"Saving Souls"

JMJ. There's a prayer--don't remember where I read it, but there's a short prayer that goes, "Jesus, Mary, and Joseph save souls." Number one, I don't understand why we humans feel like we should command those in heaven. So I modified that prayer. Now, as I've said before, I've got a huge ego but in this case I don't think I'm too off-base to suggest that we say "please." So I started praying, "Jesus, Mary, and Joseph please save souls."

The longer I have been Catholic, though, the more I realise how precarious my previous life-antics had made my salvation. Not that any one of us is safe until our deaths but at least I know that it's all up to me to maintain my soul in a state of grace. [In re-reading this I must interject that my cooperation with God is up to me--my salvation cannot happen without His grace.]  "Forewarned is forearmed", as they say. About this time I really started getting interested in apologetics and evangelisation. I added a little bit more to my daily prayer. Now I say, "Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, please save souls and please allow me to help."

Then I sat back, just waiting for our Lord to send the pilgrims flocking to my door, so to speak. (Remember, I have a big ego.) Never happened. Once in a blue moon someone would ask a question about the faith or why I had converted or I found the odd chance to "witness" to someone. I felt good about being used by heaven in even a small way but I would have like to be used a little more often. Now, St. Paul lost the scales from his eyes in a moment. My "epiphany" came a little more slowly.

It finally dawned on me how much I had really been contributing and how easy it is for any of us to contribute to this important and vital work. Consider:
1. Pray the Chaplet of Divine Mercy which allows each soul at death to choose to accept Christ's mercy. Pray it often, if not daily.
2. Make one of your intentions when saying the Holy Rosary the conversion of souls.
3. Offer up the occasional Mass for the conversion of souls.
4. Offer up a reception of Holy Communion for the conversion of souls.
5. Consecrate yourself to the Immaculate Heart of Mary as St. Louis Marie de Montfort urged. She takes all of our graces and invests them where they'll do the most good. She's the perfect spiritual investment counselor!
6. Offer up a small fast for the conversion of souls.
7. Evangelise, evangelise, evangelise.

I'm sure there are other things to do but as you can see, each of us can make a small difference by our prayers and sacrifices. The little that we do can be magnified into a humongous grace for someone whose salvation is as precarious as mine was. Someone did it for me--pay it forward!

"Birthday Gift"

JMJ. Today's my birthday. I'm 63 years old, by the grace of God. Oh, and I'm retiring from my job as an endoscopy nurse of 37 years. Life has been a roller coaster ride. Figuratively. From the most exhilarating of heights to abysmal lows, I've experienced it all. Lot's wife was turned into a pillar of salt when she looked back to her old life. Me, I've been much luckier.

A helmsman aboard ship, in endeavouring to steer a straight course, will not only rely on the compass before him but will occasionally look aft to gauge the straightness of his ship's wake. So it's been with me. Whenever I find myself languishing in a valley I look back and am always surprised by how far the Lord has brought me. At one time I thought that this progrees was the result of my own good planning but I was shown that it was His work (and His alone) which has brought me to where I am today.

Where is that, you ask? One day closer to Jesus, I answer. Though why He wants me, I'll never know. Amen.

"What Price a Soul?"

JMJ. Well, the good guys got the bad guy. The REALLY bad guy--Osama bin Laden. The headlines in the Cleveland "Plain Dealer" fairly crowed in triumph that "the wicked witch is dead." I admit to having very mixed emotions.

When I was younger the world was far more black and white than it is now. The shades of grey on almost all ethical questions seem to outnumber the sands by the seas. I know I haven't changed; where have they come from? I once whole-heartedly supported the death penalty. Not anymore. Why, you ask? Good question. Here's the only answer I've been able to come up with in my heart.

I was raised Presbyterian. Most of my adult life, though, was spent as a pagan searching for the truth. Truth with a capital T. So I was not always the paragon of virtue I am today. And there's the rub. For years I danced blindly at the edge of a deep precipice, totally unaware of the mortal danger I was in. Some wonderful soul prayed for my conversion, I'm sure. The Blessed Mother nudged me in the ribs, and I realised that Her Son had been knocking at the door of my heart for years.

Not only have I embraced His Church--HIS Church, mind you--but I've embraced the entire concommitant culture of life that goes along with it. I even went so far as to have a Mass said for Bin-Laden's conversion, having heard on a Catholic CD that Christ told us to pray for our enemies. So, am I happy that the leader of the enemy bent on our destruction has been eliminated? Of course. Hopefully, his death will result in the saving of many. But I can't help but think that at some point he might have repented and his soul might be saved. It's really tough to rejoice over the death of someone you've had a Mass offered for, let me tell you.

Maybe his soul is safe, I don't know; only God knows for sure. After all, much stranger things have happened. I'm the proof of that!

"Puzzled"

JMJ. My wife and I were Amway distributors for a number of years--good products, good business. One of the many things we learnt at training sessions was that "whenever you stick your head up above the crowd, someone is going to throw tomatoes at it." Good lesson in Amway, good lesson in Catholicism. Only one Christian denomination has been around for the whole shooting match and as such it's the one most apt to be the target for tomato-slingers.

Protestants of one stripe or another are always taking potshots at us for any of a myriad of reasons. Take the crucifix for example. "Why do you people have Jesus on the cross--don't you know that He's not there anymore?" Well, as I've said elsewhere, St. Paul says, "We teach Christ and Him crucified." Or, "why do you folks worship statues?" "Why do you kneel before pictures?" Well, statues and pictures tell stories visually and help us focus our prayers.

"Why do Catholics worship Mary?" Again, we don't worship anyone but God. We honour the Blessed Mother. (Doesn't it just seem sensible to honour the Woman whom Christ honoured, too? After all, we just imitate Him.) "And what about the Rosary? Why do you pray that--it's not in the Bible. Well, neither is the word trinity... Now it's my turn.

Why do you Protestants worship the Bible? Why do you claim it's the only revelation of God? I mean, we read the Bible, too, and every day at Mass the Word of God is proclaimed to us, far more religiously (pardon the pun) than at Protestant worship services. The answer's very simple, really. The Christian church exists for one reason only--to help us get to heaven. We do this by cooperating with the sanctification of our souls by God.

Anything that helps in this respect is to the good. Praying the Rosary helps us meditate on Christ's life and ministry. Asking the saints for their intercession on our behalf is no different than asking a friend to put in a good word for us with the boss. Wearing a scapular reminds us in a scratchy way of what we should be focusing our prayer life on. Seeing Christ on His cross reminds us in the most visceral way of what His death really entailed.

Now, can you attain salvation without all these things? Sure, but why make it difficult? If following a map helps you arrive at a destination you've never visited before, would YOU throw it away and blindly drive off into the sunset? Neither would I.

"Spring Renewal'

JMJ. Slowly but surely the weather is getting a wee bit warmer, the days a little bit longer, the birds are doing their chirping thing, the squirrels are getting frisky, and the flowers are beginning to bloom. That's all very nice and I wouldn't have it any other way but there is one more harbinger of newness and growth that gets lost in the shuffle, so to speak.

These are all signs of a natural renewal of life. But just as there are two components of a person--the natural and the supernatural, the body and the soul, so, too, there is a supernatural renewal of life and that is the baptism into new life and into the Church. That's the great thing about Easter. Every year on Holy Saturday evening, pagans become Christians in the baptism of the Trinity and those Christians of other persuasions who have listened to the prompting of the Holy Ghost in their hearts were marked with Holy Oil, allowing full communion with Jesus' Church.

The actions of the Sacraments cannot be seen since they produce their effects in the supernatural realm. But the changes--those are magical and they are most manifest in the wide grins of joy, the tears, and the sense of awe on the countenaces of all those new Catholics who have just received their Saviour in the Blessed Sacrament. It's like coming out of a darkened room into the light of a wide, wondrous, new world. Thanks be to God!

"Easter"

JMJ. Lent is always described as a journey. We are invited to travel with Jesus throughout the forty days of His passion, to suffer with Him as He witnessed one of His own chosen disciples betray Him into the hands of His enemies, to suffer with Him in the garden of Gethsemane, to be lashed with Him at the pillar, to help Him bear His cross to Calvary, and to feel the spikes as they fastened Him to the tree.

And that's as it should be. We, because of our sins, put Him on His road to death and, mystery of mysteries, we hopefully share with Him in His resurrection to eternal life. But there's another aspect to this Lenten journey. It's an embarkation of our own from a life of uncleanliness to one, through His grace, of unstained souls and lives. I didn't make it. I didn't arrive, finally, in my Jerusalem. Through sin, and unfaithfulness, and weakness I lagged by the wayside.

But I progressed. My soul is maybe a little whiter. I have a little better knowledge of my weaknesses and my future promise. And I'm a whole lot nearer my goal than if I had never set out on that Lenten journey. I'm a little bit closer to Home.

"In Time for Spring Planting"

JMJ. Well, folks, in the next four years we'll celebrate the 150th anniversary of the War of Northern Agression, which the more politically-correct continue to call the American Civil War. Be on the look-out for myriads of books, magazine articles, and the musings of liberal media pundits, all of whom will help to perpetuate the myth that slavery was defeated but continues to be the root cause of all the ills of this country, including psoriasis and moral lethargy.

The following, in no particular order, are a few facts for your edification--all true (which is why they're called facts)and all quite verifiable, often from northern sources.

* Abraham Lincoln plotted and maneuvered for war even prior to his inauguration.
* "Honest" Abe didn't care two hoots and a holler for black folks. He wanted to send them all back to Africa.
* Prior to the war he begged (in writing) each state governor to support an amendment to the Constitution enshrining slavery in the US for all time.
* The North, not the South, committed the first act of war when Maj. Rob't. Anderson moved his command in Charleston harbour from Ft. Moultrie to Ft. Sumter.
* The first union officer killed in battle one week before the First Battle of Bull Run was shot by a black Confederate sniper.
* Three black soldiers were killed at the Battle of Gettysburg--all Confederate. At the time there were no black union soldiers in combat.
* At the beginning of the war, roughly 5% of white Southerners owned slaves. Roughly 5% of free Southern blacks did, too.
* The over-bearing and imperial federal government we have now is the direct result of Abraham Lincoln's primary thrust.
* The CSA was fighting, not to protect slavery but to maintain the type of government originally given to us by our Founding Fathers.
* Once the North decided to use black troops, it took almost a year and a half before they finally agreed to pay them the same wage as white soldiers. In 1861, the very beginning of the war, the Confederate government passed a law prescribing the exact same pay for black and white soldiers in its armies.
* Black veterans are buried in Southern war cemeteries and drew state veterans' pensions.
* Nathan Bedford Forrest, a slave-trader before the war and one of the most feared of all Confederate commanders, publicly stated that the black cavalry troopers who rode with him were the finest fighters he had.

Ok. That's all for now and enough to get you curious. Everything else you hear to the contrary may be saved up and spread on your gardens.