The Secret to Living Life to the Full

The following comes from The Radical Life site:

Here is one of the most wonderful and terrifying sentences I have ever read, from William Law’s Serious Call, “If you will look into your own heart in utter honesty, you must admit that there is one and only one reason why you are not even now a saint. You do not wholly want to be.”

That insight is terrifying because it is an indictment, but it is wonderful and hopeful because it is also an offer, an open door. Each of us can become a saint. We really can. We really can. I say it three times, because I think we do not really believe that deep down. For if we did, how could we endure being anything less?

What holds us back? Fear of paying the price. What is the price? The answer is simple. T. S. Eliot gave it when he defined Christianity as “a condition of complete simplicity…costing not less than everything.” The price is everything—100 percent. Martyrdom, if required, and probably a worse martyrdom than the quick noose or stake, the martyrdom of dying daily, dying every minute for the rest of your life. Dying to all your desires and plans—including your plans about how to become a saint. (Peter Kreeft, Culture War)

So the minimum requirement is everything. Sounds kind of extreme, right? It is. But God doesn’t ask this of us to torture or test us. And he doesn’t do it to keep us from enjoying pleasure and joy.

On the contrary, He does it because he wants us to experience life to the full. Because giving everything is what sets us free to love most perfectly and to enjoy life most fully. It’s what sets us free to be who we were made to be.

We can give God everything else, but if we hold back even the smallest corner of our lives for ourselves, we remain slaves. Slaves to our own desires and wants. Unfree to love perfectly and completely. Unfree to experience life to the full.

Give everything. And how do we give everything? What does that look like? Our next posts will be exploring just that.

We Want Christianity Without the Cross

The following comes from the NCR:

If there were a Nazarene yearbook 2,000 years ago, Jesus would not have been voted most popular. Maybe "most likely to be tortured and crucified" but definitely not most popular.

He didn't seem to care all that much about being popular because he knew that if being popular is your goal you may very well achieve it but at what cost? As Jesus said, we cannot serve two masters.

When Jesus said, "I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world," it freaked a number of his disciples out. In fact, it freaked them out enough that they bolted.

Now, as they abandoned him, Jesus could've said, "Hold the phone" and then they might've asked what a phone was. But maybe they would've understood through context. But Jesus could've said, "Just messing with y'all. Not ACTUALLY my body and blood. Symbolically. It was all a metaphor, you see."

Nope. Jesus didn't say that. Jesus wasn't trying to be cool. He wasn't concerned with popularity at all. In fact, so committed to not being popular was Jesus that he allowed himself to be crucified. That, my friends, is a strong commitment to unpopularity.

So I'm always a little bit perplexed when I see Catholics arguing that the Church needs to change its teachings in order to be popular. They use terms like "get with the times" or "modernize" but it means the same thing.

We're told that if you want to be cool you'll be awesome with abortion, good with the gay sex, open to ordaining women, relaxed about religious freedom, and cool with contraception. And we're told that unless the Church does these things, churches will become increasingly empty and irrelevant. But what role does that leave the Church, to simply affirm what people already think and do? Is it the Church's role to make people feel good about their choices regardless of the reality. It seems that modern Christianity wants to avoid the cross but here's the thing - there is no Christianity without the cross.

As the Church continues preaching the truth, it may very well face empty pews, hatred, and even persecution in the near future. We will be the modern lepers who instead of announcing themselves as "unclean" must pronounce themselves "uncool." And it will likely get worse than that. When Jesus said He was the living bread, some ran. Jesus was tortured and killed. That's going on right now in many parts of the world. And it may soon go on here in the Western world.

As Francis Cardinal George said, "I expect to die in bed, my successor will die in prison and his successor will die a martyr in the public square." While this may seem like the beginning of the end, it will not be. This is how the Church is reborn.

It may very well be persecution which will eventually bring people back to the Church. But in the foreseeable future there may very well be dark times ahead. Prepare yourselves. Prepare your children. The cross awaits.

Pope Francis: Blood cries out to be heard

(CNA/EWTN News) On Sunday Pope Francis mourned the 21 Egyptian Christians beheaded by the Islamic State, calling them martyrs that “belong to all Christians.”

“The blood of our Christian brothers and sisters is a testimony which cries out to be heard,” the Pope said. “Their only words were: 'Jesus, help me!'”

Pope Francis made these off-the-cuff remarks in his native Spanish on Monday, one day after the release of a video from the self-proclaimed Islamic State purporting to show the grisly beheadings of 21 Coptic Christians from Egypt.

“It makes no difference whether they be Catholics, Orthodox, Copts or Protestants”, the pontiff continued. “They are Christians! Their blood is one and the same. Their blood confesses Christ.”

They were killed “only because they confessed Christ,” the Pope said. “I ask that we encourage each another to go forward with this ecumenism which is giving us strength, the ecumenism of blood. The martyrs belong to all Christians.”

Pope Francis telephoned Patriarch of the Coptic Orthodox Church, Pope Tawadros II, on Monday afternoon to show his deep participation in the sufferings of the Coptic Church following the executions. He assured him of his prayers, and said that tomorrow, the day celebrating the funerals of the victims, he will unite himself spiritually to the prayers and sufferings of the Coptic Church during the morning Eucharistic celebration.

On Monday, Egypt's military launched airstrikes against Libya in retaliation for the deaths of the Egyptian Christians, according to the New York Times.

The beheadings occurred weeks after some 20 Coptic Christians had gone missing near the coastal city of Surt, also known as Sirte, the report continues.

Many Egyptians, including Copts, travel to Libya seeking employment opportunities.

This is not the first time Egyptian Christians have been targeted in Libya. Last month, an Egyptian Christian teen and her parents were found dead in Surt.

Libyan authorities discovered the bodies of seven Egyptian Christians last February near militant-held parts of Benghazi.

Rev. John Chalmers, moderator for the Church of Scotland, was present for Pope Francis’ comments Sunday. In an interview with CNA shortly after his audience with the Pope, Rev. Chalmers said Pope Francis is a man of humility and prayer who “is feeling for those Coptic Christians who have been martyred.”

“In reflecting on that, it is clear that whatever denomination that Christians come from they are one," he said.

Throughout his pontificate, Pope Francis has frequently condemned violence against Christians in the Middle East. During his Urbi et Orbi address on Christmas Day, 2014, he called for peace in Libya, as well as in Nigeria, South Sudan, the Central African Republic, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Pope Francis: Religious Persecution attacks peace and it belittles our dignity

Priest murdered in Syria witnessed to Christ's love

(CNA)  A priest of the Society of Jesus who refused to leave his flock in the Syrian city of Homs was murdered by an unknown gunman Monday morning.

Fr. Frans van der Lugt, a native of the Netherlands, was killed April 7. He was caring for the fewer than 30 Christians who remain in the Old City district of Homs, which has been blockaded by the Syrian regime for nearly two years.

“Where people die, their faithful shepherds also die with them,” Vatican spokesman Fr. Federico Lombardi said April 7 in response to the death of Fr. van der Lugt.

Fr. Lombardi said the slain priest “died as a man of peace” and acted “with great courage in an extremely dangerous and difficult situation.”

Fr.  Ziad Hillal, a fellow Jesuit who has been serving in Syria, told Aid to the Church in Need the slain priest was “a ray of joy and hope to all those trapped in the Old City of Homs,” adding he represented “Christ in the world who is willing to lay down his life for his friends, who always gives us hope.”

Fr. Hillal said the priest was “apparently killed execution-style with shots to the head.”

“A man came into his house, took him outside and shot him twice in the head. In the street in front of his house,” Jan Stuyt, secretary of the Dutch Jesuits, told Agence France Press.

Given the siege, his body cannot be recovered.

In February, a three-day truce allowed residents of Homs to leave the city; at that time, the number of Christians fell from 89 to fewer than 30.

“The U.N. representatives were urgently required to leave Homs and go to another city, so we had to stop abruptly before finishing the evacuations,” Fr. Hillal said, explaining the February truce.

“Fr. Frans and the remaining 20-25 Christians in the city did not manage to leave in time.”

The February evacuation rescued 1,400 persons from the siege.

Fr. Hillal had reflected on the priest's humility, noting “he always asks how I am and does not talk much about himself.”

He described one of their last conversations, held via Skype, noting their hopes for a modest celebration of Fr. van de Lugt's birthday.

He was to have turned 76 April 10.

Fr. van der Lugt had worked in Syria since 1967. He was a psychotherapist and was involved in interreligious dialogue.

In the 1980s, he built a spirituality center in Homs which housed some 40 children with mental disabilities.

In February Fr. van der Lugt spoke to Agence France Presse about his time in Syria, saying, “the Syrian people have given me so much, so much kindness, inspiration and everything they have. If the Syrian people are suffering now, I want to share their pain and their difficulties.”

Read the rest here.

522 Spanish martyrs to be beatified on October 13th

Fr. George Rutler: The surest way to persecution is to say, “It can't happen here”

By Father George Rutler at New Advent:

Our parish is blessed with a shrine to Saint Thomas More. The young artist who painted it after Holbein was a refugee from communist Eastern Europe. He did such a good job that Cardinal Egan, dedicating it, said that he would not be surprised if this were the original. 

We recently celebrated the joint feasts of Thomas More, who was Chancellor of England, and John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester. Their personalities were different in many ways, and it was almost a miracle that an Oxford man and a Cambridge man got on so well and eventually were canonized together. The Act of Succession and the Act of Supremacy were the challenges that King Henry VIII threw at them, and the saints returned the challenge. The issues were rooted in natural law: the meaning of marriage and the claims of government. These are the same issues that loom large today. Whatever our courts of law may decide about these matters, Saint Thomas says: “I am not bound, my lord, to conform my conscience to the council of one realm against the General Council of Christendom.” In 1919, G. K. Chesterton predicted with powerful precision that great as More’s witness was then, “he is not quite so important as he will be in a hundred years’ time.” 

For every courageous saint back then, there were many who instead took the safe path of complacency. More’s own family begged him to find some loophole, and — after the sudden deaths of eight other bishops — Fisher was the only one left who acted like an apostle. Those who opted for comfort and wove the lies of their world into a simulation of truth had a banal and shallow faith that Pope Francis has called “rose water.” It is a good image, for rose water is not blood and cannot wash away sin. 

The “Man for All Seasons” wrote to his beloved Margaret from his cell in the Tower of London: “And, therefore, my own good daughter, do not let your mind be troubled over anything that shall happen to me in this world. Nothing can come but what God wills. And I am very sure that whatever that be, however bad it may seem, it shall indeed be the best.” 

The “Fortnight for Freedom” extended from the vigil of the feasts of Fisher and More to July 4, but its prayers continue, as the Church’s many charitable and evangelical works are threatened by our present government’s disdain for the religious conscience, most immediately evident in the Health and Human Services mandate and the redefinition of marriage. In 1534 Henry VIII’s arrogation of authority over the Church was quickly followed by a Treasons Act which made it a high crime to criticize the King. In contemporary America as in Tudor England, the surest way to let that happen is to say, “It can't happen here.”

Catholics are called to 'daily martyrdom,' says Pope Francis

(CNA/EWTN News)  During his June 23 Angelus reflection, Pope Francis said the faithful are called to follow the example of the martyrs in losing their lives for Christ, even if they do not suffer violence for their faith.

“Both in the past and today, in many parts of the world there are martyrs, both men and women, who are imprisoned or killed for the sole reason of being Christian,” he said, noting that there are more martyrs dying violent deaths in modern times than in the early centuries of the Church.

“But there is also the daily martyrdom, which does not result in death but is also a loss of life for Christ.”

This “daily martyrdom” consists of people “doing their duty with love, according to the logic of Jesus,” said the pontiff from the window of the Apostolic Palace to those gathered in St. Peter’s Square.

He delivered his Angelus comments reflecting on the day's Gospel reading, in which Jesus tells his disciples “whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.”

Pope Francis stressed that there are fathers and mothers who put their faith into practice concretely by devoting their lives to the good of their families each day.

“There are many priests, monks, nuns who give generously with their service to the kingdom of God and the young people who give up their interests to devote their time to children, the disabled and the elderly,” he stated.

“Those who serve the truth serve Christ,” he underscored.

The Pope also spoke of St. John the Baptist, whose feast day is June 24, and pointed to him as an example of a man who gave his life for the truth.

“John was chosen by God to prepare the way before Jesus,” he said, explaining that the saint “devoted himself entirely to God and his messenger” and ultimately died for the truth.

Pope Francis entreated everyone, particularly young people, to “have the courage to go against the tide of current values that do not conform to the path of Jesus.”

Pope Francis: "Lord, Thank You So Much for My Faith"

The following comes from Zenit:

This was the central focus of Pope Francis' homily this morning at Mass in the Domus Sanctae Marthae chapel, according to L'Osservatore Romano. The feast of the Annunciation was marked today, as it was moved from the typical date of March 25, since that fell within Holy Week this year.

Among the congregation were Sisters of Charity who renewed their vows, the staff of the Vatican Television Center, staff of the Brazilian section of Vatican Radio, and longtime Papal photographer, Arturo Mari.

The way of Christian humility rises up to God, as those who bear witness to it "stoop low" to make room for charity, the Holy Father reflected. 

The Pope said that the road taken by Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem for the imperial census was a road of humility. There was the humility of Mary, who "did not understand well," but "[entrusted] her soul to the will of God." Joseph was humble, as he "lowered himself" to take on the "great responsibility" of the bride who was with child. 

"So it is always with God's love," said Francis, "that, in order to reach us, takes the way of humility." This was the same way that Jesus walked, a way that humbled itself even unto the Cross. Pope Francis went on to say that, for a Christian, "[T]his is the golden rule," according to which progress and advancement always come through lowering oneself. "One can take no other road," he said, adding, "if I do not lower myself, if you do not lower yourself, you are not a Christian."

Progress means "lowering oneself" on the road of humility in order to allow God's love to emerge and be clearly seen. 

Pope Francis went on to say, "Being humble does not mean going on the road," with "downcast eyes." Such was not the humility of Jesus, or his mother or his foster father, Joseph. The Holy Father underlined that the way of humility is the one that leads to the triumph of the Resurrection. "Let us ask God for the grace of humility," he prayed, "that humility, which is the way by which charity surely passes," for, "if there is no humility, love remains blocked, it cannot go [forward]."

Persecuted

At his Saturday morning Mass, L'Osservatore Romano reported that the Pontiff spoke about martyrdom.

"To find martyrs we don't need to go to the Catacombs or to the Colosseum: today martyrs are alive in a great many countries. Christians are persecuted for their faith. In some countries they cannot carry the cross: they are penalized for doing so. Today, in the 21st century, our Church is a Church of martyrs," he said.

Pope Francis began his homily commenting with a quip on the Gospel passage of St Mark (16:9-15), in which are recounted the appearances of Jesus to Mary Magdalene, to the disciples of Emmaus and to the Eleven. "When I read this Gospel it occurs to me that St Mark may not have liked Mary Magdalen much, since he recalled that the Lord had driven seven demons out of her, didn't he? It was a question of liking...".

He then presented a reflection on faith: "a grace", and "a gift of the Lord" which should not be glossed over — and is thus extended "to the peoples who believe in you", as the Collect of Mass says, for "we are not attached to a fantasy", but "to a reality we have seen and heard."

The Pope mentioned the passage from the Acts of the Apostles (4:13-21) proclaimed in the First Reading. In response to the order given by the head priests and Pharisees not to speak of Jesus, Peter and John, "stood firm in the faith" saying, "we cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard."

Their testimony, he added, "reminds me of our faith. And what is our faith like? Is it strong? Or is it at times a little like rosewater, a somewhat watered down faith? When problems arise are we brave like Peter or inclined to be lukewarm?"

Peter, Pope Francis said, teaches us that "faith is not negotiable. Among the People of God this temptation has always existed: to downsize faith, and not even by 'much.'" However, he explained, we must must get the better of "the temptation to behave more or less 'like everyone else', not to be too, too rigid", because it is "from this that a path which ends in apostasy unfolds."

Indeed, "when we begin to cut faith down, to negotiate faith and more or less to sell it to the one who makes the best offer, we are setting out on the road of apostasy, of non fidelity to the Lord".

Yet the very "example of Peter and John helps us, gives us strength"; as does the example of the martyrs in the Church's history. It is they "who say, like Peter and John, 'we cannot but speak'. And this gives strength to us, whose faith is at times rather weak. It gives us the strength to carry on living with this faith we have received, this faith which is the gift that the Lord gives to all peoples".

The Pope ended by suggesting a daily prayer: "Lord, thank you so much for my faith. Preserve my faith, increase it. May my faith be strong and courageous. And help me in the moments when, like Peter and John, I must make it public."The following comes from Zenit:

Progress means "lowering oneself" on the road of humility in order to allow God's love to emerge and be clearly seen. 

Pope Francis went on to say, "Being humble does not mean going on the road," with "downcast eyes." Such was not the humility of Jesus, or his mother or his foster father, Joseph. The Holy Father underlined that the way of humility is the one that leads to the triumph of the Resurrection. "Let us ask God for the grace of humility," he prayed, "that humility, which is the way by which charity surely passes," for, "if there is no humility, love remains blocked, it cannot go [forward]."

Persecuted

At his Saturday morning Mass, L'Osservatore Romano reported that the Pontiff spoke about martyrdom.

"To find martyrs we don't need to go to the Catacombs or to the Colosseum: today martyrs are alive in a great many countries. Christians are persecuted for their faith. In some countries they cannot carry the cross: they are penalized for doing so. Today, in the 21st century, our Church is a Church of martyrs," he said.

Pope Francis began his homily commenting with a quip on the Gospel passage of St Mark (16:9-15), in which are recounted the appearances of Jesus to Mary Magdalene, to the disciples of Emmaus and to the Eleven. "When I read this Gospel it occurs to me that St Mark may not have liked Mary Magdalen much, since he recalled that the Lord had driven seven demons out of her, didn't he? It was a question of liking...".

He then presented a reflection on faith: "a grace", and "a gift of the Lord" which should not be glossed over — and is thus extended "to the peoples who believe in you", as the Collect of Mass says, for "we are not attached to a fantasy", but "to a reality we have seen and heard."

The Pope mentioned the passage from the Acts of the Apostles (4:13-21) proclaimed in the First Reading. In response to the order given by the head priests and Pharisees not to speak of Jesus, Peter and John, "stood firm in the faith" saying, "we cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard."

Their testimony, he added, "reminds me of our faith. And what is our faith like? Is it strong? Or is it at times a little like rosewater, a somewhat watered down faith? When problems arise are we brave like Peter or inclined to be lukewarm?"

Peter, Pope Francis said, teaches us that "faith is not negotiable. Among the People of God this temptation has always existed: to downsize faith, and not even by 'much.'" However, he explained, we must must get the better of "the temptation to behave more or less 'like everyone else', not to be too, too rigid", because it is "from this that a path which ends in apostasy unfolds."

Indeed, "when we begin to cut faith down, to negotiate faith and more or less to sell it to the one who makes the best offer, we are setting out on the road of apostasy, of non fidelity to the Lord".

Yet the very "example of Peter and John helps us, gives us strength"; as does the example of the martyrs in the Church's history. It is they "who say, like Peter and John, 'we cannot but speak'. And this gives strength to us, whose faith is at times rather weak. It gives us the strength to carry on living with this faith we have received, this faith which is the gift that the Lord gives to all peoples".

The Pope ended by suggesting a daily prayer: "Lord, thank you so much for my faith. Preserve my faith, increase it. May my faith be strong and courageous. And help me in the moments when, like Peter and John, I must make it public."