THE END OF DESPAIR- PRAYER SAVED MY LIFE

I was drving home from church after my fourth Mass of the day, and the dark night hung like a nightmare, closing in and pressing down. My thoughts, churning like rapids, ventured deeper and deeper into the pit of despair.

My marriage had just ended. For several weeks I put up a strong front, not betraying the growing depression that was overcoming me. Eventually, it hit with the ferocity of a tsunami, making me spin and spin until finally I saw no way out, nowhere to go except the end.

Backing Up
When I got married, I doubt anyone imagined I would give up on the Catholic Church. After all, before I met the one, the girl I knew I would marry, I had been discerning a vocation with the Jesuits for nearly five years.

But I left. I left for some some not-so-good reasons but primarily because I had no spiritual life to speak of. I found it much more difficult to have a healthy prayer life while married, especially after our kids were born. Occasionally, I said a rosary or recited some other prayers, but the distractions were too great. Without the help of a good, consistent spiritual guide, I was in over my head, not prepared for marriage or the spiritual responsibilities it entailed.


But I came back. I came back to the church a week before my wife left me. I shudder to think of how things might be different now if I had not. I was even luckier to have found a wonderful priest who, though busy, took time to guide me back to a life closer to God. During this time, he gave me a piece of advice I would need to get through my darkest hours: “You do too much; you need to pray more.” This priest and what he taught me were my salvation. Without the weeks I spent easing back into prayer, I would not be alive today.

On the Edge
It was a Sunday in November and the case of a young woman who had chosen to take her life by physician-assisted suicide had been all over the news for the past week. I attempted to conquer the questions gathering like storm clouds in my mind. Could I too choose to make the pain stop by staying busy? I volunteered to help out with as many of the Mass duties and as many Masses as I could—pushing the inevitable away and lying to myself that everything was O.K.

Eventually, the action was over and everyone had to go home. There is always a point when the doing ends, and then we are faced with the deafening and horrendous silence that is our thoughts. The light was extinguished; the darkness had conquered. Every thought that raced through my mind was worse than the last. The drive home quickly became a torture. The only solace came when I devised the method that would be the most efficient but the least painful. I had heard about this point on the road: the flood, if you will, that sends one over the top. The relatively long drive from the church to my apartment became a curse.

But somewhere along the road, God broke through the thick, viscous shroud that hung as a barrier to my inner being. Finally, that shield was penetrated ever so slightly, just enough for a small piece of self-realization and reason to break through. Suddenly, the impending danger to my life was hanging on the air as clear as a wild animal standing nearby; only I was the wild animal.

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I drove straight past my apartment complex and checked myself into the hospital about half a mile down the road. That decision saved my life.

When I refused to go to the V.A. hospital, the doctor sent for a government representative, a psychiatrist, to evaluate me. The representative put me very much at ease, and instead of chastising me for “wasting resources,” as I expected, he simply said: “You’re very strong! To have realized the danger you were in and then come here for help—that’s not common.” I thank God for that moment of uncommon strength in the midst of despair.

Walking With God
It has been a year and a half now since that fateful day, and I wish I could say that I am cured, but that is not true. In reality, this kind of thing almost never fully goes away. One must admit that. One must understand that, or it will eat you alive. The question now is not, “Am I cured?” but rather “How do I live?” Every day is a struggle that I must meet head on—but not alone; that is where I went wrong and sometimes still do. The struggle is too much for us as individuals. While having the support of another person is always a bonus, it is just that, a bonus. The key is having a relationship with the strongest, wisest and most loving being in our existence: God.

I know: It sounds like a cliché. But we often rely on our personal relationships with family and friends, especially when life hits hard. Why, then, is it so embarrassing to do the same with the Lord? I needed to leave my ego behind and stop worrying what others thought of me. I began my journey the way one normally undertakes a new challenge: by finding teachers.

From the Benedictines I learned inner contemplation, to slow down, to meditate. At their monastery in Clear Creek, Okla., I was immersed in the beauty of the Liturgy of the Hours, which the monks prayed in the most arresting Gregorian chant.

With the guidance of Jesuits I was able to return to my Ignatian roots. They have a house just down the road from me, and the superior allowed me to go on retreats there, even though I could not pay all the costs. Through the assistance of these wonderful Jesuits and Ignatian spirituality, I learned to find the shadows, the damage, the problems in my soul before they are able to build into a new crescendo.

Finally, I have gained much from my lay brothers and sisters. I joined a lay chapter of the Order of Preachers soon after leaving the hospital and with them learned the joys of Dominican balance. I learned that what I need is not too much prayer, not too much work, not too much community or alone time but to balance all of them together.

In a recent Sunday homily, the priest, the one who brought me back to prayer when I needed it most, made a wonderful comment about achieving such balance: “When the Benedictines open their ‘schedule,’ they put down when they pray and meditate, then they fit in the work that needs to be done. When we open our schedules, we shove work in until there is barely any room left, and then we try to squeeze prayer in.”

Not that long ago, I was not even trying to squeeze prayer in. Today, my prayers are constant and consistent. I am not free of my depression. Each day I wake and must force myself to think good thoughts and force the bad ones away, and it does not always work. But I am at peace. And that, I pray, is where I will remain.

Joe Watson Jr., a native Texan and Army veteran, is a lay Dominican and a member of the Knights of Columbus. He has studied biochemistry and mathematics.

My Son, the Pseudonym Was it porn? Was it drugs? What were we losing our son to, in his solitary word?

As our 16-year-old son slipped away after dinner to sit in his dark bedroom with only the light of his laptop for company, my husband shook his head and asked, “Porn?”

When his grades dropped and he started missing homework assignments and blowing off his friends, I looked at my husband and said, “Maybe drugs?”

We ransacked his room and dug through his computer history, and found nothing other than a half-eaten sandwich under his bed that we think used to be turkey, and that he watched a lot of Weird Al on YouTube.

We asked him what was going on. He shrugged, looked at the floor, and mumbled, “Nothing …”

A few weeks after that he began slipping out the front door and heading for the creek at the end of our street. We finally followed him to see what was up, and saw him crouched down in the brush slinking from tree to tree. His father shook his head, motioned for us to leave and whispered, “Your son is out of his freaking mind.”

We stopped seeing his friends hanging around our house. His teachers were constantly e-mailing us about forgotten homework. He was failing algebra and very nearly flunking chemistry. He was walking a path straight toward juvenile delinquency and having to repeat the tenth grade. We were swimming in a sea of red flags with no solution to the mystery of what-had-happened-to-our-son anywhere in sight.

Last night, I hit the end of my rope. I stood in the kitchen holding notice of a failed test in my hand and really gave him what for. I let my frustration burst forth, and it rained down heavy on his head. He stood in front of me with his head bowed, chewing his lip and nervously shifting his weight.

“You haven’t been turning in anything!” I hollered. “What on earth could you possibly be doing that’s more important than passing the tenth grade?!?”

Without looking up at me, he whispered, “I wrote a book.”

I stared at him dumbfounded. “What?”

“I wrote a book. Last fall.”

I just stared at him, the anger gone out of me, replaced by complete confusion. “A book? How long of a book?”

“Around 60,000 words.”

“What kind of book? Has anyone seen it? Why is this the first I’m hearing about it?” The questions just poured from me.

“Ummm … it’s like a medieval fantasy fiction kind of thing.”

“Have you shown it to anyone? Can I read it?”

“I self-published it, Mom. Like in e-book format? It’s been downloaded almost 1,000 times. The readers seem to like it. And they like the sequel too.”

“There’s a book and a sequel? When do you write this?”

“At night. I turn off the lights so there’s no distractions, and I just write. I told my friends that they have to be patient. I’ll be back in a few months.”

I just kept staring at the man-child in front of me as the pieces of the puzzle slid neatly into place. He wasn’t on drugs or suicidal. He wasn’t just blowing off school; he was succumbing to the soul-aching need to put words on paper. It’s an addiction, a driving need. It’s one that I know intimately and can’t believe I didn’t recognize.

He’s not an antisocial delinquent, he’s his mother’s child. He’s a writer, God help him.

I wrapped my arms around him and said, “Three things: The book thing is cool, but you still have to pass algebra.”

He sighed “okay” into my neck. “What else?”

“I get to read it. Dad and I pay for the Internet, we get to know what you’re using it for.”

“And the third thing?”

“What were you doing at the creek in the brush?”

“Choreographing battle scenes.”

“Of course you were.”

I’ve signed him up for a writer’s workshop over the summer and told him that he can take a gap year after high school to work on his writing, as college isn’t necessarily for everyone; and as of this moment I’m halfway through his first book. It’s funny. And good. And really funny. At only 16 years old, he’s already a better writer than I’ll ever hope to be.

He still has to pass algebra.

We’ve hired a tutor.

Culled from ALETEIA

MERCY GRANTED IN CONVERSION

Sandro Magister carries a report on an upcoming article to be published in the French language, "L'Homme Nouveau" by Robert Cardinal Sarah.

Magister writes:

Readers of Sarah’s book have sent him many comments, favorable and unfavorable. And in the dossier that is about to come out in “L'Homme Nouveau,” the cardinal responds to a good number of the objections he has received.

But it is precisely what these objections reveal that has convinced Cardinal Sarah even more that the serious case of the Church today is none other than a crisis of faith. A crisis that lies beneath the questions debated at the synod, because it touches the very foundations of the Catholic faith and brings out into the open a widespread illiteracy concerning the age-old teaching of the Church, present even among the clergy, precisely those who are supposed to act as guides for the faithful.

There we have it: the Synodal crisis stems from a crisis of Faith. The new "pastoral" orientations have their genesis in a defective, un-Catholic belief system. It is not Catholic, not Christian. Magister writes:

“The entire Church has always firmly held that one may not receive communion with the knowledge of being in a state of mortal sin, a principle recalled as definitive by John Paul II in his 2003 encyclical ‘Ecclesia de Eucharistia,’” on the basis of what was decreed by the Council of Trent.

And immediately afterward he adds:
“Not even a pope can dispense from such a divine law.”
Cardinal Sarah with Bishop Athanasius Schneider
It is heresy! Any change in the teaching is pure, unadulterated heresy - a "Christological heresy" - in the words of Gerhard Cardinal Muller. Let there be no mistake: if any change is undertaken on trying to change the divine law, the perpetrators will be heretics, and will be denounced as such.

The gravity of the situation is fed by - let us be honest - the Pope's continued silence over the explosion of open heresy at the Synod. This cannot be understated. At the Synod - yes - we had marvelous demonstrations of Faith and fidelity - but we also had manifestations of horrible infidelity and treachery. Not one of these men were silenced, expelled from Rome, removed from office by the Pope. These heresiarchs still have their sees, pouring spiritual poison into the souls of the faithful. How is this possible? It is possible because the crisis comes right from the top: from the Pope.

Let us return to the words of the great African Cardinal:

To conclude, I feel wounded in my heart as a bishop in witnessing such incomprehension of the Church’s definitive teaching on the part of my brother priests.


I cannot allow myself to imagine as the cause of such confusion anything but the insufficiency of the formation of my confreres. And insofar as I am responsible for the discipline of the sacraments in the whole Latin Church, I am bound in conscience to recall that Christ has reestablished the Creator’s original plan of a monogamous, indissoluble marriage ordered to the good of the spouses, as also to the generation and education of children. He has also elevated marriage between baptized persons to the rank of a sacrament, signifying God’s covenant with his people, just like the Eucharist.
In spite of this, there also exists a marriage that the Church calls “legitimate.” The sacred dimension of this “natural” dimension makes it an element awaiting the sacrament, on the condition that it respect heterosexuality and the parity of the two spouses when it comes to their specific rights and duties, and that the consent not exclude monogamy, indissolubility, permanence, and openness to life.

Conversely, the Church stigmatizes the deformations introduced into human love: homosexuality, polygamy, chauvinism, free love, divorce, contraception, etc. In any case, it never condemns persons. But it does not leave them in their sin. Like its Master, it has the courage and the charity to say to them: go and from now on sin no more.

The Church does not only welcome with mercy, respect, and delicacy. It firmly invites to conversion. As its follower, I promote mercy for sinners - which all of us are - but also firmness toward sins incompatible with the love for God that is professed with sacramental communion. What is this if not the imitation of the attitude of the Son of God who addresses the adulterous woman: “Neither do I condemn you. Go and from now on sin no more” (Jn 8:11)?

CDL MULLER AFFIRMS CHURCH TEACHING ON MARRIAGE

"Amoris Laetitia" must be read in light of traditional doctrine and discipline
VATICAN (ChurchMilitant.com) - Cardinal Gerhard Müller, head of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), is affirming traditional Church teaching on marriage and the family.

In an interview Thursday, December 1, to Kathpress, the prefect of the CDF held up the Congregation's 1994 rejection of the so-called Kasper Proposal to give Holy Communion to the civilly remarried. The cardinal also stressed that the papal exhortation "Amoris Laetitia" (AL) must be interpreted in accord with it and other Church teachings.

Cardinal Müller declined to comment directly on the recent letter submitted by Cdl. Raymond Burke and three cardinals to Pope Francis on AL, specifically whether it allows civilly remarried adulterers to receive Holy Communion. He nonetheless did point out the CDF's 1994 rejection written by Cdl. Ratzinger, (later Pope Benedict XVI) of such "pastoral" proposals.

The 1994 CDF directive mandated,
If the divorced are remarried civilly, they find themselves in a situation that objectively contravenes God's law. Consequently, they cannot receive Holy Communion as long as this situation persists. ... The faithful who persist in such a situation may receive Holy Communion only after obtaining sacramental absolution ... when for serious reasons, for example, for the children's upbringing, a man and a woman cannot satisfy the obligation to separate, they 'take on themselves the duty to live in complete continence, that is, by abstinence from the acts proper to married couples.

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, as prefect of the CDF in 1994, had to issue this letter in response to the erroneous proposal of none other than Germany's Cdl. Walter Kasper along with two other Cardinals. The Kasper proposal to give Holy Communion to unrepentant adulterers preceded the recent two synods by more than twenty years.

Cardinal Müller made known that the CDF speaks with papal authority — one of his reasons for not weighing in on Cdl. Burke's letter unless asked directly by the Holy Father. At the same time he emphasized that AL "should not be interpreted as if the teachings of earlier Popes and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on the subject were no longer binding."

As to leaving the matter of receiving Holy Communion up to the consciences of unrepentant adulterers, the 1994 statement cited by Cdl. Müller mandates, "Should they judge it possible to do so, pastors and confessors, given the gravity of the matter and the spiritual good of these persons as well as the common good of the Church, have the serious duty to admonish them that such a judgment of conscience openly contradicts the Church's teaching."

The 1994 document further iterated that St. John Paul II's apostolic exhortation "Familiaris Consortio" "confirms and indicates the reasons for the constant and universal practice, founded on Sacred Scripture, of not admitting the divorced and remarried to Holy Communion."

A JUBILEE YEAR OF MERCY

Pope Francis has announced a jubilee Year of Mercy, starting December 8. He is hardly the first pope to stress the importance of mercy. John Paul II spoke about it often and eloquently. But Francis has a special passion for the virtue, likely rooted in his experience of the poor and his affection for the thought of Romano Guardini.

In his masterpiece The Lord, Guardini has a revealing chapter on “Justice and That Which Surpasses It.” It’s worth reading as a clue to the Holy Father’s thought. To quote Guardini at length:

Justice is good. It is the foundation of existence. But there is something higher than justice, the bountiful widening of the heart to mercy. Justice is clear, but one step further and it becomes cold. Mercy is genuine, heartfelt; when backed by character, it warms and redeems. Justice regulates, orders existence; mercy creates. Justice satisfies the mind that all is as it should be, but from mercy leaps the joy of creative life.
Guardini shrewdly notes that “too often [an appeal to] ‘justice’ is used as a mask for quite different things”—envy of the person who generously grants mercy, or resentment that the penitent sinner is escaping his just punishment.

Most of us know the story, in John’s Gospel, of Christ’s encounter with the woman caught in adultery. For St. Augustine, the woman embodies the entire human race. She has sinned grievously. She has betrayed her God, her family, and the community to which she belongs. Brought before the religious authorities, she faces the severity of Mosaic law, which allows for stoning. The men who stand in judgment of her, all of them sincerely committed to the law, seek to rid the community of sin by ridding it first of the sinner. Their interest is punishment, not penance.

Jesus makes use of the moment to show the power of mercy and the conversion it can bring about. As Augustine notes, Christ is not indifferent to sin or justice—quite the opposite. When Jesus asks the religious authorities who among them is without sin, he speaks with the voice of his Father’s justice. When the law casts its eye on the human race, all persons—including those who consider themselves righteous—need God’s mercy. In forgiving the woman, Jesus does by grace what the moral law cannot do. He gives her a new life in God’s friendship.

We should not read Christ’s mercy as a judgment against all judgments. Evil exists. Sin matters. The damage it does can be bitter and not easily undone—adultery being a perfect example. But the story does remind us that, apart from God’s grace, all of us are misshapen by the distorted desires of our hearts.

As Guardini wrote, “before one can be just, one must learn to love.” We live in a tangle of debts that we owe to others and that others owe to us, in a web of mutual hurts that pure justice can never undo. When we seek justice untempered by mercy, no matter how well-intentioned we are, we risk crushing others or being crushed ourselves by the punishments we deserve. On its own, the human race cannot achieve true justice or show true mercy effectively. As Paul says, we’re in bondage to sin and death.

A people bound to their passions, to false gods made with their own hands, cannot enter God’s house. We end up stuck in the glue of our mistakes, resentments, and disordered desires. Only Jesus can free us. Only he could have justly cast the first stone. But he didn’t, saying instead, “Neither do I condemn you; go, and do not sin again”(8:11).

Mercy derives from the Latin word ­merces, “ reward” or “gratuity.” We see this meaning in the French expression merci. It’s a courtesy that graces our social interactions with a touch of kindness. In English, however, mercy can take on a theological sense, even in secular contexts. God’s grace comes to us as an unmerited gift. To be merciful, then, is to freely offer clemency to someone worthy of punishment, or to release someone from a debt he or she owes.

Mercy also has a meaning that involves more than gift, merit, grace, and the forgiveness of debts. It’s often used as the word to translate misericordia, the Latin word for compassion, or, literally, having a “merciful heart.” Here we speak of an emotional state of entering into someone else’s plight and sharing in his burdens. As Chaucer put it, mercy is a “­virtue by which a man’s heart is stirred by the misery of those in distress.” In Jesus Christ, God doesn’t offer us grace from afar. He walks with us in our daily sufferings.

The Book of Exodus gives us a first model of God’s mercy. It prefigures the life of the Church. Israel suffers in Egyptian slavery, and God hears the cries of his people. He remembers his covenant with the patriarchs. He turns his face toward them and, as Scripture says, using one of its terms for intimacy, the Lord knows their affliction. He comes to Moses in the burning bush. He states his purpose, which is to bring his people out of captivity and into the land he promised to Abraham. He gives Moses his name as a keepsake, a sharing of the divine with the human that foreshadows the Incarnation.

From that point in Exodus, God binds himself to his people. He seeks their freedom, not because they deserve it, but because they are his beloved ones. The Lord destroys Pharaoh’s ability to impose his will on the Israelites. But as children of Adam, the Israelites themselves are slaves of sin. They need the liberating power of God’s judgment, which comes to them in the law delivered to Moses on Mount Sinai. Freedom from servitude is not a license for self-will. It is oriented toward obedience to the Torah and friendship with God.

The true character of mercy lies in what sets it apart from pity. A state governor might pity prisoners on death row. He might genuinely feel their suffering. But if he does nothing to spare their lives, he has turned away from mercy. Mercy leads us to imitate the God of Israel, so far as it falls within our power. Only when the governor commutes death sentences to life terms in prison can we rightly call him merciful. He has married compassion to action.

This kind of talk can confuse a lot of good people. We often think of mercy as somehow opposed to righteous judgment. But this is misguided. Consider a teacher who notices that one of her students is deeply distressed, with bruises and other signs of beating. Simply feeling bad for the child achieves nothing. Genuine mercy pursues the facts. Is the child abused at home? Is he being beaten by another child at school? Judgments must be made, evil actions reported. Wrongdoers must be held accountable. It’s a false mercy that pities a suffering child but shrinks from delivering him from those who do him harm. True mercy can be rightly fierce. A merciful person is quick to use what power he has to destroy evil. This is exactly how God acts throughout Scripture.

Two factors tempt us to a mistaken view of mercy. The first factor is God’s love for Israel. Like all humans, the Chosen People are sinners. As a result, God’s actions on behalf of Israel—the mercy he shows them, again and again—is preferential. In human terms, there’s nothing “fair” about God’s ways. For reasons entirely his own, God intervenes to wrench one of the weakest and most obscure primitive peoples of the Mediterranean basin out of the muck of brutality, and to set them on the way toward righteousness. In that sense, mercy is remote from justice, for in a fallen world justice, strictly speaking, would demand God’s punishing everyone.

The second factor is the New Testament fulfillment of God’s Old Testament promise of mercy. Redemption in Jesus Christ goes out to all the nations. In other words, God’s love becomes reckless, even prodigal. Here again our human instincts for justice—the justice of rendering to each his due—seems to run counter to God’s mercy.

But God’s mercy is active. To save us, God assumes our human condition “from within” and becomes the most human of us all. In his crucifixion Jesus offers his life to the Father on our behalf out of love, in perfect innocence and justice. In doing so, he renders us “just,” refashioning a right relationship between human beings and God. Precisely for this reason, the Cross is the greatest sign of divine mercy. Nailed to it, God enters into our estrangement from himself—and bridges the gap with an act of love that frees us. Because Jesus has died for us, when he says, “Come, enter into my kingdom,” we can lift up our heads and go.

Having said that, we are wise to remember that God does not owe us forgiveness or redemption—or anything else. Nor does God’s mercy license us to continue in sin. It demands a response to “go, and do not sin again.” To borrow a thought from ­Augustine: We must not despair, one of the thieves was saved; we must not presume, one of the thieves was damned.

Mercy, like the virtue of charity (or love) from which it derives, is a virtue easily abused and misconceived. There is no mercy in “mercy killing,” the taking of another’s life based on the obscene judgment that some lives aren’t worth living. But even in our daily routines, we’re often tempted to use the language of mercy to dodge our responsibility to seek justice. We lie or dissemble rather than bruise the feelings of others whose behaviors are clearly wrong. This is a polite form of cowardice, not mercy. The moral law guides us toward choices that are life-giving, and true mercy is always intimately linked to truth. Indulging our own or another’s flawed choices in the supposed service of mercy defeats mercy’s true goal.

It’s useful to recall that Guardini also had, along with his thoughts on justice and mercy, much to say about truth. This from The Faith and Modern Man:

A man’s mind falls ill when he relinquishes his hold on truth—not by lying, though he lie often, for in that case the injury to the spirit can be repaired by contrition and the renewal of good will—but by an inward revolt from truth. True illness of the mind and spirit sets in when a man no longer cherishes truth but despises it, when he uses it as a means to his own ends, when in the depths of his soul truth ceases to be to him the primary, the most important concern.
Truth is essential to the sacrament of reconciliation. As sinners, we approach God seeking his mercy. In a truthful act of confession, an honest admission of our sins, we find consolation and peace. But the sacrament is not meant to confirm us in our sins, as if mechanically mentioning a list of mistakes and bad actions excuses us from renouncing them and changing the course of our lives. The Christian vocation is more demanding but also more beautiful than this. The sacrament of reconciliation, received and acted upon truthfully, is a steady path to transformation and holiness. Through it, we’re given the grace to make an exodus, a going out from our destructive situations and patterns of behavior, and to attach ourselves more deeply to God. The mercy of God is meant to render us increasingly more honest, more just, and so also more loving and peaceful.

For this reason the Church has always insisted on the necessity of repentance for serious sins as a condition for receiving the Eucharist. Confession and genuine repentance—which includes a turning away from sin—must precede Communion. A sincere movement toward God always entails a movement away from sin and error.

And this leads us to current proposals that divorced and civilly remarried persons should be admitted to Communion without a change of life. These proposals—advanced as expressions of mercy—are aimed at couples who were previously married, and where annulments are not deemed possible. According to such proposals, couples who are sexually active with people to whom they are not ­really married in the eyes of the Church might receive the Eucharist even without confession of their sins, and without seeking to be chaste while living as “brother and sister.”

These proposals draw strength from the fact that many of the people they seek to help are decent, well-intending persons tied to complex new relationships, often with children. Why—so the reasoning goes—would the Church want to punish and exclude them?

The answer of course is that the Church doesn’t want to punish them and doesn’t in fact exclude them. The divorced and civilly remarried remain welcome members of the believing community. But neither can the Church ignore the Word of God on the permanence of marriage, nor mitigate the consequences of the choices that grown people freely make. She cannot confirm human beings in patterns of behavior that separate them from God and remain faithful to her own mission at the same time. Authentic mercy is evangelical. It proceeds from the belief that God’s grace has the power to transform us. Ironically, a pastoral strategy that minimizes sin in the name of mercy cannot be merciful, because it is dishonest.

The Church can be truthful without being merciful, like the scribes who wished to stone the adulteress who violated the Mosaic law. But the Church cannot be merciful without being truthful. And the truth is, we are called to conversion. A pastoral approach that ignores this truth out of a thinly veiled pastoral despair and accommodationism will result in less faith, not more. “The one who wants to adapt himself too much,” Henri de Lubac famously warned, “risks letting himself be dragged along.” Indeed, this is what we see happening in Europe, in those churches where the pastoral practice regarding divorce, remarriage, and reception of the sacraments has departed from authentic Catholic teaching. What ensues from an untruthful teaching about and practice of the sacraments is not a more zealous evangelical life but its collapse.

Pope Francis has spoken eloquently of “accompaniment,” the task of walking patiently with others in the tangled realities of their lives—and of our times. This is a key aspect of mercy and a vital expression of Christian love. Sin’s bonds are strong, and God’s grace often unwinds them slowly. Sometimes, the most important word that another person needs to hear is best whispered gently and patiently. We must be close to those whom we love if we’re to do our part in lifting them up to the fullness of the Gospel.

But a therapeutic age tends to translate “accompaniment” as “thou shalt not judge,” affirming people indiscriminately as they are. This is not mercy. God’s mercy always moves us forward and upward. No sin places us beyond God’s forgiveness. His mercy endures forever. That means everyone is invited when the great churches of Rome open their doors at the beginning of this extraordinary jubilee, the Year of Mercy. But again, it would be the opposite of mercy to say “come” and then imply that we need not move, need not step out of our present romance with sin and toward obedience to God’s life-giving righteousness, the law of Jesus Christ.

In the end, the ministry of mercy in the Church is Marian in character. John’s Gospel tells us that Mary was a witness to the crucifixion of her Son. She saw firsthand the forgiveness of God revealed in the face of Jesus crucified. His arms open to the world, Christ offered, and still offers, the mercy of God to all humanity. Uniting her prayer to that of Jesus, Mary herself became a mirror of divine mercy. In this, Mary is an archetype of the Church. Christians are sent into the world bearing the imprint of the mercy of the Cross on our lives. The Church seeks, then, to follow the maternal example of Mary in being the perfect servant of the mercy of the Lord.

This mercy asks us to teach the truth but also to live it. It asks us to preach not ourselves but the good news of salvation in Jesus Christ. This is news not of “affirmation” but of something more powerful, more desired by all of us—redemption. The Church in this Year of Mercy invites us to encounter anew the love of our Redeemer. She opens her doors to the world and invites all to enter and join the marriage feast of the Lamb.  

Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. Cap.,is archbishop of Philadelphia.

I wanted to change the world

When I was a young man, I wanted to change the world.

I found it was difficult to change the world, so I tried to change my nation.

When I found I couldn't change the nation, I began to focus on my town. I couldn't change the town and as an older man, I tried to change my family.

Now, as an old man, I realize the only thing I can change is myself, and suddenly I realize that if long ago I had changed myself, I could have made an impact on my family. My family and I could have made an impact on our town. Their impact could have changed the nation and I could indeed have changed the world.

THE ELEPHANT ROPE

As a man was passing the elephants, he suddenly stopped, confused by the fact that these huge creatures were being held by only a small rope tied to their front leg. No chains, no cages. It was obvious that the elephants could, at anytime, break away from their bonds but for some reason, they did not.

He saw a trainer nearby and asked why these animals just stood there and made no attempt to get away. “Well,” trainer said, “when they are very young and much smaller we use the same size rope to tie them and, at that age, it’s enough to hold them. As they grow up, they are conditioned to believe they cannot break away. They believe the rope can still hold them, so they never try to break free.”

The man was amazed. These animals could at any time break free from their bonds but because they believed they couldn’t, they were stuck right where they were.

Like the elephants, how many of us go through life hanging onto a belief that we cannot do something, simply because we failed at it once before?

Failure is part of learning; we should never give up the struggle in life.

CHRISTIAN PRINCIPLES FOR GIVING

Why We Give: Christian Principles for Giving “The world asks, ‘What does a man own?’  Christ asks, ‘How does he use it?’” -- Andrew Murray (1828-1917) Introduction:  The Giving Heart of God “God so loved the world that He gave …”  John 3:16 is  probably the best loved, most widely known, and most oft-cited verse in the entire Bible.  Christians memorize it  from  childhood.  They quote it when sharing Christ with their unsaved friends.  It appears in tracts and pamphlets, on T-shirts, bumper-stickers, and key-chains.  Zealous believers placard it  before the watching world at major sporting events.  And all for a good reason – because  this short verse communicates the essence of the Gospel message. But John 3:16 is more than a Christian promotional slogan or an effective witnessing tool.  In an important sense, it reveals the heart of  God and sums  up the meaning of the  Christian life.  Because if there’s one thing the New Testament teaches us, it’s that God is love, and that those of us who claim to believe in Him  ought to love one another as He has loved us (1 John 4:8, 11).  And the message of  John 3:16 is that love gives. Why Give? Here we have the basic motivation behind all Christian giving:  we share what we have with others because, as believers, we are called to be  imitators of God (Ephesians 5:1) – in other words, joyous, generous, and faithful givers.  Our goal and purpose in this life is to open our hearts to the Lord so that the resources of His love can flow through our hands directly into the lives of others.  As Jesus says in John 15:5,  “I am the vine and you are the branches.”i  The life-producing sap of the vine is  love expressed in active giving. But before we can begin to give sincerely and effectively, we need to  understand exactly why generosity is so essential to the formation of  Christ-like character.  More precisely, we need to see how, in a practical sense, the act of giving is an expression of a genuinely Christian and biblical worldview.  There  are three thoughts that can help us keep  the answers to these questions clearly focused in our minds.

We Belong to  God “Do you not know,” writes Paul to the Corinthian church, “that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit … and you are not your own?  For you were bought at a price.” (1 Corinthians 6:19, 20). Christians, according to Scripture, are the Lord’s special possession – “a peculiar people,” as the Authorized King James Version puts it (1  Peter 2:9).  If, as believers, we have no claim even to our own persons, it’s safe to assume that we must also forfeit ownership and control of our possessions.  Everything we  have and everything we are is a gift  from the Creator of our souls – after all, “what do you have that  you did not receive?” (1 Corinthians 4:7)   Accordingly, we need to live in  a way that places all of these gifts – our time, our talents, our relationships, our physical health and intellectual abilities – at His disposal and discretion. This is not to mention, of course, that even  in a larger and more general sense – in a way that has implications for those who are not part  of the family of faith – God is the Owner of everything that exists.  Ultimately, it all belongs to Him.  “The earth is the Lord’s, and all its fullness,” writes the psalmist, “the world and  those who dwell therein” (Psalm 24:1).  Who has preceded Me, that I should pay him?  Everything under heaven is Mine” (Job 41:11).  “‘The silver is Mine, and the gold is  Mine,’ says the Lord of hosts” (Haggai 2:8). If God owns everything, it should be obvious that He alone has the prerogative to determine how it should be distributed and used.  And  if, as we’ve already established, His purposes can be summed up in the single word “love,” we can safely assume that He intends His wealth to be applied to the task of blessing  other people.  Our role is to act as faithful stewards of the abundance He has poured out upon  us by giving in accord with  His will.  As Randy Alcorn says, we are God’s money managers. 2)  We Have Received Much And God’s grace toward us is abundant – excessively so.  This is the second point we want to bear in mind.  If we would simply stop and take stock of our blessings, we would quickly see how truly overwhelming is the Lord’s generosity toward  us.  This statement applies to believers in every condition and situation, for in Christ we have become  heirs of God’s kingdom (James 2:5; Romans 8:17) and of the unlimited assets that pertain to it:  “For all things are yours … and you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s” (1 Corinthians 3:21-23).  But it’s especially true of Christians in the West, and particularly in the United States, who control an amount of the world’s resources  out of all proportion to their numbers. According to  the Bible, abundant blessings imply weighty responsibilities; “for everyone to whom much  is given, from him much will  be required; and to whom much has been committed, of him they  will ask the  more”  (Luke 12:48).  The message is clear:  our possessions  are to be used not merely for our own enjoyment but for the benefit of the world around you.  “Freely you have  received, freely give” (Matthew 10:8). 2

This doesn’t mean that giving is to be approached as a grim, oppressive “duty,” of course.  “Let each one give as he purposes in his heart,  not grudgingly or of necessity; for God loves a cheerful giver” (2 Corinthians 9:7).  As its  etymological root implies, a responsibility is primarily a response.  It’s an expression of  joy and gratitude  for the bounty of God’s goodness.  It’s like the gift of the woman who demonstrated her indebtedness to Jesus by anointing His feet with a jar of costly ointment.  She loved much, Jesus  said, because she had been forgiven much.  “But to whom little is  forgiven, the same loves little” (Luke 7:47). 3)  Money Matters Finally, if we want to make sure that our giving is thoroughly biblical  in nature, there’s one last observation we’ll need to add to  the other  two.  Although the generosity with which we express our response to God’s grace entails everything we are and everything we have – our mental, emotional, and spiritual assets as well the physical – we dare not miss the point that the Lord is especially concerned about the way  we use our material wealth.  As Randy Alcorn points out in his book The Treasure Principle, 15 percent of everything Christ ever said relates to the topic of money and possessions – “more than His teachings on heaven and hell combined.”ii Why should this be so?  Because the God of  the Bible, unlike the gods of many other religious systems, attaches great value to the  material aspect of His creation.  The physical world belongs to Him because He made it; and He  made it in such a way that it declares His glory (Psalm 19:1) and reflects His invisible attributes (Romans 1:20).  That’s why, at the end of the sixth day of Creation, He was able to  look at everything He had accomplished and conclude that it was “very good” (Genesis 1:31). Naturally, one of the most important elements of  the material creation is the physical aspect of humanity.  God made man in His own image  (Genesis 1:27), and He attaches  a value to human life far above that accorded to any other creature (Psalm 8:5; Matthew 6:26).  He loves and cherishes His people and  cares profoundly about the bodily side of their existence.  So important does he consider this  facet of human nature, in fact, that He actually took flesh upon Himself when He  came into the world to  save it (John 1:14).  What’s more, He raised the body of  Christ from death and promised  a share in that same resurrection to all who believe in Him (John 11:25), thus making it clear that the body has an important place in the life to come as well as in this present world. This is why James tells us that it is not enough  to give in a spiritual sense only.  When we minister to others, we have to minister to the  body as well as the soul:  “If a brother or sister is naked and destitute of daily food, and one  of you says to them, ‘Depart in peace, be warmed and filled,’ but you do not give them  the things which are needed for the body, what does it profit?” (James 2:16)  3

Herein lies the real significance of money from the  biblical perspective.  While it  is true that the love of money is “a root of all kinds of  evil” (1 Timothy 6:10), it should be equally obvious that  money is a powerful tool – the most powerful tool we have at our disposal when it comes to providing for basic material necessities.  As the writer of Ecclesiastes puts it, “wisdom is a defense as money is a defense” (Ecclesiastes 7:12).  The most important and most blessed thing we can do with our money,  then, is to give it away  for the benefit of those in need.  As Paul wrote to Timothy,  Command those who are rich in this present age  not to be  haughty, nor to trust in uncertain riches, but in the living God, who  gives us richly all things to enjoy.  Let them do good, that they be rich in good works, ready to give, willing to share, storing up for themselves a good foundation for the time to come, that they may lay hold on eternal life (1 Timothy 6:17-19).  Taking The Next Step   All of this sounds good in theory, of course.   But the joy of giving can’t begin to flow in our lives until we make a commitment to put these scriptural principles into practice. So go ahead.  Unclench  your fist.  Open your hand.  Become a conduit of God’s love – the love that expresses itself in hilarious giving.  The  first step is always the hardest.  But it’s also the biggest, because it puts you across the line that divides self-centered concern from grateful generosity. And remember:  it’s not the size of the gift that  counts.  Part of what makes the life of giving so exhilarating is the realization that, when  we hand our meager resources over to God, they assume a power out of all proportion to their earthly size and value.  As in the story of the feeding of the 5,000, little becomes much when  it is sacrificed on the altar of faith and service to others. For true value lies not in the possession of  a thing, but in the use we make of it.

CALL FOR UNITY IN A DIVIDED WORLD...POPE FRANCIS

By Cindy Wooden
Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — The Catholic Church’s 17 new cardinals must dedicate their lives to being ministers of forgiveness and reconciliation in a world — and sometimes a church — often marked by hostility and division, Pope Francis said.

Even Catholics are not immune from “the virus of polarization and animosity,” the pope told the new cardinals, and “we need to take care lest such attitudes find a place in our hearts.”

Creating 17 new cardinals from 14 nations Nov. 19, the pope said the College of Cardinals — and the Catholic Church itself — must be a sign for the world that differences of nationality, skin color, language and social class do not make people enemies, but brothers and sisters with different gifts to offer.

Three of the new cardinals created during the prayer service in St. Peter’s Basilica were from the United States: Cardinals Blase J. Cupich of Chicago; Kevin J. Farrell, prefect of the new Vatican office for laity, family and life; and Joseph W. Tobin, whom the pope asked to move from being archbishop of Indianapolis to archbishop of Newark, New Jersey.

Only 16 of the new cardinals were present for the ceremony. The Vatican said 87-year-old Cardinal Sebastian Koto Khoarai, the retired bishop of Mohale’s Hoek, Lesotho, was created a cardinal although he was unable to travel to Rome.

After reciting the Creed and taking an oath of fidelity to Pope Francis and his successors, each cardinal went up to Pope Francis and knelt before him. The pope gave them each a cardinal’s ring, a three-cornered red hat and a scroll attesting to their appointment as cardinals and containing their “titular church” in Rome. The assignment of a church is a sign they now are members of the clergy of the pope’s diocese.

After the consistory, Pope Francis and the new cardinals hopped in vans for a short ride to visit retired Pope Benedict XVI in the Mater Ecclesiae Monastery, his residence in the Vatican gardens. The retired pope greeted each cardinal, thanked them for stopping by and assured them, “My prayers will accompany you always.”

Cardinal Mario Zenari, the pope’s ambassador to Syria, spoke on behalf of the new cardinals, promising Pope Francis that they and the entire church would continue to be envoys of God’s mercy, bending down to help those “left half dead on the side of the road, wounded in body and spirit.”

The Gospel reading at the consistory was St. Luke’s version of Jesus’ discourse to his disciples: “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.”

“They are four things we can easily do for our friends and for those more or less close to us, people we like, people whose tastes and habits are similar to our own,” Pope Francis said. But Jesus, not mincing his words, calls his followers to more.

“With people we consider our opponents or enemies,” the pope said, “our first instinctive reaction … is to dismiss, discredit or curse them. Often we try to ‘demonize’ them, so as to have a ‘sacred’ justification for dismissing them.”

In God, he said, there are no enemies. There are only brothers and sisters to love.



All people are embraced by God’s love, he said. “We are the ones who raise walls, build barriers and label people.”

Just as God loves and forgives the pope and the cardinals for their sinfulness, he said, so they must love and forgive others, undergoing “the conversion of our pitiful hearts that tend to judge, divide, oppose and condemn.”

Looking around the modern world, Pope Francis said, “we live at a time in which polarization and exclusion are burgeoning.”

“We see, for example, how quickly those among us with the status of a stranger, an immigrant or a refugee” are seen as threats, he said. They are presumed to be an enemy because they come from a different country, “because of the color of their skin, their language or their social class. An enemy because they think differently or even have a different faith.”

The “growing animosity between peoples” is found even “among us, within our communities, our priests, our meetings,” the pope said.

“We need to take care lest such attitudes find a place in our hearts, because this would be contrary to the richness and universality of the church, which is tangibly evident in the College of Cardinals,” he said. The cardinals come from different countries, “we think differently and we celebrate our faith in a variety of rites. None of this makes us enemies; instead, it is one of our greatest riches.”

Speaking to Catholic News Service after the consistory, Cardinal Tobin said the pope’s homily was “very timely” and the cardinals, as well as all Catholics, should “examine ourselves and the church to see whether we have unconsciously appropriated this ‘virus'” of polarization and animosity. It may hide under “the name of truth or the name of orthodoxy or something, when it actually serves to divide. I think probably that is resistance to the acts of the Holy Spirit.”

“In this year of mercy,” Cardinal Farrell told CNS, “we all need to be a little more concerned about and merciful and compassionate to each of our brothers and sisters. And I think that’s the great message that the Holy Father wished to convey.

“We all need to learn how to respect each other. We can disagree on many points, but we need to enter into dialogue and conversation with each other. I believe that is what the Holy Father wanted and what the year of mercy is all about,” the cardinal said. People can discuss and debate theological problems, “but if they don’t do it with charity — as St. Paul would say — what good is it?”

Cardinal Cupich said Pope Francis “hit the nail on the head because a virus can be contagious and it can spread like wildfire, and he wanted to make sure that every individual took responsibility for making sure that whoever the person is who we disagree with, we do not make an enemy out of them, that we remember that we are all sons and daughters of the same God and that we are brothers and sisters to each other.”

“We have to break that cycle of violence and hatred and bigotry, otherwise it will be contagious like a virus,” Cardinal Cupich said.

As the Year of Mercy was ending, Pope Francis called on the new cardinals — and everyone present in the basilica — to continue to proclaim “the Gospel of mercy,” going out to where people live, giving them hope and helping them become signs of reconciliation.

At the end of the consistory, the College of Cardinals had 228 members, 121 of whom are under the age of 80 and eligible to vote in a conclave to elect a pope.