Ruminations

THIS LITTLE REFLECTION draws upon remarks by two very different mentalities: one that of Richard Rorty, among the most prominent of contemporary American philosophers (recently deceased), and the other that of Albert Einstein, who needs no sobriquet except to say that he was also a remarkable musician of the highest order, something about him few realize. Especially that the love of music in his soul might have had something to do with his insights into physics.

Rorty doesn't think that objective truth is possible. Einstein seems to feel differently. The contrast in their two mind sets could not be more stark.

The selections, below, illustrate this. The quote from Rorty illustrates what you can do and understand about life’s big questions when the only thing you trust is your own thoughts. i.e., what comes from you, the way Rorty does, and what you can do when you open your mind, i.e., what you can do when you stop thinking and start listening, the way Einstein does.

RICHARD RORTY: (p. 126, Richard Rorty, Take Care of Freedom and Truth Will Take Care of Itself. Edited and with an Introduction by Eduardo Mendieta)

“The claim that you should stop asking whether your views are those of the universe, or whether they correspond to the intrinsic nature of reality, or whether they are epistemologically sound, is a claim about the form that intellectual life should take. To say it should become relativistic is obviously the wrong way. To say it should become anti-absolutist makes a certain amount of sense—at least if you take absolutism to mean the view that the right beliefs are made right not by social agreement but by something large and nonhuman such as God or the Real.

ALBERT EINSTEIN: (passim, from Einstein, by Walter Isaacson)

“Mozart's music is so pure and beautiful that I see it as a reflection of the inner beauty of the universe itself," he told a friend. "Of course," he added in a remark that reflected his view of math and physics as well as of Mozart, "like all great beauty, his music was pure simplicity" (p. 14).

What Einstein appreciated in Mozart and Bach was the clear architectural structure that made their music seem “deterministic” rather than composed. "Beethoven created his music," Einstein once said, but "Mozart's music is so pure it seems to have been ever-present in the universe." He contrasted Beethoven with Bach. “I feel uncomfortable listening to Beethoven. I think he is too personal, almost naked. Give me Bach, rather, and then more Bach” (p. 38).

[Einstein’s] appreciation for music, and especially for Mozart, may have reflected his feel for the harmony of the universe. “Music, Nature, and God became intermingled in him in a complex of feeling, a moral unity, the trace of which never vanished" (p. 14). (This latter quote is from Moszkowski’s conversation with Einstein, found on p. 14).

Music was no mere diversion [for Einstein]. On the contrary, it helped him think. “Whenever he felt that he had come to the end of the road or faced a difficult challenge in his work," said his son Hans Albert "he would take refuge in music and that would solve all his difficulties." The violin thus proved useful during the years he lived alone in Berlin, wrestling with general relativity. "He would often play his violin in his kitchen late at night, improvising melodies while he pondered complicated problems," a friend recalled. "Then, suddenly, in the middle of playing, he would announce excitedly, 'I’ve got it!' As if by inspiration, the answer to the problem would have come to him in the midst of music” (p. 14).

In the midst of listening, we might add, for the art of improvisation (and invention in general, no?) is the art of listening to the notes (and notions) that are being given at that moment in time. There is always something in creative, groundbreaking achievements that is given, that does not come from us. Something that surprises the artist and thinker no less than the rest of us who witness it. That, dear Rorty, is something perhaps you too know by now.

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A Father and His Son

I HAVE COME TO UNDERSTAND that there are things that a son must learn about himself that can only be learned through a father, or someone functioning as a father. One of those things is the special thrill of cooperative work, experienced when a young son is invited to work alongside his father on some project and then at some point is allowed to grab hold and do some operation by himself. The boy fumbles a bit and his father reaches to steady his hand or correct an angle, and for a moment it looks like it might end in disaster. But then suddenly the work falls into place and the boy hears his father utter those magic words, “Nice going, son.” The pleasure such praise arouses in a boy cannot be overstated. But more important than that, a boy's introduction into cooperative work with his father, and the experience of being trusted with a piece of that work and of being able to accomplish it, all to the music of his father's praise, takes the boy out of himself and of that world his mother had nurtured him in since his birth. A new appetite is being aroused, moving the boy to leave that world and trail after his father, hungry for more of this male affirmation. And to the extent that the father stops to satisfy this need in his son, the child quite naturally becomes his.

A mature and healthy father is thus able to guide his son into experiences of the objective world, and open him up to the satisfactions of addressing that world, of confronting its problems and solving them, however minute the scale initially. And he corrects his son too, in a way that enables the son to accept it, teaching him the need to conform to a reality outside himself, to find the right angle, apply just the right pressure, use the correct tool, face a mistake like a man and re-do the operation until it is right, and so on. In the process, the son absorbs his father's values and way of seeing things, of walking and talking, and more importantly the boy absorbs his father's self-confidence, his patience and objectivity, and learns through all this the ego-pleasure of standing on his own two feet and coping. In short he discovers the pleasures and discipline of being a man. It is not something a mother can accomplish for her son, or a wife for her husband. Thus from the hands of a father, or an older man functioning as a father, the son experiences desires and satisfactions of a kind he otherwise would not suspect existed. Without a functioning father, unaware of the manly satisfactions that await his struggle with an objective order, the boy will seek gratification elsewhere, in imagination and in extensions of that easy, intimate, accepting world where the mother's love was originally felt and cherished. In the process, the son withdraws from his father, assuaging the guilt with bitter reflections about the old man's indifference. The boy grows up a rebel, secret or overt, and the father of such a rebel becomes at worst a roadblock to be knocked aside, and at best an irrelevance, like an out-of-season window piece that no one pays attention to.

This is the story of many today. Young boys have a natural longing for a relationship with their fathers. By nature they look to him but increasingly, for whatever reason, he is not there for them, not in a way that really matters. It is not a issue of blame; many fathers today were essentially fatherless themselves. But whatever the case, the fatherless boy now looks to his mother and comes to believe that whatever it was he needed would come only from women's hands. But no woman, however loving and supportive, can ever quite make up for that father and the ineffable thrill a father confers when he tells the boy at his side, “Good work, son.”

One can hear St. Joseph saying the same words to Jesus as the boy stood at his side in the family workshop and lent his small hands to some task. And is not this the same affirmation the mature Jesus received from his heavenly father that time at the river Jordan? This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. What sort of life does a man have when this affirmation was missing in his formative years? What restless lifelong hunger does its absence give rise to?

( First appeared in The Wanderer, June 18th, 2009. Used with permission.)

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October 1st2 - On the Feast of the Little Flower

(At Adoration, before the Holy Blessed Sacrament)

The graces you have been given are not for you alone. That is why I move you more to pray for souls, the souls of friends, relations, people you have worked with, dealt with, people who have crossed your path or whose path you have crossed, souls who in some way have left a mark on your memory. The mark is there so that you will pray for them. But pray for them in this new way I teach you now.

My Spirit resides in each of these souls. Unite yourself with My Spirit in them and beg My Spirit to pray for them, with groanings, as St. Paul said, asking for what they themselves do not know to ask for or even care to ask for. Let your prayer for them become their prayer as it becomes My prayer in them, for them, to the glory and honor of My Father, that His Justice may be satisfied even as He pours His Mercy into these souls, as you pray for them, in this way.

Do you see? I am showing you how your prayer for souls you have known, and in some cases loved, can become My prayer, a prayer that the Father of Mercy cannot refuse.

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An Interesting Tale from India

TODAY AT MASS (Third Week of Lent) the OT reading was from the Book of the Prophet Jeremiah. The Lord complains about the disregard the people have shown to his voice. "They do not pay heed," He tells the prophet. "They walked in the hardness of their evil hearts and turned their backs, not their faces, to me."

In his homily about this, our priest from India told us an interesting story about this turning of one's back, not one's face, to God. This priest belongs to a missionary order (of St. Thomas) and at one point in his career served in a little village in Kashmir.

The village was chiefly Muslim but right next to the mosque was a small Catholic chapel and every day a nun would come and expose the Blessed Sacrament for Adoration during the entire day. Now Muslim village girls attended school at the mosque and when school was let out in the afternoon, on their way home, the girls would come into the chapel and spend a few minutes before the Blessed Sacrament. When they got up to leave, rather than turn around and expose their back to the Sacrament, they would always back out until they got to the chapel door, not wanting to insult the Holy One.

Most amazing when you think about it, how little we understand the way God moves the hearts of people different from us. Our Lady in Medjugorje is said to have told one of the visionaries that the holiest person in that town was a Muslim woman. Labels. doctrines, beliefs are important, certainly, but for all their importance, they are nothing compared to what God looks to find in the heart.

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The Hurdle of Holiness

AT THE END OF BERNANOS' great novel Diary of a Country Priest, the dying priest, overwhelmed with so much human waywardness and misery in the country village where he served, cries out "What does it matter, all is grace!". And every Catholic worth his salt (i.e..anyone who cares about holiness) has to nod at this. For the movement of the soul that brings it close to God (i.e., sanctification) is a pure, unearned gift of grace. It is not something we do. not that our human will isn't involved of course.

But who has not been exposed to the view that, fine points of theology aside, if we fail to become holy it is because we have failed to make the effort. And, if we examine our consciences, isn't it so that we don't make the effort because holiness seems altogether too high a hurdle for us. Which attitude implies, does it not, that in this matter of holiness, we see ourselves as the principal agent. The burden of becoming holy is our burden.

Grace is needed of course, but we think it's needed in the way a car needs gas. So sure, without gas, the car can't go anywhere, but the car is ours and we're the driver. So. if we go anywhere in our car, the last thing we think of crediting for our getting there is the gasoline.

Yet the Church teaches that grace is nothing less than the life of Christ and his Spirit in us. And anyone who gets close to God knows that he himself is not the one who got him or her there. We have to make efforts, of course, but those efforts consist in giving over the driver's seat to God, countless times a day... Not easy for those of us who like to drive.

All of us are just passengers in the car that God is driving, but because our head is moving, we think we have the principle of movement in ourselves. But of course it just ain't so!

Listen to what Jesus said about this, in a private revelation, to a very astute theologian and Servant of God:

"Think very much of this, that I ask you only to give Me what I have given you, to love Me with My love; and realize, therefore, that the reason and purpose of everything you do is to allow Me to act in you. And the more you try to do this, the more you will believe in My love for you––because you will have permitted Me to give it to you more. You must use your freedom for this alone, to allow Me to act in you, to live in you. And the more you permit Me to love you, the more I will show you what you are in yourself, your utter misery without Me––not to reject you, but to draw you more and more closely to My Heart. It is My delight to see you trust Me more and more as you see more and more your own misery. It is my joy to give you this precious grace of boundless trust in My Love for you. That is how I rectify you; that is how you become Me."

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NOTE: The following is a private revelation to a contemplative Poor Clare nun, excerpted from The Spiritual Legacy of Sister Mary of the Holy Trinity

(Rockford, Illinois: Tan Books and Publishers, 1981), # 288

THE GREAT EVIL OF PROTESTANTISM is that it deprives so many souls of goodwill of an immense share of graces obtained through My Passion and which are conveyed to you through the Sacraments.

Ah, how it limits My action in souls who do not seek Me further and do not "follow" me further because they believe that they have responded definitively to My call once and for all....

The great evil of Protestantism is that error wears the mask of truth.

Much courage and deep personal labor is needed to discover the mask, to reject it, then to come humbly to the Source of Truth to ask for His light and His strength.

"Let your light shine before men," in order that they may understand that your Church is Christ, is the Truth,"

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The Remarkable Story of Helen Keller

I cannot explain it; but when difficulties arise, I am not

perplexed or doubtful.

I know how to meet them… It is wonderful

(Anne Sullivan)

THE REMARKABLE STORY OF HELEN KELLEER is famous, how an inspired teacher by the name of Anne Sullivan took this blind, deaf, and dumb child, so intelligent and yet so cruelly shut out from the world about her, and through a combination of unfailing effort and uncanny inspiration, led her into the world of knowledge and understanding until, in the end, Helen Keller became a personage of great learning and truly remarkable nobility of spirit. From Anne Sullivan's account, it was an almost impossible task she set out for herself. Before she came into Helen's life at the age of seven, Helen was literally uncontrollable, willful, fitful, and virtually animal-like in her behavior. At the dinner table, she would reach into other people's dishes and just take what she liked, and should they attempt to discipline her, her family could not endure Helen's wild tantrums. This was the situation Helen's father asked Anne Sullivan to address.

Anne described her new charge in a letter written at the time. “She is very quick-tempered and willful, and nobody, except her brother James, has attempted to control her. The greatest problem I shall have to solve is how to discipline and control her without breaking her spirit… Don't worry. I'll do my best and leave the rest to whatever power manages that which we cannot.”

A bit later, Anne Sullivan would write to this same correspondent, “As I wrote you, I meant to go slowly at first. I had an idea that I could win the love and confidence of my little pupil by the same means that I should use if she could see and hear. But I soon found that I was cut off from all the usual approaches to the child's heart. She accepted everything that I did for her as a matter of course, and refused to be caressed, and there was no way of appealing to her affection or sympathy or childish love of approbation… Thus it is, we study, plan and prepare ourselves for a task, and when the hour for action arrives, we find that the system we have followed with such labor and pride does not fit the occasion; and then there's nothing for us to do but rely on something within us, some innate capacity for knowing and doing, which we did not know we possessed until the hour of our great need brought it to light.”

In a letter to a friend, Miss Sullivan wrote: “I am glad Mr. Anagnos [her own teacher] thinks so highly of me as a teacher. But 'genius' and 'originality' are words we should not use lightly. If, indeed, they apply to me even remotely, I do not see that I deserve any laudation on that account.” She goes on to say, “And right here I want to say something which is for your ears alone. Something within me tells me that I shall succeed beyond my dreams. I know that she [Helen] has remarkable powers, and I believe that I shall be able to develop and mould them. I cannot tell how I know these things. I had no idea a short time ago how to go to work; I was feeling about in the dark; but somehow I know now, and I know that I know. I cannot explain it; but when difficulties arise, I am not perplexed or doubtful. I know how to meet them; I seem to divine Helen's peculiar needs. It is wonderful.”

And succeed she did, and with almost lightening speed managing to tame this wild creature and open up her mind to language, ideas, culture and things of the spirit, as we know from Helen Keller’s own remarkable autobiography. Word of Anne Sullivan’s accomplishments spread rapidly and she was quickly recognized as having done something no one ever thought possible. That Miss Sullivan resisted adulation and refused to take credit says much about this woman and indeed helps explain why she was able to do what she did.

–diarist

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On Creativity and Inspiration

A FAMOUS FRENCH SCULPTOR took it upon himself to make a statue of Mary as Bernadette had described her. Being a well-established sculptor, the artist couldn't escape his own artistic impulses and tastes and what he came up with in the end, despite its artistic merit, profoundly disappointed Bernadette. The artist, so used to public acclaim, suffered a deep interior humiliation upon seeing her reaction on the occasion of its unveiling. To Bernadette, the statue had nothing to do with her vision. This illustrates well, I think, the difference between originality and authenticity in any work of art. It also illustrates, does it not, the difference between creativity and inspiration.

There is a difference between creativity and inspiration in art. The former may be thought of as something coming from the artist, something which he originates and which expresses his ideas, imagination, and impulse. In this the creative artist is imitating the creative activity of God, but the artist is not thereby necessarily reflecting God. More likely it reflects the artist himself and his unique genius. Inspiration, on the other hand, is always something which comes to the artist as a gift, something which, in a real sense, surprises the artist precisely because he did not know he had it in him to do this thing. In a real sense the artist becomes an instrument, and the real author of the work is the heavenly source that inspired it. (There can be infernal inspirations too, no doubt.)

Great works of art, it must be said, contain both elements—creative genius and inspiration—and it would be difficult if not impossible to draw the line between them. Everything is always received, as Aristotle said, “according to the mode of the recipient,” including inspiration; so even the inspired writings of Scripture have the stamp of their human authors and their unique personality, nature, and genius.

But having said that, there is still a distinction to be made here. We can discern it most of all in iconography where the artist's individual, creative impulse is consciously kept at bay so that inspiration may be everything in the work. The monographer minimizes his own impulses and opens himself to inspiration by means of prolonged prayer and fasting. The iconographies does not sign the work and thinks of it and speaks of it as something done merely “by the hand of,” i.e., under the inspiration of someone else.

Anyone who has spent quiet time before an icon, not just flipping through an art book and admiring the pictures, or even studying them for their artistic value, symbolism, or sheer beauty, but being quiet and letting the image speak to him, allowing it to convey the intended presence, anyone happy enough to have done this in any real sense knows that icons are of a different order than the religious art of the West. For all their greatness as artists, a Michelangelo or a DaVinci cannot convey to us what the icons of orthodoxy convey, icons such as the Theotokos of Vladimir, or the Pantocrator at St. Catherine Monastery in the Sinai, to name but two of the more famous of the many Orthodox icons produced in this fashion. The production of all true icons is closely connected to both the common liturgical experience and to the private prayer life of their creators, or more precisely, the instrumentalists of their creation. And for that reason, these icons are exceptional not as marks of artistic genius, but as portals to a spiritual order, pointing to something beyond the icon itself, and never, we understand at length, to the artist.

It is said that a serious monographer may fast and pray for as much as thirty days before commencing an icon. And it never enters into his head to innovate or do something that leaves a personal, stylistic mark of his own making. Yes, there are inevitable, inadvertent clues to the individual artist, of his talent and skill, but they are unintentional. And is it not so that the greatness of an icon derives from this very fact, that its monographer, through prayer and fasting, has allowed an authenticity received through spiritual practice to take the place of creative impulse?

–diarist

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"They know not what they do"

OUR LORD SAID that “Without me you can do nothing,” yet we see it is in the nature of Divine Providence that the sun shines on both those who hear Our Lord and those who do not, and in some measure the light of truth is given to people who do not even believe in truth's possibility and yet do some degree of good in the world. Such people, among them scientists, road builders, homemakers, accountants, taxicab drivers, all use the measure of truth they have to do that good and in that measure serve the common good. Only God knows the greater good we would effect in this world if our minds and hearts would pause and listen to his words: “Without me you can do nothing.” But he also said, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.”

–diarist

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The obedience of faith must be given to God

who reveals himself (John Paul II)

FROM THIS NOTION OF OBEDIENCE we learn that faith is not so much a "leap," as the Danish philosopher Kierkegaard suggests, as it is a “response.” Not a leap in the dark to someone we cannot tell is really there, but a response we make to light that has shined in that darkness, illuminating the one who beckons us. It is not blind faith that animates us then, but a signal, one we have received and responded to in a hidden place within us. This means that faith is not our doing so much as a right response to something God is doing in, to, and for us, and yes, with us, for nothing happens if we do not make our response.

Secular minds cannot understand a lively faith as something not engendered by ourselves, by dint of will borne of ignorance, or simple psychological need, a calculated leap to someone who for all we know is not there. But if faith is a leap of the will, it is a leap into arms that have invited us. No secular mind can understand this because what takes place takes place as a gift placed deep within the soul, unobservable and unfathomable to the unbeliever and the merely curious.

Faith is our yes to one who has made us aware of him. And to what he wants to give us and what he wants to ask of us, both in myriad ways, through Scripture, through the witness of those who surround us, through the things that happen to us in the course of our day, and most particularly through the quiet stirrings someplace deep within us. We can pay attention to these signals or ignore them, but whatever the case, they are not our doing.

This is why the Council and the Pope speak of faith as obedience. An obedient soul is a soul disposed to receive what is being given, and to do what is being asked, both in the order of belief and in the order of doing. An obedient soul is an attentive soul. The eyes of the handmaid are on the hands of the master. When the Master beckons, such a soul will answer.

–diarist

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What does it mean to "live by faith"?

CERTAINLY "LIVING BY FAITH" involves giving assent to a system of belief--we believe in the great doctrines of Christianity. You can't really live by (Christian) faith and not believe in these truths. But everyone I think would agree that "living by faith" means something more than just intellectual assent to a body of truths. The key word in living by faith is living. You not only have to assent to these truths, you have to live by them. So what do we mean when we say we live by faith, then? Living by faith means we behave in a certain way. That's obviously true: Our faith obliges us to do certain things and avoid doing other things. If we didn't observe them, we'd be seen as hypocrites or as Sunday Catholics, which is another word for the same thing. But does living a good life exhaust what it means to live by faith? Or even get to the heart of it?

Note the word "by" in the expression "living by faith." "By" here has the meaning "by means of". To live by faith means to live by means of faith. What does it mean to live by means of faith? Well, Jesus gives us the answer in one of his rebukes to Satan during that time of temptation in the wilderness. The devil wanted Jesus to turn stones into bread. Jesus said, "Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes out of the mouth of the Father."

To live by faith, then, means just that: to live by every word that comes out of the mouth of the Father. To listen to the Father and to abide by what He tells us. So yes, we have to subscribe to the teachings, the commandments, the doctrines, tenets and the obligations laid out, especially the law of love that Jesus announced in the Gospel. All these came out of the mouth of the Father, and we have to live by them.

But we aren't quite there yet. Jesus didn't say we were to live by every word that "came" out of the mouth of the Father, Jesus said we are to live by very word that "comes" out of the mouth of the Father. The verb is in the present tense: So what comes out of the mouth of the Father nowadays?

The answer is very simple. The word the Father speaks to us on a daily basis is what happens to us on a daily basis. The Father talks to us by what happens to us. This is not my idea. It's what the faith teaches (see below). What happens to us is the Father's will for us. We know the Father's will by what happens to us. What God wants is what happens. And what happens is what God wants. It's the same thing. Does that mean that God wants the evil things that happen? Not at all, the Father doesn't want them to happen, it is not his idea that they should happen, He derives no pleasure in their happening, but He allows them to happen, otherwise they couldn't happen. We can't know the fulness of God's purpose in allowing evil to occur, but we do know from Scripture that God allows evil to show us the consequence of our waywardness, when we ignore or oppose the word that comes out of his mouth. He allows this trouble so that we will come to our senses, like the Prodigal Son, and return to the Father. He allows bad things to happen because, as we know by faith, in the end all manner of things shall be made well. To live by faith means to trust that this is so.

We do have dark black moments in our lives. God asks us not only to accept them but to embrace them, hard as that may be to do.. He asks us to do this so that the good that He wants to bring about can be realized. If we have any doubts about this, think of Jesus and his Passion. We live by the word that comes out of the mouth of the Father when we accept it, embrace it, whatever it is, kiss the Father back with our fiat, be it done unto me, as Jesus and Mary expressed with their fiats.

Consider the Beatitudes, and how much these moving words of Jesus have to say about about living by faith.

--Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom--they who approach each moment humbly, ready to receive from God his word, his Will, knowing they have nothing of profit to bring to that moment except their poverty.

--Blessed are the hungry--those who accept want and do not curse God as the Israelites did in the desert--for they shall be satisfied.

--Blessed are they who mourn, for they shall be comforted--for He shall wipe away every tear from their eyes (Rev 21:4).

--Blessed are you when men revile you, and persecute you...on my account. . . . For your reward will be great in heaven--for then the Father will see his Son in you, for you will have been one who listened when Jesus said, "Follow Me" (Luke 6:21-23).

People who wonder why the world is the way it is today, should ponder this--What would the world be like if its inhabitants were living by faith, if everyone in the world used their minds to embrace God's Will as it is being revealed to us moment by moment all throughout the day? Certainly our world would be a very different place. Even nature would be peaceful. Until the end times, there would still be suffering, still be death, but the world would not be like anything we know. People would greet everything that happens with praise on their lips. Thank you Lord, I stubbed my toe. You just showed me I need to be more recollected in how I move my body. I'm trying to thank you Lord for this rotten toothache. I know it lets me share in your suffering. It gives me something to offer the Father. I know how precious offered sufferings are. And how beneficial for souls. But please, Lord, let this toothache pass. But in all things, even here, thy Will be done. Does this sound silly? Capricious? Or is it the stuff a life is made of lived by faith?

Strangers who meet would look at each other and smile, perhaps smiling right merrily at the thought that even this chance encounter falls within God's Providence, for a good and holy purpose, if only so that we can exchange warm smiles, or a good joke. Even an encounter with evil, which we have to expect in this life and which might well call for costly sacrifice on our part, even so, this evil would be resisted with manly confidence in the wisdom and ultimate victory of God, for we know that "wisdom shall laugh in the latter day."

Listen to what that wise doctor of souls,

Fr. J. P. de Caussade, S.J.,

has to say about all of this:

What happens to us each moment by God's design is for us the holiest, best and most divine thing... (p. 9).

The whole essence of the spiritual life consists in recognizing the designs of God for us at the present moment... This divine will, working in the soul of a simple ignorant girl by means of a few ordinary sufferings and actions, produces in the depths of her heart this mysterious fulfillment of supernatural life... (p. 9).

It is the designs of God that are the fulfillment of all our moments. They manifest themselves in a thousand different ways which thus become our successive duties, and form, increase and perfect the "new man" in us until we attain the full stature destined for us by divine wisdom... (p. 10).

As regards souls which may have acquired the habit of avoiding deliberate faults and faithfully fulfilling the duties of their state in life, all practical perfection may be reduced to this one principle: the exercise of a continual resignation to all the manifestations of the will of God, a complete self-abandonment to all the exterior or interior dispositions of his Providence, whether in the present or in the future; one signal fiat, or in St. Francis de Sales' words: "Yes, heavenly Father, I accept everything; yes, and always yes." This phrase said and repeated, without its being necessary that it should be pronounced interiorly, represents in a few words the great and short road of highest perfection because it tells of a continual union with the holy and adorable will of God.

There is no mystery about how to reach that point; only two things are necessary: firstly, the profound conviction that nothing happens in this world, in our souls or outside them, without the design or permission of God; now, we ought to submit ourselves no less to what God permits than to what he directly wills; secondly the firm belief that through the all-powerful and paternal Providence of God, all that he wills or permits invariably turns to the advantage of those who practice this submission to his orders (p. 133-134).

--from Self-Abandonment to Divine Providence.

Tan Books: Rockford, Ill. 1987.

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Judgments about others that oppose God’s intentions for them

EACH PERSON IN THE WORLD exists as an intention of God, who only intends that person’s good, who never brings anyone into being but for a good end. So when we decide someone is a bad person and leave it at that, are we not contravening God’s intentions? When we see the defects in another person, perhaps a misguided political leader or a nasty boss, and just want to write him off, are we not contending with God over that person? If we see these negative things and let it go at that, are we not adding to the distance that may already separate that soul from God? These judgments have their consequences, we may be sure.

It is true we cannot help judging people, calling a spade a spade. Truth is of God. But what we need to do, and I must learn to do, is never to stop at truth, but use it as a springboard to mercy, as Our Lord has done for us. Seeing what is wrong in a person is an occasion for merciful prayer. Then instead of employing truth to oppose God, we cooperate with him.

And the person we have prayed for will benefit, for God, given his intention for that individual in the first place, will surely hear our prayer. Then our seeing the truth about another’s faults will have served a divine purpose. For truth is our friend, and nothing draws down mercy where mercy is needed more than truth. Then we will be like the good Samaritan helping a man who is down, not the Pharisee who keeps to the other side of the road for his own comfort’s sake.

When I see what is wrong in others and do not extend a hand, a prayer, I am that Pharisee. Merciful Father, help me change my ways. Truth mixed with charity can save a man. Truth without it can ruin him.

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On the value of Prayer

I WAS PRAYING before the Blessed Sacrament today asking Jesus to bring his blessings upon a whole bevy of people I had known in my life, people who, I felt, might be needing help right now of one sort or another. But as I prayed I wondered if praying like this was pleasing to Our Lord, or even whether it really did these people any good. Then it seemed I heard Our Lord say:

My son, look at Me on the Cross. I took the Cross for each and every one of these for whom you are praying, without exception, and by so doing I stored up for each the means of his or her salvation. There is therefore a vast treasury in Heaven with infinite funds more than enough to purchase the salvation of every soul that ever lived or ever will live. But it is my Father’s will for his children, my brothers and sisters, those who follow me and wish to be my disciples, that they must be the one’s

who write the checks.

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Why Protestants become Catholic and vice versa

Protestants become Catholics because of what they see in the Church. Catholics become Protestants because of what they fail to see in the Church. It's never the other way around. No one becomes a Protestant by way of entering the One True Church. Protestants become Catholics because they see the Church and say "this is it for me". Catholics who leave the Church say "this ain't it for me anymore." The reasons for this are legion. If a Catholic becomes a Protestant, it may be because because somehow the One True Church has failed him. Or just possibly he may have failed to live up to the Church...God alone knows the answers.

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