Having Holy Boldness in Prayer

The following comes from Msgr. Pope:

There are some who wince at the notion of praying boldly to God, especially if anger or exasperation are part of that boldness. And yet the Bible itself models and counsels that we should include in our prayers the times when we are angry, exasperated, or disappointed in God. The psalms are filled with such prayers and great figures like Moses, David, and Job cry out to God quite plainly, expressing their anger and disappointment. I have written more on that here: A Meditation on the Role of Anger in Prayer.

At any rate, in this brief blog today I offer this example of a prayer of holy boldness from a great Saint of the Church: St. Catherine of Siena. Here is the background: Catherine’s mother, Lapa, lay dying, but Catherine was convinced that Lapa was not yet ready to die, and so she told God as much. The Lord disagreed, but Catherine remained undeterred in her assessment. And now we pick up the story and prayer …

Lapa died, or so it seemed to all the women who stood around her bed. She had refused to confess and receive the last Sacrament. Catherine lay over her mother’s corpse weeping and praying aloud.

O my dear Lord, is this how you keep the promise you once made to me that none in my house should suffer eternal death? You promised me too that you would not take my mother from this world before she could leave it in a state of grace, and here she lies dead, without having confessed or received the Sacrament. My Beloved Savior, I call to you in your great mercy, do not fail me! I will not go alive from your feet until you give me my mother back.

Speechless and overcome, the women around the deathbed saw that life seemed to creep back into Lapa’s body. She breathed and made some slight movement, … After a short time Monna Lapa was quite well again. [Told by her confessor, Blessed Fr. Raimondo, and inscribed in the Biography Catherine of Sienna by Sigrid Undset, pp 94-95].

And so here is the image of a saint at prayer: reverent but bold, seemingly unwilling to take “no” for an answer. Surely, on account of her usual and deep reverence, Catherine was allowed a bit more leeway than many of us; but do not doubt that God is often listening for us sinners to pray with a little conviction and intensity!

Somehow, too, it reminds me of a place called Cana, where the Mother of Jesus said, “They have no more wine.”  And though Jesus seemed unwilling, I am convinced that Mary gave him a look that only a mother could, a look that wouldn’t take “no” for an answer.  And the next thing you know, Jesus is making dozens of gallons of the best wine imaginable!

Are you praying with me, Church? Really praying? There is a place for boldness in prayer, not a boldness that loses all reverence, but a boldness nonetheless.

Msgr. Charles Pope: God, Our Bodies and Creation

The following comes from Msgr. Pope at NCR:

Our body is revelation because it comes from God with a specific design. Through it, God is teaching us; He is revealing His truth, just as He does in the whole of His creation and in the sacred Scriptures.

The notion that our bodies have anything to say to us, let alone teach us, is not popular today. Indeed, there seems today to be a great divorce of the human person from the body. For many moderns, the body is little more than a machine that can be redesigned and accessorized at will.

This mentality finds its most extreme form in the widespread sexual confusion of our day. It is a kind of resurgent Gnostic dualism in which one’s “identity” is something separate from one’s body. And thus there is the idea that one can be a woman trapped in a man’s body, a man trapped in a woman’s body, or any of 50-some-odd other categories (see Facebook) within a fluid notion of “gender.”

Nothing could be more clear than our sex as disclosed by our body. We are either male or female. But to many moderns, our body has nothing to say to us, nothing to reveal to us about our own self.

But just try to say to supporters of “transgenderism” that a person is quite obviously male or female, that it is clearly indicated by the very structure of the body. The usual response is a blank stare followed by the insistence that the body has little to do with it, that feelings and attractions are what matters.

This same scenario plays out when speaking with those who support homosexual acts. Saying to them that the design of the body reveals the flawed nature of homosexual acts, that the body parts don’t “fit” in this way and that something is obviously amiss elicits blank stares and a sort of incredulity that the body really has anything to do with it.

It is pure Gnostic dualism, an almost complete divorce of the human person from the body. Only feelings, attractions, and thoughts matter; the body is irrelevant. In our culture we have elevated feelings to such an extent that we seem to have lost our reason. Indeed, if someone from a mere ten years in the past, let alone fifty, were dropped forward into our time, he would conclude that we had lost our minds or become delusional, denying the obvious reality right before our very eyes.

Our time traveler, unaffected by recent errors in thinking, would make the (once) common sense assessment that an obviously male person who thinks he is actually a female needs psychological help and healing. He needs our sympathy and offer of help, not our encouragement of his delusion. Our time traveler would marvel at the shocking and collective delusion of a culture that so widely approves of and even celebrates such sad confusion.

And so here we are as a culture. Yet here we are and in such a bad state that there are so-called “bathroom bills” in various phases of the legislative process in many states, to require that people must use the public bathroom that conforms with their biological “gender” (we used to call this a person’s sex). Even five years ago, such a legislated requirement would have needed no law to spell it out; it was axiomatic, just common sense. But the reaction to such legislation today has elicited denunciation and calls for boycotts.

How have so many gotten so lost so quickly?

Read the rest here.

A Biblical Warning on the Nature of Government

The following comes from Msgr. Charles Pope:

There is a remarkable passage in the Old Testament that speaks to the issue of centralized government. The portrait painted is not a flattering one. Generally speaking, the Scriptures do not comment much on secular government other than to note its existence and to prescribe a combination of support (Jer 29:7, Mk 12:17), endurance (Romans 13:1-7), and prayer (1 Tim 2:1).

But at a critical point, the prophet Samuel sets forth a litany of woes that come from centralized ruling authority (a king in this particular case). His remarks surely resonate today in the era of large, centralized, secular government. More on this in a moment, but first a little background:

Prior to the anointing of King Saul over Israel, the Jewish people existed as a kind of confederation of twelve tribes  (Reuben, Simeon, Judah, Issachar, Zebulun, Benjamin, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher, Ephraim and Manasseh). 
Though united by faith in the LORD, the tribes were rather decentralized. When threats (usually invading armies) beset any or all of the tribes, they would unite under a charismatic leader known as a “judge,” who would see them through the crisis and then step back once the threat was quelled. There are twelve judges (though there may have been more) mentioned in the Book of Judges: Othniel, Ehud, Shamgar, Deborah, Gideon, Tola, Jair, Jephthah, Ibzan, Elon, Abdon, and Samson.

It seemed that this was God’s central organizing plan for ancient Israel (and for us?): governance under the principle of subsidiarity in which a decentralized confederation of families (nuclear and extended), tribes, and clans supported and cared for one another, and shared an allegiance to God and His revealed law. Although the tribes of Israel did unite under leaders (judges anointed by God) in times of crisis, God was the true King of Israel; He was the lawgiver and the unifier. Or so the ideal went.

In the period of the judges, the system usually worked and the people trusted God to lead them through crises in these ways. The glue that held it all together was tribal, clan, and family loyalty interacting with faith in the LORD.

This leads us to the passage from the Book of Samuel, in which it would seem that the Jewish people wanted to replace God’s plan.

Indeed, over time there was a growing interest among the Jews to have a king. As Samuel’s death drew there was a fear that perhaps no judges would be found in time of crisis. But why this fear existed is not clear; God had always provided leaders in times of crisis. The text from Samuel gives the following reasons for Israel wanting a king: appoint a king over us, as other nations have … There must be a king over us! We too must be like other nations, with a king to rule us and to lead us in warfare and fight our battles … The LORD … said in answer [to Samuel], It is not you they reject, they are rejecting me as their king (1 Sam 8, various verses).

So the rejection of God’s plan of governance is seen as sinful by Samuel and the biblical tradition. In effect, the Lord tells Samuel to grant them their every wish, more as a punishment than as a gracious acquiescence to the will of the people for an earthly king.

Though the Lord told Samuel to give them what they wanted, He also told Samuel to warn the people that their decision to submit themselves to an earthly ruler would have consequences. The text from Samuel describes them:

Samuel delivered the message of the LORD in full to those who were asking him for a king. He told them, “The rights of the king who will rule you will be as follows: He will take your sons and assign them to his chariots and horses, and they will run before his chariot. He will also appoint from among them his commanders of groups of a thousand and of a hundred soldiers. He will set them to do his plowing and his harvesting, and to make his implements of war and the equipment of his chariots.  He will use your daughters as ointment makers, as cooks, and as bakers. He will take the best of your fields, vineyards, and olive groves, and give them to his officials. He will tithe your crops and your vineyards, and give the revenue to his eunuchs and his slaves. He will take your male and female servants, as well as your best oxen and your asses, and use them to do his work. He will tithe your flocks and you yourselves will become his slaves” [1 Sam 8:4-7; 10-22].

In modern terms the consequences of having a king and a centralized authority included high taxes, expansive and aggressive use of power, military draft, conscription of the people into the affairs of the king and the state, intrusive policies that affected families, seizure of land and resources, and a kind of bondage that expanded to take the best resources of the people and entrusted them to cronies and the like.

This is a pretty bleak list, and unfortunately it is very familiar to us in this era of expansive, intrusive government with its increasingly complex and burdensome regulations.

As a priest I am hesitant to enter into political discussions. I have never studied political theory or public policy and am not a member of any political party. I prefer to leave political debates to the laity, to whom the temporal order is consigned.

But I comment here due to the biblical text before us and its sober reminder that centralized power is costly, tends to grow, and draws people into a kind of servitude in exchange for some sense of security and/or moderation of justice.

G.K. Chesterton once said, “When you break the big laws, you do not get liberty; you do not even get anarchy. You get the small laws.” Indeed, we get thousands of lesser laws.

Read the rest here.

Msgr. Charles Pope: Learning to Live the Lord’s Day Today

The Worthy Reception of Holy Communion

The following comes from Msgr. Charles Pope:

I indicated yesterday an intention to expand on the need for the reverent and worthy reception of Holy Communion, to develop an apologetic for the Church’s practice of what some call “closed communion.”  Not everyone who uses this terminology means it pejoratively, though some do. But to some extent it is fair to say that we do have “closed communion.” For the Catholic Church, Holy Communion is not a “come one, come all” event. It is reserved for those who, by grace, preserve union with the Church through adherence to all the Catholic Church believes, teaches, and proclaims to be revealed by God. Our response of “Amen” at Holy Communion signifies our communion with these realities along with our faith in the true presence of Christ in the Eucharist.

But many today have reduced Holy Communion to a mere sign of hospitality, such that if the Church does not extend Holy Communion to all, we are considered unkind. There is often a mistaken notion about the nature of the Last Supper (and the Eucharist that proceeds from it) that lurks behind this misconception. Many years ago, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger articulated the misunderstanding well. I summarize the description here from his Collected Works, Vol 11, Ignatius Press pp 273-274:

Nowadays [some] New Testament scholars … say that the Eucharist … is the continuation of the meals with sinners that Jesus had held … a notion with far-reaching consequences. It would mean that the Eucharist is the sinners’ banquet, where Jesus sits at the table; [that] the Eucharist is the public gesture by which we invite everyone without exception. The logic of this is expressed in a far-reaching criticism of the Church’s Eucharist, since it implies that the Eucharist cannot be conditional on anything, not depending on denomination or even on baptism. It is necessarily an open table to which all may come to encounter the universal God …

However tempting the idea may be, it contradicts what we find in the Bible. Jesus’ Last Supper was not one of those meals he held with “publicans and sinners”. He made it subject to the basic form of the Passover, which implies that the meal was held in a family setting. Thus he kept it with his new family, with the Twelve; with those whose feet he washed, whom he had prepared by his Word and by this cleansing of absolution (John 13:10) to receive a blood relationship with him, to become one body with him.

The Eucharist is not itself the sacrament of reconciliation, but in fact it presupposes that sacrament. It is the sacrament of the reconciled, to which the Lord invites all those who have become one with him; who certainly still remain weak sinners, but yet have given their hand to him and have become part of his family.

That is why, from the beginning, the Eucharist has been preceded by a discernment … (I Corinthians 11:27 ff). The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles [the Didache] is one of the oldest writings outside the New Testament, from the beginning of the Second Century, it takes up this apostolic tradition and has the priest, just before distributing the sacrament saying:”Whoever is holy, let him approach, whoever is not, let him do penance” (Didache 10).

Thanks to Pope Benedict’s writing prior to his papacy, we can see the root of the problem: the failure to see the Eucharist for what it truly is—a sacred banquet wherein those who enjoy communion with the Lord (by His grace) partake of the sign and sacrament of that communion. Holy Communion serves to celebrate and deepen the communion already operative through the other sacraments of Baptism, Confirmation, and Confession.

If you want to call this communion “closed,” fine, but at its heart it is more positively called a “sacrum convivium,” a  sacred meal of those who share a life together (con = with or together + vivium = life).  This is not a “come one, come all” meal; it is a Holy Banquet for those who wear the wedding garment. The garment is righteousness and those who refuse to wear it are cast out (cf: Matt 22:11-12 & Rev 19:8).

Many moderns surely would prefer a “no questions asked” invitation to all who wish to come. We moderns love this notion of unity. But to a large degree it is a contrived unity that overlooks truth (the opposite of which is falsehood, not just a different viewpoint). Yes, it overlooks the truth necessary for honest, real, and substantive unity. Such a notion of communion is shallow at best and a lie at worst. How can people approach the Eucharist, the sacrament of Holy Communion and unity, and say “Amen” when they differ with the Church over essentials such as that Baptism is necessary; that there are seven Sacraments; that the Pope is the successor of Peter and the Vicar of Christ on Earth; that homosexual acts, fornication, and adultery are gravely sinful; that women cannot be admitted to Holy Orders; that there is in fact a priesthood; that Scripture must be read in the light of the Magisterium; and on and on? Saying that there is communion in such a case is either a contrivance or a lie, but in either case, it does not suffice for the “Amen” that is required at the moment of reception of Holy Communion.

Such divisions do not make for a family meal or a “sacrum convivium.” Hence, to share Holy Communion with Protestants, dissenters, and others who do not live in communion with the Church is incoherent. To paraphrase Cardinal Ratzinger (Pope Benedict), the Eucharist is not a table fellowship with publicans and other “sinners”; it is a family meal that presupposes grace and shared faith.

Read the rest here.

The Reason for Spiritual Dryness

The following comes from Msgr. Charles Pope:

None of us who commit to prayer and the spiritual life enjoy those periods during which prayer, liturgy, or spiritual reading seem dry or dull. But such moments are necessary—or so it would seem—for God permits them. If something were always pleasant, we would not be sure if we loved God or merely the pleasantries. An old saying asks if we love the consolations of God or the God of all consolation. It is the dry and difficult times that help us to determine the answer.

There are other reasons for dryness or “aridity” and they are well stated by Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange:

We must allow ourselves to be led by the path which our Lord has chosen for us. There is, to be sure, the common and indispensable way, that of humility and conformity to the divine will.

But on this common road, one part is shaded, the other has nothing to protect it from the burning rays of the sun; one section is flat, followed by long steep hills that lead to high plateaus where we may enjoy a marvelous view. The good shepherd leads his sheep as he judges best.

He leaves certain souls for a rather long time in difficulties in order to inure them to the struggle … [But] if aridity is prolonged we should [determine] that it does not spring from lukewarmness, provided that we have no taste for the things of the world but rather concern for our spiritual progress. 

Aridity [in this case] … is very useful, like fire that must dry out the wood before setting it ablaze. Aridity is needed precisely to dry up our too lively, too impetuous, exuberant, and tumultuous sensibility, so that finally, the sensible appetites may be quieted and may become submissive to the spirit (Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, The Three Ages of the Interior Life, Vol. 1, Tan Publications, pp. 459-60).

Yes, indeed, in overstimulated times like these, our passions and senses are “off the chain” if something does not help to moderate them and limit their ever-growing demands for something newer, brighter, glitzier, and more exciting. In this case, “aridity” can help us to slow down to the pace of life that God has intended for us. A little silence, a little waiting, and little experience of the passing quality of earthly thrills is good for the soul. It is the parched soul that best appreciates water.

Msgr. Charles Pope: A Reflection on the "Look" of Christ

The following comes from Msgr. Pope:

I have a large icon of Christ in my room. What icons from the Eastern tradition do best is to capture “the look.” No matter where I move in the room Christ is looking right at me. His look is intense, though not severe. In the Eastern spirituality, icons are windows into Heaven. Hence this icon is no mere portrait that reminds one of Christ; it is an image that mediates His presence. When I look upon Him, I experience that He knows me. It is a knowing look, a comprehensive look. 

The Book of Hebrews says of Jesus, No creature is concealed from him, but everything is naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must render an account(Heb 4:13). His look in the icon is not fearsome; it is serene and confident. The text from Hebrews goes on to say, Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast to our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who has similarly been tested in every way, yet without sin. So let us confidently approach the throne of grace to receive mercy and to find grace for timely help (Heb 4:14-16).     

Particularly in Mark’s Gospel there is great emphasis on the eyes and the look of Jesus. A frequent expression appearing in that Gospel is “And looking at them He said …”  This phrase, or something like it, occurs more than 25 times in Mark’s Gospel. Looking on Christ and allowing Him to look on you is a powerful moment of conversion. Jesus Himself said, For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day (Jn 6:40). The First Letter of John says, What we shall later be has not yet been revealed. We do know that when it is revealed  we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is (1 Jn 3:2).

Keep looking to the Lord in this Easter season, in the art that most moves and especially in the Most Blessed Sacrament. Look at Him and let Him look at you.

This video (above) is a wonderful collection of  many of the looks of Jesus and the reaction of the people to them. Pay special attention to it. The video also features a lot of “looks” that come from us. Notice how people look upon Jesus and how they as human beings react as they do so. Look for the “looks” in this video. The final looks are especially moving.

What Does Jesus Mean When He Says to Some, “I Do Not Know You”?

The following comes from Msgr. Charles Pope:

Every now and then someone will come past my door and request parish services of some sort. Maybe it’s to plan a wedding, a baptism, or a funeral; maybe it’s for money! And then I look at him or her and say, “Who are you?” (since I don’t recognize the person). “Oh, well Father, you don’t know me but my grandmother goes here; this is our family Church.” “Oh, I see, but where do you go to Church?” I usually ask.  The response is usually something like, “Well, you know how it is Father, I don’t get to Church too often … but my mother goes here.” 

Well, I’ve got news for you: your Mama’s faith isn’t going to save you. You gotta have your own faith. You have to know Jesus for yourself. There are some things you just can’t borrow. Once, you depended on your mother and ultimately the Church to announce the True Faith to you. But at some point you have to be able to claim the True Faith as your own. Your mother can’t go to Church for you and she can’t believe for you.

On another occasion, a man came up to me in the parking lot of the local food store and began to talk to me as if we were old friends. Perhaps he saw the puzzled look on my face as I awkwardly wondered if I had ever met him. He was mildly offended and said, “Gosh, don’t you know who I am?” “No,” I admitted with some embarrassment. He went on to explain that his family had been one the “pillar” families who had helped build the Church and that I really ought to know who he was. “Do you come to Mass often?” I asked. “No, but I was there at the last funeral, the one for my grandmother, whom YOU buried. Perhaps you know who I am now!” I said, “No. I certainly knew your grandmother, but I can’t say I know you.” “That really hurts Father, ’cause if it hadn’t a been for my family the Church wouldn’t be there.”

Eventually I got the man to admit that he hadn’t been going to Sunday Mass for over 20 years, from the time he graduated from the parish school, and that his only real attendance was for funerals and a few weddings. “Consider this a dress rehearsal,” I said, humorously but with ironic seriousness. “You may be angry and disappointed that I don’t know you, but it will be a lot worse to hear Jesus say ‘I don’t know you.'”

Read the rest here.

Men, Remember Who You Are

The Following comes from Msgr. Pope:

This is a post that Satan apparently did not like. When I posted it last Thursday, the Server of the Archdiocese (literally) burnt up within an hour or two of posting. And while things are slowly coming back online, the post you are about to read could not be found in the archive file, anywhere. Thanks be to God some intrepid readers (at dclatinmass.com) had saved the post which I had not had time to back up. So here is a post that I suspect Satan did not want you to read. But the devil is a liar and God is able. 

When I was growing up, my father would often exhort me to “be a man.”He would summon me to courage and responsibility and to discover the heroic capacity that was in me. St. Paul summoned forth a spiritual manhood with these words: We [must] all attain to the unity of faith and knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the extent of the full stature of Christ, so that we may no longer be infants, tossed by waves and swept along by every wind of teaching arising from human trickery, from their cunning in the interests of deceitful scheming. Rather, living the truth in love, we should grow in every way into him who is the head, Christ (Eph 4:13ff).

If the ladies will pardon me (for women have their own sort of strength), I want to issue a special summons to men,especially fathers, husbands, and priests. The summons is simple: be a man. We need men in these dark days, men who will heroically speak and act, men who will announce the truth and insist upon it wherever they have authority, men who will stop being passive fathers and husbands, priests who will stop “playing it safe” by remaining silent in the moral storm. Yes, be a man.

It has often been observed that men are rather disengaged from the practice of the faith and attendance at the Sacred Liturgy. Frankly, there is a reason—not a politically correct one, but a reason nonetheless. Most of the men I talk to find the Church rather feminized. There is much talk in the Church about forgiveness and love, about receptivity and about being “nicer.” These are fine virtues, all of them necessary. But men also want to be engaged, to be sent into battle, to go forth and make a difference.

After years of radical feminism, men are shamed for seeking to take up leadership and authority in their families and in the Church. It starts early.  Any normal boy is full of spit and vinegar, is aggressive, competitive, and anxious to test his wings. But many boys are scolded, punished, and even medicated for these normal tendencies. They are told to behave more like girls and to learn to be nicer and to get along, etc. It will be granted that limits are necessary, but the tendency for boys to roughhouse is normal. The scolding and “socializing” to more feminine traits continues apace into early adulthood. And then there are other cultural phenomena such as the slew of “Men are stupid” commercials, etc.

Though many in past decades have sought to describe the Church as “male-dominated,” nothing could be further from the truth. Most parish leadership structures are dominated by women. And women do fine work. But the Church has done a very poor job of engaging men as men and equipping them to be strong husbands, fathers, and priests. Virtues related to bold leadership and the effective use of authority are in short supply whereas other virtues such as collaboration, listening, empathy, and understanding are overemphasized.

Read the rest here.

Msgr. Charles Pope: A Meditation on the Dramatic Battle in Which We Live

The following comes from Msgr. Charles Pope:

A grave deficiency of modern times is the loss of the sense that our lives are caught up in a tremendous, epic battle. And yet here we are living in the midst of a great drama—in the greatest story ever told.

Behind the scenes is a deadly enemy, one of whom many rarely speak: Satan. Yet he is active and involved, manipulating both the world and the flesh (our sinful nature). We are on the front lines of a fierce spiritual war, a war that is to blame for most of the casualties you see around you. Yes, fellow Christians, there is a dragon, the roaring lion—Satan—who seeks to devour our souls.

Ah! But there is also a Son, a Savior, who is born to us and whom we call Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, and Prince of Peace (cf Is 9:6). And He shall reign forever. His hand is outstretched, first on the cross, but now outstretched to you to save you and to draw you up out of the raging waters, to deliver you from the kingdom of darkness into the Kingdom of light!

Will you take hold of His hand, or not? This is the decision—your decision—in the great drama of your life and of every life; it is your chapter in the greatest story ever told.

Yes, the battle rages all around us and we are swept up in it! It’s happening in our world, our culture, our families, and in our hearts. The sequence hymn from Easter says dramatically of it,  Mors et vita duello; Conflixere Mirando (death and life at battle in a stupendous conflict)!

The Book of Joel vividly describes the great drama, not merely an eschatological battle, but a battle that is already around us in the decision we must make, in the war we must wage, with God’s grace, against the evil that is in and around us. It is a vivid and dramatic war and we must choose sides. And our decision will one day be revealed in the great judgment that is coming on this world.

Prepare war, stir up the mighty men! Let all the men of war draw near, let them come up. Beat your plowshares into swords, and your pruning hooks into spears; let the weak say, “I am a warrior.” Hasten and come, all you nations round about, gather yourselves there. Bring down thy warriors, O LORD. Let the nations bestir themselves, and come up to the valley of Jehoshaphat; for there I will sit to judge all the nations round about. Put in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe. Go in, tread, for the wine press is full. The vats overflow, for their wickedness is great.  Multitudes! Multitudes, in the valley of decision! For the day of the LORD is near in the valley of decision (Joel 3:9-14).

Text after text in the Bible describes the awesome drama and the great decision we must make, a decision on which hinges our very destiny. Here are just a few:

1. I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. Choose life, then, that you and your descendants may live, by loving the LORD, your God, obeying his voice, and holding fast to him. For that will mean life for you (Deut 30:19-20).
2. Simeon blessed them and said to Mary his mother, “Behold, this child is set for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is spoken against  (and a sword will pierce through your own heart also), that thoughts out of many hearts may be revealed” (Lk 2:34-36).
3. Jesus said to the unbelieving Jews, “You are from below, I am from above; you are of this world, I am not of this world. I have told you that you would die in your sins, for you will die in your sins unless you believe that I AM” (John 8:23-24).
4. Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation (Matt 26:41).
5. And he said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to the whole creation. He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned” (Mk 16:15).
6. For we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. Therefore take the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand (Eph 6:12-14).
7. I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel— not that there is another gospel, but there are some who trouble you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to that which we preached to you, let him be accursed! (Gal 1:4)
8. Be sober, be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Resist him, firm in your faith (1 Peter 1:8).
9. A great sign appeared in the heavens, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars; she was with child and she cried out in her pangs of birth, in anguish for delivery. And another portent appeared in heavens; behold, a great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and seven diadems upon his heads. His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven, and cast them to the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to bear a child, that he might devour her child when she brought it forth; she brought forth a male child, one who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron, but her child was caught up to God and to his throne … And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world—he was thrown down to the earth … Rejoice then, O heaven and you that dwell therein! But woe to you, O earth and sea, for the devil has come down to you in great wrath, because he knows that his time is short!” And when the dragon saw that he had been thrown down to the earth, he pursued the woman who had borne the male child … The dragon was angry with the woman, and went off to make war on the rest of her offspring, on those who keep the commandments of God and bear testimony to Jesus (Rev 12, selected verses).
10. “Lo, I am coming like a thief! Blessed is he who is awake, keeping his garments that he may not go naked and be seen exposed!” And they assembled them at the place which is called in Hebrew Armageddon (Rev 16:15-16).

And so here we are in the Valley of Decision, in Hebrew, the Valley of Armageddon. Here is the drama of our life! Multitudes in the Valley of Decision! All of us have a decision to make, an army to join, a direction to choose! Tertium non datur (No third way is given). There are only two armies on the field of battle; there are no demilitarized zones, no sidelines. Choose an army! What will it be, light or darkness, grace or sin, Jesus or Beelzebub?

Yes, here is the immense drama in the greatest story ever told; it is our drama and our story.

Read the rest here.

Brandon Vogt Interview with Msgr. Charles Pope

The following comes from Brandon Vogt:

What if your pastor stood up next Sunday and said he wanted to double the size of the parish within one year? That's exactly what happened at Holy Comforter-St. Cyprian Catholic parish in Washington DC, a predominantly African-American parish. Monsignor Charles Pope made that bold challenge last September and then got to work.

He trained forty parishioners to evangelize door-to-door, had another forty stay at the church and pray, and then asked forty more to cook meals for everyone upon their return. The whole program was a success. They visited more than 1,500 homes and drew many people back to the church.

Msgr. Pope is known for more than his parish work, though. His popular blog at the Archdiocese of Washington website is read across the world and his dynamic preaching inspires countless others.

Msgr. Pope recently sat down with me to talk about blogging, preaching, evangelization, and the unique experiences of serving in an African-American Catholic parish.