The Catholic Reader: Novena for the Holy Souls in Purgatory

The Catholic Reader: Novena for the Holy Souls in Purgatory: Novena for the Holy Souls in Purgatory Written by St. Alphonsus Liguori this novena has prayers for each day which are followed by...

The Catholic Reader: Revelations on Purgatory from Faustina's Diary

The Catholic Reader: Revelations on Purgatory from Faustina's Diary: Revelations on Purgatory from Faustina

Two Popes and my first (Saint) love

Oct 4th 2013
Once again I write close to or on the day of a feast of the church, today being the feast of St Francis of Assisi.  And you guessed, it is about St Francis, and the two recent Popes in my life.

You see, it was the day Pope Benedict announced his resignation, a Monday and a public holiday, when I happened to go for morning mass. At the end of mass our Assistant pastor conveyed to us the news that utterly shook my world. I loved Pope Benedict, like he was my own father. I was in love with his books, his writing, his words, his Encyclicals….The ‘Jesus of Nazareth’ series opened up a well of theological beauty to me I never before experienced.  He was the solid ‘rock’ of the church and no matter what people said of him I admired him for his intellectual integrity and strength, his deep spirituality, even if as he said his physical strength was failing.

Uncannily, I felt abandoned! Orphaned even, and I could not stop the tears as mass ended. I only consoled myself by clinging to the side of Jesus my Good Shepherd and said ‘ultimately you my Jesus are the Head of the Church, you are my shepherd, my guide and my master and I should not be afraid.’ Throughout the morning I was sorrowful and went about with a heavy heart, like I lost a family member. I had the sensation that this great big ship, our church was sailing the rough seas suddenly without a captain. I thought I was consoled by saying Jesus you are my Shepherd, but I still sorrowed and couldn’t understand the plan of God. All I could do was constantly offer to God my prayers for him.

Then the second consolation happened: I picked up the mail in the afternoon and among the packages was a fat packet from CNEWA asking for a contribution and it included a gift for my Lenten prayer. It was the ‘Way of the Cross’ written by Pope Benedict. I couldn’t believe my eyes! I was sure this was a gift from heaven itself with God saying to me, ‘He is my son, pray for him at this hour’.

So all the more I prayed but I was still sorrowful and kept breaking into little sobs whenever I remembered.  Then came the last and final consolation of the day, a DVD I just happened to have borrowed from the library on Sunday was on the life of St Francis and after all the little ones were put to bed I decided to watch it thinking, ‘Maybe St Francis will finally be able to console me.’  I knew that Francis was told ‘rebuild my church’ and while watching it I cried throughout praying to St Francis to once again come and rebuild the church, especially the empty and desolate churches of Europe and the West and like him to send a new Pope who would try and make peace in the Holy Land. I pleaded with him once again to hear my prayer and bring peace to my heart once more as he did when I was young and many times after. This greatly consoled me and I went to bed in peace.

St Francis is one I call my ‘first (Saint) love”! I was 17 years old in Bombay (now Mumbai), India when the poverty and misery around me made me spend many hours in the slums and attend anti-communalism marches. In my spirituality I discovered St Francis of Assisi and felt I found a saint who shared my soul. I decided to live my life in simplicity, adopting Mahatma Gandhi’s line “Live simply so that others can simply live’, to embrace poverty if it so chose me, and finding my own choices ultimately were of poverty.  For example: I decided not to choose the glamourous path of becoming an Air-Stewardess, one that I thought of as a little girl and which then in India was one of the most lucrative jobs. But then I realised that I would be spending a great deal of time on my ‘looks’ and 5-star hotels. Of course I still loved travelling and still do but I couldn’t bear to spend my life like that. So I took up journalism, the other passion – to be an instrument of change in society.

I wrote about illegal quarrying, rapes of minors by politicians, stoning of adulterous women in the village, corrupt builders and nearly had court cases slapped on me. I had my articles documented, used by professors, used in Writ Petitions in the High Court – then I got married! There too I chose to stay with my in-laws and then to raise 3 little ones staying home to be with them. For many years I battled against leaving India emigrating to Canada 'for a better life' but succumbed when I realised that our stay was not permanent in my in-laws home.

 St Francis has stayed close to me helping me honour my teenage commitment well into now my 43rd year of life. Not only are my possessions and needs few but my husband and I and our 5 children all live simply. There is not a single moment in our family life when we can say we are financially well off. But I believe in the promise of God, "Seek ye first the kingdom of the Lord and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you."

While Bryan always worked for our daily bread, I looked after the children and home full time throwing in some free-lance writing and two years of working outside the home between my third and fourth child, we always took part in the life of the church, in the music ministry, teaching and since 2005 starting a family prayer ministry in the parish and city called "Families in Prayer and Community" (this will be a new blog entry) evangelising families - spouses, children, grandparents, singles, and the widowed. 


It has always been a struggle and still is but we never go a day without our basic needs. In fact when ever life has been financially hardest it seems like the blessings from above have been the greatest. By poverty I also mean sickness and debility of body and mind. When we were expecting our 5th child in 2009, as with the 4th in 2007 I was so sick with severe hyperemesis and acidity that I was helpless to care for my family with no one but my husband to help. It was then that he got laid off -it was for a full year. Through a most amazing and impossible source we paid our mortgage when there was nothing left in the bank and all that time Bryan was home to care for me, for the new baby and our 4 kids; he even learnt to cook!  

Every tough time like now, when we are waiting for over a year for our property in Surrey to be sold so we are free from a major debt, we see blessings falling on our family. Our two oldest sons then 15 and 17, went to the seminary in Mission BC to study and it seemed like all of us got spiritually fed from the abbey that entire year and it continues as the younger son does grade 11 at the seminary and the eldest attends a Catholic college studying Science on a full scholarship for the year! "Though Jesus Christ was rich, yet he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich" 2Cor 8:9. Through our sharing in Christ's poverty, by looking 'to God who is our help', we become rich...in spiritual bounty!  
 

March 2013: So each day to the election of the new Pope: ‘prayers and supplications’ went up, novenas late into the night and trusting in God, St Francis and all of heaven beseeched, and then each hour on Salt and Light TV was followed on my little notebook computer on the kitchen table. Black smoke, black smoke… WHITE SMOKE!! What delirious joy all over the world!! And then to my utter, utter surprise and almost disbelief, Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio chooses the name Francis!!!!!

The rest is history…in the making!

I believe in the Communion of Saints and do not infer with any kind of certainty that it was my prayers to St Francis that helped the conclave and the Pope, but it was all of our prayers all over the Catholic world and most certainly those of beloved St Francis, all the Angels and Saints and the Holy Souls with whom we are united with in spirit in the One Body of Christ.

Happy Feast St Francis!

“Love your enemies” – Learn how.

On the feast of Corpus Christi – The Body and Blood of Christ – last 'year', I sat immersed in the sense of oneness with the whole body of Christ, the people all around me at mass, while the hymn “We are one body” was being sung by the choir.

But some memories of a person I couldn't get along with, who had hurt me and was still the same arrogant personality to me and most around her was gnawing at my heart –‘What about her, Lord, how do I feel “One” with her? It seems impossible!”

And this was after I received communion and was conversing with Jesus and suddenly there flowed into my heart an inexplicable feeling of love for that person. Inexplicable at first, but then I soon made sense of that love – it was more a sorrow and I found myself tearing up as I thought of how she might suffer for what she had done, that is not as a punishment because Jesus already took that on himself, but what she would have to go through to make that change, come down from the heights of pride, arrogance and the humiliation that almost necessarily accompanies it, the pain, and who knows even a tragedy of some kind. And if unrepentant then almost certainly “just” punishment of some kind could take place. I felt a sadness at what her sins were doing to her.

I started praying for her and asking God to have mercy on her; and on me too for my self-pity. Yes, I was healed and I knew from then on that this is why, and more importantly this is the WAY we have to “LOVE our enemies,” (and “pray for those who persecute us.”) (Matt 5:44).

I was further convinced that this was the ‘way’ when a few days later I saw this in a book of St Francis of Assisi’ writings:

“Our Lord says in the Gospel,” says St Francis, “ ‘Love your enemies’. A man really loves his enemy when he is not offended by the injury done to himself but for love of God feels burning sorrow for the sin his enemy had brought on his own soul and proves his love in a practical way.” (The Admonitions, IX)

When anger turns to pity not for oneself but the one who offended you then, in Jesus, this is ‘loving’ your enemy and this works for me. Every time. What about you?

All praise be to the most Holy Body and Blood of Christ who's feast it is today June 2nd!  This took me one year to write and its is not without a coincidence that a wrote it on the eve of the feast day itself! 

Marriage: Living unmasked before each other

        Are you one of those who feels that your husband or wife only shows his/her‘bad’side at home? Does it sometimes escape your lips in public when the topic of how calm or patient your spouse is and you say, “You haven’t seen her in her element?” 

        Well, you’re not alone. If it is a marriage like mine, ten to one you will have this scenario in your marriage and more often that not it will be a bone of contention.

         In Scripture, God constantly refers to his love for us, his people, as the love between husband and wife. Can it be true that we reflect the love of God for His people in our marriages?

         Yes it is true, the love of God is faithful and forgiving when we constantly sin against him, but this is not only where I believe lies the true nature of the comparison between our spousal love and God’s marriage with His people.

         Just as we appear before God just as we are, where He knows our deepest secrets, He sees our true selves behind the numerous masks we put on, behind all the hurt, the pain, the glory, and where we can hide nothing from Him, it is here that we mirror God’s love – appearing unmasked before each other in our marriages!

         We start out as star-crossed lovers, finding almost no fault in our beloveds, till we (most of us Catholics!) marry and live together and as in the opening of a Pandora’s box discover the faults fly out one by one, or simply that the star-crossed glasses fall off and we see each other as we really are. We peel off every layer, one by one (and not just figuratively) and we are naked before each other, no one else. We start to see the good, the bad and the ugly and even that big blue birth mark on the left rear seat!

         However, as Christian couples, because our marriage is a sacrament, we can draw on the graces flowing from its uniquely covenantal nature. Every marriage and family since the dawn of time is stamped with the Godly nature of His Trinitarian relationship, (but that is another topic.) As Jesus gave His life for His bride the church, so too we give our lives for each other, body and blood, heart and soul.

         When we see that God is in our midst, as He first showed us how to love, we see this tendency to reveal even the dark sides of our personalities as sacramental and precious, accepting that we need healing, love and acceptance, and the healing power of the other sacraments of reconciliation and the Eucharist.

         We often need a third-party mediator, the support of family, counseling, therapy and much needed healing from priests and anointed persons. But with all this intervention, for the grace of the sacrament of marriage to work there must be the healing of forgiveness, from the little hurts and transgressions to the big ones.

         This is the Fount of Grace in our marriage. No matter what the hurt, if openness, communication, dialogue and forgiveness do not take place, the revelation of our dark sides to each other leads to further breakdown of trust and even love and eventually the marriage itself. So often I have felt love and peace miraculously flow into my heart after I decided to forgive my spouse after a few hours of wrestling with my tearful feelings of anger, reasoning it impossible to see him right.

         Does God abandon us, even though we are sinful?  How many times did he forgive the unfaithfulness of the people of Israel? He forgives us constantly, through the sacrifice of His Son Jesus on the cross. We can always, and anytime on bended knee, go to the fount of Love, first in our sorrow and repentance for our sins and then in the sacramental absolution of our sins in Confession. 

        It is in His forgiveness that we are healed, and we can move on. It is in forgiveness of each other that we can be healed too, and move on, past the faults of our spouses and rediscover the beauty of what we saw from the beginning of our relationship.

       As we reveal our selves to each other each time we ‘rub corners’, clash personalities, ‘fight and make up’, approach each other in humility, forgive and move on, we grow as persons, even in maturity as we age. In our faith journey we grow, albeit at our own paces, advancing each other on the path to heaven. If we truly draw on the resources of our faith for our marriage, it is our spouses that actually take us to heaven!        

        Often patience, forbearance, endurance and fortitude is cultivated in marriages where one partner, if not both, has especially rough corners to smooth out. In thus reflecting the marriage of God to his people in Christian marriage, us husbands and wives fashion each other into the image and likeness of God, if we so allow it.

        On my faith journey and state of maturity I know for sure that I have grown tremendously in my 19 years of marriage. Many years before we were married my husband said, “I hope you never change” and I was sure this couldn’t be possible, but I never imagined how disappointed he would be once the honeymoon was over that I had a streak of anger in me.

        For the most part I was a patient person but could burst a neat blood vessel when I was so riled up. He too disappointed me by what he was that I did not know before. While in defense I often used the line, that he “brought out the worst in me” I did not justify any of my behaviour (to myself, but often to him I did!) and the anger and many other faults I have tried to overcome with healing and God’s grace.

        We strived to keep in mind what we learnt at the Engaged Encounter weekend before we married “Let not the sun go down on your anger”. And though it may have taken a couple of suns going down, each time we always made some sort of deadline!

        My need for God deepened as often I felt alone, and my search for His presence, His Word, strengthened with all that married life brought on; the storms and deserts, mountains and valleys, joys and celebrations and I am now in a much better place than I was 20 years ago.

       Our marriage has passed the early and seemingly unending period of disillusionment, having only as recently worked out old issues and we walk in harmony a lot more now, to the praise and glory of God.

       If God has fashioned me thus at this point of time knowing I have miles to go, I have tremendous hope in the future -- for what the daily living out of my marriage, journeying with our five beloved children and what life itself will make of me, and of my dear spouse, who God has covenanted to me for my own, when we both finally see Him face to face. 

The Kingdom of God - where is it?

The Kingdom of God - in this world?

What exactly is the Kingdom of God? Where is it? Ever since I became immersed in wanting to know more about Jesus (as a teenager), I would get an illumination about what the Kingdom of God meant, and it would spur me on to wanting to live more and more like a ‘Kingdom person’. 

In the early days I learnt that the qualities of the kingdom are love, joy, and peace; Or when we say ‘your kingdom come’ in the Our Father it is asking for these to be established in our homes, our societies; That Jesus said ‘my kingdom is not of this world’ and hence it is not one we can see and touch but live and feel.

As I studied more I came to know of the Beatitudes that spoke of Jesus’ new law of Love. I read with great interest the parables that explained what ‘kingdom of God’ is, with each parable different from one another as chalk and cheese; and like us, His disciples too needed them to be explained! In short, my understanding was this bits-and- parts picture that still eluded me in its entirety.

Often in my relationship with Jesus I’d refer to Him as my King and worship Him as I ought to, but most of the time He is my master, my guide, my comforter, my brother, my friend, my suffering Messiah and Redeemer. Living in this day and age we find the concept of king as a thing of the past, where most monarchical heads now are mere titular figures. Prime Minister Stephen Harper is PM of Canada but so far removed from my immediate circumstance as the distance of Ottawa to BC.

Never in all these years did all my experience of what the kingdom is make such complete sense to me as recently when I meditated on that particular day’s reading from the book of Revelation: 

“…You were slaughtered and by your blood you ransomed for God saints from every tribe and language and people and nation, you have made them to be a kingdom and priests serving our God, and they will reign on earth.”  This was just before the feast of Christ the King on Nov 25 2012.  After spending some time in prayer and reading this passage, I suddenly came to see and believe from my heart–  YES! The Kingdom of God is truly among us!

The Kingdom of God is here and now!

WE ARE the people ransomed by the blood of the lamb for God from every nation, tribe and language and we serve Jesus as our king! Here and Now! It is not a concept out there, or in the air and never was. Even when the kingdom was as a little mustard seed Jesus said “Behold the kingdom of God is among you.” Luke17: 21 

The church – beginning as the smallest of seeds in the 12 apostles around the table,  then sown by the blood of martyrs and the evangelisation of nations and peoples through the centuries, grew “like the largest of plants and put forth branches so that the birds of the sky can dwell in its shade” (Mark4: 31,32). We are now a little over 1.3 billion Catholics world-wide; while one-third of the world’s total population is Christian: The largest religious group in the world. All the nations of the earth have heard the message of the Gospel and most people on earth have heard it too; (and if many have not then we still have work to do!)

How are we this kingdom?

In the Old Testament God called Abraham to be the father of a great nation – to be His people and He, their God and King. After crossing over into Jordan into the Promised Land in the Book of Joshua , God set Judges to protect and often deliver the people in their infidelity and captivity, while He was their King and would convey His decrees through the judges to His people. Later they saw how other nations had kings and they asked Samuel (the last of the judges) to ask God for a king to rule over them. God gave in to their request (in 1Sam 8: 7,8) saying, “Grant the people’s every request. It is not you they reject, they are rejecting me as their King.” and He gave them their first king, Saul. Thus began, from what was seemingly not His will, the third stage of his plan of salvation for the world - to send his own son Jesus as their king and a king for all humanity in the line of King David.

Many hundreds of years later, when the line of kings had all but a stump left, it was finally in “the acceptable year of the Lord”, that Jesus came to the world - as a little baby born to Mary and Joseph of the House of King David, a most awesome and wondrous event of history, when God entered humanity and became one of us to redeem us.

When Pilate asked Jesus (Jn 18:37), “So are you a King?” Jesus answered, “You say that I am a King. For this purpose I was born and for this reason I came into the world, to testify to the truth.”

The Laws of the Kingdom: LOVE

Jesus established his kingdom, proclaiming it on the Mount, in the Beatitudes and throughout his ministry on earth, making known his powerful new Law of Love: “A new commandment I give you, love one another as I have loved you (Jn 15:12),” demonstrating it every moment of his High-Priestly life and finally with his suffering and death on the cross. Love God and love our neighbour as He loved us: Every other law emanates from, and is based on this Law of Love, whether it is honouring the Sabbath day and going to church every Sunday or loving our neighbour who ignores or insults us.

When Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world”, it is no wonder then that his Beatitudes entirely contradict the values of the world – which seem more like ‘blessed are the most beautiful’, ‘blessed are the rich and famous’, ‘blessed are the most successful and powerful’, ‘blessed are the most pleasured and contented’! In the values of the world then, don’t we find the Beatitudes completely opposing them?

The New Jerusalem

2000 years later ….this little mustard seed has truly become a great, big tree! Our great universal ‘Catholic’ church is the definitive New Jerusalem, God’s people; the Pope, bishops and cardinals, priests are the ‘priests serving our God’ (as the ‘judges’ of the Old Testament) and Jesus is our King, none else!  What’s more, every one of us of every language and nation is called to be a disciple, priest, prophet and king as we share in the Body and Blood of our King who died for us and become part of his mystical Body every time we receive the Eucharist at Mass.

It was awe inspiring to feel part of this universal family. In spite of the wrongs of the church over the centuries, the Reformation and breaking away of the Protestant churches,  in spite of the sins of today and the attacks against the church, as Jesus told St Peter “…the gates of Hades will not prevail against it” (Matt 16:18) this church, in all its imperfections, is thriving as ever before.

The unbroken chain of Popes down the centuries, the great good that is being done constantly to alleviate poverty, misery and pain of every kind in hurting societies by the religious communities and the laity, every act of mercy, the quiet (and in centuries before, unabashed) filtering of gospel values in every level of civilised society and governance, whether we now call it the more secular ‘human values’ or not, and the continuous growth of numbers testifies to it’s presence and vibrancy. The progress of humanity in every discipline of life is unparalleled in the history of the world as in the last 2000 years and history testifies to it being as a result of the existence of Christianity.

Finally, the obedience of the kingdom people far outweighs any rebelliousness, discontent, dissatisfaction or disobedience – and even in all of that God has his plan, turning every unseemly situation into something fruitful. ‘In time we can discover that God in his almighty providence can bring a good from the consequences of an evil, even a moral evil caused by his creatures.’ Catechism of the Catholic Church, 312

Am I a ‘Kingdom person’?

I feel a sense of connection, if not oneness with every lover of Christ, Catholic or not, alive or not. We are all united in this great big tree of life, in heaven and on earth. We are this great big kingdom of people who are the salt of the earth, the light of the world, the leaven in the dough, all living in the world, not in a separate country and continent. We are very much part of society – “yet not of this world”, where how I live makes a difference for all of humanity. 

We are all connected, first through my behaviour at home, then in society, my workplace, market place, school and government, among my neighbours and down my road, in my church and in my car - I can choose to be a citizen of this kingdom, and believe that everything I do makes this world a better place or not, ‘Thy Kingdom come’ or not.

In one of his parables Jesus talks of the kingdom of God being like a field where both the good seeds and the weeds grow together. He tells his workers not to take the weeds out or else the wheat too would be destroyed, but that at the time of harvesting the good crop will be sorted from the bad and the bad thrown into the fire. Here we are assured that even though we see dishonest people or those who don’t care about God or other human beings thriving we are to continue doing the good that God wants us to do and live our lives like true disciples, not to be disheartened, for God ‘shines the sun on the righteous and the unrighteous’. All have a chance of hearing the good news of salvation through Jesus, to keep the faith and all face final judgement.

Food, Universal Spiritual Healthcare and Benefits

In this kingdom he has instituted for us the seven sacraments – through which his graces flow to us, much like how an earthly king would build roads, waterways, public utilities, healthcare, etc for its people to live well. He gave us the Holy Eucharist as food and nourishment along with His Word, and with Confession are sacraments that cleanse and nourish us, constantly replenishing our needy souls with forgiveness and his own Body and Blood. We also have the remarkable sacraments of Marriage and Holy Orders.

How many married couples are missing God given chances to become better human beings with enriched relationships with our spouses because we didn’t want to forgive, or see things from the other’s perspective or let go our will for the other. I have seen time and again how grace has flowed into my heart when I decided to forgive my spouse, sensing the love flowing back in and all hurt gone. This is grace in action. So many choose the opposite way of unforgiveness, grudge-harbouring and revenge that only causes more, and ever more, hurt and destruction.

Before he ascended to heaven Jesus promised us His Holy Spirit, the advocate. It is He who gives us these graces. He provides for us the gifts of peace, patience, gentleness and more – how we need them so! The Benefits? His loving presence! The promise of Eternal Life………

 My relationship with Jesus

What about my relationship with Jesus? I have finally made Jesus the King of my heart, my life. Not in mere words, but in mind and heart. He is not a monarch far away in his palace who would hardly even know my name. He is here and now my King, my personal King, who cares for my every need, every hurt, every pain and joy, for my past, my present, my future. Not only does he know me inside out, but better than I know myself. St Augustine in his ‘Confessions’ wrote, “He…is higher than my highest, the one deeper than my deepest, the one more intimate to me than my most intimate thought.”

My brother, friend, Redeemer is also Royalty by my side and I want to worship him every moment of the day. This is a great source of comfort to me. I want to live every moment in complete trust that he will see me through every struggle, no matter how low I reach or how difficult the task. I renew my commitment to choosing to live everyday in obedience to God’s will. Living in the freedom of His will above mine and loving Him above all else, is the great mystery that the ‘world’ will not believe is true or possible but is what I have discovered to be the source of constant joy and peace in my own imperfect world.