The Sacrament of Reconciliation and How going to Confession Heals.

I've seen non-Catholics make comments in reference to going to confession and how it's one of those "works" things and how this proves that Catholicism is a "works-based" religion. From the outside looking in, I suppose it looks like we Catholics can sin to our hearts content and then just go to confession and get clean and then sin again. My Atheist sister made that sort of snide remark and I had to correct her and explain that if a Catholic goes to confession without intending on changing their behavior then they would be lying and not getting any benefit from it.

My answer to other Christians who scoff at the idea of Catholics going to confession is, don't knock it until you've tried it. Confession is not some license to sin again.  As a matter of fact, not nearly enough Catholics take advantage of this wonderful Sacrament. It's a terrible shame because the graces you receive from going to confession are indescribable. Yes, it's hard to admit you've done wrong to a virtual stranger and sometimes, the priest isn't a virtual stranger. In a smaller parish they may even know your name. It doesn't matter either way. They are standing in for Jesus and acting in His name and that's who we're really confessing our sins to. The priest acts as a conduit of His graces. Receiving these graces is very healing and it has to be experienced to understand the magnitude of it's power.

Here's just one example of what I mean by this Sacraments power to heal. Several months ago, as I came to realize that my toddler son was on the Autism spectrum, I was in deep turmoil and not at all at peace. I was angry and in despair and to say I wasn't handling it with grace would be an understatement. I dragged myself to confession, talked to the priest, confessed my sins and then left and had an overwhelming supernatural kind of peace wash over me. Nothing changed. The priest didn't say anything enlightening. My son's condition didn't change. The circumstances were exactly the same after going to confession as they were before. But my attitude was completely different. I suddenly was handling it. I wasn't steeped in darkness. I felt peace and joy. There's no other reason other than the fact that I went to confession. My problems suddenly don't seem so overwhelming and insurmountable. I know of others who experience the same thing. So I take advantage of this Sacrament because I know it's doing something for me. Something that is supernatural and beyond my human comprehension. It's healing me. It's healing my wounded heart. All the puss and gunk gets washed off and disinfected and wrapped in fresh bandages. The wounds get redressed and overtime are completely healed. This is what going to confession does for me. Little by little, my soul is being healed and I'm better able to handle the crosses I have to carry. I have strength for the journey. This is how the Sacrament of Reconciliation heals and I'd be insane not to take advantage of this free healthcare. 

Why I need Religion

There's a video that's gone completely viral called Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus. There's been a ton of responses and especially good Catholic responses. So I won't go into a theological response to the video because it's been more than sufficiently responded to. Instead I'll just speak from my own experience of why I don't just love religion but I need religion. This religion: Catholicism.

You see, I come from a none religious background. I was baptized Catholic for mostly cultural and sentimental reasons and that was the last time my family stepped foot into a church unless it was for a wedding or funeral. Yet this simple act of  baptism put an indelible seal on me as a child of God and a seed was planted. I hungered for God and established a relationship with Him very early on in life. I had a diary which I wrote to Him. I was a bit fatalistic and had lots of fears. But I had no guidance. I was on my own and eventually dabbled in New Age and Occult. I unwittingly invited evil into my life and I witnessed it possibly destroy someone I deeply cared about.
Ultimately, I genuinely desired a relationship with God and even with Jesus but I saw many of things that Mr. Bethke saw and frankly, those things kept me away. There was a time in my life when I would have totally related to Mr. Bethke's message. But as a life long spiritual nomad, I was always searching for truth. I finally found it in Catholicism. I finally got over myself and realized, I'm not perfect and so I shouldn't expect anyone else to be perfect other than God. I had to do the unthinkable and conform. I had to let go of control which I didn't really have to begin with. Catholicism forces me to depend only on God and gives me the tools and a conduit of grace to do that. When I go to Mass, I'm not dependent on how good the priest's homily is. He isn't able to make himself all that important. Our religion dictates that he has the Liturgy to follow and he can't stray from that. The focus is always on Jesus. It doesn't matter how bad the music is or how uninspired the priest is. He could be speaking in Spanish for all I care. I'm there for one reason alone. For Jesus. I get to receive Him, Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity.

I need this religion because I need to know that when I sin, once I hear the words "I absolve you from your sins..." that means I really am forgiven and I don't have to guess or wonder. I am free. My guilt is removed. Trust me, as a spiritual nomad, I felt guilt. This religion frees me from it.

I need this religion because when things are really bad I can go to an Adoration Chapel and spend time with Jesus. I can tell Him all my woes. I can cry. I can beg. I can just be quiet and feel His presence. I know that wherever there's a Catholic Church, there He is whether I "feel" it or not. (By the way, as far as big fancy Churches and Cathedrals go, why shouldn't Jesus be surrounded in the finest most beautiful surroundings? If you were building a house for God, would you put Him in a shed?)

I need this religion because when I struggle I can take comfort in the lives of the Saints who's solutions to life's problems were otherworldly and no easy quick fixes that promised something that couldn't be fulfilled. Their only solution was complete and utter dependence on God and living a life of heroic virtue up to the point of death and martyrdom. And they were witnesses of much joy and peace in spite of their hardships. Their promise was beyond this world. They always point to God and I need their friendship now as I know they are in heaven and are able to hear my prayers and take them up to God. I know they are there because of the canonization process which takes into account miraculous events as a sign from God that they are indeed partaking in the Heavenly banquet.

I need this religion because when I'm suffering, I take comfort in that Crucifix where the Lord is up there in a display of complete unconditional love for humanity. Nothing says I love you like the Crucifix does.

I need this religion because I need stability and clear cut answers on the biggest moral issues of the day and only one place offers that unchanging TRUTH no matter how unpopular and counter-cultural.

I need this religion because it was founded by the man on the Crucifix and He promised the gates of hell would not prevail against His Church and I believe Him. He started this Church and He said unless you eat His flesh and drink His blood, you have no life within you. By golly then, I will do what He says and eat His flesh and drink His blood. I will put my pride and ego away and humble myself  and do what He says. I trust in Him which means I HAVE to trust in His Church and the religion He started. Otherwise, that wouldn't be trust and you can't have a real relationship without TRUST.

I need this religion because I NEED JESUS. I need Him now more than ever. He's the only one that has brought me peace and comfort in difficult times and it's been through His Church that I've obtained these graces He offers through His sacraments. I experience joy when I should be feeling sorrow and I experience peace in a world of unrest.

I'm not going to let other sinners get in between my relationship with Jesus. I'm not going to let corrupt religious leaders get in the way between my relationship with Jesus. If one of those corrupt individuals is holding Jesus in his hands, nothing will stop me from receiving Him. How great our God is to not let any corrupt human stop us from receiving Him and His graces. I need those graces and I can only get all of them in one place. My religion, Catholicism, started by Christ. That's all I need to know and that's all I need.

I scream: He whispers.

Things are moving at a snails pace with my son's development. He's in early intervention. He's on a special diet. He's on special supplements. He's making progress here and there but it's not enough. I'm getting impatient. I want consistent regular words. I find myself wanting to pull my hair out. I find myself thoroughly frustrated. I find myself screaming in my head. Sometimes outside my head too. I beg the Lord to "fix" this. I plead and cry. I beat my chest and have a tantrum.

He whispers back. In between my screams I can hear His whispering. He says,
It's o.k. to be angry. It's o.k. I understand. But I can't fix this for you right now. 

He is up on the cross while I have my tantrum and He is whispering these words to me.
It's o.k. Go ahead. Let it out. Let it all out.

And I see Him up on that cross so I remember to offer it up to Him so that He's not alone and I'm not alone and we can share this moment together. I start to feel a little less sorry for myself maybe, if only for a moment.

Deep down I know why He's allowing this to happen. But I still find myself begging Him to take this cup away from me. I'm a child with an attention span of a gnat. I keep screaming and He keeps whispering back reminding me and just loving me. Before all this, I used to know only intellectually of His love. Most of the time, it was too abstract for me to really grasp. I had to be knocked off my feet to really understand how powerfully and intensely our God loves us. It may have broken me in two if I experienced it when all was hunky dory. Nowadays I'm vulnerable enough to let Him in. I'm vulnerable enough to scream at Him in anger.
FIX THIS PLEASE!!!
But through all my screaming, His whispers break through and shatter it all. He whispered the Universe into existence. My screams are no match. Praise God.

Do No Harm!

I was scrolling through facebook the other day and came across a link to a news story titled:

Melbourne hospital aborts wrong twin

I didn't have to read the article to understand what happened. It was labeled as a "tragedy."  It was labeled as such because the hospital killed the "wrong" twin. They meant to kill the "sick" twin. Not the healthy twin. That was the tragedy. That they killed the "wrong" baby. And after they figured out their "mistake" they went ahead and killed the "right" baby. Of course, they used words like "terminate" and "abort" so as to not be too obvious about what they were doing. Killing. Ending the life of an innocent human being. This innocent human being wasn't endangering the life of his brother and certainly wasn't endangering the life of his mother,(the classic excuse pro-abortionists make for justifying late term abortions... ) He just had the misfortune of not being healthy and had he survived his birth, he would need many operations. So, that was a good enough excuse to end his life. And in the process, his "worthy" brother was killed by mistake. Someone had mentioned how they felt bad for the technician that made the mistake. I'm afraid that technician was going to have blood on her hands either way. She was assigned the job of assassin who ended up creating collateral damage.

So, I see this headline and I read the article and I don't see tragedy. I see willful intentional and legal murder. Murder at the hands of doctors who have broken their Hippocratic oath. They did harm. They intentionally recommended the killing of one of their patients- a sick child- because they considered him too much of a "burden."  

The real tragedy is that this made news because they killed the "wrong" baby. Had they killed the "right" baby to begin with, we would have never heard about it. These things happen everyday. Partial birth abortions take place regularly for many reasons that are arbitrary. Any child can be labeled as a burden whether they're healthy or unhealthy and they can be killed without it ever making headlines. That's the real tragedy. Broken oaths and broken lives.

But I have to believe that a greater good will come out of this horrible deed. The hospital staff are devastated by their mistake. That gives me hope. Maybe they'll rethink the idea of killing off sick babies. Maybe they'll question why they participated in these "procedures."  After all, when a director of Planned Parenthood, Abby Johnson, assisted in an ultrasound guided abortion of a 13 week old baby, whom she witnessed fighting for his life, her eyes were opened at the horror she was party to. Now she's a powerful influential pro-life hero. And because this story did make the news, maybe those who read it will think more about the horrors of partial birth abortions. Maybe they'll question why the sick child had to be put to death in the first place. In the meantime, I pray for all who were involved in this horrible injustice and I pray for God's mercy and healing for each and every one of them.

Fear of God

We have some friends that will be coming into the Catholic Church this Easter. We are their sponsors and the husband is actually a cradle Catholic that did not go through confirmation. So he has some history with the Church which my husband, who is also a cradle Catholic, felt compelled to discuss with him.
He explained to his friend that in this process of coming back to the Church, his friend might feel great terror.
Unbeknownst to me, when we decided to become church goers and he decided he wanted to go back to being a practicing Catholic, my husband felt terror upon being back at Church.
I asked him if it was because he was afraid of being assimilated and losing his identity. He said,
"There was no thought in it. I felt absolute fear and wanted to get out."

This made me think. What was going on? My husband experienced pure fear that initiated the flight response. Purely a primal reaction. I assumed his anxiety had to do with worrying about losing his identity. I certainly had those thoughts. But that wasn't the case for my husband. It was just pure unadulterated fear.

It was fear of God.

As a Catholic, I understand why he experienced this. I've come to learn of the Real Presence. I've taken it as act of faith but also as an act of reason. I have many reasons to believe in the Real Presence. I can look through the Bible -especially John Chapter 6, and I can look at the writings of the Early Church Fathers. They clearly in no uncertain terms believed in the Real Presence. These same men died for the faith. They were even closer to the events of Christ's life, death and resurrection. These same men compiled the Bible and discerned which were inspired and which were not. So on one hand, I'm a Christian because of faith but I'm also a Christian because there's plenty of circumstancial and forensic evidence that Jesus walked the earth, did lots of miracles, died on the cross and rose from the dead. If I believe anything historical, I'd say the eyewitness testimony in the Bible is better than many other historical accounts of great events in human history. And I trust that the Bible is true because of the Church that it came out of was given the authority to carry on the gospel. This same entity says Christ is present in the Eucharist. And there are also Eucharist miracles to bolster their claims.

But sometimes, it can still be hard to grasp what one can't see with one's eyes. The Real Presence is one of those. When we go into a Catholic Church, the Real Presence is there. God is physically present. I've witnessed people picking up on this instinctually. I myself picked up on this during the consecration of the Eucharist at my sister-in-law's wedding.  Even my non-believing mother picks up on this. She has said on several occasion when she was traveling, she'd walk into a Catholic Church as a tourist and feel moved to tears. She didn't know why exactly. She thought it had to do with her Italian heritage but even in Brazil, she felt this. It doesn't quite add up.

Being in the presence of God can bring about different reactions and they're not always positive. Sometimes they're negative. The fact that my husband felt absolute fear makes complete sense to me. It wasn't the cliche feel good warm fuzzy feeling. It was terror. Fear of God is considered a gift of the Holy Spirit. It's a gift because it can become dangerous to treat God as just a mirror of ourselves. I've been guilty of this approach to Jesus. Some people like to make out like Jesus is a close friend and treat Him rather casually.

Here Fr. Barron explains the dangers of "domesticating" Jesus in an excerpt from the first episode of Catholicism and why fear of God is a natural and healthy response. Enjoy and thanks for stopping by.

Things I've learned as a Catholic: The Church is a family in all the good and bad ways.

I stumbled upon this peculiar comment from the actor Robert Downy Jr. in an interview in the New York Times. Emphasis mine.

Q. Are you religious? Many people find God as part of their recovery process and there seem to be veiled references in a few of the songs.

A. I'm not above it. But like Jung said about people using religion to avoid a religious experience, I have managed handily to avoid a religious experience. I don't know where I fall. Spiritual Green Party? There were times when I was into the whole Hare Krishna thing, which is pretty far out. Now I would call myself a Jew-Bu, a Jewish-Buddhist. But there were many times when Catholicism saved my butt.

Q. You were a practicing Catholic?

A.I was in as much when I was on the B yard and they asked me, "Are you going to Catholic services or Presbyterian services?" I think I'm going to Catholic because they just give you more stuff. More candles and there's a whole calendar where this day you read this, the next day you read that. It's like a call sheet for spirituality.

He seems reticent in his comments to just actually come out and say "I'm Catholic and I'm proud."
I've come across this throughout my time as a practicing Catholic. Even the Smashing Pumpkins leader Billy Corgan admitted to going to Mass but he added only because he was brought up in it so that's all he knows. Again, not actually embracing it but in there I read between the lines. I read in there an admission that the Catholic faith has played a more than passing role in these men's lives. The problem is it's not "cool" to be Catholic.
I know where they're coming from. The Church is a family in all the good and bad ways. She's the nagging mother that you pretend you don't need but run to when you find yourself in hot water. She's the siblings and aunts and uncles that embarrass you to no end to the point where you pretend you're not related to any of them. But she's a family non the less. A very powerful family that you can't sweep under the rug. One that makes you very uncomfortable and asks a lot from you. But always loving and always ready to bring you back into the fold even when you fail to live up to her expectations. People don't always want to admit they need their family. Sometimes they look for a "better" less embarrassing hipper family to hang out with. But those other families can't cook a thanksgiving dinner like your mom can. So more often than not, people feel sentimental about the Church even when they're away from her. But then they remember the dysfunction too and so they are reluctant to come back home.
The Church isn't cool. She's not hip. She can be nagging. She can make you feel really guilty. She has so many embarrassing children, (myself included,) and her expectation are very hard. But she loves us unconditionally. She opens the doors even if we're dirty and grubby. In times of trouble, she's there dragging us out of the ditch. If we let her, she cleans us off and looks at us like a newborn child with a clean slate.
That's family. That's the love of Christ. His gift to us. A big huge over cumbersome family with all the dysfunction you'd expect at the yearly Thanksgiving dinner. But everyone still comes together for a fabulous meal known as the Eucharist which by absolutely no coincidence means- Thanksgiving.
I love my family embarrassing relatives and all.

This That and the Other Thing: Sunday Snippets--A Catholic Carnival

This That and the Other Thing: Sunday Snippets--A Catholic Carnival

This week I continue my series Things I've Learn as a Catholic

and how it's not God's fault for all that's wrong in the world as the atheist would otherwise have you believe.