the Holy Spirit had not yet told him that he was to show his power publicly. And now, suddenly, his Mother asks for a miracle. As we have seen, the life of the family at Nazareth had not been strewn with miracles ... Nazareth did not believe in him, was indeed the only town that wanted to kill him.

Mary could have asked him to work a miracle thus publicly, only at the command of the Holy Spirit: it was not in her nature to thrust bright ideas of her own on her Son. She asked him as she was bid, and the Holy Spirit moved him to do what she asked. Thus Mary, who by her obedience had brought her Son into life, now by his obedience brought him into public life.

To Know Christ Jesus by Frank Sheed

Tim Burton Terry Gilliam Would Be Proud

MIRRORMASK

We all found ourselves at a strange loss for words after watching this movie. On one hand it is a typical adventure teenage quest story of the sort found in fantasy novels. A girl must find the Mirrormask to restore her world and a parallel one to balance in order to save her mother from dying.

The way the story is illustrated with extremely odd special effects at first brought Tim Burton to mind. We soon saw that Tim Burton just wasn't odd enough (and how often do you hear that said?) and had to revise our opinion to the WeirdMeister ... Terry Gilliam.

We watched with a strange fascination to see what would happen next, not because we were caught up the story which at the base was fairly straight forward. The fascination was in the way the story moved along its predictable lines but made so very, very odd by the effects. It was like the time we watched Time Bandits (except Mirrormask's plot was more normal) ... unable to look away because we were wondering what would happen next in the weirdness.

In the end, neither Tom, Rose, or me could say that we liked or disliked this movie. That in itself probably is the strangest thing about the movie for we are an opinionated crowd. If you like this sort of movie, then this is the sort of movie you will like (to misquote The Car Guys).

HC RATING: Undefinable

Encounter at the Grocery Store

Picking up some things on the way to work yesterday, I overheard the guy checking my groceries talking to another checker about making sure they had Easter Sunday off. Then they were comparing times for their respective churches' sunrise services.

Memories of a chilly, windy, gray, wet outdoor Easter morning at 6 a.m. filled my head as I suddenly thought of attending an Easter service with my best friend from high school who attended the Church of the Nazarene. I asked the checker if his service was outside or inside.

That's all it took. We were off on a whirlwind conversation that covered why Easter is timed when it is, how many people only come to Easter and Christmas services, how hard it is to get up for a sunrise service ("You know you're a soldier when you're doing that," he said). It ended with a surprisingly personal moment of sharing as he reflectively said, "You know, I like to go somewhere by myself on Easter. I think about Jesus and what he did for us. I mean, I know he came to do it but ... still. Think of it. If it wasn't for him, none of us would be here. There'd be no Christians at all. No salvation."

We both were silent for a second. Then he handed me my driver's license and returned to his usual brisk manner. I turned away to see the bag boy grinning at both of us ... a couple of softies talking about Jesus at the grocery store.

That's ok. I'm used to it. Somehow I get caught up in those sorts of conversations fairly regularly. I like it. I like knowing so many people love their Savior and their faith and aren't afraid to talk about it with someone they don't know. Jesus is what connects us, makes us one.

Body of Christ ... it pops up all over the place. Even at the grocery store.

Back to Basics: Three Forms of Baptism

I am so used to Baptism by water that I tend to forget the other two forms.

Baptizing with Water

The most common form of Baptism is by water. The Gospels say that one must be born again of water and the Holy Spirit (John 1:33). The early Christians and their successors have been baptizing with water for almost two millennia but with some slight differences:

• Immersion: Some Christian denominations fully immerse a person in water three times while saying the invocation of the Holy Trinity, also known as the Trinitarian formula, "I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit."
• Aspersion: Other Christians sprinkle water on the forehead of the one being baptized and then invoke the Trinitarian formula.
• Infusion: Catholics (mostly Latin) baptize by pouring water over the head of the one being baptized while the Trinitarian formula is pronounced.

All three methods use water and the invocation of the Holy Trinity. Only water can be used — no other substance. But immersion or infusion are preferred.

Baptism of Blood

The notion of being baptized by shedding your own blood for Christ and/or his Church grew up during the Roman persecutions. And the Catholic Church has always revered these unbaptized martyrs — people who die for their faith — maintaining that the divine mercy of God wouldn't penalize them or ignore their sacrifice merely because they died before their Baptism by water.

In addition, Herod killed many infants (Matthew 2:16) in an failed effort to kill the newborn Christ. These infants, known as the Holy Innocents, are martyrs, too, because they shed their blood, so Christ could live. So Baptism by blood is as valid as Baptism by water. The following quote from the Catechism of the Catholic Church shows what the Church has to say about Baptism by blood:

The Church has always held the firm conviction that those who suffer death for the sake of the faith without having received Baptism are baptized by their death for and with Christ. This Baptism of blood, like the desire for Baptism, brings about the fruits of Baptism without like being a sacrament (1258).

Baptism by Desire

Part of Catholic theology is the Universal Salvific Will of God, which is just a fancy way of saying that God basically would like for everyone, all men and women, to join him in heaven. Men and women have free will, though, so he offers the gift of grace, but men and women must freely accept and then cooperate with it...

People who lack any knowledge of Christ and his teachings are sometimes called anonymous Christians, and they don't consciously, deliberately, and willingly reject Christ and his Catholic Church, so they aren't responsible for not knowing the whole truth. Therefore, the Church believes in Baptism by desire, which allows salvation for non-Christians who, through no fault of their own, haven't yet accepted Christ explicitly but nonetheless live good, moral lives as if already Christian. Only those who consciously, deliberately, and willingly reject Christ are considered liable.

If people in their heart of hearts are sincerely disposed to God's will but, through no fault of their own, don't know about Jesus Christ — or they've never been shown by word and good example — then the Church presumes that they possess an implicit desire to be baptized. If someone had told them and given good example, they would've freely and willingly embraced Christianity and asked for Baptism by water.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church has this to say about Baptism by desire:

Since Christ died for all ... we must hold that the Holy Spirit offers to all the possibility ... Every man who is ignorant of the Gospel of Christ and of his Church, but seeks the truth and does the will of God ... can be saved. It may be supposed that such persons would have desired Baptism explicitly if they had known its necessity. (1260)

Catholicism for Dummies by John Trigilio

Mensa By the Numbers

Jake is one-fourth of Molly's age. Two years ago, he was one-seventh her age.

How old are they now?

You Know, Jesus Did Take It With Him

His body, that is.

I did a double-take when this author attempted to explain details of Roman Catholicism as a key to grasping Bosch's paintings.

The ceremony takes place at an altar that contains precious relics, which are real pieces either of the body of Christ or of a saint, or of something they have touched.

The Essential Hieronymus Bosch

Ok, that's not Christian theology at all. No editor caught this one? Luckily, the author seems to be much better at writing about art than theology.

Duel in the Desert

This excerpt is talking about when Jesus was driving into the desert by the Holy Spirit and was tempted by the Satan

We should follow the duel closely — three thrusts by Satan, three times parried by Christ. What lay behind the three thrusts? I think what principally lay behind them was Christ's sinlessness. From your past sins and mine, the devil knows where the weaknesses are, the cracks and fissures in our natures half-healed or still gaping wide open. With us, he has plenty to go on: with Christ he had nothing at all. He could only improvise. We cannot read his mind ... but we can look at what he did.

He made three propositions. All of them were sketched in advance — rather sketchily sketched perhaps — by the behavior of the children of Israel in the desert. Christ answered with three wholly appropriate texts, all from Deuteronomy, all dealing with the time when Israel was beginning its new life... Or he may simply have taken three current views of the Messiah and tried them out in turn — that he would bring the earth wholly into the service of men's needs; that the very heavens would serve his splendor; that all the kingdoms of the world would be subject to him and to the Jewish nation whose glory he would be.

The first two temptations open with the words: "If you are the son of God." I think it was of the first urgency for Satan to find out what "son of God" meant. It had been used in the Old Testament as a name for the Messiah (Ps 2:7). But did he know what it meant?

"Son of God" had variously been used in the Old Testament — of the chosen people, for instance (Ex 4:22), and, in the plural, of the Jewish judges (Ps 81[82]:6). Satan knew his Old Testament, but the Book of Job he must have scrutinized with special closeness, for so much of it was about a certain Satan and the high carnival he had at Job's expense. In that book (1:6, 2:1, 38:7) "sons of God" meant the unfallen angels...

To Know Christ Jesus by Frank Sheed

Pin All Your Romantic Hopes on Google

User A: "Finally I've found my Soulmate!
Thanks, Google Romance!"

User B: "I never thought I'd be writing
an online dating testimonial.
Until I met User A..."

Google has a new beta program for online dating with contextual advertising ... make sure you take the tour.

And while we're at it ... of course ... April Fool's!

Google is the master of the day I love to hate. (For the past three years of their practical jokes check here.) I always get caught by practical jokes. Just not clever enough.

As a born afficianado of others' work (just think about all those quotes, people), I do love the way that computer nerds have taken over April Fool's Day as a way to show their chops. So any cleverness will be linked to below as I come across it.

• Everything's Coming Up Karl: Manolo's Shoe Blog has been hijacked.


• "Regular Guy" Beomes "Millionaire Guy"


• Sebastian Tours Assisi: Best travel tip -- "Of course the zombies are always a problem, but you get a free 12 gauge when you stay at our hotel, so everyone was fine. "


• All Sci Fi, All the Time: Dom Bettinelli is tired of arguing and changing genres. Can't wait to mix it up with him over whether Mr. Spock ate potato chips with his hands or a fork.
  


• Ribaldry and Risibility: Wallowing in the Earthiness of Something or Other! Jay is uncramping his style to focus on Miss Lima.

Around the House

Just a few random things ...

• Last weekend we watched a couple of favorite movies that few have heard of but many should watch ... Infernal Affairs (scroll down for my review) and Payback.


• Perhaps to compensate for the trouble with each word having definite tones, there is no verb conjugation. Catch that? No verb conjugation! For example, to make a statement past tense, add "le" to the end of the sentence. (Or that's how simple it is as of lesson 17 at ChinesePod.) Whew!


• Ballad of Mulan (courtesy of Rose who is taking East Asian studies ... yes as a sophomore in high school ... it really is a college prep school isn't it?) the first poem found in calligraphy. For fans of the Disney movie (and I am one) read it and see how it corresponds. Click on "English translation."


• Monk parakeets are a relatively common sight around here as a colony of them lives near White Rock Lake. A great story yesterday about these "bunny rabbits of the sky" (who doesn't love a parakeet in their back yard, after all?) and how the local electric utility "is earning notice for a planned construction of a 40-foot platform near White Rock Lake designed exclusively for the monks' sanctuary."

The Holy Mass and Personal Self-Surrender

In every true sacrifice there are four essential elements: and all of them are present in the sacrifice of the Cross: priest, victim, internal offering and external manifestation of the sacrifice. The external manifestation must be an expression of one's interior attitude. Jesus dies on the Cross, externally manifesting (through his words and his deeds) his loving internal surrender. Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit! (Luke 23:46) I have finished the task you committed to me, I have fulfilled your Will. He is, both then and now, at once Priest and Victim. Since, then, we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we have not a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempered as we are, yet without sinning. (Heb 4:14-15)

This internal offering of Jesus gives full meaning to all the external elements of his voluntary sacrifice — the insults, the stripping of his garments, the crucifixion.

The Sacrifice of the Cross is a single sacrifice. Priest and Victim are one and the same divine person: the Son of God made man. Jesus was not offered up to the Father by Pilate or by Caiphas, or by the crowds surging at his feet. It was He who surrendered himself. At every moment of his life on earth Jesus lived a perfect identification with his Father's will but it is on Calvary that the Son's self-surrender reaches its supreme expression.

We who want to imitate Jesus, who want only that our life should be a reflection of his, must ask ourselves today in our prayer: do we know how to unite ourselves to Jesus' offering to the Father and accept God's will at every moment? Do we unite ourselves to him in our joys and our sorrows and in all the activities that make up each one of our days? Do we unite ourselves to him at the more difficult times, such as moments of failure, pain or illness, at at the easy times, when we feel our souls filled with joy?

My Mother and Lady, teach me how to pronounce a "yes" which, like yours, will identify with the cry Jesus made before his Father: non mea voluntas ... (Luke 22:42) — not my will but God's be done. (J. Escriva, The Way of the Cross, Fourth Station)

Lent and Eastertide (In Conversation with God, Vol. 2)

One Year Ago Today, Terri Schaivo Died

I have seen various tributes all over but will direct you to the first one I saw today (and still my favorite thus far), at Jay's place.

My thoughts about Terri, euthanasia, and the culture of death from around that time can be found here.