The connection.

I find it difficult to express--and, more fundamentally, to fathom--the tremendous leaps in scale employed in the "Culture War" arguments.

A favorite pro-abortion argument centers on the suffering of a particular woman, the victim of violence, who needs our loving support and encouragement to make the difficult, but necessary, choice and end her child's life.

Then there is the favorite atheist/agnostic argument that appeals to "science" and "scientific fact," the power of "progress," and the imbecility of "religion" and "religious experience." All these are categories so broad as to be entirely devoid of meaning. Similar non-concepts include: "nature," "quality of life," "tolerance," and "green."

I see, too, there's been an uproar over Dr. Jeff Steinberg's fertility clinic, which offers hair- and eye-color selection to prospective parents. This in the very same society in which Down Syndrome fetuses are aborted at a rate of 90%. Apparently, eye-color genes are off-limits, Down Syndrome genes are up for grabs.

Finally, with the advent of our current economic crisis comes the not-too-shocking revelation that perhaps the baby-boomers ought to have invested in children rather than lattes, put up with anything rather than divorce, and flushed those birth-control pills (which, incidentally, are killing frogs in suburban America--so much for "green"). The reaction, in my limited social circles, however, has largely been: shrug. Yes, someone really should start reproducing, but, ho-hum, how would I ever pay for college for more than one kid? The leap from "we need a next generation" to "I should consider having children sooner rather than later" is not made.

The fuzzy thinking is overwhelming. The rapid leaps from the particular to the general, and the inability to apply either one to me, here, now, render us mentally, spiritually, and emotionally obese and atrophied. Like the inert humans in Wall-E.

This has been up until now an exercise in Rage Against the Machine. But what is to be done? In order to escape the vicious cycle, the answer is for me, here, now to live the culture of life. All the mushy-brained arguments for our culture's ridiculous ethic spring from the basic error: That man creates himself. That our self-actualization is our highest ambition. That God is in my image. There is no one to answer to at the end of all things. Few are the ones who connect these thoughts to their misguided compassion toward the unwed mother, their devotion to nature, their "well-done" divorces, their 2.0 children. But this is the connection.

I must live in opposition to those convictions. Obedience to divine authority is our highest lifestyle choice. I am in God's image, an image not of my making. I will face him at the end of days. My life is his to do as he has asked: not just to reproduce (although I am particularly fond of reproducing), but to love and enjoy my children. Not just to witness to the world, but to suffer and pray for the world. Not just to plant my organic garden, but to take a holy pleasure in the gifts of the earth and the gift of a simple life. Making the connection and living the connection.

Have you had your SoulWOW yet?

It's almost Easter. The Church asks us to make a minimum of one SoulWOW (er, Confession) every year. If you so choose (remember, it's a minimum request--you can do more), then before Easter is The Time To Do It. As I dig deeper into my own dirty little self, I appreciate more and more the efficacy and efficiency of the Sacrament of Reconciliation. Surely there are no more beautiful words on this earth: "I absolve you from your sins, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit."

God doesn't ask for lofty thoughts or passionate feelings (though they are both goods); he does ask for contrition, confession, absolution, and penance. Enjoy that WOW now!



(WOW. This diocese is taking Benedict's whole "technology and evangelization" thing seriously!)Thanks to Amy Welborn.

Passion Sunday and the Child

This past Tuesday, Miriam announced, "I have to go to Mass today." Tuesday is not a good Mass day for our house. Between ballet lessons, laundry, grocery shopping, and cleaning, Mass just doesn't happen. But she was insistent and even a little frantic: "I have to go to Mass."

And so I compromised. "We can stop by the Adoration chapel on the way to the library," I suggested. "You can bring him some of your flowers."

She made up a little green vase with her carnations left over from the Annunciation. She was very serious.

We walked into the Adoration chapel, Isabella gabbing and burbling, Miriam solemn-faced. I sat in the back with the baby while Miriam approached the altar and put the flowers down. Then she turned and whispered loudly, much to the amusement of the elderly woman next her, "MOM! I HAVE TO SIT HERE ALONE AND PRAY BY MYSELF!!!!"

I nodded, "Okay."

She turned and sat and, still talking in her loud whisper, "JESUS! I'M SO SORRY FOR HURTING YOU. I HOPE YOU LIKE YOUR FLOWERS. I TRUST IN YOU, AMEN!" Then she bounced out of her pew and ran back to me. Out we went through the doors, Isabella still burbling and waving bye-bye.

"What was that, Miriam?" I asked

"That was my little confession. Because you and Daddy go to Big Confession, and I can't go there because I'm a girl, so I have to have my little confession."

I'll admit it did cross my mind to assure her that she has never hurt Jesus, explain that she's not of the "age of reason." But I didn't. If she wants to offer him flowers and her sadness, then she needs to respond to that desire in her own heart.

I've been thinking a lot about our need for Christ's death and passion, for those six hours he hung in agony. All creation needed those hours, not just the adult, rational sinners. "All creation is groaning in expectation for the revelation of the sons of God." Miriam, in her little 3-year-old innocence is part of that creation. She wanted to "groan in expectation" before the altar. So she brought him flowers and her little heart.

May we all rush to reconciliation with such determination this week. May we all thirst for his body and blood this week. All of creation is waiting. Come, Lord Jesus, to your Cross and your glory.

Poem for a Friday

in Lent. It is good to enter into the meaning of death a little--its scandal. It inspires thirst in our souls for the coming Holy Week. We realize how radically the death of Christ changed death's aspect. Here is death without Christ.

The Fall

The death of a man is like the fall of a mighty nation
That had valiant armies, captains, and prophets,
And wealthy ports and ships over all the seas,
But now it will not relieve any besieged city,
It will not enter into any alliance,
Because its cities are empty, its population dispersed,
Its land once bringing harvest is overgrown with thistles,
Its mission forgotten, its language lost,
The dialect of a village high upon inaccessible mountains.

~Czeslaw Milosz, 1981

John Paul II, RIP

"The souls of the just are in the hands of God."

Remembering our beloved father.


One day late in this post, but I love this picture. He would forgive me!

The truth will set you free...

I should title this, "The Lessons of Lent."

This is why the philosopher must be a lover of truth: only the hard truth of our "frigidity" and fragility can bring us to the truth about God. Fr. Benedict Groeschel said once, "Americans hardly know what truth is anymore. We are surrounded by too much advertising, and the media manufactures 'news'." We can hardly reflect on who we are and what follows death--our heads are so full of things for me and now. Only in relationship with the Truth himself, forsaking all others, will we be free. And that is joy:

"The one cure for repeated unfaithfulness is to lament it, to be peaceably humble over it, and to turn again to God as soon as may be. Until we die life's difficulties and humiliations will be with us because of our besetting ingratitude and unfaithfulness. yet provided that this is the result of our weakness of nature without affection of the heart, all is well. For God recognizes our weakness; he is aware of our wretchedness and our powerlessness to shun all unfaithfulness... Guard against discouragement, even though you witness the failure of your repeated resolutions to serve God. Take advantage of this recurring experience to explore ever more thoroughly the deep pit of your nothingness and of your corruption. From it learn utter distrust of yourself and complete reliance on God... Your trust in God can never be pushed too far. Infinite goodness and mercy should induce trust as infinite." ~Jean-Pierre de Caussade, SJ

Love Must Be Perceived (Part V)

Hans Part V

"If God wishes to reveal the love that he harbors for the world, this love has to be something that the world can recognize... The inner reality of love can be recognized only by love."

This chapter (V) is full of hope--a much-needed dosage after the "Failures of Love" reminded us of how frigid and finite our little post-lapsarian hearts are. Our selfish beings still retain some "glimmer," says von Balthasar, of what selfless love is.

As a mother, I love his first chosen analogy: "After a mother has smiled at her child for many days and weeks, she finally receives her child's smile in response. She has awakened love in the heart of the child, and as the child awakens to love, it also awakens to knowledge: the initially empty sense-impressions gather meaningfully around the Thou." Love precedes and is the necessary condition for knowledge. Our very first relationship--which psychology teaches us is so dominant in the rest of our lives--is the premiere analogy of God's love. God, the transcendent, awakens love in us with his glance; knowledge of him follows love of him.

God takes our response to his love for granted, in the same way the mother assumes her child will, eventually, smile back at her. His movement toward us is entirely at his command; it is not a bilateral movement. Our very response to his love is his grace-filled design, his planning. This is a little offensive to our American sensibilities, because we want to claim some control over the "good that we do." von Balthasar reminds us, however, that the revelation of divine love--which alone is credible--is entirely God's. We receive our entire being, in cluding our ability to respond to him, from him:

"[T]he bride must receive herself purely from the Bridegroom; she must be 'brought forward' and 'prepared' by him and for him and therefore at his exclusive disposal, offered up to him."

Then he lists the created "conditions of perception," by which I think he means those four elements of revelation which we must have to receive the meaning of divine love. This is fascinating, because they are not what you'd probably guess at the first try.

God created:
1. The Church in her essential being (the spotless Bride)
2. Mary (the Mother and Bride, in whom "the fiat of the response and the reception is real")
3. The Bible (at once the given Word and the response of the author in one literary work)
4. The Bride and Mother (the Church and Mary together) proclaiming this Word in a living way

I think I could spend the rest of my life unpacking that, because my gut instinct is that he is right. The inclusion of Mary in such a lofty list--she's right up there with Scripture!--is not incredible, but wholly credible. She is a concrete, human being whose very existence is the perfect response to divine love. Surely we, as human beings, need such a person to have lived on earth in a physical existence. The divine economy surely demands it. I think I need to start saying my Rosary again more regularly, and perhaps more wisdom will come to my little brain.

The last really profound point I caught here was this: You must love that which you wish to communicate. Von Balthasar talks briefly about the Holy Spirit's role in revelation. The Holy Spirit is, of course, the very love between the Father and the Son, who communicates their being to the world. "The site from which love can be observed and generated cannot itself lie outside of love; it can only lie there, where the matter itself lies--namely, in the drama of love."

Of course, we might say, the Holy Spirit has to love what it communicates. After all, God is love. How obvious. But the implications of this for human communication are enormous: I think it explains why dissenters who write Church history or try explain Church teaching are so damaging to souls both in and estranged from the Church. They do not love what they are trying to communicate. While human love can blind us to faults, we must be infused with divine love in order to communicate God to others. Before we preach, we must be sure we love what we preach. And of course, that means we are trying to "be perfect as [our] Father is perfect."

What a great challenge for Holy Week.