The Womb of the Confessional

"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

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

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

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

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

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

"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.