Prayer as foundation for action

We humans like to be busy. Our culture is a frenetic mix of those who seek constant action. On one hand, we see the pleasure-seekers, those who busy themselves with gratifying their own desires. On the other, there are the do-gooders, those who busy themselves with trying to solve all the problems of the world. The problem is that both of these groups drift can tend toward identifying themselves by their actions.*

What we sometimes forget is that our actions should flow from our prayer life, our rich union with God, who renews our intentions and focuses us to order our actions according to a holy priority. It is this relationship with God that is so vital to our relationships with others.

Sadly, this concept is becoming more foreign to our modern culture. We are increasingly tempted to forgo prayer for the sake of getting just one more thing done. Time-savers such as e-mail and the internet, cell phones, video conferencing, machines that wash our dishes and clothes, cars and planes that take us great distances in a short amount of time...all these have coaxed us into filling up our time saved with even more commitments and projects. And so we push out our time with God in the name of saving time.

The problem with skipping prayer...that time in which we recall that our Lord is King of all...is that we lose our focus. We get overwhelmed by all the projects because our sense of direction wavers according to what can most successfully grab our attention at any given moment.

I can think of one concrete example that I have studied in depth. In fact, I have no way of escaping this constant reminder. I live it everyday. It's my morning routine. But here, for the sake of time, I will skip to preparing breakfast.

My best mornings happen when I wake up to a clean and organized kitchen. I have thought ahead to what I am going to make. My kitchen utensils and pans are accessible and ready to go. I have enough coffee, and the pot the is clean. My job becomes easy.

There are mornings, though, when I wake up too late to (my oldest daughter uses the expression, "hangry" hungry+angry) kids and a trashed kitchen. Yesterday's morning elixir is still in the machine. Dirty pans with crusted food fill a sink that makes it difficult to maneuver even getting a glass of water. The refrigerator is filled with condiments and not much else. Can I provide food for my children under these circumstances? Well, there's always Dunkin' Donuts. It gets the job done, but is it good for them? It is good for me? Could we sustain our family on this routine? Well, I don't want to find out.

When my kitchen is trashed, the immediate need in the morning in my head is "must feed children." It distracts me from my ultimate goal of providing nutritional meals for them. Their hunger grabs my attention, not their nutrition.

If I choose to save time by not cleaning and shopping the day before, this is what happens. I am disoriented by the mess, and I just look for the quickest and easiest way to solve the problem.

Pausing for prayer is our cleaning and shopping time. We prepare for our task ahead of us by asking God what he wants of us. We are filled with His love then so we don't seek fulfillment in the outcome of our actions, which can be disappointing, depending upon the day. We dedicate our day to serving Him. We remember our being in communion with Him, and our actions flow from that great love.

Prayer is as simple as raising one's heart and mind to God, to paraphrase St. Therese. It is wonderful to have the ability to set aside regular, silent prayer each day, but young moms know that their most heartfelt moments happen in cries of utter exhaustion, "Help me, God! Jesus save me!" If we make it a habit of lifting our minds and hearts to God throughout the chores of daily life, our work becomes a prayer. Every diaper we change glorifies God. Every boo-boo we kiss is a wound of Christ. Each tantrum we subdue is a reminder to us to constantly fight against our rebellious spirits.

Our relationship with God sanctifies and perfects our actions throughout the day. It is not our actions that perfect us. Rather, it is the grace of God that makes us whole and ready to face each challenge that is set before us all for the His glory.


*For further reading about this topic, I would suggest the following works;

The Soul of the Apostolate by Dom Jean-Baptiste
Holiness for Housewives (and other working women) by Dom Hubert Van Zeller

**For morning coffee, click here: Mystic Monk Coffee (much yummier than DD)

Veronica's veil

In recent years, many Catholics have become increasingly aware of the Church's humanness. The Church, as being fully divine and fully human, certainly has its times when the divinity is obscured by the humanity as seen in its flaws and weaknesses.

Christ himself, being fully divine and fully human, also demonstrated these times of outward weakness and frailty. When Christ took on human form, sharing fully in our humanity as one person with two natures, he allowed himself to be subjected to the weaknesses. He felt fear and sorrow, grief and pain, joy and anger, humiliation and temptation toward pride. All of these emotions he felt deeply without falling into sin.

Jesus demonstrated for us the perfection of humanity. He taught us to pray to our Father in heaven. He welcomed children. He forgave sinners. He reached out to the outcasts, and he challenged all of us to dedicate our lives to serving God more fully, not just in an outward manner, but in a deep, transformative union with the Blessed Trinity as actualized in the sacramental life.

He was also betrayed. And beaten. And scourged. And mocked. And hated.

On his way to his death, he struggled to walk underneath the weight of the beam that was to hold him for his last breath. His humanity certainly obscured his divinity at that moment, hiding beneath the blood and sweat of the flesh.

A woman named Veronica, overwhelmed by her sorrow at his frailty, removed her own veil to uncover the glorious face that was masked by the physical horrors of torture. Perhaps she paused a moment to consider the danger of such a bold act. Perhaps she experienced a grace to act without thinking of the consequences. Either way, she was not deterred by his grotesque disfigurement or by fears of guilt by association.

When our Church is disfigured by sin and corruption, I wonder if our first reaction is to consider the radiant face of Christ that hides beneath, or to retreat out of repulsion and the shock that our Lord could subject himself to such horrors and scandal.

Christ rewarded Veronica's brave act that encompassed faith, hope, and love with a miraculous imprint of his suffering face, because it was her veil that revealed the face of divinity in the midst of his passion.

Let us remember Veronica's veil when we are grieved by human frailty within the Body of Christ, the Church. It is in the midst of this passion that we need to recall the beautiful face of our Lord bloodied by our sins.

Recognizing the better choice

I very recently came across an article that used the death of Brittany Maynard as an opportunity to more narrowly define the act of suicide, Brittany Maynard Didn't Commit Suicide (What We Can Learn From 9-11's Falling Man. In it, the author makes the case that Maynard's death was actually caused by cancer, not the pills that she took. He uses the example of the jumpers of 9-ll to support this assertion:

"In all the years since 9-11, I've never once heard a Christian speak up in judgement and condemnation over the 9-11 jumpers. I've never heard anyone say they sinned because they 'hastened death instead of accepting God's timing.' I've never heard anyone say that failing to condemn their choice is a 'slippery slope that could send the message that suicide is okay.' All I've ever heard about the 9-ll jumpers is how difficult their choice must have been, and how sad it is that their lives were taken by terrorism."

While I appreciate his view of Christians as being compassionate, I must respectfully disagree with his misguided perceptions. If he has never known a Christian to condemn the act of jumping to avoid a tragic and scary death inside a burning building, let me be the first.

Certainly, there were mitigating circumstances, and I can't even begin to imagine the fear and the panic that someone would experience in that situation. Of course, we cannot judge their souls. We have no idea what they were thinking at the time, if they were thinking at all. But it is imperative that we separate these anomalies from the act itself. If we fail to do this, any act becomes impossible to judge, and our entire sense of right and wrong upon which our society exists continues to be eroded.

These jumpers and Brittany Maynard did have something in common. They suffered from a loss of hope. We can say that the situation in which they found themselves was very difficult, the pessimist would even say hopeless. We cannot judge them for taking their own lives. But the circumstance does not change the act. The act must be assessed apart from emotion or turmoil. They ended their lives directly, no matter how immanent death was by other means. Were they without a choice? Certainly not. Others made different choices.

There were others who stayed inside the burning building, no doubt trying to comfort each other and thinking about their loved ones. Maybe even there were some people who offered up their sufferings for their murderers. Who knows how many prayers were said, lives amended, peace granted in those extraordinary moments of grace?

And there are others who struggle with cancer everyday, convinced that this is their path to sanctification, being tried by fire, and those of us who are witnesses to their bravery, their strength, their hope in the everlasting God who delivers on all His promises more abundantly than we could ever imagine, we are sanctified through suffering with them in admiration and empathy.

Anyone who attempts to redefine suicide is perhaps trying to make peace with a loved one lost, a world that is filled with many evils and injustices. But isn't that just allowing the sorrow to perpetuate? When we attempt to control things by redefining, by separating ourselves from the will of God that always works for our sanctification and our ultimate happiness which can only be fulfilled in Him, doesn't that just place us back in the Garden? We reach for the fruit that we have been convinced to consume out of distrust in God's promises for our future happiness.

If we look closely, there are choices that lead us closer to God, and there are choices that play into our own fears for the future. Clearly, there are better choices. Failing to recognize the better choice in a difficult situation makes it a hopeless situation. We must be able to recognize the better choice. Our future depends upon it.

The loving gift of authority

I am the oldest of four girls. My father undoubtedly loves each one of us unconditionally. When we were growing up, he made us pancakes on Saturday mornings, took us to the park in his free time, taught us to ride our bikes, coached our all-girls sports teams, and made sure we attended Mass each Sunday. He also set the example of being active in our parish and in our community. My dad is loving and merciful. He is also an authoritarian.

Why would I call my dad an authoritarian? Well, I knew that he was the authority in my household. He did not wield his authority like a reckless tyrant, but he behaved in a manner that reflected the authority of Christ. My mother (no shy violet by any means) allowed him to make decisions that she might have disagreed with, but she acquiesced in recognition of his authority. I knew that Dad had the final say. It was admirable to be an authority figure. It was manly. I wouldn't have wanted my dad any other way.

Now that I have a family of my own, I am inspired by my father's example of gentlemanly authority and my mother's strong-willed submission. My married relationship has been formed in these balanced views of masculine and feminine complementarity. Recognizing and fostering my children's trust and respect for my husband's authority is a huge part of this. Their relationship with their father as a loving authoritarian sets the tone for their relationship with God.

I am blessed with a husband who sees love in law, freedom in structure, and mercy in justice. I listen to him as he imparts this wisdom to our children during their tutorial sessions for home instruction. I praise the Lord that He has given me this gentle, humble, holy, and strong man to lead our family. It is as Christ had intended.

So, too, does the Church need authoritarians. She needs men who are strong in their faith, who cannot be swayed by the lures of popularity or comfort. She needs priests and bishops who lovingly guide their people to be faithful to truth, to be soldiers for Christ, to have the conviction to go out and spread the Gospel in their everyday lives.

Charity and authority are not opposed to one another. A true authoritarian knows that love and respect are completely intertwined with protecting and preserving truth. The authoritative relationship of Christ to His Church models this, and we would be misdirected to imagine it any other way.

Thank you, Dad, for giving me my first lessons in loving authority. They have set the groundwork for my faith, they have given me to tools to recognize a good and holy man to be my husband and the father of our children, and they have continued to instruct and inspire me in my marriage and in my relationship with Christ and His Church.

St. Joseph, Protector of the Holy Family, pray for us.

The womanly art of being a nag

Probably one of the most devastating things I've heard in the course of this whole Brittany Maynard situation came from the lips of her mother. "It’s not my job to tell her how to live, and it’s not my job to tell her how to die."

Well, actually, that's precisely what a mother's job is. Mothers should tell their children how to live. I thought that was common knowledge, but in the words of Chesterton, "Common knowledge is not so common" anymore.

She goes on to say, "It's my job to love her through it." Yes. That is a statement with which I can agree. Brittany's mom was correct in saying that a mother's job is to love her child through the pain, through the confusion, through the fear, through the darkness.

The problem is that these two sentiments were allowed to coexist in a rational mind. A mother cannot simultaneously love her child through the pain and allow her to endanger her immortal soul through an act of usurping the decision that is God's alone. Mothers who know the value of a healthy soul would walk through hot coals to prevent their children from eternally separating themselves from God.

I know this because my mother did this for me. In a time in my life that was filled with confusion and doubt, my mother became a horrible nag. She would call me constantly to check up on me, she scheduled people to meet with me, and she prayed like a mad woman that I would repent. It annoyed me that she was telling me how to live, that she wasn't trusting my baby adult brain. Many of those decisions I ended up making during that time were a direct result of trying to get her off my back. Thank God she annoyed me. Thank God she was a nag.

I suspect that St. Monica was also a nag. I'm sure that it frustrated Augustine to have this "crazy" lady showing up in places and weeping over his soul. He recalled his gratefulness that she had never given up on him in his Confessions:

"For almost nine years passed, in which I wallowed 'in the mire of the deep' and in the darkness of error, and although I often strove to rise out of it, I was all the more grievously thrust down again. But all the while, that chaste, devout, and sober widow, one such as those you love, already livelier in hope, but no less assiduous in weeping and mourning, ceased not in all her hours of prayer to lament over me before you."

A mother's number one job is getting her children to heaven. Concern for the soul may not ever be trumped by concern for the body. Care for the soul demands that we scrutinize decisions that are made out of fear or in the midst of suffering. On a natural level, mothers have been trained to do this by the pains of birth and the emotional demands of motherhood. But training must not be limited to merely natural realms.

We are in the midst of a spiritual battle. We mothers need to arm ourselves with prayer and sacrifice. We need to make frequent use of the sacraments, and we need to be prepared to be seen as nags, definitely by the culture, but perhaps even by our own children.

Sometimes the only thing standing in the way of eternal darkness is the nagging of a good mother.

St. Monica, pray for us.