Submitted by SJN parishioner and guest blogger Sally Robb

Dear friends,

Yesterday I spoke with a lovely young wife and mother who is just beginning her journey with God. I wrote her a letter about prayer and thought it might be a nice reminder for us all.

Dearest, this is my advice about how to begin a life of prayer. The first thing we have to do is make time for Him in the morning before everyone gets up. This can be difficult, and you should expect “challenges”…..things that will get in your way. Prayer is the most powerful thing we can ever do. It is the single greatest door into the life of love, peace, goodness…into God’s own life, that exists. So you can expect “opposition.” I don’t focus on evil, but I don’t ignore it, and neither should you. There is a battle being fought for you, for your husband, for your children and for the happiness and wholeness of your family. The important thing to know is this….that it IS a battle but that Jesus is infinitely more powerful than evil. He is more powerful than addiction, or co-dependence or the hurt from our childhood that reach into our lives to wound us. He is more powerful than anything that tries to prevent us from being whole and happy.

But prayer is critical. Prayer draws us into the life of Love, the life of Christ, where strength,courage, clarity, patience, goodness and joy come from! There is a beautiful painting done by a pre-Raphaelite artist in England during the 19th century. It is of Jesus leaning against a door, knocking. When the painting was exhibited, the critics berated the artist for not remembering to paint a doorknob on the door. But the painter responded by saying that he had not forgotten the doorknob. Jesus stands, knocking at the door to our hearts. But the door can only be opened from the inside. He stands, longing for us to open ourselves to Him, to His love, but only we can let Him in. Prayer is when we open the door.

So….make time to pray. Persevere, and don’t get discouraged. If one morning you don’t get up, don’t think, “Oh well, what’s the use! I’ll never be able to do this every morning!” Just say to yourself, “He loves me, and He will never move from the door of my heart. Today I did not open the door. But tomorrow is a new day….a new chance to open the door to His love and His grace in my life.” So no beating yourself up, OK? Guilt is useless; in fact, it’s destructive if it discourages us and keeps us from trying. Discouragement is one of evil’s most effective tools. It keeps us from taking hopeful, little steps toward some longed-for good by making us hopeless and then “powerless.” Don’t give into discouragement! Just remember how much He longs for you and will NEVER give up on you!

So, make prayer a part of every day. Rejoice with Him when you succeed, and when you don’t, then give Jesus your smallness, your weakness, your powerlessness……and in that prayer of humble acceptance, He will be filled with joy and bring you beautiful gifts of grace. So either way, He comes!

Come Lord Jesus!

Photo courtesy of www.graceb3.org

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Photos of our recent evening with Catholic Relief Services as well as brunch have been posted here! Go check them out and be sure to join us at our next event, happy hour this Friday, March 2, 6 – 8 p.m. at Cru Wine Bar downtown!

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Vatican City, 25 February 2012 (VIS) – At midday today, the Holy Father received 200 scientists and members of the Pontifical Academy for Life, which is currently celebrating its eighteenth general assembly on the theme: “The diagnosis and treatment of infertility”. This subject, said the Pope, “has particular scientific importance, and is an expression of the concrete possibility of fruitful dialogue between ethics and biomedical research”.

“Research into diagnosis and therapy is the most scientifically correct approach to the question of infertility, as well as being the most respectful of the human condition of the people involved”, said Benedict XVI. “Indeed, the union of a man and a woman, in that community of love and life which is marriage, represents the only worthy ‘place’ for a new human being to be called into existence”.

The Pope explained how “the human and Christian dignity of procreation does not lie in a ‘product’, but in its bond with the conjugal act: that expression of the spouses’ love for one another, that union which is not only biological but also spiritual. … An infertile couple’s legitimate aspirations to become parents must therefore, with the help of science, find a response which is fully respectful of their dignity as people and as spouses”. Yet, the Holy Father said, the field of human procreation seems to be dominated “by scientism and the logic of profit”, which often “restrict many other areas of research.

“The Church is attentive to the suffering of infertile couples”, he added, “and her concern for them is what leads her to encourage medical research. Science, nonetheless, is not always capable of responding to the needs of many couples, and so I would like to remind those who are experiencing infertility that their matrimonial vocation is not thereby frustrated. By virtue of their baptismal and matrimonial vocation, spouses are always called to collaborate with God in the creation of a new humanity. The vocation to love, in fact, is a vocation of self-giving and this is something which no bodily condition can impede. Therefore, when science cannot provide an answer, the light-giving response comes from Christ”.

Benedict XVI invited the participants in the general assembly to continue to develop “a science which is intellectually honest and dedicated to the continual search for the good of mankind. … Indifference towards truth and goodness is a dangerous threat to authentic scientific progress”, he warned. In conclusion, the Pope encouraged his audience to dialogue with faith because “it was Christian culture – rooted in the affirmation of the existence of Truth, and the intelligibility of reality in the light of Supreme Truth – which enabled modern scientific knowledge to develop in mediaeval Europe, a knowledge which in earlier cultures had remained in the bud”.

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Due to a death in his immediate family, Peter Kreeft has had to cancel all of his events with us this weekend (Friday – Sunday). Refunds will be forthcoming. We plan to reschedule with him next year! Thank you for understanding, and please keep him and his family in your prayers.

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Vatican City, 24 February 2012 (VIS) – Yesterday morning the Holy Father met with priests of the diocese of Rome. Following a reading from the Letter of St. Paul to the Ephesians, Benedict XVI delivered a long off-the-cuff commentary on the Gospel passage.

The Apostle says: “I … beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace”.

The first call we receive is that of Baptism, the Pope explained, the second is the vocation to be pastors at the service of Christ. “The great ill of the Church in Europe and the West today is the lack of priestly vocations. Yet, the Lord calls always, what is lacking are ears to listen. We listened to the Lord’s voice and must remain attentive when that voice is addressed to others. We must help to ensure the voice is heard so that the call will be accepted”.

According to St. Paul, the primary virtue which must accompany vocation is humility. This is the virtue of the followers of Christ Who, “being equal to God, humbled Himself, accepting the status of servant, and obeying even unto the cross. This was the Son’s journey of humility, which we must imitate. … The opposite of humility is pride, the root of all sin. Pride means arrogance, which above all seeks power and appearance. … It has no intention of pleasing God; rather of pleasing itself, of being accepted, even venerated, by others. The ‘self’ becomes the centre of the world; the prideful self which knows everything. Being Christian means overcoming this original temptation, which is also the nucleus of original sin: being like God, but without God”.

By contrast “humility is above all truth, … recognition that I am a thought of God in the construction of His world, that I am irreplaceable as I am, in my smallness, and that only in this way am I great. … Let us learn this realism; not seeking appearance, but seeking to please God and to accomplish what He has thought out for us, and thus also accepting others. … Acceptance of self and acceptance of others go together. Only by accepting myself as part of the great divine tapestry can I also accept others, who with me form part of the great symphony of the Church and Creation”. In this way, likewise, we learn to accept our position within the Church, knowing that “my small service is great in the eyes of God”.

Lack of humility destroys the unity of Christ’s Body. Yet at the same time, unity cannot develop without knowledge. “One great problem facing the Church today is the lack of knowledge of the faith, ‘religious illiteracy’”, the Pope said. “With such illiteracy we cannot grow. … Therefore we must reappropriate the contents of the faith, not as a packet of dogmas and commandments, but as a unique reality revealed in its all its profoundness and beauty. We must do everything possible for catechetical renewal in order for the faith to be know, God to be known, Christ to be known, the truth to be known, and for unity in the truth to grow”.

We cannot, Benedict XVI warned, live in “a childhood of faith”. Many adults have never gone beyond the first catechesis, meaning that “they cannot – as adults, with competence and conviction – explain and elucidate the philosophy of the faith, its great wisdom and rationality” in order to illuminate the minds of others. To do this they need an “adult faith”. This does not mean, as has been understood in recent decades, a faith detached from the Magisterium of the Church. When we abandon the Magisterium, the result is dependency “on the opinions of the world, on the dictatorship of the communications media”. By contrast, true emancipation consists in freeing ourselves of these opinions, the freedom of the children of God. “We must pray to the Lord intensely, that He may help us emancipate ourselves in this sense, to be free in this sense, with a truly adult faith, … capable of helping others achieve true perfection … in communion with Christ”.

The Pope went on: “Today the concept of truth is viewed with suspicion, because truth is identified with violence. Over history there have, unfortunately, been episodes when people sought to defend the truth with violence. But they are two contrasting realities. Truth cannot be imposed with means other than itself! Truth can only come with its own light. Yet, we need truth. … Without truth we are blind in the world, we have no path to follow. The great gift of Christ was that He enabled us to see the face of God”.

“Where there is truth, there is charity”, the Pope concluded. “This, thanks be to God, can be seen in all centuries, despite many sad events. The fruits of charity have always been present in Christianity, just as they are today. We see it in the martyrs, we see it in so many nuns, monks, and priests who humbly serve the poor and the sick. They are the presence of Christ’s charity and a great sign that the truth is here”.

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Join the parish for the annual Lenten Fish Frys and Stations of the Cross, sponsored by the Knights of Columbus! *Every Friday during lent in Morris Hall at 6 p.m. Fried catfish, cole slaw, fries, mac–n-cheese, hush puppies, iced tea. Suggested donation $5 / person, $15 / family. Followed by Stations of the Cross at 7 p.m.

*No fish fry March 16 due to preparations for the March 17th Church Dedication. There will, however, be 7 p.m. Stations of the Cross.

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Please note that there will be a communion service instead of daily Mass on March 1, 2012.

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Submitted by SJN parishioner and guest blogger Sally Robb

Dear friends,

In 1952, Father Carlo Carretto left a successful very apostolate in Italy to become a Little Brother of Jesus, a movement of contemplative brothers living in solitude in the Sahara Desert founded by Blessed Charles de Foucauld. He tells a moving story of passing through a small village after sunset and seeing an old man, Kada, shivering near the road. He thought about giving him one of his two blankets but knew that he would be shivering himself that night if he did….the Sahara is “a very cold place that gets very hot in the sun.” That night, as he lay down next to a huge granite boulder, his conscience began to bother him. He fell asleep and dreamed that the boulder fell on him, crushing him, though he was still alive. He opened his eyes and saw Kada shivering before him. He tried to reach the blanket to give to him, but, crushed by the massive weight of the rock, he could not move at all. He knew that he was experiencing Purgatory……seeing with absolute clarity the good he should have done and having no ability to do it.

My dear friends, every day Christ places before us many opportunities. Will we choose the good or reject it? Today, will we choose Purgatory, or will we  choose love?

Image courtesy of www.turnbacktogod.com

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The latest edition of our parish magazine, “The Westlake Catholic,” has been posted online! Go check out Issue 6, the Lenten issue here. You can pick up a hard copy in the new church starting today.

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Vatican City, 22 February 2012 (VIS) – During his general audience this morning, the Holy Father dedicated his catechesis to the subject of Lent (which begins today, Ash Wednesday), the period of forty days leading up to the Easter Triduum, memorial of the passion, death and resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

Benedict XVI reminded the 7,500 pilgrims gathered in the Paul VI Hall that, in the early days of the Church, Lent was a time in which catechumens began their journey of faith and conversion prior to receiving Baptism. Later, all the faithful were invited to participate in this period of spiritual renewal. Thus “the participation of the whole community in the various stages of the Lenten journey underlines an important dimension of Christian spirituality: the fact that redemption is available not just for the few, but for everyone, thanks to Christ’s death and resurrection”.

“The time leading up to Easter is a time of ‘metanoia’, a time of change and penance, a time which identifies our human lives and our entire history as a process of conversion, which begins to move now in order to meet the Lord at the end of time”.

The Church calls this period “Quadragesima”, a period of forty days which has precise references in Holy Scripture. Indeed, “forty is the symbolic number with which the Old and New Testaments represent the most important moments of the People of God’s experience of faith. It is a figure which expresses a time of expectation, purification, return to the Lord, awareness that God is faithful to His promises; … a time within which we must make our choice, shoulder our responsibilities without further delay. It is a time for mature decisions”.

Noah spent forty days in the Ark during the Flood, then had to wait forty days more before he could return to dry land. Moses spent forty days on Mount Sinai to collect the Commandments. The Jewish People spent forty years wandering in the desert, then enjoyed forty years of peace under the government of the Judges. The inhabitants of Niniveh made forty days penance to obtain God’s forgiveness. The reigns of Saul, David and Solomon, the first kings of Israel, lasted forty years each. In the New Testament, Jesus spent forty days praying in the wilderness before beginning His public life and, following the resurrection, He spent forty days instructing His disciples before ascending to heaven.

The liturgy of Lent, the Pope explained, “has the aim of facilitating our journey of spiritual renewal in the light of this long biblical experience. Above all, it helps us to imitate Jesus Who, in the forty days He spent in the wilderness, taught us to overcome temptation through the Word of God. … Jesus went into the wilderness in order to be in profound contact with the Father. This was a constant aspect of Christ’s earthly life. He always sought out moments of solitude to pray to His Father and abide in intimate and exclusive communion with Him, before retuning among mankind. But in the ‘wilderness’ … Jesus was beset by temptation and the seduction of the Evil One, who suggested a messianic path, a path which was far from God’s plans because it involved power, success and dominion, not love and the total gift of self on the Cross”.

Benedict XVI went on to suggest that the Church herself is a pilgrim in the “wilderness” of the world and history. This wilderness is made up of “the aridity and poverty of words, life and values, of secularism and the culture of materialism which enclose people within a worldly horizon and detach them from any reference to transcendence. In such an atmosphere the sky above us is dark, because veiled with clouds of selfishness, misunderstanding and deceit. Nonetheless, even for the Church today, the wilderness can become a period of grace, because we have the certainty that even from the hardest rock God can cause the living water to gush forth, water which quenches thirst and restores strength”.

“During Lent”, said the Holy Father in conclusion, “may we discover fresh courage to accept situations of difficulty, affliction and suffering with patience and faith, aware that, from the darkness, the Lord will cause a new day to shine forth. And if we have been faithful to Jesus, following Him on the way of the Cross, the luminous world of God, the world of light, truth and joy, will be ours again”.

At the end of the catechesis Benedict XVI greeted pilgrims in various languages. Speaking Polish he highlighted how “fasting and prayer, penance and works of mercy” are the principal means of preparation for Easter.

The Pope also addressed a special greeting to faithful of the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, who were present in the Paul VI Hall. The ordinariate was set up a little over a year ago for groups of Anglican clergy and faithful wishing to enter into full visible communion with the Catholic Church. The general audience ended with the apostolic blessing.

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