ANXIETY AND DIVINE MERCY

Anxiety and Divine Mercy

“You should not worry too much about adversities. The world is not as powerful as it seems to be.”

In recent years, the Divine Mercy message has become increasingly popular. Thanks to the efforts of St. John Paul II, many individuals are aware of the fact that Jesus appeared to St. Maria Faustina Kowalska (a Polish nun who died in 1938) and revealed the depth of His mercy. She was instructed to share the message that God loves us and that his mercy is greater than our sins. And, while this is great news and can fill us with tremendous hope, there is an aspect of the Divine Mercy message that is virtually unknown. The revelation given by Jesus to St. Faustina is not only directed toward hardened sinners, but also to those who live in fear. If you are looking for a way to break free from worry, the message of Divine Mercy is your answer!                                                                                          A Frightening Message   There’s no doubt that life can be challenging. At one point or another, everyone will deal with trials and tribulations. When these difficulties arise, it is perfectly acceptable to experience the emotion of fear. According to Church teaching, this feeling is not wrong or sinful. What can be problematic, however, is letting your fear lead to worry. Choosing to worry instead of turning to prayer exhibits a lack of trust in God’s providence. It also presents an obstacle to holiness. In one of His conversations with St. Faustina, Jesus had this to say:                         My child, know that the greatest obstacles to holiness are discouragement and an exaggerated anxiety. (Diary of St. Faustina, 1488)

Both discouragement and exaggerated anxiety arise when we fail to trust in the Lord’s goodness and His desire to assist us. Addressing the idea of distrust, Jesus spoke the following words to St. Faustina:

How painfully distrust of My goodness wounds Me! Sins of distrust wound me most painfully. (Diary, 1076)

My child, all of your sins have not wounded My Heart as painfully as your present lack of trust does. (Diary, 1486)

Although these messages are startling, there is no need for us to panic. The Lord had much more to say to St. Faustina about this topic and we would be wise to listen.   You Are Never Alone

We often succumb to worry or discouragement because we live our lives as if everything depends on us. It doesn’t! We should never forget that the all-loving and all-powerful Lord of the Universe wants to assist us with our daily struggles:

Why are you afraid? Do you think that I will not have enough omnipotence to support you? (Diary 527)

Do not fear; I will not leave you alone. Do whatever you can in this matter; I will accomplish everything that is lacking in you. You know what is within your power to do; do that (Diary, 881).

You should not worry too much about adversities. The world is not as powerful as it seems to be. (Diary, 1643)

So far we’ve learned that our lack of trust hurts Jesus and that we never have to face our problems alone. No doubt these are important messages, but it’s probably not enough. When problems arise and fear sets in, we need something more than reminders of why we shouldn’t worry. We need a plan of action. Fortunately, Jesus provides us with exactly that.                                                          Ask For Help!

While most of us know that Jesus instructs us to avoid worry (Matthew 6:25-34), we often fall short of our goal. One of the biggest challenges is that it can be extremely difficult to avoid doing something negative, unless we replace it with something positive. Therefore, the “do not worry” message sometimes gets ignored because it’s deemed to be impossible. When we do make an effort to grit our teeth and not worry, we often fail miserably. In another piece of advice to St. Faustina, Jesus reveals why this happens:                                                                       The cause of your falls is that you rely too much upon yourself and too little on me. (Diary, 1488)                                                                                                         There you have it. Instead of trying to give up worrying on your own, Jesus wants us to ask for His help. Unfortunately, we often hesitate to ask for fear of bothering Him. What a mistake! Jesus specifically told St. Faustina that it pleases Him when we give Him our problems:                                                                           You will give me pleasure if you hand over to me all your troubles and griefs. (Diary, 1485)                                                                                                              I am very pleased that you confide your fears to Me, my daughter: Speak to Me about everything in a completely simple and human way; by this you will give Me great joy. (Diary, 797)                                                                                            For anyone who is prone to anxiety, the Divine Mercy message is literally an answered prayer. Jesus cares deeply about us and doesn’t want us to suffer needlessly. He desires that we share all of our troubles with Him and ask for His assistance. By doing so, we give Him a chance to work in our lives. I also encourage you to get into the habit of praying the words found at the bottom of the Divine Mercy image. These words don’t represent a feeling. Rather, they represent a conscious decision to trust Jesus with all of your needs. It doesn’t matter if your stomach feels queasy and your knees are shaking, the words will still be effective. Try it for yourself and see what happens.                                        Jesus, I Trust in You!

TIME AND ETERNITY

Between Time and Eternity

The days between Christ’s Resurrection and his return to the Father are full of mystery. If we accept them, as we should, not as a legend, but as a vital part of our faith, then we must ask what they mean in the life of the Lord, and what their significance in our own Christian existence.

These are the days between time and eternity. The Lord is still on earth, but his feet are already detached, prepared to depart. Before him unfold the reaches of everlasting light, but he still pauses here in transitoriness.

In the New Testament there are two figures of Jesus; one “the carpenter’s son.” (Matt. 13:55) It is he who stands in the midst of earthly events, who toils, struggles, submits to his destiny. He has his own personal characteristics – mysterious and inexplicable, certainly – and yet so unmistakably his that we almost hear the tone of his voice, see the accompanying gesture. In the main, it is the Gospels that portray this Son of Man. (See the Epistles and Revelation.)

The other “nature” of Jesus is cantered in eternity. Here all earthly limitations have fallen away. He is free, divinely free, Lord and Ruler. Nothing transitory, nothing accidental remains; everything is essence. “Jesus of Nazareth” has become “Christ our Lord,” the eternal one whose figure St. John describes as it was revealed to him on the Island of Patmos: “One like to a son of man, clothed with a garment reaching to the ankles, and girt about the breasts with a golden girdle. But his head and his hair were white as white wool, and as snow, and his eyes were as a flame of fire; his feet were like fine brass, as in a glowing furnace, and his voice like the voice of many waters. And he had in his right hand seven stars. And out of his mouth came forth a sharp two-edged sword; and his countenance was like the sun shining in its power.”

“And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as one dead. And he laid his right hand upon me, saying, ‘Do not be afraid; I am the First and the Last, and he who lives; I was dead, and behold, I am living forevermore; and I have the keys of death and of hell.’ ”

St. Paul also describes him in the Epistle to the Colossians when he speaks of him: “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature. For in him were created all things in the heavens and on the earth, things visible and things invisible, whether Thrones, or Dominations, or Principalities, or Powers. . . .For it has pleased God the Father that in him all his fullness should dwell, and that through him he should reconcile to himself all things, whether on the earth or in the heavens, making peace through the blood of his cross.” (Col. 1:15–20)

Here all concrete detail falls away. Not one familiar trait remains; hardly a human feature. Everything is strange and disproportionate. Is it the same Jesus who walked on earth?

It might be asked: Why this mysterious lingering on earth after the Resurrection? Why didn’t the Lord return home directly?

What was happening during those forty days? Let us for a moment suppose that the Resurrection and the period afterwards had been only offshoots of morbid religious experience, legend or myth – what would those days have looked like?

Doubtless, they would have been filled with demonstrations of the liberated one’s power; the hunted one, now omnipotent, would have shattered his enemies; he would have blazed from temple altars, would have covered his followers with honours, and in these and other ways, have fulfilled the longings of the oppressed.

He would also have initiated the disciples into the wonderful mysteries of heaven, would have revealed the future, the beginning and end of all things. But nothing of all this occurs. No mysteries are revealed; no one is initiated into the secrets of the unknown. Not one miracle, save that of Christ’s own transfigured existence and the wonderful fish-catch, which is only a repetition of an earlier event.

What does happen? Something completely unspectacular, exquisitely still: the past is confirmed. The reality of the life that has been crosses over into eternity. These days are the period of that transition. And we need them for our faith; particularly when we evoke the great images of the eternal Christ throning at his Father’s right, coming upon the clouds to judge the living and the dead, ruling the Church and the souls of the faithful growing from the depths of God-summoned humanity “to the mature measure of the fullness of Christ.” (Eph. 4:13)

Such images place us in danger of losing the earthly figure of the Lord. This must not happen. Everything depends on the eternal Christ’s remaining also Jesus of Nazareth, who walks among us until the day when all things will be enfolded in eternity; on the blending of borderless spirit with the here and thus and then of the process of salvation.

In the Christ of the Apocalypse one vision holds this fast: the Lamb standing “as if slain” but alive. (Apoc. 5:6; 1:18) Earthly destiny entered into eternity. Once and forever, death has become lasting life.

But there is a danger that this truth will dangle in space, enigmatic as a rune on an ancient stone. This period of transition deciphers the rune, gives us the key to the parable: All that has been remains in eternal form. Every word Jesus ever spoke, every event during his lifetime is fixed in unchanging reality, then and now and forever. He who is seated on the throne contains the past transfigured to eternal present.

EASTER AND HOPE

If you’re seeking hope, read the pope’s moving Easter Vigil homily 2019

"Jesus is a specialist at turning our deaths into life, our mourning into dancing"

1.       The women bring spices to the tomb, but they fear that their journey is in vain, since a large stone bars the entrance to the sepulchre. The journey of those women is also our own journey; it resembles the journey of salvation that we have made this evening. At times, it seems that everything comes up against a stone: the beauty of creation against the tragedy of sin; liberation from slavery against infidelity to the covenant; the promises of the prophets against the listless indifference of the people. So too, in the history of the Church and in our own personal history. It seems that the steps we take never take us to the goal. We can be tempted to think that dashed hope is the bleak law of life.

Today however we see that our journey is not in vain; it does not come up against a tombstone. A single phrase astounds the woman and changes history: “Why do you seek the living among the dead?” (Lk 24:5). Why do you think that everything is hopeless, that no one can take away your own tombstones? Why do you give into resignation and failure?  Easter is the feast of tombstones taken away, rocks rolled aside.

God takes away even the hardest stones against which our hopes and expectations crash: death, sin, fear, worldliness. Human history does not end before a tombstone, because today it encounters the “living stone” (cf. 1 Pet 2:4), the risen Jesus. We, as Church, are built on him, and, even when we grow disheartened and tempted to judge everything in the light of our failures, he comes to make all things new, to overturn our every disappointment. Each of us is called tonight to rediscover in the Risen Christ the one who rolls back from our heart the heaviest of stones. So let us first ask: What is the stone that I need to remove, what is its name?

Often what blocks hope is the stone of discouragement. Once we start thinking that everything is going badly and that things can’t get worse, we lose heart and come to believe that death is stronger than life. We become cynical, negative and despondent. Stone upon stone, we build within ourselves a monument to our own dissatisfaction: the sepulchre of hope. Life becomes a succession of complaints and we grow sick in spirit. A kind of tomb psychology takes over: everything ends there, with no hope of emerging alive.

But at that moment, we hear once more the insistent question of Easter: Why do you seek the living among the dead? The Lord is not to be found in resignation. He is risen; he is not there. Don’t seek him where you will never find him: he is not the God of the dead but of the living (cf. Mk 22:32). Do not bury hope!

There is another stone that often seals the heart shut: the stone of sin. Sin seduces; it promises things easy and quick, prosperity and success, but then leaves behind only solitude and death. Sin is looking for life among the dead, for the meaning of life in things that pass away. Why do you seek the living among the dead? Why not make up your mind to abandon that sin which, like a stone before the entrance to your heart, keeps God’s light from entering in? Why not prefer Jesus, the true light (cf. Jn1:9), to the glitter of wealth, career, pride and pleasure? Why not tell the empty things of this world that you no longer live for them, but for the Lord of life?

2.       Let us return to the women who went to Jesus’ tomb. They halted in amazement before the stone that was taken away. Seeing the angels, they stood there, the Gospel tells us, “frightened, and bowed their faces to the ground” (Lk 24:5). They did not have the courage to look up.

How often do we do the same thing? We prefer to remain huddled within our shortcomings, cowering in our fears. It is odd, but why do we do this?  Not infrequently because, glum and closed up within ourselves, we feel in control, for it is easier to remain alone in the darkness of our heart than to open ourselves to the Lord. Yet only he can raise us up. A poet once wrote: “We never know how high we are. Till we are called to rise” (E. Dickinson).

The Lord calls us to get up, to rise at his word, to look up and to realize that we were made for heaven, not for earth, for the heights of life and not for the depths of death: Why do you seek the living among the dead?

God asks us to view life as he views it, for in each of us he never ceases to see an irrepressible kernel of beauty. In sin, he sees sons and daughters to be restored; in death, brothers and sisters to be reborn; in desolation, hearts to be revived.

Do not fear, then: the Lord loves your life, even when you are afraid to look at it and take it in hand. In Easter he shows you how much he loves that life: even to the point of living it completely, experiencing anguish, abandonment, death and hell, in order to emerge triumphant to tell you: “You are not alone; put your trust in me!”

Jesus is a specialist at turning our deaths into life, our mourning into dancing (cf. Ps 30:11). With him, we too can experience a Pasch, that is, a Passover– from self-centredness to communion, from desolation to consolation, from fear to confidence.

Let us not keep our faces bowed to the ground in fear, but raise our eyes to the risen Jesus. His gaze fills us with hope, for it tells us that we are loved unfailingly, and that however much we make a mess of things, his love remains unchanged. This is the one, non-negotiable certitude we have in life: his love does not change. Let us ask ourselves: In my life, where am I looking? Am I gazing at graveyards, or looking for the Living One?

3.       Why do you seek the living among the dead? The women hear the words of the angels, who go on to say: “Remember what he told you while he was still in Galilee” (Lk 24:6). Those women had lost hope, because they could not recall the words of Jesus, his call that took place in Galilee.  Having lost the living memory of Jesus, they kept looking at the tomb.  Faith always needs to go back to Galilee, to reawaken its first love for Jesus and his call: to remember him, to turn back to him with all our mind and all our heart. To return to a lively love of the Lord is essential. Otherwise, ours is a “museum” faith, not an Easter faith. Jesus is not a personage from the past; he is a person living today. We do not know him from history books; we encounter him in life. Today, let us remember how Jesus first called us, how he overcame our darkness, our resistance, our sins, and how he touched our hearts with his word.

The women, remembering Jesus, left the tomb. Easter teaches us that believers do not linger at graveyards, for they are called to go forth to meet the Living One. Let us ask ourselves: In my life, where am I going?  Sometimes we go only in the direction of our problems, of which there are plenty, and go to the Lord only for help. But then, it is our own needs, not Jesus, to guide our steps.  We keep seeking the Living One among the dead. Or again, how many times, once we have encountered the Lord, do we return to the dead, digging up regrets, reproaches, hurts and dissatisfactions, without letting the Risen One change us?

Dear brothers and sisters: let us put the Living One at the centre of our lives. Let us ask for the grace not to be carried by the current, the sea of our problems; the grace not to run aground on the shoals of sin or crash on the reefs of discouragement and fear.  Let us seek him in all things and above all things.  With him, we will rise again.

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POPE FRANCIS

MENTAL SUFFERING OF OUR LORD

When Shall I Be Free?

Bl. John Henry Newman

I see the figure of a man, whether young or old I cannot tell. He may be fifty or he may be thirty. Sometimes He looks one, sometimes the other. There is something inexpressible about His face which I cannot solve. Perhaps, as He bears all burdens, He bears that of old age too. But so it is; His face is at once most venerable, yet most childlike, most calm, most sweet, most modest, beaming with sanctity and with loving kindness. His eyes rivet me and move my heart. His breath is all fragrant, and transports me out of myself. Oh, I will look upon that face forever, and will not cease.

And I see suddenly someone come to Him, and raise his hand and sharply strike Him on that heavenly face. It is a hard hand, the hand of a rude man, and perhaps has iron upon it. It could not be so sudden as to take Him by surprise who knows all things past and future, and He shows no sign of resentment, remaining calm and grave as before; but the expression of His face is marred; a great wheal arises, and in a little time that all-gracious Face is hid from me by the effects of this indignity, as if a cloud came over It.

A hand was lifted up against the Face of Christ. Whose hand was that? My conscience tells me: “thou art the man.” I trust it is not so with me now. But, O my soul, contemplate the awful fact. Fancy Christ before thee, and fancy thyself lifting up thy hand and striking Him! Thou wilt say, “It is impossible: I could not do so.” Yes, thou hast done so. When thou didst sin wilfully, then thou hast done so.

He is beyond pain now: still thou hast struck Him, and had it been in the days of His flesh, He would have felt pain. Turn back in memory, and recollect the time, the day, the hour, when by wilful mortal sin, by scoffing at sacred things, or by profaneness, or by dark hatred of this thy Brother, or by acts of impurity, or by deliberate rejection of God’s voice, or in any other devilish way known to thee, thou hast struck The All-holy One.

O injured Lord, what can I say? I am very guilty concerning Thee, my Brother; and I shall sink in sullen despair if Thou dost not raise me. I cannot look on Thee; I shrink from Thee; I throw my arms round my face; I crouch to the earth. Satan will pull me down if Thou take not pity.

It is terrible to turn to Thee; but oh turn Thou me, and so shall I be turned. It is a purgatory to endure the sight of Thee, the sight of myself – I most vile, Thou most holy. Yet make me look once more on Thee whom I have so incomprehensibly affronted, for Thy countenance is my only life, my only hope and health lies in looking on Thee whom I have pierced. So I put myself before Thee; I look on Thee again; I endure the pain in order to the purification.

O my God, how can I look Thee in the face when I think of my ingratitude, so deeply seated, so habitual, so immovable-or rather so awfully increasing! Thou loadest me day by day with Thy favours, and feedest me with Thyself, as Thou didst Judas, yet I not only do not profit thereby, but I do not even make any acknowledgment at the time.

Lord, how long? When shall I be free from this real, this fatal captivity? He who made Judas his prey, has got foothold of me in my old age, and I cannot get loose. It is the same day after day. When wilt Thou give me a still greater grace than Thou hast given, the grace to profit by the graces which Thou givest?

When wilt Thou give me Thy effectual grace which alone can give life and vigour to this effete, miserable, dying soul of mine? My God, I know not in what sense I can pain Thee in Thy glorified state; but I know that every fresh sin, every fresh ingratitude I now commit, was among the blows and stripes which once fell on Thee in Thy passion. O let me have as little share in those Thy past sufferings as possible.

Day by day goes, and I find I have been more and more, by the new sins of each day, the cause of them. I know that at best I have a real share in solido[“for the whole”] of them all, but still it is shocking to find myself having a greater and greater share. Let others wound Thee – let not me. Let not me have to think that Thou wouldest have had this or that pang of soul or body the less, except for me.

O my God, I am so fast in prison that I cannot get out. O Mary, pray for me. O Philip, pray for me, though I do not deserve Thy pity.

– from “The Mental Sufferings of Our Lord,” 1855

ASHES TO GLORY

ASHES TO GLORY

 Lenten reflection 8 APRIL 2019 T HESE ARE difficult times. Knife crime here in London, spreading death and fear; the terrible shootings in the Christchurch mosque and the brutal murder of 200 Christians in Nigeria within the last few weeks; and, of course, the confusion, anxieties, deep disagreements and anger over Brexit, seen not only in the Palace of Westminster but also within families and communities across the country. Have we forgotten how to live together? Perhaps this is the fundamental question. Can we be different without those differences leading to a breakdown in relationships? It is often said that tolerance and respect are vital qualities in our society: respect for one another and for the rule of law. It’s true that society needs tolerance and respect for its coherence and nourishment. But tolerance of difference and mutual respect are the fruit of something with far deeper roots. It is these deeper roots that we are neglecting, and this is why the fruit are now in short supply. To find these roots, we must go to the heart of how we understand ourselves as human beings. One of the roots of the Ash Wednesday ceremony, with which we began this season of Lent, is the Book of Genesis – an early attempt to answer our question about how we understand ourselves. Genesis tells us, in its unique way, that the human being is formed from the dust of the earth. The name “Adam” comes from the Hebrew adamah, which means “ground” or “soil”. But Genesis also tells us that God took this soil into his hands and breathed into it, giving it a unique form of life – a life that is made in the image and likeness of God. The rest of creation comes to life through the word of God; only the human person is formed by the hand and breath of God. IN THE VIVID language of Genesis, then, we come from the dust of the earth yet we are enlivened by the breath of God. We all experience both these aspects of our make-up every day. We have great hopes and dreams – dreams of a better life, of a better world, of better relationships; yet we live through disappointment, failure, hurt, anger, resentment. We are capable of the worst cruelties; and we are capable of the most sublime goodness, courage and generosity. This is the drama of our lives: we are dust of the earth yet we are filled with the breath of God; limited and fallible yet always reaching for more. Sometimes we seek fulfilment in the fleeting gratification of wealth or fame or power over others. Yet even when we find ourselves in a blind alley, the breath of God in us is never extinguished. We are always searching for something that will “put things right”. There is another word, this time a Latin word, which also means “the earth” or “the soil”. It is the word humus. And humus is the root of the word “humility”. Humility is that virtue by which we keep hold of a true estimation of ourselves, not deceiving ourselves that we are more powerful or important than we actually are. Humility helps us recognise our need of others, just as it helps us to recognise our need of God, whose breath within us spurs us on to finding those things which God alone can truly give us. “Remember you are dust and to dust you will return.” The words we heard at the beginning of Lent, when the priest dipped his thumb in the ashes and dabbed them on our forehead, are a sharp reminder of these truths. Yes, dust, and left to ourselves we remain just dust. But we are also dust made for eternal glory. Whoever we are, whatever we do, are all called to nurture this humus, this adamah, so that we can grow into our true destiny. Think of the safeguarding of children and vulnerable adults in our parishes and schools: this is clearly the work of providing good soil, free of toxic elements which kill innocence and trust. And evangelisation –  sharing the good news of God – is the work of telling the story of who we really are, from where our lives arise and the destiny we are invited to grasp. This is essential nutrient for the humus we need for our growth, both the soil of our lives and the humility of our hearts. In this way, we are nurturing the soil and the tree of true human growth. It is only this tree which provides the fruit of tolerance and respect. If it is not courageously nurtured, those qualities will recede even further from society, leaving a rough and uncompromising world in which demagogues will thrive and violence will burst out more and more frequently. In the last book of the Bible, in its final chapter, as far away from Genesis as we can get, there is a lovely image of the growth of trees and of virtue: “Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city; also on either side of the river, the tree of life, which bears twelve crops of fruit a year, one in each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations” (Revelation 22:1-2). AND TO RETURN to Ash Wednesday, to Adam and to the adamah, it is no coincidence that when we received the dust on our foreheads, it was traced in the form of the cross, the cross of Christ. He is the one who shares our human state, our dust, and yet also opens the way in which the breath of God within us finds its full expression, its full strength, its full lung-power. When we realise this, in the gift of faith, then we cry out, with that same breath: “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” We give thanks and we serve him joyfully. May this time of Lent, between now and Easter, be a time of joy for us all as we strive to rediscover the nobility and greatness of our humanity and serve it in all we do, as best we can, with sure peace and joy. 

PAIN, LOSS AND EASTER

PAIN, LOSS AND EASTER

Mary Magdalene went to Jesus’ tomb on Sunday morning, after He was crucified and buried. The stone in front of the tomb was rolled aside, so she knelt down and looked within, but His body was not there. Mary did not realize that He had been resurrected from the dead. She did not know where He was, and began to cry because of her great loss.

Inside the tomb were two angels who asked her why she was crying. Then behind her came the voice of a man she thought was a gardener—but it was Jesus. When He spoke her name, “Mary,” she recognized Him and was ecstatic (John 20:1–16).

As I read this, my eyes were opened to a key for getting over rejection, pain, and losses from the past.

For Mary, her pain was the loss of a friend and leader who may have been the first to ever care for her. Notice these key elements of this account in John 20:1–16: The other disciples spent time at the tomb and went back home, but Mary stayed there crying. Mary looked into the tomb, focused on her loss, similar to when we focus on the loss and pain of our past.

There Is No Life in the Tomb

Too often, we focus on the tomb of our past. Yes, there is an appropriate amount of time to deal with grief and loss. But there is also a time to look in a new direction. You cannot live your life at the tomb of your past. Did you notice where Jesus was? He was behind her. Mary had to stand up and turn 180 degrees from the tomb. This symbolizes the need for us to turn our focus away from our past pain and loss.

Notice that Jesus appeared as a gardener. This symbolizes that when you focus on the future, God is there to help things grow and bring life. Also, Mary saw two angels inside the tomb. The symbolism here is that inside every painful experience is a blessing from God, if we can only recognize it.

When Jesus said, “Mary,” her eyes were opened and she immediately recognized Him. Oftentimes, we are not able to recognize the work of God in our painful situation. I started to realize that inside every painful experience is a gift. By simply changing your focus, you can allow the past to strengthen you and give you the necessary tools to help others who are camped out at their tombs.

This is an important part of hearing the voice of God. As you develop a close relationship with Him, God will find ways to let you know He loves and cares for you specifically. The power of turning away from the past and negative things is vital to receiving all that God has for us!

DENYING SELF TO FOLLOW JESUS

THE CAL TO FOLLOW JESUS AND DENY SELF

Mark 8:34-38

Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: 'Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it. What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul? If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of them when he comes in his Father's glory with the holy angels.' (NIVUK)

After Jesus announced Himself as the suffering Christ (Mark 8:31), Peter rebuked Him but only to earn the worst critique this side of hell: 'Get behind me Satan' (Mark 8:32-33) .  Doubtless the other disciples were alarmed … if Peter could be so wrong, what hope had the others?  Were they in danger of being excluded from Jesus' select group?  At that point Jesus called the crowd to join them, announcing that they were all welcome to follow Him, but on one condition: they must be willing to sacrifice all self-interest, even being willing to die for His sake.  If they were to keep on following Him, they would end up where He was going.  The options were stark but real. True discipleship includes suffering as a part of the package (Philippians 1:29) .  The 'cross' Jesus talked about was the voluntary putting to death of self-interest and self-assertion - not some physical penance or relationship difficulty, however painful. Peter's concern was that Jesus should not die; later Peter was concerned that he might also die, which is why he denied even knowing Jesus (Matthew 26:69-75).  In the end Jesus predicted that Peter would die, and on a cross too (John 21:18) .  The crowd were also invited to lay down the right to running their lives for themselves, if they believed in Him and the gospel.  Such people would have everlasting life, but those who denied Him would be excluded from God's kingdom.  It was not that their personal sacrifice would save their souls – only the sacrifice of Jesus can atone for our sins (1 John 4:10) – but that their willingness to identify with the crucified Christ proved their faith in Him.  To be ashamed of Jesus, meant that He would shun them on the day of His glory. Those whose life ambitions are money or fame, power or property, sensual satisfaction or social security, can never safeguard their souls from hell.  Nobody can buy their way to God's favour by their human efforts, good deeds, gifts, philanthropy, or religious rituals (Ephesians 2:8-9).  Nobody can bribe God to let them into heaven.  No service for Jesus can bring us any closer to His heart (Matthew 7:22-23) .  But the invitation to both trainee apostles and the crowds was the same - note the words 'whoever' (3x in these verses), 'someone' and 'anyone' (2x).  The invitation is to all who will come to Jesus on His terms (Acts 2:21): true relationship with Jesus is for those who choose to deny what they want, and submit to what Jesus wants for their lives.   Self-preservation is a natural ambition. The willingness to lose our lives for the Lord's sake (as many missionaries have done over the centuries... and many persecuted believers still do today), is only possible by a spiritual transformation - created by the Holy Spirit as we submit to Jesus Christ.  But if we are ashamed of the Saviour, His verdict on that attitude is catastrophically final. There is great comfort in the restoration of the repentant disciples (especially Peter) after the resurrection.  But that should only serve to stimulate our repentance and renewed lifestyle, while there is still time before Christ's return!

Gracious God. Thank You for Your long-suffering attitude to my unwillingness to follow the Lord Jesus in His self-denial and suffering for the gospel's sake. Please help me to repent and please work that transformation in my life so that I might desire to do Your will above all else. In Jesus' Name. Amen.

THRIFT AS A CHRISTIAN VIRTUE

Thrift as a Christian Virtue

“The modern world must somehow be made to understand (in theology and other things) that a view may be vast, broad, universal, liberal and yet come into conflict with another view that is vast, broad, universal and liberal also.”  So says Chesterton, in perhaps the most important sentence in What’s Wrong with the World. “There is never a war between two sects, but only between two universal Catholic Churches,” he adds, “The only possible collision is the collision of one cosmos with another.”

He is speaking there about a difference in sexes, in a chapter entitled, “The Romance of Thrift.” Husbands, he says, like to go to public houses and spend freely there, which they take to show a favouring of friends over money.  Wives, who must oversee the household, can appear in contrast to be mean-spirited.

Yet their attention to “thrift” is itself a form of magnanimity: “many a good housekeeper plays the same game every day with ends of cheese and scraps of silk, not because she is mean, but on the contrary, because she is magnanimous; because she wishes her creative mercy to be over all her works, that not one sardine should be destroyed, or cast as rubbish to the void.”

It’s a strange conflict of cosmoi, involving a dispute over virtues and vices. The man’s liberality looks like prodigality to the woman; the woman’s looks like meanness to the man.  On Chesterton’s telling, these traits don’t neutralize each other, or come to co-exist amicably in “complementarity.” To be sure, in God’s providence, husband and wife mysteriously balance each other out.  Yet for them there is a kind of running challenge of misunderstanding and forbearance. “The whole pleasure of marriage is that it is a perpetual crisis,” he famously quipped.

Of course, to read Chesterton with sympathy on sex differences already requires a journey to another cosmos, away from what counts as vast, broad, universal, and liberal today.  We can dispute how much of his account is a creature solely of Victorian England.  But on one point he is close to the common experience of humankind, and we are the outliers – in his emphasis on thrift.

We don’t even understand the word. “Thrift” means the concrete product of thriving, just as a gift is the product of giving, and as, when we say, “Do you get my drift?” we mean “Do you get what I am driving at?”  Thriving without thrift has nothing to show for itself.

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The seed of the plant is its thrift, likewise the wealth that a household may acquire over a lifetime and pass down. Families used to devote themselves to saving, and institutions that arose in answer to that intention were called simply “Thrifts.”

By transference, “thrift” means also the habit of conserving thrift.  As conserving thrift is a good, thrift is a virtue, also known in the tradition as “economy”, “frugality,” and “parsimony.”

These in turn get paired with “industry” as the divinely willed precondition of the acquisition of substance: “Following in the footsteps of Our Predecessor,” writes Pius XI in Quadragesimo anno, “it will be impossible to put these principles into practice [viz. of social justice] unless the non-owning workers through industry and thrift advance to the state of possessing some little property.”

“Take away the instinct which Christian wisdom has planted and nurtured in men’s hearts,” Leo XIII commented, “take away foresight, temperance, frugality, patience, and other rightful, natural habits, no matter how much he may strive, [the workman] will never achieve prosperity.” (Graves de communi re)

We disagree on words when the virtue looks a lot like the vice.  Consider “parsimony”: it’s a lovely word that meant originally “to spare money” (parcere monia). For Adam Smith, it is the virtue: “Parsimony, and not industry,” he writes in Wealth of Nations, “is the immediate cause of the increase of capital. Industry, indeed, provides the subject which parsimony accumulates; but whatever industry might acquire, if parsimony did not save and store up, the capital would never be the greater.”

Yet in the Catholic tradition, the word tends to mean the vice: “He lived with such simplicity that he was blamed for parsimony,” says the old Catholic Encyclopedia(q.v. Giovanni Morgagni), “but his secret charities, revealed after his death, disprove this charge.”

In the use of money, the virtues and vices are very close. “Magnanimity is a virtue,” says St. John Chrysostom, in a homily on the use of money:

and hard by it stands prodigality.  Likewise, economy is a virtue, and hard by it stands parsimony and meanness. . . .He that spends his money on fit objects, this is the magnanimous man: for someone who is not a slave to passion, and who is capable of taking money to be insignificant, truly has a great soul.  Likewise, economy is a good thing: someone who spends in a proper manner, and not at random, without management, will be the best steward.  But parsimony is different – even when an urgent necessity demands it, it will not touch principal. And yet, parsimony is always near to economy.

But the virtues provide the standard of right reason.  That is why Leo XIII defines a “living wage” in relation to the virtue: “Let the working man and the employer make free agreements, and in particular let them agree freely as to the wages; nevertheless, there underlies a dictate of natural justice more imperious and ancient than any bargain between man and man, namely, that wages ought not to be insufficient to support a frugal and well-behaved wage-earner.”

Modern formulations, however, tend to leave out the virtues: “Everyone should be able to draw from work the means of providing for his life and that of his family, and of serving the human community,” (CCC 2428) – everyone, not “every frugal person.”

We have much to learn from that other cosmos that emphasized thrift and saving.  Our neglect, in our lives – and even in guiding summaries of Church teaching – harms us all, in many ways.