As I said before, saints’ days, most holy days and special topics (movies, books, gender, TC, synod) are and will be collected elsewhere. These posts are taking it month-by-month. More links at the end of the post.
He writes about St. Francis Xavier and frustration. What Burghardt notes strikes me as still absolutely timely, and despite the decades that have passed, not at all out-of-date. And, as I like to say, over and over again – an excellent antidote to the contemporary pop Christian baptism of the American striver and fulfilment culture which gives the distinct impression that if you’re not a “success” you’re not fulfilling God’s plan for your life – because God made you to set! the world! on fire!
And you’re spending your days scrubbing toilets and giving change at the convenience store?
You were made for more! Don’t you have…..dreams????
God is doing an old thing (11/2)
Trust God to work through the liturgy the Spirit has graced us with through the mysterious working of tradition.
Trust God and don’t hesitate to second-guess the temptation that arises to center your own needs, experiences and agendas in the experiences of those who walk through those church doors, seeking.
Julian and Margery (11/4)
As I say – to you and myself – all the time – anyone, living at any time in Christian history, must be acutely aware of the relationship between the flesh and the spirit in one’s own life and in the world. In short: as much as we are called to find God in all things, as powerfully true it is that Creation is God’s work, within which he has become incarnate, as much as our spiritual growth thrives in engagement with all God has made and the opportunities and obligations to love – for can “charity” be lived in isolation? Apart from the world? Of course not.
In spite of all of that, the great spiritual teachers and examples invariably point in the same direction:
To reject the temptation to baptize any aspect of life in this world: cultural, social, political or even personal, and to always remember Who we were created by and for and that the journey, as Julian and Margery both show, is all about less and more.
The question is, though –
less of what?
and more of…what?
Amen say ye for Saint Charity (11/6)
I have written before that as a teacher – both in the classroom, at home, and in my writing – I have long taken it as my responsibility – and great pleasure, in fact – to help students and readers dig through the initial strangeness of history, of literature, of theology and spiritual writing, of the lives of the saints, and indeed, of Scripture itself – to understand what is essentially and even eternally true there and to see that the questions posed in these works and traditions are, indeed, the same questions they grapple with. They are not alone. They are not the first to wonder. Which should, indeed, come as a tremendous relief, and a moment of yes, communion across space and time.
The Road Goes on Forever (11/10)
He Fills the hungry with good things (11/16)
There’s a mass social and cultural shake-up going on, one characterized by anxiety, tension and questions about mortality and meaning and Catholic leaders are having to beg people to come back to Church?
Maybe that’s a clue that something is off. Maybe the medium and message are stuck. Maybe there’s some rigidity at work that needs to be shattered.
Really. Enough with the anxiety-soaked nervousness of managers worrying about lost market share and image control.
Do we believe that in this time, in this weird, disturbing, unsettling time, that Christ offers peace in the turmoil and light in the darkness and hope in the despair in a way that no one or nothing else does? That he really is the Bread of Life, offering himself to nourish hungry hearts?
Then say it.
It would do the bishops well to admit that part of the reason they’ve lost people is because of the experience of not being missed or noticed or even acknowledged, not to mention outright driven away by locked churches, reservation systems at Mass and cancelled sacraments. To hear avuncular clerics plead for folks to come back to Mass because “we miss you!” is…amusing.
Charlotte was Both 