SSPX: You have two cows. You raise them precisely according to USDA standards, c. 1950. One cow denies that the USDA exists and runs off to take care of itself.
Salesian: You have no cows, but work to improve the welfare of calves orphaned by factory farming. You are a visionary when it comes to cattle futures.
"Out of the darkness of my life, so much frustrated, I put before you the one great thing to love on earth: the Blessed Sacrament... There you will find romance, glory, honour, fidelity, and the true way of all your loves on earth, and more than that: Death. By the divine paradox, that which ends life, and demands the surrender of all, and yet by the taste -or foretaste- of which alone can what you seek in your earthly relationships (love, faithfulness, joy) be maintained, or take on that complexion of reality, of eternal endurance, which every man's heart desires.
The only cure for sagging or fainting faith is Communion. Though always Itself, perfect and complete and inviolate, the Blessed Sacrament does not operate completely and once for all in any of us. Like the act of Faith it must be continuous and grow by exercise. Frequency is of the highest effect. Seven times a week is more nourishing than seven times at intervals.
Also I can recommend this as an exercise (alas! only too easy to find opportunity for): make your communion in circumstances that affront your taste. Choose a snuffling or gabbling priest or a proud and vulgar friar; and a church full of the usual bourgeois crowd, ill-behaved children - from those who yell to those products of Catholic schools who the moment the tabernacle is opened sit back and yawn - open necked and dirty youths, women in trousers and often with hair both unkempt and uncovered. Go to communion with them (and pray for them). It will be just the same (or better than that) as a mass said beautifully by a visibly holy man, and shared by a few devout and decorous people. It could not be worse than the mess of the feeding of the Five Thousand - after which our Lord propounded the feeding that was to come."
The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter to his son.
"In short, we're meant for more than the sin and death we have come to expect from this life, and it is in learning to love God and one another, in accepting His love poured out in the blood of His Son, that we can become the people we are meant to be."Fallen Sparrow has been giving us, in pieces , the story of his conversion (reversion?). The above is from the most recent installment, but it's all worth reading.
"Ho, every one who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.
Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Hearken diligently to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in fatness.
Incline your ear, and come to me; hear, that your soul may live; and I will make with you an everlasting covenant, my steadfast, sure love for David.
Behold, I made him a witness to the peoples, a leader and commander for the peoples.
Behold, you shall call nations that you know not, and nations that knew you not shall run to you, because of the LORD your God, and of the Holy One of Israel, for he has glorified you.
"Seek the LORD while he may be found, call upon him while he is near;
let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; let him return to the LORD, that he may have mercy on him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.
For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, says the LORD.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.
"For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and return not thither but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater,
so shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and prosper in the thing for which I sent it.
"It's so brutal in a way. So filled with rage and anger."
“Keep your eyes on the crucifix, for Jesus without the cross is a man without a mission, and the cross without Jesus is a burden without a reliever.”
-Archbishop Fulton Sheen
March 18, 2007
"The conference released a statement today clarifying that an interview published Sunday by L'Osservatore Romano with Bishop Gianfranco Girotti, regent of the tribunal of he Apostolic Penitentiary, was misinterpreted in the media as an official Vatican update to the seven deadly sins, laid out by Pope Gregory the Great in the sixth century.
If the word awesome could talk, it would take one look at you and say, "Now, that's what I mean!"
Previously, on your humble (award-nominated) blog:
As applied to God, Providence is God Himself considered in that act by, which in His wisdom, He so orders all events within the universe that the end for which it was created may be realized. That end is that all creatures should manifest the glory of God, and in particular that man should glorify Him, recognizing in nature the work of His hand, serving Him in obedience and love, and thereby attaining to the full development of his nature and to eternal happiness in God.
- The Catholic Encyclopedia (emphasis mine)
Previously, on your humble (award-nominated) blog:
Yesterday, my homeroom came in before lunch to get their things together. One of my girls was clearly very agitated, and before long I discovered that her real dad - meaning the one she is not on good terms with, not her step dad, with whom she lives - was here. "I haven't even talked to him in months," she said.
I herded the kids to the cafeteria, and when I got to my roost from where I watch all my seventh graders, the girl was sitting at her usual spot, but with her dad. The discussion, even from twenty feet away, was clearly very heated. My partner teacher came and sat down beside me.
"That's a sticky situation there, isn't it?" I said, discretely pointing.
"It's not that she doesn't want to go with her father, she just wants to go home with her boyfriend."
First thing in the morning, this girl had handed me a note from her mother giving her permission to go home with her little boyfriend's family. While I don't think a seventh grader should have a boyfriend, it's totally her mother's prerogative to let her daughter go home with a friend. Then the non-custodial parent came in and wanted to take her. What I found interesting, after the whole thing was settled, was how my partner teacher and I each reacted.
My partner spoke from her perspective as a parent and felt the father had a right to take his daughter home. She also didn't like the thought of her own seventh grade daughter going home with her wanna-be-boyfriend (wanna-be because my partner will not allow her daughter to have a boyfriend, because she’s in seventh grade, fer cryin’ out loud), and so she thought, "Her father is here, he wants his daughter, and he has more right to her than the boyfriend."
On the other hand, because of my experiences, I immediately "sided" with the girl. I related to how she was feeling about seeing her father, and I felt strongly about her mom's primacy as the custodial parent.
I don't really know who was right. I think, legally, the custodial parent's note overrides the non-custodial parent. In the end, dad backed down and the girl went home with her boyfriend as planned.
What was more significant and striking to me was how different our responses were.
Ka-ching!
“Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go.” - Oscar Wilde
REC over, and plenty to say about it. In short:I think I will address each item in it's own post, or something like that, and to begin with I'll wrap up the liturgical dance thing. There's not much left to say, but I will at least feel like I have accomplished something there.
- Universal Church good (pt 2)
- Salesians awesome (pt 3)
- Blatent disregard for Church teaching bad
- Liturgical dance stupid (this one)
Yawning, more than ready to go to bed, and the clock reminds me that, as of this moment, you are no longer my dependent.
I loved having you as such for almost 23 years.
I love you!
And then there were three…
Dad
Which is, aside from genuinely sweet, deeply depressing, for it reminds me -- as if I needed the reminder -- that my last dependent military I.D. expired yesterday, thus severing me from an entire sphere of the world that has heretofor been my home. No longer can I freely move between military and civilian life, nor shall I ever again inhale the sweetness of a base exchange, except as a guest on someone else's I.D., or casually lay eyes upon a tarmac of gray-bellied beasts on my way home.
A moment of silence for my way of life, please.
