Serene Mountaintop Point-of-View

Martha, Martha, you are anxious and worried about many things. There is need of only one thing. (Luke 10:41)

Anybody ever hiked up to the top of a mountain? Mill Mountain? McAfee Knob? Sharp Top? Dragon’s Tooth? Mount Rogers? Pike’s Peak? Mount Everest?

From the top of a mountain, everything down here looks small. Up on McAfee Knob, you can see down to here, where we are.* You can see the Wells Fargo Tower, and it looks like a little Lego. You can see planes taking off from the airport, and they look like model airplanes.

Now: Who lived His life–from beginning to end–Who lived His life with the point-of-view of God?

He walked the earth, stood very close to us, as one of us human beings, but He saw everything just as God sees everything?

And, because He could see everything, as if from a mountaintop, He had perfect peace. He could see how everything fits together. He knew exactly what He needed to do, and He did it. Everthing else, He entrusted to His heavenly Father.

Who am I talking about?

He said to Martha: ‘Calm yourself, my child. Don’t fuss. Mary has chosen the better part. She has focused her gaze on Me. Her eyes are fixed on the one thing necessary, on the answer, on the key that unlocks the great mystery of life. Rest your soul in Me, and you will know what to do. And you will have the strength to do it.’

Anybody ever heard of the Serenity Prayer? What does ‘serenity’ mean? Right: interior peace, calm under pressure. The prayer says, ‘Lord, give me the courage to change the things I can for the better, the serenity to accept what I cannot change, and the wisdom to know the difference.’

There is one man Who can actually teach us to live this prayer out every day. And He will give us the graces to fulfill it. The King of true serenity, the man with God’s point-of-view: Jesus Christ.

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* Roanoke Catholic School!

Downton Abbey Jubilee

In honor of the Triumph of the Cross, I thought I might offer a thought or two on a provocative subject.

This subject solely interests Downton Abbey enthusiasts. But, after all, isn’t that everybody?

The situation in late autumn 1919: Matthew and Mary could not wed. Too much misunderstanding, outside interference, and even death, had flown under the bridge. Both had lived through the death of another very attractive young person in their respective arms.

Ahhh…Boring

In other words, Matthew and Mary were doomed, their love consummately star-crossed. Hopeless. Tragic. Swallowed up by the merciless vagaries of cruel Fate. Nothing to look forward to but the long, slow, solitary march toward death and nothingness. Black suits and dresses forever.

But here’s the question: What happened? Something changed. Before we knew it, the snow was falling, they took the air on the veranda, and Crikey! they’re engaged.

What changed? How do you go from doomed to vavoomed like that? The fundamental nature of time, reality, justice, and love seems to shifted. Death no longer holds a viselike grip over this couple.

What happened?

Simple. Christmas. Christmas came, and the black clouds over the cemetery blew away.

Anna falling in love with Bates has never made sense to me. Bates bores me beyond tears. But Matthew and Mary have offered something genuinely interesting. And the jubilee their romance experienced makes perfect sense, when we remember that the Savior had been born in the meantime. The Christian faith allows mankind to start fresh every year. Death doesn’t win. Love and life win.

Mary Has Chosen the Better Part

Now a Timberwolf

Will the Wizards win 40 games this season? That would be 21 more than they won last season, more than doubling their win percentage.

I was sorry to see Darius Songaila go. But the Wizards’ off-season trades have been excellent. I think they will play better-than-.500 ball and will contend for a playoff spot…

…For the record: I can think of a lot of places where I would love to sit and drink a cold beer.

The White House is not one of them…

…As they continued their journey, He entered a village where a woman whose name was Martha welcomed Him.

She had a sister named Mary who sat beside the Lord at His feet listening to him speak.

Martha, burdened with much serving, came to Him and said, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me by myself to do the serving? Tell her to help me.”

The Lord said to her in reply, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and worried about many things. There is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part and it will not be taken from her.” –Luke 10:38-42

There is plenty to do. But the life of action in this world is for the sake of reaching the life of contemplation in the next.

It is of the essence of the Church that she be both human and divine, visible and yet invisibly equipped, eager to act and yet intent on contemplation, present in this world and yet not at home in it; and she is all these things in such wise that in her the human is directed and subordinated to the divine, the visible likewise to the invisible, action to contemplation, and this present world to that city yet to come, which we seek. –Vatican Council II, Sacrosanctum Concilium 2

Holy Family Sunday

1) San Fran weather update

2) Environmentalist Pope Benedict says no to “gender ideology”:

The Creator helps Christians to understand our responsibility toward the earth. It is not simply our property to be exploited according to our interests and desires. Rather, it is a gift of the Creator.

However, concern for God’s creation cannot be limited to care for the natural environment– although that is certainly a part of it. Far more important is the Church’s mission to preserve the ecology of the human being, understood in the proper manner. The Church must teach clearly about the nature of the human person, to counteract the influence of secular ideologies that confuse and diminish human dignity. God created man and woman as complementary, and the Church demands that this order of creation be respected by promotion of marriage and family life.

3) Your servant’s Holy Family Sunday homily:

In the beginning, God created mankind. Then, in the fullness of time, He became man. In the beginning, He made man and woman to be a family. In the fullness of time, He became a member of a family.

Prudes? Us? I don’t think so.

"I am the Immaculate Conception"

A lot of us have heard the canard: “The Catholic Church has a hang-up when it comes to sex.”

If you hear this while you are on your way out the door to Mass today, just smile patiently.

You are no prude.  You are on your way to celebrate one of the Church’s biggest feast days, the day when a man and his wife had sex, and the world was changed forever.

Fresco of Joachim and Ann by Giotto

We are not afraid of the way God made us, male and female. We say that it is good for men and women to get married and make babies.

The peddlers of the contraceptive culture of death–they are the prudes.  Their stratagems try to turn sex into something shameful.

Sexual sin is shameful, sure enough. But the Church does not have feast days for sins, and today is the feast day of the conception of a baby.

Today is the day when God, St. Joachim, and St. Ann–together–gave us our Lady. She was conceived the old-fashioned way. God made a new Garden of Eden in St. Ann’s womb. The baby was pure from the first moment of her tiny, beautiful existence!

REDSKINS ADDENDUM

…continuing with the P&BD theme of telling it like it is, here is a Chris Cooley quote for you:

“We just sucked. Right now we suck as an offense.”