Ambition

Ambition can be a good thing. It can make the difference between being a drifter with a backpack and a person with a corner office and a decent job. Of course there can be ambitions that are not good for us to have. For example, the ruler of a country looks to expand his borders at the expense of his neighbor. 

For us Christians, we should have the ambition of doing what Jesus commanded us to do.  His command is simple, love one another as I have loved you. This command is a game changer and takes what it means to be a Christian to a whole higher level than any other religion the world has ever known. 

We are given many examples of what we should be doing by Jesus himself. Let's examine just a few of them: 

Jesus is the second person of the Trinity, always present in Heaven at the right hand of God the Father.  Jesus came to earth, humbling himself to take on the form of the creature he created.  This shows that he is most humble and most loving.  

Jesus obeyed his parents, the Bible first tells us this after he was found conversing with the doctors in the temple he went with them and was subject to them.  Also, at the request of his mother he started his public life early when he provided wine at a wedding. 

Jesus was content to work at a humble job during the years leading up to his public ministry. Jesus created the world yet he worked for his bread at the job of his earthly father, a carpenter. 

Jesus in all things conformed his will to the will of his Father. As a human in all things but sin, Jesus was tempted but he set his will aside and followed the will of the Father.  This led to the Cross and to death and the redeeming of all of us.

Jesus at the Last Supper showed us what we were to do. He, the God who created the universe took basin and towel and took on the role of the lowest servant in the household and washed the feet of his apostles. 

Jesus humbly accepted death on the cross. In the garden we see Jesus making the most human of prayers, one that each of us would have made and probably do make during the hard times of our life. "Father, take this cup away from me."  This is where most of us would stop. He added, "but not my will but yours."

So our ambition as Christians should be like our Master. We should be ready and willing to serve, to put our needs behind the needs of others.  It is this selfless giving that will attract people to give up their pagan ways and come home to God.  Jesus himself said that they would know his followers by the love that they showed. 

This week I am going to try and do at least one good turn to another in secret and thus try to be like my Lord and Savior and try to love others as He has loved us keeping ever in mind that he did not spare himself from the cross. 

Mother Teresa saw a man in the street  dirty, with sores, flies all about him. People were just passing him by. She immediately went to him and cradled him and began to pick the maggots off of his soars.  A man passing by said, "I wouldn't do that for a million dollars!"  Mother answered, "Neither would I." 

The Age of Martyrs

In 1998 my wife and I had the pleasure of visiting Ireland.* It is a most beautiful country with a warm and charming people. After a nights rest in Limerick and a call to the car rental people to send someone to fix our boot (trunk) because someone had hit our rental car in the parking lot, we set out for one place and ended up in another.  We actually ended up in Galloway Bay, a beautiful town on the coast.  We found a bread and breakfast that had room for us and after a wonderful dinner we found our way to the local church for Saturday Evening Mass.

 When we walked into the church we were greeted with the sound of angels singing.  The youth choir at this church was singing a prelude song before Mass started.  It was absolutely beautiful. I noticed that the Irish people had a great reverence when they were in church. It was quiet, no idle chatter disturbed the peace. The mass itself was said with a joyfulness that I have only found here in the states a couple of times.  All through Ireland we found this same attitude towards worship. I got the feeling that the people actually wanted to be there. As we explored the country I tried to figure out why the Church seemed so different there.  Then it hit me. The pestilential British made martyrs of Catholics and the right to worship came at a very high cost. Much blood was spilled and many churches were destroyed yet the Church could not be extinguished at the point of a sword. 

Today we face barbarians that make the shenanigans of the British against the Irish seem like child's play. The people who claim to be Muslims jihadists in the Arab countries are enriching the soil of the lands that they infest with the blood of Christians some of which have been there since the second century.  These members of Isis will not be able to win. It is not the military might of the United States or the Coalition that will defeat them, it is the blood of those that they martyr that will serve to extinguish their lust for power.

I look at what my brothers and sisters in those lands have gone through and still have kept the faith and I wonder if I too would have the strength to offer my life for my fellow Christians.  I like to think that I would.  The power of the example of the martyrs is what will keep the church alive. The barbarians had lined up about 30 Coptic Christians to execute them. Included in the group was one man who was not Christian.  The Coptic men kept repeating the name of Jesus and kept praying while waiting for their death. The cowardly barbarians asked the man who was not a Christian to immediately convert to Islam and his life would be spared. The man, without any hesitation said, "Their God is my God."

In today's first reading at Mass we see that Paul and Barnabas where brought before the leaders and they without fear spoke out on how they had to obey God's word and not man's.  They were punished and expelled from the district, but the church still grew. 

As you enjoy your Sunday bring to mind all of those that came before us that made it possible for us to worship as we do.  Thank God for the martyrs and for his One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church.  

If you are interested in more information about the persecution of the British against the Irish, click on the link and you can read a brief paper about it.    (  LINK  )

*1998 was a long time ago of course, and the Irish Church has had some set backs as has the Church all over the world. The errors of common society have unfortunately been embraced by many Irish people. 

Pre-Vatican 2 Memories

I was born into the Pre-Vatican II Church. So I am fortunate to remember what the Church was like before and after that great time of change in the Church. 

My first memory of Church was when I was very young, maybe five years old or so. It was a December Sunday before Christmas. I dressed in my "good" clothes, ones I wasn't allowed to play outside in, and together we walked the two blocks from our home on Loomis Street down to Archer Avenue and St. Bridget's Church.  

We entered the Church and my mother dipped her finger into the holy water font and traced a sign of the cross on my forehead and made the sign of the cross herself.  we walked down the aisle and my mother stopped at one of the pews and she went down on one knee and got back up. I did the same think and filed into the pew. She pulled down this thing that was attached to the pew in front of us and knelt down. I did not follow suit because when I tried it, I could not see anything. I just sat down and looked around. In back of me an old man held rosary beads in his hand and they clinked against the pew and as his lips moved the made almost inaudible sounds.  I was a disgustingly good kid. I just sat there and looked around at what was happening. Then the church bells started tolling in the ding dong pattered that seemed to sing "you're late, you're late" to the people rushing in from the parking lot.  The moments after the bells stopped, a single chime sounded inside and everyone stood up. The man wearing some funny clothes said something in a language I did not understand and all those around me, except the old man with the rosary who stayed on task with his beads, made what I learned later was the sign of the cross. Not wanted to be left out, I tried to imitate what I observed and my mother told me that it appeared that I was attempting to shoe away flies.  This is the extent of what I remember about my first time at mass. 

It would not be the last time I would attend mass with my mother but when I entered Kindergarten I started attending the nine A.M. Children's mass with my classmates under the watchful eyes of the Sisters of the Blessed Virgin Mary and later under the even more watchful eyes of the Sisters of St. Joseph. 

In those early days being a child Catholic meant that you had to be adept in memorizing. We did not learn much about the Bible directly but we learned the truths of the Catholic Church using the ever popular Baltimore Catechism. This book presented the Kingdom of God in bite size pieces in a question and answer format, starting for first simple general principles, defining who God was, what He did, and why He did it. Now I sucked at math and diagramming sentences escaped me, but I could tell you who God was,what sin was, who various characters in the Bible were and what they did. So, while Protestants learned these things through exposure to the Bible and could tell you the chapter and verse the stories came from, we Catholics knew the stories but not where they were in the Bible. 

When my grandmother Anna Barbara Remeikis died the Church was still operating in the old traditional mode. The body was carried into church and the priest was dressed in black vestments and the casket was covered in a black pall. The music sounded somber and was in Latin. Women all wore hats or little rags called "chapel veils."  The whole thing seemed to accentuate the finality of death. We then drove to the cemetery and the casket was carried by the pall bearers, of which I was one, to the grave. I remember looking at the yawning open hole, seeing the tears streaming down my mothers face as we put the casket on the device that would lower Grandma to her final resting place. We pall bearers took off our white gloves and laid them atop the casket. The casket was incensed and the prayers of committal were said, the casket received a blessing with holy water and then it was over. The undertaker announced that all of the mourners were invited to go to this banquet room near the cemetery to partake of a memorial luncheon in the honor of Anna Barbara Remeikis. 

Several years later Frank Remaikis was called home. This was after the reforms of Vatican II were propagated and there was a different feeling to his funeral. The somber sounding Gregorian chant had disappeared in favor of more modern Catholic hymns. The black pall that reminded everyone of death was gone and was replaced by a white pall that represented the fact that Frank had been baptized and was now with God and that we should be happy for him in that his earthly labors were over. If anyone deserved to go directly to heaven, my grandfather should have been a candidate as he suffered as few have suffered on this earth. He was a cancer survivor not once or twice but three times!  Once he had been opened up like a side of beef.  He never complained. But his remarkable story is for another time. His funeral was a celebration. We were reminded at the homily that we would see Frank again in Heaven and his body would rise again when Jesus came back again. When the mass was over we drove to the cemetery and instead of looking into a black empty hole, the final commitment was done in a bright chapel. Sure we were all sad that Frank was gone, but we knew he would return someday. 

Other changes were made in the way Catholics lived their faith life. In the olden days the altar railing separated the holy from the profane and unauthorized persons were not permitted to open the gates and approach the altar without permission. If you were an altar boy you had that permission, other than that civilians were to keep out. The priest read the epistles and the Gospel and when communion time came we wall went up to the border and knelt down and Father would come by and place the consecrated host on your tongue and he would mumble something in Latin to which you responded "Amen."  You did not chew the host, you let it melt in your mouth, which if it got caught on the roof of your moth could take awhile ! 

Post Vatican II the communion ritual changed a bit. First of course the Mass changed, instead of facing the altar the priest now turned around and faced the people. The Mass was celebrated in English and people clinking rosary beads on pews during Mass started to become less frequent. Communion now could be placed in your hand. This was something not heard of in the old Church.  Pre-Vatican II only the consecrated hands of the priest could touch the sacred species. The average every day Catholic could now hold out his unconsecrated hand and receive the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Christ right in his own hand. This is an amazing change. 

There were other changes in church discipline. Catholics, who had received the name "mackerel snappers" because they were not allowed to eat meat on Friday were absolved from this practice and the crowds roared their approval. Of course, most of the Catholics never read the second part of this loosening of discipline, they were supposed to choose something else to replace the Friday abstinence. Most of us, me included never did. 

It is this loosening of the Friday discipline that shows one of the most important things that Vatican II did for us. Vatican II allowed us to become spiritual adults. We could foster our relationship with God using practices that meant something to us personally. As in the example what happened was the discipline was relaxed and we accepted the relaxation but did not really look into something to replace it. 

It's opinion time! I appreciate the reforms that were suggested by the church fathers as they tried to change us from children of faith into adults of faith. The changes were needed. What went wrong was how the changes were applied. The Catholic Church has been around for two thousand years and will most likely be around two thousand years from now. The church erred not in the reforms themselves, but how they were pushed out to the users.  There was time, lots of it, and these reforms could have been pushed out slowly after enough teaching about the reform(s) had been made. The way it was done had a tendency to alienate some of the older, more traditional Catholics, the ones that clinked beads against the pews during Mass for example. While many were singing Kumbya and Michael Row the Boat Ashore, the more traditional Catholics longed to hear Ave Maria.  While changing to English was one of the best ideas to come out of the council, the Church suddenly, almost overnight, changed and did not really give the oldsters a Latin Mass to go to, well they still had them, like at seven in the evening at a church so far out in the sticks that you might have had to take a Greyhound bus to get there! 

Today, we Catholics are paying the price for this unintentional mis-management.  we have fewer priests and our youth do not seem to find priestly or religious life a way to go. But we are the Catholic Church and we will survive.  Thank God for the reforms of Vatican II. They were needed and now with our perfect 20/20 hindsight the Church will begin to repair the damage caused and they will open further the windows that Vatican II opened and the Holy Spirit will do His work and we will be even stronger. 

God Bless!    

  

Hate - Why it is No Good For You

This is a true story. My mother was a simple soul. She did have a habit of analyzing people a bit too much and spent a lot of time looking for happiness to ambush her from the outside. I don't think that she ever learned  that happiness radiates from the inside of a person, that it is a seed that needs careful nurturing and by taking care of it a life takes on a glow that nothing from the outside of it will have permanent effect. She was love by myself and my three younger siblings and as we grew she taught us many lessons in life. For example, through the dark days of fourth grade where it seemed I was always in trouble with the teacher, she told me to no matter what, hold my head high and be proud of who I was. I just want to give you an idea of the beauty that was inside of the soul of my mother Violet.  

She worked as an assistant in a doctor's office and part of her compensation package was medical care. One day she showed a growth that was on her shoulder to the doctor she worked with. The doctor took a quick look and prescribed an anointment. My mother carefully followed the doctors instructions and after about six months there was no improvement. She went to visit the doctor whom she worked for previously who was in retirement and he took one look at the growth and diagnosed it as cancer. She went to another doctor who removed the growth and believed he had gotten it all. But several months later at a check up it was discovered that the cancer had metastasized to her lungs and that her condition was terminal. 

The chemo would prolong her life and she was referred to a well known surgeon in the Chicago area and he said she possibly could get more time if she would allow him to operate. Mom scheduled the operation. It was scheduled for early afternoon and it was with shock that when we arrived at the hospital we found Mom on a gurney being taken to surgery! We thought we would have had some precious time to talk with her and comfort her but a cancelled surgery meant that they could take her early.  We did get to make her feel loved as the attendant pushed her into the elevator and we began the waiting game. The surgeon eventually came into the waiting room a smile on his face saying that everything had gone good and he removed as much of the growth as he could and he estimated from what he could see that she might have a year, maybe a little more, to live.  We went into see her and she was on a respirator, but alert and able to communicate by writing on a board that the nurses provided her with.  I lived a fair distance from the hospital so the second day post-op I took the day off from visiting and went to work. The next day something had changed. Mom was no longer able to respond. If we put the pen into her hand she would try to write but the pen would slip from her hand. As the day went on she became less and less responsive until at 7:11 P.M. she passed away.

The next few days we did the needful and arranged a funeral mass at St. Joseph and St. Anne Church and laid our mother to rest.  At the wake I was introduced to her employer, the doctor that cared so little that she allowed what could have been a fixable issue to become a terminal one.  I looked at her and thought that, "This bitch killed my mother."  My heart filled with hate but I softly thanked the woman for coming to the wake. 

After all of the excitement of the wake, funeral, and the funeral luncheon there was nothing but time left. Time to mourn, time to remember the sharing of our lives with our mother. For me there was also time to hate. Now I have to say I would not in any way, shape, or manner physically hurt anyone. But mentally I killed that vile woman doctor many times. I slipped into depression but I did not recognize it for what it was. My symptoms included lethargy, lack of interest in things around me. I would read the same books over and over again and for six months I never once reconciled my checking account. 

I was working in a travel agency that was about fifteen miles from my home. I took a route through a beautiful tony suburb called Lake Forest. For months I hardly noticed the beauty of the trees. At one point I passed a Catholic Church. It was my habit to make the sign of the cross as I passed the church for brick and mortar could not separate me from the Love Incarnate in the form of Bread that was in the tabernacle. Then one day as I passed that Church and once again followed what in my mind had become an empty ritual, it came to me that as a Christian man,I could not hate, it was foreign to me. In that moment of what I believe was Christ sent inspiration I forgave that doctor, I granted her a full and complete pardon. At that moment a great weight was lifted off of my shoulders. My soul began to feel joyful again. Surely I still missed my mother, but I knew that she was with God. The other benefit I could claim from this encounter was that from that moment on I could not hate anyone else. I had forgiven my mother's killer, what could you do to me that would be worse that killing her?  

There have been disappointments in life, where friends have failed me in major ways but I could not hold anger or resentment to them. I just had to forgive! 

So the lesson I learned, taught to me by the hand of God through His Son is that hate for any reason is self defeating. It closed the universe around you. You develop myopia of the soul and risk wasting vast amounts of time seeking revenge.  This is all at great cost to your body and your soul. 

Is there anyone in your life that you need to forgive?  I don't mean you have to eat lunch with them and invite them to join you on vacation! No, I mean just the simple act of granting them mercy and absolving them from the real debt that they owe you. You don't have to tell them if you don't want to. If they are a close relative, you may approach them in time and begin to reconstruct your relationship but that is not necessary to forgive the hurt that was done to you. I can give you an absolute guaranty that if you do this in your heart you will awaken parts of your soul that go dormant when you carry hate in your heart.  Forgive and forget? I don't think that it is possible to forget an evil that is done to you. It is part of our survival skill set. But forgiving that person who hurt you the most will set you free to live and love in the paradise that God has given us. 

Remember well the prayer we say daily, the Lord's Prayer, the prayer given to us by Jesus Himself. "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those that trespass against us..." Do you think he was kidding?  God is ready to forgive us every day we sin against Him. He will forgive us in the same measure that we have forgiven others. 

Thank you Pope Francis for declaring this the year of mercy. May we learn to be merciful to each other. 
    

Walking The Road to Emmaus

The two men  were walking to Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem.  Along the way they were talking about what had happened, how very disappointed  and sad they were that Jesus had been put to death. they were sure that Jesus was Messiah, the one that they had been waiting for to save Israel from the oppressive grip of the Romans. He had performed signs and wonders that were completely beyond explaining. It appeared that he had the hand of God upon him. Yet the chief priest and the temple staff delivered him over to the Romans and they had scourged, mocked, and finally crucified him.  They thought and talked and walked and were no closer to a satisfactory answer when suddenly a stranger joined them and he asked them what they were talking about as they journeyed.  They looked at the stranger in surprise and asked him if he was the only one in the area that did not know what had happened these last three days. Of course it was Jesus that they were speaking to but they were prevented from recognizing him.  He began to walk with them and as they walked he revealed to them the whole story and every verse in the Bible that referred to Him.  The men were pleased that they had struck up a conversation with this stranger.  They had now arrived at their destination.  The stranger made as if he were going to continue the journey. But they invited him in because it was getting late and they wished to offer him hospitality.  They reclined at table and the bread was broken and their eyes were opened. They had been speaking to Jesus!  Jesus handed them bread and He disappeared from their sight. 

The two looked in their hands and realized what had happened. Jesus had disappeared from their sight because He was still there, in the bread and wine consecrated by Jesus Himself.  They trembled as they ate His Body and drank His Blood. 

We too often walk the road to Emmaus.  We do not always understand where the road we are on will take us.  We have to tread with confidence because it is the road Jesus has put us on and in the end it will lead to Him.  We must keep our eyes on our destination, even if right now we are unclear as to where the road will lead us.  We must sustain ourselves on the journey by feeding on the Word of God by reading His story in the Bible and by frequently receiving Him in the Eucharist.  

The wonderful thing about the road we are on is that if we approach it with faith the destination will be an eternity with Jesus in heaven. 

God bless you on this Divine Mercy Sunday, 

What EVERY Christian Can Learn from Mother Angelica

Rest in Peace Mother Angelica

Mother Angelica was perhaps the greatest American Catholic in the last fifty years. All of us, Catholic or not can learn a lesson from this great lady. 

The eulogies written and said for Mother are many and far more beautiful than I can write. So rather than eulogize her I am going to point out what I feel are her  most important characteristics that we as Christians could emulate in our lives. 

Mother knew of only one road to take and that was the road of faith. When she believed that God was calling her to do something, she set her eyes upon Jesus, threw the throttle into full speed ahead, and turned a deaf ear to those who said what she wanted to do was impossible.  She also knew that sometimes she would misinterpret what God wanted her to do, those times she would experience failure. She did not fear failure. The only thing that she feared was standing before Jesus and being shown what she could have done. 

She was a caring person. I read where she was more concerned with the spiritual conditions of her employees than she was concerned with the television network.  She was also fearless when it came to speaking the truth. She saw that the Church was looking to throw away practices that were necessary to keep.  She took on the mighty and helped preserve important Catholic practices that she rightly thought as important.  She also was honest to those who worked with her and if she had a disagreement with say for example with inviting a certain guest on to a show because the guests views were too liberal, she came out and said it. She was also compassionate knowing that we are all sinners and she did her best to coax and coach people back into the Church when they had lost their way.

She also had a great sense of humor. There is nothing worse than a glum Christian. From what I've heard on EWTN these past few days she even kept her humor during her sickness over the last years of her life. She embraced the suffering that came her way.  She joined it to the sufferings of Christ as St. Paul tells us to and she made her pains and her bed-ridden state into something holy.  Her whole life contained suffering. For years she had to wear pounds of braces so that she could walk. She bore this cheerfully, without resentment, for the good of all and offered it up to Christ. 

The thing she did the best is that she brought Jesus to life for many many people!  We have a tendency to think of Jesus as "up there, somewhere."  She brought Him and His teachings back to earth.  She reintroduced something that some Catholics forgot about, a personal Jesus. She reminded us that Jesus loved us and our ideal fate is to be with Him in heaven. 

Mother will be missed, there is no doubt about that. The good that she did has reached around the world via the television and radio stations she founded.  How many people came to Christ because of her?  How many returned to the Church because something she said or did on TV?  We will never know, 

She is at rest now.  Probably in heaven talking with Saint Maximilian Kolbe about modern communication methods or speaking her words of thanks to Jesus and the Blessed Mother.  She belongs in heaven for because of her work many others will enjoy being with God that may not have made it at all.