Meditations on the Art of Waiting

We've been reading this book during Advent.

http://www.ignatius.com/Products/CLJ-P/come-lord-jesus.aspx

It is wonderful. Every reading speaks to me! I cannot recommend it enough.

A Vocation to Holiness through Motherhood

My friend Caroline, over at Catholic Sunshine http://caroline-catholicsunshine.blogspot.com/ had this to say today:

"Earlier today I changed my 10 month old's diaper, dressed him in some clean clothes and nursed him. What a beautiful thing it is to have a baby for whom to care. I was thinking of Mother Teresa and her serving Christ in those to whom she ministered. "What so ever you do for these, the least of my children, that you do unto Me." Mother Teresa would repeat these words to herself as she cared for the poorest of the poor. In simply caring for my little baby, I have accomplished a lot on this day, and in so doing, I have cared for Jesus Himself! May Mother Teresa pray for my vocation of Motherhood, and for all Mothers, that we may be holy, gentle, and loving women to our husbands, children, and neighbors. God Bless and Take Care."

This perfectly sums up my view of my vocation as a mother.

“I notice the only people FOR abortion have already been born.” Ronald Reagan

God's Word

As every Sunday Mass at my home parish is a three-ring-circus of performances and calling attention to the laity (today was no exception), I was dreading going.  I considered going to another parish to which our former Parochial Vicar had invited me, but I wasn't looking forward to three hours in the van.  I have had a very productive week and was torn as to as to what was going to best refuel me for another busy week.  What I really wanted was a quiet, God-focused Mass, but perhaps not at the expense of a day in the van.  Finally, I chose to just stick it out at our home parish.  As such, I knew that I would really need to recollect myself and put all I could into Mass.  Sometimes you can come and just receive and sometimes you have to seek God.  As Mass began, I prayed to God that the Holy Spirit would be with me and guide me as I needed.  I always find that He comes to me when I ask, but that it is a bit like falling asleep, He comes so peacefully, you don't know it until you know it, just as you may not know you were falling asleep until something jerks you awake.

Today in Mass, I was offering up a past wound, a betrayal of sorts.  Just as I started to do so the thought came to my head:

Alleluia, of Aggeus and Zacharias.
Praise the Lord, O my soul, in my life I will praise the Lord:
I will sing to my God as long as I shall be.
Put not your trust in princes:
in the children of men, in whom there is no salvation.
His spirit shall go forth, and he shall return into his earth: in that day all their thoughts shall perish.
Blessed is he who hath the God of Jacob for his helper, whose hope is in the Lord his God:
who made heaven and earth, the sea, and all things that are in them.
Who keepeth truth for ever: who executeth judgment for them that suffer wrong: who giveth food to the hungry. The Lord looseth them that are fettered:
the Lord enlighteneth the blind. The Lord lifteth up them that are cast down: the Lord loveth the just.
The Lord keepeth the strangers, he will support the fatherless and the widow: and the ways of sinners he will destroy.
The Lord shall reign for ever: thy God, O Sion, unto generation and generation.

Psalm 146

And then a few minutes later, I tuned in to hear this:


I urge you, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God,

to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice,

holy and pleasing to God, your spiritual worship.

Do not conform yourselves to this age

but be transformed by the renewal of your mind,

that you may discern what is the will of God,

what is good and pleasing and perfect.

Romans 12:1-2

 

And then...

 

Jesus began to show his disciples
that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer greatly
from the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes,
and be killed and on the third day be raised.
Then Peter took Jesus aside and began to rebuke him,
"God forbid, Lord! No such thing shall ever happen to you."
He turned and said to Peter,
"Get behind me, Satan! You are an obstacle to me.
You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do."

Then Jesus said to his disciples

"Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself,
take up his cross, and follow me.
For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it,
but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.
What profit would there be for one to gain the whole world
and forfeit his life"
Or what can one give in exchange for his life?
For the Son of Man will come with his angels in his Father's glory,
and then he will repay all according to his conduct."

Matthew 16:21-27

Parenting basics

Lately, I have received requests for parenting advice from homeschooling moms of big (and not so big) families. I am not a perfect mom and I'm well aware of my failings (number one among many, I lose my patience), but I suppose the compliment comes because the adults and their children enjoy my children's company. I have to admit that I enjoy my children's company, too! But often, I think they are so very enjoyable IN SPITE of me (read kind, helpful, playful, considerate, respectful of young & old).

That said, I'm going to step out on a limb & share some advice. Behavior is THE most important thing you can work on. Period. If the kids aren't behaving, you can be using the best curriculum in the world and you will be accomplishing nothing.

Specifically, work on the behavior of your eldest child first. Then work your way down the children. You may have darling toddlers, but if you have mouthy pre-teens, guess what? You'll soon have mouthy preschoolers. And more importantly, the elder of your children back you up & reinforce your lessons. This does not mean that you leave parenting to your eldest children, that's just a variation of "The Lord of the Flies," but it does mean that they are role models for your youngers.

And my last piece of advice is to be consistent and follow through. There is nothing more important than your children's behavior (FB, TV, dates with your hubby OR girlfriends). Don't despair when they give you a run for your money, kids WILL test every limit. But if you set clear limits & expectations and follow through with enforcing, punishing, or rewarding consistently, your children will slowly (yes, maybe years) come around.

And THAT is where the real fun begins! That is when the academics soar, the ability to trust your child with responsibilities begins, and your kids are simply a joy to be around. Once they learn self control, you can focus on all the wonderful things that life holds in store for them.

Enjoy your children every minute of everyday, but never lose sight of who you want them to be and consistently guide them to that goal.

Contentment

I tried to say something to this effect on a home schooling forum to which I was adde; it fell on deaf ears. Chesterton is much more eloquent than I. Perhaps he would have broken through the log-jam.

"True contentment is a thing as active as agriculture. It is the power of getting out of any situation all that there is in it. It is arduous and it is rare. The absence of this digestive talent is what makes so cold and incredible the tales of so many people who say they have been "through" things; when it is evident that they have come out on the other side quite unchanged. A man might have gone "through" a plum pudding as a bullet might go through a plum pudding; it depends on the size of the pudding—and the man. But the awful and sacred question is "Has the pudding been through him?" Has he tasted, appreciated, and absorbed the solid pudding, with its three dimensions and its three thousand tastes and smells? Can he offer himself to the eyes of men as one who has cubically conquered and contained a pudding?


In the same way we may ask of those who profess to have passed through trivial or tragic experiences whether they have absorbed the content of them; whether they licked up such living water as there was. It is a pertinent question in connection with many modern problems."

From The Contented Man

Fulfilling our desires

Thinking more of cultivating a spirit of gratefulness: we must seek what we really desire.
A happy marriage? Look for the good in your spouse. Enjoy your time together, seek to make your differences areas where you grow.
Good kids? Lead them by your honest, hardworking example. Correct them gently but don't indulge them.
So often, what we really desire is SELF, so when our spouse doesn't cater to our whims, they are a jerk and we really just want our kids to let us do our thing, so we bribe & indulge them so they'll leave us alone.
Look at your actions. What do they say about what you REALLY desire?


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Thankfulness

I was out running errands today, grumbling about how I hate to shop. Then it struck me how easy it is to slip into a habit of complaining. And then, because God never passes up a teaching moment, I realized, "I have never once thanked God for being able to pay my grocery bill."
What ungratefulness.
A rather humbling realization.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

God's gift of Faith

Are you in the midst of a conversion? Re-version? Is everything so exciting? But perhaps also a little frustrating because you want more, now? Slow down. Relax. Understand, this change inside of you is ALL God's doing. You aren't doing this, nor can you. Savor it all. Enjoy right here. God is slowly drawing you in, pulling you close. He will unfold it all to you, in His time. Rest in the Lord and thank Him for the gift He is bestowing on you.

How do we treat those we love?

I spent a lot of time yesterday thinking about how the people I love treat me and whether or not I properly reciprocate their gentle charity and affection. How often do I criticize those I love? Do I let my loved ones know how much I love and appreciate them? I know that my husband, children, and some other dear ones are always ready with an encouraging word or warm smile. Am I ready to do the same? When we let negativity control our relationships, we can often "get our way" in the short term. But when we let patience, love, and devotion guide our actions, we motivate our loved ones to become the people we know that they can be, because they are secure in our love and see themselves with our loving eyes.

A slowly blooming flower...

God has been unfolding this lesson to me for the last five years, like a flower blossoming. Sometimes it was painful, but now it brings me joy.

"Our present life is given only to gain the eternal one and if we don't think about it, we build our affections on what belongs to this world, where our life is transitory. When we have to leave it we are afraid and become agitated. Believe me, to live happily in this pilgrimage, we have to aim at the hope of arriving at our Homeland, where we will stay eternally. Meanwhile we have to believe firmly that God calls us to Himself and follows us along the path towards Him. He will never permit anything to happen to us that is not for our greater good. He knows who we are and He will hold out His paternal hand to us during difficulties, so that nothing prevents us from running to Him swiftly. But to enjoy this grace we must have complete trust in Him." St. Padre Pio

Teenagers, an excellent article

"What Plato thought no parents would ever do, turn over their own children to others to be reeducated, the parents of America did after World War II. Before then there were no TVs, a few disk jockeys, and some movie stars, but they were seldom allowed in the home, and certainly not allowed to educate the children. Suddenly after the War, into the American home came hordes of them. Few parents would have invited these persons in as guests and yet they turned over the souls of their own children to them to be educated."



http://www.home-school.com/Articles/myth-of-the-teenager.html

The Parton saint of Teachers!

"'Your total ignorance of that which you profess to teach merits the death penalty. I doubt whether you would know that St. Cassian of Imola was stabbed to death by his students with their styli. His death, a martyr's honorable one, made him a patron saint of teachers.'" -- Ignatius Reilly, in John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces [1]

As the second semester begins, 'tis well to think of the lot of the teacher. I had not known that there was a "patron saint" of teachers. And if there was one, I presumed, at least for the college and graduate crowd, that it was Thomas Aquinas. But Aquinas, even though he spent a good deal of time dealing with beginners, is usually considered the patron of the more heady philosophical types. We know that Aquinas was not a martyr, even though he died rather young at 49, leaving several unfinished works, including the famous Summa Theologiae.

So when I returned to Washington after Christmas from California, I wanted a book to read on the Alaska Airline Flight #6 from LAX to Reagan National. I was staying with my niece, who lives some twenty minutes from LAX. Among the books on her shelves, I spotted John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces, a title from Swift. I began to read this novel last summer but only covered a few pages. My good niece let me have it to read on the five-hour flight to D.C. Since the Introduction was by Walker Percy, I figured it would be a pretty good read.

Somewhere over the eastern United States, I came to the passage that I cited above, about St. Cassian of Imola, the patron of teachers. Needless to say, I had not heard of St. Cassian before, at least not this one. As I recall, another Cassian, a medieval abbot, wrote something called The Spiritual Meadow. So I looked up Cassian of Imola (a town near Ravenna) on Google. I found a reference to his Feast Day, August 13, from Butler's Lives of the Saints.

Cassian comes from the time of Julian the Apostate, in the fourth century or so. It seems that the Emperor had ordered all teachers to take an oath to the local gods, which Cassian, good Christian that he was, refused to do. (Our modern teachers have to take an oath that they will not refer to any gods, pagan or Christian, something known as "cultural evolution".) Roman soldiers who were Christian had the same problem. It was a local form of swearing loyalty to the state which was identified with the gods. It seemed like state-supported blasphemy, which it was.

Cassian was evidently a pious professor and refused to make such an oath. Whereupon, the local magistrate promptly decided to make an example of him. Cunning man that he was, the official involved the man's own students in his punishment. The students, not having finished the course, evidently had no problem with this strange form of justice. Cassian was stripped and tied to a post. From whence, his students, mindful of the man's punishments for their own scholarly laxities, drew their iron styli—pens used to mark on wax tablets—and stabbed the man to death.

So, here we have it. A Christian teacher was stabbed to death, under orders, by his own students with their own writing instruments in the name of the state for refusing to offer sacrifices to pagan gods. Today we have a more cruel punishment. We do not grant tenure to such stubborn types! But what could be a more graphic example for the scholarly vocation? One shudders to think of the lessons that students may draw from this account of how to deal with teachers!

In recording this remarkable history, the famous Butler laconically remarks, "There is no record of his (St. Cassian's) becoming a patron of teachers in spite of his pre-eminent qualifications for the role." Well, from now on, St. Cassian is my man. Recently, I decided to forbid computers from being used in my classes. But, so far, I have seen no indication of my good students rising to bludgeon Schall to death with their laptops because he would not let them type e-mails to their friends during class. Ever since Ignatius Reilly referred to him, I have had a special devotion to St. Cassian of Imola, patron of teachers. It is probably worth noting that the "dunces" to whom Jonathan Swift referred were no doubt all of high academic standing.

http://www.ignatiusinsight.com/features2008/print2008/schall_patronsaint_jan08.html

20 books to read by the time you are 80...

Just today, I received an e-mail from a student who had been in my class a couple of years ago. He confessed to me that he had not read carefully all the books that I had assigned in class, but now with a little experience—he tells me he is a stand-up comedian in New York!—he realizes that he missed things that would be useful and important him now after a little experience. This is just what Plato said to young men in book seven of the Republic. He wanted to know if I had any books I might suggest to him! Well, I did. I told him to look up the lists in Another Sort of Learning but in particular to read James Thurber's My Life and Hard Times and Chesterton's Orthodoxy.

An interview with Father James V Shall, SJ

http://www.ignatiusinsight.com/features2008/print2008/schall_orderthings2_jan08.html

The Divine office of a Wife and Mother

Your Divine Office

Your duty now, and the expression of your love for God, is to be fully present to your family. Your "Divine Office" is to cook, and clean, and change dirty diapers, and run errands, and keep the littlest ones amused, and find time to listen to the older children, and to bandage cuts, and look after bruises, and welcome guests -- and every now and then -- to steal a moment or two alone with your husband. Is this incompatible with your desire as an Oblate of our monastery to offer yourself to Our Lord in adoration, in reparation, and in supplication for the holiness of priests?


http://vultus.stblogs.org/2012/01/letter-to-a-novice-oblate-ii.html

Children at Mass

"We need to celebrate the noise of children. What a beautiful noise to hear at Mass. It’s the sound of a living, breathing, growing Church." http://www.ncregister.com/blog/what-you-should-be-thinking-when-you-hear-noisy-kids-at-mass

The Woman's Masterpiece

The woman's masterpiece is the child. Fr Stephane-Joseph Piat, OFM - Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

The ideal conduct of Christian Mothers

"Above all, during the months immediately preceding the birth of her child, the mother should keep close to God, of whom the infant she bears within her is the image, the handiwork, the gift and the child. She should be for her offspring, as it were, a temple, a sanctuary, an altar, a tabernacle. In short, her life should be, so to speak, the life of a living sacrament, a sacrament in act, burying herself in the bosom of that God who has so truly instituted it and hallowed it, so that there she may draw that energy, that enlightening, that natural and supernatural beauty which He wills, and wills precisely by her means, to impart to the child she bears, and to be born of her." Monsignor Gay

Real life benefits of home schooling!

There are many excellent reasons to home school. This article outlines a lot of the real life benefits. But my favorite reason is one discovered by accident: Homeschooling Builds Family Bonds. Homeschooling brings families closer together. Kids thrive under parental attention, and parents get to really know their kids. Homeschooled siblings tend to be more kind and helpful to each other, also. See many more excellent reasons below! http://www.home-school.com/Articles/getting-started-in-homeschooling-the-first-ten-steps.html

Catechism of the Catholic Church

Evangelicals or confessional Protestants who pick up the Catechism will find themselves in for a treat. Sentences, paragraphs, whole pages sound as if they could come from evangelical pulpits, including passages on topics such as the nature of Scripture or the meaning of grace and faith. These readers will also notice the depth of scholarship, worn quite lightly, with hundreds of references to Scripture but also citations from early theologians…. Readers familiar with standard statements of faith from the Reformation era… will quickly notice a different tone in this Catholic writing. While covering much of the same territory…, the Catholic Catechism is much more comprehensive. Moreover, it looks beyond the statement of doctrine to the care of souls. The Catholic Catechism is strikingly pastoral in tone. It is in part a book of worship—focusing again and again on the majesty of God, inviting readers to reflect on God’s character, to respond to his love, to live as he commands, and to devote themselves to his service. …Readers… may come to the Catechism looking for information. Finding information, they may also find themselves (as we did) stopping to pray. (page 116) http://chnetwork.org/2012/02/how-not-to-become-a-catholic-part-1-conversion-story-of-james-tonkowich/

Fasting

Hunger is that state in which we realize our dependence on something else—when we face the ultimate question: "on what does my life depend?" Satan tempted both Adam and Christ, saying: Eat, for your hunger is proof that you depend entirely on food, that your life is in food. Adam believed and ate. Christ said, "Man does NOT live by bread alone." (Mt. 4:4; Lk. 4:4) This liberates us from total dependence on food, on matter, on the world. Thus, for the Christian, fasting is the only means by which man recovers his true spiritual nature.In order for fasting to be effective, then, the spirit must be a part of it. Christian fasting is not concerned with losing weight. It is a matter of prayer and the spirit. And because of that, because it is truly a place of the Spirit, true fasting may well lead to temptation, and weakness and doubt and irritation.In other words, it will be a real fight between good and evil, and very likely we shall fail many times in these battles. But the very discovery of the Christian life as "fight" and "effort" is an essential aspect of fasting. http://usccb.org/prayer-and-worship/liturgical-resources/lent/catholic-reflection-on-lenten-fasting-father-daniel-merz.cfm

Saint Joseph

O great S. Joseph! Most beloved spouse of the well-beloved Mother, ah! how often hast thou borne in thy arms the love of heaven and earth, while, inflamed with the sweet embraces and kisses of this Divine child, thy soul melted away with joy while he tenderly whispered in thy ears (O God what sweetness!) that thou wast his great friend and his well-beloved father.
-St Frances de Sales

Veiling...

“A woman does not acquire a man’s dignity by having her head uncovered but rather loses her own. Her shame and reproach thus derive from her desire to be like a man as well as from her actions.” -Chrysostom - Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone