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Christian Witness

Reflection for Trinity Sunday 2025

Christian Witness

Reflection for Trinity Sunday 2025

Christian Witness

Reflection for Trinity Sunday 2025

Everything Else

Can we all be contemplative mystics?

Ben Johnson from Western Orthodoxy comments on people seeking a mystical experience in every liturgical service in A Thirst for Spooky Religion. He works off a post on the same subject by Huw Raphael.

He states that people are looking for:

…something otherworldly, exotic, cryptic, ethereal, irrationally exuberant, a spiritual high, etc…

The experience of liturgies and most especially of the Holy Mass is to lift the eyes of our hearts and minds to God. The architecture, the music, the prayer, the postures and actions we undertake are meant to set us apart —“ for a time. It is a time of refreshment and nourishment for our souls. Each experience of the Holy Mass is a moment in the presence of the Godhead.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus and the apostles couldn’t even get away to rest. They didn’t have time to eat. We too are only allowed a brief break before we get back to working on our own journey to God and to witnessing Christ’s truth to others.

I agree. Seeking the ‘other worldly’ all the time, to the exclusion of our brothers and sisters in the world is sinful. It is escapism rather than acting in accordance with our mandate and our gifts.

Pope Benedict XVI stated in commending terrorists to a cloister’s prayers:

“Contemplative life, rich in charity opens heaven to humanity, which so needs it, as today in the world it is as if God did not exist. And where God is not, there is violence and terrorism,”

Contemplative life can indeed lead to the mystical experience of God. It can open us, and through us the world, to the experience of heaven. However, like all gifts and crosses, it is not for everyone.

Those truly called to such a life have received the grace necessary for the journey. Those seeking that unity with God have a very long and hard road to follow —“ often a lifetime’s journey —“ that may still leave them desiring at the point of death.

Each of us is on a path to God with gifts necessary for the journey. We simply need to remember that:

There are different kinds of spiritual gifts but the same Spirit;
there are different forms of service but the same Lord;
there are different workings but the same God who produces all of them in everyone.
To each individual the manifestation of the Spirit is given for some benefit.
To one is given through the Spirit the expression of wisdom; to another the expression of knowledge according to the same Spirit;
to another faith by the same Spirit; to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit;
to another mighty deeds; to another prophecy; to another discernment of spirits; to another varieties of tongues; to another interpretation of tongues.
But one and the same Spirit produces all of these, distributing them individually to each person as he wishes.

Poland - Polish - Polonia

Roadside Shrines in Poland

Gillibrand at Catholic Church Conservation provides a link to photos of roadside shrines in Poland in his post: Poland, still Catholic.

During my time in Poland what impressed me more than the shrines themselves, was that people still doffed their hats, bowed, or crossed themselves when they passed these shrines, even while driving by.

The shrines are often memorials to those executed by the Nazi Germans or the Soviets at those places. If you visit major cities you will see small shrines in the foundations of buildings or plaques in the pavement. Memorials to those killed there.

May they be of Holy Memory.

From a Treatise on Caring for the Dead by Augustine of Hippo (Cap. 2, 3)

Nevertheless, it doth not follow that the bodies of the departed are to be despised, or treated as naught, and specially in the case of just men and faithful; for the bodies of such men were used by their spirits in the life for godly purposes, that is, as organs and vessels of all good works.

…

HENCE, remembrance of the departed, and prayers for them, are tokens of true affection. And since the faithful are moved thereto by filial piety, doubt not that this same remembrance and prayer is profitable unto everyone that so lived in this world, as to attain profit from such things after death.

But even if some necessity permitteth not the body to be buried, or from lack of proper facilities giveth no opportunity for burial in a sacred place, yet should not prayers for the soul of the departed be omitted. The duty of such prayers is taught us by the Church, which hath undertaken, as an obligation, to offer them for all the departed of the Christian and Catholic fellowship in a general commemoration without mention of names.

The Polish American Journal has more information on this subject in Kapliczki: Poland’s Small Treasures.

Christian Witness, Poland - Polish - Polonia

Nativist Bigotry

It still goes on. Reference Guy in Store Is Clearly Polish by Doug McHone at CoffeeSwirls.

He posts this under the category skunkbusters. He explains what a skunkbuster is here.

Uh, sorry, I don’t get it (maybe I’m at a Home Depot rather that at a faith blog). How is laughing at and mocking people a means to spiritual growth?

Mr. McHone, stay away from the ethnic stuff. You just give the secular humanists another target to point to and say – ‘the Christians aren’t very Christian.’

Homilies

Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

I Myself will gather the remnant of My flock
from all the lands to which I have driven them
and bring them back to their meadow;
there they shall increase and multiply.

God promised the people of Israel that He would take care of them. He would care for them like a shepherd cares for his sheep.

At the appropriate moment in time God the Father sent His only Son, Jesus Christ to us as a man of flesh and blood —“ and as God.

God himself walked among us. He ate with us. He listened to us. He had great empathy for us. He used beautiful language, as the Father had used through His prophets of old. He was the shepherd for the lost sheep.

Today’s Gospel tells us that Jesus and His apostles were looking for a quiet place to go off and rest and pray, a place to reflect on what had happened on their missions to the cities, towns, and villages of Israel.

They couldn’t do it. No, the poor, the seekers, the sinners, the weak and the lame, the questioners, they all followed Him.

His heart was moved with pity for them,
for they were like sheep without a shepherd;
and He began to teach them many things.

We love this beautiful language, the gentle loving shepherd looking after his sheep. We love the soft and mellow Jesus, the Jesus of our imaginations, the Jesus we paint for our children in Sunday school.

Brothers and sisters,

We’ve somehow misplaced the shepherd Jesus —“ Jesus, the man who could save sheep with the crook of His staff. Jesus who could pull His sheep out of the jaws of the wolf, Jesus, the man, who was strong enough to guide and teach His sheep.

He began to teach them many things.

But did they learn, have we learned, from our shepherd?

The words of today’s psalm give us a powerful sense of confidence, if we believe they are true, if we trust God’s word.

Even though I walk in the dark valley
I fear no evil; for you are at my side
with your rod and your staff
that give me courage.

Do we take up that courage? Are we a people who fear no evil or pain? Do we see ourselves clothed in white garments washed in the blood of the lamb, protected by His rod and staff? Or are we faint at the thought of standing up to wrong?

This week’s press has been full of articles that call for Christian witness. They call on us to be strong in our faith, in the face of great evil.

Reflect on the alleged stem cell debate. The world calls us ignorant. The world says that we bring condemnation and death upon the sick.

Reflect on the Churches that support abortion and stem cell research on embryos. Kill the babies so we don’t have to suffer. We want our lives to be better, so get rid of the weak sheep; they’re only getting in our way. Their parts are more useful to us than they are.

Reflect on events in the Middle East. The war in Iraq, the war Israel has undertaken against Lebanon, and the stacks of civilian bodies piling up. Those civilians, many of whom are children, those civilian Christians, Muslims, and Druze who lived together in peace, are blood witnesses against our inaction, our buying in. We Christians are woefully silent.

Reflect on the Churches that buy-in to that war. The Evangelical Christians who think the war in the Middle East is the best thing to happen since Jesus. They think the wars there will hasten the coming of Jesus. Come-on, hurry up Lord, the bodies are piling up for you.

Reflect on recent events in so many so called Christian Churches. Those events call on us to be strong. They call on us to be strong witness to the faith that is being jettisoned by so many.

The numbers are stacking up against us. Our witness, true Catholic Christianity is a laughing stock and an object of derision in the world, even among alleged Christians.

Have we gotten that soft? Have we condemned ourselves to a life of ease by sins of laziness (remember the old term sloth) and greed?

Have we forgotten who we are, or are we afraid to witness against evil? Have we forgotten that Jesus taught us many things, the first and foremost being that we must love God and our neighbor, and that we must be willing to lay down our lives for each other?

Where are the true Churches? The Churches that hold true to historic Catholic Christianity. The Churches that still remember that the world is not all there is, the Churches that remember that we are to take up our crosses and join our sacrifices to the One, to Jesus Christ who sacrificed all for us.

In Christ Jesus you who once were far off
have become near by the blood of Christ.

We have been drawn near to God by Jesus’ blood. We have been washed in the blood of Christ. Now is the time to get on the road and complete the journey.

God has kept His promises to us. He cares for us, watches over us, and protects us. We need only believe. We need only be strong enough to take that first step toward the Kingdom. We need only remember the many things He taught us.

Take up the courage of Christ Jesus! Go today! Bear witness; bear the truth of Christ to the world.

Even though I walk in the dark valley
I fear no evil; for you are at my side
with your rod and your staff
that give me courage.

Amen.

[dels]homilies, sermons[/dels]

Current Events

Why Mr. Bush?

From the Independent: Why is there not a murmur of protest from Washington? by Kim Sengupta in Nicosia.

Outside the cavernous US government-run holding centre in Nicosia, Mohammed Shami shook his head. “I feel embarrassed to be an American. They have given Israel the green light to destroy Lebanon. What they are doing is wrong; it is immoral.”

Yes, indeed. President Bush acted very quickly to save the lives of the unborn the other day. If only he would act so quickly to save the lives of the born, the children of Lebanon.

Current Events

The reality of Lebanon

The best analysis I have ever read on the tragedy that is Lebanon, a tragedy that is yesterday, today, and perhaps forever. It is so sad and it pains me deeply. Read: A farewell to Beirut by Robert Fisk in Beirut.

Beirutis are tough people and are not easily moved. But at the end of last week, many of them were overcome by a photograph in their daily papers of a small girl, discarded like a broken flower in a field near the border village of Ter Harfa, her feet curled up, her hand resting on her torn blue pyjamas, her eyes —” beneath long, soft hair —” closed, turned away from the camera.

She had been another “terrorist” target of Israel and several people, myself among them, saw a frightening similarity between this picture and the photograph of a Polish girl lying dead in a field beside her weeping sister in 1939.

Will someone, anyone, speak-up to stop it? I’ll be calling my elected representatives, if only to give voice to the voiceless.

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