Easter is Here and Lent is Gone--I mean, concluded... I mean, Lent is fine, but Easter is glory... I mean...

Every time Easter arrives, the feast is full of joy and glory.  It's the resurrection of Our Lord Jesus and the most singular important event in human history!  Embedded in the joy is the relief of Lent being over.  The St. Francises and St. Ignatiuses have eyes to see suffering as it really is: participation in the Passion of Jesus.  I am not in that category.  More often than not, I fight it tooth and nail.

An examination of my Lent is always disappointing.  I have a strange idea of myself that I should come out of Lent completely purified and perfect.  Bad habit x?  Eliminated!  Evangelism efforts?  Tripled!  Sacred Scripture?  Memorized, contemplated, and able to answer every possible question!  It took a few years to come to peace with this high expectations "false me."  Dealing with that kind of unrealistic expectation has one primary peril: I inadvertently assumed that I would be doing the serious heavy lifting.  Grace, the Holy Spirit, yeah yeah, but it was I that had to fix things.  There was no possible way I could ever live up to my own expectations, especially if I relied more on myself rather than God.  That disastrous approach has two outcomes: apathy or an OCD approach (although not in the Carmelite sense).  The former, why even bother if I can't do it?, leads to sloth.  The latter, being anxious and over-scrupulous, leads to even further pride.  I settled for some apathetic Lents in the past, and they didn't do me any lasting good. 

The key is to avoid pride and hit the mark in between two extremes, as our friend Aristotle would say.  Approach Lent with humility--knowing from the beginning our weakness and inability to fix everything ourselves in 40 days.  Also, I think a targeted approach helps during Lent.  In the past, I fasted just to fast.  It's that thing we do during Lent, right?  Instead, target a particular weakness and fast toward that end.  And, to be clear, it should be a spiritual end.  Fasting from a particular food for the sake of losing weight has some spiritual merit, but it's misdirected. 

This year, my wife and I decided to give up sweets.  That practice was my go-to for Lent from my childhood all the way up until college.  I hadn't fasted from sweets for a number of years; trying this year proved more difficult than I expected.  There are two somewhat embarrassing episodes that highlight this...

First, my wife made dinner for some friends who recently had a baby; there were some leftover cookies.  I have some Irish heritage and love St. Patrick, so we agreed that a single, leftover cookie on that day would be ok.  Leading up to St. Patrick's feast day, I found myself craving that cookie.  That was accompanied by a sobering thought: have I ever had such fervor for the Eucharist?  Seriously, I looked forward to a cookie more than the Body of Christ?

Second, my wife and I started the Divine Mercy Novena on Good Friday.  Halfway through the prayer for the day, my mind wandered (in itself, not uncommon)... to breakfast the next day.  Sausage or bacon?  Eggs, for sure... are we out of English muffins?

Yikes.  We both had the realization that, for one, this was a well-aimed penance for the weakness of our appetite for sweets.  In addition, that appetite was stronger than I initially thought. 

I believe our fasting did us a lot of good, and it provided an opportunity to become more humble than before.  To close, here's a passage from St. John Chrysostum.  For everything that changes in the world, human nature does not.  These words sound like he's talking directly to me:

"Sharpen your sickle, which you have blunted through gluttony— sharpen it by fasting. Lay hold of the pathway which leads towards heaven; rugged and narrow as it is, lay hold of it, and journey on.  And how may thou be able to do these things?  By subduing your body, and bringing it into subjection.  For when the way grows narrow, the corpulence that comes of gluttony is a great hindrance.  Keep down the waves of inordinate desires.  Repel the tempest of evil thoughts.  Preserve the bark; display much skill, and you have become a pilot. But we shall have the fast for a groundwork and instructor in all these things."  (Homilies on the Statutes, Homily III, #7)

7QT: anniversary edition, 10/9/15

On our honeymoon in Ireland

1) Today, my wife and I celebrate our 5th anniversary.  I didn't know what to expect when I got married, but it's exceeded everything I thought it would be.  I never thought I could love someone so much!  I'm a blessed man to have her; I can't imagine my life without her.

2) Our little boy is almost 9 months old, and it's been a joy to watch him grow.  When I get home from work in the evening, I have about an hour with him.  I usually play with him (also known as distracting him so that my wife can get things done).  It's truly the highlight of my day.  HOW COOL IS IT HAVING A CUTE LITTLE GUY????  Yes, that's me shouting.  It's that cool.

3) I am taking a long weekend to attempt to recover from the biggest project I've ever worked on.  I was on a small team that coordinated the move of a three-story building into two new buildings.  The amount of details was burdensome and the stress was worse than anything I can remember.  Although the message we tried to get across to our fellow employees was...

...for some folks, it turned out more like this:

I've worked on many smaller-scale moves for work before; I forgot the #1 rule of moves.  Some people can't deal with change and it makes them stressed.  Then they make sure you know that they're unhappy.

4) I have another article up on the Cora Evans blog, this one on a piece of St. Thomas Aquinas' Summa.  I hadn't looked at the Summa in quite a while.  Part of my assignment was to comment on why the Summa still has value to modern-day Catholics.  I hadn't thought about it before, to be honest, so it was a good exercise for me.  With those articles, I think I learn much more in writing it than anyone does reading it.  Did you know the entire Summa is online at New Advent, along with the old edition of the Catholic Encyclopedia?

5) Back to the anniversary.  Today is also the feast day of Bl. John Henry Newman, a towering intellect of the 19th century.  Let me present reason #567,923 that God loves and cares about me...

a. Erin wanted to have a fall wedding, so we looked at October.  In 2010, Oct. 2 was a Saturday, and a really neat feast day: the Guardian Angels.  We were just about to book the date when a friend from back home sent out their save-the-date cards... for that very day.  We had some mutual wedding guests, and I really didn't want said guests to have to pick between attending a wedding 15 minutes away versus a wedding 550 miles away.  Erin and I went with the following Saturday, the 9th, avoiding the temptation to have the wedding on Sunday, 10/10/10.


b. I wrote my masters thesis on Bl. John Henry Newman--and finishing my degree was the occasion of my meeting Erin.

c. In September 2010, Pope Benedict XVI went on a trip to England.  Among other things, he beatified  John Henry Newman.  Long after our wedding date had been chosen, weeks after the invitations had gone out... Pope Benedict named October 9th as Newman's feast day.

6) If you're up for a thick but great read, pick up Newman's Apologia Pro Vita Sua.  It was the primary source material of my thesis.  There are many editions out, but you could also read it for free if you wanted to.  Newmanreader.org has all of his written works and collections of his sermons.  The book is fascinating, as we gives us a guided tour of his soul.  The "chapters" are divided among the various periods of his life.  Originally, each chapter was a pamphlet, and they were published one by one.

Because Legos have always been cool...

...and will always be cool

7) The Dodgers start their playoff series tonight against the Mets.  Let's go Dodgers!  Get out the rally bananas!  (no, that's not something dirty, I promise)  Clayton Kershaw is pitching tonight and he has some making up to do after the last few postseasons.  

Published Article #2

I received a second assignment from the blog of www.coraevans.com, on the topic of evangelization.  It was an interesting article to write--on one hand, it's easy enough to talk about.  I can point out what we should do and how we should go about it.

On the other hand, I feel that I'm genuinely awful at evangelizing.  I try my best, but I have more mistakes than successes.  By successes, I mean that I don't feel I say the right thing, convey Church teaching effectively, or take advantage of all the opportunities I'm given.  The more I read about the subject--especially in JPII's Redemptoris Missio, Paul VI's Evangelii Nuntiani, and in the life of St. Martin of Tours--the harder it was to look in the mirror.  Now if I can just take my own advice!

http://www.coraevans.com/blog/article/evangelization-our-role-obligation-and-approach

St. John Bosco's Dreams

I picked up a book of the dreams of St. John Bosco recently, looking for something light I could read before bed.  I haven't been disappointed, it's a easily readable but very substantial book.  I bought the Tan edition of Forty Dreams of St. John Bosco after reading his dream of the two pillars.  It was at once a comforting dream as a sobering one.   I won't spoil it, it's worth reading.

I was mostly ignorant of St. John before reading this book; I only knew of him as the patron of youth. After reading this, I see him as a spiritual master, an expert in spiritual warfare, and a mystic.  The book of St. John's dreams is worth reading.  Each of the forty dreams has its own chapter; they're pulled from his memoirs and the memoirs of his confrers.  The anecdotal style make them an easy read--but don't mistake 'easy' for 'fluffy.'

St. John frequently had dreams that identified the boys in his Oratory.  One of those, "A Dream About St. Dominic Savio," featured St. John being reunited with one of his pupils, St. Dominic.  At the end of their conversation in the dream, St. John asks about how he can help the boys at the Oratory.  St. Dominic hands him three lists: unconquered, casualties, and overcome by evil.  The first list was small, noting the names of the boys who had not been conquered by evil.  The second group, casualties, was comprised of boys who had previous run-ins with evil, but had been healed through Confession and the Eucharist.  The final group is a fairly obvious one, with a twist.  When St. Dominic handed St. John the list, he forbade him to open it in his presence.  It gave off an unbearable smell that, in his dream, forced St. John to vomit uncontrollably.

On one hand, we're curious creatures and want to know the future, our fate, and so on.  On the other hand, there are things that--even if only subconsciously--we would rather not know.  Reading this particular dream, two questions raised in my mind.

First, which list would I be on?  It isn't a question of which list I think I should be on.  The lists came from the Lord, Who sees and knows our hearts; He Who created us; He Who will be our judge.  What list would the Lord put me on right now?  There were many names on the final, stinky list that surprised St. John.  Who's to say that I'm any different?

Second, can you imagine the effect on the boys of the Oratory?  St. John related his dreams to the boys, and used them as teaching tools to effect further conversion of heart.  When he read the lists in his dream, he knew many of the boys on them.  Even further, he talked to the boys on the stinky list individually.  "Hey bro, can we talk?  That dream I told all you guys about... you're on the wrong list and on the path to hell."  Not that I'm disparaging St. John; better that the boys would know, and hopefully they turned their hears back to God.

Our Lady also figured prominently in some of St. John's dreams.  In "A Fiendish Elephant," the large beast (=Satan) starts attacking boys on the playground.  Our Lady's mantle became enormous and she threw it around the boys to protect them; all their wounds are healed when they're taken in by her.  She cries out, "Venite ad me omnes!" Come all to me!

It made me smile.  Here is Our Heavenly Mother, loving us, fighting for us, protecting us.  From that dream, St. John gave advice to his boys that we can all take to heart: "Turn to her; call on her in any danger.  I can assure you that your prayers will be heard."

St. John Bosco, pray for us!

7QT: Lazy blogger edition, 10/4/14

--- 1 ---
Onto a new book!  Romano Guardini's The Lord.  I'll be putting up discussion posts if anyone has the book and is interested.  We're only on ch. 2 so far!  I remember reading bits and pieces of this book for one of my classes.  I was amazed at the depth of it... so much so that I bought copies as presents for a couple people.  And now, 10 years after I read those bits and pieces, I'm finally getting around to reading the whole thing (hopefully).  

--- 2 ---
I've also finally finished reading through the Gospel of Matthew, chapter by chapter.  I'd really recommend the commentary that I used: The Better Part by Fr. John Bartunek.  It's meant to assist in lectio divina but I mainly used it as a commentary.    

--- 3 ---
Speaking of great resources, did you know Scott Hahn has a website that has free Bible study resources?  Check out www.salvationhistory.com.  I just started listening to the one on Matthew's gospel.  Very cool so far!

--- 4 ---

Fall is here, and the cooler weather is a welcome reprieve from the hot sun.  Hot sun by Oregonian standards is anything over 80, I believe.  I love fall weather but I'm not looking forward to months and months of rain.    

--- 5 ---
New special saint in our lives: St. Leo the Great.  Pope in the 400s and a major influence on the Council of Chalcedon.  Pretty awesome pastor in a turbulent time: heresies like monophysitism and manichaeism.  Check out his famous Tome on the person of Christ.  In a related note, our baby Leo is due in three short months!  Can't wait!

--- 6 ---

The Dodgers have no postseason gear, unlike their new nemesis, the Cardinals.  Makes me very sad... and wishing they'd start chopping the payroll down.  

--- 7 ---
I can never think of a final QT.  Consistency, right? 

For more Quick Takes, visit Conversion Diary!

7 Quick Takes: Great News & French Saints edition, 7/24/14

First, with some fantastic news: 

Thanks be to God!  We're very excited and incredibly happy; our prayers have been answered!  15 weeks and all is well.  Please keep us in your prayers as our baby & my wife grows bigger and cuter.  

When we pray a litany of saints after the rosary, we (=I) sometimes go on and on.  Recently, I noticed how many saints on our list are French.  And I says to meself, says I, what a good 7QT that would be!  The title links for each saint go to the Catholic Encyclopedia entry on newadvent.org.

--- 1 ---
St. Joan of Arc

I've written about her before, here.  A great book on her life is by the French historian Regine Pernoud, The Retrial of Joan of Arc.  Lighthouse Catholic Media just started selling copies of Mark Twain's biography of St. Joan, for $5 (plus shipping)!  Well, it is abridged, I just discovered.  :(  Anyway, it's worth reading this brief Wikipedia page.  Mark Twain was fascinated with St. Joan and put a lot of work and research into this book.  


--- 2 ---

St. Bernadette
Extra points for St. Bernadette, a close, personal friend of the Blessed Virgin Mary.  Her life was marked by a great degree of suffering, both from her health and from her religious superior.  As a nun, her superior felt it was her mission to constantly tear down and humble the terrible pride she saw in  Bernadette.  I've come to appreciate this more as I've grown older: it's very difficult to be graceful/grace-filled in humbling situations.  I'm much more inclined to justify myself, get angry, etc. and those situations can completely ruin my day.  And there's St. Bernadette, who faced that on a near-daily basis, who responded by deepening her love for others.

--- 3 ---
St. Genevieve
St. Genevieve lived at the end of the 5th century and a little bit into the 6th century, and was awesome.  In addition to having a beautiful name (the frontrunner if we have a baby girl), she had a hand in saving Paris.  Twice!  The first was when Attila the Hun was approaching with his army; Genevieve exhorted the city to pray, fast, and trust in God as opposed to getting the heck out of there.  The residents did, and the Huns left Paris alone.  Next, when the city was under siege by Merowig (two kings before Clovis), Genevieve's influence caused Merowig and his successors to deal very kindly with the inhabitants of Paris.  (which would not have been a common thing in those days)

--- 4 ---

St. Martin of Tours
I've written about him before as well, and like St. Joan, there's a great book on him by Regine Pernoud.  His zeal for the faith--as well as his care of souls--drove him to preach the Gospel everywhere he could.  He risked death many times to convert the villages he visited, and the Lord was with him.  

--- 5 ---

St. Therese
Her spiritual autobiography is very well known; The Story of a Soul is a step inside the mind of a saint.  Another interesting read is a lesser-known book that was popular when I was in the seminary, Maurice and Therese.  St. Therese corresponded with a seminarian who was studying to be a missionary in Africa.  Worth picking up for any Therese-o-phile!

--- 6 ---

St. John Vianney
In English we know his French title, and St. John is commonly known as the Cure of Ars.  Ever notice?  St. John was so extraordinary that he was widely known in France as "the priest of Ars."  Nothing else needed saying; his reputation for sanctity spoke for him.  Wow.

--- 7 ---
So many saints are needed in every age, but ours especially.  It's sad that the Catholic faith is dying in France, as it is in many countries in the West.  For anyone that reads this: please say a prayer for the nation of France.  There is such a rich heritage of French saints, from the earliest days of the Church (e.g. St. Irenaeus who served there as a priest & bishop in the 2rd century).  May it please God to send more saints to France in our day!

For more Quick Takes, visit Conversion Diary!

Saint Joan of Arc, Flower of France

Sometime while I was in college, there was a brief craze of movies about St. Joan of Arc.  That is, if you count a T.N.T. miniseries starring Leelee Sobieski and a terrible movie starring Milla Jovovich.  The miniseries was decent, and Leelee Sobieski was a pretty good fit for the role.  The movie, called "The Messenger," portrayed St. Joan as a charlatan who invented her visions & voices in order to seek revenge on the violent death of her sister.  I have very little good things to say about it and it angers me that the reputation of such a great saint was defamed.

No matter.  What prompts me to write about St. Joan is a book written by French historian Regine Pernoud.  So much has been written on St. Joan's condemnatory trial--but since that was technically an ecclesiastical trial (however twisted and politically motivated it was), St. Joan had to be "rehabilitated" (as Pernoud calls it) from being a relapsed heretic.  In terms of ink, nobody who writes about St. Joan seems to care about the rehabilitation trial!  Before Pernoud's book, I don't know if there was anything written in English on the subject... only in French.   

Pernoud's The Retrial of Joan of Arc: The Evidence for Her Vindication covers the trial that occurred twenty-five years after her death.  Many witnesses from the trial were still alive, including those that passed judgment on her.  Witnesses from all parts of St. Joan's life were called to testify to her character; her mother, childhood friends, her soldiers, priests, and bishops.  In reading this book, I gained a great appreciation for St. Joan.  She is commonly known for her military exploits, but that's not what made her a saint!

The testimony of the witnesses was overwhelming.  All described her as a kind, thoughtful girl.  She participated in the sacraments as often as she could.  She was widely held to be a good Catholic in word and deed.  

Her time as a soldier was also marked by sanctity.  She held a high standard for herself, but also expected the same for those around her.  Soldiers knew not to take the name of the Lord in vain around her; she chewed out many a man for doing so.  Prostitutes were not allowed in the camps and were literally chased away if they tried to join the camp.  More than one soldier noticed an odd thing about her great chastity: they lost the ability to lust after women when around her.  

We speak in hushed tones, respecting the heck out of mystics like St. John of the Cross, St. Teresa of Avila, and many others.  Don't forget that St. Joan was a mystic, too!  Her voices and visions were a privilege afforded to very few.  A simple, illiterate farm girl from Domremy, one of the least by worldly standards.  

As St. Joan was tied to the stake and the fire stoked, she cried out to Jesus, begging him for mercy.  One of the bishops present wept openly and bitterly.  One of the English soldiers, who boasted that he'd  personally bring the fuel for her burning, witnessed St. Joan's execution.  He, too, was moved to tears and went to confession immediately after St. Joan's death.  

Let's remember that the Church declared her a saint for possessing a rare quality of holiness--not for being popular, not for being a military hero.  

St. Martin of Tours

I just finished reading a book on St. Martin of Tours by Regine Pernoud, a French historian who has written extensively on French saints and the Middle Ages.  I was very impressed with St. Martin; my only exposure to him was through church art.  He is famously depicted cutting his cloak in half and giving it to a beggar.  After his time as a soldier came to an end, he was popularly elected bishop of Tours.  The people of his diocese wanted him as their shepherd for his extraordinary sanctity.

One of the main things that really struck me about St. Martin was that simple holiness.  Pernoud makes the observation that, in the 300s, with martyrdoms so fresh in the memory of Christians, it's remarkable that St. Martin was widely known & honored.  He didn't get fed to the lions; he wasn't a hermit in the desert, battling demons (Anthony of the Desert); he didn't get exiled or take part in any dogma-defining councils (Athanasius); he wasn't a giant theological mind (Ambrose, Augustine).  He was holy, working hard in a profession--bishop--that he didn't choose or feel worthy to hold.  Had it been up to him, Martin would've lived a quiet life as a monk.

The other main thing that struck me was all the miracles that he performed.  A large portion of them seemed to come in his evangelical efforts.  He frequently traveled into rural areas to convert the pagans there... and that involved destroying their objects of worship.  To do that was brazen, to say the least.  But just as God revealed Himself to His chosen people in words and deeds, Martin followed suit.  He preached and worked wonders, giving verbal and visual evidence of the power of the Gospel.

Looking at the Catholic Church now... it's rather obvious to say that we need more St. Martins around.  Those of simple faith that enrich every person they come into contact with.  In every age, the Church needs saintly folks like that.

In this post-post conciliar era, I think we as Catholics need to rediscover our identity.  A big part of that is a rediscovery of our liturgical identity: in the words of Fr. Z, "save the liturgy, save the world."  That's not to say we have to do everything like we used to--not at all.  If anything, the Church could use some bureaucratic streamlining.  Yes, a certain amount of bureaucracy is necessary, but as Bl. John Henry Newman said, institutionalization is a more efficient destroyer of the Church than persecution.

As frustrating as these times can be, it's comforting to think that there have been many such as St. Martin.  They experienced similar difficulties; they dealt with secular opposition; they lived in a world that didn't seem to know or care about Christ.  And in spite of all that (perhaps because of it), they still lived marvelously holy lives.  Sanctity is available to all--no matter the year, no matter the age.  It's not the times that are so unique in their difficulty.  Developing virtue, conquering vice, and putting the blood, sweat, tears in?  THAT is the biggest challenge.

St. Martin, pray for us!