Rehabilitating Obedience.

I've been pondering how desperately we need to reclaim the virtue of obedience (to rightful authority, of course). Pascal prompts me. Newman prompts me. I really should write an article or something...

Then, this from an old Richard John Neuhaus essay. And I realize he's said it so well that all I need to do is pass it on to you:

"I may not understand an authoritative teaching of the Magisterium, I may have difficulties with a teaching, but, as Newman understood, a thousand difficulties do not add up to a doubt, never mind a rejection. I may think a teaching is inadequately expressed, and pray and work for its more adequate expression in the future. But, given a decision between what I think the Church should teach and what the Church in fact does teach, I decide for the Church. I decide freely and rationally--because God has promised the apostolic leadership of the Church guidance and charisms that He has not promised me; because I think the Magisterium just may understand some things that I don't; because I know for sure that, in the larger picture of history, the witness of the Catholic Church is immeasurably more important than anything I might think or say. In short, I obey. The nuances of such obedience, of what is meant by thinking with the Church (sentire cum ecclesia), are admirably spelled out in the 1990 instruction of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, "The Ecclesial Vocation of the Theologian." It is an instruction that can be read with enormous benefit also by those who are not professional theologians. My point is this: liberal Catholicism cannot be reinvented, it cannot be rehabilitated, it will not be vibrantly Catholic, until it candidly and convincingly comes to terms with obedience."

I'm convinced. (I'd add that liberal philosophy can't come to terms with the human condition until I also comes to terms with the tradition.)

Dec. 8--The Immaculate Conception

A dewdrop of the darkness born,
Wherein no shadow lies;
The blossom of a barren thorn,
Whereof no petal dies;
A rainbow beauty passion-free,
Wherewith was veiled Divinity.

John Bannister Tabb

Second Sunday in Advent

Behold! He comes. And, behold! We are going...

"But when we shall have come to that judgment, the date of which is called peculiarly the day of judgment, and sometimes the day of the Lord, we shall then recognize the justice of all God’s judgments, not only of such as shall then be pronounced, but, of all which take effect from the beginning, or may take effect before that time. And in that day we shall also recognize with what justice so many, or almost all, the just judgments of God in the present life defy the scrutiny of human sense or insight, though in this matter it is not concealed from pious minds that what is concealed is just." ~ Augustine, City of God, Book XX, Ch. 2

Girls and boys are different.

Yesterday my ninth-grade religion class--two girls and four boys--discussed heaven. We often discuss heaven, but this time it was actually part of the reading assignment.

One of the boys asked whether there would be any pain at all in heaven: "Like, if we're playing paintball, wouldn't it hurt just a little. To be fun. Ya know?"

Well, okay. I conceded the possibility: not all pain is bad, so there can be pain in heaven. But our experience of it will not be like our experience of pain here.

Then I dropped the bombshell: "Maybe heaven will be so beautiful that it will hurt just a little."

Uh. Faces dead as doornails. "Huh?"

Now, it is a near and dear maxim to my heart that True Beauty pierces--it makes us hurt a little. Our being aches with the beauty of a moment or thing or person. It had not occurred to me that perhaps that was a post-14-years-old moment in my life.

Then.... LIFE in the classroom! The girls awoke, "Yeah, like a beautiful piece of music." "Or a beautiful day." "Like Christmas."

They got it. And the boys.... never did.

Is the pain of love a more feminine intuition? I have no doubt that one day those boys will experience what I was talking about. But the girls got it first.

Anecdotal evidence.

At the beginning, the end.

I love that the liturgical year begins by looking forward to the second coming of Christ. The first two weeks of Advent are a time to prepare our hearts for "the day when He appeareth." We are told that he is "like the refiner's fire" and "he shall purify." Sometimes I'd like to just leave all that purifying for him on "that day"--leaving it all in an abstract future, something I'll just passively receive when I get there.

In a way, it is true that we can't prepare adequately for that day. But it is also true that we must prepare: we must practice saying "yes!" to the Returning Christ by saying "yes!" every moment as he comes to us now. "To those who are faithful in little things..." He is purifying us now so that we shall be wholly his then; he redeems our suffering now so that we shall rejoice on that day. My reaction won't be, "Darnnit! It's the day of reckoning!" Rather, if I say yes to him today, on that day I will say, "Gloria! It is the day of reckoning!"

This is all inspired by a little blurb from Elizabeth Foss's column. She wrote, remembering the unexpected and harrowing days of bedrest:

"A couple of days before Sarah Anne was born, I commented to my priest that it is much more difficult to sin when one is on bedrest. He raised his eyebrows. No, I continued, maybe it’s not the bedrest so much as it is the knowledge that at any moment I could hemorrhage and once the bleeding began, I could die. Indeed, nothing drives one to one’s knees (figuratively, in my case) like knowing a serious medical situation lurks around the corner. Nothing makes avoiding sin seem more urgent than knowing the accounting could be quite near.

The reality, of course, is that none of us knows what day is our last. None of us knows when life might change suddenly and death might loom large. But few of us pray that way. Ever."

Let's start praying that way. Always.

The inevitable question.

It's "holiday" party time. And here comes the inevitable question over that (small) glass of merlot: "So, what do you do?" Or, even better: "You have your Master's? Great! What are you going to do with that?"

Usually, I respond with, "Oh, I'm home with my kids right now."

But sometimes I'd really like to bust out some Mother Teresa:

"Love one another. It is easy to love the people far away. It is not always easy to love those close to us. It is easier to give a cup of rice to relieve hunger than to relieve the loneliness and pain of someone unloved in our own home. Bring love into your home for this is where our love for each other must start."

I'm loving my husband and my children to the point of the cross.

That's all I do.

Dirty word?

Darwin asks, "Is 'planned' a dirty word for Catholics?"

In usual form, the answer is funny and philosophical. The comments are also worth your perusal.

Because any philosophy that rejects reproduction is doomed...