Even If He Will Not

Today's biblical reading in the Office of Readings is from Daniel 3. It's the story of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, the three young men who were saved from the fiery furnace. I've always loved this story, but today while I was reading it, something occurred to me that I've never thought of before. What must it have been like for the young men while they were in the furnace that was so hot that it consumed the men who threw them in. It must be a glorious adventure to be inside a fire. Flames are so beautiful when you see them from a distance, how much more intense and full of light would they be if you were inside. Maybe they were praising God, not just for delivering them, but for the privilege of seeing his beautiful creation in a way no one else ever had. 

I was also reminded that so many times when believers are persecuted, in Persia, in Babylon, in Rome, it's not because of the God they worship, it's because they refuse to worship the reigning gods. This, of course, was the crime of the three young men. Whoever chose the reading for today, for some reason left out my favorite part. When Nebuchadnezzar said to the men, "Be ready now to fall down and worship the statue I had made, whenever you hear the sound of the trumpet, flute, lyre, harp, psaltery, bagpipe, and all the other musical instruments; otherwise, you shall be instantly cast into the white-hot furnace; and who is the God that can deliver you out of my hands," they answered, "If our God whom we serve, can save us from the white-hot furnace and from your hands, O king, may he save us. But even if He will not, know, O king, that we will not serve your god or worship the golden statue which you set up." I've thought about this passage many times when I had to face some scary situation where I had to do the right thing even though the consequences could be bad. It puts things in perspective. I've been thinking that Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego might be good patrons for Catholics in the US these days. 

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I also want to mention St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, Mother Cabrini, whose feast day is today, and who was responsible for founding many Catholic schools, orphanages and hospitals in the United States. I don't really have any idea of what has happened to all these foundations. I'm sure that some are defunct and some have passed into other hands. If any of them still belong to the Church, of course, they are now in danger of having to close. She would be another good intercessor for us. There's a nice article about her here.

AMDG

More Photos from Tessa

I thought I'd take a break from writing today and share some more of my granddaughter's pictures with you. You should be able to enlarge the pictures by clicking on them. I especially recommend this with the first picture, so you can see all the patterns in the little swirls of smoke to the right.

And here are a couple of pictures I took so I could show you my middle granddaughter's bedtime reading.

Artist or Writer?

It's hard to take a picture of someone who never stops moving.

AMDG

Providence, Smoke, and Faith

Photo credit: Teresa Love

I've been thinking about Maclin's comment on the Providence post and instead of responding there, I decided to respond in a new post. What Maclin said was:

[L]ooking at it from the broader historical perspective, I keep thinking of the English Reformation, of Henry's break with the Church, etc. All providential, we have to believe and trust. Yet the whole of British civilization was lost to the faith then, and has never returned, with profound consequences to the whole world, considering the reach of British influence. I'm not suggesting that that means it wasn't providential, only that the ultimate purpose remains hidden, even after all this time.

Well, that's true, and I doubt any of us will ever know the answer to that dilemma in this life. It reminds me of Aslan saying that he never tells anyone any story but his own, or God's oblique response to Job. We just don't know. We don't. And he won't tell us, but He asks us to trust Him anyway in much the same way that he asks the disciples in John, "Do you also want to leave?" Either He has the words of eternal life, or He doesn't.

I was thinking about this in Mass this morning when I heard the readings about the two women who gave everything they had. That's what God asks of us all--everything. It's not just our possessions. He wants our senses, our affections, and our faculties: memory, will, understanding, intellect, the whole lot of it. We have to throw everything into the pot, and not hedge our bets, or keep anything back for a rainy day. 

One of the hardest of these things for me to surrender is my intellect, because in my own image of myself, that is what defines me. It's where I excel--what I like best about myself. I want to understand. I want to know. I want to be able to explain things to myself and to everybody else. When some concept, like the suffering of the innocent comes up, I want to find the book that lays out the answer for me. I think it's a sort of intellectual shirking to let it go and trust God to know what He's about. "Other, more naive people can just blindly accept this difficulty, but I'm more demanding than that."

There are a couple of problems with this, the first being that I am demanding something of myself that I can never deliver. I will never be able to understand more than a sort of Janet-sized portion of Who God is and what He is doing. It's ridiculous to throw my intellect up against the "infintely perfect Being Who made all things and keeps them in existence." The second is that I'm demanding something of God that He knows I don't need, that would probably harm me if I had it. Also, I'm putting Reason before Faith, and that's a fatal mistake. I'm not a child of the Enlightenment; I'm a child of God. I can't always reason things out, but I can always choose to believe and to trust.

I think that it's a mistake to let ourselves get too much caught up in these unanswerable conundrums. They can paralyze us. While our minds are running around and around in an inescapable maze, we miss whatever it is that the Lord is asking us to do. We don't have time for that. There's too much at stake.

Our perceptions in life are often similar to the picture above. Sometimes the smoke is so thick that we can't see the flames underneath. Sometimes the world is so cold that we can't even feel the heat, but the fire still burns.

AMDG

And I just have to say that my granddaughter is one amazing photographer.

A Week Late . . .

Every year, EVERY year, I miss the feast day of St. Martin de Porres, who is my favorite saint. So, of course, this year I missed it again. I go to Mass about 45 Saturdays out of the year, but last Saturday, November 3, St. Martin's feast day, I decided not to go, and that's really too bad because there is a very nice shrine to St. Martin in Memphis and I could have gone to Mass there. 

One reason I love St. Martin so much is because of his great humility. When he first entered his monastery, he didn't ask to be a lay brother, but only a helper, or servant, although after a while the prior ordered him to become a lay brother. When the monastery was in financial difficulty, he asked them to sell him into slavery to get the money they needed. Thankfully, his request was denied, but his willingness to give of himself completely never ceases to touch and amaze me.

Another reason I love him is his hospitality, but there is more to it than that, and the more is something that I can't really explain because I don't understand it myself. I have just always been drawn to him.

St. Martin had a lot in common with President Obama. As you probably know, he was of mixed race and his father was only with the family for short periods of Martin's life. So, when the president was elected for the first time, I thought that St. Martin would be the perfect saint to intercede for him. For the past four years, my husband and I have said a novena to St. Martin for Obama over and over again, praying one day each morning that we ride to work together, which is most mornings. We say some other prayers and the rosary first, and usually get to this novena about the same time we reach the expressway. We usually finish about the time we get to the field I described in my poem the other day. It's the one that fills up like a bowl with fog. We call this St. Martin's Field.

I find most novenas to be a bit irksome in the way the prayers are written and this one is no exception, but that's okay. That's just another little something to offer up. I've put a link to a page with this novena on the sidebar, and another page with the Prayer of St. John Fisher for bishops, which I posted when the HHS Mandate first entered on the scene.

AMDG

P.S. This post was originally called, "A Day Late . . . ." I need to find the patron saint of procrastination.

Providence

Since last December, or maybe January, I have been in a spiritual formation program developed by Fr. Santan Pinto, SOLT, called Disciples of Jesus and Mary. The program centers around five fairly simple principles, the first of which is "Nothing happens accidentally but everything is gifted providentially." I think this sounds deceptively simple, but when you start trying to apply it to everything you find that a great deal of trust is needed.

This concept wasn't really new to me because years ago I cobbled together a variety of things I'd read and heard and figured out that whatever was going on in my life at any given moment was something that God knew about and that He had allowed to happen and that He knew I needed. Now, I don't always, or even usually, accept these things in this spirit, especially when I am in the middle of them, but usually when things (meaning when I) calm down, I can see that it's really true, that Romans 8 isn't just a nice platitude. And when I occasionally manage to remember this in the heat of the moment, it transforms that difficult moment into a channel of grace.

Then several months ago, I came across a passage in Caryll Houselander that said that the events of our lives are not just gifts that Jesus sends us, but indeed, they are Jesus Himself. Since I read that, and since I have been trying to be always aware of the Hidden Christ, I am more and more conscious of the presence of Jesus everywhere and of the providential gifts that are hidden in our everyday lives.

So, it was easy for me to go to bed early on Tuesday night before I knew the results of the election, even though I knew that if Obama won, a variety of difficult and, I will even say evil, things might be in store for me and those I love, and for my beloved Church. I was entirely peaceful when I got up Wednesday morning and found out what those results were because I believe that they are providential. I believe that they are Jesus coming to us--not as the Glorious Conqueror, but bruised and bleeding and asking us to go where He has been.

Many people have been talking about "What we did wrong," and "What we need to do next," but I think that largely I will do exactly what I have been doing. I am trying consciously to live the best Catholic life I can, and I believe that before anything else, this is the most important thing we can do. I will trying to add bit by bit to the prayers I say and try to get to Mass more often. I'll try to let Christ in me be present to those around me. And then maybe I will have other duties as assigned.

A couple of things that have been running through my mind for the last 24 hours are this:

"But you and all the kind of Christ Are ignorant and brave,
 And you have wars you hardly win
 And souls you hardly save.

 "I tell you naught for your comfort,
 Yea, naught for your desire,
 Save that the sky grows darker yet
 And the sea rises higher.

 "Night shall be thrice night over you,
 And heaven an iron cope.
 Do you have joy without a cause,
 Yea, faith without a hope?"
                       from The Ballad of the White Horse by G. K. Chesterton

The whole thing is here.

And this:

WILD RIDE

I hear in my heart, I hear in its ominous pulses,
All day, on the road, the hoofs of invisible horses,
All night, from their stalls, the importunate pawing and neighing.

Let cowards and laggards fall back! But alert to the saddle
Weatherworn and abreast, go men of our galloping legion,
With a stirrup-cup each to the lily of women that loves him.

The trail is through dolor and dread, over crags and morasses,
There are shapes by the way, there are things that appeal or entice us.
What odds? We are Knights of the grail, we are vowed to the riding.

Thoughts's self is a vanishing wing, and joy is a cobweb,
And friendship a flower in the dust, and glory a sunbeam
Not here is our prize, nor, alas! after these our pursuing.

A dipping of plumes, a tear, a shake of the bridle,
A passing salute to this world and her pitiful beauty,
We hurry with never a word in the track of our fathers.

I hear in my heart, I hear in its ominous pulses,
All day, on the road, the hoofs of invisible horses,
All night, from their stalls, the importunate pawing and neighing.

We spur to a land of no name, outracing the storm-wind,
We leap to the infinite dark like sparks from the anvil.
Thou leadest, O God! All's well with Thy troopers that follow.

                                                        Louise Imogen Guiney

I really like this poem, but I have yet to find anybody else that's very enthusiastic about it. I think it's because although I look like a dumpy housewife, this is who I really am.

AMDG

A Place in Time

This came today.

Wendell Berry's first new fiction in six years. I meant to mention in the post about Hannah Coulter that it had just been published. It's twenty stories about the Port William membership. I'm really excited.

What I've been doing lately instead of writing.

Babysitting

That's my middle granddaughter. I figured a faceless picture would be okay with her mother.

Going to the zoo. We have a great zoo.

Right before I took this picture, four martial arts experts fought a battle to the death. You should have seen them leaping through the air, flying over the top of the buildings. The girl with the long sword was really great. Unfortunately, by the time I got my phone out of my purse, it was all over.

I tried to get this guy to speak parseltongue to me, but no luck. He is much larger than he looks in this picture. I wish there was some close to judge the scale by. That hand is a good ways in front of the cage, so it gives a deceptive idea of the difference. I doubt he could get his hand halfway around the snake.

These guys had such a good time that they obviously stayed too long.

Visiting my other daughter in Normal, IL, where I found out that there's hope for churches built in the mid-sixties if somebody decides to take on the challenge.

This window is in the adoration chapel. I posted a picture of the chapel in the Hannah Coulter post.

I just found out that you can click on the pictures to enlarge them.

I'd tell you about my weekend, but I don't think my trip to the grocery store was very interesting.

AMDG