Wretched Food…

We’ve only lived here about four months and let me tell you, I am SPOILED.  Father is on vacation. 

Having lived in three states in the past few years and visited many more parishes than our local ones as part of the job interview process in each prospective community, we had one really good parish.  The others were mediocre at best and some of them were down right scary.  I am not talking a lack of aesthetics, I’m talking teaching and homilies and treatment of the Blessed Sacrament that would wipe Papa Ben’s smile right off his face. In these parishes, we reminded ourselves that the Eucharist was still there and did what we could to continue growing in our faith even when the priest etc was letting the parishioners down, staying and praying for that parish and its priests…. but we grumbled.

Our parish here has been fabulous.  Talk about an on fire, dedicated, passionate, priest not only faithful to the magisterium but seriously dedicated to the souls in his care. The seminarian is an excellent complement to him and between the two of them it has been an incredible summer.  Our seminarian returned to school a few weeks ago and we are already feeling the loss keenly, particularly with Father gone. As I said, we have gotten spoiled… not complacent by any means, but spoiled none the less.

Yesterday, I was going over the Mass readings between Benediction and Mass.  The first reading was Numbers 21:4b-9.  I got stuck at the end of verse 5.

4b But with their patience worn out by the journey, 5 the people complained against God and Moses, “Why have you brought us up from Egypt to die in this desert, where there is no food or water? We are disgusted with this wretched food!”

It suddenly hit me, totally out of the blue, that I am guilty of griping about the ‘wretched food.’  I have been worn out in the past by the moves journey and complained to God saying, “Why have you brought us out from where we had it so good to this place with a spiritually anemic parish, a horrible priest, and unfriendly people wretched food?” Ouch. That was all BEFORE Mass.  Did I mention that Father is on vacation?

We had a visiting priest.  If I had thought the lesson was over once Mass began, I had another think comin’. It was case in point, or point in case rather, illustrated by the opening prayer.

God our Father, in obedience to you your only Son accepted death on the cross for the salvation of (hu)mankind.  We acknowledge the mystery of the cross on earth.  May we receive the gift of redemption in heaven. We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

That red bit above was added courtesy of the visiting priest and it didn’t get better.  Sigh. It was like our wonderful new parish had been invaded by the ghosts of parishes past… and I had just been told I was a whiner.  Did I say ouch? Yeah. I hear ya Lord, no more complaining about the ‘wretched food’.* 

Father gets back on Wednesday and we are incredibly grateful.  He has been sorely missed.  Still, I will not forget this lesson and will continue to pray daily as a result for an increase in vocations, both to the priesthood and religious life, of those who will be like my priest.  Men and women faithful to the magisterium with a passion for both the people and the details which make up our Liturgy and the Deposit of Faith we have been given, people who encourage others to greater holiness by their example and their presence. Praying not with an attitude of complaint but of gratitude… for the GOOD priests out there and that God would give us MORE of them.

If you are like me and have been in the past, or still are, stuck in a parish that seems to hurt more than it helps, I ask you to join me in prayer.  I encourage you to offer up the suffering you experience on behalf of vocations, begging God for a priest after His own heart – not only for your parish, but for all parishes like it in the world.  Instead of complaining about the “wretched food,” let us turn to God in thanksgiving for what we have and pray that He will raise up holy, godly young men and women who will ‘feed’ the generations to come well.

 

*Just noting that ‘no more complaining about wretched food’ doesn’t mean no more speaking out about abuses and failings generally which need to be corrected.  That we are required to do as an spiritual work of mercy.

Cost of Ministry…

My parish is having a course for the high school kids this week called ‘Catholic Summer University: A Crash Course in Catholicism’ taught by our priest and our seminarian.  Since I am attending as an Ethics and Integrity adult, all four of my kids are participating (15, 12, 11, 10).  As of the end of this, our second day, we have almost 50 handouts and that isn’t counting the blank paper we have taken notes on.  It has been awesome. 

In one of the handouts on The Christian Spiritual Life I found something under the topic of Prayer and Devotion that struck me as I read our ‘homework’ for the evening.  It wasn’t what was said but rather how it was said. 

“Woe to me if I preach not the Gospel” does not entitle us to forget: “What does it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and suffer the loss of his own soul?”

I read that, thought ‘yep’ and turned the page.

Then I thought ‘WHOA’ and turned it back.

Rereading it, the meaning broke over me, sort of like the day I realized that ‘bearing much fruit’ as a believer had NOTHING to do with the number of saved souls on your belt (the only interpretation of that verse I ever was taught as a Baptist – though of course, in more genial terms) and oddly enough these two teachings – in their true meaning – dovetail.  Immediately, some in my own experience came to mind.  I would not say for one moment that these had lost their soul.  However, I definitely have wondered if their dedication to ‘preaching the Gospel’ in order to ‘gain the whole world’ had not cost their souls, and many others, more than was ever intended to be paid…

For me, realizing that ‘bearing much fruit’ did not mean I was responsible for the salvation of souls… on the contrary, while we may be used of God, conversion is the work of the Holy Spirit alone and it is presumptious both to assume otherwise and to claim something for which we can take no credit… To realize that, and to understand that by ‘bearing much fruit’ our Lord meant ‘fruit of the Spirit’, left me in tears and left an enormous weight of responsibility and a burden of failure on the floor at the altar.

Similarly freeing, realizing that while God sends us forth to the lost world, He does not expect or even intend for us to neglect our own soul, or the souls for which we are directly responsible (ie my children), by giving so much of ourselves for the sake of others. How much more might we influence the world for our blessed Lord if we cared for our own soul, and those more immediately entrusted to our care, as we have been taught, in that allowing ourselves to be more completely transformed we would be an even better witness than we ever could be in compromising our own spiritual life by a level of ministry involvement beyond what is wise?

The example which came to mind aside, this was an important moment in my own understanding and has given me both great peace and encouragement.  God does not ask more than we can give and the first thing He asks us to give, and give completely, is ourselves… not to everyone else… but to Himself.

Once again, I learn about the importance of priorities and balance. If we want to be of greater service to God, then FIRST we must give more of ourselves to Him in personal spiritual growth through prayer, meditation, the Sacraments, mortifications, fasting, etc… and as we grow in holiness, then we are of greater use in whatever service our Lord asks of us.

Herman the Cripple…

As I said Father recommended some reading material recently.  Here is yet another offering from Stumbling Blocks or Stepping Stones: Spiritual Answers to Psychological Questions by Fr. Benedict J. Groeschel, C.F.R.  This poem was written by a physician admirer of Blessed Herman.

 

Herman The Cripple
by
William Hart Hurlbut, M.D.

I am least among the low,
I am weak and I am slow;
I can neither walk nor stand,
Nor hold a spoon in my own hand.

Like a body bound in chain,
I am on a rack of pain,
But He is God who made me so,
that His mercy I should know.

Brothers do not weep for me!
Christ, the Lord, has set me free.
All my sorrows he will bless;
Pain is not unhappiness.

From my window I look down
To the streets of yonder town,
Where the people come and go,
Reap the harvest that they sow.

Like a field of wheat and tares,
Some are lost in worldly cares;
There are hearts as black as coal,
There are cripples of the soul.

Brothers do not weep for me!
In his mercy I am free.
I can neither sow nor spin,
Yet, I am fed and clothed in Him.

I have been the donkey’s tail,
Slower than a slug or snail;
You my brothers have been kind,
Never let me lag behind.

I have been most rich in friends,
You have been my feet and hands;
All the good that I could do,
I have done because of you.

Oh my brothers, can’t you see?
You have been as Christ for me.
And in my need I know I, too,
Have become as Christ for you!

I have lived for forty years
In this wilderness of tears;
But these trials can’t compare
With the glory we will share.

I have had a voice to sing,
To rejoice in everything;
Now Love’s sweet eternal song
Breaks the darkness with the dawn.

Brother’s do not weep for me!
Christ, the Lord, has set me free.
Oh my friends, remember this:
Pain is not unhappiness.

One Very Ill…

Father recommended some reading material recently.  One of those books is Stumbling Blocks or Stepping Stones: Spiritual Answers to Psychological Questions by Fr. Benedict J. Groeschel, C.F.R.  Close to the end of the book I found several things that really spoke to me.  One of them was a prayer, a prayer of hope but of hope born of pain and suffering.

The Prayer of One Very Ill…

Lord, the day is drawing to a close and, like all the other days, it leaves with me the impression of utter defeat. I have done nothing for You: neither have I said conscious prayers, nor performed works of charity, nor any work at all, work that is sacred for every Christian who understands its significance.  I have not even been able to control that childish impatience and those foolish rancors that so often occupy the place that should be Yours in the “no-man’s land” of my emotions.  It is in vain that I promise You to do better.  I shall be no different tomorrow, or on the day that follows. 

When I retrace the course of my life, I am overwhelmed by the same impression of inadequacy.  I have sought You in prayer and in the service of my neighbor, for we cannot separate You from our brothers any more than we can separate our body from our spirit.  But in seeking You, do I not find myself?  Do I not wish to satisfy myself? Those works that I secretly deemed good and saintly dissolve in the light of approaching eternity, and I dare no longer lean on these supports that have lost their stability.

Even actual sufferings bring me no joy, because I bear them so badly.  Perhaps we are all like this: incapable of discerning anything but our own wretchedness and our own despairing cowardice before the light of the Beyond that waxes on our horizon.  But it may be, O Lord, that this impression of privation is part of a divine plan.  It may be that, in Your eyes, self-complacency is the most obnoxious of all fripperies, and that we must come before you naked so that You, You alone, may clothe us.  

 ~Marguerite Teilhard de Chardin, president of the Catholic Union of the Sick, and sister of the well known Jesuit writer Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

The Third Hour of Prayer…

 So I was quite willing when said friend turned to me (as we left the Adoration Chapel at 4 am) and asked if I was up for ‘the third hour’ of prayer as her husband calls it.  You. Betcha.  During a recent natural disaster, a local church refused to accept supplies from my friend’s Catholic parish simply because they were from Catholics.  Since it can be difficult to fall asleep after Adoration anyway, my friend has taken to spending an hour in prayer for this Church.  We piled into the car, swung through Whataburger for a breakfast sandwich to eat on the way, and headed for the third hour.

In the quiet of the car, we took out our rosaries and began to pray the Luminous mysteries.  The rosary is a meditation on the life of Christ, luminous mysteries being specifically the major events in our Lord’s ministry.

So these were a particularly appropriate meditation to pray for unity in service to our Lord with these, our brothers and sisters in Christ. As the street lights formed pools of clarity in the early morning darkness, our voices rose into the silence with the rhythm of prayer.  I meditated upon each event in the life of Our Lord, praying the words of the Angelic Salutation and asking God to accept her fiat as mine, that intimate communion with God returning.  The prayerful chorus of our voices invited our Lord into our midst and He came, and listened, and taught…

My memories are imperfect… and incomplete… some insight is not given for us… to be scribbled on the back of stray bits of paper, meditated on and shared, but to assist us in prayer… as our Lord participates and guides our prayer, bringing it into line with His will.  This was that sort but I wanted to save what I do remember as everything He gives is precious.

Luminous Mysteries

1. The Baptism of the Lord

As I meditated upon the Baptism, I realized yet again what being ‘Christ-like’ means.  It means that God came and LIVED as our example. He showed us HOW to respond by HIS response. He was baptised not because He needed to be cleansed of sin, but to fulfill all righteousness… and that is an example to us.  We need to respond in such a way as to fulfill all righteousness…   He humbled Himself and walked among those who were weak, needy, sinful… an imperfect reflection of Himself.  How can we refuse to do likewise?

2. The Wedding of Cana

In the Wedding at Cana, a need was brought to Jesus attention by His mother.  The wine was gone and the wedding feast far from over.  He asked what she would have Him to do… it was not yet His time.  She turned and gave instructions, her very entrusting of the servants to Him an act of faith, belief, and persistence.  What did He tell them? I told her no? He honored the request of His mother. He was humble. He saw the need and met it, even though the timing was not the best.  How often to I let convenience determine my willingness to serve?

3. The Proclamation of the Kingdom

4. The Transfiguration

5. The Institution of the Eucharist.

Bread. Wine. Simple food. Brought by sinful men, held in imperfect hands, shared even by a traitorous friend.  What did our Lord do? He took it, blessed it, broke it, perfected it, shared it… and in doing  so, gave Life. The bread and wine, like the prefiguring loaves and fishes, was useful to our Lord… not because of the perfect hearts and right belief of those who brought it, not because it was an adequate offering… the apostles themselves thought it insignificant and unworthy… but because of the perfect heart and holiness of He to whom it was given by faith. Our Lord repeatedly took imperfect gifts and sanctified them, made them holy, multiplying them, and using them to bless… to give Life.  Who then are we to refuse the gift of another made in our Lords name and to our Lords sheep, no matter how blemished, imperfect, unclean the heart of the giver in our eyes? Is it not a lack of faith on our part? Just as the apostles lacked faith that God could do anything worthwhile with a few simple loaves and fish?

As the temple became a car once again and the harmony of our voices died away, I realized a few things… First, that voices risen in prayer, glorifying our Lord, was something precious… it was as though I’d been given a very veiled glimpse of what it must be like to raise one’s voice in the throne room continuously in the Holy, Holy, Holy… never tiring, just being renewed and filled with joy and never ending love… not boring as it always sounded to me as a child… and that it would be a wondrous thing to be able to do that one day in heaven.  Secondly, that I was praying not only for that church, but for all Christians… for myself… knowing myself guilty and praying that I would be given grace to not be found lacking in faith, doubting God’s ability  to transform even the simplest things given by the most corrupt appearing heart, incapable of judging rightly the heart of another before our Lord… but trusting that God can use even the Samaritans of our acquaintance… to do His work.

Arriving back at the house, I climbed the stairs with a silly grin on my face to climb back in bed … a third hour… who knew… I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.

Not Enough Time…

As I mentioned in my last post, I am visiting my best friend and had the opportunity to spend several hours in prayer with her during her usual weekly 2-4 am Adoration slot. She’s the one who introduced me to Adoration in the first place and it had become a very precious part of my prayer life by the time I moved to a new state and new parish with no real Adoration to speak of.  Anytime I come to visit that coincides with Adoration, I am able to join her and it was particularly precious this visit as it has been more than six months since I had such an opportunity for Adoration, much less one with her.

I have not slept well these last months and was particularly tired last night due to little sleep the night before.  So I slept through both the cell phone alarms I set and had to be woken by my friend asking if I was sure I wanted to go. One might think that going to pray for two hours on such little sleep in the quiet of a private chapel would be difficult.  There was a time when I could not pray for five minutes together without serious boredom and attention loss.  I frankly was a bit concerned that, despite previous experiences in Adoration, I might be tempted to join the apostles in their example of ‘midnight prayer’.

Silly me.  Time had passed for me, but not for God.  My location had changed, but His remained the same.  He was there waiting for me.  I had so much to pray for, petition and thanksgiving, so much I wanted to meditate on… so I got right to it.  After praying the dedication of the hours, I paused to switch out my Magnificat’s in their little cover as the month was changing that night and I wanted to go ahead and do Morning Prayer before I hit the more intense, specific prayer. There is usually an editorial, some articles and prayers before the daily stuff starts and I began with those once morning prayer was over.  As my previous post suggests, I got seriously sidetracked there with all kinds of intense illumination going on. 

 As I mentioned to my friend, as a Protestant I dutifully showed up for services with my Bible and a notepad, studiously listening for the ‘points’ in the sermon to make notes.  As a Catholic, I show up with so much to pray and meditate on in Adoration that it never occurs to me to bring paper… and repeatedly I’ve found myself learning so much, so inspired by repeated somethings that click as I meditate, that I’m scrabbling for pen and paper… holding my hand up to heaven saying ‘WAIT! Hold that thought! You’re going too fast!  I have to write this down so I won’t forget it!’

 This was true this time as well.  In fact, something unusual happened last night. Normally, our Adorations are a blessed, pregnant silence. Ours being the type of friendship where no words are necessary and hours of silent prayer spent together  in our Lord’s Presence with rarely a spoken word are an easy and familiar thing.  This time, it was happening to us both, though reading and meditating on different things but being given some really interesting illumination that spoke to the same or similar topics.  We kept interrupting each other to share as they struck us… sometimes one writing furiously, trying to capture the latest insight while the other was enthusing over something as well… both in close, intense communion with the Holy Spirit… but with each other at the same time… as the insights given complemented and shone light upon the others.

At last, we both leaned back in our chairs, silently absorbing the wonder of the moment.  After some moments had passed, my friend asked what time it was… I reached for my cell phone to check the time, thinking it could only have been about 20 minutes and why was she, of all people, so time conscious all of a sudden… (stupid anne)… Imagine my astonishment to find that it was 3:48 in the morning, a mere 12 minutes remained in our two hours and I was nowhere near ‘done’.  Yet again I found myself packing up my Adoration materials and reaching for my shoes feeling both profound joy and somewhat bemused disappointment as I realized that not even TWO hours is enough dedicated time for prayer…

A Family Rosary…

Tonight we began to pray a rosary daily as a family.  It was something my husband had mentioned wanting to do to the children. They mentioned it to me, not knowing that I had  also been wanting to begin doing this, and so it began. 

We used Scriptural Rosary books, the same ones we used in our old parish to pray the communal rosary every Wednesday.  At the end, my husband told me that wasn’t a traditional rosary.  Ha. I told him that if by ‘traditional’ he meant not ‘just a mantra of Our Father’s and Hail Mary’s without even mentioning the mysteries’ (and he admitted that is what he meant) then no, it wasn’t. It was better. He did like it though, so it’s ok. 

 One of the girls wanted to pray another set of mysteries, and I’m glad that she enjoyed it that much, but we told her it would wait until tomorrow.  I want them to keep enjoying it and overdoing it the first night won’t help.  Still, it was a good start. 

There is something special about praying together in community.  There is also something special about praying together as a family.  The chorus of our daughters young voices raised with the deep tones of their father in prayer is a precious thing.  These are precious days together.

Almost My Last Service…

Once RNW, my friend at Postscripts From the Catholic Spitfire Grill, shared her thoughts on being an Extraordinary Minister of Holy Communion in a post called Channels of Grace: We Become What We Do.  Her thoughts really resonated with me as my experience has been very similar. A few quotes to illustrate what I’m referring to specifically…

…I have the privilege of being an Extraordinary Minister of Holy Communion. I assist the priests and the deacons in distributing Holy Communion at Mass and to those who are unable to attend Mass during the week. I have noticed that Our Lord has taken this thing that I do and used it to change what I am…

Just as Our Lord has allowed me to distribute His Body and Blood in the Eucharist, He has blessed that ministry and multiplied it like the loaves and the fishes to every part of my life. I bring Jesus in the Eucharist with me in other ways all of the time as I talk to people about the joy of being Catholic. The physical actions of what I do as a Extraordinary Minister of Holy Communion has somehow been imprinted on my soul and I have become what I do.  

 I have shared before on this blog a few of my experiences in being an Extraordinary Minister and the profound effect they have had on me.  What I have not shared, perhaps because I did not realize fully the source or the completeness of the gift, was the depth of love I have been given for this parish family, these parishioners individually.

 

 Tonight was, unless I am assigned next week and don’t know it, my last time to serve as an Extraordinary Minister of Holy Communion at my parish before we move.  I knew that before I went to Mass but somehow it slipped my mind until I had taken my place with the Cup in hand and as the first person, an older gentleman in our parish who I know well, came to receive it hit me again. It hit me more fully, and I began to cry. (Despite the mention of such times on this blog, this is not normal for me. I’m not a ‘crier’.  It is the very irregularity of it that makes it blog worthy in the first place.)

 

Each face was familiar. I knew each one, some by name, some only by sight. That first one, the older gentleman, is Italian like my husband.  He too married a woman substantially younger than himself. Their family was similar to ours in some ways.  He never thought he would end up outliving her. Devout, he attends daily Mass and often has another widowed older gentleman friend with him. He has always seemed to have a soft spot in his heart for us, and we for him. 

 

That one would pause briefly with clasped hands before the raised Cup and proclaim brusquely, “My Lord and My God” before moving on.  Her devotion none the less for her short manner; her eyes never leave the Precious Blood.

The next a sweet woman with such a love for her husband who had an accident and severed a few of his fingers last year. Also regulars at daily Mass. He battles malaria contracted during military service… a man with such a gentle heart.

 

One after another, on and on they came, and with them the tears welling and causing the entire nave to sparkle at the edges of my vision. Each person so precious, some of them friends to whom I speak often and some I know only from previous moments just like this one, yet the love I have for them is indescribable and it is all the same intensity.  To think that I am to leave this parish family, these people for whom God has shared His love with me… to think that this was the last time I would be able to serve them by offering them the Body and Blood of our Lord… brought great pain and mourning.  How I long to continue to be His Hands to them.  Not only in this Extraordinary service, but also in other less visible ways… cooking, serving in the church kitchen, working the bazaar, teaching children and grandchildren in various capacities, visiting them when sick or injured, praying with them… just loving them and being with them.

 

As I stood in the Sanctuary waiting with the other EM’s for Father to replace the extra Hosts in the Tabernacle, Charmaine, our pastoral associate, having finished as well took her place beside me and took my hand. I held on for all I was worth and loved her for being there. She was there with me in the beginning when I first received, knowing what it meant to me. She taught me how to serve and was there when I served the first time and knew what it meant to me. Now she was with me again at the end, and again, knew. I fought the emotion all the way back to my seat beside my husband, but from his reaction - and that of my youngest daughter, I didn’t do a very good job of hiding it.

 

The tears continue as I type. The sorrow of leaving this parish family so dear to all of us remains and I’d imagine we will all mourn the loss for some time to come.  With the perspective blogging provides, I am reminded that there is a way I may serve them, regardless of where or how far away this road takes us… I can still pray.  They are on my permanent prayer list and will remain there. It seems so little to give in return for all they’ve given me, all they’ve taught me, the example of godliness and faith they’ve been. It seems so inadequate compared to actually living among them, serving God side by side in a temporal way… and yet, when we drive away for the last time, this will not be good-bye but only Vaya Con Dios and Until We Meet Again… in the High Country.

Rosary: Mysteries, Meditations, and the Telling of the Beads (Part 1)

This book by Kevin Orlin Johnson, Ph.D. was recommended to me by a friend who said “This is a MUST buy! RUN, don’t walk, RUN to Amazon…” and so I did. She is rarely wrong about such things.  I began it shortly before leaving on the two week interview odyssey with my family (husband is changing jobs) and continued to read it between my spousal obligations at each interview location. While far from finished, I must admit to being grateful the highlighter I’m using is a fresh one… certainly it is getting a LOT of use.

The book is divided into ‘chapters’ but they are not numbered, being differentiated instead by their title.   I begin here with the ‘chapter’ titled The Fertile Ground.  While it is all excellent, I’m just sharing some bits that really jumped out at me for one reason or another and read as a whole it flows much better than hacked into such ‘bits’.

The Fertile Ground

Conversion* is a turning of the heart toward God, which means that the heart has to turn away from the quick and the transient satisfactions of this world in favor of its birthright, which is everlasting reunion with God (Gn 25:29-34).

So from earliest times monks and nuns often sang psalms.  Sometimes they sang all hundred and fifty psalms, and sometimes they chose certain ones appropriate to the intentions of their prayers; but either way they all used psalms as a basis for meditative prayer – “I will pray with the spirit, but I will pray with the understanding also; I will sing with the spirit, but I will sing with the understanding also”, as St. Paul advised (1 Cr 14:15-16). And they added standard prayers like the Kyrie after each, no matter what arrangement of psalms they sang. Historians like Eusebius, John Cassian, and, long before them, St. Paul himself (Eph 5:19; Cl 3:16) testify that the laity, too, established the Psalter as the basis of their private devotions very early in the Church’s history.  Day and night, the people flocked to the oratories of the monasteries and convents to participate in those devotions, and they were certainly welcome; the communal prayers of monastic communities are above all the prayers of the whole Church for the whole Church, and for the salvation of the whole world. In fact, the monks didn’t just admit people who happened by; they invited the laity to join in.  By the turn of the fifth century St. Porphyrius of Gasa had already added an invitatorium to the psalmodic prayers of the monks in his diocese; he put Psalm 94 – Come, let us sing joyfully to the Lord – at the beginning of the devotions, and there it has stayed ever since across Christendom.  The Mozarabic Rite still calls this sonus, because it’s sung while the bells are being rung to summon people to prayer, and since at least the time of Charlemagne the rubrics in Europe have specified that it should be sung slowly, to give people enough time to get there.

Still, plenty of people could read, in the Middle Ages. In fact, the Book of Psalms was the basic textbook that the Church used to teach people to read.  And the practice is as old as Scripture itself – it’s why Psalms 110, 111, and 118 are arranged as little alphabet-books for Hebrew children.  The real problem was that before the invention of printing nobody could figure out how to make enough copies of the liturgical books so that everybody who could read could use one.  We sometimes forget that mediaeval Europe didn’t even have paper; a single sheet of parchment or vellum costs the life of a farm animal, not to mention weeks of preparation.  Even today good ink is costly, brewed by hand.  Manuscripts took years to copy, and they were unbelievably expensive.  A Psalter was worth a farm and a Bible a whole village.

To understand Mt 6:7 clearly, you have to go back to the Church’s Bible, which was the only Bible in existance when the King James commission started working on their own version.  The original Greek… In it’s classical sense… means “to stammer”, and it’s also used to mean to chatter any empty, meaningless sound.  Eustathius, the twelfth-century bishop of Thessalonika – who certainly knew his Gospel – used it in his commentary on Homer to refer to the twittering of birds.  Either way, the word doesn’t mean saying the same thing over and over; it means hemming and hawing, babbling meaninglessly instead of saying what you want to say, or just not getting to the point…. In the Latin Bible… nolite multum loqui just means “don’t talk a lot; don’t run off at the mouth; don’t rattle on like the pagans do: get to the point” – exactly what the Greek means…. So Mt 6:7 is a warning against confusing quantity witih quality; “first of all,” St. Augustine said, “Our Lord excluded loquaciousness” (Sermon 56:4).  Christ advised against twittering and talking too elaborately, which is a different thing entirely from repeating the same prayers over and over.  In fact – like pious people in the Old Testament (1 Kn 12) – he himself spent whole nights in prayer; he himself repeated what he said time and again (Mt 26:44), and he himself said that repeated prayers work even beyond the claims of justice (Lk 11:5-8, 18:1-8; cf. Jm 5:16-17; 3 Kn 17-18).

The simple answer to the objection, then, is that proper repetitions of vocal prayers aren’t vain, in either sense of the word. The words of vocal prayer are not meaningless – it’s a fault to babble them out without paying any attention to them (Mr 7:6), but words have meaning and, because the human mind operates in terms of language, words have power, the power to change the way you think.  If you repeat the words automatically, you’ve wasted this power, and you’e missed the point of vocal prayer, which is after all communication that asks for an answer.

If you’re saying it right, you can’t say it often enough; and if you’re saying it wrong, it doesn’t matter how often you say it.

But beyond that an objection to the repetition of vocal prayer in devotions like the Rosary misses the point, precisely because these vocal prayers are repeated as a way to achieve a state of clear meditation, a lively regard of God or of some aspect of God: he who only follows words has nothing, but he who possesses his own mind cares for his soul (Pr 19:7-8). Repetitions aimed at that goal can appear vain only to those who have not been taught the skill of meditative prayer.

If we’re working with our hands on earthly things, Richard Rolle asked in the fourteenth century, “what is to keep us from working with our hearts on heavenly things?”

… the laity across Europe had the habit of praying as they worked, too…. They counted their prayers by means of little stones, or they knitted those prayers together with a length of string, a circlet of cord knotted or strung with beads.

In fact, our English word “bead” really means “prayer”.

It’s also why the venerable St. Bede, the eighth-century English writer, was named that; his name means prayer.

For the word to enter our language as it did, the Angles must have used beads almost exclusively for counting prayers, and the Saxons must have worn their strings of prayer beads around the waist – the Saxon word for prayer is belt.

….the modern Rosary itself, lay far in the future in the year 800. But by then all the elements were there: the Faithful throughout Christendom, lay and clerical alike, were regularly practicing meditative prayer; they were structuring their meditations on the repetitions of vocal prayers anchored to the Lord’s own prayer, the Our Father; they added the Angelic Salutation after each Pater noster, and they counted these vocal prayers on beads, after the pattern of the psalms, grouping them in fifties for a total of a hundred and fifty.

 Some of these ‘bits’ were things that rang true from past experience… others were things that connected for the first time in a rapid fire chain and left me saying ‘duh, of course!’ such as the meaning of the word bead and how it translated to the name of the Venerable Bede (which I got before the book made the connection for me).  As much as I have appreciated the Rosary these past two years, this book (along with Hail Holy Queen by Scott Hahn) has helped me realize that I have only scratched the surface and that there is so much more to the beads I hold in my hand than I realize… and so much more that God can teach me through this devotional form of prayer.  Again the joy of new discovery breaks over me, the knowledge that no matter how long I live or how much I devote myself to the faith, the feast that God has brought me to in the Catholic Church is large enough to sustain me, fresh as though newly prepared and yet two thousand years old with wisdom that God has protected through the ages, simple enough to minister to my youngest child and yet rich and complex enough to satisfy the most discerning adult.  How thankful I am that God had not created within me a hunger for more of Himself that He did not intend to satisfy, and how I rejoice as He shares glimpses of what lies ‘further up and further in’.

*Many people use the word ‘convert’ when speaking in terms of a move from the Protestant arena to the Catholic Church.  This use does not accurately reflect what has happened however.  The proper term would be ‘reconciled’… so and so ‘reconciled’ to the Catholic Church.  This would be true regardless of whether or not they had ever been Catholic before.  The word ‘conversion’ in the Catholic faith refers to the ongoing process of the Christian walk, the Christian life. A cycle containing both  God’s saving grace (and other graces) and our loving response to Him through our prayers and Acts of Mercy, whether spiritual or corporeal, which changes or ‘converts’ us – our habits, desires, tendencies, thought processes, etc – into more Christ-like people. 

St. Patrick’s Prayer…

One of the gifts Catholicism brings is the gifts of the saints.  Their lives, their witness, their writings, their prayers speak to us, encourage us, strengthen us, stretch us.  One of the prayers of the saints that I have come to love is the Prayer of St. Patrick.

 

 

 Prayer of St. Patrick

Christ be with me, Christ within me,
Christ behind me, Christ before me,
Christ beside me, Christ to win me,
Christ to comfort and restore me.
Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ in quiet, Christ in danger,
Christ in hearts of all that love me,
Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.

 

What I didn’t know is that this is only a small portion of a larger prayer by St. Patrick called St. Patrick’s Breastplate which is excellent in its entirety.

 

 St. Patrick’s Breastplate

I bind unto myself today
The strong Name of the Trinity,
By invocation of the same
The Three in One and One in Three.

I bind this today to me forever
By power of faith, Christ’s incarnation;
His baptism in Jordan river,
His death on Cross for my salvation;
His bursting from the spicèd tomb,
His riding up the heavenly way,
His coming at the day of doom
I bind unto myself today.

I bind unto myself the power
Of the great love of cherubim;
The sweet ‘Well done’ in judgment hour,
The service of the seraphim,
Confessors’ faith, Apostles’ word,
The Patriarchs’ prayers, the prophets’ scrolls,
All good deeds done unto the Lord
And purity of virgin souls.

I bind unto myself today
The virtues of the star lit heaven,
The glorious sun’s life giving ray,
The whiteness of the moon at even,
The flashing of the lightning free,
The whirling wind’s tempestuous shocks,
The stable earth, the deep salt sea
Around the old eternal rocks.

I bind unto myself today
The power of God to hold and lead,
His eye to watch, His might to stay,
His ear to hearken to my need.
The wisdom of my God to teach,
His hand to guide, His shield to ward;
The word of God to give me speech,
His heavenly host to be my guard.

Against the demon snares of sin,
The vice that gives temptation force,
The natural lusts that war within,
The hostile men that mar my course;
Or few or many, far or nigh,
In every place and in all hours,
Against their fierce hostility
I bind to me these holy powers.

Against all Satan’s spells and wiles,
Against false words of heresy,
Against the knowledge that defiles,
Against the heart’s idolatry,
Against the wizard’s evil craft,
Against the death wound and the burning,
The choking wave, the poisoned shaft,
Protect me, Christ, till Thy returning.

Christ be with me, Christ within me,
Christ behind me, Christ before me,
Christ beside me, Christ to win me,
Christ to comfort and restore me.
Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ in quiet, Christ in danger,
Christ in hearts of all that love me,
Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.

I bind unto myself the Name,
The strong Name of the Trinity,
By invocation of the same,
The Three in One and One in Three.
By Whom all nature hath creation,
Eternal Father, Spirit, Word:
Praise to the Lord of my salvation,
Salvation is of Christ the Lord.