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Language and Communion

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God has given us so many gifts, it’s hard not to take many of them for granted.  Yet none of the gifts God gives are superfluous.  They all have a purpose.  It would be an exercise in the likeness of Our Lady, to ponder the Lord’s gifts and to try to align ourselves with their particular purposes.  In some instances, the accountability for the gift is exceptionally high.  Language is one such gift.

Jesus tells us that we will be accountable for every word we use.  Right away, that tells us that there is something extraordinary about language and our use of it that must be respected.  With a bit of reflection, it becomes apparent that language in all its forms is meant to serve communion, our communion with God and with others.  Likewise, it serves our own inner healing and integrity so that true communion actually becomes possible for us.

Jesus gives such a beautiful example of this in His Resurrection appearances.  The apostles have been separated from the Lord by fear, by violence, by death, by their own unfaithfulness, and in Peter’s case, by his own words of denial. When Jesus rises from the dead, the apostles are still hiding, in fear for their own safety.  After being informed of the Lord’s Resurrection, they must have anticipated his reaction to the fact that none of them had sufficient courage to conquer the overwhelming fear that engulfed them once the events of the Passion began.  St. John the Beloved disciple only managed to be at the Cross because of Our Lady, (a good thing to remember the next time our own courage is challenged.)

When Jesus appears to the apostles behind closed doors, they reasonably could have expected Him to chastise them, even dismiss them for their failures and disloyalties. They knew His first words would determine their future. Jesus, once again, does not speak in the ways of ordinary people.  Instead, “Jesus came and stood in their midst and said to them, ‘Peace be with you.” -Jn 20:19. The first words out of His mouth are words which dispel fear, unite, reassure, and even lay the interior ground to be able to receive a divine mission.  The effect of His words is so powerful that something shifts, and the Apostles, now freed of fear, spontaneously rejoice! He again repeats His gift of Peace.   He communicates mercy, which He then expects them to exercise in the ministry He entrusts to them (“Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained.” -Jn 19: 22-23)

Our consideration of the gifts of God has to be examined in the light of the culture in which we currently live.  The sins which violate the purpose of language are well known to us:  slander, libel, dishonesty, calumny, detraction, gossip, cursing, and blaspheming, to mention a few.  Unfortunately, powered by social media, these sins have become almost institutionalized.  A glance at Facebook or any mainstream news cast easily confirms that language is used to separate people from each other, the “good from the bad”, the woke from the unwoke, the “beautiful people from the unbeautiful.”  This corporate gossip then transports its fruits of accusation and contempt to the undiscerning masses. We can allow ourselves to get sucked into this abuse of language, or we can follow the unspoken wisdom in the simple adage mothers have spoken for centuries.  “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything.”  This is the common-sense version of the biblical directive: “Say only the good things men need to hear, things that will really help them!” -Eph 4:29. That includes speaking the truth in love, correction, and forgiveness if necessary.  It does not mean evil is ever condoned.  This would work against the unity language should build.  The point is that language should never be used to deliberately hurt others.  Even when Jesus spoke sternly to the Pharisees, His motive was love and communion, not destruction.

We know intuitively that there is something sacred about language.  It’s why we are so hurt when someone lies to us, doesn’t keep their word, or gossips about us.  The violation goes to something deep in us and in them, something sacred to our very being, something even of God’s very nature. 

It is necessary to ask ourselves often, is what I am about to say, engage in, or listen to, something that serves communion?  Or will it serve the kingdom of darkness, of hate and division? In whatever we choose, we will be found worthy of either the Kingdom of God, or God forbid, worthy of the caverns of hell, which will groan eternally with the opposite of everything language is meant to be.

  1.  Language is something we take for granted.  We often have little appreciation for its power, its potential, both positive and negative.  What do you think can be done to restore a sense of respect before the power of words?
  • Scripture says: Life and death are in the power of the tongue.  (Proverbs 18:21. Also see James 3). Words can be life-giving or death-dealing.  But it presumes we are aware and weigh our words carefully.  Careless words can cause untold damage.  How do you assess your own use of language?
  • Who are some people you like to listen to?  What draws you to them?  What is it about the way they use language in particular that gets your attention?
  • What examples do you see of language serving communion or, on the other hand, language serving things that are not of God?  How might you address your own use of language?

Pilgrims of Hope

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In a time that needs the witness of Christian hope more than ever, our Holy Father, Pope Francis, says the following about hope:   it is a gift of God and a task for every Christian.  He explains that it is more than just “a mere act of optimism.”  Rather, it is “waiting for something that has already been given to us” (salvation and full communion with the Lord.)  What might that look like in the world of today? 

Many years ago, while presenting the pro-life position to a group of high schoolers, one boy asked what could be wrong with abortion if you were saving a baby from a terrible life of unhappiness.  Our seminarian responded by pointing out that if we were to follow that logic, we should take a gun out and shoot everyone who is currently unhappy.  The young man was not operating from a vision of life informed by hope but rather from the belief that happiness and unhappiness are unchangeable and, in fact, the only thing that really matters.  He did not have the wisdom to see that suffering passes, states of happiness come and go in this life, and therefore, our hope is fixed on the life to come, which will be unchangeable bliss if we know how to read the happenings of this present life correctly.

A recently canonized saint, (2021), Margaret of Costello, shows us what a life of hope looks like.  Margaret was born to a noble family in 1287 with severe disabilities. She was a dwarf who was blind and lame, with a severe curvature of the spine, which made her a hunchback. If she had been born in our time, she most likely would have been terminated before birth.  The reaction of her parents was functionally the same though the time she lived in dictated a somewhat different outcome.  She was born, but her parents, upon seeing the extent of her deformities, were ashamed to have her be seen in public, so her father walled her up in a room with no door, which he attached to the chapel. Her food and necessities were passed to her through a window.  Her only visitor seems to have been the parish priest, who took pity on her and visited her while instructing her in the faith.  She lived in this separation and isolation for close to ten years.

When she was 16 years old, her parents heard of a place in a nearby city (Costello) where miraculous healings were taking place at a Franciscan shrine. They decided to take her there in the hope that she would be healed. When she wasn’t healed, they abandoned her and returned home without her. The townspeople eventually took her in, and she became known for her holiness, serenity, and cheerfulness. She took on the education of the children of the poor and assisting the sick and dying, as a part of her work and penance, along with caring for prisoners and working to bring them to repentance.

She became a third-order Dominican, and her deep prayer life drew many of the townspeople to her for counsel and even prophetic exhortations.  She never spoke an unkind word about her parents, and when asked why she wasn’t resentful of their treatment of her, she responded by saying that if people knew what was in her heart, they would understand.  Evidence shows that she developed an intimate relationship with the Holy Family, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.  By the time she died at the age of 33, the whole town recognized her holiness and insisted she be buried in the Church.  They attended the funeral as well, and it was reported that a young girl was healed during the funeral Mass.  Later, she was found to be incorrupt, and more than 200 miracles have been attributed to her intercession since her death.

St. Margaret’s witness to hope is especially appropriate in our celebration of Easter.  She did not let anything take away her joy or her peace.  She lived the great gift of Easter, hope – “Christian hope which makes us have that confidence in God, in his ultimate triumph, and in his goodness and love, which nothing can shake.” -Cardinal Basil Hume.  And, in her glory, in concert with Christ Himself, she is the best argument against the mindless embrace of hopelessness and the rejection we so often make to sacrifice and suffering.

  1. What is the difference between natural and supernatural hope?
  2. What do you think the Holy Father means when he says hope is a task for every Christian?
  3. What do you think is the deepest hope in the heart of man today?
  4. In God’s providence, St. Margaret was beatified in 1609 but not canonized until 2021.  Pope Francis recognized her heroic virtue but why else do you think God saved her for our age?

Please Join Us for Our Next Spiritual Exercise: Christian Resistance to Evil

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CHRISTIAN RESISTANCE TO EVIL – Session 66

The ordinary Christian knows something the unbeliever does not.  When Christians, especially Catholics, look at the state of the world, they know the primary source of evil is not cultural, political, or sociological.  It’s spiritual.  “For our struggle is not with flesh and blood but with the principalities, with the powers, with the world rulers of this present darkness, with the evil spirits in the heavens. Therefore, put on the armor of God, that you may be able to resist on the evil day and, having done everything, to hold your ground.”  Eph 6:12-13

As Catholics, we do not believe that anyone is born evil.  God creates us good.  We are, however, born wounded in the integrity of our nature because of the first sin.  The original harmony and unity between us and God, between us and others, between us and creation, and finally, the harmony within ourselves was lost as a consequence of this first sin.  And the battle between good and evil in our lives was directly engaged from that moment on. 

This leads us to reflect that if the grand conflicts in life, in our time, are spiritual, then the answers to resolving them must likewise be spiritual.  What would be some of the ways then that we, as believers, can offer effective resistance to evil? 

The Holy Father gives us a good place to start.  He recently shared a reflection on a German religious sister who died in the Auschwitz concentration camp, Angela Autsh. “Even before being arrested, when the evil looming over the world was already evident, she invited her nephews, who were approaching Holy Communion for the first time. She invited her relatives who had strayed a little, and she also invited those who had remained devout to rebel against that evil with simple and, in some places, dangerous gestures, to come as close as possible to the Sacrament of the altar, to rebel through Communion.  For her, to urge frequent communion, especially in prayer for the Pope and the Church, which was persecuted at that time, meant finding in the Eucharist a bond that strengthens the vigor of the Church herself, a bond that strengthens this vigor between her members and with God, and for her, it meant to “organize” the fabric of a resistance that the enemy cannot unravel because it does not respond to a human plan” -Pope  Francis

Read that again!  Are fervent communions a source of resistance to evil?  What a powerful insight into the workings of grace and into the real needs of those who have fallen sway to the enemy.  Fervent Communions, something the enemy loathes, actually disarm the enemy; they make him powerless. So, he constantly seeks to keep us from the Mass and worthy Communions because it is indeed one of the most powerful weapons we have precisely because it is the “source and summit” of our whole lives of union with the Lord.

Jesus confirms in the Sermon on the Mt that resistance to evil is not what we think. “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ “But I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your heavenly Father, for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust.” Mt 5:44-45

What are other ways the Christian is called to resist evil?  Fervent prayer, of course.  Fasting, considered a form of exorcism by the early Church, is especially powerful, as Our Lady tells us it can suspend the laws of nature and even end wars.  Simply refusing to comply with evil in the midst of those who embrace it, even if it leads to Martyrdom is another compelling way in which evil is resisted, and the faith is spread exponentially.  

But these are not the normal, vengeance-based responses that most people make to evil.  Ours should follow the direction of St. Paul, wherein we repay evil with good instead of evil for evil.  “But if your enemy is hungry, feed him, and if he is thirsty, give him a drink; for in so doing you will heap burning coals on his head” (Rms 12:20). That’s the way of God with us and it should be our way with others as well.

  1.  Normally speaking, what is your first reaction to evil?
  • How have you experienced evil in your own life?  
  • Most of the time, we are not aware of the spiritual significance of our behavior and how it will play out in time.  How do you understand the consequences of the way we respond to evil in our lives?
  • Can you think of other ways to resist evil that Jesus would approve of?

Join Us For Our Next Spiritual Exercise

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Becoming A True Prepper

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Becoming a True Prepper

There is a whole industry today built around people’s anxiety to be prepared in the event of a catastrophic disaster, both natural and man-made.  How would you survive if there was a nuclear war, if there was an asteroid hit, or if the grid was completely knocked out? It’s the dilemma of Lazarus.  Jesus raised him from the dead at his sisters’ pleading.  But his reprieve from death was temporary.  He eventually had to be prepared to die again.  You can bet, though, that the time between his first death and second death served to detach him even more from this present life so that he was fully ready when it came time to die again.  

You start thinking about these things when you assess the real-time threats we face.  It is true that we are called to read the signs of the time and be responsibly prepared.  But our goal has to be more than saving ourselves and our life here.  Jesus warns us that seeking to save ourselves alone is a futile exercise.  

“For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. What profit would there be for one to gain the whole world and forfeit his life? Or what can one give in exchange for his life?”  Mt 16: 25-26 In other words, we can’t save ourselves.  But if we give ourselves to Jesus, He can. Only Jesus has the necessary ransom.

Jesus also reminds us that, practically speaking, the Father knows what we need and providentially provides for us unless we reject his help.  Yes, he expects us to do our part, but at the same time, we understand that not a detail about us and our needs is overlooked by the Lord.  Instead, the Lord wants us to focus on the better part that Mary recognized before Martha did.  That would be listening to and following the Master Himself instead of trying to “manage” everything on our own. 

To be a real prepper means you are prepping not just for time but, more importantly, for eternity.  Yes, we are responsible stewards of the gifts we have here.  But the eternal gifts we seek are in the care of Jesus, Whom we must follow, constantly aware that it’s the spiritual treasures we seek to store up and the earthly treasures we let go of in order to carry the Cross.  

One measure of preparation can be found by looking at your relationships.  Would you feel at peace and happy with all your current relationships if God suddenly called you?  

Would you be prepared to see people in heaven you may consider enemies at the moment?  This is critical.   We are not forgiven unless we forgive.  If we have any unforgiveness in us, then we are not ready.  We need to do some real prepping.  A friend who was struggling in a marriage had a dream she died along with her husband. They both ended up in two different lines, one obviously headed into Heaven and the other not.  She said she couldn’t believe her husband ended up in the “saved” line while she did not. Her immediate reaction was: How did he end up in “that” line?  Her perspective in eternity was not the same. Nor will our perspective be the same at the end of our lives.

Imagine being on a plane that suddenly starts to go down.  Everyone believes they have minutes, maybe seconds, to live.  What would be important to you in that moment?  All your belongings and possessions? Your relationships? Your spiritual state?  One of our priests related such an incident.  He was on a plane struck by lightning, and the plane began a dive, which, fortunately, the pilot was able to pull out of.  But in the moment when everyone thought they were about to die, he said he sprang into action.  Not being able to imagine what that meant, his audience asked him: “What did you do?”  His answer:  “I gave everyone General Absolution!”  That’s a true “prepper!”

Time is a sort of dress rehearsal for eternity.  We work to get things right in time so that we can live them in eternity.  If we’re prepping for the here and now, we’re thinking short-term only. And unless we learn to prep for eternal life, none of the other prep will matter.  

  1.  What would you say about your orientation at the present time?  Is it short-term or long-term?
  • Our life here has definite limits.  Do you ever think that once this life is over, we will live forever?  Not 100 years, not a thousand years, not 10,000 years.  But forever!  Do you have any thoughts about that?
  • What area in your life do you think needs the most attention in order to be prepared better for eternal life?
  • What do you think is your responsibility to help others understand what is at stake in the way we look at our lives?  What is a good strategy around those who believe this is all there is?  

The Leaders We Deserve

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 It’s often been said that God gives us the leaders we deserve. If that’s true, we should then do everything in our power to become worthy of good leaders. Everyone who grows anything knows that the stock you start out with is very important. If the stock is not healthy, it will not produce good fruit. Simply saying this, in a political season, can bring about the pressing temptation to pivot to our leaders and complain about our options.

But the point is that reform begins with ourselves. If we want good leaders, we have to become good ourselves. It’s as simple as that. As a people, we produce our own leaders. But if we are trying to produce leadership without any connection to or real reference to God, and if the criteria for a good leader have become completely secularized, we are going to run right up against the impossibility of bringing anything good out of it.  God the Father is the source of every good gift, and if we are honest, we soon recognize that without his gifts, we can do nothing. 

Someone will immediately suggest God is the one Who has withdrawn his gifts from us and that is  the reason we are in the trouble we are. But really, God does not like to take back His gifts once He gives them. And upon honest reflection, we have to admit that God has not withdrawn his gifts, but rather, we have rejected them.   Or, perhaps it’s more accurate to say we want the gifts, but we don’t want the conditions that go along with the gifts, such as striving to live a life that is without sin and that is really pleasing to God as the source of our real happiness

This does not mean we will see perfection in those who acknowledge God, but rather that God will use present weaknesses for His purposes and to manifest His power.  David was such a man.  Chosen and anointed by God, he struggled mightily at times with his own weaknesses.  Yet his relationship with the Lord was so strong that he never became separated from God but turned to Him immediately in his falls (seducing Bathsheba, killing her husband Uriah, calling for a census whose repercussions resulted in the death of 70,000 people.) One of the most beautiful prayers of contrition and repentance is found in Psalm 51.  “Have mercy on me, God, in your kindness.  In your compassion, blot out my offense.”  This is David casting himself upon the Lord’s mercy.  This is David manifesting his heart but also revealing the heart of God at the same time.  David’s relationship with the Lord was so intimate that God Himself said of David that he was a man after his own heart!  Imagine entering heaven and hearing the Father exclaim:  “Here comes a daughter (a son) after my own Heart!  What living soul wouldn’t thrill to hear those words?  These are the leaders we really need!

Leaders often think it is their business to create new morality. It is not! God has given His people a morality to follow, and any leader who tries to replace it commits the original sin on a massive scale.  Adam and Eve rebelled by deciding they and not God should determine what was right and wrong.  Likewise, any leader who rejects God’s sovereignty in this area will lead his people to doom. That would be Lucifer taking his followers down to hell.  Make no mistake: a leader has the capacity to set you on one of two paths only: a path to heaven or a path to hell. That’s it!  Because the authority of leaders comes from God himself it doesn’t matter if you reject God’s order.  You will, in the end, be judged by it.

 To be authentic and faithful followers of Christ requires courage.  Unanimity can be very compelling, and resisting that force when it is a moral question can be very difficult for one individual against the crowd.  Perhaps if we kept the words of Dwight D Eisenhower in mind:  “Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups,” we would be more cautious in blindly following the latest “advancement” or “progress” proposed to us by our “leaders.” And, please God, we would be far more prayerful, discerning, and cautious in actually choosing our leaders according to the purposes for which God has put them in their position!

  1. In what ways are we responsible for the leaders we end up with?What do you think is the essence of leadership, and what is the essence of our responsibility toward our leaders?  In other words, what do you want from a good leader?
  • What do you think is the Number One responsibility of leaders toward their followers?
  • Where do you see good leaders in the world today?  How do you exercise leadership in your own life?

Please note: Leadership permeates every aspect of our lives.  Think outside the box.  Don’t focus primarily on politics.  Politics simply manifests gross problems that have developed over time in many other areas.  They are not the root of the problem.

Join Us for Our Next Spiritual Exercise

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A Phrase for Life

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

Monday, July 15, 2024, 6:30 pm mountain time; 7:30pm central

Topic: Sr.AnneMarie Walsh’s Personal Meeting Room

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A Phrase for Life

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Living life by a particular motto can have untold benefits.  Many of the saints had mottoes to which they oriented their entire lives.  “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world but lose his soul?”  That motto spoke to St. Anthony of the desert as the conversion or turning point of his entire life.   We may be familiar with other mottoes, such as Padre Pio’s “Pray, hope, and don’t worry.” Or, Pope St. John Paul II, who entrusted his life to the care and protection of Our Blessed Moth and encapsulated this in his papal motto: “Totus Tuus,””,  meaning “Totally Yours.”  St. Junipero  Serra’s motto was “Always forward, never back.” Padre Miguel Pro, who was martyred for the faith in Mexico during the Cristero uprising against the government and who died by firing squad, proclaimed the motto he lived his life by:  “Viva Christo Re!” or, “Long live Christ the King.”

Each of us lives our lives according to our beliefs and the way we understand life in general.  At the end of our lives, we are generally tagged accordingly.  “She was so kind.”  “He was a good father.” etc. Someone whose motto for life is “Be a friend to everyone” will live their lives much differently than someone whose motto is  “Success at all costs.”

When the idea of mottoes was presented to a group of grade school children, and they were asked to come up with a motto for their lives, the usual answers were given: “Do unto others. As you would have them do unto you.” “Say only the good things people need to hear,” or in Mom language:  “if you don’t have anything good to say, keep your mouth shut.” But one little girl had another take, which amused the teacher.  Her motto was:  “Ladies go first!”  

We can overlook the natural egocentrism of a child. Norm, we grow out of the more blatant forms as we mature both humanly and spiritually, though the tension is always there.  It’s the tension again between what Bp. Barron calls the Ego-drama vs. the Theo-drama.  Whose script for our lives are we following?  God’s or one of our own making?  Imagine you are watching a performance of Swan Lake but something is really off.  You begin to notice that one of the ballerinas seems to be out of sync with everyone else. After a while, you realize she is improvising her own choreography to grab some attention for herself.  That is the mark of ego. Self-exaltation can mar even the performance of a masterpiece.

In God’s sovereign drama (salvation history), we have crucial roles, especially as Catholics!  Many saints bemoan the fact that if Catholics only lived the way they should, the world would be in much better shape.  But sometimes, it’s precisely Catholics who are unforgiving, filled with ambition, and unwilling to drop rivalries that witness more to secular concerns than the building up of the Kingdom of God.  Discovering our actual place in the Theo-drama on the other hand is exciting and eternally productive even if the rest of the world never recognizes it.  As Archbishop Fulton Sheen noted, no one comes into the world not caring if their life has a meaning.  Everyone wants to be known or remembered for something.  Committing yourself to playing your part  within God’s drama will take you beyond yourself into living out the deepest significance your life could have.  Simply striving for holiness uplifts the whole Body of Christ and changes the world for the better.

It’s always a good time to stop and ask yourself what the real driving force in your life is.  Sometimes this means being brutally honest with yourself, acknowledging any discrepancies between what you say and how you actually live.  Sometimes it means acknowledging where you have drifted away from the ideals you committed yourself to at one point, so you can get back into the Divine drama unfolding all around you.  It almost always involves humbling ourselves so that God can lift us up to where we belong.  We’ll never be able to do it alone.  To serve that end, a short little motto can give us the direction we need.  Ask God to show you the unique motto for your life!

  1. Can you think of people who had definite mottoes in their lives?
  • Do you have a sense of what your part is in the Theodrama?  What kind of witness do you think God specifically asks of you?
  • Our various gifts incline us to various roles.  If you had to “try out” for a specific role, what kind would it be?  
  • What is the driving force behind your life?  What kind of a motto would encapsulate it?

Tragedy and the Power of Prayer

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Topic: Tragedy and the Power of Prayer

Monday, May 13, 2024 7:30pm central time/6:30 pm mountain time

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Tragedy and the Power of Prayer

A dear friend of mine recently lost a grown daughter to suicide.  The daughter was a wife and a mother of two teenagers.  My friend, who is a devout Catholic, has been almost inconsolable so much has this death shocked the whole family. None of them saw any signs that this was coming.  There was no explanation for this sudden happening, only unfiltered speculations on what brought the daughter to this point, none of which could touch the acute pain they have been in since her death.

One expression (which is roundly rebuffed by those suffering this tragedy) is the oft-repeated, almost trite observation that suicide “is a permanent answer to a temporary problem.”  It may be ok to make this remark to someone currently struggling with suicidal ideation.  But to use it with the “survivors” is insensitive and even cruel. It hangs in the air like a judgment, words weighted with hopelessness. When one is actively mourning, what is one to do with words like that?  They are like a weight that can cause people to drown, that can destroy marriages, and that can take the light and joy out of family gatherings and individual hearts.

Over recent years, the Church has moderated its position in relation to those who commit suicide.  Though the act itself is gravely disordered and immoral, the culpability of the person who commits suicide is greatly affected by their interior state and whether or not they actually fulfilled the three conditions that make a sin mortal.  The first condition is that objectively speaking, the action is gravely serious.  Murder is the obvious example, though there are plenty of other sins that are objectively mortal, such as marital infidelity, destroying another’s reputation intentionally, deliberately missing Mass, etc.  The second condition is that you must know something is gravely sinful.  And third, you must freely choose to do it. 

The third condition gets the most attention in this context because we’ve come to recognize that many people who choose to commit suicide are in such interior pain that they see suicide as the only escape, the only way to make it stop.  People can be led by all sorts of emotions, psychological difficulties, and imbalances. The key is whether they freely chose or were compelled by the influence of sickness, pain, or mental illness.

Henry David Thoreau famously said: “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation…A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind.”   And this is why we may never judge another.  We do not know the secrets of their hearts and the torments that are stored in their memories. And we can never know fully their current distress.  Our call is always and only to love them.

So how do we love our loved ones who choose such a devastating course as suicide?  By loving ourselves first and taking refuge in the Lord’s promises and gifts.  We believe that no one is beyond Redemption and that our prayers, even now, are efficacious for our loved ones who’ve already gone into eternity.  When a soul is presented before God at the end of life, God takes into account many factors; key among them are the prayers that have been and will be prayed for that person.  Padre Pio explained that for the Lord, the past and future do not exist. There is only an eternal present. Thus, Padre Pio regularly prayed for his grandfather who had died many years earlier. God knows how many people will pray for a soul, and sometimes the difference between eternal life and eternal death hinges on those prayers. Our Lady at Fatima said that so many people go to hell because they have no one to pray for them, no one to implore grace for them, graces which will be used to save them.  To this end, we are invited to pray special prayers with special power and promises attached, in particular the Chaplet of Divine Mercy.  Masses and the Rosary are among the most powerful channels of grace as well. At these times, our refuge is prayer and the hopeful belief that God will allow our love to follow those we have lost even into eternity, where the Lord’s timeless love can fully redeem them! 

  1. Have you lost members of your family or from among friends whose salvation concerned you?  How did you address that concern at the time?
  • People often lose sight of the fact that there is a real battle for souls.  Salvation is not a given as many people seem to think.  They put everyone in heaven as soon as they die and may be depriving them of much-needed prayer.  How can we help others understand that we still have a responsibility to the souls of our loved ones even after they die?
  • We tend to easily live the maxim:  “Out of sight, out of mind.”  This, unfortunately, is not a good tact to take with regard to eternity.  What habits could we develop to make the Church suffering (the souls in Purgatory) more present to us and less forgotten?
  • No prayer is insignificant.  What kind of prayer might we apply daily to the souls that will die that day and are perhaps not prepared?

Session 61: Finding Our True Selves

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

Topic: Finding Our True Selves

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FINDING OUR TRUE SELVES

Blessed Carlo Acutis, the young Catholic, Italian website designer who died of Leukemia at 15 years of age while living a holy life in the modern world, observed that “All people are born as originals, but many die as photocopies.” This is a problem if we understand that God has a master plan for our happiness but that many people do not, knowingly or unknowingly, choose to follow it.  

Blessed Carlo understood this.  His plan for life was to stay close to Jesus and allow Jesus to unfold his life and its unique purpose.  It wasn’t a long life, but it was one in which he could say:  “…in eternal life, something extraordinary awaits us.”  “I am happy to die because I have lived my life without wasting a minute on those things which do not please God.”  He also understood that to know himself, the best way was to come to know Jesus more and more deeply in the Blessed Sacrament and that Jesus would then teach him about himself and lead him to heaven. 

So, how do we become fake versions or photocopies of someone else?  First, by following the natural interference our own egos cause in this area.  Second, by disconnecting from Christ.  Third, by listening to the enemy of our soul.  He devotes his time to isolating us from the Lord.  He is always about the work of trying to thwart God’s plan in every way he can.  The devil is a consummate meddler and he excels in deception, in offering us cheap knockoffs of the treasures and riches the Lord offers.  Counterfeits!

Everything that God does for us and wants for us, is targeted.  The evil one will offer us anything to keep us from following Our Lord because he knows how powerful a true believer is against his kingdom.  The Holy Spirit of God in the believer comes up against the kingdom of darkness and stands as an implacable wall against the reach of satan into our lives. There will be, nonetheless, incredible opposition and, at times, almost relentless attempts to divert and distract us.   

How often the roots of a problem can be traced back to the fall. The attempt to offer a cheap alternative to God’s gifts for the sake of deception is evident from the beginning.  Dan Burke (founder of the Avila Institute for Spirituality) points out that the original temptation is clearly worded in this kind of language. Regarding the forbidden fruit, the devil says to Adam and Eve, “Eat this, and you will become like God.”  We know this happens only in the Eucharist!  So, what is the devil doing?  He’s offering a false Eucharist!  Already in the Garden, his modus operandi is revealed, an MO that is powered by lies to divert and isolate the gullible and spiritually immature.  You can believe that for every gift, every mystery of God, there is something lifeless, deadly actually, that the devil promotes in its place. 

In Resurrection, Jesus makes all things new!  The Easter season is a perfect time to let the Lord divest us of all of our facades, our pretenses, our unreal aspirations, wherever they come from, and to allow Him to ground us in reality, the reality that our Risen Lord has given us everything He has to give and withholds nothing from us.  To fall prey to the temptations of the world, our own vanity, or the machinations of the evil one, simply means we are not rooted in reality but rather in fantasy and base appetites and desires that hold us back from the true glory God waits to bestow on us. 

This kind of self-examination requires the Lord’s help.  GK Chesterton wryly noted that going to Church every Sunday isn’t enough.  It doesn’t make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.  We don’t readily recognize the subtle lies on which we have constructed parts of our lives.  Jesus needs to show us, just as He did the disciples in Resurrection, a concrete vision of a truly transformed life in Him.  That’s where we’re headed.  Jesus risen is what true life looks like! May your own life come to manifest his glory and proclaim His wonders eternally! Alleluia!  He is Risen!

  1. What kinds of illusions have you struggled with in the past? What are some of the ways you have experienced in your own life that God brings you to reality, to the truth?
  • As human beings, we have a strong tendency to imitate someone or something that engages us.  We find something compelling or inspiring in another and then try to imitate that.  Unfortunately, what engages us is often a mix of darkness and light, (think music and sports, superstars).  Why is it so necessary to train ourselves to imitate Jesus?  
  • What has the Lord taught you about yourself?  How have you come to know yourself, your real purpose, and the uniqueness or originality of your life? 
  • How would you discern what things in your life are pleasing or displeasing to God?  As Bl. Carlo Acutis implies, anything displeasing to God wastes our time and doesn’t make Him happy either.