"An Idle Thought"

JMJ. I was on my way to check out paint swatches yesterday, driving down the road to our local Lowe's store about ten miles away. I was praying the Rosary although that's not unusual. I was using a rosary to count, though, and that is. Usually I just count in my head as I go along but I often miscount so the Blessed Mother sometimes gets 15 Hail Marys per decade instead of ten. Anyway, I had both hands on the wheel with the rosary in my left. I stopped at a red light and happened to look at the car next to me. It was driven by a 20-ish young man who had both hands on his wheel, too. He, though, was texting on his cell-phone as he sat there and then as he began to drive away when the light changed.

Unsafe? Of course. What struck me as ironic is that we represented two forces--the spiritual and the secular. Now, I'm not sitting in judgment on him or blowing my own horn. In fact, I'm not sure what the point is that I'm trying to make. Maybe just that we both chose different ways to make the drive productive. I think I'll continue to pray the Rosary.

"The Berea Water"

JMJ. There must be something really great in our Berea water supply. I was taking a shower the other day (I know, I do that from time to time) and I got an amazing insight into a passage from Holy Scripture. It's the verse from Luke dealing with the finding of the Child Jesus in the temple, to wit, chapter 2, verse 52. St. Joseph and the Blessed Mother found that Jesus was not present on their returning to Nazareth and returned to Jerusalem hoping that He had remained there. They found Him, discoursing with the learned ones in the Temple.

Now, as an FYI, I have been continually amazed lately at the number of people within the Church who feel that they may go around, teaching and conducting Church business as they see fit. In Cleveland, as only one example, our Bishop had closed a number of parishes which he felt were not productive. Many parishioners, understandably, were upset that their spiritual homes were being closed. In this instance the parishioners appealed to their pastor. They rented a commercial area which they now call their "worship space" and their pastor there administers the sacraments, in defiance of His Excellency.

Imagine my awe when I recalled the above-mentioned passage, "And He went down with them [St. Joseph and the Blessed Mother] and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them..." Do you see the enormity of this? Jesus had every reason to be there. After all, it was His Father's house. Although only twelve years old in time, Jesus--the second Person of the Blessed Trinity Who has existed for all eternity, is obedient to two of His creatures! Why? Because as His parents, they were in authority over Him!

By acting out of their own arrogance and hubris, so many bishops, priests, and laity place themselves superior (by their actions) to our Lord Jesus Christ because they will not accept the God-given authority of their superiors. One expects this of Protestants but it is sad to see it within our Church. Have mercy on us, Lord.

"The Woman In the Moon"

JMJ. I was walking the dog the other night. He gets a chance to smell smells, get a little exercise and use nature's facilities before I go to bed each night. The only time I mind it is during the winter when I can think of about a zillion other things I'd rather be doing. But Linus is a good dog and doesn't ask for much so I try to be charitable about it, regardless of the weather.

Anyway, I waited a little bit longer this night than usual and it was quite dark by the time we went out. It's a great time to think, BTW, and to pray a little, too. We hadn't gone more than a couple hundred feet and there it was, exploding before my very eyes in splendour--the moon, completely full and shining brightly in a cloudless sky. Yes, I think I could make out the "man in the moon" but it struck me how much more the moon reminds me of Our Lady. Now, like 95% of the stuff on this site, this is not original to me--I'm sure I read it somewhere else.

But it just hit me, I guess you could say. There she shone, in all her glory, immaculate in a gown of off-platinum, surrounded by the deepest blue. A beacon, if you will, to light our steps when the sun is not there to do so. To guide us from straying from the true path. How does She do this? By some innate power of Her own? Hardly! She does it by reflecting Her Son, our sun. It is His brightness, His refulgence, His majesty that supplies Her power. She is the mirror for us, taking rays from half a globe away and using them, dutifully, for His glory and our benefit. Think about that the next time you're out with the family mutt. Thanks, Linus. I owe you.

"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.