"Fire is not put out by fire!" New year's wisdom from two great saints.

Happy New Year! Welcome to the start of another journey on the road to heaven. Want a good start? Use a good roadmap and find wise guides. You can't go wrong with St. Francis de Sales and St. Alphonsus Ligouri. I love them both!

The First Consideration for the Rule of Life

Even little ones can start practicing a rule of life. 
See The Beginner's Rule of Life

I'm going to do a little series on the Rule of Life as Lent begins. Yesterday was part 1, Crafting a Rule of Life.  Today I'm going to begin going through the conference by Fr. Ripperger, essentially the How-to-do-it guidelines for developing a rule of life.

Feelings and Their Proper Role in Our Lives

This week has been interesting with regard to my spiritual reading. Everything I pick up has been about feelings and their proper place. Looking at the statue of the Sacred Heart at our chapel on Sunday, stirred feelings of gratitude and love for Jesus and awe over His love for us. Beauty has a way of doing that. Feelings are a significant part of our makeup. Having said that, it's important to keep them in their proper role.

 Yesterday, I read this in The Imitation of Christ:

Got any Good Spiritual Books on Your Reading List?

One of my favorite Catholic authors is Fr. Leo Trese. presently I'm reading his 1961 book, Seventeen Steps to Heaven. I take seriously his recommendation to make spiritual reading a part of daily life. How can we know God if we never think about Him? How can we love God if we don't know Him? Fr. Trese gives us this practical advice:

Loving God is the most important business of our lives....The truly practical Catholic, the Catholic who takes seriously his vocation to love God, will try to make spiritual reading a regular part of his weekly, if not daily, program.

And so, every day I read Scripture, or an entry in the Lives of the Saints, or a chapter in the Imitation of Christ, etc. At present I'm reading the life and ministry of Christ in chronological order in scripture. It puts things in perspective. What happened first? What did Jesus do right after His Baptism and temptation in the desert? I never thought about a lot of it before. His meeting with the woman at the well, for example happened very early in His ministry, so did the nighttime visit of Nicodemus. How does that impact my understanding of Jesus and His ministry?

Monday Morning: Another Week to Serve the Lord

Give up a glass of wine with dinner?

My thoughts are all over the place this morning -- this very early morning. Sleep and I have become strangers. Last week I had multiple four-hour nights. It reminded me of Fr. John Hardon, that zealous Jesuit beloved by so many, who rarely slept more than four hours a night. His superior had to order him to do that.

When I ask myself why I'm having sleep issues again, I remember how negligent I am at voluntary penance. I generally practice temperance, but fasting? Give up that Hershey kiss or that glass of Merlot with dinner? Well...maybe I can give it up for the next thirty minutes.

When I'm up before the early bird....

Well, it was one of those nights. I turned the light off around eleven, slept somewhat fitfully, and was wide awake at 4:30. So what does one do (after making coffee) when it's still pitch dark out and absolutely quiet? (Even the early bird is still in bed.) Here's my answer: Read morning prayer in my Magnificat, sit down with the unread stack of Wanderers, and then write a letter to my granddaughter.

The first article in The Wanderer that caught my eye was a reprint of Fr. John Hardon's commentary on the Real Presence. So many Catholics no longer believe and my granddaughter is working as the Admissions Director at a Catholic high school. She will have many opportunities to witness to her belief that Christ is really there in the school chapel simply by her reverence and frequent visits. 

So I was going to clip the article and mail it.

What Are You Reading for Lent?

I always pick out a book for Lent to be my primary reading material. Since I read St. Francis de Sales Sermons for Advent, I decided to read his Sermons for Lent. He is, of course, addressing his sermons to religious, but they nevertheless are fruitful for the laity.

Since we arrived back from our Florida trip on Ash Wednesday and I had several days of catch up, I didn't read his Ash Wednesday sermon until this morning at adoration which is on fasting and how to do it properly and well. He firsts wants the reader to recognize how beneficial fasting is, so he describes four fruits of fasting well:

• fasting fortifies the spirit, mortifying the flesh and its sensuality
• it raises the spirit to God
• it fights cocupiscence and gives power to conquer and deaden its passions
• it disposes the heart to seek to please only God with great purity of heart

What Book's on your Nightstand? I'm reading Transformation in Christ.

After reading Soul of a Lion, the biography of Dietrich von Hildebrand by his wife Alice, I decided to tackle his Transformation in Christ. It's not an easy read, but it sure is an important subject -- our life's work. Isn't transformation in Christ what we are all called to accomplish from the day we are baptized until we return to God? I'm only on the fourth chapter but the first three give the blueprint for the journey's start.

• Be willing to change -- not in the sense of progressives who see everything in flux and value nothing as substantial -- but to be malleable like the clay in the potter's hand. We must open every part of our being to God's grace, even the deepest recesses where we nurture and protect those things we really don't want to change, the little vices we love and to which we are so attached. It is this willingness to change every part of ourselves to conform to the will of God that is the essential beginning of transformation.

• Be contrite -- All who have reached the age of reason have sinned. The only human creature who never did is Mary, "Our tainted nature's solitary boast." Recognizing our sinfulness before God without minimizing or excusing it draws us to humility, and only humble people can be transformed. We all tend to forget our past sins with the sense that, "Well, that was then and we'll just forget all that and move on." But periodically examining our entire life and our pattern of sins helps us recognize how much we owe God for his mercy and His never-failing love. I remember a story about a man who sat in the church for hours gazing at the crucifix. When the priest asked him what he did there, the man replied, "I look at Him and He looks at me." What do we see when we set our gaze on Christ and His wounds? Do I see the depth of His love, a love willing to suffer torture and death for ME? Do we see the consequences of our sins? My sins put the nail marks in His hands and feet. My sins were the force that sent the spear into His side. My sins were the thorns penetrating the Sacred Head. Reflecting on our sins and what they did to Jesus invites us to deep penitence, and deep penitence is a prerequisite to a transformed heart. 

• Know yourself -- To truly know ourselves we must put ourselves in direct self-confrontation before God. "Who are you and who am I?" Von Hildebrand reminds us of St. Augustine's statement, "Could I but know Thee, I should know myself." As we move into the light of Christ we see ourselves more clearly. Christ shows us all our sins, faults, and shortcomings, even those we may subconsciously hide from ourselves. Knowledge of ourselves in the light of the desire to change and "become a new man in Christ" represents not a source of depression and despair over our vileness, but an invitation.  "We must appreciate it as a great gift of grace from God when He opens our eyes to the actual danger, and shows us where the battle has to be fought." Instead of "tilting at windmills" we put serious effort into fighting our real enemies. Those who foster illusions about themselves focus on inconsequentials. They never achieve the real change they seek. Knowing oneself is not easy and the seeker of truth must constantly pray, "Cleanse me of my hidden weaknesses."

Let's prepare for Sunday Mass by resolving to begin the journey to transformation in Christ by a deep desire to change, contrition for our sins, and a determination to know ourselves in the light of Our Loving Lord.

On my Christmas Wish List..Flannery O'Connor's Prayer Journal

Flannery O'Connor's A Prayer Journal

From the New York Times book review:

While O’Connor was a student at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop she was also a daily communicant at St. Mary’s Catholic Church at the edge of campus. Her journal reflects a conflict, in her mind at least, between a skeptical intellectual environment and the faith she sometimes anxiously sustains. She says: “I dread, Oh Lord, losing my faith. My mind is not strong. It is a prey to all sorts of intellectual quackery. I do not want it to be fear which keeps me in the church.” She knows all the arguments against religion. They seem to have changed little over the last 70 years, so there is no need to rehearse them here. Considering the threat she feels them to be, it is striking that atheism, in an apparently Southern, vernacular incarnation with nothing intellectual about it, is at the center of “Wise Blood,” the novel she had already begun to write and submit to be read in workshop. This is a tale in which pathos tips into pathology and violence, answered by a penance of self-mutilation and suffering. Yet the prose is absolutely brilliant, sentence by sentence, simile by simile, and so relentlessly inventive it feels comic. The young writer prays, “Please let Christian principles permeate my writing and please let there be enough of my writing (published) for Christian principles to permeate.”