I Am Bread…

I Am Bread

I lie here in unknowing Upon a plate of glass. I stare unblinking at the face That hovers through the Mass. I am by nature silent. That is my state in life. I know no better than to stay. I have not ease nor strife. Yet even if I had a mind I’d lie upon that plate In wonderous expectation; Amazement at my fate. For have I not been chosen? I, just lowly bread, Been chosen by the grace of God When angel words be said To change from water, wheat and oil; To transubstantiate. To look at me you’d never guess The awesomeness I wait. And if I did indeed have thought What, but “Thy Will Be Done”; For who in wildest dreams could dare To hope to be God’s Son? No longer just a grain of wheat My old life quickly passes. I die to self completely So God can feed the masses.by Dorothy E. Wimsatt

What’s Wrong with the World…

The
London Times once asked a number prominent people to write essays on the topic, What’s Wrong with the World. G. K. Chesterton reply is the shortest and most to the point in history: Dear Sirs: I am. Sincerely, G. K. CHESTERTON

Indeed. I am. More and more I am aware of just how much so.

The New Paganism by Hilaire Belloc

I’ve been reading Essays of a Catholic by Hilaire Belloc.  Belloc is like Chesterton in that I have yet to read anything written by either man that did not strike me as brilliant and profound.  The first essay in the book is “The New Paganism”* from which I’ve taken the following quotes…

… a Christian man or society is one that has some part of Catholicism left in him. But when every shred of Catholicism is lost we call that state of things “Unchristian.”

I have found this to be so true… we might not use the word unchristian, but certainly we use words that are interchangeable with it. Even in the protestant faiths, we see slivers of Catholic (universal) Truth that remain to some degree, though I have seen of late some who’ve shredded it entirely and yet claim the title Christian.

…with the attack on faith and the Church at the Reformation, the successful rebellion of so many and their secession from united Christendom, there began a process which could only end in the complete loss of all Catholic doctrine and morals by the deserters.  

Rebellion indeed, for that is what the Reformation was.  Belloc claims that we are today reaching this consummation and that was in 1931 or there abouts. Indeed, so we are even more today… and yet the Church remains, true to the faith she was given.  She is yet a shining beacon, parenting her children through the rocky shoals of this journey, a light to guide those who still seek and treasure truth.  It has been many years since the fathers of the rebellion began their denomination of their faith… how many will be lost because of it? How many will live out their lives in service to God in the desert created for them by their forefathers, so far and yet so close to the bounty God left to sustain His people here in these shadow lands. They do so much despite serving on such scant rations!

…there are, spreading over what used to be the Christian world, larger and larger areas over which the Christian spirit has wholly failed; is absent… …both larger moral and larger physical areas, but especially larger moral areas. There are now whole groups of books, whole bodies of men, which are definitely pagan, and these are beginning to join up into larger groups. It is like the freezing over of a pond, which begins in patches of ice; the patches unite to form wide sheets, till at last the whole is one solid surface. … they are coalescing—to form a corpus of anti-Christian influence. It is not so much that they deny the Incarnation and the Resurrection, not even that they ignore doctrine. It is rather that they contradict and oppose the old inherited Christian system of morals to which people used to adhere long after they had given up definite doctrine.

Is this not what we bemoan regularly in our own society as well as others? In my own life I see quite close at hand a life that embodies this description.  Truly, this life is pagan, yet not pagan with a hope of something better… a new pagan such as Belloc describes in this essay… a pagan who has turned their back on hope, disdained it and chosen paganism, humanism, as their god. 

So often pundits insist that we ‘can’t legislate morality’.  On the contrary, morality is the root of all legislation… what is legislation but the common morality chosen for a group of people to which they are held by penalty? Personally, having seen the various ‘types’ of legislated morality available in the world today, I far prefer the ones that are based upon Christian doctrine.  This is not due primarily to my own faith, so much as it is the preference for the results of that doctrine’s morality taken to it’s conclusion in those given cultures.

What does doctrine have to do with morals? Belloc is succinct.

…morals are the fruit of doctrine.

Belloc goes on to identify the source of this trend… 

The true origin of this attitude of mind in modern times is the powerful genius of Calvin, though those who most suffer his influence would most strenuously deny their subjection to it, partly because they have never read him, much more because they do not see it in their daily papers…

Calvin, then, is at the fountainhead of this new sense of doom. But behind Calvin the fatalist attitude is an attitude as old, of course, as the hills. It is a temptation to which the human intellect has yielded on important occasions from as far back as we can trace its recorded experience and definitions. To the mind in that mood all things are part of an unchangeable process following from cause to effect immutably. 

… that one very powerful agent in producing this mood is the desire to be rid of responsibility.

Denial of man’s free will indulges that desire to be rid of responsibility.  If we deny freedom of will to choose, we deny our own responsibility and can reject every objectionable thing with ‘it’s not my fault…’ This is pervasive in our society even more so today.

…the New Paganism has already begun to produce and cannot but produce more and more a mass of restrictive legislation.  

More restrictive legislation while being more permissive of inhumanity.

It is a paradox, of course, that such restrictive legislation should be bred from a mood which proceeded originally from rebellion against restriction, but the fact is undoubted—it is before all our eyes. With the denial of the will there necessarily appears the questioning of any content to the word “freedom.” In a Christian society you were free to do a number of acts, for some of which you could be punished under Christian laws, for others of which no state or other authority could punish you, but which were opposed to the social atmosphere in which you lived. But the New Paganism will tend, not to punish, but to restrain with fetters; to prevent action, to impose coercive bonds. It will be at issue more and more with human dignity. It has already, in certain provinces (the Calvinist canton of Vaud in Switzerland is an example), enacted what is called “the sterilization of the unfit” as a positive law. It has not yet enacted, though it has already proposed and will certainly in time enact, legislation for the restriction of births. Not only in these, but in many other departments of life, one after another, will this mechanical network spread and bind those subject to it under a compulsion which cannot be escaped.

and…

The battle for right doctrine in theology is always also a battle for the preservation of definite social things (institutions, habits) following from right doctrine; nor is there anything more contemptible intellectually than the attitude of those who imagine that because doctrine must be stated in abstract terms it therefore has no practical application nor any real fruit in the real world of real men. Contrariwise, difference in doctrine is at the root of all political and social differences; therefore is the struggle for or against true doctrine the most vital of struggles. . . .

and… 

The Old Paganism was of a sort that would be open, when due time came, to the authority of the Catholic Church. It had ears which at least would hear and eyes which at least would see; but the New Paganism not only has closed its senses, but is atrophying them, so that it aims at a state in which there shall be no ears to hear and no eyes to see.

The one was growing keener in its sight and its hearing; the other is declining towards a condition where the society it informs will be blind and deaf, even to the main natural pleasures of life and to temporal truths. It will be incapable of understanding what they are all about.

The Old Paganism had a strong sense of the supernatural. This sense was often turned to the wrong objects and always to insufficient objects, but it was keen and unfailing; all the poetry of the Old Paganism, even where it despairs, has this sense. And you may read in those of its writers who actively opposed religion, such as Lucretius, a fine religious sense of dignity and order. The New Paganism delights in superficiality, and conceives that it is rid of the evil as well as the good in what it believes to have been superstitions and illusions.

There it is quite wrong, and upon that note I will end. Men do not live long without gods; but when the gods of the New Paganism come they will not be merely insufficient, as were the gods of Greece, nor merely false; they will be evil. 

A blog entry can in no way do this essay justice. It is powerful and prescient. Belloc was truly a great historian and a brave man to continue to speak truth when it was unpopular to do so.

Rod Bennet of tremendous trifles  has blogged on Belloc’s writings on the New Paganism as well and his entry is well worth reading.

*an incomplete rendering of the essay (but at least it is partly available online )where perhaps can be read more fully the context of the quotes I’ve taken.

Lent, the Season of Joy…

The children and I attended the 7 pm Mass for Ash Wednesday as I was scheduled to serve as Eucharistic Minister.  (Husband stayed home as he isn’t well.) After I received my ashes I returned to my seat in time to see my youngest, Sunshine (dd 8 yrs) turn and apply ashes to her sister Cricket (dd 9 yrs). As I meditated on the Lenten journey we are beginning, the knowledge suddenly broke over me that the journey ended with Easter and the penitential mood of my heart exploded suddenly into a sunny joy. 

I can just hear you now… duh?!?!?! (of course Lent ends in Easter)

So why did this knowledge break with a special joy over and beyond the usual appreciation of Easter?  This Easter I will be spending far from home as my best friend and I go to see a mutual dear friend and her family received into the Church.  The thought of these precious ones and others who will also be reconciling to the Church this Easter brings such a deep joy… It is the nature of this Treasure that one doesn’t feel the urge to hoard.  There is enough for all to feast at the Table for the rest of our lives and never see the grain of the wood.  The nature of this Treasure is quite the different sort to the greedy, selfish competitive pushing and shoving inspired by any earthly wealth. The nature of this Treasure rejoices in sharing, rejoices in the discovery by another of the same Pearl of Great Price. 

So as I enter the desert of Lent, striving to imitate my Lord… It is with a new understanding of how He must have entered the desert as well… for as surely as I look forward to the joy of the Easter Resurrection and new unity with Him, so must He have done…  What a thought!  What a LOVE! What a JOY! It is this that we are invited to join and in this is embedded the understanding that suffering is JOY because of what it brings!  When suffering is become joy, it has no more sting, it has no more power… because it is suffused and consumed with something greater… and we are set free by joining Him there.

Lenten Chit-Chat…

Simply MUST go see this little chit-chat on Lent by Kansas City Catholic… It’s a keeper… and don’t forget to check out the postscripts! (Hat tip to Shellie)

Is Confession Hard on the Priest?

Went to confession on Saturday… the weather was still pretty bad and I have a feeling I’m the only one he saw.  I’ve enjoyed reading the perspective of Father Longenecker on the ‘priestly’ side of confession and find that a source of joy and comfort. However, after I spent some time in prayer and was leaving the sanctuary I caught a glimpse of Father through the open door to the confessional.  He was sitting in his chair but leaning forward with his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands.  Certainly, it appeared a prayerful pose but also a bit of a melancholy one and I couldn’t help but wonder if my confession (fairly run of the mill and certainly nothing very exciting… I am just a homeschooling housewife after all… and nothing like the silly women on that Desperate Housewives show I see advertised) had somehow been burdensome to him. Not JUST mine of course, I began to wonder about confessions in general.  Father Longenecker’s posts have gone a long way to put such a notion to rest and still I wonder. Perhaps after many years of hearing confessions, do our confessions burden our confessor? 

Basic Sin…

Yet again from Thomas Merton: Spiritual Master by Lawrence S. Cunningham 

The basic sin, for Christianity, is rejecting others in order to choose oneself, deciding against others and deciding for oneself.  Why is this sin so basic? Because the idea that you can choose yourself, approve yourself, and then offer yourself (fully “chosen” and “approved”) to God, applies the assertion of yourself over against God.  From this root of error comes all the sour leafage and fruitage of a life of self-examination, interminable problems and unending decisions, always making right choices, walking on the razor edge of an impossibly subtle ethic (with an equally subtle psychology to take care of the unconscious). All this implies the frenzied conviction that one can be his own light and his own justification, and that God is there for a purpose: to issue the stamp of confirmation upon my own rightness. In such a religion the Cross becomes meaningless except as the (blasphemous) certification that because you suffer, because you are misunderstood, you are justified twice over – you are a martyr. Martyr means witness. You are then a witness? To what? To your own infallible light and your own justice, which you have chosen.

This is the exact opposite of everything Jesus ever did or taught.

Looking Back at the Church Militant, now Triumphant…

Lo, there do I see my father…

Lo, there do I see my mother, and my sister, and my brothers…

Lo, they do call to me…

They bid me take my place among them
in the halls of heaven…

With all the martyrs, the angels, and the saints, they live forever in the Presence of God.

~Adapted from The 13th Warrior

Saints… Dead or Alive?

Again quoting from Thomas Merton: Spiritual Master by Lawrence S. Cunningham… 

Saints of the fifteenth century. In the collapse of medieval society, amid the corruption of the clergy and the decadence of conventual life, there arose men and women of the laity who were perfectly obedient to God. Nicholas of Flue, for instance, and Joan of Arc. They were simple and straight forward signs of contradiction in the middle of worldliness, prejudice, cruelty, despair, and greed. They were not rebels at all. They were meek and submissive instruments of God who, while being completely opposed to the corrupt norms around them, gave every man and every authority his due.  They show clearly and convincingly what it is to be not a rebel, but obedient to God as a sign to men – a sign of mercy, a revelation of truth and power. We are spontaneously drawn to these signs of God with all the love of our hearts.  We naturally trust them, believe in their intercession, knowing that they live on in the glory of God and that God would not give us such love for them if they were not still “sacraments” of His mercy to us.

Saints and our relationship with them has been a great treasure to me as a new Catholic.  How often I  have looked at the current ‘heroes’ and role models of our culture and thought that for the most part they are absolutely NOT what I want for my children to emulate… but where WERE all the good ones?  Where were all the REAL heroes? The men and women who did truly great things with more lasting effect than the ‘Hail Mary’ touchdown.  They were missing in action… or so I thought.

The truth is that they’ve always been there… silent witnesses who still inspired and reached millions of people.  I just didn’t have access to them, didn’t know about them… because I was raised protestant.  The communion of saints, despite being in the Creeds to which most Christians at least nod if not actually adhere, was yet another Truth, another blessing, another grace which protestantism had stripped away from the fullness of the Faith. 

These saints live still… they are the Church Triumphant, the Church who has been perfected and dwell with the Lord having completed their race… and they are our cloud of witnesses who cheer us, the Church Militant, on in ours, interceding for us to the Father of us all.  We do not idolize them anymore than we idolize our brothers and sisters in Christ here on earth. We do not worship them any more than we worship a beloved sister or brother here on earth.  Rather, together as the complete Body of Christ we worship God together, and intercede for one another.

Ps. 103:20–22 Bless the LORD, all you angels, mighty in strength and attentive, obedient to every command. Bless the LORD, all you hosts, ministers who do God’s will. Bless the LORD, all creatures, everywhere in God’s domain. Bless the LORD, my soul!

Psalms 148: 1-2 Hallelujah! Praise the LORD from the heavens; give praise in the heights. Praise him, all you angels; give praise, all you hosts.

Just as surely as they worship God with us, do they also intercede for us. We do ask them to intercede for us… just as we ask brothers and sisters in Christ here on earth… Do not the prayers of the righteous avail much? (Jas. 5:16) Scripture itself speaks to the intercession of men and angels in heaven…

 Rev 5:8 When he took it, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb. Each of the elders held a harp and gold bowls filled with incense, which are the prayers of the holy ones.

This shows that the saints and angels are aware of our prayers to God, else they would not be offering them to Him… They are aware of our prayers and intercede for us, presenting our needs to God as this scripture testifies.

Rev. 8:3–4 Another angel came and stood at the altar, holding a gold censer. He was given a great quantity of incense to offer, along with the prayers of all the holy ones, on the gold altar that was before the throne. The smoke of the incense along with the prayers of the holy ones went up before God from the hand of the angel.

Indeed we are cautioned as to the strength of their intercession…

Matt. 18:10 “See that you do not despise one of these little ones, for I say to you that their angels in heaven always look upon the face of my heavenly Father.

The testimony of the Early Church Fathers agrees with sacred scripture and we see it lived out in their example to us. 

Hermas

“[The Shepherd said:] ‘But those who are weak and slothful in prayer, hesitate to ask anything from the Lord; but the Lord is full of compassion, and gives without fail to all who ask him. But you, [Hermas,] having been strengthened by the holy angel [you saw], and having obtained from him such intercession, and not being slothful, why do not you ask of the Lord understanding, and receive it from him?’” (The Shepherd 3:5:4 [A.D. 80]). 

Clement of Alexandria

“In this way is he [the true Christian] always pure for prayer. He also prays in the society of angels, as being already of angelic rank, and he is never out of their holy keeping; and though he pray alone, he has the choir of the saints standing with him [in prayer]“ (Miscellanies 7:12 [A.D. 208]). 

Origen

“But not the high priest [Christ] alone prays for those who pray sincerely, but also the angels . . . as also the souls of the saints who have already fallen asleep” (Prayer 11 [A.D. 233]). 

Cyprian of Carthage

“Let us remember one another in concord and unanimity. Let us on both sides [of death] always pray for one another. Let us relieve burdens and afflictions by mutual love, that if one of us, by the swiftness of divine condescension, shall go hence first, our love may continue in the presence of the Lord, and our prayers for our brethren and sisters not cease in the presence of the Father’s mercy” (Letters 56[60]:5 [A.D. 253]). 

  “Atticus, sleep in peace, secure in your safety, and pray anxiously for our sins” (funerary inscription near St. Sabina’s in Rome [A.D. 300]).

“Pray for your parents, Matronata Matrona. She lived one year, fifty-two days” (ibid.). 

Methodius

“Hail to you for ever, Virgin Mother of God, our unceasing joy, for to you do I turn again. You are the beginning of our feast; you are its middle and end; the pearl of great price that belongs to the kingdom; the fat of every victim, the living altar of the Bread of Life [Jesus]. Hail, you treasure of the love of God. Hail, you fount of the Son’s love for man. . . . You gleamed, sweet gift-bestowing Mother, with the light of the sun; you gleamed with the insupportable fires of a most fervent charity, bringing forth in the end that which was conceived of you . . . making manifest the mystery hidden and unspeakable, the invisible Son of the Father—the Prince of Peace, who in a marvelous manner showed himself as less than all littleness” (Oration on Simeon and Anna 14 [A.D. 305]).

“Therefore, we pray [ask] you, the most excellent among women, who glories in the confidence of your maternal honors, that you would unceasingly keep us in remembrance. O holy Mother of God, remember us, I say, who make our boast in you, and who in august hymns celebrate the memory, which will ever live, and never fade away” (ibid.).

“And you also, O honored and venerable Simeon, you earliest host of our holy religion, and teacher of the resurrection of the faithful, do be our patron and advocate with that Savior God, whom you were deemed worthy to receive into your arms. We, together with you, sing our praises to Christ, who has the power of life and death, saying, ‘You are the true Light, proceeding from the true Light; the true God, begotten of the true God’” (ibid.).

Cyril of Jerusalem

“Then [during the Eucharistic prayer] we make mention also of those who have already fallen asleep: first, the patriarchs, prophets, apostles, and martyrs, that through their prayers and supplications God would receive our petition . . . “ (Catechetical Lectures 23:9 [A.D. 350]).

Hilary of Poitiers

“To those who wish to stand [in God’s grace], neither the guardianship of saints nor the defenses of angels are wanting” (Commentary on the Psalms 124:5:6 [A.D. 365]).

Ephraim the Syrian

“You victorious martyrs who endured torments gladly for the sake of the God and Savior, you who have boldness of speech toward the Lord himself, you saints, intercede for us who are timid and sinful men, full of sloth, that the grace of Christ may come upon us, and enlighten the hearts of all of us so that we may love him” (Commentary on Mark [A.D. 370]).

“Remember me, you heirs of God, you brethren of Christ; supplicate the Savior earnestly for me, that I may be freed through Christ from him that fights against me day by day” (The Fear at the End of Life [A.D. 370]).

The Liturgy of St. Basil

“By the command of your only-begotten Son we communicate with the memory of your saints . . . by whose prayers and supplications have mercy upon us all, and deliver us for the sake of your holy name” (Liturgy of St. Basil [A.D. 373]).

Pectorius

“Aschandius, my father, dearly beloved of my heart, with my sweet mother and my brethren, remember your Pectorius in the peace of the Fish [Christ]” (Epitaph of Pectorius [A.D. 375]).

Gregory of Nazianz

“May you [Cyprian] look down from above propitiously upon us, and guide our word and life; and shepherd this sacred flock . . . gladden the Holy Trinity, before which you stand” (Orations 17[24] [A.D. 380]).

“Yes, I am well assured that [my father’s] intercession is of more avail now than was his instruction in former days, since he is closer to God, now that he has shaken off his bodily fetters, and freed his mind from the clay that obscured it, and holds conversation naked with the nakedness of the prime and purest mind . . . “ (ibid., 18:4).

Gregory of Nyssa

“[Ephraim], you who are standing at the divine altar [in heaven] . . . bear us all in remembrance, petitioning for us the remission of sins, and the fruition of an everlasting kingdom” (Sermon on Ephraim the Syrian [A.D. 380]).

John Chrysostom

“He that wears the purple [i.e., a royal man] . . . stands begging of the saints to be his patrons with God, and he that wears a diadem begs the tentmaker [Paul] and the fisherman [Peter] as patrons, even though they be dead” (Homilies on Second Corinthians 26 [A.D. 392]).

“When you perceive that God is chastening you, fly not to his enemies . . . but to his friends, the martyrs, the saints, and those who were pleasing to him, and who have great power [in God]” (Orations 8:6 [A.D. 396]).

Ambrose of Milan

“May Peter, who wept so efficaciously for himself, weep for us and turn towards us Christ’s benign countenance” (The Six Days Work 5:25:90 [A.D. 393]).

Jerome

“You say in your book that while we live we are able to pray for each other, but afterwards when we have died, the prayer of no person for another can be heard. . . . But if the apostles and martyrs while still in the body can pray for others, at a time when they ought still be solicitous about themselves, how much more will they do so after their crowns, victories, and triumphs?” (Against Vigilantius 6 [A.D. 406]).

Augustine

“A Christian people celebrates together in religious solemnity the memorials of the martyrs, both to encourage their being imitated and so that it can share in their merits and be aided by their prayers” (Against Faustus the Manichean [A.D. 400]).

“There is an ecclesiastical discipline, as the faithful know, when the names of the martyrs are read aloud in that place at the altar of God, where prayer is not offered for them. Prayer, however, is offered for the dead who are remembered. For it is wrong to pray for a martyr, to whose prayers we ought ourselves be commended” (Sermons 159:1 [A.D. 411]).

“At the Lord’s table we do not commemorate martyrs in the same way that we do others who rest in peace so as to pray for them, but rather that they may pray for us that we may follow in their footsteps” (Homilies on John 84 [A.D. 416]).

“Neither are the souls of the pious dead separated from the Church which even now is the kingdom of Christ. Otherwise there would be no remembrance of them at the altar of God in the communication of the Body of Christ” (The City of God 20:9:2 [A.D. 419]).

Indeed, Jesus is the only mediator between God and man…

1 Tim. 2:5 For there is one God. There is also one mediator between God and the human race, Christ Jesus, himself human,

However, this does not mean that we can’t or shouldn’t ask others to pray for us as we see in the verses immediately preceeding that…

1 Tim. 2:1–4 First of all, then, I ask that supplications, prayers, petitions, and thanksgivings be offered for everyone, for kings and for all in authority, that we may lead a quiet and tranquil life in all devotion and dignity. This is good and pleasing to God our savior, who wills everyone to be saved and to come to knowledge of the truth.

Just as our brethren who pray for us here on earth, the saints and angels do not bypass Christ, but rather intercede with and for us TO God THROUGH Christ… saying as He taught us ‘Our Father…’ among the many other forms of prayer which we offer to God.

Before the fall, in the Garden of Eden when all was as He created it to be … what did Adam do? God gave him work right? A way to join God in what He was doing… After the fall, where we are now… does God allow us to join Him in His work? Sure… even those of us who are not ‘officially’ in ministry are not only allowed to join Him, it is expected of us, is it not? Then why do we think it will be any different when we are once again perfectly joined with Him and reside with Him again side by side?

Matt. 17:1-3  After six days Jesus took Peter, James, and John his brother, and led them up a high mountain by themselves.  And he was transfigured before them; his face shone like the sun and his clothes became white as light. And behold, Moses and Elijah appeared to them, conversing with him.

Why do we assume that He will not give us ‘work’ then as well in assisting Him in caring for others, even when He has SHOWN us He does exactly that in sacred scripture!

God continually renews my mind, teaching me things of Himself and His ways that have been neglected in my spiritual education.  They are not always pleasant, these lessons… rarely in my ‘comfort zone’… but so richly blessed am I that I rejoice in His instruction and turning my face to Him, beg Him to continue for the sheer joy of learning at His feet despite the pain and suffering it may bring.  Truly, this is the Christ life…

Hear and Understand God’s Tradition…

Audite et intelligite traditiones quas Deus dedi vobis.

“Hear and understand the traditions which I, God, have given you.”

I’m currently reading Thomas Merton: Spiritual Master by Lawrence S. Cunningham and it is from this that I am quoting…

There are traditions which God has given us. They are so to speak a memory we are born with and into which we are born: a store of meanings, of symbols, of signs. What is born in us is the connatural ability to understand these great buried signs as soon as they are manifested to us.  What is given us in society is a more or less authentic manifestation of the signs. If society loses its “memory,” if it forgets its language of traditional symbol, then the individuals who make it up become neurotic, because their own memories are corrupted by uninterpreted, unused meanings. Then traditions themselves become mere dead conventions – worse than that, obsessions – collective neuroses.  To replace one set of conventions with another, however new, does nothing to revive a truly living sense of meaning and of life. This is our present condition.

This resonates strongly within me.  In my own experience, growing up as a Baptist (Southern of some flavor), I often felt drawn to certain things… liturgical tradition drew me, though I knew not what to call it. The austere nature of our faith and its tradition (or rather traditional lack of the same) left me feeling as though something were missing.  As a young child, striving to fill that unspoken void, I would contrive my own ‘traditions’ or forms of reverence. Having a lace trimmed hanky to lay my Bible is one good example, and yet this felt contrived even to my infant sensibilities and I soon gave it up in shame for having taken up such ‘pretensions’. 

Later, when I saw my first crucifix, I remember being struck by it – feeling a hushed awe and reverence within that was inexplicable… Later still in a similar setting, kneelers were intuitive in response as I felt immediately the desire to drop to my knees and pray. I worked hard (funny that since we were repeatedly taught that works were of little import) to be a workman approved before the Lord and stifled those childhood fancies, all the while feeling as though something important were missing… that such a holy God, such a magnificent Lord and Master deserved more than what was given… and that burning desire to give such to the Lord whom I loved was banked.

Even when I began to attend Church with my Catholic husband, the fear and misunderstanding taught me in my youth kept me from really seeing that what I witnessed there was the very fulfillment of what my young soul had yearned for.  When I finally was reconciled to the Church by God’s mercy and command, the protective walls bricked up over time to protect myself from that which I was forbidden to give as a protestant began to come down.  As I have lived a full year now as a Catholic with the blessings of the Sacraments, the joys of Eucharistic Adoration, the Liturgy and the Liturgical Calendar with all it entails, I have found at last that which my soul within naturally knew and longed to give as right to the Lord.  Truly, God has written His law upon our hearts… we ignore and deny this innate understanding to our peril.

We as a protestant society have lost our memory.  Our forefathers denied it; their descendents fought it, suppressing it more and more until it is so very lost that we of the common era in this protestant culture no longer recognize it within ourselves and rail against it embraced by others with vile blasphemies. We have reduced those beloved traditions given us by God to dead conventions so long that they have become  collective neuroses.  We have replaced God’s traditions, God’s ways with our own. New conventions, new traditions that reject all but that which seems comfortable, godly, and right in our own eyes.  In the process not only do we deify ourselves, but we forfeit life and all its meaning. We no longer show respect to any, much less the equal respect to all that we claim. We proclaim proudly that we bow our knee to NO man, and in the process, refuse to bow our knee to God. We have lost all sense of honor, of respect, and have no true understanding or experience of humility.  What else is dying to self but considering others better than we do ourselves?

Esteeming others, being willing to be humbled, being willing to abase ourselves, to be SERVANT to ALL men… this is the calling of the followers of Christ. If we are so unaware of the traditions of God that we no longer recognize true Worship, then we call things worship in error in order to have it at all. Such ignorance leads to not only great pride, but great sin. Let us not be so ignorant due to hard hearts and pride that we call speech, lectures, song-a-longs, and any humbling position of body worship. Let us not be so prideful in our ignorance that we can no longer bend our knee in respect to another lest it be construed as worship where none exists.  Let us again learn what we once knew and rejoiced to do, obey the traditions of our God and walk humbly before Him always.

Audite et intelligite traditiones quas Deus dedi vobis.

“Hear and understand the traditions which I, God, have given you.”

Let us hear, understand, and obey the traditions which He, our God, has given to us.  Blessed be God forever!