It’s the Most Wonderful time…

Yes, it changes and shifts, but it’s a fun thing to watch this time of year, sacrament season:

 

For the past couple of years Heroes has sold more strongly (#4 in the overall “Catholicism” category right now, for example…what?) than Saints during this time of year, and I don’t know why – I don’t know if Loyola is doing some sort of marketing push for it in particular or what.

(Remember you can get signed books from me here.)

Today, I’m in Living Faith, by the way. 

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First Communion Season

It’s that time of year….First Communions…Confirmations…Mother’s Day…Graduation…

I can help. 

(I have most of these on hand, and you can purchase them through me. If it’s on the bookstore site, I have it. Or just go to your local Catholic bookstore or online portal).

First Communion:

 

The Loyola Kids’ Book of Saints

The Loyola Kids’ Book of Heroes

Be Saints!

Friendship with Jesus (not available through my bookstore at the moment)

Adventures in Assisi

Confirmation/Graduation:

Any of the Prove It books.

The Prove It Catholic Teen Bible

The How to Book of the Mass

New Catholic? Inquirer?

The How to Book of the Mass

The Words We Pray

Praying with the Pivotal Players

Mother’s Day

The Catholic Woman’s Book of Days

End of Year Teacher/Catechist Gifts

Any of the above…..

 

 

 

 

 

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Frances of Rome

…for kids. 

 

 

 

 

From the Loyola Kids Book of Saints. 

By the way, I have restocked my bookstore. I have a speaking engagement on Monday, and I needed to have wares to peddle. I didn’t order a lot, so who knows how long I’ll be open here. But if you want – I sign the books, and you can certainly specify an inscription – here is the bookstore page.  Please note, all prices include Media Mail Shipping.

I have some copies of the Lent Daybreaks hanging around, so as long as you see this sentence in this post, I’ll throw in a free copy of that with every order.

Available:

• All the Prove It books
• Prove-It Teen Bible
• Loyola Kids Book of Saints
• Loyola Kids Book of Heroes
• The Words We Pray
• Catholic Woman’s Book of Days
• The How-To Book of the Mass
• Wish You Were Here
• Bambinelli Sunday
• Be Saints
• Adventures in Assisi

 

 

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St. Teresa of Calcutta

The full text of Pope Francis’ homily:

Following Jesus is a serious task, and, at the same time, one filled with joy; it takes a certain daring and courage to recognize the divine Master in the poorest of the poor and to give oneself in their service.  In order to do so, volunteers, who out of love of Jesus serve the poor and the needy, do not expect any thanks or recompense; rather they renounce all this because they have discovered true love.  Just as the Lord has come to meet me and has stooped down to my level in my hour of need, so too do I go to meet him, bending low before those who have lost faith or who live as though God did not exist, before young people without values or ideals, before families in crisis, before the ill and the imprisoned, before refugees and immigrants, before the weak and defenceless in body and spirit, before abandoned children, before the elderly who are on their own.  Wherever someone is reaching out, asking for a helping hand in order to get up, this is where our presence – and the presence of the Church which sustains and offers hope – must be.

Mother Teresa, in all aspects of her life, was a generous dispenser of divine mercy, making herself available for everyone through her welcome and defence of human life, those unborn and those abandoned and discarded.  She was committed to defending life, ceaselessly proclaiming that “the unborn are the weakest, the smallest, the most vulnerable”.   She bowed down before those who were spent, left to die on the side of the road, seeing in them their God-given dignity; she made her voice heard before the powers of this world, so that they might recognize their guilt for the crime of poverty they created.  For Mother Teresa, mercy was the “salt” which gave flavour to her work, it was the “light” which shone in the darkness of the many who no longer had tears to shed for their poverty and suffering.

 

The articles at Angelus News – the Archdiocese of Los Angeles – are all very good, including this one by David Scott.

One of the most telling aspects of the Missionaries of Charity is how challenging it is to find information about their present activities online. They do not have a dynamic, smooth online brand or platform, they are not on social media, and it is even hard to just find a list of their locations. In fact, it’s impossible. This is the best I could do – on a web page devoted to volunteering with the MOC.  

I was interested in finding out if and how local news covered the MOC in their area in light of the canonization. It wasn’t an exhaustive search, but here’s some of what I found:

In Washington, DC:

At the Missionaries of Charity facility in Northeast Washington, he now helps care for 51 ill and aging men and women alongside 34 nuns and nuns-in-training. It is a place apart from the rest of Washington, secluded from curious neighbors by expansive gardens. And it is a place suffused with veneration for Mother Teresa, who will become a saint in the Catholic Church on Sunday….

…When their founder officially becomes Saint Teresa of Calcutta at a canonization Mass at the Vatican on Sunday, her nuns will celebrate all over the world – including in the District, where they maintain a presence in three locations.

There’s a contemplative order, a few nuns devoted to prayer, not works. There’s a facility the nuns operate for homeless single mothers in Washington’s Anacostia neighborhood. And there’s the nursing home, on a hill overlooking in the Woodridge neighborhood, near the District’s eastern border.

NYC:

The sisters live in a brick building with a banner of St. Teresa’s centennial stamp from 2010 hanging outside the front of the home facing a housing project. The sisters live without computers and wash their clothes by hand. They avoid pageantry for the good they do—rarely granting interviews or permitting media to enter the convent.

“We’re doing God’s will for us because this is our vocation,” said Sister Clare, who entered the Missionaries of Charity in 1979.

“We will only have true joy and peace when we do what God wants. So we’re called to this life and God has given us the grace to live this life. When this is your vocation, you receive a joy to be with the poor. It is true there are many sacrifices, but also many joys. If we live it, we will have joy.”…

 

…Past the garden, an entrance to a soup kitchen and homeless shelter awaits. Some 80 men and women, sitting at tables in separate rooms, are led in prayer before enjoying an early lunch of pasta with pie or cake for dessert.

Painted in royal blue, the walls of the eating area sport pictures including ones of St. Teresa and another of Jesus at the Last Supper as well as prayers such as the Hail Mary written on poster-size paper. Upstairs from the eating area is the homeless shelter for 18 men, who arrive at 4 p.m. and leave before 6 a.m. Two volunteers oversee the shelter at night.

“The sisters are really kind and wonderful to the volunteers. They are helping the poor with food and clothes as well as their spiritual lives,” said Cesar Mateos, a teacher for children with special needs in Spain who was volunteering in the Bronx for the month.

Norristown, PA:

Mother Teresa herself founded the house in 1984 — one of 17 in a division that covers the Northeastern United States and Eastern Canada — at the request of the local archbishop.

Since that time, a rotating group of four sisters has lived in the house and fulfilled the vows of the order: chastity, poverty, obedience and free service to the poorest of the poor.

“All our work is immediate service,” said Sister Regis. “We are not going for continuous work, that someone else can do. Today the person is hungry, today the person has no place to stay.”

Along with an army of volunteers from are Catholic parishes, the order runs a soup kitchen that serves lunch most days. The community also operates an emergency women’s shelter with 16 beds and holds Sunday school for children. The sisters are also missionaries, providing services in tandem with evangelizing and prayer.

San Francisco (story is from 2015)

Six days a week the Missionaries of Charity and volunteers serve a home-cooked dinner to about 100-150 mostly homeless people, many of whom live near or under the freeway that passes over the intersection of Potrero Avenue and Cesar Chavez Street in San Francisco. The Missionaries cook the meal at their home at 55 Sadowa, near St. Michael’s Korean Church. They serve the food around 4 p.m. every day but Thursday, the sisters’ dedicated day of prayer. The tables are set up just outside the fence of the ballfield at James Rolph Playground. The sisters help in many ways, including cutting fingernails and trimming beards and hair.
The Missionaries of Charity, founded by Blessed Teresa of Calcutta in 1950, came to San Francisco in 1982, when Blessed Teresa established a novitiate in a convent adjacent to St. Paul Church. Shortly afterward, the Missionaries opened a hospice for AIDS patients, the Gift of Love, now located in Pacifica, and a home for pregnant women, Queen of Peace.

And finally, in Kentucky. If you click through to any of these stories, include this o Kentucky. If you click through to any of these stories, include this one. I had no idea there was a Missionaries of Charity foundation in rural eastern Kentucky:

Typical days include about six hours of visiting with the sick and needy.

Among those who received a visit from the sisters on Tuesday were Carol and Roy Church.

Roy has a number of health problems and is recovering from recent foot surgery. As he reclined on a small bed in the front room of their home, Sister Suma Rani took a peek at his dressings.

“Time to cut,” she told Carol Church, pointing to the long nail on Roy’s big toe. “Be careful.”

They chatted about how each member of the family was doing, the coyotes that howl at night and the bear that ambled across the family’s front yard.

The nuns offered a bit of advice about a struggling teenager and, before they left, they prayed.

“That’s the best part,” Carol Church said.

She said the nuns have given them food, helped get repairs made to their ceiling and floor and cared for their children at their summer Bible camp.

“They have done so much for us,” she said. “They do for everybody around here.”

 

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Regrouping

Why, yes, I do have homeschooling takeaways, but can’t seem to process them enough to put them down on paper in a coherent way. That will be tomorrow morning’s project – to get that going.

I’ll just say that things are going well so far, although I am already enjoying my fully-expected constant low-grade seething about the quality and quantity of various (not all) assignments at both levels (middle and high school).

And yes, homework for elementary – even middle school – students is a bug, not a feature. The school might respond, “Oh, but how can we get everything done without homework?” I respond, to quote another, Think Different. Begin your curriculum and class preparation and planning with the assumption, “We are not going to give homework” and work from there. You will teach differently, and class time will be spent in different ways, but I doubt the results will be worse.

But as to here – in general, people are content, apparently having internalized my “life is a tradeoff” lectures, and understanding that if you want the good things that school offers – friends, instruction from Interesting and Capable People Who Are Not Mom – well, you have to get up earlier, and you’re going to have to do homework.

You’ll be hungry. You’ll be tired!

I will also say that I certainly hope this is not the end of homeschooling. I can definitely see it – or something else – happening again in different forms as they get older and (I hope) as different modes of schooling make their way into our area (Alabama just approved charter schools last year, so in a few years, something interesting might pop up).

In the meantime, I am adjusting. It is very, very weird to finish cleaning the kitchen at night and not have the next day’s kid activities on my mind and it is very, very weird, to drop off the younger one at school and return to my house before 8 with a full day, free to work in front of me.

I’m not going to say that I’m ecstatic about it. They are in good situations, but homeschooling was good, too, and I miss it a lot.

I am also not sure what to do with this time. It’s not that I don’t have projects. I do, with hopefully a biggish one being confirmed soon that will occupy my fall. But for four years, my creativity – such as it is – has been focused on homeschooling and engaged, all day and every evening, with conversations on learning with one or both of those boys, and now it’s very quiet, during the day at least.

And yes, how much I yearned for quiet for four years, and yes, I knew from experience that once I got it, I would be a bit at sea – because that’s how it goes with life. You live for the semester to just be over, but once your life isn’t filled with going to class, studying or teaching, you have to recalibrate and you don’t know what to do with yourself at first. People retire and then just…die because their beings can’t compute life without the job.

So yes. In a day or two, more of what I’m taking away from homeschooling, both in specific and more general terms.

One thing I’m doing – besides going on rants about Arthur Miller, The Crucible, the Hollywood Ten and the Salem Witch Trials for the benefit of a 15-year old person who is probably thinking, “Uh…I just need to do my powerpoint now, but thanks” – is reading more, more and more.

And reading more…books.

I had written about this a few weeks or months ago: as much as I appreciate e-readers – and I do read a lot of public domain stuff I would never be able to access otherwise that way – I am consciously trying to redirect my reading energy to actual paper books.

First, I really do believe I retain what I read better via books. Research is showing that this might be generally true, and I definitely feel that it is true for me. Part of it has to do with the fact that reading a book is a physical experience in a way that holding a tablet is not. It engages more of my body and more of my senses, which deepens the experience. As I have said before, my memory of what I read is often tied to where a sentence was located on a page and what that book felt like in my hand.

And I think that my way of reading on a tablet is different than reading a book. Since childhood, I have always been a fast, gulping kind of reader, and e-readers just exacerbate that tendency, since I’m definitely susceptible to the quick, superficial get-on-to-the-next-thing-because-everything-is-here-on-the-Internet reading habit that the Internet seems to engender, and reading e-books are not exempt from that tendency. I read them faster, I don’t linger, I don’t go back and reconsider what I’ve read because it’s kind of a pain to find my place again.

Secondly, I am very conscious of what I’m modeling for my kids. I can’t very well be super-restrictive with them about screens if I’m on a screen all the time, and sorry, the “but it’s a book” doesn’t wash. Because yeah, it might be a book one minute, but it’s probably going to be Facebook or Instagram the next. So it’s much more helpful on that score for me to settle down in their presence with a book in hand rather than one more damn screen.

(And I will say like many kids, they prefer to read “real” books. The only time they’ve read ebooks have generally been when we are traveling. My adult daughter, who is typical of her generation in her relationship to screens, has gotten to the point at which she prefers to read paper books as well – I think we’re all feeling it. We spend enough time on screens. Give us a book again.)

So…library trip. I went downtown to find a copy of a couple of books for my high schooler, and walked away with a stash.

They had a bunch of Mauriac I had never read, I thought I would read some more Maugham, and they very nicely went to the stacks to get the only copy of Priestley’s The Good Companions available in the whole system. An original, published in 1929, still intact, the subject of some commentary by the librarian who fetched it for me.

I started with the shortest – Mauriac’s The Little Misery. Oh, what a FUN read!

Not really. Quite sad, almost unbearably so, but with a hint of redemption at the end. As is often the case with Mauriac, the story concerns a bunch of terrible people who are concerned with status and wealth more than anything else and who either ignore God or promote some perverse image of God that supports their bigotry, selfishness and cruelty.

I was thinking that with Graham Greene, characters see the truth when they are challenged to do the right thing, at a great personal cost. In O’Connor, the protagonist usually experiences some personal injury, humiliation or other sort of pain. With Mauriac, it seems that characters (finally) see a glimmer of truth when the horrible consequences of their actions on others can’t be denied any longer.

In every case, sure, God may have a wonderful plan for you life, but your resistance is strong, and breaking things is painful.

Such is the case here. The novella (I read it in an hour or so) concerns a woman, Paula, who has married into a somewhat aristocratic family simply for the sake of that. Her husband seems to be suffering from some sort of intellectual disability, we’re going to assume, at least in some symbolic way, from inbreeding. Her mother-in-law despises her and she despise the son who is the result, it is implied, from the one time she and her husband came together In That Way. Paula is bitter, feels trapped, sees nothing but misery for the rest of her life, and is seen as the enemy by the others in her household.

The boy has been treated in a way that has rendered him, seemingly at the same level of intelligence as his father, he is sometimes incontinent, and he is regarded as ineducable. Something must be done, however, so the suggestion is made to seek the help of the village schoolmaster, a married man with known Communist sympathies. During an evening with the schoolmaster and his wife, it is clear to us that there might be hope for this boy, but for various reasons, that won’t do, and…well, you have to read it to see what happens. As I said, it’s very sad, but the events, as they do in Mauriac, make clear to these horrible people in a way that nothing else has, how horrible they have been. It is now too late for some things to get better, but not too late – never too late – for a touch of grace, somewhere.

I always finish a Mauriac novel thinking…don’t be that way. Untie the knots, open your eyes, shake it off, and love generously.

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7 Quick Takes

— 1 —

First, an article about two religious women who served Hansen’s Disease patients in South Korea for decades:

After graduating from nursing school, the two nuns arrived in South Korea in the 1960s to work on Sorok Island, where a medical facility, more concentration camp than hospital, had been set up.

Whilst others who worked there armed themselves against possible infection with masks, gloves, and quarantine gear, the two women, then in their mid-20s, wore only white gowns as they tended to the patients. Even when their faces were spattered with blood and pus from wounds, they paid no attention.

Recalling her time on the island, Sister Marianne said, “It was through the power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ that I was able to serve”. Above all, “The greatest joy came from seeing patients being discharged from the island and meeting their family members after their wounds healed.”

 

 

— 2 —

From another part of the East:

Some of you might already be aware of the conversion of Chinese artist Yan Zu to Catholicism, as recounted on National Catholic Register and Catholic News Agency. A Dominican friar from the Western Province who is from Taiwan originally recently brought this story to my attention.

It was the study of European art history, and specifically of medieval illuminated manuscripts, that brought Yan to the Faith. She has a Chinese language blog from which these images of her own work are taken.

 

–– 3—

One of the reasons I like having my sons serve at the Casa Maria retreat house is the opportunity to hear generally excellent homilies from the priests leading the retreat on a particular weekend. This past weekend, the retreat master was Fr. James Kubicki, national director of the Apostleship of Prayer.  I spoke with Fr. Kubicki after Mass, and he immediately made the connection with the chapter on the Morning Offering from The Words We Pray, which was nice!

 — 4 —

Italy trip prep continues. Well, not really. I haven’t done much, since there really isn’t much left to do.  I have almost been convinced to just leave Tuscany to chance, the winds and the Spirit. We’ll see.

 

— 5 —

I’m serious about upping my social media game for the trip. I certainly don’t want it to dominate the experience as I juggle phones and cameras and spend the evening on the computer.. Absolutely not. But I do want to share various aspects of the trip – new sight  and sounds, a story or two per day. So if you are interested be sure to follow me here, and then on Instagram. I will probably try to Periscope, but I have to practice here on this side of the world, so look for that via Twitter at some point over the next couple of weeks.

 

— 6-

I’m excited about the new Richard Russo book, Everybody’s Fool.  I’ve always thought Nobody’s Fool to be one of the great American 20th century novels, and this one is sounding good.  If you want to laugh until you weep, read Straight Man. 

 And then there was that time I had contacted Richard Russo, my writing hero,  through either his agent or his publisher with the faint, crazy hope that he would write an introduction for a volume in the Loyola Classics series.  I am not one hundred percent sure, but I think it was Jon Hassler’s North of Hope.  As I said, it was pretty insane, and I thought nothing would come  of it.

One Friday morning, I went to the grocery store. I returned. There was a message on the voicemail.

Hi, this is Richard Russo. 

WHAT.

Yes, Richard Russo HAD CALLED MY HOUSE.

FIVE MINUTES before I walked back in the door.

And of course, he was calling (very politely and kindly) to tell me that he was swamped with work and couldn’t do the introduction.

So what was I going to do, fangirlishly call him back just to tell him…what? That I was sorry, but I certainly understood, and by the way, hey I’m talking to you right now, Richard Russo, writing hero?

No. I couldn’t do that. So I just stood there in my kitchen holding milk or green beans or whatever other meaningless object had made me miss talking to Richard Russo.

Writing Hero.

— 7 —

Well, speaking of writing, but on a less-exalted scale – you still have time….if your local Catholic bookstore has it in stock, you can grab it before Sunday. Or maybe even get super-quick delivery!

For more Quick Takes, visit This Ain’t the Lyceum!

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RCIA Stuff

We are in the final weeks before Easter, which means that we are in the final weeks of candidate and catechumen preparing for full initiation at the the Easter Vigil.

(Of course, RCIA is really, properly only for the unbaptized and already baptized Christians can and should be catechized and brought into the Church year-round if it’s appropriate for that person. But, nonetheless…)

The Scrutinies are the 3rd, 4th, and 5th Sundays of Lent and so perhaps this is a good time to share some good instructional material with friends or family members who are revving up for meeting Christ in the Eucharist for the first time in a few weeks.

The How To Book of the Mass has recently undergone a makeover – I had no role in it and was as surprised as anyone. Mike fought hard for the original cover – he didn’t want the normal Catholic-looking cover and wanted something that would really stand out on a bookstore shelf, so for years the left-hand image had been the cover.

 

 

The new cover looks much like any other intro-to-the-Mass book, but rest assured the content is the same. I’m glad it’s still in print, still selling welling, and helping people. And the content does reflect the most recent translation. Here is an excerpt. 

I have a few copies with the original  cover – you can order here. Or get through your local Catholic bookstore or online. 

In addition, I’d recommend my Words We Pray  – which is a collection of essays I wrote on traditional Catholic prayers from the Sign of the Cross to the Lord’s Prayer to the Memorare to the Liturgy of the Hours to Amen.  Each essay ties in some historical material with spiritual reflection, the goal being to help the pray-er link the prayers of his or her own heart with the prayer of the Church.  St. Paul says, In the same way, the Spirit too comes to the aid of our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit itself intercedes with inexpressible groanings.(Romans 8:26).

One way the Spirit helps us pray as we ought and give voice to our the depths of our hearts is via the Spirit-formed traditional prayer of the Church. It leads us away from solipsism and situates our prayer properly, putting praise and gratitude to God first, and placing our needs in the context of his will, above all.

I have a few copies of that here too, as well as all the picture books.  But you can get The Words We Pray online anywhere as well.  

 

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