WEEKLY DIGEST OF rc
DAILY MEDITATIONS

Dear Nacho, I understand your consternation.  Liturgical oddities and deviations from Church norms can cause confusion and division, if nothing worse.  But the solution does not lie in publicly criticizing your bishop.  Not all bishops are saints, and some may even betray their sacred trust (like Judas), but they are still bishops, souls chosen by God to pastor his people.  Be confident in God; be grateful that the Pope and the bishops in union with him bear the divine guarantee that they will never lead the Church astray.  Let your love for the Church and your confidence in God guide your own words and actions, and never give in to the temptation of destructive criticism.  Make the extra effort to speak and act positively, bringing light into the darkness and not just chasing shadows. You know well the story of St Ignatius of Antioch, disciple of John the Evangelist and for forty years exemplary pastor of the important Christian community in Antioch – at least, you should know it well, since I told it to you in great detail when we were in Rome together, visiting the coliseum (where he was thrown to the lions and martyred).  It’s a remarkable story, really:  How he was denounced as a Christian (under the Emperor Trajan, only Christians who were publicly denounced could be punished for not worshiping the Roman gods; the officials were not supposed to go looking for them) though he was already an old man; how he eagerly submitted to the charges and suffered abuse during his long and indirect sea voyage towards execution in Rome; how he encouraged the Christians who came to see him at every port along the way, and wrote a steady stream of letters exhorting the different churches to stay true to Christ.  One of the constant motifs of those letters is his deep and passionate faith in the structure of the Church.  He never tires of referring to the bishops as the guarantee of Christian authenticity, both in doctrine and in discipline.  One would expect him to focus on the Twelve Apostles, after all, he is writing around the year 100 (so close in time to the Apostles themselves), and he himself was a disciple of St John the Evangelist, but he stresses the role of the bishops, the successors of the Twelve.   His love and religious respect for the Catholic hierarchy even at such an early stage in its development illustrates the divine origin of the Church’s structure.  In one letter he encourages the Christians at Tralles to resist heresy, “which you will do if you remain united to God, even Jesus Christ, and the bishop and the ordinances of the apostles.  He who is within the altar is clean, but he that is outside it, that is, who acts independently of the bishop, priests and deacons, is not clean.”  In a letter to the Philadelphians (not the ones in Pennsylvania), he likewise exhorts, “Use one Eucharist; for the flesh of the Lord Jesus Christ is one and the cup is one, to unite us all in his blood.  There is one altar, as there is one bishop…” The Church is God’s work, and Christ acts through it.  If we want to stay close to him, we must always view the Church through the clear lens of faith. So be humble, my dear nephew – creative and zealous in your efforts to defend and extend the Kingdom, but humble, trusting more in God and his grace than in your own good sense (though you should continue using it).  Choose your battles well, and always fight them in order to and in a such a way as to please God, not just yourself. Always your Uncle, Eddy Eddy

Dear Marge, It doesn’t surprise me that your commendable and considerable efforts to get that sorority back into shape have gone unacknowledged.  Now everyone is enjoying a lively and healthy atmosphere and engaging in productive and worthy activities, and no one gives you any thanks at all – they even pass over you when it comes to electing officers.  I’m not surprised, because, well, as difficult as it may be to accept, that’s the way we human beings are: ungrateful.  But far from causing you discouragement, you can take advantaged of the experience to purify your intentions (the more we do things to please God instead of to win fame, the freer we become to love him and to receive his love), and to grow closer to Christ, who has never stopped experiencing monstrous ingratitude from the very souls he came to save. That was the core of his message to today’s saint.  Margaret Mary was a talented and popular young lady of French nobility (well, near-nobility), well educated and with a bright future in high society.  But something held her back from acceding to her suitors.  Brooking consistent and energetic opposition from her family, she entered the Visitation convent at Paray-le-Monial when she was 22.  There she continued living out the virtue she had practiced since childhood, especially humility, charity, and a love for our Lord in the Blessed Eucharist.  But her years in the convent were filled with suffering as well as spiritual consolation.  She was treated harshly by some of her superiors for her clumsiness and inability to follow the ordinary spiritual itinerary of a Visitation nun.  Of course, it wasn’t her fault, since it was Jesus himself who was leading her down the extraordinary paths of contemplative prayer, visions, and strong interior manifestations.  But she persevered in obedience both to her religious superiors and to the Lord, who rewarded her virtue with a series of apparitions (over the course of a year and half between December 1673 and June 1675) in which he spoke to her of what would later become known as the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.  For the rest of her life, Margaret Mary would propagate this devotion through her prayer, her fidelity, and her influence on another saint who became her confessor, Claude de la Colombiere.  Through it all, her trials never ceased, and she had to suffer ongoing contradiction from her sisters and superiors, along with intense interior temptations and trials.  Such is the lot of all who closely follow our Lord! It would do you well to read a detailed biography (and the autobiography) of this chosen soul, but I would like to leave you with some of the most famous of Christ’s words to her.  In these words you will find meaning for your own current dilemma, and you will see what a grace God has given you, to experience a little bit in your own life what Jesus has been experiencing so intensely for centuries.  In his final apparition to St Margaret Mary, our Lord showed her his heart and told her, “Behold the heart which has so much loved men that it has spared nothing, even exhausting and consuming itself in testimony of this love.  Instead of gratitude I receive from most only indifference, by irreverence and sacrilege and the coldness and scorn that men have for me in the sacrament of love [i.e. the Eucharist].” So if your sorority sisters have shown you ingratitude, you can better identify with Christ’s suffering.  Therefore, you will better be able to accompany him and relieve his loneliness by visiting him in the Blessed Sacrament. Prayerfully yours, Uncle Eddy

Dear Abigail, Trepidation does not become you.  It is the devil’s ploy.  Between the lines of your notes I can read the eagerness and excitement you feel at the prospect of giving yourself entirely to our Lord.  In my humble opinion, those indications should influence you much more than the petty fears about what your dad will say, what your friends will say, and what may happen to your “career” if you try the consecrated life and discover that it’s not your vocation.  My dear niece, no life choices are free from risks, but risking everything out of love for God (and out of a deep and long-standing conviction that he loves you in a special way) is the surest bet of all.  Do not fear the advances of God’s love; relish them. St Theresa did.  Her remarkable life sprang from God’s determined love; all she had to do was follow along.  She was the most normal of children, exhibiting a love for the faith (quite natural considering the prominent role of the Church in sixteenth-century Spain), but also a fascination with fashions and romance and the sparkle of high society.  When she began to listen to her conscience and felt the tug of her religious vocation, it was hard for her to accept it.  She had to battle against contradictory desires in her own heart, and opposition from her beloved and devoted father.  When she finally did enter the convent, she fell into the widespread spiritual mediocrity that plagued Spanish religious life, and for years enjoyed all the dissipation of the nuns’ peculiar social life (the convent was one of the busiest of Avila’s social parlors).  But God’s love wouldn’t leave her alone.  A good priest here, a saintly layman there – bits and pieces of sound spiritual advice combined with special favors in her prayer (and with plenty of trials – especially long illnesses) connived to lead her down a path of ravishing intimacy with the Lord.  Levitations, visions, interior locutions, trances, angelic visitations – God showered her with extraordinary signs of his love, because he had an extraordinary mission for her to carry out.  At the suggestion of a young nun, she discovered it: reform the lax Carmelite lifestyle, and begin a new foundation in which the nuns dedicated themselves seriously to prayer, simplicity, work, and the love of God.  This she did, having to overcome a whole range of mountainous obstacles (from her sisters, from the clergy, from lay people, from townspeople, from her own followers…) in order to lay the foundations of thirteen new Discalced (“unshod” – they wore sandals instead of shoes as part of their rigorous poverty) Carmelite convents for nuns and two for monks.  Admittedly, Theresa was endowed with uncommon natural qualities of good humor, charm, wit, intelligence, and prudence, but it was because she generously put those talents (plus her burning, passionate heart) at the service of God’s call that she achieved her personal fulfillment and a renewal in the Church that continues even today. So, I repeat, don’t be afraid if our Lord is showing you a special love.  He knows what he’s doing.  Don’t resist him; give yourself to him.  That’s the only way to discover the great mission he has in store for you. Love, Uncle Eddy