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.