Regnum Christi

We enter these 40 days of Lent contemplating and accompanying Christ entering the desert to be tempted. To do this. we all decide a sacrifice to offer this Lent in reparation for our sins. We offer the sacrifice with the hope of finding God. The sacrifice is hard and our experience is that we feel unable or small before the task that lies before us. Lent becomes a time of challenge and sometimes, even darkness. This is when Lent achieves its goal. It is in our weakness that we are able to find God. However, it isn’t we who find Him, but rather God who comes to have mercy on us. He finds us in our smallness to bring us to Him. The desert is the place where God can find us. We have to go to the desert. We need to make the experience of the desert repeatedly. He is the only one who can save us. The desert is where we alone with ourselves and with no securities. Only alone in our heart can God come in. God is looking for us we have to help Him find us.

Social Media often desensitizes us to sins of the tongue. If everyone else is using swear words and insults against politicians, my mean comment doesn’t seem that negative. But as Christians we are not just called to be better than average, we are called to be saints.

Sharpening Your Tongue by Fr John Bartunek speaks to this need to use our tongue virtuously. I picked it up to review. Overall I’d give it 5/5 stars.

Fr Bartunek doesn’t say anything radical and earth-shattering that I hadn’t already heard, but he summarizes all the aspects of sin and virtue with the tongue in only 37 pages. Let me summarize his argument then give my assessment. Continue reading →

Putting sacristy items away one morning after mass, something caught my eye as I passed by the tabernacle.

Was I imagining something, or had I seen a reflection?

Those 10 seconds of curiosity became the source of days of prayer: the crucifix above the tabernacle was reflected in the inch-wide strip of gold on top.

The liturgy for the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord on February 2^nd referred to the LORD- the King- as purifying his people. Yet “do not fear me” (Malachi 3). The love of His heart cannot be contained. He knows it’s what’s best for us, although we might dread or fear the discomfort and challenge.

“After you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you” (1 Peter 5:10).

With the Kingdom of Your Heart, reign in my Heart. Make my heart more like yours. May all I am and do always be a reflection of you.

…And to dust you shall return. (And if for any reason you forget, everyone who stares at your forehead today will remind you).

Our Lord has been leading me to contemplate my creature-ness for the past few weeks. And it has struck me just how little I am and how much I am afraid of being little. I don’t always like it.  Yeah, my root sin/defect: pride. I can’t even really hide it either.  But, as I was talking to Our Lord last week about something that was bothering me (and it bothered me that it bothered me), He let me see something that gave so much light and freedom: I will die. The world and humanity existed before me and will continue to exist after me. With that my petty concern went *poof*. Continue reading →

I propose the following three “sacrifices” for this Lenten Season ahead:

1. Pray more and pray better- perhaps going to daily Mass a few days a week, meditating on Sacred Scripture, making more time for adoration/Eucharistic visits or the daily rosary, or praying for the intentions of others.

2. Choose the most difficult person in your daily life and make a real effort to practice extra patience and love toward that person. Allow Christ to love that person through you!

3. Small sacrifice in food or drink that could be a “crutch” or an unhealthy attachment in your life…as a means to foster greater self discipline, detachment, and love for Our Lord. Continue reading →

“I want to greet all the grandmothers and grandfathers to thank them for their special place in families and for their importance to the new generations.” (Pope Francis, July 26, 2015)

The photo is of the 11 am daily Mass at Nuestra Señora del Carmen y San Luis, a parish built in the 17^th century. It’s right next to my Spanish class so most days I try to make a visit and sometimes attend Mass. There usually isn’t anyone under the age of 65 and the priest must be at least in his 70’s. It takes Father two and a half minutes to walk from behind the altar and make his way down the stairs, clutching Jesus to his chest with one hand as he uses the handrail with the other. It could be easy to think these people don’t have a place in the New Evangelization, but they are the backbone of it. They are the ones holding us up in many ways. I see them every day praying for Spain, for vocations, for young people and families, for political leaders, for the Pope and the Church. I’m sure many have experienced the pain and aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, the brutal persecution for being Catholic in the country that gave us Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, Ignatius of Loyola and so many more. Their faith is humbling. Continue reading →

Christ meets the disciples, as they caught nothing. When we feel the frustration of not being up to the challenges of life, it is then when Christ wants to come into our boat as He did with the disciples today in the gospel. At first, He doesn’t solve their problem and almost seems to ignore it. It can seem that when we go to Christ looking for help that He doesn’t care about what is happening to us. This is because He wants us to see that there are more important things. He just wants to be with us. He wants a little bit of our attention and then He puts order back in our life. After they sat and listened for a little, He then gets to their problem, He invites them to do the impossible. And then He changes their life completely. He gives them a whole new perspective on fishing. He shows them how they can make their fishing worth something for eternal life. He takes away their frustration by showing them the way to continue their work, but even through the frustrations of not catching anything, they can make it into a continual encounter with Him and then share that experience with others. He is the only one who can change it, but we need to let Him in.

This post originally appeared in the IPS Virtual Chapel

Several weeks ago I did a 7 day silent retreat, and the silence was sweet indeed. But maybe silence isn’t even the right word since, to be honest, it wasn’t actually all that silent. It was more like a moment of intense listening: listening to the voice of God, listening to his call, listening to his invitation to follow him along a path I can’t fully see.

In his message for Lent Pope Francis touched on the importance of listening to God. “As a man, Jesus of Nazareth is a true son of Israel; he embodies that perfect hearing required of every Jew by the Shema, which today too is the heart of God’s covenant with Israel.” The Holy Father goes on to explain what this means by quoting the book of Deuteronomy.  “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might” (Deut. 6:4-5).” And he concludes with this stirring reminder of what we hear when we actually listen: “As the Son of God, Jesus is the Bridegroom who does everything to win over the love of his bride, to whom he is bound by an unconditional love which becomes visible in the eternal wedding feast.”

When we listen to God with all our heart, all our soul, all our mind and all our strength, we begin to understand the true meaning of mercy. We begin to sense deep in our souls that the eternal feast of heaven awaits, and that God’s mercy, made visible in Jesus, is drawing us home. With that in mind, here are some suggestions for enhanced Lenten listening.

• Daily Commitment to Prayer. Just 10 minutes a day, every day. As part of this try out the Liturgy of the Hours (the Magnificat magazine is very helpful for this). The Liturgy of the Hours is the prayer of the whole Church, with Christ, to the Father. You can’t do much better than that.
• Early to Bed and Early to Rise… Maybe we’re not seeking to be wealthy, but healthy and wise aren’t all that bad. Why not cut out that 11:00 news and go to bed earlier? That translates into an earlier wake up, and more quality time for daily prayer.
• A Retreat. If you can’t make it to an actual retreat, check out the online retreats at the RC Spirituality Center.
• Read. My favorite Lenten book is Richard John Neuhaus’s Death on a Friday Afternoon. It’s an inspiring and challenging exploration of Christ’s 7 last words from the Cross, and of their enormous relevance for our daily life. What’s yours?

God’s mercy is gently insistent; God’s mercy is transforming; God’s mercy is without end. All he asks is that we listen.

Massimo’s home, Civitella

If we could see the expression on Christ’s face when we came into his Eucharistic presence, what would it be like, I wonder.

Once or twice a month, my community gets out into the Italian countryside on a Saturday to get some fresh air and ventilate out our brains, which have been saturating themselves in philosophical juices for the past fortnight. It is always a much needed disconnect from the lofty things like “being,” “essence,” and “truth,” which are our daily bread at the university. I love the country: the winding mountain roads, the olive groves, the sheep, the vineyards. My favorite sights are the cities on the mountains. They are really something to behold, as if crowning the entire panorama. The sand-tinted plastered houses, glistening in the sun, are compacted into a dense, impenetrable bundle that practically hangs off the mountain. These cities never cease to strike me with awe. Continue reading →

Fit for a Queen

“ i Love You mis Queen”

A very energetic kindergarten student marched up to me one morning, holding out her hand with a wrinkled post-it note. I was just popping my head into their classroom, but as soon as she spotted me, she made a bee-line over to the door.

“Here! Can you give it to her?”

Glancing at the note she had given me, I looked back to her and asked, “to who?”

She looked shocked. After a dramatic sigh, she said, “Mother Mary!”

Oh, of course. THE Queen.

She wanted to make sure I took her note straight to the chapel, to deliver her message.

How simply and matter-of-factly! With a  relationship like that with our Heavenly Mother, daily worries and anxieties melt away. Mother Mary will take care of me, and that’s all that matters.