Journeys of a Catholic Poster Girl

Happy All Saints’ Day, friends. Don’t you love this feast?
I do–as a kid I always thought it was weird to be juxtaposed with halloween (sacred and profane, and all that), but as I grew older and realized how important the saints are to us, and how close they are, I’ve really grown to love this feast.

Here are the three saints I’m celebrating this year:

St. Therese of the Child Jesus, as always. She was the saint I chose at my confirmation, and the more I learn about here, the more I fall in love with her. She’s the most popular saint of modern times for a reason. If you’re looking for a good book on her, I recommend this one.  And there’s the movie!

St. Francis is the saint I have been studying this year. I got the idea from “Around the Year With the Von Trapp Family” to pick a saint every first Sunday of Advent that you will study during the year. I chose St. Francis since, at that time, I was applying to Franciscan University and wanted to learn more about St. Francis and the order he founded. This book is a good introduction, and this movie (also featuring St. Clare) is fantastic. (Also, in my family, my grandfather’s name is Francis, and it is my brother’s middle name.)

And finally, St. Dominic, whom, as we know from here, I have been studying. Right now I don’t have any books or movies to recomment, except–say the rosary! This great gift was given by Mary to St. Dominic, and is such a powerful prayer.

In addition to these, there is also St. Emily and St. Michael the Archangel, who are my name saints (Michele is my mom’s name, and my middle name.)

What about you? Who are your special saints?

1. My Lent has been pretty…uneventful. With the show it’s hard to fit in time for everything. I’m wondering if I can do like some super-charged Lent after the show closes this weekend? I could go to Stations of the Cross this Wednesday, so I think I may do that.
2. For awhile I’ve been feeling a lot of aridity–no desire to pray, no real desire to “be holy”. Not that I’ve become a bad person or anything, but the things of the Spiritual Realm seem to be reduced to sporadic Bible Reading and nighttime prayers. Need to work on this.
3. I really do LIKE Lent. This year just seems–off. But then again, there is a great story about St. Teresa of Avila, who had many great plans for a certain Lent. But she was bedridden for the entire season. I suppose God knows how we can best serve Him, and will use any means to get our attention!
4. Catholic news: This, in Connecticut, is really appalling. S0rry, but lay people don’t get to have this much say in a diocese. Deal with it. And I believe something called the First Amendment makes this totally unconstitutional.
5. Good Lenten reading (when I actually do it): Lent and Easter with JPII and Death on a Friday Afternoon, by Richard John Neuhaus.
6. I did buy, as part of the St. Francis Project, the prayer book “Praying with St. Francis.” I do like it alot and am thinking about using it for evening prayer, instead of my Magnificat. It has morning and evening prayer, plus short articles on St. Francis, prayer in his time, and the role of prayer books. It’s published by Paraclete Press.

So, this year my patron saint is St. Francis of Assisi. I chose him for a few reasons: one, he’s a saint everyone “knows”, but I thought I didn’t really know much about him, other than the rebuilding of the churches, loving animals, and stuff like that. So I thought I needed to know a bit more about him. 

Second, I am applying to Franciscan University of Steubenville to do my MA work. So I thought it wouldn’t hurt to know more about the order’s founder, no? 

I have begun, thus, to read about St. Francis. I will probably create a Google doc, like I have with my Jane project (over on the Bucket), to amass all the info. But right now I’m just reading. 

The first book I read wasn’t precisely about St. Francis, per se. It was My Life With the Saints, by James Martin, S.J.  As the title would indicate, Fr. Martin writes about the different saints that have had an impact on his life, including St. Jude, St. Peter, St. Therese, St. Bernadette, and St. Francis. 

While this wasn’t a biography, more of a personal reflection, I still learned more than I had before–about St. Francis’ family, how his father changed his name to Francis as an homage to France, the founding of the Franciscan order, and St. Francis’ love of song. Martin writes in an engaging style that makes this a fun book to read. 

The second book was a Christmas gift from my friend Richelle– St. Francis of Assisi, by G.K. Chesterton. (The link doesn’t take you to a precise copy, but it’s as good–if not better). Chesterton, with his characteristic wit and insight, gives “an introduction” to St. Francis (which is what he calls it), touching on his life, the historical period, and some good anecdotes. He says several times that his book is for beginners, or those just learning about the saint, which made it perfect for starting my project. 

But wait…there’s more! (As the Count on Sesame street says…)

Here are two awesome interviews with Archbishop Chaput of Denver, who is a hero of mine. If any American could be Pope, I’d pick him (well, and my cousin, naturally.). 

The first is from NRO

Some choice bits (but you really need to read the whole thing) (emphasis mine):

LOPEZ: What should it mean when someone says, “I’m Catholic.”

ARCHBISHOP CHAPUT: It should mean that we love Jesus Christ as our redeemer, love the Catholic Church as our mother, and give our hearts to what she teaches, because she teaches in Christ’s name.

LOPEZ: What should it mean when I’m “voting Catholic?”

ARCHBISHOP CHAPUT: We should see ourselves as Catholic first — not white or black, or young or old. or Democrat or Republican, or labor militant or business owner, but Catholic firstas the main way we identify ourselves. Our faith should shape our lives, including our political choices. Of course, that demands that we actually study and deepen our Catholic faith. The Catholic faith isn’t a set of clothes that we can tailor to a personal fit. We don’t “invent” our faith, and we don’t “own” it. If we really want to be Catholic, then we’ll live by Catholic teaching. Otherwise we’re just fooling ourselves and abusing the belief of other Catholics who really do try to practice what the Church teaches.

And: (emphases mine)

LOPEZ: Whenever I write about Catholics and abortion, I am immediately asked, “What about war? What about the death penalty?” What about them? Can a Catholic vote for Senator “Surge”? We have killed people in Iraq, after all.

ARCHBISHOP CHAPUT: I’ve written and spoken against the death penalty for more than 30 years. And along with most other American bishops, I opposed our intervention in Iraq. But these issues are different in kind, not merely degree, from the violence involved in abortion. Anyone rooted in Scripture and Catholic tradition will understand the distinction if he or she reasons honestly. Genocide, euthanasia, abortion, and deliberately targeting civilians in war — these things are always grievously wrong. But in Catholic thought, war and capital punishment can be morally legitimate under certain carefully defined circumstances. Abortion is never morally justified. 

Last: 

LOPEZ: If there is one single point that every Catholic reader of your book could take away from it and pray about and make their own, what would you pray it be?

ARCHBISHOP CHAPUT: Again: Don’t lie. If we say we’re Catholic, we need to back it up with proof. Our faith needs to be the North Star of our lives. Our behavior needs to match our words, including in our political choices.

Here’s the Archbishop’s interview with radio host (and Catholic) Hugh Hewitt

And, of course, here’s the book: Render Unto Caesar. 

I have finally finished St. Augustine’s Confessions. Whew. I have to say that the last four books were a bit slow going, since he switches to theology, as opposed to the story of his life, which had been in the nine preceding books. But it was much better this time around (thank you, Good OUP Translantion!) and I am glad I have read it (again).

…from the third.
I’m talking about St. Augustine and his Confessions.
Most people that are into classical/theological lit have heard of it. A few of us have read it in its entirety. I tried once, and failed miserably. I just didn’t get it. What was everyone raving about?
Now I know. It’s been two years since I last tried to read it, and now, armed with a new translation, I have discovered the incredible wisdom and richness of Augustinian prose.
Augustine is far from a ivory-tower saint. This is a guy who dabbled with women (having a child with one of them), calling himself a “slave of lust”, while being engaged to a girl (and I do mean girl; he had to wait until she was 12 to marry her. He was over 20 by this time.). He stole, caroused, got drunk, and pursued many other activities familiar to twenty-first century frat boys. His mother, St. Monica, certainly earned her “St.” with him as a son. He left Hippo to go to Rome and Milan, teaching rhetoric to support his high living lifestyle.
Yet, somehow, God found him (in no small matter due to his mother’s unceasing prayers), he became a Christian, and, eventually, Bishop of Hippo (in North Africa).

I haven’t finished this re-through yet, but I am enthralled. This should be required reading. (Nerdy book note: PLEASE get the translation I linked to above, if you’re going to read this. It is readable, elegant and VASTLY superior to the other one I tried, which I believe was published by Signet.)

Late have I loved you, beauty so old and so new; late have I loved you. And see, you were within and I was in the external world and sought you there, and in my unlovely state I plunged into those lovely created things which you made. You were with me, and I was not with you. The lovely things kept me far from you, though if they did not have their existence in you, they had no existence at all. You called out and shattered my deafness. You were radiant and resplendent, you put flight to by blindness. You were fragrant, and I drew in my breath and now pant after you. I tasted you, and I feel but hunger and thirst for you. You touched me, and I am set on fire to attain the peace which is yours. (Book X, 38)

So Lent is upon us. What are you doing?

Here’s my plan:

–Daily Bible reading (apart from the Magnificat). I have the CAtholic Women’s Devotional Bible, and I use their daily meditations.

–Lenten Reading plan: The Confessions; On The Passion of the Christ (Thomas a Kempis), and Lent and Easter with John Paul II (meditations and Lenten actions).

–Attend my parish’s Wednesday soup suppers (which are really yummy!) and Stations of the Cross (new this year–I’m excited!).

–Daily rosary (I hope I hope I hope)

–Attend at least one week day Mass per week

–Confession (at this point, it’s just getting there again. I’m not going to set a grand goal of once a week–yet. We’re working on it!)

–And the fast and abstinence requirements.

For a great Lenten primer, go here and download the guide to Lent. It is great!

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.

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

Book I’m reading: Salt of the Earth

Books upcoming:

• Orthodoxy, G.K. Chesterton
• Confessions, St. Augustine (yes, again, in a better translation!)