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.

Please support our journalism. Subscribe now!
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."