Amen

I must say that word a hundred times a day: over and over again in the Rosary, whenever I make the sign of the cross, after every prayer, and when I receive Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament. I hardly ever think about what it means. If I do, it's almost always during the reception of the Eucharist, but otherwise it's just the way we end our prayers.

It was surprising, then, to find that at the end of the explanation of the Creed in the Catechism there is a whole section on the word "amen." You'll find it in numbers 1061 through 1065. "In Hebrew," the Catechism tells us, "amen comes from the same root as the word 'believe.' This root expresses solidity, trustworthiness, faithfulness. And so we can understand why 'Amen' may express both God's faithfulness towards us and our trust in him."

I had always heard that "amen" means "so be it," that it is our "yes" to what has gone before, but this definition enlarges the content of our response. A bit further on we read, "Thus the Creed's final 'Amen' repeats and confirms its first words: 'I believe.' Our profession of the truths of our Faith is enclosed within our profession of belief.

Amen!

AMDG

The End and the Beginning

Saturday, we finished the second leg of our pilgrimage, and began the third. I was going to post pictures from the entire morning's walk, but I don't have much time today, so I'll just show you the first part. On Friday, we  reached the Walgreen's in Hernando, which is just half a mile away from the church, so that's where we started on Saturday morning. This wasn't exactly the most exciting stretch of the pilgrimage.

Of course, we could have taken this picture anywhere. There must be at least 50 buildings that look exactly like this within a fairly small radius around us.

Then we headed down the main street in Hernando, which is called Commerce. It begins in the newer commercial area which has the ubiquitous Walmart, and several banks and fast food restaurants, and ends at the old town square. Holy Spirit Catholic Church is just under halfway to the square. 

First we had to walk under I-55. You can see that our granddaughter is with us, and that she has much less hair than she did during the famous snake incident.

The thrilling underbelly of the expressway.

Holy Spirit from the street. You can see the spire of the old church on the left, and the much larger new church on the right. The old church is very small. It probably doesn't hold more than about 150 people. It's not particularly beautiful, but it has a very nice, peaceful atmosphere. I used to go there a long time ago when the pastor would say Mass sometimes for our prayer group, and then later my dear, dear, best spiritual director ever was the pastor, and I would drive down (about 45 mins. from my old house) once a month to see him.

Then the parish outgrew the church and they had to have Mass in the gym while they were raising money and building the new church. The drawback to Mass in the gym was that it was in the gym, but that couldn't be avoided since they could have filled the old church four times over. Now they have the big church and it's a big, new church. 

So, we arrived. We wanted to go in and say a prayer, but we weren't sure we could get in on a Saturday.

Hmmmm.

As luck would have it, we got there while some florists were decorating for a wedding--see the flowers on the doors--so we got to go in. The florist weren't quite sure we should be there, but we were quiet and sat in the back pew, so they let us carry on.

After leaving, we walked on to the town square to celebrate. Since this would be the first part of the walk to the next church, we will consider that we are on our way. I'll post pictures from the rest of our walk later or tomorrow. They are more interesting.

AMDG

Now is the Acceptable Time

As I mentioned in October, my husband and I have been reading the Catechism on the way to work. We are way behind the internet group that we started reading with, but we persist--slowly. Yesterday, we read this.

From the Catechism of the Catholic Church on Hell, #1033

We cannot be united with God unless we freely choose to love him. But we cannot love God if we sin gravely against him, against our neighbor or against ourselves: "He who does not love remains in death. Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him." Our Lord warns us that we shall be separated from him if we fail to meet the serious needs of the poor and the little ones who are his brethren. (Emphasis mine.) To die in mortal sin without repenting and accepting God's merciful love means remaining separated from him for ever by our own free choice. This state of definitive self-exclusion from communion with God and the blessed is called "hell."

What struck me was that right there between hatred and the results of dying in mortal sin, we have this warning against failing to meet the serious needs of the poor. This is a really sobering thought. I, and I think many or most people, tend to think of mortal sins as sexual sins, sins of violence, or pride. But here in the paragraph about Hell, we have a very quiet sin of neglect. Something that's easy to overlook. Those other sins aren't even mentioned.

As we move on to the next section, The Last Judgement, we find the same admonition.

Then Christ will come "in his glory, and all the angels with him. . . . Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate them one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will place the sheep at his right hand, but the goats at the left. . . . And they will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life."

We know, of course, that the goats are those that saw the hungry, and the thirsty, and the outcasts, and the naked, and did nothing to help them.

The passage continues with this quote from St. Augustine, emphasizing for the third time the importance of caring for the least of our brethren.

All that the wicked do is recorded, and they do not know. When "our God comes, he does not keep silence.". . . he will turn towards those at his left hand: . . . "I placed my poor little ones on earth for you. I as their head was seated in heaven at the right hand of my Father - but on earth my members were suffering, my members on earth were in need. If you gave anything to my members, what you gave would reach their Head. Would that you had known that my little ones were in need when I placed them on earth for you and appointed them your stewards to bring your good works into my treasury. But you have placed nothing in their hands; therefore you have found nothing in my presence."*

 "...I placed them on earth for you...."  I don't know about you, but when I see a person in need, that isn't my first thought, or at least it hasn't been until recently. And they are appointed to be our stewards? This triple emphasis on charity, and the results of our lack of charity is startling to me, and should be a wake up call for us all. 

In the last paragraph of the section on The Last Judgement we read:

The message of the Last Judgment calls men to conversion while God is still giving them "the acceptable time, . . . the day of salvation." It inspires a holy fear of God and commits them to the justice of the Kingdom of God.

"Behold, now is the acceptable time, behold, now is the day of salvation."
                                                                                     2 Corinthians 6:3

AMDG

The entire passage from the Catechism can be found here.

The Fourth Day of July

Maybe I should wait to post this, but July is too far away.

The other day, I was listening to an album by the Be Good Tanyas while I was doing some sort of repetitive work. I've heard it before but didn't realize that one of the songs, The Coo Coo Bird is one that I really like on Hem's album Rabbit Songs, although they call it, The Cuckoo. Hem's version sounds like a traditional folk song, which it is, but the Tanyas' version is darker, and looser, feels like it sung by the bayou, and has a great fiddle in the background. I wanted to link to both recordings, but unfortunately I can't find a video of Hem; however, I found recordings by several different, really different, performers. As with any good folk song, the lyrics are constantly changing. I'm not sure that they are the same in any two of these videos. Here's the Be Good Tanyas.

Richard Thompson. He probably sounds more like the person that wrote this song than any of the others.



Combining the two, folk music and 60s rock, is gonna knock ya, rock ya, and sock it to ya now--although up until about the fourth minute her only contribution is marakas.



A great interview with Clarence Ashley before the song..



AMDG

Cypress Swamp

The cabin where I spent my retreat is in French Camp, MS, which is along the Natchez Trace Parkway. If you aren't familiar with the trace, it roughly follows the route of the Old Natchez Trace which was developed under Thomas Jefferson and connects Nashville, TN with Natchez, MS, a distance of 444 miles. It's a beautiful, quiet, well-maintained road with hardly any traffic, and it's a great place to drive for a while--if you aren't in any hurry. There are several places along the way where you can stop and walk part of the original trace, or take nature walks. My favorite of these is this cedar swamp. 

This is the bridge that takes you into the swamp. I'm not sure that any camera, especially not the one on my phone, could capture the atmosphere of this swamp. For one thing it is very green. The water is a kind of lucent green and the air shimmers with greenness. It's almost like being under an emerald sea. As you can see, this doesn't show up in the pictures at all. Also, it is as still as can be. Except for a few snowy days at my home in the middle of nowhere, I've never experienced such silence. No one else was there that day. It was lovely.

I love cypress knees. This bunch makes me think of a tribe of Native Americans on a journey.

Nothing much to say about this one. It's just beautiful.

This little group of cypress knees looked like a nativity scene. 

After a while, I came to a sign--why didn't I take a picture--which told about the alligators in the swamp. They mostly just float around and are small and only eat a few fish a week, but we ought not to feed them because they might get aggressive. This made me a bit nervous because I know for sure that some jerk has been down there feeding them, and I don't know how aggressive they may have become to date. So, I saw this in the distance. For some reason, it looked a lot more like an alligator than you can tell in the picture.

Then there was this sign.

Bobcat. Really. After they tell you that, they bar the way out, but I managed to sneak through.

Then the little gathering of peoples came to tell me good-bye.

AMDG

If you click on the pictures, you can see them enlarged.

Bird Songs

We had some real birdsong, and now we shall have songs about birds. About a year or so I was looking at the songs I had downloaded and realized that there were a lot about birds, and here they are. I'm not going to say much about them, but I love them all for different reasons. Some are happy and some are sad and some are funny.

Emmylou-If I had a bird, little bird, I would teach that bird to sing your name. 



Go away little bluebird, you're too darn happy for me and my broken heart.



Hard to be sad when you listen to this one.



Although, I don't really believe that the littlest birds sing the prettiest songs. Of course, a hummingbird may be singing some lovely melody that we can't hear, but I don't think that counts.

Hard to sit still when you listen to this one.



Hard to keep from laughing when you listen to this one. I think about the way the lyrics to this song would be received today and it cracks me up.



No more birds. I don't own this one yet. I wish I did.



And if you want to read something seriously good about bird song, you should go here--but do it when you have some time. It's the best.

AMDG