Mother's Day 2017 - Remembering My First Mentor

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Anna Jarvis is a name that most people are not too familiar with.  She had an idea in the year of 1908 to hold a memorial for her mother at her church.  She began a campaign to have a special holiday declared for mothers.  The Congress, using the thought processes that have made them famous up until this day, refused to declare a holiday for mothers because they felt they would next have to declare a holiday for mothers in law.  In 1914, Woodrow Wilson proclaimed the second Sunday in May as a national holiday to honor mothers.  

This was all very good and the Hallmark company entered into the fray. They realized that there was money to be made with this sentiment for mothers and they developed a line of Mother's Day cards.  Anna Jarvis was not pleased with Hallmark as she was of the opinion that people should write personal notes to their mother on this special day instead of relying on artificial words penned by professional sentiment peddlers.  The commercialization of the holiday she lobbied for annoyed her so much that she organized boycotts of Mother's Day, and we know how that turned out!

My mother, Violet, has passed from this life.  She was a good woman and did her best with me in my youth.  I was a bit of a problem child in that I suffered from what today would have been diagnosed with a learning disability.  I had one heck of a hard time understanding math.  Back then, my teachers all said that I was not working up to my potential while in fact, I was and I just did not understand certain mathematical concepts. My mind was sluggish when it came to numbers but I routinely tested two grades higher in my reading and reading comprehension skills so I was no dummy.  But I was also very frustrated.  What follows is a chapter from my book, "Glimpses of God" in which you will hear about the world I inhabited in fourth grade.  You will see the role my mother played and she taught me a lesson that I carry with me to this very day.  I know it is kind of long and you may not want to read the whole thing, although I think you will be amused if you do, I have marked in bold the relevant paragraph if you want the express version. 

Every September was a new start. I had new shoes, a new haircut, fresh paper, sharp pencils, new BIC pens, you know the kind that they shoot through two by fours and they still write. I also had a never been used three ring binder with factory fresh paper but most of all at least for the first few days of school I carried a new attitude promising myself that I would do better in school and would claw my way by hook or crook out of the dummy tank. The September I started fourth grade I came into the game with all of these things, fresh from vanquishing Sister Emerita and her letter writing campaign and ready to take on the challenge of a new school year. In every era, some disasters make the headlines. In the beginning of the century there was the sinking of the Titanic, later there was crash and burning of the Hindenburg and still later great earthquakes that destroyed cities in Alaska. For me the stage was set for a disaster that for me would dwarf those disasters. The actors were ready and fate shouted; “Action.” Then enter stage left we see Mrs. R. Read. Mrs. R. Reid was a middle-aged teacher of average build who camouflaged her true self with rosy cheeks and a nice smile. She dressed in sixties teacher style and her hair were always coifed in a bun. That nice smile was there to draw you in, sort of the way a cobra will attempt to hypnotize its prey before striking and consuming it. You would have thought that as a lay teacher she would not have had access to the teacher’s pet list since she did not live in the close confines of the convent, but she apparently did obtain a copy of the list and the favored few of third grade continued their reign of blackboard erasing, handing out of papers and putting the names of people who talked while teacher was out of the room in her fourth grade kingdom. 

Mrs. R. Reid was the empress in her domain. Other teachers both nuns and lay teachers alike held sway in their kingdoms but Mrs. R. Reid was an absolute despotic monarch over hers. She was an absolute disciplinarian and was quite inventive in the punishments she could come up with. As the school year progressed, my good intentions and my good attitudes started to decay very quickly melting as if it were a pyramid of sugar caught in a drenching rainstorm. 

Early in the year, she passed out a small envelope containing twenty-five small slips of colored paper. She explained that these were tickets and we would receive some tickets when we did what we were told and we would lose some tickets when we failed to make good. You did not get tickets for doing your homework, that was a requirement and besides since her lectures were so fascinating you would want to rush home to eagerly complete each assignment and therefore it followed that finishing the assignment would be its own reward. No, you received tickets for doing things like erasing the blackboard, handing out papers, putting the names of people who talked on the blackboard and by bringing in Betty Crocker Coupons. So right from the start, you could see that the tables were tilted towards the teachers’ pets. About the only thing I could hope to get tickets for would be to bring in Betty Crocker Coupons. I guess these were coupons on the top of Betty Crocker products such as cake and cookie mixes that could be exchanged for premiums. Mom’s back then mostly stayed at home and had time to do things like baking. Unfortunately for me my mother, when she did bake, did not use Betty Crocker products. She used Jiffy Mix products. Betty proudly sold her wares for fifty-nine cents while Jiffy Mix sold for just a dime at the Hi Lo store on Kedzie Avenue. With three kinds consuming food and tuition money not to mention the general upkeep of the kids, there just was no contest in our house as to which products would be used. There were other ways to earn tickets which I cannot bring to mind, but I was able to get some of the valuable pieces of scrap paper but never really enough to exchange for pens, paper, or other supplies you could use them for and during the annual World’s Finest Chocolate sale ten tickets would get you a square of chocolate or three chocolate covered almonds and if I wasn’t being punished, I would dole out three of the valuable tickets just so I could wrap my lips around some of those almonds, mmmm! You also were paid tickets for selling chocolate or Christmas cards or whatever they decided we were selling that year. We will talk more about these yearly sales in a little while. The ticket system, while not completely fair is not the reason why to this day I have a dislike for Mrs. R. Reid. The year I had with her as a teacher changed me as a person and for the longest time, not for the better. 

Mrs. Reid’s fourth-grade class was relegated to a basement room which was not as nice as the regular rooms on the first three floors. There were exposed pipes, probably wrapped with asbestos. I think that it was kind of poetic justice that Mrs. R. Reid would hold court in the dungeon- like atmosphere of the basement. I have to be fair to her. I know that out there are people that will say that she was a fine teacher and the best that they ever had. Luckily for me, this is not their autobiography so I need not consider their opinion. Never since Mrs. Reid have I had a teacher that was so outstanding in unfairness. She had considerable ability to classify children into rigid categories which they were never allowed to escape from. Thus, once I was placed into her “dummy” category, I was there in her eyes for life. She never would call on a dummy in class unless she absolutely knew she could embarrass you because she knew there was no way that you knew the answer. Please understand that I am not saying that she only treated me this way, no, out of the forty or so kids there were about four others occupying the dunce classification, and she never called on a dummy for anything. Even in my fourth-grade mentality, I knew this was unfair. Let’s face it, folks, even a real dyed in the wool dummy just might have a correct answer now and then. With Mrs. Reid, I did more homework. Not all of it mind you, but more of it than I did for that great teacher and potential winner of the Nobel Prize, Sister Emerita, whom, when I compared her to Mrs. R. Reid, I loved and admired so very much. The reason I did homework for her is because there was a penalty if you did not do it. The penalty was you had to write your multiplication tables from 1 X 1 to 12 X 12, doing this once was considered one penalty. I don’t know if I am clear about what a penalty was, you would start with 1 X 1= 1, next line 1X2=2, all the way up to 1X12=12. Then you would go up to the top of the page again and in a second column start with 2X1=2 next line 2X2=4 etc continuing until you got to 12X12=144. While I was never able to amass a fortune in tickets because I lacked Betty Crocker coupons, I was able to become a virtual millionaire in the penalties. If you wanted penalties, I was the guy to see. At one time I remember I had amassed five hundred opportunities to write my time's tables. I was an expert so let me tell you that you can fit all of the times tables from 1 X 1 to 12 X 12 on both sides of one sheet of paper. Each penalty had to be on a separate piece of paper, so we were buying lots of five whole punch notebook paper that year! About now you may be thinking; “Why didn’t Dofus just avoid penalties by turning in the homework?” That is a good question, I am glad you asked. Although my grades in fourth grade were better than in third and I was turning in more of the homework, I was still failing badly at New Math, once again I just could not understand it and back then I had a very low threshold for frustration. I accumulated penalties because I seldom turned in my Math homework and was awarded five penalties each time I missed an assignment. Once I tried turning in the worksheet from the workbook with my name on it and nothing else, but that earned me a bonus penalty, she really did go over the papers! Then as time went on the frustration got even greater and I did less and less of the assignments. Mind you, when it came to passing tests say for English and History, there was little problem for me. I was a good reader. 

Mrs. R. Reid, unlike the beloved and saintly Sister Emerita, was no letter writer; she would have her revenge on me and once the decision was taken without hesitation she went straight for the jugular vein and used that modern invention called the telephone. One day Mrs. Reid left the room for a few moments right after I told her my Math homework sadly would not be arriving in her inbox that day. She stared at me for a moment and she smiled, but it was a smile that sent shivers up and down my spine. One of her pets was stationed at the blackboard to take down the names of anyone who talked and she left the room. She was gone for a few minutes and then came back and started the lesson. About fifteen minutes later there was a knock at the door and the principal Sister Victoria motioned for Mrs. Reid to come into the hall. After Mrs. Reid stationed her snitch, she called me to follow her. I went out in the hall and there with Sister Victoria was my mother. Mrs. Reid had called her and she came down for a conference. In front of my mother and Sister Victoria, Mrs. Reid asked me straight out if I had my math homework to turn in today. I said no and she told me to go back into the room and put my name on the board for not having my homework. She was big at putting people’s names on the blackboard. I think that she thought that shame of having your name on the board would cause you to do your best to turn in your work. It didn’t work in my case, I was used to it. I hung my head and slowly went back into the room and walked to the usual spot on the board and with my classmates giggling at me, only Dennis in the back refused to laugh or giggle, I wrote my name on the board and shuffled to my seat. Believe it or not, this, as I reflected on it later in life, gave me a glimpse of God. I thought of the shame Jesus felt as he carried the cross to Calvary, not that I can compare my not doing homework to his work on the Cross for us but the feeling of eyes upon you knowing that they were looking you with scorn really hit home. It turned out that I would be turning in all of my assignments from that day on. We all carried a green assignment pad and wrote down the homework assignments in it. My book was only slightly used at that point. By the end of the year, it would become well used and dog-eared. At the end of every day, I would have to bring my assignment notebook to Mrs. Reid and she would have to certify that I had written down all of my homework assignments. One day I forgot to bring it to her and she forgot to sign the book and I knew I would be in trouble. I decided that there was no harm in forging her signature since I had all of the assignments written down. I practiced her signature a couple of times and got it exactly right. I can still sign her name better than she could. If you could compare my rendering to one of the genuine ones in the assignment book, you would maybe see some very small variations, but no one, not my parents nor Mrs. Reid ever stumbled on to the fact that I forged her name. I only did it once, on a Friday so the next week’s assignments would begin on a new page. Mark down one point for me!

Violet Spoula
Someone tried to "colorize: this photobooth picture, not me! 

At this impromptu powwow that Mrs. Reid called between her and my mother, one good thing actually came out of it, while not a glimpse of God, it was a life lesson that I will remember for the rest of my life. When I got home, instead of the expected, and because of my slothful ways well deserved dressing down, my mother told me that she had noticed that when I was going to the blackboard to write my name, I had my head hung down low. She told me that I should always be proud of whom I was and no matter what I had the dignity that came with just being who I was no matter what so I should always hold my head up high. I remembered that lesson from that day on and although things would happen in my youth and in adulthood and I would get in trouble again and have to put my name on the board, I would always remember the wisdom she spoke on that day and now I remember that no matter what that I should be proud just to be me. 

I spent the rest of the school year doing homework and times tables. I eventually got all of my penalties done, but it took hours and hours. I did really know my time's tables by the end of the year! The way she made me feel small, the teasing from other kids, the pressure I felt because I felt dumb and alone caused me to start biting my fingernails. Mrs. Reid was on this like a great white shark would take to meat. She tried her best to get me to stop, but it was a compulsion that was not under my control. Doctors today say that this disorder called Chronic Onychophagia is caused by stress and anxiety. Mrs. Reid, for me, was THE local distributor of stress and anxiety. I carried my nail biting habit all the way up until my freshman year in high school; it was an embarrassment and more cause for kids to tease me. On rainy days we would have lunch recess inside. Our class would have it in our classroom. We played this game where five kids would stand in front of the class and we would put our heads down and our thumbs up and the five in front would circulate through the room and push a kids thumb down and go back to the front of the room. We then were told to pick our heads up and those that had their thumbs pushed down would stand up and try to guess who pushed their thumb down. What a fascinating game huh? One time I had a turn-up front and pushed down the thumb of Patricia Glowacki, a notorious teacher’s pet, and blackboard writing snitch. She immediately guessed it was me that tagged her and we were allowed to ask how she was able to guess correctly. She said, “Your finger was wet Ewwww.” The class laughed and I was mortified. But we digress here. In the long run, I am glad that I had this nail-biting disorder. I think that as I grew and saw other people with things wrong with them, I was able to empathize and sympathize more with them. In the long run, I guess my Chronic Onychophagia was a good thing. 

On the last day of school, the pastor came and handed out report cards. There was some question as to if I was going to go on to the fifth grade or not. The pastor called me up looked at my card, shook his head discreetly and wordlessly handed it to me. I went back to my desk and opened it; “Promoted to Grade Five.” Oh, remember we started the year with that little envelope of twenty-five tickets? Well, I have to tell you that is about the same number of now valueless tickets that I threw in the wastebasket as one of the pets brought it around as we cleaned our desks for the last time. God was showing me through Mrs. R. Reid that things of this earth would over time lose their value. Who would think that there was that much power in some scrap paper? What a Glimpse of God this was and it really came from a most unlikely source; thank you, Mrs. R. Reid. With my report card in my hand, I realized something else. Oh, Joy! Oh, Rapture! I was FREE so I sayFarewell to the old Mrs. R. Reid, I hardly knew thee!

Commercial Time: My autobiography, "Glimpses of God" is available through Amazon.com - type "spoula" as the search term. 

So, on this very special day that we set aside to honor our mother, I just want to encourage you to be grateful for your mother and to remember her not only on this day but during the whole year. 

For Violet, I pray, my dear mother, that you have found the rest and the joy you never seemed to be able to find in life.  I love you and miss you very much.  You worked wonders with me Mom, I think I grew up to be a good reflection of all that was good in you. 

Jesus and the Lottery

"Amen, amen, I say to you,

whoever believes in me will do the works that I do,

and will do greater ones than these,

because I am going to the Father. 

And whatever you ask in my name, I will do,

so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. 

If you ask anything of me in my name, I will do it."

Dear Lord, I want a winning lottery ticket, in Jesus name, I pray, Amen.  Well, it's off to the Shell station on the corner to buy my guaranteed "in Jesus Name" winning lottery ticket!  Man, am I going to have fun with all those greenbacks!  Or, have I set myself up for failure?   

Now, there is no reason why Jesus cannot grant me a winning lottery ticket. He knows me.  He knows how I think and what I would do with all of that money. If it is His will, it will happen.  But, it is foolish to pray for something so temporary as little green pieces of paper. The Lord knows what will help us achieve our goal, and that is heaven. 

Prayer is a privilege that we have by virtue of being created by God.  Christian prayer is a privilege that comes to us when we are baptized into the death and resurrection of Jesus.  We have a twenty-four hour a day, seven days a week, fifty-two weeks a year hotline to God, a phone that will never go unanswered.  How sad it is that we do not take more advantage of this wonderful thing. 

It is through prayer that we will get to know Jesus and to cultivate a relationship with Him.  At any moment we can ASK, SEEK, & KNOCK.  We can always be assured that we will get what we ask for. It may not be a winning lottery ticket.  We have to remember that when we pray we are asking God, "Do you love me?"  His answer, no matter what it is, no matter what form it takes is always, "Yes, I love you, and you are precious in my sight.  I love you more than you can imagine. I want you to be with me forever in Paradise."  He will give us what we need when we need it for that is what a loving Father does for His children. 

  

A Place of My Own - Heaven

Jesus said to his disciples:

"Do not let your hearts be troubled. You have faith in God; have faith also in me. In my Father's house, there are many dwelling places.If there were not, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you?

And if I go and prepare a place for you,

I will come back again and take you to myself, so that where I am you also may be.

Today I want to muse about heaven. Heaven is the place all of us Christians want to be once our life is changed and we close our eyes in death.  Some people have been heard to say that they don't want to go to heaven because none of their friends will be there.  Well, I would make better friends then!  

Of late there have been a few books written by people who have supposedly gone to heaven and have returned. I read one of them that relates the story of a little boy's visit to heaven and to Jesus.  I found the story very interesting. The book's title is "Heaven is for Real."  Colton is a child who got very, very sick indeed from a burst appendix and apparently died and went to heaven and visited with Jesus. While he was there he visited with his grandfather whom he never knew, learned that he had a sister that had been stillborn.  He relayed these facts to his parents when he was "sent back."  There was no way he could have known about the stillborn sister and he did not recognize the grandfather's picture until one was shown to him that showed his grandfather as younger.  The boy said that no one is old in heaven.  He also related what his father and mother were doing while he was in the operating room being worked on by the surgeons.  They also kept showing pictures of Jesus and he rejected all of them until he was shown one drawn by an artist who had a near death experience and visited heaven.  They showed Colton the painting Prince of Peace by Akiane Kamarik and he said nothing. His father pressed him for his comments and the boy said that this painting looked just like Jesus. 

Here is the painting - Is This Jesus?

Prince of Peace by
Akiane Kamarik 

That is a synopsis of Colton's story.  Is it true?  It most certainly could be true. What heaven will be like cannot be described in human terms.  Through my personal experience, I can tell you that heaven will be a place of great joy, I know this as fact, not as something I take on faith.  The details are for another post.  

My hopes for heaven are simple, like the old song.  Heaven will be a place where no one ever goes hungry or cold, nor will they grow old and die.  I believe that we will know absolutely everyone in heaven and will talk to them as we speak to our best friends and spouses here on earth. I believe that our minds will understand all of the mysteries of the universe.  There will be no hate or prejudice and we will all have a great love for one another. 

I've never owned a place of my own on this earth and there was a time in my life that I mourned over this fact.  But, today, I realize that no matter what we own here on earth, we can take none of it with us except that which we carry in our heart.  My place in heaven will rival and surpass the palaces in this world because it will be with God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and the Saints.  Maybe, I can be on a first name basis with St. Francis of Assisi, and speak with St. Michael the Archangel about how he defeated the devil.  A tent on the edge of heaven will be infinitely better than a mansion on earth. 

So, that's what I have to say about heaven.  What are your thoughts? Feel free to share a comment below.   

They Asked. He Spoke, They Didn't Listen

My sheep hear my voice;

I know them, and they follow me. 

I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish. 

No one can take them out of my hand. 

My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all,

and no one can take them out of the Father's hand. 

The Father and I are one."

Well, here He went and did it.  The crowd asked Jesus to tell them plainly who He was and he did it.  "The Father and I are one." Those words could not be plainer. The crowd heard what he said and immediately picked up rocks to stone Him. He walked away from them and went across the Jordan River. 

The people in our story could hear, but they did not listen. One hallmark of a Christian is that they hear the voice of Christ in their life.  They try, through the daily tribulations of life, to do what He commands. The command of Jesus is simple but powerful.  He commands us to love others as He has loved us.  At the Last Supper, He showed us by washing the Apostles feet.  The next day He showed us by dying on the cross for us.

It is this love we are to show one another.  It is a love that can be expressed only with the help of Grace in our lives. This Grace comes upon the wind, in the voice of the Good Shepherd.  We, His flock, must listen for His voice.

 The voice of the world will be much louder and at times more persuasive. But we listen for His voice and we are not drawn away from Him because it is His voice that we yearn for, and only His voice impels us to move. 

Today, the Lord has something to say to YOU.  Listen to what He says. Follow His voice and you will be doing His will and you will be safe with His arms around you as you feel the beating of the Sacred Heart as it beats as one with yours. 

Save Yourself From The Corruption of This Age !

Peter testified with many other arguments, and was exhorting them,

"Save yourselves from this corrupt generation."

Corruption is all around us.  It has been a constant companion to mankind from the very beginning of time. Corruption happens when a person entrusted with some sort of responsibility that affects other people uses his or her authority to enrich him or herself at the expense of his friends and neighbors. For the one that commits this type of fraud against his neighbor, it is always for some perceived good.  For example, in Chicago, we had an official of the public schools that used her authority to steer contracts to companies that paid her for the use of her office.  This lady had an excuse, it was simply that she wanted to make extra money so her grandchildren could go to college.  Now, grandchildren going to college is an important goal but she should not have placed her goal over the needs of literally thousands of Chicago Public School children who are already dealing with the corrupt politics of Mike Madigan in Springfield Illinois where he is using his political influence to keep the legislators from passing a budget. Corruption breeds corruption.  If it is okay for the likes of Madigan, then it should be okay for others as well.  

Corruption is a sin that is caused by a lack of faith in God to take care of His people.  Corruption always infuses riches into those that practice it and takes it from the coffers of those who need it most. In our reading today, Peter rises and tells us to save ourselves from this corrupt generation. How in heavens name can you do that in a world like ours?  

The first thing that needs to be done is our silence must end.  When we see a wrong we must point it out but we must also be ready to suggest a solution to the issue as well.  

Next, we need to watch and pray.  Our prayers will be answered but we need to be ready to accept the solution God sends to us.  Our cries will be heard and a solution will be offered.

We must be ready to take a risk.  The solutions we receive from our prayers may make us a bit uncomfortable. We must have faith that God knows what He is doing.  We must take the solution and run with it. 

We must be patient and be persevering.  Just because we ask for something once and we do not seem to receive an answer does not mean that an answer is not coming.  We must ask, and ask, and persevere in our prayer.  Our faith will be our rock. 

We must avoid the temptation to just give in and to go with the flow. The enemy may attempt to present a solution that would be great for you but would leave others out in the cold, in effect making you a part of the problem.  We must be selfless in our view and be ready to make a sacrifice for the good of others. 

We must not be afraid of failure. In our pride, we say that "Failure is not an option."  Look at the cross of Christ, if there was ever a monument to failure, that is it and look at what happened because of it, death itself was destroyed and we have inherited eternal life.  What appears to be a failure in our eyes, may just be God saying to wait.  That is hard for us to do, to just wait.  

We must remember that all of the advantages that a person of this world receives because of corruption will decay into corruption when that person is called to give an account of their life to God. 

Our life as a Christian will always be counter-cultural. It is why Christians are laughed at and scorned.  We show the example of what should be done and that gets in the way of what people, without God in their lives, want to do. 

To save ourselves and those we love from the corruption of this age, we need to not engage in it ourselves and we need to put our trust in God.  God has won the victory, we just need to keep the faith and keep ourselves from being drawn into the sin around us. It is easier to sin than it is to pray to be delivered from sin. 

Be filled with joy this Easter season.  God loves you very much.  He has proven it by what He has done and what He continues to do. Have faith even in the face of death that you will be rescued and be brought home to Jesus. 

Star Stuff and the Round-About at Bernards Star...

This week I have been watching some YouTube videos dealing with space and the incredible data that has been collected by the Hubble Telescope. What I have heard and observed this week has convinced me that we do not always see things in the reality that they reside in without the help of a powerful lens. Take for example our picture today. It shows part of the sky as seen by the Hubble Telescope.  The brightest points are all within our galaxy, the Milky Way. They are the objects in this photo that are closest to us and the word close is a tiny bit on the inaccurate side because the light from these stars may have begun the journey to our eyes hundreds of years ago.  What we see in this photograph is not what any of the stars or galaxies look like today, no, using the Hubble lens, we are seeing what they looked like hundreds, thousands, or even billions of years ago.  The scientists can peer further and further back into the past almost to the point where they can see the hand of God putting a match to the fuse on the concentrated ball of matter that was the center of the Big Bang.  As strange as it seems, scientists are more and more becoming more and more convinced about how intelligently the universe has been designed.  The calculations made by these scientists show that if the Big Bang had lasted a nanosecond more, or if there was just a little bit more or less matter at the time of the explosion, the universe would not have formed.  The odds of all of these random factors lining up just perfectly are, excuse the pun, astronomical! 

 Our home, the Milky Way Galaxy contains about four hundred billion stars.  You and I live, love, and die on a blue marble near our sun which is about twenty-seven thousand light years from the galactic core. We are in the Orion arm of the galaxy.  As impressive as that may be, our illustration to the left shows dozens upon dozens of galaxies of all sizes out there.  All of them at distances that make making a visit to them quite impossible for us to contemplate.  While all this is breathtaking, it makes us "bags of mostly water" as a creature on Star Trek once called humans feel a bit puny and quite non-essential to the bigger picture. The Big Bang was instituted by God with YOU in mind.  His calculations from the very beginning included you in them.  Every calculation was perfect and over the eons, our earth was formed, life began, and soon man walked the earth, subduing it and mastering it as God tells us to do in Genesis. When the time was right, you were conceived in the furnace of passion and in about nine months you began your sojourn through space and time. 

God went through a lot of trouble to create you.  Everything had to be in place for you to arrive and He saw to it. In Genesis, when God was finished with all of the work he was doing, he looked it over and saw that it was "very good." What we forget is that God, who lives outside of space and time, saw each of us, and he pronounced us as "very good" too.  This is an important concept because it validates the life of every person who ever lived as being from God and destined to return to God. So, on those days, and all of us have them when the boss is cranky, the baby is crying, the bill collectors are calling, take the time to remind yourself how very important and precious you are to God.  He made only one of you and there will be no Mark II model, you are it. You have been created out of star stuff and placed in this universe to do a job that no one else can do.  For heaven's sake, do it! 

Are We Being Punished ?

The world we live in today is positively crazy. Around the world, things could not be crazier.  In North Korea, we have a fat little man wanting to play with nuclear toys.  In the Philippines, there is a psychotic serial murderer as president.  In Mexico, there is no real government except what the drug cartels allow.  In the United States I will leave it up to you to judge our president, but we as a people have a lot to answer for as the corpses of innocent murdered babies pile up.  Forgive me for being so graphic with that last sentence. 

It is said that Our Lady, Mary, the Mother of Jesus, the bride of the Holy Spirit, has appeared in history and has warned us that if things don't change there will be a chastisement.  In the twentieth century, there were two such chastisements that we can easily point to. We called them World Wars One and Two and millions upon millions of people died.  Mary warned us when she appeared at Fatima. 

Today, we have the scourge of radical Islam murdering Christians in the places where it has existed for two thousand years.  ISIS has used the very symbol of our religion to martyr our brothers and sisters in the middle east.  But, force of arms, God willing, may end this reign of terror.  But the punishment from this direction will continue because, in America, we have embraced birth control and abortion.  The birth rate of children being born to households where Christianity is at least marginally practiced is falling while Islamic families are experiencing a baby boom. Will there be sharia law in America? Not in my lifetime but it is very possible that it will happen in the lifetimes of our children.  We baby boomers have not been the best at passing the torch to our children.  A common attitude has been to let the children decide for themselves about God and which religion to follow. We see how well this has worked out.  Today, for example, in the Catholic Church we have a lack of men offering themselves to the priesthood.  In families where it was once thought of as an honor to have a son or daughter opt for the religious life or priesthood, now that is not even given a remote thought.  

My original question in this post was, "Are we being punished?" I think that God does not have to send a chastisement down upon us because we, ourselves, are doing very well at reaping the rewards for our sloth in spiritual things. So, right now I do not believe we are undergoing a chastisement from God.  This scares me a bit because I believe that one is coming that will make all of the terrible things that are happening in our world today seem like child's play. 

Okay, I can almost see you rolling your eyes, shaking your head, and thinking the Michael the Lesser has finally slipped his moorings and is now a candidate for a rubber room in a fool farm somewhere.  The bad things that we are paying for today are the simple result of what we have done, no more, no less.  I believe that God has given us what we have earned in the hope that we would recognize what we are doing and turn back to the right way of living.  It is evident that we have no desire to change things and turn ourselves around.  God is a loving Father and wants us to be with Him forever in heaven.  He will do what is necessary to get our attention, and it will not be pleasant.   

There are a lot of good people in this world. It is time for them to put on the armor of prayer, draw the sword of righteousness, and start using their talents to point out to family, neighbors, friends, and fellow citizens that God loves us and that He wants us to change, to repent, to come back home.  We are all prodigal sons and daughters.  We are all born to live in the light of God. We just need to make the slightest effort, cooperate just a little, and God will welcome us back. 

Begin today to rebuild the Kingdom. Start small and carry one brick at a time. Use prayer to soften the hearts of your neighbors. I suggest the Rosary as the prayer to use.  This prayer is one of the best in our arsenal.  If you don't like the Rosary, pray whatever prayer you want to, just get started. 

Am I going to turn myself into a street preacher, yelling about fire and brimstone descending upon the land?  No, I am not going to do that.  I have confidence that if each of us does just a little bit to change the world, to slightly correct the course we are on, our combined actions will bring us back to where we belong. God loves us very much, that is the ultimate truth that we can hang on to no matter what comes.