Magnification

Many wannabe Catholics find one little-known nugget of Catholic teaching shocking but very comforting – shocking because they never would have guessed that it was so, and comforting because they think it will help them avoid the thing they fear most. This amazing Catholic fact is that the same Catholic Church that asks catechumens and candidates to declare that they “believe and profess all that the Holy Catholic Church teaches, believes and proclaims to be revealed by God” does not require anyone to have a devotion to Mary.

Say that again?

Catholics are not required to have a devotion to the Blessed Virgin.

But… I thought Catholics were all about Mary….

Catholics are all about Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, born of the Father before all ages, God from God, Light from Light, True God from True God, begotten not made, one in being with the Father. It is because we are all about our Lord Jesus that we take an interest in Mary. And she would be the first to tell you that.

I think the reason Mary sticks out like a sore thumb to Protestants is because, with one annual exception, she is so completely absent from their Christian experience. So are all the other saints except Paul, who because he wrote the portions of the New Testament that Protestants base most of their doctrine on, gets more than his fair share of airtime on Sunday mornings. Yet we Catholics have it on good authority that Mary’s soul “magnifies the Lord.” Who wouldn’t want to get closer to someone with a soul like that?

One thing potential converts fret over is a Catholic practice which they believe runs contrary to the clear message of Scripture. Catholics ask Mary to pray for them. We ask all the saints, as well as the angels, to pray for us, but most Protestants worry about Mary because they worry about the Rosary: “Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death” and that sort of thing. How can Catholics ask Mary to pray for them when the Bible clearly tells us:

For there is one God, and one mediator also between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.

Based on this verse, Protestants claim that it is simply wrong to try to go through a “saint” to get to God, and so the Rosary is patently unbiblical. There is only one way to get to God, and that is through His Son, Jesus. The Bible says so.

The Bible actually says:

First of all, then, I urge that entreaties and prayers, petitions and thanksgivings, be made on behalf of all men, for kings and all who are in authority, so that we may lead a tranquil and quiet life in all godliness and dignity. This is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God, and one mediator also between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself as a ransom for all, the testimony given at the proper time. For this I was appointed a preacher and an apostle (I am telling the truth, I am not lying) as a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth. Therefore I want the men in every place to pray, lifting up holy hands, without wrath and dissension.

So, as St. Paul clearly states in his letter to St. Timothy, there are two types of mediators between God and men. Only Jesus could give Himself as a ransom for all; in that capacity He is the unique Mediator – blessed be His Holy Name! Catholics have absolutely no problem grasping that concept. But Protestants have a problem grasping the second, very biblical concept of saints (that is, holy men and women) mediating on our behalf through their prayers. Asking other people to pray for us is exactly what we’ve been commanded to do. Protestants do it all the time; they have prayer meetings and prayer chains for the express purpose of getting others to bring their requests before the Throne. The Catholic position on this is simply: why not go straight to the top of the prayer chain? As St. James assured us, “The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.” As the ultimate righteous person (Hail, Mary, FULL of grace!), Mary’s prayers are the most effective, and she loves us like the mother she is to us (Jn 19:27). Of course, there is the Protestant quibble concerning rote prayers, again answered by the Bible itself. Look up Psalm 136 – what you’re looking at is a litany, right smack-dab in the middle of the Bible, repetition and all! Matthew 6:7 is not condemning repetition in prayer; it is condemning VAIN repetition – mindlessly babbling prayers because you think there is something magical about just saying the words. There is simply nothing wrong with praying the Rosary – Catholics are asking a Christian in Heaven to pray for them (1 Tim 2:1) using a set pattern of prayer consisting of Bible verses (Luke 1:28 and Luke 1:42), with a request that Mary, Mother of Jesus Who is God, pray for sinners (that would be us) now and when we are about to die. Amen.

That said, the Catholic Church doesn’t require anyone to pray the Rosary, or to have any kind of a devotion to Mary. It’s optional, so if you’re considering the claims of the Catholic Church, and our Mariology makes you nervous, don’t sweat it. Converts will be asked to assent to the Marian doctrines (that Mary was immaculately conceived, that she is a perpetual Virgin, that she is the Mother of God, that she was assumed body and soul into Heaven) just as you will be asked to assent to everything else the Church teaches, but you can live and die a Catholic in good standing and never own a set of rosary beads.

Don’t say I didn’t remind you, though, that you are shunning a practice about which it has been said:

The rosary is the book of the blind, where souls see and there enact the greatest drama of love the world has ever known; it is the book of the simple, which initiates them into mysteries and knowledge more satisfying than the education of other men; it is the book of the aged, whose eyes close upon the shadow of this world, and open on the substance of the next. The power of the rosary is beyond description. (Venerable Fulton Sheen)

The greatest method of praying is to pray the Rosary. (St. Francis de Sales)

If you say the Holy Rosary every day, with a spirit of faith and love, our Lady will make sure she leads you very far along her Son’s path. (St. Josemaria Escriva)

Some people are so foolish that they think they can go through life without the help of the Blessed Mother. Love the Madonna and pray the rosary, for her Rosary is the weapon against the evils of the world today.. (St. Pio of Pietrelcina)

When we pray the Rosary, we take a walk through the events of our Savior’s life with His Mother as our guide. Meditating on the Mysteries of the Rosary, we allow Mary to tutor us in faith, hope and love. The effects can be profound. When I first got up the courage to pray the Rosary, it was a Friday, so I began with the Sorrowful Mysteries. When I got to the final Mystery, Jesus’ crucifixion, I was suddenly overwhelmed with horror, because I am a mother, and I have a son. I realized that I sent Jesus to the Cross, my indifference tormented Him, my perverse love for my sins cost Him His very life, and I was kneeling there asking His Mother to pray for ME, the woman who crucified her Son.

At that moment I learned more about forgiveness than I had in the preceding 48 years of my life, as Jesus’ Mother forgave me from the depths of her heart, and took me as her own child.

No, the Catholic Church won’t require you to pursue a relationship with Mary – don’t worry about that. But her soul really does magnify the Lord. If you have any interest in getting a closer look at God, you’re going to want to begin looking at Him through Mary.

 

On the memorial of Our Lady of the Rosary

Deo omnis gloria!

Hagiography and the Cause for My Canonization

A few years back, a classmate of my daughter’s was killed in a car accident. That was when my daughter learned the meaning of the word “hagiography.” According to the dictionary, hagiography is “idealizing or idolizing biography.” According to my daughter, the idealizing and idolizing that went on when the boy died was nearly unbearable, as everyone at their school suddenly claimed him as their dearest friend and spiritual next-of-kin. My daughter remembered the boy (who had marched with her in the drum corps of the school’s band and whom she counted among her friends) as foul-mouthed and impious, as well as energetic, funny and good-natured. Yet after his reputation had been hagiographically bleached, it shone like the sun. The boy had purportedly never done anything objectionable. My daughter said it was nauseating.

A lot of people find hagiography nauseating, particularly when employed in a discussion of Catholic saints. Reading Alban Butler’s The Lives of the Saints will cause them to gag as they wallow through all the extravagant praise and wanton hyperbole:

In the person of St. Lewis IX. were eminently united the qualities which form a great king, and a perfect hero, no less than those which make up the character of a wonderful saint. Endowed with all qualifications for government, he excelled equally in the arts of peace and in those of war; and his courage, intrepidity, and greatness of mind received from his virtue the highest lustre; for ambition, or a view to his own glory, had no share in his great enterprises, his only motive in them being religion, zeal for the glory of God, or the good of his subjects. Though the two crusades in which he was engaged, were attended with ill success, he is certainly to be ranked among the most valiant princes, and understood war the best of any general of the age in which he lived; in the most dangerous battles which he fought he beat the enemy, how much soever superior to him in numbers and strength: and his afflictions set his piety and virtue in the brightest light.

Where are the warts?? people want to know. The truth lies in the warts!!

Because that’s what life is really all about – the warts. After all, look at the New Testament! It is brutally honest about the failings of the followers of Christ: Thomas’ unbelief, Peter’s cowardice, the apostles’ overall spiritual dimwittedness. My gosh, thinking about my own life – warts galore. It seems that everything about me, as well as about everyone of my acquaintance, is either objectionable or tragicomedic. We bumble and stumble our way through just about everything. Consider my ten years of Catholic experience. It has not been marked by “courage, intrepidity and greatness of mind” – not even remotely. Looking back, I note no marks of distinction whatsoever.

As a Protestant-turned-Catholic, I had a lot to learn when I first started attending Mass 10 years ago – all that standing up, and sitting down, and kneeling, and genuflecting, and blessing oneself with the sign of the Cross, all those responses, new hymns, new accoutrements, new faces. That last part, the new faces, was hard for me as a socially challenged individual – all those strangers to get to know, some stranger than others. One thing I quickly learned as a Catholic neophyte was that most of the men in the parish would either be named Jim or Joe. To be sure, there’s the occasional Ken or Brian, but chances are those guys are converts like me. No, real Catholic men are named Jim or Joe; the trick is figuring out which is which. Like the last time I went to confession – two men were standing in the foyer talking. One of them kindly introduced himself; he was Jim. The other man I recognized as someone I knew by sight from Adoration and holy days of obligation, the kind of guy you can always count on to be there. He introduced himself as Joe. Now, how was I going to keep that straight? (And sure enough, the next time I saw Jim, I called him Joe….) Anyway, after some chit-chat which left Jim singing “Just Walk Away, Renée,” I proceeded to the Adoration chapel which connects to the confessional. As usual, there had been no stampede to the sacrament, so I went on in, made my confession, and received the grace to go out and get it right this time. Back in the chapel, I knelt before the Tabernacle to pray. It suddenly dawned on me that this was my chance to do something I have long desired to do – prostrate myself before Jesus in the Holy Eucharist. Joe (the one I had just been introduced to in the foyer) had done that last Holy Thursday, and I had longed to imitate him, but I was wearing a skirt at the time and after pondering the logistics of lying down on the floor in a ladylike and unrevealing manner without calling undue attention to myself… well, I had just continued to kneel. But now, in the empty Adoration chapel, here was my chance. Not only was I wearing pants, not only was the chapel empty so that I would distract no one, but our church is blessed with 120-year-old wood floors that creak like nobody’s business. When you’re in the chapel you can hear folks coming from a mile away, so I’d have a good chance to get up off the floor before anyone saw me (I have a horror of calling attention to myself in the presence of the Eucharist – if the Host is indeed the Creator of the Universe, God forbid that someone should enter into His presence and then be distracted by me or anyone else). It was now or never, so I proceeded to lie face down in the middle of the aisle and thank God for His mercy and His grace poured out in the sacrament of Reconciliation.

And in less than 10 seconds, two of the light-footedest men God ever created entered the chapel.

So there I am, lying face down in the middle of the aisle in the Adoration chapel, my nose mashed into the carpet, thinking to myself that it’s truly a mercy that in this day and age this is probably one of the few places left in America where two men can find a middle-aged woman lying face down on the floor, and not dial 911.

They seated themselves. I righted myself, genuflected, and left the chapel as discreetly as I knew how. I recognized neither man, although I can say with certainty that there is a good chance that one or both of them was named Jim or Joe.

So, how’s that little incident going to look when they open the cause for my canonization? Seriously, there will have to be a MAJOR rewrite of the facts, something along the lines of “And as St. Renée lay prostrate before her Lord in the Tabernacle, two strangers entered the chapel. Stricken by the obvious intensity of her devotion, they were at once convicted of their sins, and henceforth were moved to lead lives of notable piety.”

Something like that. After all, that’s how hagiography works, isn’t it? Religious cryotherapy is applied to the warts in the saint’s life, smoothing out the rough edges and making saints appear a breed apart from everyday folk like you and me. Let’s face it, goobs and doofuses don’t get canonized. Hagiographists get paid not to talk about the crankiness, the fender-bender (seriously, officer, I did not see that tree!), the break-up with the fiancé, the hammer and the bad language, the mind-wandering during Mass, the social contretemps, the bouts of depression, or any neglect of the niceties. Hagiographists blather instead about the saintly characteristics which the person under discussion purportedly possessed: the zeal, the piety, the courage, the intrepidity, and the greatness of mind.

Yadda, yadda, yadda….
The truth is in the warts!!

Well, no, actually the truth is in the truth, warts and all. To make saints sound as if they never got distracted during prayer (ask St. Teresa of Avila) or spoke sharply to someone (St. Jerome wanders into my mind) is to do them a disservice. Yet, far from being a crock, hagiography is actually good in that it offers us another perspective on the lives of the saints, a necessary perspective on the truth.

Take the example of soon-to-be St. John Paul the Great. It was revealed after his death that the pope would spend all night lying on the bare floor with his arms outstretched, fasting and praying before the ordination of bishops. Sounds saintly, right? Think about how this played out in real life. John Paul would first lie down in bed, shifting from one side to the other, to make it look like he had slept there – wouldn’t want people to talk…. The bed was comfortable, and the thought crossed his mind that he was getting kind of old for the self-mortification stuff. He pulled himself out of bed and onto the cold floor, which got colder after a half an hour had passed. He prayed, and prayed, and realized that he had dozed off. He prayed some more. The floor was awfully drafty, and he began to think idly about perhaps doing some remodeling to cut down on heating costs. Realizing that his mind had wandered, he also realized that he had to go to the bathroom. He wasn’t getting any younger, and neither was his prostate. My goodness, his legs were stiff as he arose from the floor. When he returned from the bathroom, his soft bed called to him. He knelt beside the bed. Why was he doing this? Was it really going to make a difference? All-night vigil or no all-night vigil, those bishops would be ordained tomorrow. If he showed up bleary-eyed and haggard, there would be no end of talk in the media about how ill he looked and whether or not he should consider resigning….

He lay back down on the floor, stretching his arms out to form a living cross. Hour One was behind him; only seven more hours left to pray for those men he was ordaining.

So what’s the truth? Is it the old guy lying uncomfortably on the floor all night, getting up for periodic bathroom breaks? Is it the saint imitating His Lord’s all-night prayer vigil before He announces His choice of apostles the next morning (Lk 6:12-14)?

Yes.

And that’s why hagiography isn’t to be discounted out of hand. A supernatural reality underlies all that a Christian does when he is not conformed to this world, but is being transformed by the renewing of his mind. Remember the words of the angel to Daniel the prophet, who had prayed and fasted for 3 weeks:

He said to me, “O Daniel, man of high esteem, understand the words that I am about to tell you and stand upright, for I have now been sent to you.” And when he had spoken this word to me, I stood up trembling. Then he said to me, “Do not be afraid, Daniel, for from the first day that you set your heart on understanding this and on humbling yourself before your God, your words were heard, and I have come in response to your words. But the prince of the kingdom of Persia was withstanding me for twenty-one days; then behold, Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me, for I had been left there with the kings of Persia. Now I have come to give you an understanding of what will happen to your people in the latter days, for the vision pertains to the days yet future.”

Had the angel not disclosed the behind-the-scenes supernatural struggle, Daniel would have gone on fasting and praying, thinking, “Gee, this sure is getting old. I wonder if any of this really makes a difference. Who do I think I am, anyway, that God should take special notice of me and my prayers?” This dual reality, the natural and the supernatural, is the warp and woof of a Christian’s life – both the “who do I think I am?” and the “Oh. That’s who I am.” Both are real, and both are worthy of contemplation. You prayed for me, and through your prayers you obtained graces for me that I would not have obtained otherwise. Yes, you forgot my name and had to pray for “that woman with the blog about off-roading,” but God knew who you meant! Two realities – you are a fallible, foible-ridden human, and you are a co-heir with Christ = one truth.

So, yeah, the warts are true and deserve a mention. The writers of the New Testament realized that and pulled no punches – doubting Thomas, cowardly Peter, disappointing disciples. But remember, when speaking of the irritating, inept but determined children of God clinging to His promises like drowning rats, the New Testament also confesses: The world is not worthy of them.

And that’s true, too.

Which bodes well for the cause for the canonization of this messy bumpkin. I hope the iconographers remember to depict St. Renée in profile, with her nose still a little mashed from the carpet. Warts and all.

 

On the memorial of St. Narcisa de Jesús Martillo Morán

Deo omnis gloria!

Immortal Horrors, Everlasting Splendors

Thus far we have not discussed the remarkable opportunity afforded Sts. Peter, James and John on Mt. Tabor when they beheld the glorified appearance of the One Whom Peter had hailed as the Son of the Living God. It was granted to them to behold their Lord in conversation with two of the greatest Old Testament figures – Moses and Elijah. Of course, this get-together poses a problem for the Protestant notion that God wants Christians to have nothing to do with icky dead people, and therefore asking the intercession of the saints is a heathenish practice. Why would Jesus have involved His disciples in the event at all, so close that they not only saw Jesus conversing with someone but actually learned who those men were (after all, Moses and Elijah weren’t wearing nametags!), if there is something deeply wrong when living children of God have to do with dead children of God? This Jesus, you see, is not only the Son of the Living God, as Peter proclaimed Him to be; He is the Son of the Living God of the living! Dead saints aren’t dead; they are ALIVE in Christ! Necromancy, the conjuring up of the spirit of a dead person for the purpose of divining the future, is a very different thing from asking our brothers and sisters in the Lord to pray for us. The fact that they are far more alive than we are doesn’t bother them at all – it shouldn’t bother us, either!

Once we learn to see God as He is – that is, to view Him as our loving Father Who only gives good gifts to us – and to see ourselves as He sees us – i.e., to allow Him to pressure-wash through the lies we’ve told ourselves about ourselves and uncover the real, raw person behind the façade – we find that we have more work ahead of us. We have to learn to deal with all those pesky little “me’s” running around the world, those “others” also made in His image and according to His likeness. The third thing the account of the Transfiguration bids us do is to learn to see others the way God sees them.

And this has always been the most difficult for me. I can believe that God is my Father, and I am learning to be myself – no excuses – in His Presence. But like someone who’s new to the firing range, I keep aiming above or below the target when contemplating my fellowman. I either see you as a god or as an object – there isn’t much in between as far as I’m concerned. I tend to allow people whom I like and admire to occupy an exalted position in my estimation. You can easily become a god to me, to the point where your influence on my thinking and decision-making may become detrimental to my spiritual wellbeing. When God – the real God – is asking me to do something like “convert to Catholicism,” and my main concern and impediment to obeying Him is that Jim-Bob might think less of me when he hears that I’ve entered the Church, then Jim-Bob has become to me a god. I don’t need to state here that that is unacceptable to the real God, in the extreme.

But my other proclivity is almost as bad. For if I don’t like and admire you enough to want to make a god out of you, I generally don’t have much use for you. You become to me an object, and I want to either use you as a paperweight or a knick-knack, or else set you aside entirely. And so my neighbor the mycologist, who loves to bring his work home with him and tell me all about it, gets the brush-off. He’s not interesting to me; we have nothing in common; he bores me. I can find no use for him.

It goes without saying that I’m not supposed to be “using” my neighbor in the first place. Jesus’ message to us was that God is our Father Who loved us so much that He sent His only begotten Son – that truth supplied the reasoning behind the injunction delivered to the Israelites centuries earlier:

You are to love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength.

But remember, the Israelites were also given another commandment:

‘You shall not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the sons of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

Jesus combined the two, explaining that not only is God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, He is OUR Father, and He deeply desires that ALL become His adopted sons and daughters, partakers of the divine nature. For that reason, my rejection of my neighbor as useless to me becomes a sin – for he is NOT an object, anymore than he is a god. He is another “me,” or as C.S. Lewis put it:

…it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit – immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.

Just as I, depending upon my choices, will end up either “knowing Him, loving Him, serving Him in this world, and being happy with Him forever in the next,” or suffering the unimaginable torments of an eternity without God, so also my neighbor. He and I are both immortal, whether we realize it or not. If I understand this and he doesn’t, it is my obligation to make him aware of this, and to point him towards the outstretched arms of the Father, just as Jesus did when He allowed Peter, James and John a glimpse of the glory of Moses and Elijah in conversation with their transfigured Lord. This is the glory that awaits us all, provided that we choose it. Seeing my neighbor as God sees him or her, as a potential Everlasting Splendor, is what is required of me – because that’s what God sees when He looks at me. Helping my neighbor to see this as well is my privilege as well as my obligation. These are the realities taught to us by the celebration of the Feast of the Transfiguration – Jesus became Man to reconcile us to our Father, Who wants to delight in the real me and the real you, forever and ever and ever.

 

On the memorial of St. Lawrence

Deo omnis gloria!

Signs and Wonders

When I was in high school, my mother, a lifelong Methodist, became a fervent charismatic, something of which my father thoroughly disapproved. As a family we attended the nondenominational Scottsdale Bible Church, but during the week Mom would take me to charismatic meetings. With my mother I once attended a small gathering of charismatics to listen to the preaching of Frances and Charles Hunter, and to watch as they “healed” several of those present suffering from leg-length discrepancy. I guess no more serious ailments were afflicting those present that day. There was a great hoopla and a cacophony of tongues, and everyone went home happy.

I’m not claiming that God never used Frances to heal anyone – I simply don’t know that. But I do know that on that day no one was healed, yet we pretended that several had been. And that was not unusual, nor was it of evil intent. Our hungry hearts yearned for God to manifest His power in our sight. We simply loved God so much that pretty much everything had to be viewed as a “miracle.” To think otherwise was evidence of a lack of faith.

That wore thin after a while. I began to realize that some of the vaunted “healings” among charismatics were most likely cases of medically unsophisticated individuals being told by their doctor that he had seen “something” on an x-ray, something which might just be an artifact, but which needed further investigation because, although highly unlikely, he could not completely rule out (worst case scenario) cancer. Said individual, who heard the doctor say, “Blah, blah, blah, blah, CANCER” requests prayer for the “cancer which was found on the x-ray.” Fervent prayer ensues. Said individual returns for further tests, and it turns out that the “something” seen on the first x-ray isn’t there anymore, having been merely an artifact as the doctor suspected. Said individual, however, returns to his church utterly convinced that he has been healed of “the cancer that my doctor told me he saw on the x-ray,” and reports the “miracle” to the congregation who believe it without questioning, not wanting to be accused of a lack of faith. In my few years as a charismatic (and in my mother’s many years – she was involved right up until progressive dementia made it impossible to attend church), neither of us was ever confronted with a medically documented miracle among the “healings” reported in our midst. And that was a lotta “healings” over the course of a lotta years.

Obviously not all Protestants fall prey to this theology. In fact, some swing the other way. They are cessationists, claiming that miracles went out with the apostles. Calvinist cessationist B.B. Warfield, in his Counterfeit Miracles, sought to debunk Catholic claims of miracles, and fumed against the “exploitation” at Lourdes, inexplicably drawing into his argument the writings of the atheist French physician Émile Zola to show that the healings at Lourdes are but a fraud (Zola was actually a witness to a miracle at Lourdes, the healing of
Marie Lemarchand, yet declared, “Were I to see all the sick at Lourdes cured, I would not believe in a miracle!”). Warfield, though a Christian, was apparently of the same persuasion as Zola. “Lourdes does not register her failures,” he groused, claiming that the fact that more Catholics are left uncured after a visit to Lourdes than receive healing is somehow proof that the whole thing is a hoax – though Warfield was undoubtedly familiar with the passage in Acts 12 where Sts. Peter and James are arrested. The church prayed fervently for them both; Peter was miraculously released from prison by an angel, and James was executed. According to Warfield’s logic, that episode demonstrates a 50% failure rate on the part of the early church and its prayers, and thus by his reasoning the Good News was a hoax as well.

In my final Protestant incarnation I was a Baptist, and took the middle road. I had trouble buying into cessationism. I believed that God still healed people. Didn’t the Gospel of Mark tell us that “These signs shall follow them that believe; they shall lay hands on the sick, and shall recover”? I didn’t think that charismatics were wrong to expect miracles. Miracles just didn’t, in my opinion, seem to be forthcoming among the charismatic assemblies with which I or my mother were associated. Despite my disenchantment with charismatic “healings,” I nevertheless remained convinced that God can and does work miraculously in this world. When we were regaled with occasional tales of healings on the mission field, I believed that those might not have been mere rumors and exaggerations. I knew that God the Holy Spirit was still at work in our day.

I just didn’t have any documented proof of that.

Now, consider this announcement from late last year:

Today, 20 December 2012, Pope Benedict XVI received in a private audience Angelo Cardinal Amato, S.D.B., prefect of the Congregation of the Causes of the Saints. During the audience, the Holy Father authorized the Congregation of the Causes of Saints to promulgate the following twenty-four decrees regarding [among other things]:

– A MIRACLE, attributed to the intercession of Blesseds Antonio Primaldo and 800 Companions, laypersons of the diocese of Otranto, killed in odium fidei on 13 August 1480 in Otranto (Italy); cult confirmed on 14 December 1771; martyrdom recognized on 06 July 2007

– A MIRACLE, attributed to the intercession of the Blessed MarÍa Laura de Jesus Montoya Upegui (in religion, Laura of Saint Catherine of Siena), founder of the Congregation of the Missionary Sisters of the Immaculate Virgin Mary and Saint Catherine of Siena; born on 26 May 1874 in Jericó, Antioquía (Colombia) and died on 21 October 1949 in Belencito, Medellín, Antioquía (Colombia); beatified on 25 April 2004

– A MIRACLE, attributed to the intercession of the Blessed Anastasia Guadalupe García Zavala (in religion, María Guadalupe), cofounder of the Handmaids of Saint Margaret Mary and of the Poor; born on 27 April 1878 in Zapopan, Jalisco (Mexico) and died on 24 June 1963 in Guadalajara, Jalisco (Mexico); beatified on 25 April 2004

Yeah, right – would have been my charismatic response. As a Protestant I just KNEW that those Catholic “miracles” were bogus. Obviously bogus. Since the Catholics had their theology all messed up, I reasoned, there’s no way God doesn’t work real miracles in a charismatic assembly but does work them when Catholics pray. Impossible.

Today the above-mentioned two women and one large group of men are being canonized by Pope Francis. The story of why one of them, Laura Montoya, is being declared a saint is a good illustration of the work of the Holy Spirit, the work that I as a charismatic was looking for, the work that I as a Baptist was still longing to see, in the Catholic Church today:

SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic (CNS) — In early January 2005, Carlos Eduardo Restrepo, a Colombian anesthesiologist suffering from lupus and a severe infection in his thorax, faced death.

His family and friends were preparing for the worst. He was given last rites. But then an image of Blessed Mother Laura Montoya appeared to him, he said.

“I remember it very well. In the moment, I was calm. I prayed to her: Help me get through this and it will allow you to get to the altars,” he told the newspaper El Colombiano.

Restrepo survived and was cured of his disease.

“If this wasn’t a miracle, I don’t know what is,” he said.

Pope Benedict XVI recognized it as a miracle last year, making it the second miracle attributed to Mother Montoya. In 1994, a Colombian woman, Herminia Gonzalez Trujillo, who had been hemorrhaging due to uterine cancer, was cured after praying to Mother Montoya.

Mother Montoya will be the first Columbian saint, with two thoroughly impressive, modern-day, physician-documented miracles under her cinture. From a Protestant perspective, kind of hard to explain.

Since becoming a Catholic, I have REVELED in the miracles leading to the canonization of various saints. These appear from time to time in newspapers and magazines, all documenting that the cures simply cannot be explained from a medical standpoint, and that they occurred after Catholics petitioned various “servants of God” for their prayers. One of the most extraordinary recent cases was the healing of an American boy, Jake Finkbonner, leading to the canonization of St. Kateri Tekakwitha. Jake himself tells the story on his website:

We thank the doctors at Children’s Hospital for all that they did to save my life. I wouldn’t be here without them. I also thank all the people that prayed for me. Obviously, God heard their prayers. This decision to canonize Blessed Kateri is something that the Vatican and the Pope declared, based on testimonies given by parishioners, my family and my doctors. Congratulations to the Catholic Church and the Native American culture in the canonizing of the now Saint Kateri.

My scars came in 2006 when I was just 5 years old. I was playing basketball for the Boys & Girls club, it was the last game of the season and the last minute of the game. I was running down court with the ball, I stopped in front of the hoop to shoot when I was pushed from behind. I flew forward and hit my mouth on the base of the portable basketball hoop. Lurking on the surface of that base was Strep A, also known as the “flesh eating bacteria” or Necrotizing Fasciitis. When I hit my mouth, my tooth pierced the inside of my lip and from that small pierce is where the Strep A entered into my body. By the next day I was fighting for my life. I am so thankful to the doctors at Children’s Hospital in Seattle that saved my life.”

Jake’s skin was being eaten away by the bacteria, and the decision was made to invoke the prayers of then-Blessed Kateri, a Native American (Jake’s dad is a Native American) whose skin was scarred from smallpox. The necrotizing fasciitis just disappeared.

And there are more signs and wonders. One miracle is necessary for the beatification of an individual, and one for canonization, so let’s take the case of the recently canonized Australian saint, Mary MacKillop:

Miracle #1: Veronica Hopson, 1961

”I went to see [my doctor] because I was tired and lazy and because of the bad cramp I was getting, because of the transparency in my hands and because everyone kept telling me I didn’t look well,” Mrs Hopson told the Vatican when it was investigating MacKillop’s life and works.

”He arranged for me to go into hospital. At that time I did collapse and couldn’t do any work at all.” She was diagnosed with acute myeloblastic leukaemia and told ”death was the evident outcome”.

”I thought she had perhaps a month to live,” said her haematologist, Redmond Dalton.

The nurses believed she was ”beyond prayers”. Her husband, Allan, told the Vatican: ”The doctors told me not to expect anything.”

Mrs Hopson went home to die on November 17. Her marriage was confirmed in a Catholic ceremony on the same day.

A month later she was back in hospital, sicker than before and with excruciating abscesses in her left arm and right thigh.

Veronica Hopson recovered completely and went on to give birth to six children. She credits the prayers of the nuns invoking the aid of Mary MacKillop for her healing, and so does the Vatican.

Miracle #2: Kathleen Evans, 1990s

“My name is Kathleen Evans. I’m married to Barry. I’m a mother of 5 and a grandmother of 20 including 2 great grandchildren. I come from the small town of Windale in Lake Macquarie. In the 1990’s, I was diagnosed with a non small carcinoma in my right lung.

After x-rays and scans were taken, my GP sent me to a heart, lung surgeon. He put me in hospital for a biopsy. The surgeon explained that he hoped to remove my right lung as my youngest child was only 13. And by taking the lung out, it might give me 5 or 6 years to see him through high school. What he found was that the cancer was very aggressive and had spread into my glands. He was concerned that one of the glands was too close to the aorta. He also asked for an x-ray of my head to be taken. He found that a secondary had started at the bottom of my brain. This put paid to any operation.

I was then sent to a chemotherapist who gave me no hope of the chemotherapy working.

The next step was radiotherapy, only to be told that any ray treatment would help with the side effects and perhaps give me a couple more weeks at the end. For this to happen, I would have to go to the hospital for 10 consecutive days. I was too sick for that. Besides the odds were just not worth it. I was only given a couple of months at the most to live. So I said thanks, but no thanks. I went back to my doctor and asked him to see me through until the end. All this took 1 month.”

A friend gave Kathleen a relic of Mary MacKillop which she wore night and day. Family and friends asked Blessed Mary for her prayers, and Kathleen began to feel better. She was eventually declared cured by her doctors, and was alive to see the 2010 canonization of the saint whose intercession she believes led to her recovery.

Three female saints, five medically inexplicable cures. But now, to give holy men their due, the canonization miracle of St. Juan Diego:

On May 3, 1990, in Mexico City, nineteen-year-old Juan José Barragán suffered from severe depression and, wanting to commit suicide, he threw himself from the balcony of his apartment, striking his head on the concrete pavement thirty feet below, despite his mother’s frantic attempts to hold onto him as she cried out to Juan Diego for help. The young man was rushed to the nearby hospital, where the doctor there noted his serious condition and suggested that the boy’s mother pray to God. To this, the young man’s mother replied that she already had prayed for Juan Diego’s intercession. For three days, examination and intensive care continued, and physicians diagnosed a large basal fracture of the skull – a wound that normally would have killed at the moment of impact, and even now destroyed any hope of survival or repair. Given the mortal nature of the wounds, on May 6 all extraordinary medical support was ceased, and young Juan José’s death was thought to be imminent. But that same day, Juan José sat up, began to eat, and within ten days was entirely recovered, with no debilitating side-effects, not even so much as a headache. In the scans, the doctors could see clear evidence of the life-threatening fracture, but to their surprise they noticed that the bone was mended, with the arteries and veins all in place. Astonished, they requested more tests by specialists for second opinions, only to have their original assessment confirmed. Impossible, unexplainable, it was declared a miracle.

A cause for canonization very dear to American hearts is that of Venerable Fulton Sheen. Will this be the miracle that brings him to beatification?

“One year ago today I delivered my son, a stillborn. For a moment he was placed in my arms quiet, blue, and limp. The midwife and her assistant then took him from me and began CPR. They could not find a pulse. He did not breathe. Because we were at home (it was my third, planned homebirth) 911 was called.

While CPR was continued and we waited for the ambulance my husband took water and baptized him using the name we had agreed upon, James Fulton. I remember sitting on the floor saying, “Fulton Sheen, Fulton Sheen, Fulton Sheen” over and over again in my head. I suppose it was as close as I could come to a prayer; I suppose it was my way of asking Archbishop Sheen to interceded for my son.

The paramedics came and rushed James away. In route, as they tried to restart his heart, they gave him two doses of epinephrine by lines in the shin bone. Neither worked and one leaked out, turning his whole right leg – from toe tip to buttock – black and blue and purple. In the ER the doctors and nurses worked on him for another 18 minutes or so. A nurse practitioner told me she wanted James’ mother to be able to hold him alive for a little bit. Five minutes, an hour – she just wanted my son to be alive long enough for me to say good-bye.

They did a sonogram of his heart. It fluttered but it didn’t beat. A nurse held his foot; she later told me it was cold, like the expression “cold and dead”. He was intubated and getting oxygen, but there was no way that the chest compressions were adequately circulating the oxygen to the brain and other organs. Following the orders of the on-call neonatologist they stopped working on him so they could call time of death.

My little boy, James Fulton, 9lbs and 12oz, had been without a pulse for 61 minutes.

Everyone stopped working. And then his heart started.”

Although it was apparent that James Fulton would live, physicians held out no hope that his life would ever be a normal one. Both an EEG and an MRI showed brain injury from lack of oxygen. The family and everyone who knew them continued to pray, invoking Fulton Sheen’s intercession:

Eternal Father, You alone grant us every blessing in Heaven and on earth, through the redemptive mission of Your Divine Son, Jesus Christ, and by the working of the Holy Spirit. If it be according to Your Will, glorify Your servant, Fulton J. Sheen, by granting the favor I now request through his prayerful intercession – that James Fulton’s body heals and functions normally and that he is spared any brain damage. I make this prayer confidently through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.

And God heard the prayers of His servant. James Fulton Engstrom is a normal, thriving toddler with no sign of brain damage.

Impossible!

But true.

Don’t get me wrong – I believe that God can and does work the occasional miracle among Protestants, and even for unbelievers who need that extra push towards Christianity. But my persistent belief that miracles must be out there despite the fakery and false hope of my past experience has been validated by the miracles of the saints. The claims of the Catholic Church are thereby validated as well.

There was recently exciting news concerning the canonization of Blessed John Paul II, who is one step away from being declared a saint. The miracle which led to his beatification was the healing of Sister Marie Simon-Pierre, a French nun suffering from Parkinson’s. A second potential miracle is apparently under consideration, and rumor has it that he may be canonized as early as October.

And when he is canonized, I’ll be grinning from ear to ear. Miracles do happen.

I knew it!

 

On Ascension Sunday

Deo omnis gloria!

Photo credit: Stained glass window in the southern section of the ambulatory, close to the Lady’s Chapel. Depicted is the raising of Dorcas by Saint Peter in the upper section with the inscription Peter said Dorcas arise and she opened her eyes, and the release of the Apostles from prison by an angle (Acts 5:19) with the inscription I was in prison & ye came unto me. Created by Heaton, Butler & Bayne in 1889. By Andreas F. Borchert

And If I Should Die

The commemoration of All Saints on November 1st draws a lot of attention, as would be expected, it being a Solemnity and all. The commemoration of November 2nd lives in the shadow of its big brother, and yet it is the conjoined twin, so to speak, in the celebration of the communion of saints. On November 2nd we commemorate the Church Suffering, and the day is called All Souls.

In our culture we sometimes talk about death, but seldom our own. Comedian Tim Hawkins half-seriously claims that trauma has been inflicted on generations by the old children’s prayer:

Now I lay me down to sleep

I pray the Lord my soul to keep

If I should DIE before I wake….

What kind of sicko, he’s asking, sends small children to bed with a prayer like that? Actually, our ancestors lived a lot closer to death – we moderns are cocooned in bubblewrap. They thought it appropriate to teach their children that mortal men must leave their fate in the hands of God, and rest easy. The whole “memento mori” genre of art attests to that. Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return is a very Biblical concept.

Our priest broached the subject of our own death at a weekday Mass last November. He informed us that the parish office has forms we can fill out explaining how we would like our funeral to be conducted, and he urged us to take advantage of this. I don’t know how many folks took him up on it – as I said, we’re not too comfortable thinking about that subject. And what he was talking about were the aesthetic details of the funeral, such as the choice of hymns. Not that I don’t care what’s sung at my final appearance (if they start singing “When The Roll is Called Up Yonder,” I swear I’m getting up and I’m leaving!), but there are other aspects of the memorial service that are far more important to me than that. If allowed to micromanage my own funeral, I would have 4 main points that I would insist upon:

–    I want it to be stated loud and clear that I am NOT in Heaven – YET! By the grace of God, I hope to die in God’s friendship, that is, in a state of grace. But the Church takes Hebrews 12:14 and Matthew 5:8 very seriously. God is at work in the Christian, making him or her like Jesus. This is not an idle pastime – it is a necessary change that must take place to fit us for Heaven. If, despite all that God sends, we are not made holy in this lifetime, we will be after death. Everyone at my funeral will, I presume, be someone who knew me, so they should be able to tell you from personal experience that I died in need of further purification. Don’t argue with the dearly departed, folks – I didn’t go straight to Heaven. But I hope, with the assistance of your prayers, to get there very soon!

–    I want the priest to preach a fiery sermon. Now, I realize that that kind of thing is generally frowned upon at a funeral, but I want one of the readings to be Philippians 2:1-13, and I would like the priest to challenge the assembled to please, please take the Scripture reading seriously. Please don’t take your salvation as a given. Please do not be arrogant, but be afraid!
Ask God to help you to work out your salvation with fear and trembling! If you’re kind enough to accompany me to the graveyard, I pray I will have the honor of welcoming you into Heaven one day!

–    Since most of the folks at my funeral will probably be Protestant, I want to make very clear my answer to the oft-posed Evangelical question, “If you were to die tonight, and God asked you why He should let you into Heaven, what would you say?” My answer would be to shamelessly steal the famous answer of the Little Flower, St. Thérèse of Lisieux:

In the evening of this life, I shall appear before You with empty hands, for I do not ask You, Lord, to count my works. All our justice is stained in Your eyes. I wish, then, to be clothed in Your own Justice and to receive from Your Love the eternal possession of Yourself. I want no other Throne, no other Crown but You, my Beloved!

Believe me, assuming entrance into Heaven were based upon the correct response to that Protestant question – if St. Thérèse’s answer didn’t get me in, nothing would…..

–    And lastly, I want conversions. I am praying that many unbelievers will be converted at my funeral, and that many Christians will have their hearts turned back to God. Conversion is never man’s doing – it is the work of the Holy Spirit, and it is always a miracle. So on that day when the bell tolls for me, I pray God that it will be the occasion of many miracles.

On the commemoration of all the Faithful Departed

Deo omnis gloria!

Postscript: I pray that the homily preached at my funeral will be at least as good as this one by Msgr. Pope.

Photo credits: Viewing casket, Museum of Funeral Customs, Springfield, Illinois, 2006, by
Robert Lawton

Top Dog!

A boy and his dogs

I have a dog. His name is Lucky, and he is. He and his brother, Grateful, were abandoned in the woods as pups. They were found by my husband’s co-worker and adopted by our family based on the suspicion that two entirely average, half-wild mongrel puppies might not survive the winnowing process at the shelter. Grateful has since gone on to his canine reward, and to be honest he’s probably more comfortable there. Lucky had an unfortunate habit of using his brother’s head to make himself look taller. Whenever we would pay attention to the dogs, Lucky would stand on top of Grateful, pushing him down and elevating himself, so that he would get all the attention, praise, and hopefully culinary compensation.

What goes up, Lucky reasoned, must needs push something else into the ground….

If Catholics are none too keen on the phenomenon known as Reformation Sunday, Protestants get all creeped out around this time of year, too – by All Hallows Eve, All Saints Day and All Souls Day (October 31, November 1 and 2, respectively). The basic concept of the communion of saints is not the problem; after all, no Christian can quibble with Hebrews 11 and Hebrews 12:1 –

And what more shall I say? For time will fail me if I tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets, who by faith conquered kingdoms, performed acts of righteousness, obtained promises, shut the mouths of lions, quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, from weakness were made strong, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight. Women received back their dead by resurrection; and others were tortured, not accepting their release, so that they might obtain a better resurrection; and others experienced mockings and scourgings, yes, also chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were tempted, they were put to death with the sword; they went about in sheepskins, in goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, ill-treated (men of whom the world was not worthy), wandering in deserts and mountains and caves and holes in the ground. And all these, having gained approval through their faith, did not receive what was promised, because God had provided something better for us, so that apart from us they would not be made perfect. Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. For consider Him who has endured such hostility by sinners against Himself, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart. (Heb 11:32-40, 12:1-3)

Both Protestants and Catholics are encouraged by the truth that we have “so great a cloud of witnesses.” Often, though, in a Protestant context, that word “witnesses” transmogrifies into something more along the lines of “predecessors.” The saints mentioned in the Faith Hall of Fame in Hebrews 11 become merely “those gone before,” and Protestants understand their importance the way we understand the importance of our ancestors or of the founders and original settlers of our country. They’re not “witnesses” in the sense that they’re actively watching us contend for the faith. They were certainly important in their lifetimes, and their lives serve as great examples for us – but they’re dead and they’re gone.

So, while Protestants accept the notion of the communion of saints, it really isn’t something that plays a decisive role in their theology. For all intents and purposes, the body of Christ, to them, is here on earth. When you go to be with the Lord, you cash in your chips and leave the survivors to play on, so to speak.

And Catholics have a problem with this. In Catholic theology, the communion of saints isn’t just an abstract theological concept – the communion of saints helps form the basis of our definition of who we are as believers. The body of Christ – the Church Universal – is made up of three subsets: the Church Militant (us), the Church Suffering (those who have died and are undergoing purgation), and the Church Triumphant (our brothers and sisters who now see God face-to-face). The Catechism elaborates on this:

When the Lord comes in glory, and all his angels with him, death will be no more and all things will be subject to him. But at the present time some of his disciples are pilgrims on earth. Others have died and are being purified, while still others are in glory, contemplating ‘in full light, God himself triune and one, exactly as he is.’

All Saints Day and All Souls Day are the commemoration of the members of the Church Triumphant and the Church Suffering, as well as a reminder to us of our goal in Christ to one day become a member of these groups ourselves. We are admonished to aim for Heaven, so that should we fall short, we will at least land among those destined for Heaven when their purgation is complete. And this is Heaven as described in the Catechism:

By his death and Resurrection, Jesus Christ has “opened” heaven to us. The life of the blessed consists in the full and perfect possession of the fruits of the redemption accomplished by Christ. He makes partners in his heavenly glorification those who have believed in him and remained faithful to his will. Heaven is the blessed community of all who are perfectly incorporated into Christ.

This mystery of blessed communion with God and all who are in Christ is beyond all understanding and description. Scripture speaks of it in images: life, light, peace, wedding feast, wine of the kingdom, the Father’s house, the heavenly Jerusalem, paradise: “no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him.”

This perfect life with the Most Holy Trinity – this communion of life and love with the Trinity, with the Virgin Mary, the angels and all the blessed – is called “heaven.” Heaven is the ultimate end and fulfillment of the deepest human longings, the state of supreme, definitive happiness.

In the glory of heaven the blessed continue joyfully to fulfill God’s will in relation to other men and to all creation. Already they reign with Christ; with him “they shall reign for ever and ever.”

This is good news indeed! “He makes partners in His heavenly glorification those who have believed in Him and remained faithful to His will.” “…the blessed continue joyfully to fulfill God’s will in relation to other men and to all creation.” This is in accord with what we know from St. Paul about life here on earth: “We are God’s co-workers.” But many assume that Heaven is where we go to get some rest from all this “co-working.” Not a chance! As Jesus told us, “I am working, as my Father in Heaven works.” There’s no such thing in the Christian life as resting on your laurels. Which instrument can God more readily use: an indolent, half-hearted, doubt-plagued, balking mule (like me), or a completely purified saint in Heaven who beholds His face and exists only to do His will (like St. Paul of the Cross, who devotes a considerable amount of his heavenly ministry to praying for this balking mule)? The saints have by definition been perfected in holiness and in love, and the Catholic understanding of this is that they are taking an even more active role in God’s work now that they are with Him and can see Him face-to-face than they ever did when they could only perceive Him “through a glass, darkly.”

Fine, so the saints in Heaven are praying for us. Some Protestants will give us that much, but would definitely like to leave it at that. All this talk about “venerating the saints” rubs them the wrong way. They feel that veneration (the respect, honor, and devotion paid to a saint) distracts the Christian from what he should be doing – worshipping God! Catholics, from this Protestant perspective, need to get a better grasp on the sharp distinction between the creature and the Creator!

According to the Catechism:

All creatures bear a certain resemblance to God, most especially man, created in the image and likeness of God. The manifold perfections of creatures — their truth, their goodness, their beauty all reflect the infinite perfection of God. Consequently we can name God by taking his creatures’ perfections as our starting point, “for from the greatness and beauty of created things comes a corresponding perception of their Creator”.

God transcends all creatures. We must therefore continually purify our language of everything in it that is limited, image-bound or imperfect, if we are not to confuse our image of God — “the inexpressible, the incomprehensible, the invisible, the ungraspable” — with our human representations. Our human words always fall short of the mystery of God.

Admittedly, in speaking about God like this, our language is using human modes of expression; nevertheless it really does attain to God himself, though unable to express him in his infinite simplicity. Likewise, we must recall that “between Creator and creature no similitude can be expressed without implying an even greater dissimilitude”; and that “concerning God, we cannot grasp what he is, but only what he is not, and how other beings stand in relation to him.”

To summarize, if we want to think about God Whom no man has ever seen, we need to take His creation as our starting point, because in His creation we see Him reflected. As previously quoted, “This mystery of blessed communion with God and all who are in Christ is beyond all understanding and description. Scripture speaks of it in images: life, light, peace, wedding feast, wine of the kingdom, the Father’s house, the heavenly Jerusalem, paradise…” – in other words, we can’t discuss or even form an understanding of God’s presence without comparing it to something on earth. If we have an impoverished concept of the value of created things, our estimation of God will necessarily be that much the poorer. With that said, we must always remember that God transcends His creation, and when we say that “God is like _____,” we must keep in mind that He is actually far more different than similar to whatever created thing we’ve filled into that blank. In saying, “God is like a father,” for example, what actually needs to be said is that in some limited sense, earthly fathers reflect the image of the One True Father, whose eternal Fatherhood will forever be for the most part a mystery to His creatures. Hardly satisfying, and yet, if we spurn the use of creation as the starting point for our thoughts about God, we end up with no scaffold for our thoughts about God at all.

But that’s no excuse for venerating saints! the quibble goes. Look, if you’re sitting around thinking about how great St. Paul of the Cross is, you can’t be thinking about how great Jesus Crucified on the Cross is!

This is a weighty objection to the veneration of saints – that praise given to them is obviously praise taken from its rightful object, which is God. To answer that objection, let’s read part of a prayer in honor of St. Paul of the Cross:

By your preaching and holy example Jesus converted thousands of sinners through you by bringing them to the foot of the Cross to repent of their sins, thereby obtaining for them His infinite forgiveness and mercy! May Jesus be blessed for His extraordinary grace that was so often made present in your life, and for the many miracles He worked through you for the conversion of souls!

Are you catching the drift? When we go on and on about St. Paul of the Cross, it’s not St. Paul of the Cross that we’re going on and on about – it’s the One Who made St. Paul of the Cross the big deal that he was! Contemplation of the saints, therefore, is an extraordinary help towards better understanding the God who, in crowning the saints’ merits, has merely crowned His own gifts.

“…Our communion with these in heaven, provided that it is understood in the full light of faith, in no way diminishes the worship of adoration given to God the Father, through Christ, in the Spirit; on the contrary, it greatly enriches it. Lumen Gentium

Protestants often take the attitude that in order to glorify the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, the saints must be cut down to size. In order for Him to be exalted, all creatures must be devalued, as if tall poppy syndrome were the engine driving the heavenly economy. Jesus is Top Dog! But this misses the point – Jesus specifically isn’t the King of nobodies or the Lord of underachievers. The fact that He is the King of kings and the Lord of lords makes Him all the greater than if He were the King of indolent, half-hearted, doubt-plagued, balking mules alone. In praising the holy lives of His saints, we are praising something spectacular about Him, praise that will never be offered Him if we insist on devaluing the saints to the supposed glory of God. With all Heaven, therefore, the Christian rightfully declares with his whole heart:

Blessed be God in His angels and in His saints!

 

On All Hallows Eve, the vigil of the Solemnity of All Saints

Deo omnis gloria!

We Agree!

As Reformation Sunday approaches, most of us will be dwelling on the issues that divide Catholics and Protestants. “Catholics believe one thing, and Protestants believe something completely different!” – this is where the emphasis will be. I think it is beneficial to try to be fully aware of the many, many areas in which Protestants and Catholics are in agreement, and then go from there in explaining our differences. The following is a partial list of some of those areas:

WE AGREE that we as Christians have been saved! (Rom. 8:24, Eph. 2:5–8)

We also believe, in accordance with 1 Cor. 1:18, 2 Cor. 2:15, Phil. 2:12, Rom. 5:9–10, 1 Cor. 3:12–15, Mt 10:22, Mt 24:13, Mk 13:13, Lk 21:19, Rev 2:26, and Phil 2:12 , that we who are working out our salvation with fear and trembling are being saved and will be saved if we persevere to the end.

WE AGREE that we are saved by grace through faith, not by works, that none should boast! (Eph 2:8-9)

We also believe, in accordance with James 2:17 and 2:24, that we are justified by our works, and not by faith alone, because faith without works is dead.

WE AGREE that there is one Mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus! (1 Tim 2:5)

We also believe, in accordance with 1 Tim 2:1, James 5:16 and Heb 12:1, that the saints in Heaven and on earth can intercede for us.

WE AGREE that only God can forgive our sins! (Mt 9:2-3, Mk 2:7)

We also believe, in accordance with John 20:22 and 2 Cor 5:18, that God forgives sins through His priests.

WE AGREE that the Holy Scriptures are inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness! (2 Tim 3:16)

We also believe, in accordance with 1 Timothy 3:15, that the Church is the pillar and foundation of truth.

WE AGREE that Jesus Christ is the Foundation of the Church! (1 Cor 3:11)

We also believe, in accordance with Eph 2:20, Acts 1:15-26, and 2 Tim 2:2, that the Apostles are also the foundation, and that they passed on the authority of their office to their successors.

WE AGREE that in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth! (Gen 1:1)

We also believe, in accordance with 2 Peter 3:8, that one need not embrace 6-Day Creationism to be a real Christian.

WE AGREE that relics possess no magical powers!

We also believe, in accordance with 2 Kings 13:21, Acts 19:11-12 and Acts 5:15-16, that God can and does use relics to effect miracles.

WE AGREE that marriage is a very, very good thing! (1 Cor 7)

We also believe, in accordance with Mt 19:12 and 1 Cor 7, that celibacy is even better.

WE AGREE that it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment! (Heb 9:27)

We also believe, in accordance with Heb 12:14, that after death comes purification (Purgatory) so that we can see God.

WE AGREE that the writings of the Church Fathers were not divinely inspired nor were they infallible!

We also believe that they are the best witness to the earliest Christians’ understanding of the teachings of the Apostles.

WE AGREE that the Church of the 16th century was in need of reform!

We also believe that the Reformers introduced novel doctrines that have led many Christians into serious error.

WE AGREE that Jesus Christ suffered, died and was buried, rose again on the third day, and is now seated at the right hand of the Father, from whence He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and His Kingdom will have no end.

AMEN!

Deo omnis gloria!