Desires

I was talking with a friend over the weekend about pretty much everything (we ran the gammit from fantasy to the virtue of poverty) and at one point we discussed how Buddhism stands compared to Christianity.

This got me thinking and I worked up a definition that separates the Buddhist and Christian understanding of the afterlife: a Buddhist aims to have all desires erased, while a Christian aims to have all his desires fulfilled in God (assuming that all desires are good things that can simply be twisted by sin).

On the Writing of Letters

If I had any readers before, I've probably lost them by not posting for a week and a half.

To start off, I would like to go back to my last post and explain what the Novena was for (something I should have done, oh, a week and a half ago). There were two ends for the Novena, both of which currently look more positive but neither is certain, so feel free to make your thoughts known, if you have any.

I am now considering pursuing a degree in architecture (the secondary intent of the Novena) and putting my energy toward, at some point, the building of a large and beautiful church (the primary intent). I will explain more about the latter later, but I just wanted to put those out.


The world we live in is one which has come to an abhorence of slowness. Everything needs to be fast, from fast food to quick check out lines to ATMs to e-mail. There is very little in the way of silence or the desire to take things slow.

In a personal attempt to reverse that within me, I have taken up the hobby (or rather, art) of letter writing. I don't mean e-mail, but hand written, snail-mail letters. I am writing them to anyone who would receive them, from friends living, literally, just down the street, to relatives who live on the far end of the country.

The beauty of the letter is multi-faceted. First, it forces me to take the time to write. Where I can type somewhere in the range of seventy words a minute, I can only write about twenty. Editing is also more difficult, forcing me to think ahead more.

Secondly, the communication is not instantaneous. We are so used to in this day of cell-phones and instant messaging to, well, instant messages. Sending a letter takes a couple of days, meaning the information is not hot-button. The written word has a naturally more relaxed feel.

Furthermore, letters take time to read. When you receive a letter you must ingest the words and make your way through the author's handwriting. In addition, you can return to what you have read, something largely impossible with phone conversation and mostly pointless with the way we write e-mails these days.

In addition, letters allow for a unique form of dialogue. Where conversational dialogue is quick give and take, letters demand the writer to take his time in responding, forcing thought to proceed action which will, in many cases, keep people from saying stupid things we don't really want to say (the ones we do want to say, well . . . ).

Finally, letters are doccuments and thus endure. They can be saved for future generations, for a smart point they make, or just a comment that makes the receiver laugh. Their tactile nature also makes for a unique reading experience because they can be carried, folded, crinkled, pocketed, re-read, tossed about, and otherwise enjoyed.


Tune into the next post for a discussion of the Lord's Prayer (well, part of the Lord's Prayer, a couple of words, anyway . . . it has to do with the Our Father. Trust me). This one will hopefully be sooner than a week and a half.

Novena

In any of you have been counting, you might have noticed that today is the last day of the novena despite the fact that I said it was going to Sunday.

Turns out the Novenas are started the day after Ascension Thursday and finishe the day before Pentecost Sunday, so I started mine a day early. It does not really matter, 'cause it is still a novena, but I just wanted to clear up any confusion (if there was any. I have a feeling nobody was counting).



Glorious Saint Benedict, sublime model of virtue, pure vessel of God's grace! Behold me humbly kneeling at your feet. I implore you in your loving kindness to pray for me before the throne of God.
To you I have recourse in the dangers that daily surround me.
Shield me against my selfishness and my indifference to God and to my neighbor.
Inspire me to imitate you in all things.
May your blessing be with me always, so that I may see and serve Christ in others and work for His kingdom.

Graciously obtain for me from God those favors and graces which I need so much in the trials, miseries and afflictions of life.
Your heart was always full of love, compassion and mercy toward those who were afflicted or troubled in any way. You never dismissed without consolation and assistance anyone who had recourse to you.
I therefore invoke your powerful intercession, confident in the hope that you will hear my prayers and obtain for me the special grace and favor I earnestly implore.

Obtain for us the graces necessary to see God's will and those required that we may perform his will, no matter our fears or apprehensions, and pray that we may come to love the Lord's will more and more.

Help me, great Saint Benedict, to live and die as a faithful child of God, to run in the sweetness of His loving will, and to attain the eternal happiness of heaven.
Amen.

Consumerism

As promised, by reflections on American consumerism.

I recently got a job at a local department store and have spent way too many hours there (all of them working). It has given me an opportunity to see first hand how Americans use their money.

Two days ago while I was working checkout I watched the number of people who picked up either drinks or candies on their way into the lanes. Probably one out of ever five people purchased at least one or the other, yet none of them had the intent to buy it (about half the time the person backtracks in order to pick up the goods). Why are people so flippant with their money as to purchase way over-priced (twenty ounces for $1.19) drinks?

A recent article in the loval paper discussed the success of High-Definition TVs in America and it quoted a consumer anthropologist (apparently they do exist) who said that Americans define themselves by what they buy. This seems obvious in retrospect, but I had never considered it before. If you don't have the best clothing, jewelry, cars, TVS, cell phones, etc. then you are looked down upon. It is far worse in America to be poor than to be a prostitute.

As of this moment, I have no real response to this anti-poverty mentality other than to say we should try and do without. Can you really go for one day a week without purchasing anything? Do you have to get a full meal everytime you go to a restaurant? (It seems that the only Americans who are close to leaving in intentional poverty are the college students, and most of them are only doing it so they can get more money in the long run). I'll probably post more on this as it develops.



Glorious Saint Benedict, sublime model of virtue, pure vessel of God's grace! Behold me humbly kneeling at your feet. I implore you in your loving kindness to pray for me before the throne of God.
To you I have recourse in the dangers that daily surround me.
Shield me against my selfishness and my indifference to God and to my neighbor.
Inspire me to imitate you in all things.
May your blessing be with me always, so that I may see and serve Christ in others and work for His kingdom.

Graciously obtain for me from God those favors and graces which I need so much in the trials, miseries and afflictions of life.
Your heart was always full of love, compassion and mercy toward those who were afflicted or troubled in any way. You never dismissed without consolation and assistance anyone who had recourse to you.
I therefore invoke your powerful intercession, confident in the hope that you will hear my prayers and obtain for me the special grace and favor I earnestly implore.

By your holy example lead us to a poverty of spirit so that we may more fully come to the will of God in our lives.

Help me, great Saint Benedict, to live and die as a faithful child of God, to run in the sweetness of His loving will, and to attain the eternal happiness of heaven.
Amen.

Dogmatic

I was going to talk about consumerims today, but you are spared that lecture until tomorrow.

Several months ago I was angry/upset at a Catholic friend for doing somthing not very Catholic and the statement was made by this friend that: "New converts are often very dogmatic," implying that other Catholics are not dogmatic.

I'm sorry, a non-dogmatic Catholic is known as an Anglican.

At some point in the creation of the Protestant (and American) ideal the idea that dogma is bad was born. This idealogy suggested that a unwielding belief in something was damaging to the true Christian ideal (of course, every Protestant is - or was - dogmatic about the Trinity, but they never worried about that). The very phrase dogmatic has gained negative connotations, suggesting a belief that is unduely harsh and rigid.

The thing about dogma is that is must be rigid. If one could bend dogma when the situation was convenient, it would be little more than a preffered idea, rather than God's idea. To relax on dogma is to relax on holiness.



Glorious Saint Benedict, sublime model of virtue, pure vessel of God's grace! Behold me humbly kneeling at your feet. I implore you in your loving kindness to pray for me before the throne of God.
To you I have recourse in the dangers that daily surround me.
Shield me against my selfishness and my indifference to God and to my neighbor.
Inspire me to imitate you in all things.
May your blessing be with me always, so that I may see and serve Christ in others and work for His kingdom.

Graciously obtain for me from God those favors and graces which I need so much in the trials, miseries and afflictions of life.
Your heart was always full of love, compassion and mercy toward those who were afflicted or troubled in any way. You never dismissed without consolation and assistance anyone who had recourse to you.
I therefore invoke your powerful intercession, confident in the hope that you will hear my prayers and obtain for me the special grace and favor I earnestly implore.

May you pray that we are guided forever to the full understanding of God's light and interecdede that we may never turn from his path.

Help me, great Saint Benedict, to live and die as a faithful child of God, to run in the sweetness of His loving will, and to attain the eternal happiness of heaven.
Amen.

Personal Prison

I wanted to offer today's post as a prayer for those who believe they have no other options.

In many parts of society, people have constructed a worldview that limits what one can do, forcing those of lesser wills (and many of those of greater) into an undesired path. For example, secular society says that the best response to unplanned pregnancy is abortion, and the second best is being a single mom. It almost ignores giving a child up for adoption, and the idea of the parents marrying for the sake of their child is considered absurd (if considered at all).

There are many such examples, spanning all the reaches of life. There are millions every day who feel they have no other options and do what they do not wish to, simply because no one has offered them an out.

With God, there are always options, if nothing more than the freedom of Christ and his power to endure whatever must be done. Let us today remember those who feel trapped and pray the receive the light to see Christ's hope for them.



Glorious Saint Benedict, sublime model of virtue, pure vessel of God's grace! Behold me humbly kneeling at your feet. I implore you in your loving kindness to pray for me before the throne of God.
To you I have recourse in the dangers that daily surround me.
Shield me against my selfishness and my indifference to God and to my neighbor.
Inspire me to imitate you in all things.
May your blessing be with me always, so that I may see and serve Christ in others and work for His kingdom.

Graciously obtain for me from God those favors and graces which I need so much in the trials, miseries and afflictions of life.
Your heart was always full of love, compassion and mercy toward those who were afflicted or troubled in any way. You never dismissed without consolation and assistance anyone who had recourse to you.
I therefore invoke your powerful intercession, confident in the hope that you will hear my prayers and obtain for me the special grace and favor I earnestly implore.

Pray for us that we may be given the insight of God and intercede for us so that the path of others is not forced on us against the better will of the Father.

Help me, great Saint Benedict, to live and die as a faithful child of God, to run in the sweetness of His loving will, and to attain the eternal happiness of heaven.
Amen.

Love

While I was on campus today I saw a poster promoting the week of Valentine's Day as "Safe Love Week" with such enlightening and instructive things as "Condom Bingo."

Somehow your society has shifted romantic love (eros) from a emotion to a thing you do. You no longer really fall in love, rather you make love. As such, love has become simply another aspect of a person, something all people will experience and therefore should be enjoyed as much as possible and, in the short term, the most effective way to 'enjoy' love is through sex.

This shift has caused the pathetic masculine statement: "if you loved me you would sleep with me," and, in many ways the equally pathetic (though better in moral ways) statement: "if you loved me you would marry me." Both these statements reveals an immaturity, specifically in the understanding of what love should be. Sex is, outside of marriage, one of the most base things man can do, and to use it as a guage if love is stupid. Does a prostitute love you because you have had sex with them?

On the other hand, the equation that love must result in marriage is a different sort of bastardization of love, forcing it toward a natrually eros-centered existence. The claim that true love must result in marriage is an attack on both the single life and the final end of life, for in heaven there will be no marriage.

This topic is very much bottomless, and I will probably review it more as Valentine's Day approaches (I choose to not call it St. Valentine's Day because the love-holiday is specifically secular).


Glorious Saint Benedict, sublime model of virtue, pure vessel of God's grace! Behold me humbly kneeling at your feet. I implore you in your loving kindness to pray for me before the throne of God.
To you I have recourse in the dangers that daily surround me.
Shield me against my selfishness and my indifference to God and to my neighbor.
Inspire me to imitate you in all things.
May your blessing be with me always, so that I may see and serve Christ in others and work for His kingdom.

Graciously obtain for me from God those favors and graces which I need so much in the trials, miseries and afflictions of life.
Your heart was always full of love, compassion and mercy toward those who were afflicted or troubled in any way. You never dismissed without consolation and assistance anyone who had recourse to you.
I therefore invoke your powerful intercession, confident in the hope that you will hear my prayers and obtain for me the special grace and favor I earnestly implore.

May we, by your intercessions, be brought more fully into the love of God. May your prayers lead us to the full understanding of the Lord's will and may you obtain for us the graces necessary to perform this will.

Help me, great Saint Benedict, to live and die as a faithful child of God, to run in the sweetness of His loving will, and to attain the eternal happiness of heaven.
Amen.

Dreams and Discord

Today, oddly enough, I will be talking about a dream I had last night, not so much for the content of the dream as the thoughts it inspired afterward.

The basic premise was that I was with a group of FOCUS people doing something (with a suffecient quantity of dream ambiguity) and there was someone in the group (the person in question being a creation of the dreamstate) who was not trusted by the others (I can't rightly remember why, if there was a why).

This mistrust continued to build throughout, expanding from the one person to others involved, until people started fighting each other refusing to do anything together. In the end it seemed as if everything was falling apart.

In many ways this is the way mistrust works. It is contagious and harsh, building off itself. If you can't trust one person you know, why should you expect to be able to trust anyone you do not know. The mistrust can then spread from that one person to other people you know by virtue of uncertainty.

Mistrust is a shadowy issue, for the trustworthyness of a person is not visible on their bodies, but hidden in their souls. Glancing at someone, even knowing them for a while, cannot tell you how trustworthy they are. You must entrust something to them and see how they respond, and that is a very vulnerable action, something you would not like to do unless you trust someone, throwing the whole thing into a loop.

In the end, the only way to trust someone is to trust God first, and place trust in others as an extension of that first unshakable trust. It is not foolproof, but it is also not foolhardy.


Glorious Saint Benedict, sublime model of virtue, pure vessel of God's grace! Behold me humbly kneeling at your feet. I implore you in your loving kindness to pray for me before the throne of God.
To you I have recourse in the dangers that daily surround me.
Shield me against my selfishness and my indifference to God and to my neighbor.
Inspire me to imitate you in all things.
May your blessing be with me always, so that I may see and serve Christ in others and work for His kingdom.

Graciously obtain for me from God those favors and graces which I need so much in the trials, miseries and afflictions of life.
Your heart was always full of love, compassion and mercy toward those who were afflicted or troubled in any way. You never dismissed without consolation and assistance anyone who had recourse to you.
I therefore invoke your powerful intercession, confident in the hope that you will hear my prayers and obtain for me the special grace and favor I earnestly implore.

Intercede for us in the heavenly realm that we may be guided to do the fullest will of God, both now and forever.

Help me, great Saint Benedict, to live and die as a faithful child of God, to run in the sweetness of His loving will, and to attain the eternal happiness of heaven.
Amen.

Novena

I can't think of anything new to post, so I'm just throwing up day three of the Novena:

Glorious Saint Benedict, sublime model of virtue, pure vessel of God's grace! Behold me humbly kneeling at your feet. I implore you in your loving kindness to pray for me before the throne of God.
To you I have recourse in the dangers that daily surround me.
Shield me against my selfishness and my indifference to God and to my neighbor.
Inspire me to imitate you in all things.
May your blessing be with me always, so that I may see and serve Christ in others and work for His kingdom.

Graciously obtain for me from God those favors and graces which I need so much in the trials, miseries and afflictions of life.
Your heart was always full of love, compassion and mercy toward those who were afflicted or troubled in any way. You never dismissed without consolation and assistance anyone who had recourse to you.
I therefore invoke your powerful intercession, confident in the hope that you will hear my prayers and obtain for me the special grace and favor I earnestly implore.

Pray that we may be guided into the fullness of the Father's will and that all our actions may bring him greater glory.

Help me, great Saint Benedict, to live and die as a faithful child of God, to run in the sweetness of His loving will, and to attain the eternal happiness of heaven.
Amen.

Mea Culpa

So I need to make a clarification based on multiple people's responses to multiple posts.

When I write something that is about the internal life, specifically about what constitutes sin, I do not write it for someone in particular. I cannot ever say whether someone is in mortal sin, and I can rarely say if someone is in sin (because even involuntary sin is still venial sin, that is a judgement call one can make). As such, my writings are designes as, at most, guides to suggest how one might examine one's self.

What this means is that if you felt yourself attacked in my blog, it was not intentional. I might have been attacking a situation you are in, think yourself in, or appear to be in, but much of the time I probably did not even know of the situation (sometimes I do, and sometimes that knowledge begins a thought process that results in a post, but most of the time those post look nothing like the original situation).

If, for example, I post about people gossiping and you do, I am probably not writing directly to you but it applies to you. On the same hand (if I can use that phrase) people might think you gossip a lot and have said so, but you do not believe it to be gossip. I am likewise not writing to you but it may or may not apply to you, depending on whether or not those other people are correct. But I am not making the judgement on whether they are or not.

My goal is to be as broad and focused as possible, writing posts that can reach a variety of people but engage a single issue and drive it home. Because of this, my posts will apply to situations in people lives, often things they do not want to think about and often things they are harrassed about. My goal is neither to harrass nor point fingers, but just to present my understanding of an issue, which very well might be wrong in the end.


Glorious Saint Benedict, sublime model of virtue, pure vessel of God's grace! Behold me humbly kneeling at your feet. I implore you in your loving kindness to pray for me before the throne of God.
To you I have recourse in the dangers that daily surround me.
Shield me against my selfishness and my indifference to God and to my neighbor.
Inspire me to imitate you in all things.
May your blessing be with me always, so that I may see and serve Christ in others and work for His kingdom.

Graciously obtain for me from God those favors and graces which I need so much in the trials, miseries and afflictions of life.
Your heart was always full of love, compassion and mercy toward those who were afflicted or troubled in any way. You never dismissed without consolation and assistance anyone who had recourse to you.
I therefore invoke your powerful intercession, confident in the hope that you will hear my prayers and obtain for me the special grace and favor I earnestly implore.

Guide us with your prayers and lead us into a full understandig of the great will God has in store for us and by your prayers may we never stray from what is right.

Help me, great Saint Benedict, to live and die as a faithful child of God, to run in the sweetness of His loving will, and to attain the eternal happiness of heaven.
Amen.

Femininity and Novena

The promised novena will come after a brief reflection on my thoughts from this day.

This coming friday the FOCUS ladies are having a girl's 'Spa Night' and being all feminine (the guys are watching war movies and burping a lot). For some reason I was thinking about this and began to think about a friend of mine who has generally positioned herself as the non-feminine type. While this is her norm, she slips into feminity on occassion, suggesting that perhaps her demenour is not so fixed.

There are two incorrect responses to feminity (or masculinity, but I personaly have so far seen less problems in the this area): either an annihilation of feminity or the use of feminity as a power or weapon.

The annihilation of feminity is the idea that woman and men should be identical. There should be no distinction between the genders so that there is perfect equality. It would do us good to remember "male and female he created them," that feminity is a gift from God.

The use of feminity as a power is more subtle and thus probably more dangerous. I have a orthodox Catholic friend who has told me, on multiple occassions, that she believes it good for her to use her 'feminine wiles' (her term, not mine) to get things. She has said that if flirting will get her a better deal, she has absolutely no qualms about doing it. I mention this because it shows just how subtle this can be. It can coexist with a viable Catholicism and remain largely unnoticed, yet it is truly dameging to a person. The primary problem with feminity as a power is that it turns the essence of being female into an external object, something which is used to an end, its good being made subserviant to the lusts of man (not all flirting is necessarily lust filled, but flirting with a stranger is naturaly inclined giving the stranger unchaste thoughts).

John Paul the Great has a bit to say about Women.


Novena

I am going to pray the following Novena until a week from Sunday for discernment for all, and specifically discernment on a project for me. I am not going to mention the project until after these nine days. I decided to start the Novena today because they were originally prayers said from Ascension Thursday until Pentecost, and seeing as there is no close Ascension Thursday I decided to use an ordinary one. The selection of the Novena is based on the unmentioned project (because I did not find a specific Novena on discernemnt).

Noven to St. Benedict


Glorious Saint Benedict, sublime model of virtue, pure vessel of God's grace! Behold me humbly kneeling at your feet. I implore you in your loving kindness to pray for me before the throne of God.
To you I have recourse in the dangers that daily surround me.
Shield me against my selfishness and my indifference to God and to my neighbor.
Inspire me to imitate you in all things.
May your blessing be with me always, so that I may see and serve Christ in others and work for His kingdom.

Graciously obtain for me from God those favors and graces which I need so much in the trials, miseries and afflictions of life.
Your heart was always full of love, compassion and mercy toward those who were afflicted or troubled in any way. You never dismissed without consolation and assistance anyone who had recourse to you.
I therefore invoke your powerful intercession, confident in the hope that you will hear my prayers and obtain for me the special grace and favor I earnestly implore.

Please pray that all people properly discern God's will and help us to find the paths which we are too take.

Help me, great Saint Benedict, to live and die as a faithful child of God, to run in the sweetness of His loving will, and to attain the eternal happiness of heaven.
Amen.