Facing Our Immortality

Please join us! We meet Monday, March 11 at 6:30 pm Mountain time; 7:30 pm Central time

Sr.AnneMarie Walsh is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

Topic: I Can Love Myself Better

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“I Can Love Myself Better?”

Certain things are just obviously ridiculous. It’s hard to fathom how anyone could believe them.  Yet today, there are so many examples of people believing patently false ideas that you wonder how they have become so estranged from the truth.

If someone showed up seriously promoting the idea that The Encyclopedia Britannica was created by the random explosion of a typewriter, most people would laugh.   Yet people readily accept things much more ludicrous than that.  Many people believe that there is nothing greater than ourselves, that the universe in all its infinite, delicate, micro and macro details just happened, and that one day we (or “Science”) will figure it out, but that basically, there is a human explanation for it.  God is not necessary.  Man is the real measure of things. 

This kind of atheism allows for the unbridled reign of the ego. It effectively relegates God to the realm of superstition and religious fundamentalism, which may be the main reason people embrace it.  It allows them to override the voice of their own conscience and its warnings so that they may pursue the attractive lie at the heart of our own history of existence, which is that if we disregard God and “eat” whatever appeals to us, we will be like gods ourselves. We will be happy.

Even believers succumb to this when shopping around for a Church that will allow them to live the life they want without complete adherence to the laws and counsels of the Gospel.  One woman openly admitted this when she left her more traditional Church to become Unitarian.  She explained that in the Unitarian Church, she was free to divorce without question, and it was not a big deal. 

From the beginning, the struggle has always been to subordinate our ego to God.  In its fallen nature, the ego is an incredibly tenacious force powered by a kind of arrogance and selfishness. It makes itself the reference point for everything, usurping God’s sovereignty and right to be honored and revered as the source of all that is good, beautiful, and true.  One of the ill effects of pride is blindness.  How often we lament over those who can’t see.  How can it be, we say, that they can’t see how ridiculous their position is?  Pride.  It takes away our vision.

So, how does God break through our obstinate and exaggerated self-sufficiency?  He humbles us.  Through sickness, failures, suffering of various kinds, and seemingly irresolvable challenges and difficulties.  He shows us over and over again that we have no power of our own, that we need Him, and that the control we convince ourselves we have is an illusion.  He doesn’t do this to dominate us or control us.  He does this to liberate us from our own arrogance and blindness so that He can take care of us and introduce us to the deeper mysteries of His love for us, the unveiling of our real identity in Him, and all that He so impatiently wants to share with us as Our Creator, Lord, and Savior.

It will be important to remember this during times of great suffering when God will seem to abandon us even as a people.  St Augustine reminds us that “…God is a physician, and that suffering is a medicine for salvation, not a punishment for damnation.”  Anything that increases our humility is efficacious for us because it brings us back to Truth.  And Truth is incarnate in the Person of Jesus Christ.  Everything aligns itself in the light of His gaze, which is why Eucharistic Adoration is so powerful.  You submit yourself to the greatest power on earth when you humbly, simply, and confidently come before the Lord and allow Him to love you as He so much desires.

The healing of the world will come when enough people return to God and allow His love to blossom in them.  At his core, the atheist basically does not want God to love him.  His attitude, like the popular song, is:  I can buy myself flowers…I can love me better than you can…”. That’s the miserable life we choose until and unless we give up the pretense and surrender to the One who truly can love us better than we can.

1. Have you ever had the experience of God humbling you so He could free you from something in your life at the time?

2. Pope St. John Paul II pointed out several times that there is a connection between love and obedience.  We obey, yes, because of love.  But also, in obeying, we are actually allowing God to love us.  When we surrender to Him, when we comply with what He asks, He is able to increase His gifts in us; He is able to give us His gifts and to love us to the perfection of union with Himself.  Why do you think we struggle with obedience even when we know it’s good for us?

3. People talk about the rise of narcissism in the culture today.  In light of these considerations, what do you see as a major contributing factor?

4. What examples of pride and blindness do you see today?  This can be personal or from a broader scale.

Sr. Anne Marie Walsh is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting for Facing Our Immortality online support group. Join Zoom Meeting: Please use the link below. Included are the meeting ID and password. Our meeting begins at 6:30 pm MT.

Topic: Definitive Questions

Time: Feb 12, 2024 07:30 PM Central Time (US and Canada); (NB) 6:30 pm Mountain Time

https://zoom.us/j/95448669169?pwd=eUZ0MzNTczZTcG1jVFZUSUNNOGM3Zz09

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Prayer: Remember O Most Gracious Virgin Mary…

Definitive Questions

The saints often cast our meeting with God at the end of our time on earth in terms of a life review in which certain questions are implicit.  How have you loved?  Have you kept my commandments?  What do you have to show for the gifts you’ve been given?

There is another plausible question that the Lord might ask us and which we may not be expecting: How many disciples have you made? 

Currently, there are about 1.3 billion Catholics in the world (which boasts an 8.1 billion population). If every Catholic devoted time to making at least one disciple, one convert, it would go a long way toward fulfilling the mandate Our Lord gave us to make disciples of the nations. Converts and reverts are often so fervent that they set off a momentum of interest, which in turn draws other people in.  So, your conversion of one person can often indirectly result in the conversion of many more.

Jesus laments that the harvest is plenty, and the laborers are few.  In other words, there is no reason to argue about how many are lost vs. saved because it ultimately becomes an indictment against ourselves.  So many need not be lost if we are doing our job as Catholics. 

Yet, evangelization is a word that scares the ordinary person because it is often misinterpreted.  Most people do not see themselves in the light of the common definition of a missionary.  Most people dismiss the concept as meant for “professionals,” priests, religious, etc.

However, in our Baptism, we are all called to go forth and make disciples.  So, it is something we need to take seriously.  One way to understand how we might proceed is to look at the early Church and learn how they understood this mandate and how they moved to fulfill it.

What becomes obvious in reading the Acts of the Apostles is that the early Church practiced evangelism in several different ways.  The Apostles went out to the corners of the earth and founded communities of disciples whom they formed and equipped for ongoing growth.  However, the members of those communities practiced what has been called “oikos” evangelism.  Oikos is a Greek word which means house or household.  Household referred to immediate family but also included extended family, friends, business and social associates, and even servants or slaves and their families.  How often do you read that the conversion of one person often led to the conversion of the whole family, the whole household?

Oikos has to do with your sphere of influence, those people you share something in common with either through kinship, work, or social connections.  It was the basic social unit and one by which the Church grew because of the immediate links of relationship, influence, and communication.  This is the realm in which the ordinary person practices evangelism. 

Today, one of our most popular pastimes is to sit around and argue about the state of the world, the state of religion, the state of our culture, etc. Yet, how many people have the right to hear the truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ but have not heard it because of the passivity of believers? 

This Lent might be a good time to dip your toes into the work of evangelism.  Strengthen your own faith through prayer, and then consider one or two people you know who need to hear the truth of Jesus Christ and His saving power in their lives.  Begin praying for them daily and asking the Holy Spirit to give you opportunities to invite them to a deeper relationship with God, to show them what peace faith in God brings even during trial and difficulty, and to lead them to the deeper meaning of their life.

St. James tells us there is a tremendous reward when we work with Jesus in this way:

“My brothers, if anyone among you should stray from the truth and someone brings him back, he should know that whoever brings back a sinner from the error of his way will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.^”  James 5: 19-20. That’s the kind of heavenly return Jesus gives us for our little efforts.  There are no better deals in the whole universe!

1. The Scriptures point out that reaching the immediate family is not always easy.  “No prophet is without honor except in his own home…”. How can we move in Oikos Evangelism, given that challenge?

• Stop for a minute and think about how many people you know who are disconnected from God and need to hear the kerygma for the first time or need to be invited to draw near again.  How many do you know who have known God and practiced their faith and now have fallen away?  This requires a different approach.  What would the difference be?

• What special gifts do you think suffering in your own life might bring to a discussion about God with those who are far away from Him?

• What can you do when someone is not yet ready to “talk” about God?  What kinds of things can you do in the Spirit to make the ground softer and more receptive?

Life’s burdens come in many forms.  What is a burden for one may not be a burden for another.  But what is certain is that everyone either carries or has had to carry burdens in their lifetime.  

Of all the possible burdens that may come to us, it is wise to consider which are the heaviest, the most debilitating, and really the most unnecessary.  There is a difference between those that are essential in our lives and those holding us back from the life we were meant to live.

Essential burdens revolve around commitments and responsibilities necessary for growth, development, maturity, and our humanity in general, such as family and community demands, personal obligations, charitable outreach, care in times of illness, etc.

A story from the life of St. Jerome illustrates a kind of burden that is the opposite, that holds us back from the future that Jesus has for us.  

St. Jerome had just finished decades of work on translating the Bible from Hebrew to Latin.    It was around Christmas time, and Baby Jesus appeared to him and asked him what gift he would give to Him for his birthday.  Jerome responded by offering Him the work he had just completed.  Jesus was pleased but told Jerome He wanted more.  Jerome then offered Him his life, his heart, his prayer.  But each time, Baby Jesus asked for more.  Finally, Jerome asked Him, “What else can I give you?”  Jesus smiled and said: “Jerome, give me your sins!”

This is probably the heaviest burden people bear today: the sins, guilt, and regret of things chosen and done in their lifetimes.  This can be true even of those who regularly go to Confession.  We come out again, not really understanding our sins are gone. We confess like Protestants who believe only that their sins are covered over.  Catholics do not believe this.  We believe that once our sins are confessed, they are gone forever.  God remembers them no more; even the devil can no longer access them to accuse us.  

While penance and reparation are good and necessary, they are meant to strengthen us in our resolve and, in the grace of repentance, not become a new burden to carry.  Jesus does not stay stuck in our sins the way we do.  He does not constantly revisit them the way we do.  He wills to remember them no more.  They are gone.  Instead, Jesus beckons us to follow Him into the future.  It does us no good to stay back, clutching our forgiven sins as though they are still there.  And it is even more deleterious not to confess at all.  Unconfessed guilt can make us sick and so unbalanced psychologically, emotionally, and spiritually that we become incapable of building and living the kind of life that would make us and those around us happy. 

The movie The Mission illustrates this dynamic well.  Captain Mendoza, one of the main characters, a mercenary involved in the slave trade, kills his brother in a duel after finding him with his fiancé.  His regret is so powerful that it becomes a force for his own conversion, even bringing him to the point where he joins the Jesuits as a missionary to the native peoples.  His self-imposed punishment/penance is to drag a large net full of heavy armor and the tools of his mercenary life as they travel through the jungles to establish a mission among the people who live there.  At times on the journey, his brothers try to free him of his burden by cutting the rope that continually drags him backward.  But he doesn’t believe he is forgiven until finally, the native people he has exploited demonstrate forgiveness by cutting the rope that binds him to the past.

Rather than dragging the burden of sin into the new year, we also can be done with it once and for all. In the Confessional, the Priest who hears our Confession “in persona Christi,” in the Person of Christ, takes the sword of the Spirit and severs the sin, the regret, and the guilt of it from our lives.  This causes great rejoicing in heaven and, at the same time, fills our souls with the energy, hope, and joy in which Jesus can begin fulfilling His promises in us.

1. What are some of the common burdens people carry today?

• What do you think is meant by “Bear one another’s burdens, and so you will fulfill the law of Christ?” Galatians 6:2 

• What might be some unnecessary burdens we place on ourselves that actually hinder us in our relationship with God and with others?

• What are some ways we can lighten another’s load?

Sr.Anne Marie Walsh’s Zoom Meeting

Please join us Time: Oct 9, 2023 06:30 PM Mountain Time/7:30 Central Time

https://zoom.us/j/92645572023?pwd=S2Q2dHdHUytwVnRuSGROUnhza1A3UT09

Meeting ID: 926 4557 2023 Passcode: 084331

Opening Prayer: The Memorare

REMEMBER, O most gracious Virgin Mary, that never was it known that anyone who fled to thy protection, implored thy help, or sought thy intercession was left unaided. Inspired with this confidence, I fly to thee, O Virgin of virgins, my Mother; to thee do I come; before thee I stand, sinful and sorrowful. O Mother of the Word Incarnate, despise not my petitions, but in thy mercy, hear and answer me. 

Amen

An Examination of Love

One of the benefits of regularly examining our conscience is to make us more sensitive to God and His ways so that we do not become lax in identifying areas of sin and weakness in our lives. Sin always affects our intimacy with God. It spiritually (and psychologically) distances us from God and inclines us to make light of what He requires or asks us to do. The examination of conscience, though, is not just about sin. It’s also about self-knowledge in the area of our relationship with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It allows us to look over the day and see where we were mindful of God and, at the same time, where we lost His presence amid our normal activities and experiences. We learn, often on a personal level, about what pleases God and what displeases Him.  This helps us progress in prayer and our striving for holiness. If you sincerely love God, you want to know what draws Him but also what pushes Him away.

Many of us earnestly desire to become more united and conformed to Christ, to love God more and more. But we don’t always know exactly what that means or what it looks like.  To love someone is often said to mean that we will the good for that person.  This means that regardless of feelings, we can love even our enemies or those who have hurt us deeply by willing their sanctification and salvation.  But obviously, this definition doesn’t help us when it comes to loving God because God is pure goodness in Himself.  We cannot will anything for Him that He does not already have.  So, our love for Him must be expressed differently. 

Jesus shows us two primary ways.  1. We can love what God loves. 2. We can seek to please Him in all things, just as people who love each other do.  Jesus expresses His love for the Father this way:  “I love the Father…I do just as the Father has commanded me, “ Jn 14:31  and, “My food is to do the will of the one who sent me and to finish his work.”  Jn 35:34. This is what feeds the soul of Jesus, and it is what should feed our own souls as well.

We can ask ourselves first:  What does God love?  What does the Father love most?  Because I want to love that too!

The answer is that the Father loves His Son the most.  St. John of the Cross says that God is offended when we ask for certain gifts (perhaps prophecy or healing or word of knowledge) as though there is anything He has held back from us.  He has given us the fullness of all He has to give in giving us His only begotten Son.  There is nothing more than that.

So then, to answer how we please God becomes easy. We please Him by loving Jesus, listening to Him, and becoming more and more like Jesus in our own unique way.  (Remember, the saints all manifest the holiness of God, but they are also very different from each other, simply one facet in the multi-faceted reflection of Christ, present and at work in the world in His Mystical Body.)  We can never plumb the depths of the riches of Christ!  Even after the 117 billion people who have lived on the face of the earth since time began and who each were called to live out some aspect of Christ in their lives (at least by potential), we have barely scratched the surface.

And so, what pleases the Father most?  Anything or anyone that resembles His Beloved Son; anyone that becomes like Him and united to Him.

Children often grasp this quite easily because their love is not yet cautious, suspicious, or calculating.  As one young child observed: “When you pray, God the Father looks into your heart to see if His Son is there.”  This is the starting point for real intimacy with God.  Look at your own interior life.  What does the Father see when He looks in your heart?  That will tell you where you are and where you need to go. 

Questions for silent reflection:

1.  What does doing the will of the Father look like in your life?

2.  Our relationship with God, with the three Divine Persons, is very personal and unique.  No two relationships are alike.  What have you found is pleasing to the Father in your everyday walk with Him?

3.  What are some of the aspects of Christ that attract you?

4.  What reality of Christ would you like to be able to live out more deeply?

Please join us for our upcoming session with Sr. Anne Marie Walsh, SOLT. It takes place Monday 06/12/23 from 6:30 pm to 8:00 pm MDT. Please click the link below for automatic entry. God Bless you.

Click on Zoom: https://us05web.zoom.us/j/4537185699?pwd=emRVOEZwMTY1eGN1bzYrU2VldWhiZz09

Opening Prayer: The Memorare

REMEMBER, O most gracious Virgin Mary, that never was it known that anyone who fled to thy protection, implored thy help, or sought thy intercession was left unaided. Inspired with this confidence, I fly to thee, O Virgin of virgins, my Mother; to thee do I come; before thee I stand, sinful and sorrowful. O Mother of the Word Incarnate, despise not my petitions, but in thy mercy hear and answer me. 

Amen

Becoming True Influencers

“Your beliefs don’t make you a good person. Your behavior does.” This is a meme that floats around Facebook every so often, but the idea has been around from the beginning of time. It’s been noted that the devil believes in God but is no better off for it. Just as being in the presence of Jesus, as the Pharisees often were, did not benefit them much either because of their obstinacy and hardness of heart.

We often find this division in our own souls. We may sincerely believe something and yet keep it sectioned off somewhere in our minds where it has no real influence over our everyday life or behavior. Perhaps we say we believe things, especially regarding our faith because we have some vague notion that we are supposed to believe those things. Yet they don’t influence our actions as they should.

Most of us would never want to be an occasion of sin for someone else. Yet we often are, if not by intent, then by carelessness and lack of awareness. This becomes, then, something to consider carefully in our own lives.  

A few examples can illustrate this. In our religious community, one unwritten rule from our Founder is that we don’t drink alcohol. This is not because alcohol in and of itself is evil or sinful. But it is because we don’t want to be a source of temptation to those brothers and sisters who have a weakness in this area. Even before this, because alcoholism is generationally prevalent in my family, we had to come to the point where we agreed that there would be no alcohol at family gatherings. There was a lot of resistance to this at first. Why should we suffer because someone else can’t stop once they start? Yet the overreaction missed the point that if we can’t come together and enjoy one another for a few hours without alcohol, we may have a problem also.  

This principle applies as well to the whole area of modesty. In this, we are sadly ruled all too often by the world’s norms and not by genuine concern for our own dignity and the dignity of others. Modesty means behaving in a way that does not become a source of temptation to others. This is why we cover or veil ourselves in attractive or tasteful ways but in ways that are not suggestive or seductive. We protect ourselves this way from the lustful eyes of others and the sinful overreaching that too much visible flesh can entice them into. If we want people to see our real person, we don’t blind them with too much physicality, which they won’t get past to the more essential things. At the same time, we dampen the possible temptation that would come from dressing more provocatively. Telling the Lord, we just wanted to be attractive will not hold much weight in the light of the destruction that sin brings with it, even if it wasn’t directly our own sin.

A third example has to do with anger. How many potential sins we can cause when we over-indulge our anger? Anger is a contagious emotion. If we are not careful, we can incite anger in others, especially those who generally sympathize with us anyway. We can cause all sorts of gossiping, rash judgment, detraction, reputation destruction, and numerous other violations of charity.  

Imagine being held accountable for all the sins we have committed (and remember, Confession permanently wipes them away) but also for the sins we have caused others to commit. These are areas that need to be examined; otherwise, we risk, as the Chinese proverb says, “burning false incense before a True God.”

There is no getting around the fact that we influence others for better or worse. And today, being an “influencer” has become a prize designation. In an age where influencers push worldly trends, our counter-witness must be as influencers that point immortal souls beyond this world to the eternity that awaits them. This is to fulfill the real purpose of influence while preserving us from the guilt of causing sin in others.

Questions for silent reflection:

1. What are some ways you have found to be a positive influence in other people’s lives.

2. Who has had the greatest influence in your life (apart from Jesus). 

3. What areas today need a Christian influence and what would that look like?

4. What qualities or characteristics do you think make someone influential?

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Please join us for our upcoming session with Sr. Anne Marie Walsh, SOLT. It takes place Monday 04/17/23 from 6:30pm to 8:00pm MDT. Please click the link below for automatic entry. God Bless you.

Click on Zoom: https://us05web.zoom.us/j/4537185699?pwd=emRVOEZwMTY1eGN1bzYrU2VldWhiZz09

Opening Prayer: The Memorare

REMEMBER, O most gracious Virgin Mary, that never was it known that anyone who fled to thy protection, implored thy help, or sought thy intercession was left unaided. Inspired with this confidence, I fly to thee, O Virgin of virgins, my Mother; to thee do I come; before thee I stand, sinful and sorrowful. O Mother of the Word Incarnate, despise not my petitions, but in thy mercy hear and answer me. 

Amen

Forgotten Intercessors

Perhaps one of the world’s most frequently found sufferings is the grief that comes with miscarriage and/or the death of a young child. Family and friends who could be strong supports often overlook the profound impact the loss of a child has because they are uncomfortable and don’t know what to say, or saints preserve us because they don’t think it’s any big deal. “You can always have another” is like saying, “If your spouse dies, no big deal. You can always find someone else.” This is not the language of love nor of respect for the dignity of another living soul, a person who becomes present at the moment of conception.

St. Zelie Martin, (St. Therese’s mother) who lost 4 little ones, recounted:  “Many persons said to me: ‘It would have been better for you if you had never had them.’ I could not bear that kind of talk. I do not think that the sorrows and the troubles endured could possibly be compared with the eternal happiness of my children with God. Besides, they are not lost to me forever; life is short and filled with crosses, and we shall find them again in Heaven.”

St. Bernard of Clairvaux, a Doctor of the Church, said in response to parents asking about the fate of their miscarried child: 

“Your faith spoke for this child. Baptism for this child was only delayed by time. Your faith suffices. The waters of your womb – were they not the waters of life for this child? Look at your tears. Are they not like the waters of Baptism? Do not fear this. God’s ability to love is greater than our fears. Surrender everything to God.” 

Mother Angelica’s prayer is also a poignant reminder of the personal grief parents wrestle with. The perspective of God here is, at the same time, tremendously consoling. 

“My Lord, my baby is dead! 

Why, my Lord—dare I ask why? He will not hear the whisper of the wind or see the beauty of its parents’ face—he will not see the beauty of Your creation or the flame of a sunrise. Why, my Lord?” 

“Why, My child—I will tell you why. 

You see, the child lives. Instead of the wind, he hears the sound of angels singing before My throne. Instead of the beauty that passes, he sees everlasting Beauty—he sees My face. He was created and lived a short time, so the image of his parents imprinted on his face may stand before Me as their personal intercessor. He knows secrets of heaven unknown to men on earth. He laughs with a special joy that only the innocent possess. My ways are not the ways of man. I create for My Kingdom, and each creature fills a place in that Kingdom that could not be filled by another. He was created for My joy and his parents’ merits. He has never seen pain or sin. He has never felt hunger or pain. I breathed a soul into a seed, made it grow, and called it forth.” 

I thank You for the life that began for so short a time to enjoy so long an eternity. 

-Mother M. Angelica 

St. Therese of Lisieux understood this well. She never met the 4 siblings who died before she was born. Yet she was very conscious of them and prayed for their help when she felt she needed divine assistance. Who knows if her siblings’ prayers before God’s throne didn’t bring down the graces of sanctity that saw St. Therese, St. Zelie and St. Louis (St. Therese’s father) reach a heroic holiness recognized by the official canonization of the Church?

Our greatest joy will be to see God face-to-face in eternal beatitude. And yet, we may anticipate the many secondary joys we will experience, not the least of which will be the meeting, face to face, with our loved ones and with the children that went on ahead and who will perhaps be the ones to welcome us home when our time comes!  May all the Holy Innocents intercede for us and for the salvation of the world!

Mary, Queen, and Mother of us all, pray for us!

Questions for silent reflection.

1. Do you have any “forgotten” intercessors in your own family?

2. Who do you anticipate seeing in heaven? Besides the Most Holy Trinity and family, who would you like to encounter once you enter into eternity?

3. Every time we participate in the celebration of the Eucharist we are in the presence of the whole Heavenly court. Though we don’t see it, our loved ones, the angels and saints, Mary and our Triune God are present. How can we become more connected in the communion of saints, with our “brothers and sisters” (both literal and figurative) who have gone before us?

4. What is your deepest desire for eternal life? If you could arrange the details of your “homecoming” who would you like present?