The Blessing in the Soap Suds

I don’t usually love doing housework, but I do like to have things in order. When I was a young mother I felt like it was an impossible task to keep the house clean- it seemed that the piles of laundry or the dishes in the sink would multiply like so many Tribbles on a Starship. With age and a better handle on organization- plus kids getting older-that time of chaos seems like a distant memory.

We have a pretty rustic home in the mountains outside of New York that we go to many weekends to get away from the hustle of the city. We don’t have a dishwasher upstate, so I found myself on Sunday morning being the only person awake, in front of a sink filled with soap suds, cleaning up the remnants of the previous night’s feast. I recognized that this quiet time with my hands in water would be a perfect time for prayer.

Before I really got into praying, I started to think about how our Blessed Mother Mary also would have washed the dishes for her family, and how she never would have felt “put upon” by the chore. Her “Big Yes” of accepting her role without question in the Annunciation, was undoubtedly followed by thousands of smaller “yesses” as she lived out her perfect vocation. While none of us are perfect in our vocations (and certainly not me when it comes to caring for my house!), it is such a wonderful opportunity to bless our families in the same way that she most certainly blessed hers.

Feeling the love of the Blessed Mother with me as I started to wash the dishes, it became a wonderful opportunity to say the rosary as I scrubbed away, and had the beautiful winter morning outside the window staring back at me. When I had finished the praying and the dishes, it occurred to me that years ago the idea of saying the rosary daily was daunting because I wondered when I would fit it in to my busy schedule. Now that I have been at it for some time, I realize that there are so many hidden moments in every day available for prayer- if you want there to be. Before the feet hit the floor in the morning is perfect, but so is when taking a shower, when commuting, when taking a lunch break, when doing something manual like chopping onions or folding laundry, and of course, when in bed before the day is done. We also have the opportunity for a “yes” to giving our lives to Christ, always and completely, and it starts with choosing to be in communion through prayer.

The best laid plans of mice and men…

I am not into New Years resolutions, but I do love to start a new year with plans. Big plans for health and for organizing, plans for work and projects. I look forward to my time over the holidays to reflect and to chart the course for the next 12 months. This year, however, my plan to plan fell away. With all of the traveling and visiting and holiday festivities and jet lag, I find myself in these early days of January with none of my carefully plotted outline for the year ahead made. But I have something else!

Today as I was wearily folding laundry taken from suitcases as we settle back into work and school routines, I turned on a Mother Angelica rerun. She was talking about Purgatory, and one of the things she said really struck me. She said that to avoid purgatory we need to be completely accepting of God’s will in our lives, and thankful for it. She quoted Mother Theresa – apparently someone came to her and said “Mother Theresa, we have a problem”-and before hearing what the problem was, Mother Theresa said, “No- we have a gift.” Why? Because Mother Theresa understood that we can be purified in this life by the trials that God permits in our lives. When we realize that everything that happens to us is either God’s will or something that God permits – BECAUSE HE LOVES US!- that it will all be for our good – we can accept what happens and be grateful for it.

This doesn’t mean that there is no place for planning and having goals for the year. But more than anything my goal is to really listen for the will of God in my life and to follow it. How to do that? Pray, go to mass, read the Bible and Catechism, volunteer with the sick and the poor, go regularly to confession- there are so many ways. But mostly to NOT let my plans get in the way of what God has for me. The idea is to not be so attached to what I want and to be happy when God has a different plan for my life. Wishing you all a blessed New Year!

Why Me?

A close friend of a friend died last year. I only knew him slightly but he was a well respected person, a good father and husband, successful professionally. Then in one brief instant, unexpectedly, he was gone. My friend was grieving the loss of this fine person, and she asked me- why would God take him? Why, when there are so many people who are not living the way they should, but yet God continues to bless their lives with good health and other earthly gifts. Why?

I have two answers to this question that satisfy me as to the loving nature and the justice that is our Heavenly Father.

  1. This earth is not our home. As has been stated far more eloquently by others than by me, we are not physical bodies with a spirit, but rather we are spiritual beings that for our time on earth inhabit our bodies. Our true destiny is eternity- and we hope to spend that in heaven. This earth and our time here is for preparation for the life of the world to come. For all of us, life is short – and for some its shorter than for others. I think about this life as being in the foyer of the house – but the real deal is when we get to enter the main house, which is heaven (or purgatory, or hell)- so we want to use our time wisely here to prepare as well as we can for that future time.
  2. The second thought I had on this topic came from a Mother Angelica episode. She was recounting how she was distraught with many business issues weighing on her, as well as serious physical and health related trials. She went into Adoration and was laying it all out for Jesus and she said to Him “Why me Lord? You know I don’t know anything about business, why have You called me to do this? And why do I now have all of this trouble?” and the word she received back from Him was “yes- and why Me?”. Because we are sinners and the wages of sin is death. But He was not a sinner and yet he took on the price of all of our sin, which makes asking “why me?” seem like a very silly question indeed.

Life is filled with trials- the Bible promises us we will have them. We will have heart ache and we will have illness. People will fail us, and we will fail others and ourselves. This is life in a fallen world. But we also have hope. We have a God who loves us and who wants us all to be redeemed. He wants each of us to be with Him in Heaven, and he has given us the freedom to choose whether we want that too. What a wonderful God we serve!

Finding stillness and quiet at Christmas

In these last days and hours leading up to Christmas there is so much hustle and bustle- and so much of it is joyful and festive. Some of it is just crazy frantic- shopping, wrapping, packing, traveling…go, go, go!

So let’s pause.

We can’t hear God if we aren’t listening, and we need to hear Him now- as we do always. Taking a little time out of the day to go to mass, or just sit in prayer- it is so renewing to the soul. No matter the time of year it is very easy to fall into prayer being about me talking, me petitioning, me…me…me – but so much more it needs to be about me listening- making it about God, and not about me.

My prayer for all of us at this blessed and very full time of year, is that we each of us find a moment, in a quiet corner, to hear God’s still small voice in our hearts, and to feel the gratitude that He sent His Son as a tiny, vulnerable baby- into a humble manger – to save us all. If that isn’t worth stopping to deeply ponder, I don’t know what is!

Merry Christmas everyone!

Accepting Gods Will

One of the hardest things for us to do is accept that God’s will may be different from what we want. The whole reason that we want something is because we think it is what is best for us- and it is so much easier to see in someone else’s life that maybe there is something better for them. It is funny how we grow up but there are some aspects of being a human being that are not that different when we are adults than when we are children. And just like we needed our parents to say “no” to us- for our health or overall wellbeing they would restrict sweets, or make us go to bed on time- God does the same.

I was speaking today with a lovely Christian woman who I am just getting to know. She began telling me about a man she had started dating recently- who she had developed strong feelings for. Her concern was that his ex-girlfriend seemed to be circling and trying to win him back. My suggestion to her was to pray about it, but not to worry. If this man is meant to be her boyfriend, and she honors God in her behavior towards him, then it will come to pass. If it doesn’t happen, it is because there is something better for her. Easy to say, when my heart is not the one on the line.

My hope is that when I have something in my life that I have my heart set on, that I will also have a friend who will remind me to keep my eyes fixed on God- and all the rest will fall into place. At the end of the day, all we need is Him- and all we really have is Him. We aren’t going to leave this world with any of our stuff- nor will we leave with any other people- it will just be us and Jesus, and we have an opportunity to practice relying on Him alone whenever we accept His will over our own. When we really start viewing our lives, and our stuff and relationships- and everything- as really belonging to God, it changes how we behave towards all of it.

My prayer is that this Christmas we all renew our efforts to give our whole lives to God- He is way better equipped to deal with it than we are anyway. We can then put our full effort into living in a way that is honoring to Him. If you wonder what that looks like, the resources to start with are the Bible, the Catechism of the Catholic Church – and your daily mass! With those three things we all have pretty much all the information we will ever need to live in this world and prepare for the next!

It Is the Most Wonderful (and Busiest) Time of the Year!

I got the tree up, and the cards written out. The Christmas parties have started and I find I am hitting the snooze button perhaps a bit more than I should be in the wake of the festivities aftermath. Most presents are bought- but none are wrapped. The whirlwind of travel to see family is two weeks away and the business calendar is filled with everyone needing to wrap things up before the end of the fiscal year. What about Jesus?

I love this time of year, but I find that I do need to remind myself with regularity that there is one reason – and one reason only-that we celebrate Christmas, and that is the birth of our Lord and Savior. It is a magnificent and awe inspiring reality that God humbled himself to come to us- as a baby in a manger. The Christmas scene of the Holy Family is so beautiful- and if I just stop to think about it every day- before my feet hit the floor in the morning- it changes my outlook on the entire day. Today, when I was contemplating the Joyous Mysteries as I was sitting on the subway traveling from Manhattan to Brooklyn, it took on special meaning to think about the Nativity – in this season of Advent.

I will still be making Christmas cookies this weekend, and I also will be out every night this week at some sort of celebratory function- but I will also be bringing it back, in the morning, mid-day and evening, to the reason for the season. Whether reading the Book of Luke, or attending mass, or praying with friends- this is a glorious time in our liturgical year. Let’s not miss this special time to deepen our relationship with Him who is our Creator!

What Do You do for Advent?

Advent is here. Traditionally I don’t plan particularly well for this important time of year- with all of the holiday planning somehow this gets away from me. I am determined this year to focus more intentionally on the preparation for the celebration of our Lord’s birth. Here is what I have in mind:

  1. There are 24 chapters in the book of Luke. I plan to read a chapter for each day of Advent leading up to Christmas Day- what a wonderful way to read about the life of our Lord! Doing this with family members will help to prepare all of our hearts!
  2. I am keeping a prayer journal. This is something that I have talked about doing for some time, but I haven’t done it. Having just seen the movie about Mr. Rogers (starring Tom Hanks), which was incredibly inspiring, I am newly motivated to write down the names of the people I pray for, and to pray every morning- as Mr. Rogers did. If you haven’t seen this movie, I would recommend doing it this Advent!
  3. As we know from Matt. 17-21; Mark 9:29 – Jesus teaches that only prayer and fasting had special power to cure a man possessed by a demon. Jesus teaches about the efficacy of fasting and how fasting, coupled with prayer, is acceptable and pleasing to God. I don’t really know anyone (that I am aware of) who is possessed by a demon, but I do know that fasting coupled with prayer is powerful. This Advent I plan to be more disciplined about fasting (but in a way that isn’t noticeable to others- as the Bible also tells us to fast with a smile on our faces!).
  4. I plan to schedule mass attendance a few times during the week and to confession weekly.
  5. I printed off an Advent suggestion list from the internet- one for each day. It is things like “give someone a hug today”, or “let someone go ahead of you in line”. These are really nice reminders to make this season about sharing the love of Jesus with others!

If you have special Advent practices, please comment below! I would love to add more to this special time of year!

Forgetful of Myself

I realized the other day that I have a lot of ego around cooking results. I am not a professional chef- I have a different “out of the house” profession. But I love to cook and I love to have people enjoying the food I make. I am that person who often says things like “the special ingredient is love”. Nice right? Except when people DON’T like my food. Then I get annoyed. My thought process runs along the lines of, “well I like the food, you are so picky!”, or “it’s easy to criticize when you aren’t doing any of the work!” What I realized is that this is indicative of self absorption and a “me first” attitude.

It is not a bad thing to want to cook for others- and I don’t plan to stop. What I need to do is stop the attitude, which is clearly unholy- but how? Then I found the answer when I was reading the prayer for the Order of Malta, which goes like this:

“Lord Jesus, thou hast seen fit to enlist me for thy service in the Order of St. John of Jerusalem. I humbly entreat Thee, through the intercession of the most holy Virgin of Philermo, of St. John the Baptist, Blessed Gerard, and all the saints, to keep me faithful to the traditions of our Order:

Be it mine to practice and defend the Catholic, the Apostolic, the Roman faith against sacrilege. Be it mine to practice charity towards my neighbors, especially the poor and sick.

Give me the strength I need, to carry out this my resolve, forgetful of myself, learning ever from Thy Holy Gospel a spirit of deep and generous Christian devotion, striving ever to promote God’s Glory, the world’s peace, and all that may benefit the Order of St. John of Jerusalem.

Amen.”

There is much in here to absorb- but the part that really hit me on this particular issue was the “Give me the strength I need, to carry out this my resolve, forgetful of myself, learning ever from Thy Holy Gospel a spirit of deep and generous Christian devotion” part. Wow- that can apply in so many areas of life! Forgetful of myself- that is the key!

So practically speaking, how does this get implemented? A couple of things come to mind:

  1. Examine my motives- before making a meal, pray for the people who will be eating the food – that is where the “ingredient of love” really comes in!
  2. Ask God for greater humility. Without Him I can do nothing- and there are times that my feeble efforts will fail. Learn to laugh it off- and if there is criticism from other people about something that didn’t turn out, just agree with it. Get comfortable with reality!
  3. Thank God for the opportunity to serve my friends and family with food. Be thankful for not being hungry, and for the conveniences that I have in my kitchen. Once you get going on things to be thankful for, it is truly never ending!

This “being forgetful of myself” idea works brilliantly in every area of life- because it is what we are called to do, by God!

Therese

I was sick over the weekend with a bad cold. Nothing major- just one of those times when a sore throat and runny nose leaves you feeling like a wet rag. So I lay on the couch and popped in the DVD of a movie about the life of St Therese of Lisieux. I had actually purchased this movie a long while ago, and life got busy and I never watched it. I believe God doesn’t miss an opportunity to help bring us closer to Him, and so one might say I was deeply blessed to have a cold- because it created the space in my life to take the time to watch this movie.

Many of you know the story of the “Little Flower”- and I for one follow a couple of Facebook pages dedicated to her- so I knew about her approach of showing love for Jesus in small ways. But somehow (and I guess it is this way with all the saints) it looks on the surface like it must have been so easy for them. Like they were just born “better” – and so to be exceptionally pious, or kind, or giving, or loving- is just part of their DNA in a way that it is not in mine- or most of ours. Unsurprisingly, when you watch movies about their lives, you see that it is not the case.

Therese Martin was called to religious life at a very young age, so in that way it is true that her passionate love for Jesus was extraordinary – and she knew of it earlier in life than most. But if the movie is at all accurate, she had to overcome her own issues like we all do. What was interesting was to see how she prayerfully asked for the strength to forget herself– which I am convinced is the root of holiness. As St John the Baptist said “He must increase, but I must decrease.” Therese seemed to get this more clearly at a younger age than most of us ever really see it. The other thing that Therese seemed to understand completely was also from John the Baptist, “A person cannot receive even one thing unless it is given him from heaven.”

I read recently that Therese was so consumed with the idea of dying to herself, that she was truly grateful when others did something to annoy her (like a fellow nun who kept carelessly splashing water in Therese’s face when they were working together)- because it gave her an opportunity to intentionally forget herself and proactively love someone who was being unloveable. It is in these moments that we are loving Jesus.

St Therese is such a wonderful role model. We may never any of us do great and heroic things that the world will sit up and take notice of, like St Maximillian Kolbe or St Theresa of Calcutta. But we can all do small things every day to show Jesus our love. St Therese was looking to do little things that others wouldn’t notice, so that she wouldn’t draw attention to herself, but would glorify Jesus in everything. It may sound ridiculous, but one of my big “take aways” from this movie is that my irritation when I hear someone chewing and eating noisily is an opportunity to grow in holiness. Rather than getting annoyed and angry, showing love and asking God to bless them is a real opportunity. I am sure that in a thousand ways I can turn frustration to thankfulness- because God can use every circumstance if we give it to Him!

A Fight for Life

In the US and in the world, we are fighting a battle over our culture. In most places, it appears we are losing the war. Nowhere is this more poignant than in the world of healthcare- where we can find stories across the globe about the increase in abortions and in euthanasia. A culture of death and a disregard for life is prevalent.

We can’t be complacent on this point. As Catholics, there are many topics that are open for debate- but valuing life is not one of them. The problem is that even when we think we are doing the right things- praying for people to choose life, supporting organizations that assist families in caring for their children, volunteering in hospitals to make the end of life a time of dignity- there is still more that we can do.

I learned recently of an organization whose mission is to help hospitals and doctors follow their conscience, that assists employers who want to provide insurance while supporting the mission of life, and in helping individuals to get the care they need. It is called Christ Medicus and more information about this wonderful organization can be found here.

In their own words, Christ Medicus “defends religious freedom and builds Christ-centered Catholic health care. Our mission is to share Jesus Christ’s healing love in health care, to build authentically Catholic care, to defend life and religious freedom, and to protect the poor and vulnerable.” I was very excited when I learned about this organization, because they are putting into action what so many of us have in our hearts. They are really caring for individuals, mind, body and soul.

If you are concerned about where the health care in this country may be headed, Christ Medicus is working to create solutions. “The Christ Medicus Foundation champions religious freedom, Christ-centered care, and the dignity of the human person at a moment when many are calling for health care that would undermine patient freedom and control of their medical care, limit religious liberty, and radically expand abortion. We work for a person-centered health care system.”

God bless the people at Christ Medicus who are fighting for life!