God's Twofer

In today's Gospel, Jesus sums up the whole Bible in "two great commandments." (He was, technically, only asked for one!) Outside of these two (or single, twofold), all of our religious practices amount to nothing but a collection of extrinsic acts: all we can come up with on our own. But "the love of God has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit," so that we can "love the Lord our God with all our heart, all our soul, all our mind and all our strength, and our neighbor as ourselves."
This passage (Mark's version) was Bl. James Alberione's inspiration, too. Even before founding a single congregation or organization, he rejoiced to think of people who would give their lives to the love of God and neighbor, happy to earn the "divine salary" of eternal life. When he wanted to express the core of Pauline spirituality, he put it in the language of today's Gospel. When he wanted to detail what it meant to live in Jesus, he specified that it meant loving God with "all your mind, all your heart, all your strength." That's what God is looking for, and that's where grace intends to lead us.

Satan vs. Satan

In today's Gospel, Jesus has just been accused of delivering people from evil by the power of evil. In other words, Jesus has been called a minion of Satan. His response was to ask, "If Satan is divided against himself, his domain cannot last."
For some reason, I found myself going from this biblical image to ... today's newspaper coverage of the election! Not just with Hillary vs. Obama, people who should be on the same side, but who are duking it out for the Democratic nomination, but also the coverage from the Republican side, with conservative pundits decrying McCain's lack of complete obeisance to the party line. I would hate to see people actually following the pundits' recommendations to boycott the election because a candidate wasn't slavish enough in adhering to one political orthodoxy or another. Boycotting, it seems to me, puts a double burden of responsibility on the person who fails to participate in the process. "The best is the enemy of the good" really applies here. If "Satan" keeps fighting "Satan" in-house, no matter what the party or policy, it cannot stand.
But that's just an aside. The real meat of the Gospel, of course, comes in the parable Jesus tells. Is Satan really fighting Satan, as Jesus' jealous foes claim, or is something else going on? Jesus admits that Satan is like a strong man, well-armed as he guards his palace. So who is Jesus? Jesus is the even stronger robber who breaks in, grabs the weapons and takes possession of the place, lock, stock and barrel. Jesus has already won the victory.

It's startlingly nice out today. The sun is shining, and in the sun even the temperature isn't that painful. Some people hereabouts don't like it when the winter teases us by going a dozen or so degrees warmer and then shoots back down, but I don't mind it one little bit. I'll take any moment of moderation I can find!
Today I had planned to pick up my children's grief book project, but first I wanted to collect Paul quotes from the books piled (with everything else) on my desk. So I was going through them with the voice dictation software, making some real progress. In a moment of caution, I decided to save my work. And it was in the middle of saving it that the program crashed. I have never had success retrieving my work under those circumstances, so I'm doomed to start again. I guess I can offer that up for Lent!

just wondering

Today's Gospel, about the least letter of the Law not being done away with until all is fulfilled, got me thinking about the Parousia. And I found myself thinking of Lent in a new way. As our typical Lenten practices are nothing unusual, but really a part of our Christian living just intensified in view of Easter, isn't life itself a kind of Lent, with our day to day prayer, self-discipline and deeds of mercy preparing us for the great and eternal Easter, "as we wait in joyful hope for the coming of our Savior, Jesus Christ"?

Matched set

Meditating on today's Liturgy of the Word, especially the Gospel, I found myself reflecting that the paired readings seemed too familiar; that I had meditated on them not too long ago. I had to ask, "Where have I seen this before, and fairly recently?" The Gospel, Matthew's parable of the unmerciful servant, seemed to repeat the message we heard last week (last Monday, in fact), which was from Luke: "Be merciful, as your Father is merciful... The measure you measure with will be measured back to you."
Interestingly, not only is the Gospel message basically the same, even the first readings for today and last Monday match: both are prayers of repentance from the book of Daniel.
You think God is trying to tell us something?

HIAL

Back from the Here I Am Lord conference! Sr. Laura and I had a dual display: vocational on one side, and a regular Pauline book display on the other (multi-tasking, as always!). It was a terrific experience at a wonderful parish. At yesterday's 9:45 Mass, after receiving communion, I watched the parishioners approach the Eucharist. One by one, they all bowed: young, old, tiny, teen. (The teens' bangs flopped forward as they bowed!) The pastor preached about Confession, and gave everyone a heads-up that next week's bulletin would have a helpful guide to making the examination of conscience for the Sacrament of Penance. But St. Patrick's is not a "retro" type parish, reveling in traditional expressions of Catholic piety and eschewing anything with a copyright after 1965. It is architecturally very modern (actually, the parish has two Churches!) and the music was what you'd find in any typical suburban parish (only generally better executed). It's a very put-together, vibrantly Catholic parish.

There Here I Am Lord vocations conference is hosted and supported by St. Patrick's. This year's presenters included Tony Melendez, Jason Evert and Gianna Jessen (one of the few people around whose birth certificate was signed by a very surprised abortionist). Gianna (on the left) impressed me the most. Not only because of her striking life story, but because it seemed that she lives, every day, with some pretty profound interior pain, and every day she chooses not to let that interior suffering (or the crippling effects of the saline abortion she suffered in utero) dominate her life. I heard so much pain in her voice that I could not stay to listen to the whole talk she gave, but the catechists said she had the teens mesmerized.

HIAL is a vocations conference, so there were talks on the different states in life, and displays staffed by members of close to 50 religious communities. Here are some photos from the vocations exhibits:

Way back in the epoch of the Church Fathers, there was an erstwhile teacher named Marcion. Marcion LOVED St. Paul. Marcion HATED the Old Testament. So when he put together a volume of the Sacred Scriptures, he made sure to include the Gospel of Luke (so similar in thought to Paul) and the letters of Paul, but to leave out the entire Old Testament, and the Gospel of Matthew which is so patently in line with the Old Testament that you come across a quote from it every chapter or so.
Marcion went so far as to presume that Jesus was an entirely different deity than the Lord of Israel! He must not have noticed a tiny line in today's Gospel (interestingly enough, from Luke): "If they do not believe Moses and the prophets, neither will they believe if someone rises from the dead."
We need the Bible, whole and entire, if we are to really know Jesus and his Gospel. St. Jerome said, "Ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ."
Poor Marcion really had it all wrong!


Sr. Laura and I are on our way to St. Charles for the weekend. Please pray for us, the many other religious who will be there, and all those kids!

Introducing...

Sr. Laura, our newest Chicago community member!
Sr. Laura hails from Minneapolis, and she entered the Daughters of St. Paul the year after I did. She met the sisters in Alaska, where she was finishing her studies to be a veterinary technician. Later, as a sister, she was stationed in Anchorage for a total of eight years, and made many trips into the bush country, toting boxes of books on tiny bush planes and learning to appreciate the native cuisine. She still has native friends who send her the occasional supply of "tundra tea" and other specialties you can't find in the lower 48. Sr. Laura is also an artist, even though she was only able to study art for the past few years. When we picked up her things on Monday, we had to fit a drafting table into the van, along with her boxes of pastels and special paper! She's hoping to catch a few more classes here in the Chicago area, and to do some projects for the publishing house while focusing locally on outreach.
Which we will be doing this weekend in St. Charles, IL at the "Here I Am" conference. Set-up is tomorrow, and the event lasts through Sunday. Pray for us! And if you don't hear from me until then, you'll know why. 3,000 teens clamoring for attention.

In today's Gospel, we have the embarrassing alignment of Jesus' prediction of his sufferings (in excruciating detail) and the self-promoting ambition of James and John, looking for the top posts in the Kingdom. And getting their mother to make the request on their behalf.
Jesus' reply, which follows very well upon the conclusion of yesterday's Gospel ("whoever exalts himself will be humbled, while the one who humbles himself will be exalted") revealed the dispositions with which Jesus was accepting his forthcoming torture and death: "whoever wishes to be great among you shall be your servant; whoever wishes to be first among you shall be your slave."
Even in advance of the passion, from his Incarnation, Jesus intended to be our servant, slave and ransom.

Was Jesus judgmental?

It's a question I find myself asking occasionally, seeing that being judgmental is the mortal sin of our society. Today's gospel hints of an answer. In it we also find the basis of the proverb "Practice what you preach," at least in the NAB translation. And it certainly seems that Jesus was being, well, judgmental! "Do everything the scribes and pharisees tell you," Jesus instructs the crowd, "But do not follow their example, because they do not practice what they preach. They...do things to be seen, to be respected, to be called 'rabbi'..."
We can't go through life without exercising judgment. Negotiating a complicated relationship involves a certain practice of judgment. At the same time, though, we are warned by all the spiritual masters to be on guard against the spiritual pitfall of "rash judgment." Perhaps the key is in that word "rash." Judgment calls we do not need to make; observations about other people that contribute nothing to our dealings with them; the comfortable practice of gossip: this is dangerous territory, because we tend to go beyond behaviors and into people's interior motivations, and that is sacred ground for God alone.
Most of the time, though, when society condemns judgment or judgmentalism, this is not what they are talking about. Our culture has mis-identified as "judgment" the simple observation that certain behaviors violate moral norms. Even the claim that there are moral norms is sometimes dismissed as "being judgmental." To that, every Catholic should confess, "Guilty as charged."

Just found out about another Pauline blog, this one by a sister in Italy. It has a vocational focus. (Hey, you can always use the translation tools online!)

No Frs in Facebook

No Srs either. I opened Facebook today to see that my name was changed: from Sr. Anne to Anne. I don't particularly care for that. Then I saw that a Facebook group had been started "Facebook--stop removing Fr. from priest's names!" So it wasn't only me. I just went in and changed my Facebook name to SisterAnne for a quick get-around. Let's see if Facebook responds to the Fr. group (which I also joined).
What gives?

Perfection

Today's Gospel can dismay many a heart: "Be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect." Yikes! Jesus can't mean that, can he? I, for one, am mightily tempted to discount this command, except that I find it echoed in Paul, as well: "Be imitators of God as his very dear children."
I think the problem is that we Americans think perfection means "flawlessness" (my readers in other countries may not share this Puritan inheritance), and so it looks as though we are being commanded to be as flawless as the Godhead. (We will now pause for a spiritual panic attack.)
But Paul comes to the rescue, because being "imitators of God" sums up what came before: "Be kind to one another, compassionate, forgiving one another as God has forgiven you in Christ."
In fact, the whole section of Ephesians, from 4:2 through to almost the very end, can be read as a commentary on the Gospel phrase, "Be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect."

The week ahead

Lots of pots on the fire this coming week, starting today with a book display for a parish day of prayer. I'll be going with Sr. Laura, our newest Chicago Pauline. Sr. Laura was transferred from Boston and arrived Monday night. She came with me to the St. Paul talk I gave on Wednesday, too. (Eventually, I'll introduce her to you in a more formal fashion!) Monday we have a treat: a friend of the community invited us to a Cole Porter evening. Not quite sure what kind of evening, but it's music! Then Thursday, Sr. Laura and I will be going together to the "Here I Am Conference" in St. Charles, IL: 3,000 teens and 50 religious orders, with Tony Melendez and others leading the way in prayer and song. That ends at a noon Mass on Sunday, when Sr. Laura and I will spin by the house to pick up Sr. Thecla and go to an event at the Cardinal's house.
I think there's something else going on...hopefully I will remember it on time!

Praying for a Miracle

I just received a card from a mom whose two daughters were "My Friend" magazine subscribers while I was the editor. The girls used to send their pictures and stories for the "Our Own Pages" and somehow the mom and I connected through them. I usually hear from her at Christmas (as was the case this year). The card in today's mail was signed, "In desperation."
Both girls (now grown) have health problems, and one would be a candidate for Anointing of the Sick if she could be spiritually awakened to desire it. (Neither girl practices the faith she learned about in the magazine, sad to say.) So my friend is praying above all that her daughters receive spiritual healing. I'm going to send her the prayer card of Mother Thecla Merlo, our co-foundress, and a woman with a truly motherly heart. (Feb. 20 is Mother Thecla's birthday.)

Thoughts for St. Valentine's Day

You may be surprised to discover that nuns do Valentine's Day up big. Our Mother Paula, who came to the US in 1932 from her home in Italy, was quite surprised to encounter American traditions for St. Valentine's Day, but she quickly became a fan of the feast day, which she called "the Feast of Charity." She always gave a "preached" meditation on Valentine's Day, always on the same Scripture passage (1 Cor. 13: Love is patient, Love is kind...). (She also loved to say, "Jesus is our Valentine.")
Right now, our refectory (dining room) is decorated with cut-out construction paper hearts. (Sr. Thecla's handiwork.) I have little Snoopy valentines for the sisters, and so does Sr. Helena (and maybe the others do, too; will find out soon enough). When I lived in Italy, I asked my Mom to send me some kiddy Valentines, and the sisters (who only associate Valentine's Day with romantic love), were entranced. They understood immediately from the childish cards that this was a day to celebrate friendship in the most human and most spiritual senses, and many of them set to work crafting homemade valentines for the first time.

A little prayer for the day: "Pour forth, we beseech Thee, O Lord, thy grace into our hearts!"
What did St. Paul say in this regard? "God's love has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit" (Romans 5:5).

and...I just learned that St. Valentine's remains are entombed in my favorite Church in Rome: the Church (probably Basilica) of St. Praxedes!

St. Paul tonight

I'm making the final preparations for my talk in the Cathedral Lenten series tonight. It's on the life and legends of Paul in art. I got the idea from Sr. Armanda Santos, who did her Master's Thesis on the subject and graciously shared it with me. She featured select art works and analyzed them (the Sister Wendy of St. Paul) first from an artistic standpoint, and then developing the theology implicit in the scene. But where Sr. Armanda went deep, I opted for wide: about 100 different works of art on the life of St. Paul. I didn't even know there were so many depictions of so many aspects of his life! I hope to further develop this for a set of talks here at Pauline Books in preparation for the Pauline Year. But if you're in downtown Chicago tonight, I hope you come to the Cathedral "soup and lecture" program! Soup's on at 6:00.

Fire!

Isaiah's words about his vision of the Heavenly Temple became a reality for us today: "And the room was filled with smoke."
A vigil candle, left unattended in chapel (my oversight) turned a chubby round candleholder into the baseball from hell this morning, setting off the smoke alarm. Hearing the alarm, I found myself asking, "Where would a fire most likely break out?" I knew the answer: it had to be chapel. Sure enough. I was the first one on the scene (I really was on my way out, really). There was the culprit, right by the tabernacle, emitting clouds of soot and smoke. Unable to blow the thing out, I managed to first open a Michigan Avenue window (knocking over a kneeler and books in the process), and then yelled, "Look out, below!" and I hurled the ball of fire onto the sidewalk (praying earnestly that no one was walking by; thank God, no one was). Then I shakily picked up my cell phone from where it had fallen. It was coated in grime. So were the kneelers, the chairs, the hymnals, the altar cloth, the windowsills....
We have a bit of clean-up to do now...
and Bible study on that same floor of the building this evening. ("Everyone, wipe down your chair and place at table before sitting...)

Sidebar update

Check my sidebar for two more community/bookstore blogs, and Sr. Rose's new "Center for Media Studies" site!

Did you add the "Thought a Day for the Pauline Year" widget to your sidebar yet?

for the sick

Today being the World Day of Pray for the Sick (and, as said earlier, the 150th Jubilee of Our Lady's visit to Lourdes), the prayer intention I just got from my sister in Texas is all the more timely. Please accept the family's request to offer three Hail Marys for a young bride, age 29, who suffered a stroke just days after her honeymoon. Her name is Gena.

No better day...

to visit the Lourdes grotto webcam and see all the pilgrims who are able to celebrate this jubilee day on site.

What a day!

Today is the 150th anniversary of the first apparition at Lourdes. Nobody put it better than Franz Werfel : "For those who believe, no explanation is necessary. For those who do not believe, no explanation is possible."

The Best of Lourdes
IMHO

Best book on Bernadette Bernadette Speaks: A Life of Saint Bernadette Soubirous in Her Own Words (Rene Laurentin)
Best runner-up book on Bernadette Bernadette: the Only Witness (John W. Lynch)
Best movie on Bernadette Song of Bernadette (no matter how hard they try, will other moviemakers get it as right as this?)
Best website on Our Lady of Lourdes The official Lourdes shrine site, with four webcams!

IYHO

Add your humble opinion on the Best of Lourdes through the comment box! What other "best of Lourdes" categories should there be?

I was out all day; the first part of it at a fairly informal gathering of catechists and parents who want to promote Eucharistic adoration for children. Father Antoine Thomas of the Community of St. John gave a talk explaining the origins of his now 12 years of leading groups of children, even tiny children, in prayer before the Blessed Sacrament. It all comes down to modeling prayer before the children: showing them how Catholics pray. I spoke for a few minutes, mostly telling the back story of my book "Come to Jesus!" and what this has to offer, especially for the 7-11 age group. Here in the Archdiocese of Chicago, Cardinal George has already responded to the December 8 request from the Vatican to appoint a priest full-time to promote Eucharistic adoration.
After the presentations, I ran some errands. As I was picking up a few staples for my community, an elderly gentleman approached me. Near his side was a younger man in an electric cart, his son. The older man, close to eighty, spoke only Spanish, which I struggled to understand. (I speak Italian, so it's close, but...) From what I gathered, the boy's mother abandoned the family, unable to parent a severely handicapped child. And now that the boy is an adult, his elderly father is finding it impossible to support him, but he does not know how to navigate the social service agencies that could help. All he wanted was for me to pray for him. (Please join me in this: for Pedro and "Pedrito.") Only later did I realize that the two were in the store to make a meal of the samples being offered there; their shopping cart was empty. Hopefully, a Spanish-speaking contact (God bless you, Juan) will be able to find someone who will be in a position to guide the two Pedros to address their needs.
Driving home (traffic!!!), I couldn't help but connect the two parts of the day: the earlier session, discussing what comes down to the Church's contemplative life, and the afternoon encounter, which expresses the need for an active commitment, as well. When Eucharistic spirituality really takes hold of people, they don't stay in Church all day. Jesus sends them out, as Teresa of Avila said, to be his hands. Our Founder used to say that St. Paul's heart blazed with a twofold flame: love of God and love of neighbor. But love of neighbor can quickly burn out if it is not part of the love of God. The Pedros of the world need us to be Eucharistic, contemplative people.

This was news to me: In his address on Feb. 3, Pope Benedict XVI said that until Feb. 11: "It is possible to receive [a] plenary indulgence, which may be applied to the deceased, under the usual conditions (sacramental Confession, Eucharistic communion and prayer in keeping with the intentions of the Holy Father) and by praying before a blessed image of Our Lady of Lourdes exposed to public veneration. For the sick and elderly this is possible if they formulate such a desire in their hearts."

Here's a lovely image from Our Lady of Mount Carmel Parish, Wyandotte, Michigan.

Keeping a fast

These first days of Lent are kind of a tutorial. Today's lesson is on fasting. The first reading lets us know right away that God is not all that interested in our food intake: fasting is supposed to involve us body and soul. "Would that today you might fast so as to make your voice heard on high!" God says through Isaiah. That we tend to insist on limiting the notion to our food intake becomes obvious from the Gospel. Disciples of the ascetic John the Baptist come to Jesus, a bit scandalized that his followers don't seem to do "much" fasting, while "we and the Pharisees fast much."
Fasting is one of those practices common to just about every major religion worthy of the name. And Catholics are probably the most lax of all, with two obligatory days of fasting in Lent (and for Americans, one day of penance and fasting on Jan. 22, in reparation for sins against human life). It has been said that one of the biggest obstacles to unity with the Eastern Orthodox is that Catholics don't manifest a spirit of penance. When the issue was brought to Jesus' attention so long ago, he admitted that at the time, his disciples were not practicing the typical penitential fast. The bridegroom of the whole world was among them; it was still the time of the wedding feast. But he said that the time would come "when the bridegroom is taken away--and then they will fast." That fasting has to mean something: that we recognize the bridegroom for who he is; that we feel his absence; that we long for his return.

Another Pauline Blog!

Our Redwood City, CA community has entered blogdom. Pay them a welcoming visit!

self-denial

One of the traditional hallmarks of Lent is self-denial. In a hymn we sang yesterday, we tell the Lord we intend to "die to self and only live by your most holy Word." As familiar as this sounds to a lifelong Catholic, it turned out to be an unsettling concept to someone not brought up in our Catholic spiritual environment. I overheard a snippet of conversation in which someone was asking what that terrible expression ("die to self") meant. When it was rephrased as "die to selfishness," that seemed to work.
Self-denial is the opposite of self-indulgence or self-satisfaction: a life built on these is a pretty ugly sight. In today's Gospel, Jesus tells us pretty forthrightly: "If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself....losing his life for my sake." Only Jesus makes full sense of this. Self-denial without the "follow me" is just stoicism.

Prayer for Media

On the first Thursday of every month, the Pauline Family has a twofold prayer focus: we honor the Guardian Angels, and we pray for vocations. Our Founder gave us a great prayer to the angels for media people. Here's an abridged (and updated) version you can pray:
O Angels of heaven, watch over writers, producers, programmers and broadcasters, and all those who make use of their work. Defend them from evil, guide them in the truth, and obtain for them true charity. Enlighten, guard, rule and guide the world of media, so that it may contribute to uplifting the level of this present life and direct all people towards eternal goods. Amen.

St. Paul and Lent

I've been pretty immersed in books on Paul lately, preparing both for my talk next Wednesday and for a series of talks in preparation for the Pauline Year. So it is only natural for me to be thinking in terms of Paul as Lent begins.
I think St. Paul would have loved the idea of Lent. It sums up, in forty days, what Paul was doing in his letters: recalling Christians to the meaning of their baptism (the first four weeks of Lent) and redirecting our thoughts and attention to "Christ and him crucified" (the final week and a half). In today's second reading (from 2 Corinthians), the Church takes up Paul's own words to invite us into this season of spiritual renewal: "We implore you, in Christ's name, be reconciled to God! Now is the acceptable time! Now is the day of salvation!"
I even have a plaque on my wall that echoes this ardent message of Paul. It reads, "The place is here; the time is now."

Sic transit gloria alleluiae

You would have thought that, today being Mardi Gras (or Shrove Tuesday, if you went to confession), and our last chance to sing out that Alleluia before the Easter Vigil, the organist at St. Peter's would have done it up big. Maybe have "Ye Watchers and Ye Holy Ones" as the opening hymn, for instance, so we could sing the refrain ("Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!). Well, he must be really looking forward to Lenten hymnody, because we sang "Take up your cross the Savior said."
So much for Mardi Gras. Hello, Ash Wednesday!

St. Paul widget

Thanks to the many nunblog readers and Facebook users who have installed the "Pauline Thought of the Day" widget (visible in my sidebar): there are now 100 of you! Please encourage your readers and friends to install this widget for the Pauline Year.

Facebook users: it's a little trickier than it ought to be. Marika Donders showed me a way to get around one problem, though it creates its own little glitch. See my profile for info.

It's Mardi Gras!

It's many things today:

• Mardi Gras (there's the Venetian pin I wear every year on this day)
• Super Tuesday
• Mother Thecla's anniversary
• St. Agatha's feast day.

Here's a thought for the day from Mother Thecla:
"There beyond those stars is our Father's house... He is waiting for us. How beautiful it must be to go home!"

David's Ignatian Spirituality

Something in today's first reading (from 2 Sam) made me sit up and take notice in a particular way. In the story, King David's son Absalom "won the primary" (so to speak) by his masterful art as a politician. He would position himself on a chariot outside the city gates, and give an ear to the people heading to town with their lawsuits, telling them, "You really do have a good case. Too bad none of my father's functionaries will give you a fair hearing." To others, he would offer over-the-top greetings. (He was, literally, a "kiss-up." Hey! It's in the Bible, you can read it yourself.) Anyway, Absalom effectively swept the country, and it was his father, King David, who was on the run from the amassed armies of Israel.
As David and his retinue crossed the Mount of Olives, the king in deep mourning for his son's betrayal, a relative of the late King Saul started keeping pace with him, hurling rocks and curses all the way. Naturally, one of David's retainers wanted to shut the man up. Forever. But David would not let him. He said, "If God told him, 'Curse David,' who are we to interfere?"
What a remarkable perspective! Instead of seeing things in a pure "cause and effect" framework based on the material aspects of what was happening, David seems to have habitually "found God in all things" (as St. Ignatius would put it some three thousand years later).

This has been a rough week for nuns. Here in Chicago, we had the shameful event of a sister being sentenced to jail in a sex abuse case. (She was taken away from school work as soon as allegations were made, but it was already too late for the victims.) The elderly woman admitted the abuse, and finally also asked pardon of her victims. There is really nothing that can be said about this horrible situation; we can only pray for that disturbed woman and for her victims, known and unknown.
Then there are the fictional nuns. Because I found these things so deeply offensive (not to mention just plain embarrassing), I am not featuring any links to these stories, and I ask you not to look for them. There's the "performance art" at the College of William and Mary involving a woman in a traditional habit, obscene behavior, and the strains of the Ave Maria. Further north, an elite Boston athletic club ran an ad involving a male nude and four, yes, nuns. In full habit. Looking on admiringly. This caused no little ruckus in Boston when the Catholic League protested yet another example of the "last acceptable prejudice." Once the ruckus was raised, the crass ad became a "story" which led all the way to the national media. Two of our sisters in Boston were interviewed as part of the coverage on a local and then national level, and their carefully prepared input was reduced to one sentence each in the published reports, which then generated criticism in the Catholic blogosphere.
It is clear that creating a ruckus around an offensive ad is playing into the hands of the ad agency. This means that refusing to take the bait is a legitimate response. I really shouldn't have to say this. However, since people I love and admire reproached my fellow sisters for their (incompletely quoted) responses to the issue, I wrote to the two sisters. This is what I learned:

• The sisters prayed, sought advice, prepared and took the risk of accepting an interview, despite the fear that what they said would be taken out of context or reduced to a senseless sound byte.
• They tried hard to give a thoughtful, rather than angry, response, because the more anger you express, the more publicity you generate for the offenders.
• In what they said, they underscored the need for sensitivity to the sacred, tried to give the audience a look at real people who are nuns and who deserve respect, and asked media people use their creativity in a way that respects all human persons.
• They said much, much more than what made it on the air or on line. The editors plucked a single phrase from each sister's fuller message.
  
• Amalia Barreda from Boston's Channel 5 said that the young people she interviewed saw the ad as out of place and tasteless.
• Cardinal Sean had his media person call the sisters to express his satisfaction with how well they handled the matter.

Personally, I want to ask why nuns have become the comic relief of pop culture. Is it an attempt to cancel out the witness to a life of purity? Does it represent fear of the invitation our life expresses? (After all, we are meant to be an eschatological sign!)

Rated E

Thanks to Carol for deeming this blog "E for Excellent." Since Carol is a teacher, that really means something! (I remember bringing home E's on my report card, way back when. Not all E's, mind you; I had a few G's for Good and S's for Satisfactory.)
This is a ten for ten award: it is only valid if bestowed on ten others. I have a kind of broken-record status when it comes to blog references, but this time I want to do something different, and salute blogs I have rarely had occasion to mention here. I'm also expected to notify the honorees, so that the honor can continue to abound. I'll do it, but I don't think too many of these bloggers know I exist.
Here we go:People of the Book (the serious Catholic booklover's blog): you are Excellent!
Courageman: you are Excellent and forthright in witnessing to the grace-full effort to live as a committed Catholic who struggles with same-sex attraction.
Lucy, you are Excellent in your French kitchen, even if your blog is a cipher in Internet Explorer.
Luis, you are Excellent in your ardent Catholic family life and in your career as a cartoonist. I hope you will soon be back at work. Congratulations on the birth of your son!
Rocco, you are an Excellent source of news and whispers for the Catholic world.
Veritas, you are an Excellent poet and visual artist: an inspiration to Blogdom.
Sr. Helena, you are Excellent in your Pauline mind and cultural insight.
Barbara, you are Excellent in your own Pauline creativity and critical sense. But you knew that.
Dawn, you are Excellent as a writer and witness to the culture. (Get well soon!)
Ironic Catholic, you are an Excellent source of laughs. Well, snickers, maybe.
There! Now you all get to post the Big E on your blogs, if you want to, and lead us to ten other equally Excellent bloggers.

Pauline thought a day

I am working to develop a sidebar widget with a Pauline thought for every day (see my sidebar). I don’t expect it to be fully operational before May, but it will have about a week’s worth of quotes pretty soon. Feel free to pick this widget up and incorporate it into your blog as a simple way of commemorating the Pauline Year: no fuss, no muss, no research! (We do it all for you here at Nunblog.)

Lourdes Jubilee

The 150th anniversary of the apparitions of Our Lady of Lourdes is in less than two weeks, but there is a Jubilee celebration that has already begun for it--and an official website, too. This is one of those Marian stories that will never fade away, thanks in part to Bernadette's precocious wisdom and faithful common sense. (A great book on Bernadette is Bernadette Speaks by Mariologist Rene Laurentin. I've read many books on Bernadette and Lourdes; this is the one that makes the visionary saint the most real, and communicates here spiritual wisdom in a clear and comprehensive way.)

sin and grace

Today's first reading is about sin, and the Gospel is (as always!) about grace. The first reading is structured like a psychological thriller: We see the Israelite army at war. Change of scene: the roof of the Jerusalem palace, and the king strolling in the evening quiet. Something catches his eye, and we follow his gaze to another rooftop patio, on a far humbler building. And so it goes, changing scenes, letting us see the various characters who will be taken up in tragedy, above all the innocent and faithful soldier, Uriah. The pathos really builds when David, to deflect any suspicion about his own adultery with Uriah's wife, calls the soldier from the battlefield and tells him to go on home. But as a soldier in a "holy war," Uriah refuses what would put him in a state of ritual impurity. He stays in the barracks, faithful to the king and to the Lord, even though Uriah is not even a Jew! David tries again, but Uriah remains faithful: a good soldier, ready for battle at the king's behest. And it is this which will be his death.
The Gospel, on the other hand, is about the Kingdom of God, like abundant seed scattered on the ground that sprouts and grows seemingly from nothing. While praying over this Gospel this morning, watching the snowflakes pour from the sky, I remembered the words of Isaiah: "Just as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return until they have watered the earth, making it fertile and fruitful, so shall my word be.... It shall do my will and achieve the purpose for which I sent it." In the light of the first, dramatic reading of David's inhuman betrayal of Uriah, the Gospel message was "Where sin abounded, grace abounds all the more."