Danielle Rose

Joan. His friendship will not fail me, nor His counsel, nor His love. In His strength I will dare, and dare, and dare, until I die.
--George Bernard Shaw, Saint Joan

A little light humor for finals...

NUNS!!!

Poof

So I was reading the Catechism and poof!~
2639-"Praise is the form of prayer which recognizes most immediately that God is God. It lauds God for his own sake and gives Him glory, quite beyond what He does, but simply because HE IS. It shares in the blessed happiness of the pure of heart who love God in faith before seeing Him in glory. By praise, the Spirit is joined to our spirits to bear witness that we are children of God,"121 Cf.Rom 8:16. (CCC)

I don't know why this strikes me as so beautiful, but it makes me pretty happy. God has raised my fallen nature! I can do this! Praise be God!

Review of things to learn

Determining spiritual consolation/desolation and distinguishing them form non-spiritual consolation/desolation.

Spiritual consolation- "When the soul comes to be inflamed with Love of its creator and lord"

"When it sheds tears that move to love of its lord"

All interior Joy that calls and Attracts to Heavenly things.

Non-spiritual consolation- Being with friends, cookies, and created things, not drawing us up into heavenly things. These can be a springboard to spiritual consolation.

Non-spiritual desolation: This can be any disappointment can be mental or psychological, it can be simply being tired or even hunger or malnourishment . These can be places that springboard spiritual desolation.

Spiritual desolation: hopelessness, meaninglessness, sadness, disquiet, darkness of soul-discouragement, disturbance- being upset or disturbed by losing our peace. There can be disquiet from various agitations and Temptations-inability to focus in prayer or interest in spiritual matters.

"Moving to Lack of confidence, without hope and without love."

"Persons in spiritual desolation, on the contrary, feel no attraction to prayer and to God's service but are drawn toward "lower" and more "earthly" things: Material comforts, gratification of the body in various ways, memories of such things from he past, immersion in empty trivia, diversion through the media, the internet, busyness, superficial conversation, and similar occupations." 63

Thoughts: "You think you've grown in love of God: look at you now, unable to pray, thinking that such kinds of thoughts. You've just been fooling yourself... How can God love someone who fails as repeatedly as you do? How can you be so confident that you read well the signs of God's will when you chose his calling?"64

Finding oneself totally slothful, tepid, Sad!

Finaly finding oneself separated from one's Creator and Lord.

God never gives spiritual desolation only consolation, but permits the enemy to give spiritual desolation for lessons and reasons in His loving providence.67

During times of Spiritual desolation one must be faithful to resolutions made during consolation. The enemy rules has sway over one in desolation where God gives consolation. During desolation the enemy will try to dissuade one from fulfilling ones resolutions made in consolation. Do not change your decisions in desolation!

During desolation what one may change is how one reacts to desolation, by stepping up ones devotion to God to reject times of desolation.

All of this is from Fr. Timothy Gallagher's book "The Discernment of Spirits, an Ignatian Guide for Everyday Living."

Hands To heaven.

Hands to heaven.

Read this its amazing!

St. Therese, Office of Readings

Reading

Philippians 3:1-16 ©

Finally, my brothers, rejoice in the Lord. It is no trouble to me to repeat what I have already written to you, and as far as you are concerned, it will make for safety. Beware of dogs! Watch out for the people who are making mischief. Watch out for the cutters. We are the real people of the circumcision, we who worship in accordance with the Spirit of God; we have our own glory from Christ Jesus without having to rely on a physical operation. If it came to relying on physical evidence, I should be fully qualified myself. Take any man who thinks he can rely on what is physical: I am even better qualified. I was born of the race of Israel and of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrew parents, and I was circumcised when I was eight days old. As for the Law, I was a Pharisee; as for working for religion, I was a persecutor of the Church; as far as the Law can make you perfect, I was faultless. But because of Christ, I have come to consider all these advantages that I had as disadvantages. Not only that, but I believe nothing can happen that will outweigh the supreme advantage of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For him I have accepted the loss of everything, and I look on everything as so much rubbish if only I can have Christ and be given a place in him. I am no longer trying for perfection by my own efforts, the perfection that comes from the Law, but I want only the perfection that comes through faith in Christ, and is from God and based on faith. All I want is to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and to share his sufferings by reproducing the pattern of his death. That is the way I can hope to take my place in the resurrection of the dead. Not that I have become perfect yet: I have not yet won, but I am still running, trying to capture the prize for which Christ Jesus captured me. I can assure you my brothers, I am far from thinking that I have already won. All I can say is that I forget the past and I strain ahead for what is still to come; I am racing for the finish, for the prize to which God calls us upwards to receive in Christ Jesus. We who are called ‘perfect’ must all think in this way. If there is some point on which you see things differently, God will make it clear to you; meanwhile, let us go forward on the road that has brought us to where we are.

---

Reading	St Thérèse’s autobiography
In the heart of the church I will be love
Since my longing for martyrdom was powerful and unsettling, I turned to the epistles of St. Paul in the hope of finally finding an answer. By chance the 12th and 13th chapters of the 1st epistle to the Corinthians caught my attention, and in the first section I read that not everyone can be an apostle, prophet or teacher, that the Church is composed of a variety of members, and that the eye cannot be the hand. Even with such an answer revealed before me, I was not satisfied and did not find peace. I persevered in the reading and did not let my mind wander until I found this encouraging theme: Set your desires on the greater gifts. And I will show you the way which surpasses all others. For the Apostle insists that the greater gifts are nothing at all without love and that this same love is surely the best path leading directly to God. At length I had found peace of mind. When I had looked upon the mystical body of the Church, I recognised myself in none of the members which St. Paul described, and what is more, I desired to distinguish myself more favourably within the whole body. Love appeared to me to be the hinge for my vocation. Indeed I knew that the Church had a body composed of various members, but in this body the necessary and more noble member was not lacking; I knew that the Church had a heart and that such a heart appeared to be aflame with love. I knew that one love drove the members of the Church to action, that if this love were extinguished, the apostles would have proclaimed the Gospel no longer, the martyrs would have shed their blood no more. I saw and realised that love sets off the bounds of all vocations, that love is everything, that this same love embraces every time and every place. In one word, that love is everlasting. Then, nearly ecstatic with the supreme joy in my soul, I proclaimed: O Jesus, my love, at last I have found my calling: my call is love. Certainly I have found my place in the Church, and you gave me that very place, my God. In the heart of the Church, my mother, I will be love, and thus I will be all things, as my desire finds its direction.

---

Concluding Prayer
O God, we see your almighty power most clearly in your forgiveness and compassion. Pour out your Spirit upon us unceasingly: make us hasten to receive your promises, and give us a share in the joys of heaven. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God for ever and ever. Amen.

Karol II, The Pope the Man

Wonderful movie. Absolutely wonderful.

I just finished. I'm done, I'm not particularly glad I'm done, but still it was a wild ride while it lasted. G.K. Chesterton's "The Everlasting Man" was exhilarating to say the least. I was thrilled with the book, it was witty, it was funny(I chuckled out-loud at some of the most ironic statements. Yet what I find most amusing is that how true and prophetic it rings out. It smashes down doors of folly and sheds some brilliant light upon modern errors that last even a hundred years later. While we as a society have added unto the list they can be explained simply as continuations of the same brand with slight variations. Truth is blaring and its beauty is dramatized as paganism is brought to light. Chesterton is no slouch and pulls no punches and is most clear in his refutations here present. I can't help but love this book, it pokes holes in the Darwinist so called explanation of things as he sets it in its rightful place: a theory, and imperfect as theories are considered.

Cheers!

Our Lady of Guadalupe Shrine

This Shrine is absolutely beautiful, and I am only half jesting when I say, "If I am ever commissioned to build a Church I will build one like this one." I have ideas of beauty and a few things that strike me about today's modern Church's is that they lack vision of what is truly beautiful. I mean they lack majesty and awe, in the face of God. The beauty of the Church I believe reflects the faith of the community and I see it as a teaching tool in itself. You see beauty and it draws you into the majesty of God. Oversimplicity draws us into the drag elements of the earth. Colors and lighting affect the moods of people, and they affect worship, if we white wash everything then we can see people asking whats so special about the mass. Can you imagine people walking into mass, and seeing no solemnity or no respect held toward the sacrament. Then the place you worship in is a warehouse gray and dank, and then you try to say that your eating God himself. The bread of life on a pewter plate? How you worship isn't necessarily how you believe, but there is a strong correlation. If you see the Latin mass and think this is it with all the pomp and circumstance there is a risk to think that faith, hope and love automatically become the norm you must think again. Devout persons have to be careful to not fall into elitism, and forget what is truly important, loving our God and our brother.


In every age Christianity has survived decay, peace, war, paganism, and every Heresy. Protestantism and every other schismatic Christian are just old heresy's reborn as something else, and these will die just as heresies have in the past. What I believe survives in all these schismatic church's is that Catholicism that they adhere to without acknowledgment. In fact its the Catholicism that secretly keeps them alive.

The purpose of this post is in the fact that I get to travel on Saturday to La Cross to the Shrine of our Lady of Guadalupe. The Shrine is indeed beautiful and I will have to take many pictures and take in many ideas for the building of my own Church.

Anyway, Beauty is one of the transcendentals so it needs to be considered more in building things. I wouldn't mind building something over several years if I could build it extra beautiful. Another thing that makes for more beauty is Truth, as something represents truth in design their has to be beauty, I prefer realism, but at least abstract art that is respectful of the truth its representing.

Its too bad St. Thomas is wasting their money on stupid athletic facility's and wouldn't provide a few leftover thousands for a beautiful shrine to the unborn. It shows our secularism... I guess it wouldn't be such a big deal if our chapels didn't get striped of all beauty in the 80's.



What we need is not complaining, but work to be done. Certainly making things beautiful is part of it, but bring the light of Jesus takes precedence and through a combined effort we can make beautiful, and bring glory to God. Its not wasteful of resources, if it brings people to Jesus as then when we are brought to him through the beauty we can then bring others and we can worry ourselves about the work of feeding and clothing our bothers and sisters. God works through all things, but it doesn't hurt to use the beauty to further his kingdom, and bring it about. Our faith is what draws us outside of ourselves, and only it can give us loving hearts that care for the world beyond that superficiality we see of our pagan brothers. We see this simply in the fact that the Church is the largest Charity organization, and nothing else compares with the selflessness of its acts. Brothers and Sisters who give up their lives in service of the Gospel spread throughout the world are effecting the Kingdom of God.

I conclude with nothing more than the fact that I need to go pray.
God bless you!

Oh Mother Pray for Us!!!!!!

Pray, fast, demonstrate in front of abortion clinics... We need to continue to beg God for renewed hearts and something to give in this self-destructive culture of Death. Its funny, seminary has been one of arming us, to combat the horrors and blatant evil in our midst. Its really terrifying, so much so that I wonder when the Church will wake up.

Freedom is not the liberty of all responsibility. Freedom indeed is the doing the excellent. Freedom is learning the guidelines of life so that you live well. There is a way to live well a Truth to follow. The Church is that way. Period.

On Laughter, or Why Satan Fell

This is an excerpt from George Weigel's book, "Letters to a young Catholic". This is one of the outstanding books we are reading for our J-term class, Christian Theological Tradition. Weigel is currently commenting on GK Chesterton's "Orthodoxy".

Seriousness is not a virtue. It would be a heresy, but a much more sensible heresy, to say that seriousness is a vice. It is really a natural trend or lapse into taking one's self gravely, because it is the easiest thing to do. It is much easier to write a good Times leading article than a good joke in Punch. For solemnity flows out of men naturally; but laughter is a leap. It is easy to be heavy; hard to be light. Satan fell by force of gravity.GKC

His own, that is: Satan fell by force of his own gravity. By taking himself too seriously-by taking himself with ultimate seriousness-Satan fell. His weight became too much for him to bear, and so he fell. Crashed. Cratered. Isn't that rather like the modern gnostic mind-set? Because nothing in the world counts, only I count: only my imperial autonomous self-generating self counts. Now that's heavy; far too heavy. A sacramental outlook on the world teaches us that, yes, we count(and infinitely). But so does everyone else. (Weigel,95)

Jterm

Despite not getting to be in the holy land or Rome... It is a relief to be back at the seminary. I have friends and things to do here at the sem, where as at home I would be lost with nothing in particular to do. I am comforted by being at the seminary because it represents movement from where I was to where I'm going. Certainly, it helps to go home to achieve some perspective and reminder of why I'm even in seminary. It helps to reinvigorate my priesthood calling so to speak. Seeing the lack of faith at home and the utter hopelessness/apathy hidden underneath my own family members various facades. The hope and joy of Christ stands out as something distinct and necessary for true happiness.

However I do see some hope in my own calling. I certainly don't stand alone in coming to the Catholic faith from within he midst of secular culture, but I can in my own way bring something towards the developing of the Catholic culture we desperately need. This is only one of the many reasons I want to be a priest. I mean at one point I thought social work was a field suited for me, but then I saw it as too superficial. I don't mean that in a way you might think. What I really mean is that the human condition and the social structure suppliing physical or emotional needs isn't enough to me. What I found is that I deeply desire to serve peoples true desire, God. I have already found Christ to be everything in my own life and what is left was and is to share that with a society in desperate need. The hope and joy that prevails through my relationship with Jesus is what I want to serve most to people. The relationship with Christ will no doubt serve more people and to greater benefit.

Anyway, Jterm or (January term) has been more than fruitful. And I'm saying that just after the first day! Christian Theological Tradition has been very thought provoking thus far. I am very blessed to be here!

God Bless!
Michael