Free Advice.

Please consider seriously.

1. Forgive self.
2. Proceed to forgive others.

Self and others will find things much easier.

Not meant to be trite.

Litany for Those Feeling Especially Crappy

Seems to be a lot of us lately. Remember, prayer helps.

Litany of Our Lady of Seven Sorrows

Lord, have mercy on us.
Christ, have mercy on us.
Lord, have mercy on us.
Christ, hear us.
Christ, graciously hear us.
God, the Father of heaven,
Have mercy on us.
God the Son, Redeemer of the world,
Have mercy on us.
God the Holy Ghost,
Have mercy on us.

Holy Mary, Mother of God,
pray for us.
Holy Virgin of virgins,
pray for us.
Mother of the Crucified,
pray for us.
Sorrowful Mother,
pray for us.
Mournful Mother,
pray for us.
Sighing Mother,
pray for us.
Afflicted Mother,
pray for us.
Foresaken Mother,
pray for us.
Desolate Mother,
pray for us.
Mother most sad,
pray for us.
Mother set around with anguish,
pray for us.
Mother overwhelmed by grief,
pray for us.
Mother transfixed by a sword,
pray for us.
Mother crucified in thy heart,
pray for us.
Mother bereaved of thy Son,
pray for us.
Sighing Dove,
pray for us.
Mother of Dolors,
pray for us.
Fount of tears,
pray for us.
Sea of bitterness,
pray for us.
Field of tribulation,
pray for us.
Mass of suffering,
pray for us.
Mirror of patience,
pray for us.
Rock of constancy,
pray for us.
Remedy in perplexity,
pray for us.
Joy of the afflicted,
pray for us.
Ark of the desolate,
pray for us.
Refuge of the abandoned,
pray for us.
Shield of the oppressed,
pray for us.
Conqueror of the incredulous,
pray for us.
Solace of the wretched,
pray for us.
Medicine of the sick,
pray for us.
Help of the faint,
pray for us.
Strength of the weak,
pray for us.
Protectress of those who fight,
pray for us.
Haven of the shipwrecked,
pray for us.
Calmer of tempests,
pray for us.
Companion of the sorrowful,
pray for us.
Retreat of those who groan,
pray for us.
Terror of the treacherous,
pray for us.
Standard-bearer of the Martyrs,
pray for us.
Treasure of the Faithful,
pray for us.
Light of Confessors,
pray for us.
Pearl of Virgins,
pray for us.
Comfort of Widows,
pray for us.
Joy of all Saints,
pray for us.
Queen of thy Servants,
pray for us.
Holy Mary, who alone art unexampled,
pray for us.

Pray for us, most Sorrowful Virgin,
That we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.

O God, in whose Passion, according to the prophecy of Simeon, a sword of grief pierced through the most sweet soul of Thy glorious Blessed Virgin Mother Mary: grant that we, who celebrate the memory of her Seven Sorrows, may obtain the happy effect of Thy Passion, Who lives and reigns world without end.

Amen.

Coming Attractions and Some Other Random Bits

Coming soon...

"The real Martin Luther... was not that attractive!"

And that's all you'll get from me!

Is it weird to decide one of your favorite authors before you've read any of his works? Because right now I'm strangely infatuated with G.K. Chesteron, just from reading a) his biography, b) some varied quotes, and c) brief summaries of many of his works. I've read bits and pieces of his writing because he's quoted like a madman by just about every POD Catholic living. He's like the Catholic C.S. Lewis (although Lewis was practically Catholic... he believed in purgatory, for heaven's (heh) sake!), except potentially even cooler. Must. Find. Chesteron. Books.

As for other spiritual books that are super duper and potentially worth seeking out, I highly recommend "The Imitation of Christ" by Thomas a Kempis. It'll make you feel sort of inferior, but at the same time every single chapter (which are like a page and a half each) seems like it's talking right to you... It's "Christianity's Second Best Seller" -- only the Bible has sold more copies.

For a similar book that will make you feel ever more inferior, try "Story of a Soul," the autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux. Super spiffy. Even if you're not a fish-eater.

Excuse me for indulging myself momentarily:

"[Catholicism] is the only thing that frees a man from the degrading slavery of being a child of his age." G.K. Chesteron, from "Why I am Catholic"

If...

If, hypothetically, any of you were waiting for me to send you a paper on the Book of Mormon, then let it be known that I made significant progress today (9 pages!!), but I need at least one more day in order to finish it up, because there's still a lot I'd like to cover but I have to work on my German assignment right now...

And I'm still working on Spiritual Dryness Part III.

Thank you.

This made me chuckle.

"Hearing nuns' confessions is like being stoned to death with popcorn."
Fulton Sheen.

Spiritual Dryness, Part II

This is Part II, so go read Part I first if you’re interested.

THE DICHOTOMY BETWEEN LOVE AND EMOTION.

You don’t need warm fuzzies to love someone, and sometimes you get warm fuzzies when you don’t actually love someone. One of the greatest mistakes we make, especially at our age, is to assume that whenever we feel a great warmness toward someone or something it means that we love them, and when we don’t feel that burning enthusiasm and obsessive desire it means we don’t.

Emotions aren’t always bad. They can motivate us, inspire us, encourage us and make us do things that we might not be able to do without them. But they are by nature fleeting and unstable. Our relationship with God is supposed to be permanent and hopefully unchanging, and by building our relationship on emotions, we are already on a very unstable foundation. Instead, our relationship should be founded on love.

Remember, love is not an adjective, it is a verb. (I read that somewhere, but I don’t remember where, so forgive me.) Love doesn’t describe a feeling, love is an action. And in this case, love is a reaching out towards God even when we don’t feel his presence in our lives. Love is an act of will, not an act of feeling. We choose to love.

“[Love] bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.” (1 Corinthians 13:7-8).

One of the first steps in combating Spiritual Dryness, therefore, is to understand that your relationship with Him does not depend on how you are feeling at the time. Tell God that you have chosen to love Him no matter what, and stick with that. Remind yourself that you can love God without feeling it, and that just because you don’t feel like God is near, that doesn’t mean He isn’t.

Pray, like St. Teresa of Avila:

“I do not need Your gifts to make me love You, for even if I should have no help of hope at all of all the things I do hope for, I would still love You with that very same love. Amen.”

Part III coming soon, although not as soon as Part II came. I've got to go get some stuff accomplished before I do!

Spiritual Dryness, Part I

It’s something that I can speak of with a great deal of knowledge, because I’ve had personal experience with it. A lifetime of personal experience with it. And at least in some ways I’ve come to understand it, somewhat. However, it has come to my attention that there may be others of you who are really suffering and don’t get it at all, so I thought I’d put down my thoughts in hopes that it might help some of you out at least in some ways.

IN GOOD COMPANY

First off, remember that you’re not alone when you are feeling as if God is unknowable or simply made up or not listening or anything like it. Everyone goes through times like those, and it is not something that just visits those who are weak in the faith and do not truly love God. Take, for example:

Mother Teresa. We just watched a video about her amazing service in Humanities – you all saw that she was a saintly, pious woman with a deep love for God and serving him through “the poorest of the poor.” But would any of you have guessed that the woman you saw on the video was spiritually dry from the time she left her convent to work with the poor until she died?

In letters she wrote in the 50s and 60s, she said that she felt spiritually dry. [1]

“I am told God lives in me -- and yet the reality of darkness and coldness and emptiness is so great that nothing touches my soul.”

“Where I try to raise my thoughts to heaven, there is such convicting emptiness that those very thoughts return like sharp knives and hurt my very soul. Love -- the word -- it brings nothing.”

“In my soul, I can't tell you how dark it is, how painful, how terrible -- I feel like refusing God.”

Who ever could have guessed that these words came from Bl. Mother Teresa? I believe she would have been the last person I would have guessed, ever.

St. Teresa of Avila. She was a great Christian woman who lived in the 1600s, and was later proclaimed a Doctor of the Church, a great honor held by only three women saints. She also went through an 18 year period of spiritual dryness (along with physical pain caused by an illness).

St. Maria Faustina Kowalska. Another “big name” saint – she’s the reason we have Divine Mercy Sunday. She received revelations from the Lord about the vastness and eternity of God’s mercy for those who turn to him for forgiveness. However, as she records in her diary, she too suffered from times of spiritual dryness. Imagine that – someone who has talked to Jesus in a vision, feeling doubt and fear!

St. Therese of Lisieux. One of the most popular saints of all time, and another Doctor of the Church, and yet she did nothing great in her life except love God! I remember reading her autobiography “Story of a Soul” and being absolutely amazed when she talked about feeling abandoned by God, because she seemed so utterly perfect. I can’t locate my copy at the moment, but here’s what some other people have to say:

“Her celestial Lover, to whom she had offered all, was silent. God did not reply to her prayers, or if He did it was always with a strange kind of "no". Whatever she requested was met with the stone wall, the divine negative, and there is the Cross, her Cross. At times it is ours. But she embraced it in the daily events of a life as her vocation. In illness, spiritual dryness, anguish, she was always doing the small things quietly and well. Here we find the embodied reality that is Therese, the one who never said "no" to the silent God. She has always been a Doctor of the Church for our times as she teaches us her "little way". In this constant fidelity, she never ceased to love this silent God who seemed to say "no".” [2]

“Do not believe I am swimming in consolations; oh, no, my consolation is to have none on earth.” [4]

“From Easter 1896 until her death from tuberculosis on September 30, 1897, at age twenty-four, Thérèse endured a trial of faith of the modern kind, which she described as like being enclosed in a dark tunnel.” [4]

Dame Julian of Norwich. “So he says this: "pray inwardly, even though you find no joy in it. For it does good, even though you feel nothing, see nothing; yes, even though you think you cannot pray. When you are dry and empty, sick and weak, your prayers please me - though there be little enough to please you. All believing prayer is precious to me."” [3]

The Dark Night of the Soul. A “masterpiece in Mystic literature” by St. John of the Cross, a Spanish mystic. The phrase “Dark Night of the Soul” has now become the trademark phrase for spiritual dryness. A sense of emptiness and of being separated from God. And in this work, St. John of the Cross examines the experience as being just another part of a Christian’s journey towards God.

“Later generations of Christian mystics dwelt upon the more desolate kinds of darkness to which the spiritual life can lead: the darkness in which all modes of prayer and spiritual practice become arid, and all consolation in the love of God seems lost. Even in the desolate dark night of the soul, indeed especially there, St. John of the Cross taught, God is present, purifying the soul of all passions and hindrances, and preparing her for the inconceivable blessedness of divine union. Along with dark knowing, there is dark loving, no less ardent for being deprived of all sensible and spiritual vision of the beloved. Therefore St. John can say, “Oh, night more lovely than the dawn, Oh, night that joined Beloved with lover, Lover transformed in the Beloved!”” [4]

I could go on and on with lists of saints who have had extended periods of spiritual dryness. I say extended because everyone has had little times, but some have had it worse than others. So, for my last example:

Jesus Christ, Son of God. “My soul is sorrowful even to death.” (Matthew 26: 38). “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46).

So, we can see that everyone, including the greatest saints and even the Son of God himself, experiences feelings of hopelessness, despair, and doubt.

Part II coming soon.

[1] http://archives.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/asiapcf/south/09/06/teresa.letters/

[2] http://www.ad2000.com.au/articles/1997/oct1997p20_594.html

[3] http://feastofsaints.com/howpray.htm

[4] http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0305/articles/zaleski.html

More Fun Saints!

Patron Saint of...

Backward Children: Hilary of Poitiers

Jugglers/clowns: Julian the Hospitaller

Ammunition/Fire/Fireworks: Barbara

Herpes (??): George (of dragon fame)

Invincible People: Drausinus

And again, my personal favorite:

St. Drogo is the patron saint of "unattractive people" and "sheep".

The Flyin' Friar

Okay, Casey... just so you know, there is a patron saint of test-takers! St. Joseph of Cupertino, aka the "Flying Friar." He was prone to ecstasies at just the mention of the name of God or any event of Jesus' passion, during which he was oblivious to the world and would only respond to a direct order from a superior. During these ecstasies, he often levitated, which means that he is also a patron of air travel. Here's a blurb on St. Joseph Desa.

St. Joseph of Cupertino, pray for those of us who are taking AP tests for the next couple of days!

Now, I mentioned there's a patron saint for everything. Examples:

- St. Quirinus: Patron Saint against Obsession
- St. John the Baptist: Patron for the Protection of Lambs

and my personal favorite...

- St. Kentigern: Patron Saint of Salmon