wombsoflife

Womb of Stone: Part I

2011-06-02T18:26:00.001-07:00

In the second chapter of his 1st epistle, the Apostle Peter describes the way the Lord forms a people for himself as if it were in a womb of stone. He tells how in the purity and innocence of newborn babies we should desire the pure milk of the word of God and grow.

Therefore, laying aside all malice, all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and all evil speaking, as newborn babes, desire the pure milk of the word, that you may grow thereby, if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is gracious. Coming to Him as to a living stone, rejected indeed by men, but chosen by God and precious, you also, as living stones, are being built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ (1 Peter 2:1-3).

How do we become "living stones"? In Ezk. 36:26 the Lord tells his people, "I shall give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you. I shall take the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh." The NIV translates a similar text in Ezk. 11:19 as, "I will give them singleness
of heart." Jesus says that the single-hearted will see God in the Beatitudes in Mt. 5. We are to cast away all of our former transgressions as part of the process of our transformation in Jesus Christ (Ezk. 18:31). We lay aside our former ways. This is not something we do on our own. Only with cooperation on our part with God's freely offered unmerited gift of grace can we become living stones.

Therefore it is also contained in the Scripture,
“ Behold, I lay in Zion A chief cornerstone, elect, precious, And he who believes on Him will by no means be put to shame.” Therefore, to you who believe, He is precious; but to those who are disobedient,“ The stone which the builders rejected Has become the chief cornerstone,"and
“ A stone of stumbling And a rock of offense.” They stumble, being disobedient to the word, to which they also were appointed. But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light; who once were not a people but are now the people of God, who had not obtained mercy but now have obtained mercy (1 Peter 2:6-10).

The world rejects Jesus Christ and all those who follow Him. Jesus was rejected but God made him the foundation and cornerstone of our lives--of our eternal lives. He is "precious" to us who believe and it is a marvel to behold the goodness of the Lord in our lives. God chose and predestined us in His Son Jesus Christ before the foundation of the world to be precious, living stones built on Him the true Rock and Foundation. In Matthew 16:18 Jesus tells Peter, "You are rock and upon this rock I will build my Church...and the very gates of hell shall not prevail against it." This is done by the Lord.
"Unless the LORD builds the house, its builders labor in vain" (Ps.127:1).

We, with the aid of God, build on the Rock of Jesus Christ. When we keep his commands we show that we love him and that we build our house on rock (Jn. 14:15, Mt. 7:24). We are able to withstand the crashing waves, the howling winds, the torrential rains, because we are built on rock and not shifting sands. God builds us up as precious living stones into a beautiful spiritual house. God the Father gave us His only Son Jesus Christ, who through His life, death, and resurrection has washed us making us without spot, blemish or wrinkle that he might present us to himself as a glorious bride and church (Eph 5:27). Fire will test each one's building on the last day. If we build with hay, straw, wood that will be consumed in the fire (1 Cor 3:9-17). If we build with gold, silver, and precious stones, our work will truly be built on the foundation of Jesus Christ and we will be God's holy temple in which the Spirit of God has been dwelling all along. The precious materials we build our house with are the spiritual sacrifices we have offered throughout our lives on earth. We will be free like our mother, the Jerusalem that is above (Gal 4:26). The heavenly Jerusalem contains the glory and light of God "like a most precious jasper stone, clear as crystal" (Rev 21:11;18-21).

We look to our mother the Blessed Virgin Mary as our example of someone who contained God's very self: Glory and Light Incarnate. She gave forth light to a world plunged into darkness: being precious jasper that is clear as crystal. Mary was a living stone in whom the Rock not made by human hands took form. More on this in Womb of Stone Part II

Womb of the Baptistery

2010-11-28T12:21:00.000-08:00

The Gospel for the first Sunday of Advent this year is from Matthew 24. In it Jesus says that as in the days of Noah so too will it be when the Son of Man returns. There will be marrying, eating, drinking and making merry. There will be a new creation brought about through the destruction of the old heavens and the old earth. Peter tells us that Noah's ark was a type pointing to baptism which saves us. (1 Peter 3:21). We go down into the water of baptism united with Christ in his and death and burial, then we rise with Him in the new life of Resurrection and Grace. Death is killed and sin is destroyed, now ourselves, but Christ lives in us (Gal. 2:20).

In the early Church, baptism was seen as a regeneration and resurrection. The area where the baptismal fount was or the baptistery was seen as being a type of womb because of the rebirth in the Spirit and water that took place there. In his book, Ambrose of Milan's Method of Mystagogical Preaching, Craig A. Satterlee tells how St. Ambrose preached on this.

"Finally, in De Mysteriis, Ambrose asserts that in the blessing of the font, the Holy Spirit comes upon the font, or upon those receiving baptism, in the same way that the Holy Spirit came upon the Blessed Virgin Mary. As the Holy Spirit brought forth a miraculous birth in the womb of the Virgin, so too in the womb that is the baptismal pool the Spirit brings forth the birth of a new creation in a miraculous way."

In the time of Noah the world was destroyed because of its wickedness through a great deluge; in the time of Christ's second coming, the world will pass away in fire according to Peter (2 Peter 3:10).
In the time of our baptism we received the Holy Spirit through water, when we celebrated our Confirmation we received the Holy Spirit through chrism and the laying on of hands. We heard the reading from Acts of the Apostles of how fire descended upon the Apostles.

In water and fire there is purification. Water destroys impurity and washes it away. Fire burns away stubble and chaff and is used to heat molten gold and silver so hot that the impurities of the dross rise to the surface to be removed (1 Peter 1:7). The Holy Spirit wells up in us as living waters giving drink to a dry and thirsty world (John 4:14). The Holy Spirit goes forth from our mouth in fire with the Word of God setting the world ablaze; baptizing, purifying, and Christening it. (Luke 12:49; Rev. 11:5).

Womb of Fire

2010-05-14T05:56:00.000-07:00

Jesus said, "I have come to send fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!". (Lk 12:49)
He also said, "If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father from heaven give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?" (Lk. 11:13) When we ask anything in Jesus name that is in accord with the will of the Father, He will give it to us. How much more then should we be asking for the fire of the Holy Spirit to rain down upon us.

Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful and kindle in them the fire of your love.

V. Send forth your Spirit, and they shall be created.

R. And You shall renew the face of the earth. (Ps 104:30)

Let us pray.

O, God, who by the light of the Holy Spirit, did instruct the hearts of the faithful, grant that by the same Holy Spirit we may be truly wise and ever enjoy His consolations. Through Christ Our Lord. Amen.

Happy Pentecost!

Womb of the Wilderness Part II

2010-03-15T18:49:00.000-07:00

"Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. The wild beasts will honor me, the jackals and the ostriches; for I give water in the wilderness, rivers in the desert, to give drink to my chosen people, the people whom I formed for myself (in the womb of the wilderness) that they might declare my praise" (Is. 43:18-21)

Womb of the Wilderness

2010-02-28T12:58:00.000-08:00

Lucifer and his angels rebelled against God when they saw a great sign in the heavens and were given to understand that God would become Incarnate through this Woman and that the greatest of angels would have to worship and serve God Incarnate as a lowly man. Not only would he have to worship God Incarnate, he would also have to serve this Woman would be Queen of Heaven and of Earth by what the sign portended. In addition the mystery was revealed to Lucifer that through the Incarnation, the weaker and inferior human creatures would be given a share in the very Life of God Himself.

"Now a great sign appeared in heaven: a Woman, clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and with a crown of twelve stars on her head. She was pregnant, and in labor, crying aloud in the pangs of childbirth. Then a second sign appeared in the sky a huge red dragon which had seven heads and ten horns and each of the seven heads was crowned with a coronet. Its tail dragged a third of the stars from the sky and dropped them to the earth, and the dragon stopped in front of the woman as she was giving birth to the child so he could devour it as soon as it was born from its mother. The woman brought forth a male child into the world, the son who was to rule all the nations with an iron scepter, and the child was taken straight up to God and to his throne, while the woman escaped into the wilderness, where God had made a place of safety ready...And now war broke out in heaven, when Michael with his angels attacked the dragon. The dragon fought back with his angels, but they were defeated and driven out of heaven. The great dragon, the ancient serpent, known as the devil or Satan, who had deceived all the world, was hurled down to the earth and his angels with him... but for you earth and sea, trouble is coming-- because the devil has gone down to you in a rage because he knows his time is short. As the devil found himself thrown down to the earth, he sprang in pursuit of the woman, the mother of the male child, but she was given a huge pair of eagle's wings to fly away from the serpent into the wilderness...Then the dragon was enraged with the woman and went away to make war on the rest of her children, that is all who obey God's commandments and bear witness for Jesus" (Rev. 12: 1-14,17).

Adam and Eve sinned against God in the garden of Eden giving into the temptation of Satan. They ate the forbidden fruit and brought spiritual and physical death on them and their descendants.

"I will put emnity between you and the Woman, your offspring and her offspring. He will crush your head, and you will strike at his heel" (Gen. 3:15b).

"So the Lord God expelled him from the garden of Eden, to till the soil from which he had been taken. He banished the man, and in front of the garden of Eden he posted the cherubs, and the flame of a flashing sword to guard the way to the tree of life" (Gen. 3:23-24).

The pangs of birth and the struggle for power with her husband were given to the woman. The struggle to survive and tilling of a soil which would yield thistle and thorn against his efforts to bring about a fruitful harvest were given to the man. But when God cursed the serpent, he also blessed humanity promising a Redeemer.

"Yet God did make man imperishable, he made him in the image of his own nature; it was the devil's envy that brought death into the world, as those who are his partners will discover" (Wis. 2:23-24).

Adam's descendants were fruitful and multiplied filling the earth, with sin and death accompanying them every step of the way. Through covenants with Noah, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; God began calling a people apart for himself. The descendants of Jacob were brought to Egypt through Joseph. After many years the Egyptians began to fear the Hebrews and they enslaved them. They were so afraid of them that the male child of every Hebrew was killed save one named Moses who was hidden from harm. He was raised as part of the Pharoah's own household. After killing an Egyptian task master for maltreating a Hebrew slave, Moses escaped to the wilderness of Midian where God called to him. God revealed his name to Moses and sent him back to bring the slaves of Egypt in the freedom of being God's people.

"God led the people by a roundabout way of the wilderness to the Sea of Reeds...The Lord went before them, by day in the form of a pillar of cloud to show them the way, and by night in the form of a pillar of fire to give them light, thus they could continue their march by day and by night" (Ex. 13:21-22).

God took this stiff-necked people to be his own and through many trials in the wilderness, he made this people his own; making a covenant with them that he would never break. They complained against God and Moses several times. God took bitter water and made it sweet. God gave them manna--bread from heaven. Just as the serpent first tempted Adam and Eve with food, so it is the first thing that the Hebrews were tempted with and also the first thing Jesus is tempted with in the Gospel of Matthew. Does there seem to be a modus operandi here?

"Then Jesus was led by the Spirit out into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. He fasted for forty days and forty nights, after which he was very hungry,..." (Mt. 4:1-2a).

"Immediately afterward the Spirit drove him out into the wilderness and he remained there for forty days, and was tempted by Satan. He was with the wild beasts and the angels looked after him" (Mk. 1:12-13).

"Filled with the Holy Spirit, Jesus left the Jordan and was led by the Spirit through the wilderness, being tempted there by the devil for forty days. During that time he ate nothing and at the end he was hungry" (Lk 4:1-2).

     Mark is silent about the temptations that Jesus underwent, but the Greek word 'ekballei' Mark uses is translated at drove or thrust force. After his baptism Christ is driven by the Spirit to begin his mission as redeemer and save what was lost by facing the ancient serpent. He is tempted to use his power to fill his own belly which would make him an enemy of the Cross (Phil 3:18) which he was born to take up. He is also tempted to adore Satan and receive power from Satan over all the kingdoms of the earth. Jesus rebukes him saying that the Lord God alone shall be worshiped. The angel Gabriel had told Mary that Jesus would sit on the throne of his father David forever. He is the Lamb of God who was found worthy to receive glory, laud, honor and power forever by God the Father. The fatherhood of Satan, a liar and murderer from the beginning (Jn 8:44) is rejected by Christ. Jesus was lastly tempted to put God to the test and cast himself off the top of the temple to see if the angels would really bear him up lest he dash his foot against a stone. Jesus quoted Deut 6:16 to Satan and said "You shall not temp the Lord your God." This referred back to the day when the people of Israel were departing the Wilderness of Sin and had no water and they wondered aloud if God was truly among them. God gave them water from the Rock to drink (Ex 17).

     The temptations Christ underwent in wilderness at the end of forty days of fasting shows Christ as the New Moses and the New Elijah. Moses spent forty days and forty nights on the mountain top in Exodus 24. Elijah fasted as he journeyed for forty days and forty nights through the wilderness to Mount Horeb to the Craig of Moses. Jesus is also the King of the Jews, the head of the people Israel who wandered for forty years in the wilderness. As the first born of all creation, he is every man and woman resisting temptation by denying the appetite that the rest of humanity had developed for sin. We were exiled to the spiritual Wilderness of Sin because of our sin. Jesus has led us out of the wilderness into the Promised Land of Salvation by overcoming Satan in every way. He is victorious over the world, the flesh and the devil and gives us by His Holy Spirit, His Blood and Water the power to overcome and cast out the accuser (1 Jn 5:8; Rev. 12:10-11).

     Just as Jesus overcame Satan, so also to God's glory, Mary conceived without sin overcame him. Whenever and whereever the dragon has sat ready to devour the children of the Woman, she has been among her children nourishing them and teaching them of her firstborn Son. Through the midwifery of the Holy Spirit and Mary's intercessorial midwifery, Jesus Christ has come to be born in each child of the Woman, making them one in Jesus and therefore children of the Father. We are born from a womb of safety in the wilderness prepared for us by God.

     Whether Mary comes in extraordinary means such as at Lourdes, Fatima, or Rwanda to help prepare the people for a time of great suffering, or if she comes in the ordinary way of helping us to ponder the mysteries of the Gospel of the Rosary in our hearts she comes as our Mother. She comes as Mother who will not abandon her children to the dragon. The Woman of promise in Genesis 3 is the Woman crowned with the stars in Revelation 12 who has the head of the serpent and the moon under her feet. Though the dragon wages war on us her children, so we too wage war on him.

May "the God of peace ...soon crush Satan under your feet" (Rom. 16:20).
“For we contend not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, powers, the rulers of the darkness of this age and against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the high places” (Eph 6:12).

Womb of Untimeliness

2010-02-07T07:16:00.000-08:00

It seems that God's timing is always something that catches us off guard. We get caught up in the cares of life such as what we are to eat, where we will get the money for bills, what we are to wear, etc... Jesus tell us to seek first the kingdom of God and these things shall be added unto us.

The prophet Hosea describes how the sin and iniquity of Ephraim was stored up against him. He says, "The pangs of childbirth come for him, but he is an unwise son, for at the right time he does not present himself at the opening of the womb" (Hs. 13:13).  Ephraim had been making for himself idols and sacrificing children to Baal. He did not remember that it was God who had been a faithful Redeemer; who had brought him from the land of Egypt. The people had gotten away from remembering the Lord first in their daily lives. How often I get away from remembering God first. The difficulties in life and the increased pangs created by my own sins put me at odds with God. I am not where God wants me. God wants me at the opening of the womb of life ready for his light, life, and love to both bring me forth in birth and to be born from me.
Instead I am unable to see what God wants to do in my life because I am as blind, mute, and deaf as the sins and idols I worship.

God goes on to say through Hosea, "Shall I ransom them from the power of Sheol? Shall I redeem them from Death? O Death, where are plagues? O Sheol, where is your destruction? Compassion is hid from my eyes" (Hs. 13:14).  Ephraim's punishment is declared and the hot breath of God shall dry up his springs and his land shall be stripped of its treasure. Samaria is told that her people will fall by the sword, her children will be dashed to pieces, and her pregnant women ripped open. (Hs. 13:15-16).

The wages of sin is death. It is more than just physical death, but also spiritual death. The light, life, and love of God which are in us are aborted by mortal sin. We are ripped open and the good things that God wants to be born in and through us are dashed to pieces. We are spiritually slaughtered.  Those in the family and community around us are also hurt by our sins. However, we are not without hope of salvation.

There is a Greek Syriac manuscript of verse 13 which uses the words, "I will be" in place of the word "where".  Rendered that way the passage reads: "O Death, I will be your plague. O Sheol, I will be your destruction."

The Greek Orthodox Study Bible quotes St. Jerome in a foot note to this passage as follows:

"Moreover the Lord liberated everyone, and redeemed them through the suffering of the Cross and the shedding of His blood, when His soul descended into Hades, and He did not experience corruption to His flesh; and He speaks of the death itself as well as Hades: 'I will be your death, O Death!' For that reason I have died so that you may die through My death. 'I will be your death, O Hades' for you devoured all with your throat."

When Christ descended to hell, he broke the very jaws of death, and when he rose from the dead, he was victorious over the grave. In the book of Revelation, Jesus refers to himself saying, "Fear not, I am the first and the last, and the living one: I died, and behold I am alive evermore and I have the keys of Death and Hades" (Rev. 1:17b-18).

The Apostle Paul illustrates Christ's victory over sin and death in telling of his own salvation.

"For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures,
and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.  Then he appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep.  Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles.  Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me.  For I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.  But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God which is with me (1 Cor. 15:3-11).

Paul calls his conversion an "untimely" birth. Despite his great sins as a persecutor of Christ and his Church, God had mercy on him and saved him through grace. God then had a mission for Paul to the Gentiles.  Paul, by grace, was able to present himself at the opening of the womb of God's plan. God's plan for Saul to be born again as Paul was in God's time (kairos), not his time (chronos). For God, "Now is the acceptable time and now is the day of salvation" (2 Cor: 6:2, Is. 49:8).

Paul goes on to explain the mystery of the resurrection of the dead and how the last enemy to be destroyed will be death (v. 26).   "When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written:  'Death is swallowed up in victory.'  'O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?'" (vv. 55-56).

May we all be wise children ready to present ourselves at the opening of the next womb that God has ready for us.

Womb of the Whale

2009-08-17T05:02:00.000-07:00

(Whether or not it was whale or just a large fish, I like the title.)

The prophet Jonah was sent to the people of the city of Nineveh to preach repentance. If they did not repent, then in "forty more days Nineveh [would] be overthrown." Initially, Jonah tried to run away from God by taking a boat from Joppa to Tarshish on the the Mediterranean Sea. A storm came up and the other men on the boat knew that Jonah had done something to anger his God. Jonah told them that if they would throw him overboard the sea would calm, and it did. God then sent a large fish (or the more poetic sounding whale) to swallow Jonah alive. Jonah spent three days in the whale and from the depths of the whale cried out to God.

From the belly of the fish Jonah said this prayer to the LORD, his God: Out of my distress I called to the LORD,and he answered me; From the midst of the nether world I cried for help, and you heard my voice. For you cast me into the deep, into the heart of the sea, and the flood enveloped me; All your breakers and your billows passed over me. Then I said, "I am banished from your sight! Yet would I again look upon your holy temple." The waters swirled about me, threatening my life; the abyss enveloped me; seaweed clung about my head. Down I went to the roots of the mountains; the bars of the nether world were closing behind me forever, But you brought my life up from the pit, O LORD, my God. When my soul fainted within me,I remembered the LORD; My prayer reached you in your holy temple. Those who worship vain idols forsake their source of mercy. But I, with resounding praise,will sacrifice to you; What I have vowed I will pay: deliverance is from the LORD. Then the LORD commanded the fish to spew Jonah upon the shore" (Jonah 2:1-10).

Jonah tried to flee from God, but was unable. His punishment was to be shut up in the belly of a whale in the depths of the sea at the roots of the mountains. Even there though, God was present to him as he cried out in prayer. The psalmist in Psalm 139 says, "Where can I hide from your spirit? From your presence, where can I flee? If I ascend to the heavens, you are there; if I lie down in Sheol, you are there too. If I fly with the wings of dawn and alight beyond the sea, Even there your hand will guide me, your right hand hold me fast" (Ps. 139:7-10). Jonah realized too late the terror of falling into the hands of the Living God. Yet he also realized the peace that only God can give. As so many of the psalms begin in distress and end in a sacrifice of praise to God, so to does Jonah's. Psalm 22 quoted by Christ on the Cross is a prime example of this; "My God, My God why have you forsaken me?"

From out of the depths Jonah is reborn. "You formed my inmost being; you knit me in my mother's womb. I praise you, so wonderfully you made me; wonderful are your works! My very self you knew; my bones were not hidden from you, When I was being made in secret, fashioned as in the depths of the earth" (Ps. 139:13-15). Jonah comes forth from the whale reborn and ready to God's will. God did not abandon him. When Jonah turned to God in faith, God did not withhold his right hand, but he delivered him from the pit within the whale. "For you will not abandon me to Sheol, nor let your faithful servant see the pit" (Ps 16:10).
Jonah is a type of Jesus. Jesus was in a boat with his disciples. A key difference is that Jesus always did the will of his Father who sent him.
"He got into a boat and his disciples followed him. Suddenly a violent storm came up on the sea, so that the boat was being swamped by waves; but he was asleep. They came and woke him, saying, "Lord, save us! We are perishing!" He said to them, "Why are you terrified, O you of little faith?" Then he got up, rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was great calm. The men were amazed and said, "What sort of man is this, whom even the winds and the sea obey?" (Mt. 8:23-27).

Jesus was not literally thrown overboard; he is rather revealed as Lord of the storm. However, his Incarnation in which he sank into the depths of our humanity by becoming a man in the depths of the womb of the Virgin Mary and his Passion and Death in which he was cast into the depths of our sins and swallowed by the gaping Jaws of Death show that Jonah is fulfilled in him.

"Then some of the scribes and Pharisees said to him, "Teacher, we wish to see a sign from you." He said to them in reply, "An evil and unfaithful generation seeks a sign, but no sign will be given it except the sign of Jonah the prophet. Just as Jonah was in the belly of the whale three days and three nights, so will the Son of Man be in the heart of the earth three days and three nights. At the judgment, the men of Nineveh will arise with this generation and condemn it, because they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and there is something greater than Jonah here" (Mt. 12: 38-41).

Jonah was cast out of the boat and the wind and the waves were calmed and the sailors made vows and sacrifices to the one true God. Jesus was bodily taken up on the cross and cast into the raging wind, rain, storm, and crashing waves of sin and death. Jonah was cast into sea and swallowed up by the mouth of a great fish. Jesus was cast into the sea of sin and death and was swallowed up by the jaws of death. From the depths of the whales womb Jonah's prayer rose up. He made his own De Profundis. "From out of the depths I cry unto you, Lord." (Ps. 130). From the depths of the earth, Jesus prayed to his Father. He broke open "the bars of the netherworld" and preached to the prisoners. He lead them into heaven breaking open those gates that had been shut to man since the fall, probably singing a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving much like Jonah's.

Jonah points to the Resurrection of Jesus. Jesus is not left in the pit to know corruption. He is gloriously and bodily Resurrected. Death, sin, suffering, and destruction are not the end. There is a resurrection in which we will all be reborn: either to life everlasting or death everlasting. The Resurrection of Jesus is so important and central to our faith that Paul says that if it did not happen then everything we believe is in vain. The bars of the gates of hell were not enough to keep Jesus drug down into the pit. The wrappings of seaweed in Jonah's case and the wrappings of a burial shroud in the case of Jesus were not enough to hold back the hand of the Living God. In Jesus Christ, death itself is swallowed up and has no victory. We therefore have our faith and hope in him.

From the depths of our suffering we cry out to God. God hears our cries and does not abandon us to the pit; rather he transforms our circumstances to a womb of hope from which we are born anew and from which one day we will rise with him.

Feast of St Thomas the Apostle

2009-07-03T05:07:00.000-07:00

St Thomas doubted when he heard that the Lord had been there while he was away. He had earlier said, "Let us go and die with the Lord" (Jn. 11-16). This echoed Peter's proclamation of never abandoning Jesus and his subsequent use of a sword to cut off the ear of a servant of the high priest who had come with Judas and the mob to take Jesus away. Now Thomas is in disillusionment and despair over Jesus being crucified. His resolve and faith have waned. He states his doubt as boldly as he stated his confidence in going to die with the Lord earlier. "I will not believe until I see the nail prints in his hands and feet and put my hand in his side" (Jn. 19:25).

Jesus came again the following week and this time Thomas' own words are used against him by the Lord Jesus. "Then he said to Thomas, "Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe." Thomas said to him, "My Lord and my God!" Then Jesus told him, "Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed" (Jn. 19:27-29).

Thomas' faith is born anew from seeing the Risen Lord with his wounds now glorified. Thomas sees the womb of the Sacred Heart which has loved the Father in obedience and suffered, died and rose again for our salvation. The side of Christ is opened to him and his heart in turn is opened. Do not suppose this was a gentle thing. I think it was more as the prophet had said, "Rend your hearts not your garments" (Joel 2:13). The words of faith, "My Lord and My God," boiled and burst forth to the surface. A faith that was dead in him rose again with the same violence as the earth quake at the time of Jesus' death. Just as the chief priest rent his garments when Jesus said, "You shall see the Son of Man coming on the clouds with the hosts of the armies of heaven in glory;" so now Thomas rends his heart with the confession of faith "My Lord and My God."

Sometimes in life we cannot come to faith until the Lord has removed every last obstacle and excuse our doubt can hold onto. In the parable of Lazarus and the rich man, Abraham warned that not even if one should come back from the dead would the rich man's brothers believe. Some have received extraordinary graces like St Thomas the Apostle and still do not believe.
Today is the First Friday of the month and therefore also dedicated to the Sacred Heart. Go to Mass and confess that Jesus is Lord and God with Thomas. Rend your hearts that your faith may be born anew. The pains of your labor of faith will soon be forgotten with the Joy of beholding your God anew (Jn. 16:21).

Womb of the Sacred Heart of Jesus

2009-06-21T16:10:00.000-07:00

Below are my reflections on the meaning of the symbolism of the Sacred Heart of Jesus image.

The Heart itself.

The heart is a universal symbol for love. "If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in him and he in God. And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him" (1 Jn. 4:15-16). God so loved world he gave His only Son as a sacrifice for our sins.

The heart as an organ pumps blood to every member of the body. So too the Sacred Heart of Jesus pumps His blood to each one of us especially when we receive Him in the Eucharist in a state of grace. The heart is life giving. One man died that we all might have life. This is the heart which literally poured out its blood and water on our behalf to give us eternal life.

The crown of thorns.

The crown of thorns around the head of Jesus was placed there by the soldiers as they struck him and mocked him saying, "All hail the King of the Jews." I don't have the source of this next quote, but Jesus is supposed to have said to Margaret Mary Alacoque that the soldiers gave him a crown of thorns on his head and his friends gave him the crown of thorn around his heart. The love of men has grown cold in the last days and the heart which has love all has not been loved in return. It has been hated, reviled, or just ignored.

The crown of thorns surrounding the Sacred Heart is also like a hedge of protection.
Satan asked God about Job, "Have you not put a hedge around him and his household and everything he has" (Job 1:10)? In the book of Hosea, God put a spiritual hedge of thorns around Gomer. "Therefore, I will block her path with thorn bushes; I will wall her in so that she cannot find her way. She shall chase after her lovers but not catch them; she will look for them but not find them. Then she will say, "I will go back to my husband as at first, for then I was better off than now" (Hosea 2:6-7). There is also an opinion in Jewish rabbinical tradition that the bush from which God spoke to Moses was a thorn bush. (See the following article from the Jewish Encyclopedia.) The Law on Sinai was given forth from a thorn bush; the Law on Calvary was given forth from the heart of a man pierced with nails, spear, and thorns. He spoke the words earlier in John's Gospel, "I give you a new command: Love one another as I have loved you." He lived those words unto his death on the cross and his rising from the dead.

When we are in the Sacred Heart of the God who is love and He within us, we are protected from the fiery darts of the evil one. God allowed Satan to try Job with the loss of all of his possessions and family, even the loss of his health, but God did not allow Satan to take his life. "God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it (1 Cor. 10:13).

The Fire

The fire in the Sacred Heart is the fire of Divine Love. The fire from which God spoke to Moses burned but did not consume the thorn bush (Ex. 3:2). John the Baptist said of Christ, "His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor, gathering his wheat into the barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire" (Mt. 3:12). Again Paul writes:
"For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ. If any man builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, his work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each man's work. If what he has built survives, he will receive his reward. If it is burned up, he will suffer loss; he himself will be saved, but only as one escaping through the flames" (1 Cor. 3:10-15).

Those who love Jesus are in his Sacred Heart and they are purified by him like gold that is tested in fire. Though we suffer loss of imperfect work built from inferior materials, we shall be saved in the end. I think that purgatory is within the Sacred Heart of Jesus figuratively and literally. Though the heart is a symbol, the love it symbolises is quite literal. Those who do not love Jesus will suffer the eternal loss of God's friendship. There is a consuming fire that goes before the Israelites and destroys their enemies. "For our God is a consuming fire" (Deut. 4:24; Heb. 12:29). Those who die without the fire of God's love in them are eternally punished by it.

The Cross

The cross in the middle of the flames in his Sacred Heart is the suffering which we endure just as he endured suffering. "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me (Lk. 9:23). He gave his life on the cross that we might live. The greatest good of our salvation was brought about through the greatest evil of deicide. "And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose" (Rom. 8:28).

If we are within his heart, though we suffer the cross with him, and we are burned by the fire of our trials in life, we are not consumed by them. We are protected as the three young men were protected in the furnace by the angel in the third chapter of the book of Daniel. We are purified as gold is tested in fire. We are safe and protected within the womb of his heart. We cling to the promise he gave that we will not be tempted beyond our endurance. He is always faithful to his promises.

There are 12 promises that he gave to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque listed below:

1. I will give them all the graces necessary for their state of life.
2. I will give peace in their families.
3. I will console them in all their troubles.
4. I will be their refuge in life and especially in death.
5. I will abundantly bless all their undertakings.
6. Sinners shall find in my Heart the source and infinite ocean of mercy.
7. Tepid souls shall become fervent.
8. Fervent souls shall rise speedily to great perfection.
9. I will bless those places wherein the image of My Sacred Heart shall be exposed and venerated.
10. I will give to priests the power to touch the most hardened hearts.
11. Persons who propagate this devotion shall have their names eternally written in my Heart.
12. In the excess of the mercy of my Heart, I promise you that my all powerful love will grant to all those who will receive Communion on the First Fridays, for nine consecutive months, the grace of final repentance: they will not die in my displeasure, nor without receiving the sacraments; and my Heart will be their secure refuge in that last hour.

Sacred Heart of Jesus have mercy on us!

Womb of the Upper Room Part IV

2009-05-31T04:56:00.000-07:00

The disciples were not orphaned. There is one who is quietly gathering them to the womb of the upper room. There is one who has never given up the Faith, Hope, and Love--the Divine Indwelling-- that has been with her since her Immaculate Conception. She is the mother hen in Jerusalem gathering her chicks. She is the Spouse of the Holy Spirit hovering as Gerard Manly Hopkins would say with "ahh bright wings!" Mary is the midwife of the Spirit helping the disciples prepare for their rebirth. All hope is dead (almost) and therefore seemingly lost...

She gathered them to the upper room once more to pray and fast for nine days for the coming of the Holy Spirit. The first novena of the Holy Spirit was facilitated by Mary who already was Church incarnate. Peter lead them and Mary guided him and the others. They prayed, fasted and waited on God to act.

Going back to Genesis 11, God had confused the language of the men of the world as punishment for the pride they showed trying to build a tower to heaven with which to challenge God or make themselves his equal. God scattered these men and their confused languages to the four corners of the earth. God made covenant with Abraham and his descendants through Isaac and Jacob. He began to gather a people through whom would come the salvation of the world (Is. 40:5; Lk. 2:29-32; Jn 4:22 ). God sent the power of His Holy Spirit upon the waters of creation, upon the Ark of the covenant, upon the Temple of Solomon, upon the Blessed Virgin Mary and now upon the newly conceived Church.

The Holy Spirit descended in a great wind that shook the cenacle. The power came to rest over each one in the form of a visible flame. The waters of the upper room broke and the Apostles burst forth into the streets of Jerusalem praising the God of heaven and earth in the tongues of all the people's gathered there from the four corners of the earth. Now the Spirit of God gathers all peoples to Himself. No longer are those that believe scattered, confused and afraid. Rather, those who heard the good news, believed and were baptised received unity, knowledge and courage!

The Church is God's antidote to the sin and confusion of Babel. All the power of the Holy Spirit with the merits and graces of the Life, Death, and Resurrection of the Glorified Son of God, Jesus are contained within her. She dispenses the divine treasures to all her children. The life of faith is conceived in us by the power of the Holy Spirit and we are born in the womb of the baptistry to new life in Christ. We are fed with the manna from heaven in the Eucharist that nourishes us and sustains us on our journey. We are matured and built into the full stature of the man Jesus in confirmation. We are unbound and delivered from slavery to sin in the sacrament of reconciliation. We are given healing in the sacrament of anointing of the sick. We are called to leave father and mother and cleave to our spouse that we might be one as Christ and the Church are one and give more children to God from our union in the sacrament of marriage. We are called apart and ordered to the person of Christ to be priests to teach, govern and sanctify the Church. We call God Our Father and Jesus our Brother. Mary is our mother as well as the Church. She is the Church in glory interceding for us in the Holy Spirit who helps us in our weakness and knows how to pray for us in groanings that cannot be expressed by the human tongue (Rom 8:26).

Credo in Spiritum Sanctum, Dominum et vivificantem, qui ex Patre Filioque procedit. Qui cum Patre et Filio simul adoratur et conglorificatur: qui locutus est per prophetas. Et unam, sanctam, catholicam et apostolicam Ecclesiam. Confiteor unum baptisma in remissionem peccatorum. Et expecto resurrectionem mortuorum, et vitam venturi saeculi. Amen.

Happy Birthday Church and Thank you Holy Spirit!

Womb of Mercy

2009-04-25T18:22:00.000-07:00

I come across masters of expression every once in a while and to paraphrase them does injustice. Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis is one of these people. In his book, Fire of Mercy, Heart of the Word: Meditations on the Gospel According to Saint Matthew: Vol. 1, he comments on the fifth beatitude. Blessed are the merciful for they shall obtain mercy.

"Having mercy at bottom means bestowing life. God is merciful by nature because he is the Creator by nature. This essential aspect of mercy has solid philological roots. Recall the particular way the Benedictus refers to God's mercy: per viscera misericordiae Dei nostri (Lk 2:78), which the older translations rendered literally as "by the bowels of the compassion of our God". One word for mercy in Hebrew is rachamim, which literally means the "viscera" occupying the abdominal region and , specifically the womb. Probably one reason for this is the feeling of compassion manifested physically in that area of the body. We say that our "heart skipped a beat" or our "insides turned over". In Spanish, something held to be very dear is said to be entranable, from entranas (one's "insides" or "entrails"). More profoundly this expression is metaphorically referring to God as a mother who has compassion on her children and feels it in that part of her body because it is there that she conceived them, bore them, and gave them birth. The act of having mercy may thus also be called the act of giving birth in the spirit...
God calls us to be in the world and extension of his paternal and maternal activity, whereby he is ever bearing and giving birth. Ex utero matutini velut rorem genui te [From the womb of the morning like the dew have I begotten you] (Ps 109:4), says the Father to the Son and to all those who are born in the Son"(Merikakis, pp 197-8).

God also says, "Can a woman forget her sucking child,that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget,yet I will not forget you. Behold, I have carved you on the palms of my hands;your walls are continually before me" (Is 49:15-16). We have a God who is merciful to us and knows us from before our conception in the womb. We have a God who Himself became Mercy Incarnate in the Womb of the Virgin. John the Baptist "leapt for joy" in the womb of Elizabeth with the joy of receiving the Good News of the Mercy of God from Mary. God was so faithful to us that He wrote the law of love in our hearts of flesh even as He allowed us to write our names in the palms of His hands and soles of His feet with our sins and the nails of the Cross--the spear of Longinus writing our names in His most Sacred Heart in return for the law of love he writes in our hearts. The Anima Christi says, "Within your wounds hide me." I say, "Within your womb hide me."

Womb of the Upper Room: Part III

2009-04-18T17:06:00.000-07:00

The disciples were locked in the upper room "for fear of the Jews." On the evening of that first day of the new creation Jesus, the New Adam came and stood in their midst saying, "Peace be with you." It is only after he shows them his hands and feet that they recognize him and rejoice. Fear, grief, sorrow and despair are replaced with trust, solace, joy and hope. In the Gospel of John the apostles are given the gift of the Holy Spirit as Jesus breaths upon them.

"Jesus therefore said to them again, 'Peace be with you'. And when he had said this, he breathed upon them and said to them, 'Receive the Holy Spirit: whose sins you shall forgive are forgiven them and whose sins you shall retain are retained'" (Jn. 20:21-23).

Adam, the first born of the new creation shares his breath with them. He breathes in their nostrils the new life of God which is eternal. They shall rise again with him on the last day to life everlasting. They receive a Spirit of power and charity and discipline (2 Tim. 1:7). Jesus stirs into flame the new life of the Holy Spirit within them. Jesus gives them the Holy Spirit by whom we have the Incarnation, the Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the Resurrection of the body, and life everlasting.

Thomas was not there and did not believe that the others had seen the Risen Jesus. He boldly proclaims that he will not believe unless he can put his fingers in the wounds of Jesus' hands and feet and his hand in Jesus' side. Eight days later Jesus stands before them again saying, "Peace be with you." He tells Thomas to put his fingers in his hands and feet and his hand in his side and to no longer persist in unbelief but to believe. Thomas says the immortal words of faith, "My Lord and my God!" Jesus then gives us words of faith to live by, "You have believed because you have seen me, but blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe!" We believe because of the Spirit inspired witness of the Apostles: most of them witnessing in their own blood to Jesus Christ, Risen and Glorified as God's own Son.

Jesus tells us that when we pray we are to go to our room and pray to our Father who is in secret. "And your Father who sees in secret will reward you" (Mt. 6:6). It is in the womb of your personal "upper room" where you must go, not out of fear, but with courage: the courage to call God "Father." The Father knows what we need even before we ask it and Jesus tells us therefore to ask with confidence. In the Gospel of Luke Jesus says that we are to knock and it will be opened unto us. He says that the Father will give us the Holy Spirit when we ask (Lk. 11:9-13).

God the Father and Jesus long to give us the gift of the new life in the Spirit that has overcome death.

"Behold, I stand at the gate, and knock. If any man shall hear my voice, and open to me the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me" (Rev. 3:20). Jesus also said,
"If any one love me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him, and will make our abode with him" (Mt. 14:23).

When we love Jesus with the Spirit with which he loves the Father, we cry out; not in slavery to sin and fear, but in a Spirit of freedom and adoption the most intimate name of God the Father, "Abba" (Rom. 8:15). This same Spirit also gives us the courage to say, "Jesus is Lord" (1 Cor. 12:3). The Holy Spirit makes us partakers in the hidden inner life of the Trinity (2 Pt. 1:4).

Jesus is Risen! The Spirit and the Kingdom are within in us and upon us. In the womb of our upper room in secret we ask God, our Father, the most intimate desires of our hearts freely and without fear. God in turn shares with us every good thing, supping with us giving us some of the secret manna and calling us by a secret name known only to us that names us as God's beloved child (Rev 2:17).

Womb of the Upper Room: Part II

2009-04-10T05:35:00.001-07:00

The disciples have all run away. Christ has been taken from them. Two that we know of followed him. The rest we presume are in shock and terror that the Light of the world has been taken from them. They are in utter darkness and confusion. He had predicted His passion, death and resurrection and they still do not understand. They don't see any hope in this tragedy.

The one who betrayed Christ for thirty pieces of silver has turned in horror to face the evil he has committed. He throws the silver pieces back to those who have given it to him. In utter despair he does not seek forgiveness. He condemns himself to death and hangs himself.

News reaches them all of the horrors that happen to the Master. He is taken out and scourged, beaten, crowned with thorns, mocked, humiliated, rejected, made to carry the instrument of His death, crucified as one cursed to a tree, and He died as a God-forsaken criminal. After he is dead he is immolated on the end of a centurions lance and both blood and water pour forth.

The disciples are beginning to gather in the upper room in darkness, locking the door for fear of the Jewish leadership that handed over Jesus to death under the Romans. Only fear, sorrow, darkness, anguish, affliction, and despair seem to be present.

But somewhere...Mary the Mother who witnessed everything from the foot of the cross has found one of her "sons"(Jn. 19:26). Jesus her Only Son has given her the beloved disciple to be her son , and she has been given by Jesus as Mother to John and to all who would believe and do the will of the Heavenly Father (Mt. 12:50).

"If you love Me, you will keep My commandments. "I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever; that is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not see Him or know Him, but you know Him because He abides with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans..." (Jn. 14:15-18).

Just as Jesus had promised the Holy Spirit by saying, "I will not leave you orphaned;" now He has already given His earthly Mother. Later He will give the Holy Spirit. For now it would seem Mary is the earthly model of the Divine "down payment" to be fulfilled at Pentecost (Eph. 1:14)..

The disciples were not orphaned. There is one who is quietly gathering them to the womb of the upper room. There is one who has never given up the Faith, Hope, and Love--the Divine Indwelling-- that has been with her since her Immaculate Conception. She is the mother hen in Jerusalem gathering her chicks. She is the Spouse of the Holy Spirit hovering as Gerard Manly Hopkins would say with "ahh bright wings!" Mary is the midwife of the Spirit helping the disciples prepare for their rebirth. All hope is dead (almost) and therefore seemingly lost...

Womb of the Upper Room: Part I

2009-04-09T04:10:00.000-07:00

The twelve disciples all gathered with Jesus on the night before he died in the upper room. Jesus gave them the gift of Himself in the Eucharist. Paul recounts the event in 1 Cor:23-26:

For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, "This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me." In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me." For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.

The disciples may have understood part of what he was saying since they would have heard Jesus speak of Himself as the Bread of Life before. However, they couldn't understand the full significance of what he was saying until after His passion, crucifixion and Resurrection.

Within the upper room, Jesus, by the power of the Holy Spirit, brought forth the first bread and wine now blessed and transformed into his Body and Blood for all humanity to eat and drink of until He should come again in glory. The same thing happened over thirty years earlier when His mother Mary said, "Let it be done to me according to your word." The Word became Flesh and dwelt among us! Now the God who became Incarnate becomes Impanate: becomes bread for the life of the world. Now the God who became Incarnate becomes Invinate: becomes new wine poured out for the life of the world.

Jesus told the disciples that He would not leave them orphaned and that behold He was with them even unto the end of days. He promised the Holy Spirit, the Divine Shekinah which over shadows and conceives and brings forth the first fruits of Jesus in many different ways. In particular the Eucharist is one of the greatest ways that Jesus stays present among us.

Each time we gather in our local church for the Eucharist, the priest calls down the Holy Spirit to bless the gifts of bread and wine "that they may become for us the Body and Blood of Your Son our Lord Jesus Christ." We do this is in "remembrance" or in greek anamnesis. It is not the kind of remembering you do of your favorite vacation. It is the kind of remembering (in hebrew zakar) that was done by the people of Israel in Exodus whenever they celebrated the passover meal. They were to eat with their loins girded and staff in hand as one on a journey (Ex. 12:1-14). They were by their actions (and God's Divine once-for-all action) to make present that day of their flight from Egypt through the Red Sea into the Promised Land. God always remembers His Covenant and always keeps His part of the Covenant. In the Eucharist we have God the Son having come now as one of us making a Covenant with God the Father in His own Body and Blood that shall never be broken. God is always faithful to Himself. By the Power of the Holy Spirit the Lord has sworn an oath to Himself which He shall eternally be faithful to.

What is born from the Divine action of God on the Table of the first Eucharist is to be born in us when we receive Jesus in communion. His Body and Blood are truly present. We the body have remembered with the priest our spiritual head and we all partake of the same bread and wine. We are now all born into each other as One Body, One Blood, and One Spirit in Christ. What happens to the least of us, happens to the greatest of us. We are all equal in dignity and love in the eyes of God. What is born from the womb of this table is our eternal life together in Christ Jesus. No one is saved alone and no one is damned alone. Then let us be mindful of how we conduct ourselves that we might not be the cause of our brothers and sisters falling into sin.

May the Body and Blood of Christ bring us to everlasting Life!

Feast of the Annunciation

2009-03-25T11:07:00.000-07:00

Fiat mihi secundum Verbum tuum! The words the world had longed for since the fall of creation. By the fiat of a humble maiden, permission was given to God to act in the world. Somewhere Augustine is attributed with saying that the God who created you without you will not save you without you. Saying yes to God is the simplest, humblest thing and that is why our pride finds it so difficult and we find no solace in doing our own will. Only in seeking the design from the master's hand do we get a sense of who we are and where we are going. May God hear Mary's prayer of obedience once more today on behalf of us all and may Jesus Christ be conceived in the wombs of our hearts that we may bear the good fruit of the Holy Spirit. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control are all fruits we give birth to when we say yes to God.

Aaron and Joseph: Priests to the Womb of the Tent of Meeting

2009-03-22T17:09:00.000-07:00

In Numbers 16, a man named Korah and 250 people who were not descended from Aaron attempted to offer incense at the altar of the Lord. They confronted Moses and Aaron saying that they too were holy and asking why should Moses and Aaron put themselves over everyone else. Moses responded that the next day they would all bring their censers filled with burning coals and incense and offer it before the Lord along with Aaron and that the Lord would decide who was the holy one. To make a long story short, the leaders of the group and their families are swallowed up by the earth and fire from heaven consumes the 250 others who were daring to offer incense at the Tent of the Meeting. Numbers 17 continues the story.

"The next day the whole Israelite community grumbled against Moses and Aaron, saying, "It is you who have slain the LORD'S people." But while the community was deliberating against them, Moses and Aaron turned toward the meeting tent, and the cloud now covered it and the glory of the LORD appeared. Then Moses and Aaron came to the front of the meeting tent, and the LORD said to Moses and Aaron, "Depart from this community, that I may consume them at once." But they fell prostrate. Then Moses said to Aaron, "Take your censer, put fire from the altar in it, lay incense on it, and bring it quickly to the community to make atonement for them; for wrath has come forth from the LORD and the blow is falling." Obeying the orders of Moses, Aaron took his censer and ran in among the community, where the blow was already falling on the people. Then, as he offered the incense and made atonement for the people, standing there between the living and the dead, the scourge was checked. Yet fourteen thousand seven hundred died from the scourge, in addition to those who died because of Korah. When the scourge had been checked, Aaron returned to Moses at the entrance of the meeting tent.

The LORD now said to Moses, "Speak to the Israelites and get one staff from them for each ancestral house, twelve staffs in all, one from each of their tribal princes. Mark each man's name on his staff;and mark Aaron's name on Levi's staff, for the head of Levi's ancestral house shall also have a staff. Then lay them down in the meeting tent, in front of the commandments, where I meet you. There the staff of the man of my choice shall sprout. Thus will I suppress from my presence the Israelites' grumbling against you."So Moses spoke to the Israelites, and their princes gave him staffs, twelve in all, one from each tribal prince; and Aaron's staff was with them.Then Moses laid the staffs down before the LORD in the tent of the commandments. The next day, when Moses entered the tent, Aaron's staff, representing the house of Levi, had sprouted and put forth not only shoots, but blossoms as well, and even bore ripe almonds! Moses thereupon brought out all the staffs from the LORD'S presence to the Israelites. After each prince identified his own staff and took it,the LORD said to Moses, "Put back Aaron's staff in front of the commandments, to be kept there as a warning to the rebellious, so that their grumbling may cease before me; if it does not, they will die." And Moses did as the LORD had commanded him.Then the Israelites cried out to Moses, "We are perishing; we are lost, we are all lost! Every time anyone approaches the Dwelling of the LORD, he dies! Are we to perish to the last man?"

God gives responsibility of the priesthood to Aaron and his sons alone, where the rest of the Levites may attend to the sanctuary. Aaron and his direct descendants were to have charge of the altar and the sacred vessels used for sacrifice. They would have no portion of the promised Land, but the Lord Himself would be their portion.

In the The Apocryphal Gospel of the Nativity of Mary, the story is related that Mary had been living at the Temple with other young girls dedicated to the Lord since the age of three years. Her parents Joachim and Anna left her there to be educated. God the Father thought of Mary as His "lily among thorns, so is my love among the daughters"(Songs 2:2). Mary turned fourteen years of age and the high priest announced that it was time for all girls of that age to return home and get married according to custom. Mary had made a vow of perpetual virginity to God and told the high priest she could not marry for this reason. The high priest consulted with the other priests and they decided that the matter must be taken before the Mercy Seat of the Lord. A voice was heard that said in order to fulfill the prophecy of Isaiah, "a man should be sought out to whom the virgin could be entrusted and espoused."

"But a shoot shall sprout from the stump of Jesse, and from his roots a bud shall blossom. The spirit of the LORD shall rest upon him: a spirit of wisdom and of understanding, A spirit of counsel and of strength, a spirit of knowledge and of fear of the LORD, and his delight shall be the fear of the LORD (Is 11:1-3).

All of David's descendants who were eligible for marriage were summoned to bring forth their rods to the altar. None of their staffs blossomed and the high priest found out from God in prayer that Joseph who was very old by this time had withheld his rod and had not come forth. Joseph was summoned to bring his staff before the altar of the Lord and it blossomed and the Spirit of the Lord in the form a dove descended upon his staff and settled there. Mary was obedient and became betrothed to Joseph. She returned to her parents home in Nazareth and it is shortly thereafter that the Annunciation took place and the angel Gabriel calmed her fears and explained to her God's plan of salvation of which she was to be a significant agent.

Tradition and Scripture tell us of the virgin birth of Jesus and how Joseph cared for and protected Mary in whom God and Man were joined inseparably for eternity. Joseph served as a priest before the new "Tent of Meeting" between God and man. The Shekinah of the Holy Spirit came down upon Joseph's staff as a sign that he alone had been chosen to serve at the altar of the Blessed Virgin's Womb. His obedience to the will of God expressed to him in dreams by angels was a sweet fragrance that was an acceptable sacrifice before God in His new Holy of Holies.

The Tent of the Meeting contained the Word of God written on stone tablets that Moses received from God on Sinai. Later when the Ark of the Covenant was built there would also be the staff of Aaron and the manna from heaven with which God fed them in the desert for forty years. The womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary contained the Word of God written not on stone but in the literal Flesh of Jesus. He was the blossom from the root of Jesse and the Bread of Life come down from Heaven through which God gave them every good thing.

Here within Mary was a temple not made by human hands. In Hebrews 10 it says upon coming into the world (within Mary's womb) Jesus said to God, "Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body you prepared for me; holocausts and sin offerings you took no delight in. Then I said, 'As is written of me in the scroll, Behold, I come to do your will, O God.'" The author of Hebrews goes on to explain "By this "will," we have been consecrated through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all" (Heb. 10:10).

Just as Aaron served before the first tent of the meeting, Joseph served before the second tent of the meeting. Jesus was born of the Virgin Mary and was watched over by a just man who was also chaste and never had relations with Mary. He treated this sacred vessel of the Lord with great reverence and respect and was always ready to obey the command of the Lord to protect Mary and the child Jesus.

Aaron's staff bloomed almonds and signified the Lord's choice of his priesthood. Joseph's staff bloomed a blossom which signified that he was God's choice to be the man entrusted with His beloved bride. The blossom is depicted as a Lily in artwork probably because Jesus is prophetically called the rose of Sharon and the lily of the valley in the Song of Solomon 2:1. God, through Mary, came to us in a way that we no longer needed fear for our lives in approaching Him. Jesus is the Mercy of God Incarnate. From the Mercy seat of Mary's womb he began to offer Himself to God the Father on our behalf as a "once for all sacrifice".

Mary's intercession helped bring about God with us. She continues to intercede for us and helps us to approach the Lord in love and confidence. She says, "Do whatever he tells you to do" (Jn 2:5).

If any man wants to be a better husband, let him look to Saint Joseph's example for guidance. Actions speak louder than words. The Scriptures only record what Joseph did. They never tell what words he spoke. Joseph listened to the Lord in prayer and promptly obeyed God's will. As a husband I need to follow his example of being faithful leader of my wife and family and to always be faithful to the sacred duties I have been entrusted with.

St Joseph, pray for us.

Womb of the Beatitudes: Solidarity

2009-03-07T09:28:00.000-08:00

In reading the beatitudes in Matthew's Gospel, I have often come away puzzled as to how these actually fit into my everyday life. What does it mean to be meek or be poor in spirit or to be pure of heart? What do these things on a practical level mean for my life: my relationships with God, others, and myself? Lately I have thought on this more often. After remembering a way of reading the Scriptures that I learned at a retreat once, I have gleaned the beginning of understanding the beatitudes.

For example, in chapter 13 of 1st Corinthians where it says, "Love is patient, love is kind...", substitute the name of Jesus every time the word love occurs. You get, "Jesus is patient, Jesus is kind... ." It gives new meaning to the passage of Scripture. In doing the same thing with the Beatitudes, it helps get to the deeper meaning.

Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the Kingdom of God.

Jesus is poor in spirit. He was born in a stable surrounded by the beasts lodged their. He had no covetous desire for wealth and he lived simply. He had nowhere to lay his head and made himself poorer than the foxes and birds. When we identify with our brothers and sisters who have very little in the ways of money, possessions, education, or importance in society, then we identify ourselves with Jesus.

From all Eternity Jesus as God the Son is loved by and begotten by God the Father. In the internal life of the Trinity, God the Son completely impoverishes Himself in order to be filled and overflowed with every good thing from God the Father. In freely pouring Himself out in complete love and obedience to the Father he is given every bit of His Father's Kingdom and
Wealth of Love. The Holy Spirit is their way of relating and their exchange of Infinite Love. When the Holy Spirit is poured out upon the Church, He is called the first down payment or installment by Paul. ( Eph 1: 13-14). Jesus tells us if we who are part of an evil generation know how to give what is good to our children, how much more the Father will give us the Holy Spirit when we ask Him (Lk. 11:13).

Blessed are the meek: for they shall possess the land.

Jesus was meek. He told us, "Come to me all you who labor and find life burdensome for I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon your shoulders and learn of me for I am meek and humble of heart" (Mt. 11:29). Jesus was silent before those who condemned him.
"He was oppressed and He was afflicted, Yet He did not open His mouth; Like a lamb that is led to slaughter, And like a sheep that is silent before its shearers, So He did not open His mouth" (Is 53:7). When he died he was cut off from the land of the living and he freely gave himself as a sin offering for our offenses. Because of this, God raised Him up and gave Him his portion with the great and gave Him the Name above every other name.

In our afflictions God expands us and prepares us for the good things He wishes to give us. In Isaiah 54 the barren woman is told to expand her tents. "Enlarge the place of your tent;Stretch out the curtains of your dwellings, spare not;Lengthen your cords and strengthen your pegs. For you will spread abroad to the right and to the left.And your descendants will possess nations and will resettle the desolate cities." Through her sufferings she is preparing and is prepared for the coming fulfillment of the Lord's promises. She has hope. "Blessed is she who believed that the promises of the Lord to her would be fulfilled" (Luke 1:45). The wombs of our hearts are expanded so we can give birth to a larger portion of the "land" Jesus, our inheritance.
(also see Pope Benedict XVI's Saved in Hope #33)

Blessed are they who mourn: for they shall be comforted.

Jesus wept. Jesus mourned Lazarus. He had great anguish over the death of his friend. He gave comfort to Martha even as he challenged her to have faith. "I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me will live even if he dies, and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die. Do you believe this?” (Lk. 11:25-26). Do we believe this? Do I believe that Jesus is the Christ the Son of the Living God who is to come into the world? If I do believe, then through faith, I allow Jesus to move back the mountain of a stone that keeps me trapped in the death and decay of my sins. If I believe then he can command to sin and evil "Unbind him! Let him go!." If I believe... I shall be comforted. Out of this comfort, I can minister to the needs of others and give them the same solace as I have found in Jesus.

Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after justice: for they shall have their fill.

Jesus said that his food was to do the will of the Father who sent Him.
In John 6, Jesus says "I am the bread of life. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood will never die." After the fall of humanity from grace, injustice came into the world and God chose to end it by transforming the greatest injustice deicide, into the greatest blessing. God sent His only begotten Son into the world to restore Justice. Through Jesus' Life, Death, and Resurrection we are reconciled to God and made righteous before Him. Jesus shares with us the Bread of Life made out of the bread of his sorrows. The Sacrifice of Calvary is one and the same with the Sacrifice of the Mass. Through Jesus' Body and Blood we are nourished as we grow in the womb of the Church our earthly mother. We are born from death into new life through our celebration of the Holy Sacraments.

Even though we are wounded by the effects of original sin, we still have a hunger and thirst for God who is our Justice and righteousness. We seek to do His will because it is Just and it feeds us. We still know when we suffer injustice, and we hunger and thirst for the restoral of our righteousness. Jesus says when we visit those in prison, that we do that unto him. We help to restore to them their dignity as a child of God that they have lost through committing crimes or by being unjustly imprisoned.

If we have to be purified in the after life in purgatory, it will be our penultimate destination before heaven. When we pray for the poor souls, we help them get closer to what they ultimately hunger and thirst for: union with God. In offering the Mass for the dead, we share with them the heavenly banquet of the Eucharist and we are one with them at the Lord's table. One day we will be finally born to eternal life and have our fill.

Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.

"The merciful man does himself good, But the cruel man does himself harm" (Prov. 11:17).
Jesus told the parable of the the unmerciful servant where a man who was forgiven a great debt by his master was unmerciful to his fellow servant who owed a considerably less debt. The master hears of this and has the first servant handed over to the torturers in prison until he should pay back the entire debt. He tells us that that is how the Heavenly Father will deal with us unless we are merciful.

When you pray say: Our Father... forgives our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. God is good and demands our goodness in response to His. If you have hate in your heart against your brother or sister you are to go to them and settle the matter before making your offering at the altar (Mt. 5:24). This is why we have the penitential rite at Mass and we say the Lamb of God before receiving Holy Communion.

Jesus is the Divine Mercy. If we are merciful to one another then truly He lives in us and we live in Him and in turn we live in each other. We have solidarity with each other knowing that we too were once slaves in the land of Egypt.

Blessed are the pure of heart: for they shall see God.

Jesus was always in dialogue with His Father and always beheld the Beatific Vision. When sin separates us from God and when we can no longer see by faith Him whose image we are created in, we are blind to the will of God and cannot hear what he wants for us.

"Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we will be. We know that when He appears, we will be like Him, because we will see Him just as He is. And everyone who has this hope fixed on Him purifies himself, just as He is pure. Everyone who practices sin also practices lawlessness; and sin is lawlessness. You know that He appeared in order to take away sins; and in Him there is no sin. No one who abides in Him sins; no one who sins has seen Him or knows Him" (1 Jn. 3:2-6).

Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.

Jesus is our Peace with God. "Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation" (2 Cor. 5:18). Through Jesus the Son , God the Father has reconciled all things in Heaven and on Earth to Himself, making peace through the blood of the cross (Col. 1:19). Through water and the Holy Spirit in baptism we are now children of God and we are given the vocation to be peacemakers. It is not our call to condemn people but to call them in charity to the truth of God's ways. Our hearts must always be big enough to forgive and we must always let the peace of Christ reign in our hearts.

Blessed are they that suffer persecution for justice' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Jesus suffered for our sake and gave his life that we might live. For us men and our salvation he came down from heaven. When we are reviled for Jesus' sake and when we identify with those who are persecuted, we are in solidarity with Jesus and His Body the Church. "When one member of the body suffers, the entire body suffers" (1 Cor. 12:26). I can't summarize this any better than Jesus does in Matthew 10:16-21.

"Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves; so be shrewd as serpents and innocent as doves. But beware of men, for they will hand you over to the courts and scourge you in their synagogues; and you will even be brought before governors and kings for My sake, as a testimony to them and to the Gentiles. But when they hand you over, do not worry about how or what you are to say; for it will be given you in that hour what you are to say. For it is not you who speak, but it is the Spirit of your Father who speaks in you. Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child; and children will rise up against parents and cause them to be put to death. You will be hated by all because of My name, but it is the one who has endured to the end who will be saved."

I humbly submit this exposition on the Beatitudes in hopes that it will help you find solidarity with Our Lord and therefore with your brothers and sisters.

The Immaculate Conception

2008-12-07T18:01:00.000-08:00

Since the Enlightenment period the only truth is that which can be empirically verified. Any form of truth which would seek to limit science morally cannot be tolerated and has to be denied as mere subjective opinion. In the pursuit of perfection, science is trying to develop the perfect person. We have mapped the human genome, we seek to stamp out every type of physical, genetic, emotional, and mental defect. With embryonic stem cell research, science seeks to unlock the secrets of life. Man makes man in man's own image. We have embraced eugenics again. Even though we have the Special Olympics to celebrate the achievements of those otherwise looked at with fear, we have no tolerance for letting them exist. Genetic testing for Downs Syndrome and other diseases has increased the number of abortions and decreased the number of mentally handicapped people we see in our society. Having to care for the weak, innocent, and different among us apparently makes us too weak and vulnerable.

Jesus calls us to become as little children, for to these belong the kingdom of God. We are called to "present [our] bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God." (Rom 12:1) Innocence and weakness are what he embraced as his cross and we are called to this also. Peter exhorts us to "be zealous to be found by him without spot or blemish, and at peace." (2 Peter 3:14).

Jesus gave himself up for the church "so as to present the church to himself in splendour, without a spot or wrinkle or anything of the kind—yes, so that she may be holy and without blemish." (Eph 5:27). In short Christ seeks to make us in his image: holy, spotless, without blemish--a sacrifice acceptable to God.

"We offer unto your excellent Majesty, of your gifts and presents, a pure Victim, a holy Victim, an immaculate Victim, the holy bread of eternal life, andthe chalice of everlasting salvation.
Offerimus praeclarae Majestai tuae, de tuis donis ac datis, Hostiam puram, Hostiam sanctam, Hostiam immaculatam, panem sanctum vitae aeternae, et calicem salutis perpetuae." (Roman Canon)

Jesus kept his Mother Mary from any spot or blemish. She was conceived without sin in lieux of the merits of his Life, Death and Resurrection. This "immaculate" conception took place to offer sacrifice, The Sacrifice of God the Son, Incarnate to God the Almighty Father as an atonement for all the sins of the world. Mary is the Church par excellant on Calvalry offering the One, Holy, Immaculate, Acceptable Sacrifice once and for all in union with her Son the High Priest. Our physical and spriritual birth defects are made holy and perfect when they are offered in union with Christ on the Cross to the Father. Let us not forget to thank God for his plan of salvation that included so great a gift as Mary's Immaculate Conception. Let us never tire of seeking her intercession as she has never stopped offering her Son on our behalf.

Womb of Gettysburg

2008-10-30T04:55:00.000-07:00

The Gettysburg Address

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

"I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. So choose life in order that you may live, you and your descendants." (Deut. 30:19).

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that this nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

"Put on the full armor of God, so that you will be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places." (Eph. 6:11-12).

But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate - we cannot consecrate - we cannot hallow -this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.

"But we do not want you to be uninformed, brethren, about those who are asleep, so that you will not grieve as do the rest who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep in Jesus." (Eph. 4:13-14).

It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that this government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from this earth.

"Where there is no vision, the people perish: but happy is he that keeps the law." (Prov. 2:18).

The lives of those who have gone before us in the struggle and labor pains of bringing forth this nation conceived in liberty shall not have been in vain if we choose life in this upcoming election. The lives of all the aborted and euthanised shall not have been in vain if we realize that we "confirm our souls in self control and our liberty in law."

I have set before you this election day life and death, the blessing and the curse. So choose life in order that you and your descendants may live.

Humility: the ability to become small.

2008-08-23T05:28:00.000-07:00

Jesus said at different occasions things like, "You must become as a little child to enter the Kingdom," or "Seek to enter by the narrow gate," and yet again, "It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven." He is speaking about humility: the ability to become small.

This type of smallness is ironically something which we "shrink from" and find difficult. The smallness required is a humility that can receive a Love so great as the Eternal Father's love for the Son. In eternity the Son is so humble in receiving everything the Father bestows upon him that he seeks to grasp at none of it but rather "he empties Himself taking the form of a slave" although He is every bit the Heir, the Eternally Begotten Son. The Son completely, continuously, and dynamically empties Himself back to the Father. He reciprocates all Love to the Father through the Person of the Holy Spirit who is the Love so strong between the Father and the Son as to be another Person of the Trinity.

The Holy Spirit descended upon a young Woman who was very small and humble of heart.
The Eternal Word took on flesh in her by "emptying Himself and taking the form of a slave" in her womb becoming "like us in every way except sin". He became a tiny conceived human being that he might be born among us and save us from our sins.
We too must become small that we can receive so great a Truth as the Father wants to bestow upon us by the power of the Holy Spirit. The Word of God must be conceived in us and be born of us that we might be conceived in Eternal Beggetting of Son by the Divine Father and be born into Eternal life.

May God's Holy Spirit help us to be small and humble to receive so great a Mystery. Amen.

Hail Jesus

2008-06-16T19:07:00.000-07:00

I have my entire life prayed Hail Mary's in a formal rosary or as prayers ushering forth in times of need or even woken up at night to find myself praying to the Blessed Mother for her intercession. Several months ago I started formulating in my head what a "Hail Jesus" prayer might look like set in parallel to the phrasing of the Hail Mary. I am posting it below and I'm not sure if I would say it in the same format of Credo, Paters and Gloria Patris' as the regular rosary uses.

"Hail Jesus, Fullness of Grace, You are the Lord, First-born are You among all creation, and blessed is the fruit of Your Cross, Salvation.
Holy Jesus, Son of God, intercede for us sinners at the right hand of the Father, now and at the hour of our death. Amen."

I welcome any comments regarding constructing an over all format for praying this to Our Lord, ie. following the layout of the current rosary and meditating on the same mysteries of Our Lord's and our Lady's lives.

What about Cain? or Cain Redeemed.

2007-12-02T08:26:00.000-08:00

Jesus is the New Adam because by this one man's obedience all are redeemed (Rom. 5:17). By His sacrifice on the Cross, Jesus is the New Abel offering to God the first fruits of all creation, Himself. Mary is seen as the New Eve because in her fiat she said yes to God through the angel Gabriel, while Eve said no to God and yes to the ancient serpent, Satan.

What about Cain? Who is a type of Cain in the New Testament? Our minds may immediately jump to Judas. Judas was the holder of the purse and the Gospel of John tells us that he was stealing from it (Jn. 12:6). He gave up Christ for thirty pieces of silver. Cain killed Abel out of jealousy because God was not pleased with Cain's sacrifice. Judas was not pleased with Christ's sacrifice of giving up worldly power and proclaiming a Kingdom that was "not of this world." Cain was filled with self pity but had no remorse for his actions. Judas was filled with despair over what he had done and committed suicide apparently without seeking forgiveness from God. But is that where it ends? Is there no redemption for Cain planned for from the foundations of the world (Eph. 1:4)?

Looking more closely we might see the chief Apostle Peter and his denial of Christ as being similar to Cain's denial of any knowledge of his brother's whereabouts. Cain asked God "Am I my brother's keeper (Gen 4:9)?
God told Cain, "And now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hand" (Gen. 4:11). Peter "began to invoke a curse on himself and to swear, 'I do not know the Man' (Mt 26:75). The cock crowed convicting Peter of his treachery and he went out and wept bitterly. Both are accursed by what they have done, but Peter did not despair and deny Christ again by believing his sins could not be forgiven. The Gospel of John tells that Christ asked Peter three times if he loved Jesus more than the other apostles. Three times Peter confessed his love for the Lord, and three times Jesus responded to him "feed my lambs" or "feed my sheep(Jn 21:15-17)". Here is Cain redeemed.

Where else is Cain Redeemed in the New Testament? There are several other examples. I will only look at two others.

The pharisee Saul was killing followers of the Way. He was the instigator in Stephen's martyrdom and was feared by the Christians. We know the story of how Saul of Tarsus was on his way to Damascus and how he was struck down blind. He heard the voice of Jesus say, "Saul, Saul why do you persecute me?" He was given his sight back and a new name Paul. With his new name he had a new mission, Apostle to the Gentiles. His writings give us the majority of the text of the New Testament. Saul was Cain to Stephen's Abel. He confessed Christ crucified all the way to the court of the emperor of Rome where he received his crown of martyrdom. Cain is redeemed.

Finally, there is one other who ran away. Perhaps the same young man who ran away naked in the Garden of Gethsemane (Mk. 14:51). The disciple whom Jesus loved even ran away from him. Somewhere Cain was found by Eve and brought to the ground where the blood of Abel cried out to God for justice. Somewhere John the Evangelist was found by Mary the Mother of the Redeemer and brought to the foot of the Cross to seek his redemption. The blood of Jesus gave the earth a once for all response to the unholy taste for blood it received from Abel's murder (Gen. 4:10-11). The blood of Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant which "speaks more eloquently than that of Abel", now redeems all of creation (Heb 12:24).

From the mercy seat of the cross, God Incarnate says to His Mother, "Woman, behold your son", and to John he says, "Behold your Mother" (Jn. 19:26-27). Eve is given back her first born son Cain. The first child to be conceived in sin is now , in type, redeemed. Our abortion from Eden is now undone in Mary's adoption of John as her own son. John is the New Cain who represents all of us as the Church with Mary as our spiritual mother in the order of grace. Through His Cross and Resurrection and by the power of the Holy Spirit we become God's children. From the throne of grace, the King of kings addresses God as His Father and commands us to take Mary as our mother. Let us follow his example and command.

Birth of the Prophets and Martyrs

2007-08-29T06:35:00.000-07:00

No servant can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon." The Pharisees, who were lovers of money, heard all this, and they scoffed at him. But he said to them, "You are those who justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts; for what is exalted among men is an abomination in the sight of God. The law and the prophets were until John; since then the good news of the kingdom of God is preached, and every one enters it violently. But it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away, than for one dot of the law to become void. Every one who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery, and he who marries a woman divorced from her husband commits adultery"(Luke 16:13-18).

This passage from Luke comes after the parable of the worldly steward and before the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. At first appearance it looks like the author was stringing together some unrelated quotes from Jesus. What does love of money, entering the kingdom of God violently, the law not passing away, and divorce have to do with one another?

The Pharisees preferred the appearance of being holy to actually being holy. The temple taxes imposed and the cheating of the people by the money changers who took the money for the cost of the animal of sacrifice were found "abominable" by Jesus. The writing of a bill of divorce by a man to his wife leaving his wife and children in poverty, while the man would go off and attempt marriage with another was abominable in the sight of God. The killing of the Prophets who witnessed to God's Law was an abomination. Love of Mammon (power, money, social status, convenience, infidelity, etc ...)is the opposite of Love of God (humility, gratitude, fidelity, service, justice, mercy, etc...).

Blessed Jose Escriva quoted in the Navarre Bible Commentary says that the entering of the kingdom of God through violence has to do with violence against the things of world, the flesh, and the devil within us. "It is a violence used to fight your own infidelities, a boldness to own up to the faith even when the environment is hostile...This is the attitude of those who fight their passions and do themselves violence, thereby attaining the Kingdom of heaven and becoming one with Christ" (The Navarre Bible: Matthew, p 114). (The commentary for Luke refers one over to the Matthean commentary.)

Jesus also said, "If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me." (Mk 8:34). To be a disciple is to be able to be crucified with Christ and live so that "now not I but Christ lives within me" (Gal. 2:20). To live with Christ is to die to greed, lust, pride, infidelity, uncharitableness, etc... Jesus calls us to death to selfishness so we may have life in His and thus our selflessness.

It is not likely that we will be put to death for witnessing to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We will go through the martyrdom of self denial if we are going to be part of God's kingdom. Sin must be aborted from our lives if we are to have rebirth in the Spirit, the Blood and the Water. "For whatever overcomes the world is born of God" (1 Jn. 5:4a).

Divorce as the source of abortion

2007-08-21T18:31:00.000-07:00

"Have you not read that he who made them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, 'For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh'? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder" (Mt 19:4-6).

The fruit of a covenantal relationship with God is Jesus Christ and thus our salvation through being born again of the Spirit and water. The fruit of a covenantal relationship with our spouse is children when God chooses to bless us with them.

In the divorce of Adam and Eve from God's way and the resulting abortion from Eden, spiritual death brought about the natural consequence of physical death--the divorce of the soul and the body. The abortion of Cain's soul took place in his conception in sin and the consequence of his being ripped from the womb of original justice and innocence was the murder of his brother Abel. God still walked among men even after the fall and Cain still had a choice to do good as Abel did, but Cain's pride and jealously were the seeds of his and his brother's destruction.

When a man and a woman divorce from each other, the third person formed in their communion of love, the child, is effected in a very real and horrible way. The incarnation of the parents' love is ripped apart inside. The one flesh of their parents is put asunder and so is their heart. The children are spiritually and emotionally aborted by the very selfish act of divorce. Their lives are literally ripped apart on many levels.

It also follows that when sexual intercourse is divorced from marriage for only recreational use, physical abortions of unwanted preborn human beings take place. When the unitive and procreative purposes of marriage are divorced in the sexual act, the salvific purpose is aborted. Artificial contraception enters into many marriages because of ignorance on one level and a deep mistrust of God's providence on another. People who are in uncommitted, fornicative relationships are more likely to abort their children.

Women don't want children or men don't want children; one does and the other doesn't. The women don't feel like they have any "choice" except abortion because there is no support from the man or there is pressure from the man to kill the offspring unintended by their selfish use of each other. The reasons go on and on why people kill their own children, but the main reason is sin. Sin defined as a divorce of a human being's will from the Divine Will is the cause of all abortion: analogical, spiritual, and physical.

Despite our sinfulness, there is a loving God who will even now take us back to himself as Hosea kept taking back Gomer. Also in the book of Joel God declares his love for us. Even now if you return to God will all your heart and rend your hearts and not your garments...God will save us and take us back. He will heal our abortiveness and forgive all our iniquities.

Assumption Day

2007-08-15T18:30:00.000-07:00

The Assumption is not only Mary's being taken into heaven body and soul by her Son Jesus. It is her resurrection. Since Mary had no stain of original sin and she never committed personal sin there was no reason for her to die. She probably would have suffered death only to perfectly imitate her Son.

The psalm says, "You will not let your beloved know decay." This I interpret to mean both Jesus'Resurrection and the resurrection of Mary. In the case of Mary it points to her beginning, her Immaculate Conception in the womb of St. Anne. It also points to her falling asleep incorruptible and being awakened by her Son to be taken to heaven body and soul, dwelling in everlasting glory. There are numerous saints who have been granted an incorruptible body after their soul has departed. These signal graces point to the bodily resurrection of the dead.

After so much death in the twentieth century by 1950, Pope Pius XII proclaimed as dogma that Mary was assumed into heaven body and soul at the end of her earthly life. I heard someone say once that he did this to offer hope to a beleaguered and despairing world. A world that has seen so much death and destruction of innocent people needs to believe in world without end.

Mary our hope,
ora pro nobis!

The Womb of the Confessional

2007-07-29T17:36:00.000-07:00

"For a priest to restore a soul to grace from mortal sin in the sacrament of confession is a greater miracle than the creation of the world at the beginning of time." St Augustine

The death of a soul is a horrible thing. We act in ways which are "unbecoming". We regress into an endless cycle of self, solipsism ad nauseam. We literally turn away from God and try to run to whatever will satisfy the whim of our appetite next.

If you want to see the effects of sin: on your soul, and consequently on Jesus Christ, look at a Spanish crucifix that shows every stripe, wound, and drop of blood. It resembles an abortion, which is what mortal sin does to a soul--it aborts the soul. There is a miscarriage of innocence, goodness, truth, beauty, and justice.

"Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that made us whole, and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all" (Is. 53:4-6).

Only by the one acceptable sacrifice of the perfect, unblemished, pure, Lamb of God, can our sins be taken away. Jesus Christ came that we might have life and have it to the full. He came to give His life as a ransom for the many. Through His Life, Death and Resurrection we have Eternal Life and share in His Resurrection.

In the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary, God became a man. In that Holy of Holies was formed the marriage of God and Man. Once more God and Adam walked and conversed in Eden without shame between them. The radical friendship of God to man His creation was restored in the Incarnation, Life, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus.

Jesus was first born of the Womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Next He rose from the dead and was born from the Womb of the Tomb. Now especially in the Sacraments of Reconciliation and Eucharist, He rises in us as He raises us from the life of sin we led (or death of grace in our souls). Jesus calls to our inmost selves and cries in a loud voice stricken with grief over what has happened to us, "Lazarus, Come out!"
He says to the Community of Believers, "Unbind him!" God gives us each other in the family of the Church to help one another come into the life of grace and away from a life of deadly sin.

At the Creation of the cosmos, the Spirit hovered over the waters and God spoke His Word and all that is came to be by the power of that Word. In the Sacrament of Reconciliation, the Holy Spirit hovers over us and the Father speaks His Word Jesus Christ deep within the womb of our being and we are born again in Him as He is born again in us.

"For a priest to restore a soul to grace from mortal sin in the sacrament of confession is a greater miracle than the creation of the world at the beginning of time." St Augustine

Temptations and the Womb of the Heart

2007-07-24T17:14:00.000-07:00

In the first chapter of the Epistle of James, the Apostle tells us that the man who endures trial will be rewarded with a crown of life. He warns us that the temptations we endure are not from God, who never tempts people or can be tempted.

"... But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin; and sin when it is full-grown brings forth death " (Js.1:14-15).

Within the womb of a man's heart is where evil desires conceive and give birth to a sin which in turn gives birth to the death of our souls. James enjoins us submit ourselves to God in humility and to resist the devil and he will flee from us (Js.4:7). In the Gospel of Matthew Jesus says that it is not what goes into a man that makes him unclean but what comes out of him. "What comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a man. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander" (Mt. 15:18-19).
Everything in us which is not of God must be renounced and given up. "Every plant which my heavenly Father has not planted will be rooted up" (Mt. 15:13). When we allow evil desires to take root in our minds and our hearts, we are only a short way from committing the act. Jesus said that it is not enough to refrain from committing an act of sin, but the thought being carried out in our heart is enough to make us guilty of the sin. He said this explicitly in regards to anger and hatred against our brothers and lust against our sisters (see Mt 5:17ff).

Jesus advises it is better to pluck out our eyes and cut off our hands and enter the Kingdom of Heaven blind and lame than to be tossed whole into the fires of hell (Mt. 5:29-30). Practically what this means is that if you have a problem with pornography throw out the television and computer, or at least don't have these things in your bedroom with closed doors and hearts closed to God's grace.
If you have a problem with anger ask God for the grace to forgive those who have injured you and say a prayer for them. It is also helpful to say nothing unkind about them, and if possible say something nice about them or do something kind for them. Chesterton said the reason God tells us to love our neighbors and our enemies is because often times they are the same people.

God's Word must be planted in our hearts and bring forth the fruit of the Good News, Jesus Christ. If we are pure of heart, we shall see God because we will be open to God and closed to the world (open only to the Life of God). God's Holy Spirit overshadows us and brings us forth as adopted son's and daughters, because the Holy Spirit always conceives God's Only Begotten Son, Jesus Christ within us.

"Every good endowment and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.
Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth that we should be a kind of first fruits of his creatures"(Js. 1:17-18).

If Christ is truly within us, we are driven by the Spirit to the wilderness of our hearts. Temptations come to us from the evil one who seeks to sow weeds in us among the wheat sown by the Spirit. If we resist him and submit ourselves to God the devil who also believes in God trembles in fear of our faith and will flee from us. If Christ is truly within us we are driven by the Spirit to act as Christ acted becoming "doers of the Word".

"Therefore put away all filthiness and rank growth of wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.
But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.
...he who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer that forgets but a doer that acts, he shall be blessed in his doing.
If any one thinks he is religious, and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, this man's religion is vain. Religion that is pure and undefiled before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world" (Js. 1:21-27).

Jesus said the kingdom of God is like a mustard seed; even though it is the smallest of seeds, it grows into the largest of plants.

May our roots be deep and our branches wide!

Father's Day

2007-06-17T07:39:00.000-07:00

Fathers beget children with their wives. They want the best for their children and try to find a way to provide food, shelter, clothing, and safety for them. Sometimes the providing becomes the objective rather than the means to an end. All of the father's attention and efforts are directed to the career and the children are secondary in his life. Children become nuiscances and wives objects of pleasure.

The innate dignity of these persons becomes trampled upon in the name of bettering the social and economic standings of the family. This leaves little room for a relationship of a father to a mother and to his children.

Dad is only a provider without being a mentor; an authority absent his purpose and meaning. The meaning and purpose of fatherhood is not only the begetting but the rearing and education of offspring to the glory of God the Father. A father who cannot play with his children or pray with his children is one who has lost his meaning. This leads to distance in the relationship, and discipline is done more with anger and annoyance at being bothered with the responsibilities of parenthood.

Father's need to renew their convenant with God the Father first and see the complete outpouring of God's love for them. This is done through a personal prayer life in addition to frequenting the sacraments, especially Eucharist and Reconciliation. Then taking from prayer the example of being poured out on behalf of someone else (as Jesus poured himself out for us on the Cross)fathers can give of themselves to their children and their wives.

You cannot give what you don't have. The strength to be a man, to be a father and not only be responsible for the physical needs of children, but also for their spiritual, psychological, and emotional needs can only come from the realization of the Love that God the Father has for us men through his love for his only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, which is the Holy Spirit...the Spirit of Love, of Truth, of Unity, the Lord the giver of Life.

" And I tell you, Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For every one who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent; or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him" (Luke 11:9-13).

The Holy Spirit will be your source of strength as a father. The Spirit will lead you to all truth and convict you of the truth in the womb of your fatherly heart.
The Spirit will lead you to examine the life you have been leading and give you the strength and the courage to repent and ask for mercy. No man can lead a Christian life without the grace of the Holy Spirit. No man can be a father without the aid of the "Father of the poor". May the Holy Spirit, this father's day, give us "poor" fathers a renewed strength and vigor in our obligation to love, protect, and serve our families. Amen.

In the Womb of the Father's House

2007-05-21T19:35:00.000-07:00

The fifth Joyful Mystery is the finding of the Child Jesus in the Temple when he was 12 years old.

Too often this is seen by some as an example where Jesus the boy was disobedient to his parents Mary and Joseph. The story goes that they had come up to Jerusalem for the annual Passover festivities and had come up with relatives in a caravan. When it was time to go back home they thought Jesus to be among his kin. However, he turned out to be missing and Mary and Joseph searched until they found him on the third day in the Temple. He was sitting surrounded by the priests and teachers of the Law. They were asking him questions and they were amazed at his answers.

When Mary and Joseph asked Jesus how he could do such a thing and that they were worried sick, he replied with a question, "Didn't you know that I must be in my Father's House about His business?" The story says that Jesus went with them quietly and grew in grace and wisdom, and Mary for her part is pondering all these things in her heart, "for they did not understand what he was saying to them."

In the Womb of the Father's House was where Jesus was called to be by his Father at that moment. Jesus the boy was aware of his Eternal Begetting from the Womb of the Father's Bosom. He sought the earthly dwelling of his Father prompted the Spirit of Love shared between Them. In the earthly Womb of the Temple where the Holy of Holies was and the Shekinah dwelt Jesus was at home. He was (at this time of his life) protected and nourished by the earthly dialogue with the priests and teachers of the Law which was a reflection of and earthly extension of the Eternal Dialogue of the Word with God His Father.

In our Catholic parishes, the Holy of Holies is present. The Word made Flesh made Bread for our sake dwells in the Womb of the Tabernacle. The Word is proclaimed at every Mass and is received by the faithful as the Bread come down from Heaven. Each parish is truly the Father's House wherein the Truth about Jesus and flowing from that ourselves is shared and discovered. In this dialogue of the Liturgy of the Word, the Liturgy of the Eucharist, the R.C.I.A., the Children's Faith Formation, etc... the People of God should be protected and nourished and midwived into new life. As the Apostle Paul said, "I am again in labor until Christ be formed in you (Gal 4:19).”

Sadly in some parishes, the latest fads in experimental liturgy and speculative theology are all the rage, while sound doctrine is ignored and even openly rejected and sneered at. Jesus was not disobedient to Joseph and Mary as it may appear at first glance. In the Father's House, all are called to the obedience of faith. Those who are newborns in the faith who need pure spiritual milk to start on and then good solid food of mature doctrine are deprived and grow up weakly formed on spiritual junk food. They are not protected and nourished in this womb as they should be. Many who mislead these little ones are only passing on the ingrained heresies they themselves have been taught. There is a great need to re-evangelize and re-catechize the the Catholics who have been malnourished the last forty years.

Again the words of St. Paul. “ Although you should be teachers by this time, you need to have someone teach you again the basic elements of the utterances of God. You need milk, [and] not solid food. Everyone who lives on milk lacks experience of the word of righteousness, for he is a child. But solid food is for the mature, for those whose faculties are trained by practice to discern good and evil” (Heb. 5-12-14)

The Man Jesus (das Mann)came back to the Temple and drove out the money changers who were there for personal profit and had no intention of helping to see that a pure sacrifice be offered. The spiritually mature man of God needs to rise up in reponse to the Holy Spirit who calls and be a defense for the ignorant and weak in the local parish setting. The Spirit pours out the seven-fold gifts including courage and wisdom on those who ask. It's time to ask.

Thomas Malthus and the Womb of the World

2007-05-16T17:07:00.000-07:00

The world is often referred to as "Mother Earth". In Genesis man is given dominion over the earth and charged with stewardship of it. The earth is the very substance that God forms Adam from and breathes his life into. Too often, we have lost sight of our responsibility to take care of the physical world by practicing conservation of resources and not polluting it. We are stewards of creation and must not neglect it.

The above being said, I do not have much more in common with some people in the environmental movement than "green" practices of conserving and not polluting but recycling when possible. There are some who believe human beings are the viruses that are making the earth sick and therefore the vast majority of us must be wiped out.

The earth was intended by God to be the "womb" in which we children would grow, be formed, and nourished physically as well as spiritually. Even though death entered the world because of sin, we have hope of new life through the Life, Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. In our death the tomb in the earth becomes the womb from which our resurrected bodies will be born.

Thomas Malthus wrote an essay on the need for population control in 1798 and as the following editorial in the Boston Globe points out there are still those who feel the same way today.

www.boston.com

Thinking Outside the Garden

2007-05-14T17:27:00.000-07:00

Since the abortion from Eden, human beings have had a fallen state. The loss of orginal innocence, original justice, and original unity. While Adam and Eve walked with God, they were in a protective womb which allowed them to grow in their relationship with Him and be nourished by every good thing of Creation placed in Eden for their use. They were forbidden only one thing, to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. In other words, God told them that they were not to "know" evil in the sense of intimate union with it.

Adam and Eve succumbed to the temptation of the serpent who has a story of its own abortion from heaven--heaven being another womb in which the angels were spiritually nourished and protected so they could grow in their love of God. Recall the passage in Isaiah 14:19 where in the RSV translation the king of Babylon is compared to an abortion, "but you are cast out...like a loathed untimely birth." Also the words of Christ in Luke 10:18, "I saw Satan fall like lightning from the sky!"

Our intellect is now dulled and concupiscence impairs our wills. The basic desire to do good remains, but the ability to discern what is good and to control our thoughts and impulses is greatly reduced. In Baptism we receive the new life of spiritually adopted children of God. The guilt of original sin is forgiven though the effects can remain.

In the womb of the Church, our mother, we again receive the nourishment and protection of the "Garden" in which a new Tree of Life gives forth every good fruit for our benefit. All the sacraments but in particular the Eucharist is our source and summit, our beginning and our end, our Alpha and our Omega...Jesus Christ.

Augustine said that before the Blessed Virgin Mary conceived Jesus in her womb, she conceived him in her heart. "And Mary pondered all these things in her heart" (Luke 2:19,52). In the womb of Mary, our mother, we find the silent Word waiting for us to join Him in the soil of humility from which the New Adam was formed. We poor banished (aborted) children of Eve, find our life, our sweetness and our hope. We find protection and nourishment in this valley of tears until one day we look upon the Blessed Fruit of Mary's Womb Jesus. (Be patient this is coming together to a point soon.)

The kind of thinking Mary did by pondering was more than intellectual. It was a deep contemplation of the very Life of God which dwelt within her in perfection by a singular grace of her own Immaculate Conception. Through Baptism we are given freedom from sin to live as God's children. Through the pondering and deep contemplation of God's Life within us and His love for us, the presence of Christ comes to live and grow within the wombs of our hearts in a stronger and fuller way. We then say with Paul in Galations that "now not I, but Christ lives within me."

All the baffling things which happen to us in our lives only come to make sense in the Light of Faith. A deep intimate knowing of God our Spouse, brings about the Living Jesus in us and us living in Jesus. Thinking outside the new Garden, the Church leads to heretical thinking and the corresponding manifestations of sin.
Contemplating the Word of God within the context of the Living Tradition of the Liturgy and the Church's teaching authority preserves our lives and nourishes us.

Thinking outside the Garden has only and always led to our destruction.

In dying that we're born to Eternal Life

2007-05-08T20:07:00.000-07:00

"Whoever finds his life will lose it and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it." Somewhere in the Gospels Jesus says this. I cannot live a life of comfort and conviction at the same time. One has to give. Either I put myself on the line and I am authentic trying my best to live the life God has given me the way he wants, or I take the easy way out and play the part of being modern, sophisticated and "grown-up". I deny the reality of child-like simplicity which is imperative for entering into Eternal Life. When I am well educated and know many things, I can perceive myself to be wise, but in fact, play the bigger fool for it. If I deny Jesus, he will deny me. If I cut myself off from the source of Life, I am dead inside. If I die unrepentant, I am aborted to eternal death. I pray for the grace of final perseverance almost every day. When my hour is come, I want to be born to Eternal Life. I am in the womb of the Church, the womb of my family, the womb of the Blessed Virgin, the womb of the wounds of Christ where I seek shelter until that day I am called. May the Blood of Christ which speaks more eloquently than that of Abel speak on my behalf that day, and may I die with the sweet name of Jesus on my lips.

Amen.