Journeys of a Catholic Poster Girl

(is it weird to like Lent? Because I think I do)

This, from Our Sunday Visitor, has a whole bunch of good Lenten resources, including a poster all about Lent you can download and print out.

The season is upon us, so here are some ideas from Fr.Z’s site.

Also, check out this for some great “old school” Catholic devotions year ’round.

I’ll be posting my “what I’m doing for Lent” piece in a few days.

Can be found here.

Because it is getting to be that time…

I’ve said a few times on here that Catholicism can be hard. It’s sheer definitiveness can make it that way. But then again, the Cross wasn’t easy, either.

In my life there have a been a few big issues that contrasted what I want with what God wants. The first was birth control.

I want kids–those of you that read regularly know that is NO shock. But with CF, and now transplant, getting pregnant is one of those super-touchy-feely things. You can’t just “get” pregnant. You have to plan it like you’re planning the Omaha Beach invasion. Nurses ask me, pretty matter of course, whether or not I use birth control. It’s sort of a moot point ,regardless, since I don’t have a boyfriend now, but when I was engaged this was a doozy.

Obviously I was not going to use birth control. Fiance OK with this–for awhile. Then we began to fight about it. He didn’t want me to die for a baby. I said I didn’t want to be engaging in sinful behavior. I asked multiple priests whether or not a woman in my condition could use birth control. They said yes. I read the Catechism. It wasn’t quite so malleable (it’s late, but I’ll have the cite later for y’all). And I was torn.

I remember a discussion I had with my best friend about this. I said it really came down to how much I trusted God, didn’t it? Because God doesn’t give us more than I can handle (I did, and still do, believe this). She agreed that it was important to do what God wanted (for the record, she’s Lutheran, so this wasn’t like a fellow Catholic was shooting me the party line.). I prayed. I really agonized over this. And, in the end, it was one of the points that caused our relationship to end.

This has always been a problem with whomever I’ve dated. I don’t normally date casually–life’s too short, you know? So I figure I better stay on God’s good side. But this was an agonizing decision. I didn’t want to give up love. But I didn’t want to go against my faith, which has been my only constant.

The second issue is end of life stuff. Before my transplant, I wrote dozens of letters to people, and planned my funeral. Even if I did get the call, there was no guarantee of surviving major surgery. So I wrote it all down. I chose the “Suffering Servant” passage from Isaiah, the gospel where Jesus raised Lazarus. I chose hymns. And I told my parents that, if I was unable to make decisions for myself, I asked them to do what the Church required. Of course, the excellent Children’s Chaplain (the irreplaceable Fr. Mark) would be able to help them, since he was ministering there at the time. What the Church said, we would do.

Thinking about your own death when you’re 22 is not fun, let me tell you. But I’m glad I did it. It helped me solidify what is really important. Believe me, when I say that Catholicism can be hard, that Christianity can be hard, I know. I’ve struggled with the doctrine too. And for me, I’ve found that submitting to it is the way I find peace.

I’ve been reading Chesteron’s Orthodoxy, and I thought I’d share some of my favorite passages (thus far):

The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits.

The lunatic’s theory explains a large number of things, but it does not explain them in a large way.

How much larger your life would be if your self could become smaller!

A Christian is only restricted in the same sense that an atheist is restricted. He cannot think Christianity false and continue to be a Christian; and the atheist cannot think atheism false and continue to be an atheist.

The Christian is quite free to believe that there is a considerable amount of settled order and inevitable development in the universe. But the materialist is not allowed to admit into his spotless machine the slightest spec of spirtualism or miracle.

Materialists and madmen never have doubts.

Mysticism keeps one sane.

But the cross, though it has at its heart a collision and a contradiction, can extend its four arms for ever without altering its shape. Because it has a paradox in its center it can grow without changing. The cross opens its arms to the four winds; it is a signpost for free travellers.

What we suffer from today is humility in the wrong place. …a man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth.

We are on the road to producing a race of men too mentally modest to believe in the multiplication tables. We are in danger of seeing philosophers who doubt the law of gravity as being a mere fancy of their own.

Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all.

In the act of destroying the idea of Divine authority we have largely destroyed the idea of that human authority by which we do a long-division sum. With a long and sustained tug we have attempted to pull the mitre off pontifical man; and his head has come off with it.

I am still as much concerned as ever about the Battle of Armagedoon; but I am not so much concerned about the General Election [E note: well, not me, so much...]

Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about.

One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star.

Remember..that to be breakable is not the same as to be perishable.

It may be that our tragedy has touched the gods, that they admire it from their starry galaxies, and that at the end of every human drama man is called again and again before the curtain.

[T]he materialist, like the madman, is in prison; in the prison of one thought.

This cosmos is indeed without peer and without price; for there cannot be another one.

[T]he proper form of thanks to it is some fore of humility and retraint.

We ow[e]…an obedience to whatever made us.

First some links:

Fr. Z gets classical–Ovid and abortion

Danielle has a collection of links.

And my thoughts:

There is never, ever an excuse to have an abortion. There is never a reason to kill an innocent child, no matter what the circumstances. Period. I pray that one day everyone will realize the inherent dignity and rights of the unborn child.

So many of my friends are pregnant right now, and I’m receiving quite a few ultrasound pictures via email. These are children. You cannot look at these pictures and not see a child! They have heads and feet and arms and toes and little noses. One of them looks like an Olympic diver executing a perfect pike position. How can anyone look at these amazing images and say that they are not human? That they do not deserve to live? It’s unconscionable.

Mother Teresa used to say that you cannot have peace in the world because the womb, the most peaceful place on Earth, isn’t anymore. Mothers are killing their babies. How can we have peace between people if we don’t have peace within the family? Life is life. It doesn’t matter how it happened. It’s a baby, a tiny human being. Just like you were in the beginning. And that child must be protected.

Oh, and, for those who need a refresher, abortion is one of those “non-negotiable” Catholic things. If you’re pro-choice, you do not believe what the Church believes. So don’t whine about how the Church needs to include you. Go find a Church that believes what you believe, because we are not changing. “Inclusion” does not include sanctioning murder.

Everyone has crises of faith, doubts about their lives, their vocations, what God wants from them.

Yesterday was one of those days for me. I had gone to my faith sharing group and we had discussed things like submitting to the will of God, rejoicing in His plan for us, etc. And I kept thinking, “Well what if you desire something–something good, and holy–and you STILL don’t get it? What are you supposed to do then?”

I’ve wanted to be a wife and mother as long as I can remember. I think one of my professors in college had a heart attack when I told her that that’s what I wanted and I wouldn’t be going to law/grad school. It’s what most of the women in my life have done–my aunts, my friends’ mothers, etc. I want that kind of life.

But I also want to be a sister. I feel the calling, the attractiveness of that life. And of course the retreat next month will help me discern more clearly what I feel about this.

But what if I don’t get either? What if the convent doesn’t want me (or doesn’t think I fit) and I never get married? Why do I have these desires in me if they can’t be fulfilled?
So I was a little distraught about all this.

Today, I saw at least three different roses on three different occasions. Yup, I guess God is listening to me–a little.

Some ideas for tomorrow,courtesy of the Bonfire:

Our bishops have declared Jan. 22 a day of fasting and prayer for reparation of sins against human life. I hope everyone will join with this time of prayer and action, in whatever fashion you can, either by coming if you can, or joining a demonstration or prayer vigil somewhere, attending Mass, making sacrifices, and praying.

For this month’s selection, In This House of Brede, go over to the bucket.

(h/t Amy)

B XVI (before he was B XVI):

A very interesting essay from 1988 by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger:

While there are many motives that might have led a great number of people to seek a refuge in the traditional liturgy, the chief one is that they find the dignity of the sacred preserved there….

I confine myself to coming straight to this conclusion: we ought to get back the dimension of the sacred in the liturgy. The liturgy is not a festivity; it is not a meeting for the purpose of having a good time. It is of no importance that the parish priest has cudgeled his brains to come up with suggestive ideas or imaginative novelties.

The liturgy is what makes the Thrice-holy God present amongst us; it is the burning bush; it is the alliance of God with man in Jesus Christ, who has died and risen again. The grandeur of the liturgy does not rest upon the fact that it offers an interesting entertainment, but in rendering tangible the totally Other, whom we are not capable of summoning. He comes because He wills. In other words, the essential in the liturgy is the mystery, which is realized in the common ritual of the Church; all the rest diminishes it. Men experiment with it in lively fashion, and find themselves deceived, when the mystery is transformed into distraction, when the chief actor in the liturgy is not the living God but the priest or the liturgical director.