Halloween Countdown

Tweedlesketch is celebrating 31 days of Halloween with original monster cards. These are really great! Via No Blasters.

Tags: Catholicism, Christianity

Marriage and Self-Sacrifice

I think my relationship with my wife is the best chance I will ever have to love my neighbor as myself. My success or failure as a lover will show most clearly with her. She is my best occasion for self-sacrifice, the bloodless martyrdom of daily life. My children also demand self-sacrifice, and on a greater scale, but there is a mandatory element to my fatherly efforts. They are my children; their dependence on me is nearly total. To neglect them would be an obvious moral failure. Even when they are at their worst, I do not wish they would raise themselves. Deirdre is another story. She is far more autonomous; she took care of herself before we married. I sometimes wish that she would do for herself some of the things she asks of me. I like to sit and read and be left alone. Overcoming that wish to the point of granting her requests cheerfully, or even anticipating them, is a small but constant opportunity for charity.

She is my best lesson in the pain of sin. The relative innocence of children may make them ideal candidates as earthly stand-ins for God. When you sin against them, the injustice of it shines forth -- they're just kids. But Deirdre loves me as on other, and I her. When I sin against her -- when I break a promise, speak a cutting word, or fail in my duty -- I see the pain in her face, and the ingratitude of it hits home. How can I wound one who loves me so well? I see the wild incongruity of it: I love her so much in my better moments, the good she does is the source of so much of my happiness; how can I forget this?

Swimming with Scapulars by Matthew Lickona

Anyone who has been married for any length of time knows this one, kids or no kids. But Matthew Lickona puts it so clearly and so well that it was a really good reminder for me of the fact that we are living our faith every day, all the time, with the people who are closest to us.

Tags: Catholicism, Christianity

Halloween Countdown

(source)

(Because there's nothing for kicking off a Halloween countdown like some really bad jokes...)

How do you fix a broken pumpkin?
With a pumpkin patch.

What do you get when you cross a vampire and a snowman?
Frostbite...

How do witches keep their hair in place while flying?
With scare spray...

Do zombies eat popcorn with their fingers?
No, they eat the fingers separately...

What did one ghost say to the other ghost?
"Do you believe in people?"

What do you call someone who puts poison in a person's corn flakes?
A cereal killer...

Why do mummies have trouble keeping friends?
They're so wrapped up in themselves...

What kind of streets do zombies like the best?
Dead ends...

What is a ghost's favorite mode of transportation?
A scareplane...

What type of dog do vampire's like the best?
Bloodhounds...

What does a vampire never order at a restaurant?
A stake sandwich...

What is a skeleton's favorite musical instrument?
A trombone...

What do birds give out on Halloween night?
Tweets...

Why do vampires need mouthwash?
They have bat breath...

Why did the Vampire subscribe to the Wall Street Journal?
He heard it had great circulation...

Learning From Our Family

*headslap* This is so basic but makes so much sense. Why has it never been explained to me this way before? That family example may be the best I have ever heard.

Establishing a canon did not mean the bishops started handing out Bibles. Most people in the fourth century did not know how to read, and it would be another thousand years before the technology for mass-producing books was developed. For centuries the Scriptures were circulated in hand-copied manuscripts and guarded lovingly by local churches.

But even if they could have put a Bible in each person's hands, the successors of the apostles would never have thought that to be sufficient. Scripture was never envisioned as standing apart from the church in which it was born, apart from the tradition -- the new way of life handed on by the apostles.

The Catholic does not limit the word of God to only the words found in the Bible. As St. Bernard of Clairvaux said, the word is "not a written and mute word, but the Word which is incarnate and living." Catholics are not "people of the book." We are children of the witnesses, begotten of the words and deeds of those who first saw the Lord.

Parents do not raise children only by lecturing them about right and wrong and repeating stories and words of wisdom handed down from long-dead relatives. Instead, they build a home life in which the family's character and values are passed on as much by shared experience and example as by words. It is the same with the family of God, the church. Our life in Christ grows not only through reading the words of our ancestors in the faith, but also by doing the things they did, sharing in the rituals and practices they received from Christ.

Catholic Passion by David Scott

Tags: Catholicism, Christianity

Chock Full of Songs That Makes Us Roll Our Eyes

Sent to me by ever so insightful, Laura H.

Tags: Catholicism, Christianity

The True Religion, the One Way of Salvation

Jesus is more than a great religious teacher, and his church is not merely one religious institution among many. Catholics believe that the church is the true religion, the one true way of salvation. All other religious figures and institutions are incomplete in comparison to the Catholic Church. How could they not be, if Jesus really is who he said he was, as Catholics believe?

The ancient religions of the world -- especially Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam -- contain much that is beautiful, noble, and true. And these religions, especially, continue to impel people to heights of holiness, wisdom, and love. Catholics believe that all that holy and true in these faiths is a gift of God, a reflection of the desire for God that he places in every human heart. But no matter how sublime the other religions of the world, only the Catholic Church contains all the gifts that God wants to bestow on his children. Only the church can bring us to divine life...

This is, after all, what Jesus taught. He said that no one can go to the Father except through him. To be saved we have to be born again of water and Spirit in baptism. To have eternal life we have to eat his flesh and drink his blood in the Eucharist. Salvation, as our Lord revealed it, means meeting him in his church, which he established to continue his saving presence in history.

However, whom Jesus saves may not be limited to those we see being baptized and made a part of the Catholic Church. Those whom Jesus saves, those who are really "in" the church, remain a secret known only to God. "In the ineffable forethought of God, many who appear to be outside are within, while many who seem to be within are without --- the Lord knows his own," Augustine once observed.

Catholic Passion by David Scott

This is why we can be ecumenical while simultaneously believing that the Catholic Church is the one true path.

Tags: Catholicism, Christianity

Who Needs Prayer Wheels ...

... when you've got these? Now that's classic Engrish.

Engrish.com

Tags: Catholicism, Christianity

Finding Freedom in the Bonds of Love

The walls of the house signify the boundary enclosing the particular place where these few people are engaged in enacting the rite of love, that is, of exchanged life. They experience it under many forms: the love of the parents for each other is one form; the love of the mother for her son, say, is another, and for her daughter another; and the father for his daughter and for his son; and the older brother for the younger sister, or the older sister for the younger brother. There are a dozen variations on the theme, but the same theme; namely, that we find real life where mutual responsibility and commitment turn out to be forms of joy. It is love that liberates the participants for this. Love sets them free from the calculating and jockeying and tallying up of scores that we find in mere politics, where we have to protect people with half-measure such as equality and rights and self-determination. Love opens onto a vastly more splendid order of things; and the forms of love at work in an ordinary family are like introductions to this splendor.

This family bond is there in the fabric of ordinary human life, giving us all this chance to participate in the Real Thing. All forms of love furnish this chance in one way or another, of course --love for one's country, or for one's community, or one's master or friend. Wherever love operates, there we find some exhibition of the principle. But the obvious place where we find the natural occasion for the whole race to enact the rite is the household -- in other words,in the biological family.

No one supposes that these four or five or six people are a select breed, tailored to get along with each other perfectly, or picked because they are better than anyone else. Rather, it is as though the great lesson in love that we must all learn sooner or later has been made obvious, easy, and natural by being carried along in the arms of sheer biology...

Splendor in the Ordinary: Your Home as a Holy Place by Thomas Howard

This just seems to continue the message from yesterday about God putting us right smack in the middle of the place we need to be to learn what we need to know. Once again, we've just got to recognize it to help us get the most advantage from the lesson.

Tags: Catholicism, Christianity

Adoration Prayers ... Another Chance!

I will be in adoration ... yes again! lucky, lucky me! ... for an hour early Saturday morning. If anyone would like me to take a special intention to Jesus for them just send me an email (julie @ glyphnet . com) with "Adoration" in the subject line. I'll already have all those from my Prayer Journal and also those that I took with me for last week.

Tags: Catholicism, Christianity

Quick Book Reviews

THE SHOEMAKER'S GOSPEL: A NOVEL
A shoemaker who lived in Capernaeum while Jesus was there writes his musings in his journal. Among his entries are included thoughts about personal encounters with Jesus and his disciples. The author clearly has incorporated some of the insights and thoughts he has had during his long practice of Ignatian contemplation, which involves putting yourself in the scene when reading the Gospels. Much of it is quite effective in terms of helping the reader imagine where Jesus might have stayed, the sorts of jokes the disciples would tell, how one might speak personally to Jesus in passing, and so forth. The author, of necessity, invents much of Jesus' dialogue during the aforementioned examples and, for the most part, it works.

I had a much more difficult time when the author invented additional parables for Jesus to use as thought provoking examples for his disciples. Not surprisingly, the added parables were much shallower than Jesus' own and jolted me out of the story as I mentally contrasted it to the real parables. They read like parables I would have made up myself and that is no recommendation, believe me. There was a similar lack of depth and originality in most of the shoemaker's insights. I think this book could be useful for those who would like some help in putting themselves "in the scene" with Jesus but it didn't really grab me with any new insights or thoughts that I haven't seen elsewhere.

THE THIRTEENTH TALE: A NOVEL

... I have always been a reader; I have read at every stage of my life, and there has never been a time when reading was not my greatest joy. And yet I cannot pretend that the reading I have done in my adult years matches in its impact on my soul the reading I did as a child. I still believe in stories. I still forget myself when I am in the middle of a good book. Yet it is not the same. Books are, for me, it must be said, the most important thing; what I cannot forget is that there was a time when they were at once more banal and more essential than that. When I was a child, books were everything. And so there is in me, always, a nostalgic yearning for the lost pleasure of books.

This author understands me. And I understand why she wrote this unusual book which is a love letter for those who have read and reread Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, Rebecca, and similar classics. It is a double tale wound around the story of a young woman, Margaret, who has been tapped to write the biography of Vida Winter, a very famous and reclusive writer who has never told anyone a single truth about her life story. As the author's tale unfolds, Margaret begins investigating the truth from her side. I couldn't put this book down. Highly recommended even though I feel the author pulled an "Agatha Christie" toward the end when Vida Winter's true identity is finally revealed. But I love Agatha Christie books as well so it all works out. Not perfect but a thoroughly enjoyable read.

You don't have to take my word for it. Steven Riddle has a much more thorough review here.

SWIMMING WITH SCAPULARS
This book was lent to me by a much younger friend with the recommendation that she and her husband both really loved the book. I could tell as there were numerous bits of paper marking favorite passages and underlined mentions of authors for further investigation later. I also could understand their enthusiasm. This is a lively and well written book from Matthew Lickona, a young husband and father, who examines his life and roles thus far through a Catholic viewpoint. Lickona is thoroughly orthodox yet also that most welcome of people who live in the world but not of it ... which is to say he's real. I thoroughly enjoyed this book although I am well past the age where many of the insights are new. However, even with that said, I still gleaned several thought provoking ideas and plan on suggesting this book to my Catholic women's book club which has a range of women from young singles to grandmothers. I think they will all enjoy it. Highly recommended though much more for people in their twenties or thirties.

For a daily look at Matthew, check out his blog.

IN THE STACKS...
I just had the pleasure of getting some books to try from the library and finding that they all look so good I'm having a hard time deciding which to dive into first.

• Isn't It Romantic?: An Entertainment by Ron Hansen ... a French couple tries to find the real America and winds up stranded in a tiny town in Nebraska. Light and fluffy looking ... my favorite kind of quick read.
  


• The Salaryman's Wife by Sujata Massey ... a mystery being solved by the Japanese-American heroine living in Japan. Mystery and exotic locale.
  


• The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova ... a modern vampire tale (does everyone remember that Dracula is one of my favorite books?) that follows three timelines, one in the 1930s, one in the 1950s, and one in 1972.
  


Tags: Catholicism, Christianity

2 Corinthians Study: Affliction, Suffering, and Comfort

2 Corinthians 1:1-7
I really like it when we can get the nuances of the original language from Scripture. Often, as we can see below, it conveys so much more than the mere English translation gets across. The definitions below all much more active expressions of how we experience and deal with suffering than what comes to my mind when simply reading the verses with no knowledge of the original Greek.

(i) Paul writes as a man who knows trouble to those who are in trouble. The word that he uses for afflictions is In ordinary Greek this word always describes actual physical pressure on a man. R.C. Trench writes, "When, according to the ancient law of England, those who willfully refused to plead had heavy weights placed on their breasts and were so pressed and crushed to death, this was literally thlipsis." ...

(ii) The answer to this suffering lies in endurance. The Greek word for this endurance is hupomone. The keynote of hupomone is not grim, bleak acceptance of trouble but triumph. It describes the spirit which can not only accept suffering but triumph over it ...

(iii) But we are not left to face this trial and to provide this endurance alone. There comes to us the comfort of God. Between verses 3 and 7 the noun comfort or the verb to comfort occurs no fewer than nine times. Comfort in the New Testament always means far more than soothing sympathy. Always it is true to its root meaning, for its root is the Latin fortis and fortis means brave. Christian comfort is the comfort which brings courage and enables a man to cope with all that life can do to him ...

The Letters to the Corinthians, Revised Edition by William Barclay*

*Barclay is not a Catholic source. Read here for more info about him.

Tags: Catholicism, Christianity

Bleg: Toronto Resources Needed to Offer to Mother and Unborn Baby

I received this request ... anyone know where to go for resources to help this 23-year-old woman and her unborn baby?

She wants to let the baby live, but is under a lot of pressure to have an abortion and does not have a lot of resources on her own. She really needs help from someone or a group in her area (Toronto).

I've been searching online for the Toronto equivalent of the White Rose*, but haven't been able to find anything yet. I'm sure there is something like that. I was wondering if someone on here with better connections within Catholic Charities or the Toronto area might know of a good place I could refer her to.

If anyone wants to email me rather than answer in the comments box, my email is julie[at]glyphnet[dot]com. Thanks!

* White Rose Women's Center is a Catholic crisis pregnancy center providing pro-life education, counseling and aid.

Tags: Catholicism, Christianity

Wasting Time? You Say That Like It's a Bad Thing.

I got this from Hannah. As she warned me, there is one surprising and shocking moment toward the beginning but it goes on to be downright hilarious. Therefore, I'm passing that warning on and, because I like to live on the edge, I'm posting it here for all to enjoy.

Gym class

Update: Evidently some find the whole thing to be shocking ... so I will elaborate on the warning ... mock shooting included.

Waving From the Cloud of Witnesses: Dorothy Day

The Christian life is certainly a paradox. The teaching of St. John of the Cross (which was for beginners, he said) is of the necessity for detachment from creatures; of the need of traveling light through the dark night.

Most of us have not the courage to set out on this path wholeheartedly, so God arranges it for us...

We try to escape, of course, either habitually or occasionally. But we never can. The point I want to make is that a woman can achieve the highest spirituality and union with God through her house and children, through doing her work, which leaves her no time for thought of self, for consolation, for prayer, for reading, for what she might consider development. She is being led along the path of growth inevitably. But she needs to be told these things, instructed in these things, for her hope and endurance, so that she may use whatever prayer she can to cry out in the darkness of the night.

Here is her mortification of the senses:

Her eyes are affronted by disorders, confusion, the sight of human ailments and human functions. Her nose also; her ears tormented with discordant cries, her appetite failing often; her sense of touch in agony from fatigue and weakness.

Her interior senses are also mortified. She is also with her little ones, her interest adapted to theirs; she has not even the companionship of books. She has no longer the gay companions of her youth (their nerves can't stand it). So she has solitude, and a silence form the sounds she'd like to hear -- conversation, music, discussion.

Of course there are consolations and joys. Babies and small children are pure beauty, love, joy -- the truest in this world. But the thorns are there -- of night watches, of illnesses, of infant perversities and contrariness. There are glimpses of heaven and hell.

On Pilgrimage by Dorothy Day

I like that point about God arranging for us what we need in our everyday life. We must be open to it so that we can take full advantage of what we are being offered though. Otherwise it is just inconvenience, pain, and suffering without any of the redemptive possibilities being used.

I am greatly indebted to the friend who, upon hearing that I was not fond of Dorothy Day, sent me this book as well as Praying in the Presence of Our Lord: With Dorothy Day by David Scott, which largely consists of quotes by Day. I also would like to add that Scott's introduction about Day's life is the only one I have ever read that was not a turn off.

I had begun to suspect it was not so much that I did not like Dorothy Day as that I had never read anything that she had written, but only things that others wrote about her. Reading these books proved that suspicion to be correct. Dorothy in person is nothing like the persona presented by others, who I had begun to mentally label "Social Justice Dorothy." Reading her is like looking at a Catholic Madeleine l'Engle whose books about her life and faith I find interesting and inspiring but incomplete.

Both books are highly recommended.

Tags: Catholicism, Christianity

Feeling Blue? Try This.

Guaranteed to put a smile on your face and tears in your eyes (but good tears).

The Devil and Me

Precisely.

I know I have to be careful with the devil. I don't want to shunt off my personal failings onto him -- my evil is my own. Satan won't be around at the judgment to share the blame. But I don't want to discount his power and influence, either. To ignore him is to let him move unseen, which is exactly where he thrives. I don't want to be cocky with him. I sympathize with the old tradition of not saying his name, for fear of giving him an inroad. But neither do I want to cower before him. I believe I have power over him; the thing is not to suppose that the power is my own.

Swimming with Scapulars by Matthew Lickona

Tags: Catholicism, Christianity

World's Fastest, and Possibly Most Interesting, History Lesson

Who has controlled the Middle East over the course of history?

See it before your eyes in 90 seconds.

Via TSO.

Tags: Catholicism, Christianity

The harvest is plentiful but the laborers are few ...

... that quote never has seemed more meaningful than now, has it? And, frankly, neither has this commentary on it from In Conversation with God.

Early Christianity grew up in a world which seems very much like our own. It boasted abundant material means but suffered from great spiritual poverty. The early Church had the necessary vigor to protect itself from paganizing influences. It was also vibrant enough to transform a worldly civilization from within. The world today seems no more difficult to evangelize. At first sight it may appear to be closed to Christ. Yet if we are firmly united to the Lord as the first Christians were, we can be sure that the transformation will take place once again. How well are we succeeding in our efforts to transform the people around us, the members of our family, our friends, our colleagues at work?

The world is in need of many things. But there is no doubt that it is in great need of apostles who are holy, cheerful, loyal to the Church and eager to make Christ known. The Lord is calling for us to work in his fields: Pray, therefore, the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest. Prayer is the most effective means of winning new apostles (Josemaria Escriva). Our apostolic zeal has to be manifested, first of all, in a continuous prayer of petition for new apostles. Prayer always comes first.

That cry of the Son of God, lamenting that the harvest is plentiful but the laborers are few, is always relevant. How it tears at our heartstrings. That cry came from Christ's mouth for you to hear too. How have you responded to it up to now? Do you pray at least daily for that intention of his? (Josemaria Escriva).

In Conversation With God Vol 5

Tags: Catholicism, Christianity

Cool Weather and Monarch Butterflies

Photo source

What beautiful weather we are having right now. I actually was comfortable in a long sleeved shirt when standing outside chatting with a friend after Adoration. The cool weather is accompanied by those deep blue skies that just seem to come with Autumn.

Even better, as we stood we saw one huge, glorious Monarch butterfly after another floating through the air around us. Driving home, sometimes I would see as many as ten in the skies over the road ahead. It must be that annual migration to Mexico coming through ... it is really wonderful to have all those butterflies drifting in and out of your sight everywhere you go.

Join This Valiant Pro-Life Stand

Ms. magazine is running the names of 5,000 women who are boasting they had abortions. Eleanor Smeal, president of the Feminist Majority Foundation, which publishes Ms.says, "We have to get away from what the politicians are saying and get women's lives back in the picture." They are sending the signatures to Congress, the White House and state legislators.

Amy Pawlak thinks that we should focus on the lives of the unborn, who are the real victims of abortion, no matter what Ms. Magazine says.

Help me create a petition that will put the one in Ms. to shame. Email this post to every man and woman you know. Email your names and cities/states to me. I'll compile them and send a petition to Congress - a petition with the names of people who think women (and their unborn children) deserve better than an abortion.

I want to get more than the 5,000 signatures Ms. is boasting it has...

... if you are a woman who considered having an abortion but chose not to, I'd like to hear from you and your story.

Please do go to her blog to read the entire post.. I will be emailing this to many of my friends and encourage y'all to do the same.

Tags: Catholicism, Christianity