Help Us To Know You Dead. By:C.C.

Today we stop to pay homage to Your going.

The sun shines intensely and it's wounding, radiant with reason for it's being.

Burnt offering proclaiming God's goodness,

and the darkness of Your endured absence.

To the tomb , to the tomb, dead within us.

Weeping without hope, insensible despair.

Hidden from this great unknown

Yet, known to us it is by grace of time , 

how unmerited it seems.

The dream they wept for 

we live out daily.

All of this faith, all of our disbelief

woven in the experience of Cross to tomb

We slumber there in disobedience of the garden 

Trembling with the obedient consent You prayed in yours. 

While they mourned the loss of their hope

We mourn in the disbelief that is frequently ours.

Standing at the Cross in solidarity, 

mourning at the tomb in confused offering .

Messy praise ,and faithless glory, unknown Lord.

At times we come so unprepared.

What we know to call good emerges from this darkness .

Why have You told the sun to shine so brightly today? 

Haunted by the grace of Your rising

Please Lord , help us to know You dead!

Help us to see Your lifeless and bloody body offered. 

Help us to stand beside our Mother, Your Mother , 

help us to feel that sword!

Help us help to lay you in the tomb...

Just so maybe, for once, we can purify what we think we own in faith

Yet lack to claim by love.

Remembering The Cross. By: C.C.

A spirit of irreverence toward God increases to the measure that one lives mindless of the Cross.

The Cross that we can often be mindless of bleeds for our attention. Not just a look of acknowledgement but of trembling reverence, of complete and honest submission in whatever capacity we have received to offer ourselves. 

This remembering, though not pretty or comfortable is a necessity of our spiritual life and faith in Christ . It is by this alone that we begin to grasp the fragments of the understanding available to us about the height of Christ's radical love.

Love is taught here. 

Love is revealed.

Given life, learned in the giving up of Christ's life for us. 

The Cross is our unified place of belonging. It is the inescapable reality of our humanity . We , would rather suffer it without naming it, live chased by its shadow but keep running on our own esteem. 

Silly we are to run from such love. Strange love no doubt , but only in meditation of it do the implications of this love unfold to us, shaped as a cross.

"Do this is in memory of me"  becomes the necessity of remembering our belonging. The harness to our striving toward sanctity, and our encouragement along the way toward the eternal end. 

What we gain by our nearness to Calvary is the gift of the third day, the Resurrected Bread to consume and sustain us. 

The Liturgy is the place we walk this journey from the incarnation to the resurrection , intentionally. In this fullness and this completed mystery, yet ever hidden, we're made ready to see what has been eternally left to us. 

Do we know Who is among us? 

Are we aware of what is taking place?

We speak of encountering Jesus, we speak of authentic witnesses. He is met in the Calvary of our hearts an encounter all consuming , we must consent to be attentive to this greeting. This eternal encounter. At the table of Christ is where witnesses are made, where the Apostles were fed with necessary remembrance, and where transformation is radiated; from what dwells in the interior, and not from the peripheral matters we often select to be consumed by.

The priest at the altar carries us to this remembering, Fathers to us, Sons in the Son, to give us a nourishment eternal. 

We suffer from infinite longings in those areas of finite limitations. Only in relationship with the infinite can we sober ourselves to the uses of our finite things, our journey here, and of Calvary's visitation to us. 

The Eucharist is the Son, our light, so much the sun risen on the third day, conquering evil and darkness, not absolving us of our suffering, but claiming us as beloved. 

The Eucharist.  Father lifts the Son before us, in this rising mirrors that of the sun , expelling all darkness, redeeming so much by His light. This spotless , unblemished Eucharist that we gather to consume even before the sun is risen shines eternally for us even if the sun outside does not. There is such an important grace here, this is the only essential Light for us. This is what sustains us even if darkness was all we could perceive outside of Him. 

In the priests hands is lifted the Son, filling the faithful with rays of love, mercy, hope, and belonging. A grace of "keeping watch" with Christ . Of standing at the foot of the Cross while others fled. 

Stand there first fixed at the Cross. The love is agonizing.

Irreverence toward God begins in our forgetting of the Cross. You will know how to receive with an awe of reverence the Bread of Life, the love of Jesus, when you remember to remember the Cross.

International Women's Day and One Universal Woman. By:C.C.

When woman lives mindless of her divine purpose all of man suffers the confusion of it's natural order.

Jesus, in His encounter with women at varying points in Scripture touches them with a profound sense of dignity, entrusting to them on more than one occasion the hiddeness of His majesty that through

them was further revealed.

Women by their very design make visible the invisible to man, and in the fertility of their ordained ability of receptivity to life bring forth, even in spiritual ways, a depth of understanding and sensitivity to the movements of the Spirit that ultimately encourage man to uphold all that is entrusted to him by God.

Through Jesus’ encounter particularly with the Samaritan woman, the woman caught in adultery, and Mary Magdalene there is a restoration by His touch to return to that divine origin and dignity that they had been created in, by calling them from the bondage of sin and into the fullness of His grace.

There is great intentionality in the way that Jesus appears to these women, and what unfolds after these encounters.

Through the Samaritan woman many unbelievers came to believe, and Mary Magdalene was the one to bear witness to the most important moment in all of history and the reason for our rejoicing. I find great symbolism in the way that our Lord made himself apparent to these women, to go forth and carry the news to man that he may believe and come to faith, and even endure in it.

There is a sacrament born in the life breathed into them by Christ’s presence that blesses those who bore witness to it. They, in tremendous ways brought the Good News to men. They, through the encounter of the nearness of God made visible the invisible power of the Lord. The souls of these women and their receptivity is the fertile ground that our Lord plants seeds of His truth.

Though I am much ignorant of “feminine theology” and also the direction that a lot of it seems to take. I am struck primarily by the ways in which a false sense of feminism has crept into the Church, and into the minds of women, this idea that there is an inequality of roles, that there is need first and foremost to be as man. And to ultimately fulfill duties that our Lord never ordained to us as women. God in his design made us “helpers” to man, to be as partners, to receive life physically and reveal the majesty of God’s blessing, tangible evidence of a miraculous God through the body of the woman. This, I see as an important point that translates even in to the spiritual, into the mystical reality of Christ.

I see a tremendous suffering of ignorance to the truth and role of women as willed by God. There is one woman alive who has boldly shared her sentiments on this matter with whom I agree greatly. And this is Dr. Alice Von Hildebrand. I worry there are far too few women imbued with the sense of understanding that she holds, and as she nears her end it is a blessing that she has left us with the abundance of her words upon pages and pages that will endure beyond her time on earth.

I recall a lecture I heard of hers where she spoke about the creation of Adam and Eve, she spoke to those initial days in the garden and brought us into the moment of God’s creation of man and woman, identifying that Adam was created from “the slime of the earth”, and that “Eve had the dignity of being made from the human person”. Eve was created by God through man, through part of his body, the body that God had made from the earth, and in this wondrous creation, from the rib, and thus the dignity of the body was made Eve. She spoke to this to begin highlighting the initial glory already belonging to woman. Her thought continued in Adam’s naming of Eve “Mother of all the living’, this lingers in my mind as a key point, and a necessary point of remembering, that even though woman suffers the wounds of original sin, nothing can eliminate this point of potential or even divine purpose of being called to be “Mother of all the living”,even in a culture where women have too often become the handmaid’s of death through killing the life of their womb.

Vonhildebrand, a lover of St.Augustine went on to allude to his comments regarding the temptation in the garden, and while he suggested that Satan came to Eve because she was the weaker sex, Vonhildebrand differs in that she was able to see Satan’s coming to Eve as a means of highlighting the power of woman’s influence over man, for good, or for evil.

She sees this approach to the woman in light of the great threat women are to Satan’s designs, because through woman comes all life, through woman is mirrored God’s glory in a profound way exceeding that of man. She speaks of this in relation to the ability to beget life within the womb, and reminds us that everything God touches, especially in regards to the potential of conception is sacred, immensely sacred and calls for a “trembling respect”.

When we come to view woman in light of having the capacity for the greatest influence over man, the chaos we suffer from today and many of the issues surfacing arise from this forgetting of woman’s divine purpose, by women themselves.

Satan comes not as a serpent in the garden, but in cunning, tremendous ways to cloud the concept of the feminine dignity and divine purpose that consequently leads man to roam around in the filth from where he was drawn.

In numerous ways there is an outpouring of women seeking worth and dignity in areas to claim some lofty status of headship, especially in areas of the Church, in my opinion this is pursued completely ignorant to the reverence necessary to hold man in his designated place and fulfill humbly the immensity of the role entrusted to them as women of Christ. When woman becomes the antagonist to man she is no longer helper, she is no longer “Mother of All the living”.

There is One Woman through Whom we must pass to understand our role as women of God and this is the Most Blessed Virgin Mary. When we seek to be near Her and to grow in the virtues that she so taught by her witness, then we uphold the role within the Church that God willed for us. To imbue it with the gift of life, to receive in the hiddeness and fragility, by our nearness to God, the eternal truths made visible by faithful servitude.

There is One Mother of The Church, One Divine Woman deserving of the role to sit beside the alter of Christ. That woman fails at large to recognize the magnitude of her worth and divine purpose is reflective that she has forgotten her tremendous belonging to the Maternity of Mary. What does it mean to be a woman of God, and His beloved daughter, but to uphold the dignity of ourselves by seeking to unfold the mystery that we are in Him, being helpers to man by utilizing our gifts in accordance to their design. By carrying the good news entrusted to us, by being a “mother of all living” and caring prayerfully for the many sons of God through whom we receive the Living Word and Bread of Life.

"Upon This Rock" By:C.C.

"You are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it." (Matthew 16:18)

Even while I lived in complete error, even while I accepted sin religiously, I never thought anything within the Catholic Church was untrue.

It lingered truthful and intact, just unexplored, and unloved.

I dismissed it , accepting that it would be waiting , just as it has been left to us by Him. Waiting as constant and fixed as Christ left it to us, but I preferred the fluidity of the world , and all of its apparent freedoms.

I remember meeting a few religious, those people imbued with a sense of the Gospel , those to whom God was really God and they were subject to His authority.

I thought myself free. Not beyond His authority, but more tragically beyond His love.

In fact, I completely chose myself there. To love other things and left no room to love Him adequately, nor the room for Him to take the place He most deserved and desired, denying Him the place He created. 

But He rang the bell of my heart , He sang there in times of need. He reminded me Whose I was, always seeking to gain entry to a place He owned yet was shut out of completely.

Eventually He won , His Rock demolishing the castles I'd built from the sand of sin.

What is this Truth we possess , if it does not leave us changed? What is this faith we profess if our whole life is not rearranged?

On the feast of the Saintly lover in 2014 , on a fresh day in February, I knelt before the bones of St.Peter , and I felt mine within shatter in further surrender. I believed before I got there, but I left that tomb faithful in spaces within me I didn't know existed.

And so I do not worry what may force against It. I do not mind those entrenched in error and sin, for Truth, though unlived remains intact and valid. God's promise to us is a constant comfort.

He alone can ring the bell.

He alone will call His children home to Rome. 

"That's Amore": Remembering Italy & God's love By: C.C.

"Do you not yet understand or comprehend?

Are your hearts hardened?

Do you have eyes and not see, ears and not hear?

And do you not remember" (Mark 8:17-18)

Our remembering of God's goodness and intercession in our lives does not render us perfect but points us to recalling where perfection can be found, and to where we must return and reside to attain it. To live in faith and trust God in order to be brought to the fullness of our purpose and know true life. 

It is important to remember where we came from, where God has brought us, and to do so graciously. The point of our remembering is important, because as we proceed in our faith lives and gain greater understanding, we see the grace of those moments behind us that  can help encourage our continued following of the Lord. This remembering also enables us to see the grace and movements of the Holy Spirit interceding at a time when we were much too ignorant to notice. It is in our coming to recognize Him at work that we become more attentive, more humble, and more faithful.

During my fourth year of university, I was far from God but nearer to my roots and indeed on my way to witnessing the collision of my culture and the faith that I had so poorly tried to dismiss.

I immersed myself in Italian studies during the later years of my post-secondary education. Many of the English courses were cross listed with Italian, and I used this to successfully explore my passion for the Italo-Canadese experience, Italian literature, and identity throughout my final year. 

I fondly remember reading through great works of Italian studies, plenty of those I read moved with deep critique and satirical references to the Catholic faith, despite how eloquently done they were, in time I did begin to recognize how controversial all of it was. Even at the highest most articulate critique of the Church I was moved to consider God in a way that I had not before.

It led me to entertain that there was something intensely true about the Catholic faith that I'd so nonchalantly thought of.

I was intrigued by the history of Italy the literary life of Florence , nostalgic for a time long gone and people etched in these pages. A dear friend of mine was going to Milan that year for a semester at Bocconi University. She is incredibly bright, I somehow always managed to keep some quality company, despite scraping through the trenches of immorality.

I approached my dad and told him that I would enjoy, as a means of celebrating my last year of university, to go to Italy for some time to be with my friend, to tour a bit etc. It was a fulfilled request and off I went for reading week and some added extra time.

I would also be spending Valentine's day in Italy , I mean, how romantic could it get?  At that point in my life I was far more into these secular things, and into plenty disastrous scenarios and men, but in honest reflection I was the tornado causing most of the disaster! God had a much bigger plan and lesson to be learned indeed.

Prior to leaving , given my interest in Italian studies I perused the Italian Interest section at Chapters one day and discovered a book about Padre Pio. It grasped my attention to say the least and I clasped the book and reserved myself to buying it. That my soul was never to be the same was an understatement, if you welcome him , look out! I am sure now , that God in all of His goodness knew I needed the intercession of one such spiritual warrior to help shake me from all my badness! 

I'm also assured had he been living and I went to him for confession it'd be one of those spent kneeling for 14 hours, with a line up of people outside shaking their heads at me chanting "Vergogna". 

I was shaken to the core , but not shaken enough of course, just rattled enough to know how real and mighty God was , how true this faith within me was , and how far I had gone from all of it, and that this Padre Pio man was a mighty man of faith and surely very real.

Valentine's day in Italy that year seemed far from romantic. It involved a yelling match with a partner left at home , and just disgust at my current life. Simultaneously this was incredibly the most beautiful day because alive in me was the desire for only God , for a Church, and this is where I reserved myself to spending the day, looking for a Church, a priest, and praying that my English tongue could muster up the ugly litany of my numerous sins in the beautiful Italian language in a confessional somehow. 

I'm amazed looking back and seeing the grace at recognizing the need for Confession, when I couldn't even muster up the effort to attend Sunday Mass. That awakening to seeing our sin and coming to know where it can be remedied is a true grace. 

My friend was off to her day at Bocconi and I was off to find a church, which I was sure in Italy, would not be difficult! Off I went to seek "la Chiesa"

What I discovered on the way was the awareness of radical solitude and my own freedom of vulnerability. There's something about the perception of being unknown in your surroundings that can offer a freedom to appear just as you are without concern. And so I wept and wept through the streets of Milan, it was far more dramatic than necessary, and maybe in many ways poetic perhaps. But it did indeed capture the moment I was in. Ah, the collapse of the sinful fortress within me was beginning. 

 I went into the Church beside the University  but there was no Priest present to hear my Confession. There was a young man praying there and I left as silently as possible in my sniffles and tears to continue seeking another Church. I walked outside and the young man who was in the Church followed me and introduced himself. His name was Giuseppe, he was from Sicily, and he was a law student at Bocconi. 

I was a mess, truthfully the last thing I wanted to do was talk to anyone beyond a priest. I spoke to him in my stuttered Italian and said that I was in need of a Priest and a good Confession. The young man looked at his watch, and told me that he knew where another Church was and that he would bring me there. He did have an exam to write that day, and told me that his time was short. He motioned toward his vehicle, and apprehensively I said to him that I would not be travelling in a car with as I do not know him. I was being "street smart" even in my state of personal disaster. He exclaimed a slightly frustrated "Va bene" and said he would walk me there. A walk that he said would take a near 30 minutes.

I could not believe the selflessness of this man's gesture to me. We spoke on the walk about faith, and religion. He shared about himself and his journey of faith and the very reason for his success of studies and in his life was due to his faith in the Lord and that of his praying family. He asked me bluntly if I was religious, I did not know how to respond to such a question. I was not religious, in fact I did not have any relationship with my faith life at that time. Although, I did talk to him about Padre Pio because I had just finished reading his life story, which I feel was largely responsible in aiding me to be walking the streets of Milan distressed and looking for a Confession.

Giuseppe had much to say about Padre Pio. In fact he was very devoted to him.  We approached this beautiful Church and he walked me inside. He spoke to the secretary for me and asked when the priest would be returning. She notified him that it would be a couple of hours. He parted with me and said ``be faithful and be strong``. He had to get back to Bocconi, and I agreed that I would wait inside of the Church for a priest. 

This Church was beyond words. There were people everywhere taking pictures. I knelt in tears in one of the pews and continued to weep for a rather long time. I did not recall the name of this Church and for years it had bothered me. I remained there for over two hours in silent tears of prayer. I did not end up seeing the Priest but there was still something seemingly profound and sense of home that I felt in being there within the Church. By God`s grace I would eventually find a priest for Confession back home, though it did take me some good time(couple years sadly) and bad moments until I sought it. 

(*Go to Confession, don't wait, it's beautiful)

When I left this Church I took a picture of it to remember. It would be years until I would realize the incredible holiness and sacred ground that I was kneeling upon, and it's symbolism. I learned that the place I was led to by Giuseppe was a Basilica.

While in attendance at a Conference in Connecticut (2013), I encountered a priest from Milan. I quickly realized that maybe he would be able to tell me the name of this Church where I was years before in tears and in search of a priest. 

   Fr. Mario did in fact tell me that this Basilica where I was at in 2008 is called Sant` Eustorgio. It is one of the oldest Churches in Milan and the original location of the relics of the Three Kings. It is also named after St. Eustorgius (I) who was Archbishop of Milan in 343-349. He was appropriately referred to by St.Ambrose  as `confessor`. I'm also baptized on St.Ambrose' feast day so I was pretty moved to say the least to know I came to the right place for a Confession, even if I didn't find a Confessor!                            
                                    (My friend gave me this as a parting gift from Italy)

As time went on in 2014 , I found myself off to Italy again for Valentine's Day, this time a practicing Catholic, a frequent Confession going woman, and about to be married in under a month. 

Within me was intense gratitude. I recalled prayerfully my last Valentine's day long ago that I had spent in Italy, and how far I had come. It was a necessary remembering of grace. It was a moment that grows in significance the more that time passes. 

At the center of all we think we know of human love is God's radical love for each of us. As Valentine's day approaches and all the fluffy nonsense is overdone, poorly done, and so meaningless. We as the faithful begin our Lenten journey. Remembering that we are dust. 

I am pausing to remember two Valentine's days spent in Italy coming to learn the amazing power and love of God, and His love for us, despite us. 

And I am also thankful for knowing where to find a priest, and for this morning's Sacrament of Penance.

Purifying our Appetite for Knowledge at The Table. By:C.C.

There is an increase today in the available  information and our "knowing" of the things of God. Numerous degrees, studies, theories, philosophies, and even truth tainted by personal ideologies have somehow swept into the sacredness of faith. 

Perhaps, we need applaud the aspirations that stem from the honest desire and longing to fill the void of unknowing within us, yet only God alone can instruct and truly carry us to clarity in the capacity that He wills for us.

The intellectual ascent is laden with limitations . The Desert Fathers spoke about the essentials for guarding of the intellect . Perhaps this was always the case. It seems the danger today is in the rapid way the thoughts of man can spread into the shallowness of unrooted minds and souls, heavily influencing one's concept of God and leaving untouched His reality.

We see the rivalry of egos and comparisons, of ideologies and methods to bring about positive advancements in Church affairs , riddling with noise the sacredness of God's gift to us.

Faith suffers not because of poor evangelization, but due to being evangelized by the poverty of another's concepts and ideals, while the Sacred is pushed aside , closed away, and dismissed.

To be a disciple of the Lord demands lowliness.

Personal conversion , and reverence before God born from holy fear is important to keep in mind before commencing any work for Him.

To pursue study not with intent of knowing , but with a desire to love and to serve God more fully. Not the God we have constructed in our minds to accommodate the superficial way we have grown to live in the Western World. But the God born to us in the poverty of a manger, died for us at the sufferings of the Cross, and left for us the only thing necessary to live out a life of virtue.

"Do this in memory me" is the most sacred remembering, it is where we are most instructed.

The Eucharist is the true Source, and the most Essential.

At the table of remembering men are born and made. We are humbled and fed. We are instructed and guided. We are fulfilled and provided for. This surpasses linguistic limitations , the heights of intellect, and pierces with Infinite love the wounded heart. It purifies our instructions, guides our steps, and provides the grace for our work to be entrenched in the love and will of our Lord.

Growing up , I tactfully learned that the best time to speak to my father and present my lavish ideas was after he had eaten. It was at the table where I knew he would best receive news of my desired weekend plans , a troubling math grade (frequently), or other things that if presented in the haste of passing, and to a man's unfed belly would ensure a troublesome reaction. I understood the simple way that being fed would allow him to deal better and be more content. To think more clearly , and this at a natural level.

Our Lord calls us to His table , with our hunger, with our ideas stirring, with the yearnings, and the zeal in our hearts, not to beg our permission, or ask pardon, but to imbue us with the supernatural aid and sacramental grace to enable our steps to be most aligned, most nourished, and most fulfilled. To purify the intent of our knowing and our learning.

May we always strive to be humble students at the Lord's feet, be at peace in our unknowing, and yearn to use all that is known to us for the greater good.

No Texting on The Road to Emmaus: A Loss of Attentiveness & Reverence by:C.C.

Recently Pope Francis addressed his dismay regarding the prominence of cell phone use during Mass. From this point he elaborated and encouraged the faithful to recognize the importance of what is taking place and Whom it is present among us, “The Eucharist is an amazing event where Jesus Christ, our life, becomes present,”. Naturally, the distracted way that many come to the table of the Lord reveals the reality of a loss of reverence, and the essential understanding necessary to have us partake in the Lord's passion with a well disposed and focused spirit. 

Today Pope Francis again reminded the faithful of the need for attentiveness and silence during Mass, declaring that "Mass is the highest form of prayer and not an appropriate moment for small talk". There is an invitation to be silent before the Lord. 

We are inundated today with many distractions and the primacy of God seems to be a rarity. However, it can be said that what is more tragic is the underlying reality that there is a loss of belief in the presence of Christ in the Eucharist. And that the "breaking of the bread" becomes commonplace and some routine of sorts opposed to the "highest form of prayer"that leads us to be transformed and renewed in Christ, offering to us the graces that we so need to live out our call as Christians in the world. 

I am brought to reflect upon that moment on the road to Emmaus,(Luke 24:13-35) when the pilgrims were walking and Jesus approached them, but they were kept from recognizing Him, carrying on in conversation with Him unknowingly. 

I imagine if this were to happen in 2017, there would be very little conversation on the road and perhaps not even the notice of another person approaching as one is often found distracted by their phone, perusing the latest social media feeds etc. There is a loss of so much natural encounter from person to person that encountering the supernatural presence of our Lord becomes even more difficult if we do not attune ourselves to the necessary quiet and interior attentiveness required to recognize what is truly taking place. 

Though the pilgrims were unaware, and even kept from recognizing Jesus while walking,  He became real to them and present at the breaking of the bread. This is where Jesus meets us daily. In the Eucharist , in the breaking of the bread, and if we allow our self-inclined gaze and misplaced priorities to be broken, we too will see Him and know Him.  

When we are reminded to recognize the Eucharist as the most important part of our lives as Catholics and the true focal point of the Liturgy then all other things with little relevance naturally fall away. Only One thing becomes essential. Only One is the most important-Jesus.

A priest I write to from time to time said to me the other day that "Catholics were once known for their interior life that is why the Eucharist was Real for them". This stirred within me as I reflected and could see unavoidable truth in this. The loss of interior life amidst the noise of this world leaves us all outside of the capacity to recognize the Real Presence of Jesus. I view the loss of an authentic Eucharistic life as reason for straying away from our profound truths, and naturally a cause of so much distracted dilution and loss of a richness in faith. 

How do we again acquire an interior life? How do we come to know the Real Presence of Jesus?

It begins as simply as putting down the phone and spending some time in silence. (CC)

"He remains among us until the end of the world. He dwells on so many altars, though so often offended and profaned."

- St. Maximilian Kolbe