Lessons on True Manliness...

I've heard that among the many problems in the world today, one of the greatest crisis is the defective understanding of masculinity. I remember being asked the question, "What does authentic masculinity look like", on a seminary application. And I was almost at a loss. But I realize now that to discern a call to the priesthood and to be a priest, we need to know what it means to be real men in the way our Creator ordained us. How else can we become men of the Church, fathers for the many, if we do not first know what it means to be a man? Grace, the gift of ordination, works with nature, our nature as men. So what does it mean to be a real man? Fr. Roger J. Landry has a great article on this here. I quote a small part below. He compares true men to a good soldier. This image helps, well at least for me.

A good soldier, especially one fit for battle, generally has the following ten traits, among others:

• He is willing to give his life to protect others.

• He is task-oriented, and lets his actions speak for themselves.

• He does his duty, even when it is unappreciated.

• He is a man of honor, who is loyal to others and to his principles.

• He is rooted in discipline and strength.

• He may be tender and compassionate but never soft.

• He sees himself as part of a unit, a band of brothers, greater than himself.

• He follows the chain of command, without considering it demeaning.

• He is courageous, even and especially when heroism is required.

• He sees sacrifice as an opportunity to show his character and demonstrate love.

There is also another article I came across that talks about the lessons we can learn from a great generation that came before us. I found this inspiring too. I will not say I necessarily support everything on that website, especially the advertisements, and even the author, but this specific material is good. Look here. I've posted a part below.

Lesson #4: Love Loyally

The men of the Greatest Generation took their marriage vows seriously. Brokaw wrote, “It was the last generation in which, broadly speaking, marriage was a commitment and divorce was not an option. I can’t remember one of my parents’ friends who was divorced. In the communities where we lived it was treated as a minor scandal.” The numbers bear Brokaw’s anecdotal evidence out: of all the new marriages in 1940, 1 in 6 ended in divorce. By the late 1990’s, that number was 1 in 2.

This was a time where there was no hanging out or “hooking up.” Men asked women on, and had serious intentions in doing so. When a particular gal caught a man’s heart, he proposed, and they got hitched. And they were married for the next 60 years.

Peggy and John Assenzio had the kind of commitment to marriage typical of the Greatest Generation. They were married right before John headed off to basic training. Peggy kept her husband constantly in her thoughts while he was away. “I never went to sleep until I wrote John a letter. I wrote every single day. I wouldn’t break the routine because I thought it would keep him safe.” When John got home, he and Peggy picked up right where they left off. John would sometimes have nightmares about the war, and Peggy was always there to comfort him. John said, “The war helped me to love Peggy more, if that’s possible. To appreciate her more.” Their commitment to each other was unshakeable. Peggy believed that young couples today, “don’t fight enough. It’s too easy to get a divorce. We’ve have our arguments, but we don’t give up. When my friends ask whether I ever considered divorce, I remind them of the old saying, ‘We’ve thought about killing each other, but divorce? Never.”

AMDG.

Sons of the Church

I was reading an old rector's conference of Archbishop Timothy Dolan on the priest as a Son of the Church. I've just quote a few portions below. I assume it must be in one of his books by now but I am unsure which one. But it's a must read!

"St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, our first native-born American saint...on her death bed in 1821, at that white frame house one can still visit in Emmitsburg, she spoke her last words to her beloved religious sisters, five words, yet so telling and profound: “Be daughters of the Church.” Her biographer tells us she uttered those five words, seemed to fade away, and then revived to lift her head and say one final time, “Be daughters of the Church.”



Maybe it is because the Liturgy of the Word during this paschal season is so ecclesial, so rich in readings about the apostolic Church, bursting with promise, growth, conversion, evangelical preaching, and, yes, with adversity; maybe because this is a topic close to my heart, and because this is the final rector’s conference I will present here at the College – who knows, who cares why – but I say to you this evening, brother priests and future priests, “Be sons of the Church! Be sons of the Church!”

He mentions the fact that it takes a lifetime to discover what the Church really is. The Church is such a great mystery to be discovered. But he does mention seven things the Church most definitely is. It is catholic (universal), true, one, composed of people who are not perfect, apostolic, people centered, and it is on the cross. He goes into much greater detail. I focus simply on the last two sections.

The Church we love is people. Someone criticized Newman for writing too much about the role of the laity in the Church, and he replied, “The Church would sure look silly without them.” As Lumen Gentium reminds us, the role of the ministerial priesthood is precisely to serve the common priesthood of all the faithful. Call it communio, call them the “people of God,” call them “the faithful,” call it the Church – who cares? The Church we love is people...

...That means people first. If you are bothered by people, bored by people, distracted by people, inconvenienced by people, the priesthood is not for you; come to think of it, the Church is not for you, because the Church we love is people...

...Finally, the Church we love is on the Cross. “From His wounded side flowed blood and water, the fountain of sacramental life in the Church,” as we pray in the preface of the Mass of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. We usually call Pentecost the “birthday of the Church,” but many of the Fathers would contend it to be Good Friday instead.

From this perspective, all those facts usually cited to prove the Church is failing – rejection of the Church’s teaching, criticism of the Church for its “failure to change,” persecution by hostile forces – are actually proofs of its success, because that means the Church is on the cross. That’s the Church’s real vocation, its real “contribution.” “If you want to see what a contribution really is,” observes Catherine Doherty, “look at the man on the cross. When you are hanging on a cross, you can’t do anything, because you’re crucified. That’s His contribution.”

That’s why priests are very near to those visibly on the cross – the sick, poor, suffering, struggling, lonely, hurting; that’s why a priest is mostly a “man of the Church” when he is suffering – from doubt, frustration, temptation, weariness, discouragement; that’s why the priest is strong in fighting the temptation the Body of Christ, the Church, still is taunted with today, “Come down off your cross and we will believe in you.” Because the Church we love is on the cross.

AMDG.

Faces from the Past

Traveling through the Balkan states I came into the Cathedral in Mostar, Bosnia and caught sight of this poster in the back commemorating the many Franciscans who died during World War 2 and what I can only assume was under the Nazi regime.



Look at the faces. Some of them are as young as their early twenties. I cannot even begin to imagine the courage it took to face the oncoming threat of suffering and death. More so, I cannot imagine living so short a life with having so much left to be done. But I think this is the challenge for all of us. We must realize each day is a gift and simply live this day as our last. Accept it. Take it. Cherish it. Receive it from our Lord and then give it back to him. I think this virtue of living always ready to die will make us saints so very soon. AMDG.

On learning

"To study well, we must know the true end for which we study. We must not study in order to nourish our vainglory or to gratify our curiosity; but we must study in order to sanctify ourselves and edify our neighbor. There are some who wish to know merely for the sake of knowing; this is detestable curiosity. Others wish to know in order to become known; this is execrable vanity. Others, again, study in order to sell their science; this is filthy lucre. But there are others who study in order to be able to edify their fellow men; this is charity. Others, again, study in order to edify themselves; this is wisdom. The two latter classes of students only do not abuse knowledge; for they study only to do good."

- St. Bernard of Clairvaux

That's what keeps me going whenever I'm feeling tired from study - I'm not here for myself. Everything I do here and everything else I do outside of the seminary I want to do for the greater glory of God as Colin likes to say.

AMDG.

46th World Day of Prayer for Vocations

From the Holy Father:

Brothers and Sisters,

On the occasion of the next World Day of prayer for vocations to the priesthood and to the consecrated life, which will be celebrated on 3 May 2009, the Fourth Sunday of Easter, I want to invite all the People of God to reflect on the theme: Faith in the divine initiative - the human response. The exhortation of Jesus to his disciples: "Pray therefore the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest" (Mt 9:38) has a constant resonance in the Church. Pray! The urgent call of the Lord stresses that prayer for vocations should be continuous and trusting. The Christian community can only really "have ever greater faith and hope in God's providence" (Sacramentum Caritatis, 26) if it is enlivened by prayer.

The vocation to the priesthood and to the consecrated life constitutes a special gift of God which becomes part of the great plan of love and salvation that God has for every man and woman and for the whole of humanity. The Apostle Paul, whom we remember in a special way during this Pauline Year dedicated to the Two-thousandth anniversary of his birth, writing to the Ephesians says, "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him" (Ef 1:3-4). In the universal call to holiness, of particular relevance is God’s initiative of choosing some to follow his Son Jesus Christ more closely, and to be his privileged ministers and witnesses. The divine Master personally called the Apostles "to be with him, and to be sent out to preach and have authority to cast out demons" (Mk 3:14-15); they, in turn, gathered other disciples around them as faithful collaborators in this mission. In this way, responding to the Lord’s call and docile to the movement of the Holy Spirit, over the centuries, countless ranks of priests and consecrated persons placed themselves totally at the service of the Gospel in the Church. Let us give thanks to God, because even today he continues to call together workers into his vineyard. While it is undoubtedly true that a worrisome shortage of priests is evident in some regions of the world, and that the Church encounters difficulties and obstacles along the way, we are sustained by the unshakable certitude that the one who firmly guides her in the pathways of time towards the definitive fulfilment of the Kingdom is he, the Lord, who freely chooses persons of every culture and of every age and invites them to follow him according to the mysterious plans of his merciful love.

Our first duty, therefore, is to keep alive in families and in parishes, in movements and in apostolic associations, in religious communities and in all the sectors of diocesan life this appeal to the divine initiative with unceasing prayer. We must pray that the whole Christian people grows in its trust in God, convinced that the "Lord of the harvest" does not cease to ask some to place their entire existence freely at his service so as to work with him more closely in the mission of salvation. What is asked of those who are called, for their part, is careful listening and prudent discernment, a generous and willing adherence to the divine plan, and a serious study of the reality that is proper to the priestly and religious vocations, so as to be able to respond responsibly and with conviction.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church rightly reminds us that God’s free initiative requires a free response on the part of men and women; a positive response which always presupposes acceptance of and identification with the plan that God has for everyone; a response which welcomes the Lord’s loving initiative and becomes, for the one who is called, a binding moral imperative, an offering of thanksgiving to God and a total cooperation with the plan which God carries out in history (cf. n. 2062).

Contemplating the mystery of the Eucharist, which expresses in a sublime way the free gift of the Father in the Person of his Only Begotten Son for the salvation of mankind, and the full and docile readiness of Christ to drink to the dregs the "cup" of the will of God (cf. Mt 26:39), we can more readily understand how "faith in the divine initiative" models and gives value to the "human response". In the Eucharist, that perfect gift which brings to fulfillment the plan of love for the redemption of the world, Jesus offers himself freely for the salvation of mankind. "The Church", my beloved predecessor John Paul II wrote, "has received the Eucharist from Christ her Lord not as a gift – however precious – among so many others, but as the gift par excellence, for it is the gift of himself, of his person in his sacred humanity, as well as the gift of his saving work" (Ecclesia de Eucharistia, 11).

It is priests who are called to perpetuate this salvific mystery from century to century until the Lord’s glorious return, for they can contemplate, precisely in the Eucharistic Christ, the eminent model of a "vocational dialogue" between the free initiative of the Father and the faithful response of Christ. In the celebration of the Eucharist it is Christ himself who acts in those whom he chooses as his ministers; he supports them so that their response develops in a dimension of trust and gratitude that removes all fear, even when they experience more acutely their own weakness (cf. Rm 8:26-28), or indeed when the experience of misunderstanding or even of persecution is most bitter (cf. Rm 8:35-39).

The awareness of being saved by the love of Christ, which every Mass nourishes in the faithful and especially in priests, cannot but arouse within them a trusting self-abandonment to Christ who gave his life for us. To believe in the Lord and to accept his gift, therefore, leads us to entrust ourselves to Him with thankful hearts, adhering to his plan of salvation. When this does happen, the one who is "called" voluntarily leaves everything and submits himself to the teaching of the divine Master; hence a fruitful dialogue between God and man begins, a mysterious encounter between the love of the Lord who calls and the freedom of man who responds in love, hearing the words of Jesus echoing in his soul, "You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide" (Jn 15:16).

This intertwining of love between the divine initiative and the human response is present also, in a wonderful way, in the vocation to the consecrated life. The Second Vatican Council recalls, "The evangelical counsels of chastity dedicated to God, poverty and obedience are based upon the words and examples of the Lord. They were further commanded by the apostles and Fathers of the Church, as well as by the doctors and pastors of souls. The counsels are a divine gift, which the Church received from its Lord and which it always safeguards with the help of His grace" (Lumen Gentium, 43).

Once more, Jesus is the model of complete and trusting adherence to the will of the Father, to whom every consecrated person must look. Attracted by him, from the very first centuries of Christianity, many men and women have left families, possessions, material riches and all that is humanly desirable in order to follow Christ generously and live the Gospel without compromise, which had become for them a school of deeply rooted holiness. Today too, many undertake this same demanding journey of evangelical perfection and realize their vocation in the profession of the evangelical counsels. The witness of these our brothers and sisters, in contemplative monasteries, religious institutes and congregations of apostolic life, reminds the people of God of "that mystery of the Kingdom of God is already at work in history, even as it awaits its full realization in heaven" (Vita Consecrata, 1).

Who can consider himself worthy to approach the priestly ministry? Who can embrace the consecrated life relying only on his or her own human powers? Once again, it is useful to reiterate that the response of men and women to the divine call, whenever they are aware that it is God who takes the initiative and brings His plan of salvation to fulfillment, is never patterned after the timid self-interest of the worthless servant who, out of fear, hid the talent entrusted to him in the ground (cf. Mt 25:14-30), but rather expresses itself in a ready adherence to the Lord’s invitation, as in the case of Peter who, trusting in the Lord’ word, did not hesitate to let down the net once more even after having toiled all night and catching nothing (cf. Lk 5:5). Without in any sense renouncing personal responsibility, the free human response to God thus becomes "co-responsibility", responsibility in and with Christ, through the action of his Holy Spirit; it becomes communion with the One who makes it possible for us to bear much fruit (cf. Jn 15:5).

An emblematic human response, full of trust in God’s initiative, is the generous and unmitigated "Amen" of the Virgin of Nazareth, uttered with humble and decisive adherence to the plan of the Most High announced to her by God’s messenger (cf. Lk 1:38). Her prompt "Yes" allowed Her to become the Mother of God, the Mother of our Saviour. Mary, after this first "fiat", had to repeat it many times, even up to the culminating moment of the crucifixion of Jesus, when "standing by the cross of Jesus" as the Evangelist John notes, she participated in the dreadful suffering of her innocent Son. And it was from the cross, that Jesus, while dying, gave her to us as Mother and entrusted us to her as sons and daughters (cf. Jn 19:26-27); she is especially the Mother of priests and consecrated persons. I want to entrust to her all those who are aware of God’s call to set out on the road of the ministerial priesthood or consecrated life.

Dear friends, do not become discouraged in the face of difficulties and doubts; trust in God and follow Jesus faithfully and you will be witnesses of the joy that flows from intimate union with him. Imitating the Virgin Mary whom all generations proclaim as blessed because she believed (cf. Lk 1:48), commit yourselves with every spiritual energy, to realize the heavenly Father’s plan of salvation, cultivating in your heart, like her, the ability to be astonished and to adore him who is mighty and does "great things", for Holy is his name (cf. Lk 1:49).

From the Vatican, 20 January 2009

St. Therese to a struggling seminarian

I forget if I mentioned this other book I have read called Maurice and Therese by Bishop Ahern. The book details the relationship between St. Therese and a seminarian. The letters show forth her great love for seminarians and I find her words speak to me as well. Here is a small excerpt and some words of great encouragement. Just imagine a saint speaking directly to YOU! :)

“Don’t think you frighten me by speaking of “your best years wasted.” As far as I’m concerned, I thank Jesus who has looked at you with a look of love as once He looked at the young man in the Gospel. More fortunate than he, you have faithfully responded to the Master’s call. You have left everything to follow Him, and you have done so at the most beautiful age of your life, at eighteen. Ah, my brother, you can speak as I do of the mercies of the Lord. They shine in you in all their splendor. You love St. Augustine and St. Mary Magdalene, those two for whom “many sins were forgiven because they loved much.” Me too; I love them. I love their repentance, and especially their loving boldness. When I see Magdalene coming forward before all those guests, washing with her tears the feet of the Master she adored, Whom she was touching for the first time, I sense that her heart understood the depths of love and mercy in the Heart of Jesus. And sinner though she was, this loving Heart was ready not only to forgive her, but still more to lavish upon her the blessings of His divine intimacy and lift her to the heights of contemplation.”

AMDG.

And I will lift you up on eagle's wings

From Father Z. comes this story about the first known attempt at flight. It was made by an 11th century Benedictine monk!

The first known serious flight attempt in world history occurred about a thousand years before the Wright brothers, in western England. Then, a young Benedictine monk leapt with a crude pair of cloth wings from a watchtower of a church abbey at the beginning of the 11th century. This monk, known to history as Eilmer of Malmesbury, covered a furlong – a distance of approximately 600 feet – before landing heavily and breaking both legs. Afterwards, he remarked that the cause of his crash was that he had forgotten to provide himself with a tail.

...As well, church artists increasingly showed angels with ever-more-accurate depictions of bird-like wings, detailing the wing’s camber that would prove crucial to generating the lifting forces enabling a bird – or an airplane – to fly. This climate of thought led to general acceptance that air was something that could be worked. Flying was thus not magical, but could be attained by physical effort and human reasoning.

Don't believe it for a second whenever someone tries to describe the Middle Ages as the "Dark Ages." Those people really knew how to use their reason; men like St. Bonaventure and St. Thomas could have eaten atheist polemicists like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens for breakfast even without any appeal to divine revelation. This is just my opinion of course, but I think philosophy has been all downhill since St. Thomas. One of the reasons why he can be a delight to read (now I've really revealed my nerdiness) is that his philosophy is firmly grounded in common sense. Chesterton said that no philosophy since Descartes has really corresponded to everyone's sense of reality. It's like all of the modern philosophers say to us, "If you'll just grant me this one little twist, everything else will fall into place."

Don't misunderstand me though. I've enjoyed my first year of pre-theology and learning about all of the great philosophers. I find philosophy interesting for it's own sake, but I also derive great joy from knowing that I'm fulfilling God's will by doing this (I hope so anyway :p) Next week is finals week. Say a prayer to St. Jude for us.