As ministers of a sacrament which is constituted by consent and perfected by conjugal union, man and woman are called to express that mysterious “language” of their bodies in all the truth which is proper to it. By means of gestures and reactions, by means of the whole dynamism, reciprocally conditioned, of tension and enjoyment – whose direct source is the body in its masculinity and its femininity, the body in its action and interaction – by means of all this… the person, “speaks.”
– Pope John Paul II, Theology of the Body address, 1984
The person speaks… but oh, sometimes we wish we hadn’t! Words are like arrows shot, once released they cannot return! So think before you fire away. What husbands and wives speak or communicate to each other, in word or in action, should always lead to communion. But sometimes… we slip. And it does just the opposite. Ladies, forgive us our trespasses, for often, we know not what we do! So men, here’s a goofy little reminder of the things you don’t say to your wives, courtesy of Tim Hawkins. Can the ladies come up with a list of things you shouldn’t say to us?
Archive for the ‘communion’ Category
Things You Don’t Say to Your Wife
October 9, 2009Lost in Love: The Trinity and the Human Person
October 25, 2007
Eternal Trinity… mystery deep as the sea, You could give me no greater gift than the gift of Yourself. For You are a fire ever burning and never consumed, which itself consumes all the selfish love that fills my being…
– Saint Catherine of Siena
I always get a little annoyed when a priest or deacon gets skittish about preaching on the Trinity, and jokes about how confusing the Trinity is, saying things like “When I’m through preaching on the Trinity, you’ll probably be more confused than you are now!” And everyone sort of chuckles in that soft church laugh/chuckle kind of way. Then we buck up for a homily that anesthetizes more than it obfuscates (oh man would my old English teacher be proud of me for that line!)
But is the Trinity some sort of Divine Puzzle? Did God reveal Himself to us as some sort of enigmatic algebraic equation that only Einsteins could figure out? Or is it perhaps that our approach, our trying to “grasp” this 1 + 1 + 1 = 1 formula is all wrong?
HUSH IN THE PRESENCE OF THIS MYSTERY
The Trinity is not a puzzle, but Persons. Not a problem to be solved but a Mystery of Love in Whom by grace we can swim!
“Thanks to the Holy Spirit, who helps us to understand the words of Jesus and guides us into all the truth, believers can know, so to speak, the intimacy of God himself, discovering that he is not infinite solitude, but communion of light and love, life given and received in an eternal dialogue between the Father and the Son in the Holy Spirit – lover, beloved and love, to recall St. Augustine.”
– Pope Benedict XVI (Angelus, June 11, 2006, www.Zenit.org)
God peeled back the blue sky and sent the Spirit to hover over His Son in the waters of the Jordan and spoke from up above to welcome us into this Great Mystery of Who God Is. And the image of Three Persons as One Communion of Love is not far from us, or foreign to our minds. It’s stamped right in our bodies, in the love of husband and wife, and in the fruit that proceeds from the man and wife in the beauty and overflowing love of New Life!
Allow me to quote at length from the MAN:
“For him who has faith, the whole universe speaks of God one and triune. From interstellar space to microscopic particles, all that exists refers to a being who communicates himself in the multiplicity and variety of the elements, as in an immense symphony. All beings are ordered according to a harmonic dynamism, which we can call, analogically, “love.” But only in the human person, free and rational, this dynamism becomes spiritual, a responsible love, as response to God and to one’s neighbor in a sincere gift of self. In this love the human being finds his truth and happiness.”
YES!!
“Among the different analogies of the ineffable mystery of God one and triune, which believers have the capacity to perceive, I would like to mention the family. It is called to be a community of love and life, in which differences must come together to become a “parable of communion.”‘
– Pope Benedict
Great food for thought in these days of sexual confusion, marital conflict, divorce and fracture. Let’s remember who we are, and that we are made for Communion. A Communion with the very Triune, Familial Heart of the Living God, Who is Love. In giving ourselves, body and soul, in our own masculinity and femininity to this Mystery, we will truly find ourselves!
The Internet is Not a Monster, Basically
October 19, 2007
We love to vacillate, to flip flop, to take sides, to split things up and think, well, it’s got to be either good or evil. Now don’t get me wrong, this is most essential in this Land of Confusion, where the windows on the Car of Modernity seem forever to get foggy from the heat and chill and wintry mix of our emotions. To discriminate in this moral sense is KEY! It’s HEALTHY and ESSENTIAL, and NECESSARY…. It clears away the fog.
Discrimination between moral good and bad, right and wrong needs to come back in style, really FAST. It’s not “all good” all the time. Discrimination in this sense of the word is not a sin. Good grief, it’s our drawing the line between sin and the Good!
But let’s switch gears…
When it comes to tools, things, inanimate stuff…. well, things are neutral. And you, my self-determining, self-aware friend, are the one who directs the wheel.
EXHIBIT A: THE INTERNET
Some say the Internet is taking us away from each other. It’s a big monster with electrical tentacles creeping out of our offices and living rooms and just grabbing us and dragging us out into the sleazy void of cyberspace. But I feel that it can be a bridge to something else. When someone drops an e-mail or once in awhile posts a comment and echoes the words I felt driven to write, well, then there it is. Sympatico, synchronicity, or my favorite way to describe it: the Communion of Saints.
Now, there’s a huge difference between communication and COMMUNION. The Internet is Communication, Love is Communion. E-mail, cell phones, blogs, Instant messaging….. these are like the sparks, Communion is the fire. Communication is like preparing the meal, Communion is kicking back with a napkin on your lap and finally consuming the meal.
Communication is the means, Communion the end.
My goal, my deepest desire in writing these words in the wee hours of this Friday morning is that this very blog can be a vehicle for Communion. I hope in perusing its posts and links and “stuff” that something, somewhere provides that spark, that touch of the spirit that turns your head, draws you in, gets you thinking about God, Life, and Everything in Between in a way perhaps you didn’t think before. When I read stuff (the good stuff) that’s what happens to me. When people pass stuff along my way, that’s what reminds me of this human call to Communion.
I think (heck, I know) that there is so much good out there in cyburbia. We just have to use our minds as that divining rod, and sift through the mess. It’s a human mess after all. It’s our stuff, it’s our story. So in the words of Pope John Paul II, “Be not afraid” of technology!
But at the same time, be wary. Like all things that have the potential for good, there is the potential for evil, for manipulation and greed. So remember, the Internet is not a monster, but it’s not a fuzzy little kitten either.
“The Internet causes billions of images to appear on millions of computer monitors around the planet. From this galaxy of sight and sound will the face of Christ emerge and the voice of Christ be heard? For it is only when his face is seen and his voice heard that the world will know the glad tidings of our redemption. This is the purpose of evangelization. And this is what will make the Internet a genuinely human space, for if there is no room for Christ, there is no room for man.”
– Pope John Paul II, Message for the 36th World Communications Day
Catholics and the Face of the Internet
September 12, 2007
My radio guest this week was Brian Barcaro from 4Marks and CatholicMatch.com. Brian is the co-founder of Acolyte, LLC an Internet software development and Management Company. Through is work with Acolyte Brian was also involved with the co-founding of 4marks.com a social networking platform for Catholics as well as CatholicMatch.com the largest online singles community for Catholics.
Our topic was Catholics and Social Networking. We looked at popular websites like Facebook and MySpace, spoke of the advantages and disadvantages of this technology, and also cited Church documents on the use of the internet as a powerful and positive tool for humanity. Brian is available to talk to families and large groups on the pros and cons of today’s technology through the 4Marks website on topics like…
“Understanding a MySpace Culture”
“The Internet & the Church “
“Real Teachers in a Virtual World”
“Does love exist online?”
RESOURCES TO FIND AT 4MARKS.COM
If you are interested in having Brian speak, please contact Dan Flaherty at 888.605.3977×6 or dan@goacolyte.com
CHURCH SOURCES WE CITED
“The Internet causes billions of images to appear on millions of computer monitors around the planet. From this galaxy of sight and sound will the face of Christ emerge and the voice of Christ be heard? For it is only when his face is seen and his voice heard that the world will know the glad tidings of our redemption. This is the purpose of evangelization. And this is what will make the Internet a genuinely human space, for if there is no room for Christ, there is no room for man.” – Pope John Paul II, Message for the 36th World Communications Day
“Man’s genius has with God’s help produced marvelous technical inventions from creation, especially in our times. The Church, our mother, is particularly interested in those which directly touch man’s spirit and which have opened up new avenues of easy communication of all kinds of news, of ideas and orientations.” – Pope Paul VI, Inter Mirifica
OTHER SOURCES
The Church and the Internet
Ethics in the Internet, 2002
The Death of Marriage
August 9, 2007
DISCLAIMER:
This is not a gloomy post. Sure, the “death of marriage” is a pretty dramatic title, but I just needed to catch your eyes. This one is meant to edify! To fire up husbands and wives and prospective husbands and wives! To lead them up the Mountain of Love that is Calvary, not down some primrose path with a white-picket fence that just feels nice. Those of us in the club know what I’m talking about: the secret to a joy-filled married life is… death.
So yeah…. Today, Rebecca and I celebrate 4 years of marriage… woohoo! So I went digging through the ‘ole journals and this is something I found, written a few months before the BIG DAY…
“I am going to die.” (I was ridiculous back then, wasn’t I?) “It’s not long now; just a couple of months. August 9th, to be exact. I’m getting married. Now this thought may not seem like your traditional “jitters” or cold feet. It’s a wee bit extreme, huh? But it’s true. I am going to die. I am mounting the hill of Calvary, and like Christ, I am called to lay down my life for my bride. His was the Church, mine is a symbol of the Church. But death it must be, if there is to be Real Life in our new life together. This isn’t poetry, it’s reality! To put it scientifically, no two objects can occupy the same space at the same time. In order to become a “one flesh union” we have to die to our old selves. Imagine if this was how engaged couples were viewing their wedding day! It would bring a radical simplicity to the plans, wouldn’t it? “We are going to die… Okay then, I guess we can’t take it with us, as they say. So what do we leave behind? The ego… yes, let’s die to that one. And the “Me First” attitude. That has to go too.”
Marriage is about service to the other (I know this, despite the many times I turn it around). Before Jesus died, He washed the feet of his friends. A couple years ago, we went to a wedding of friends who were once Franciscan Volunteers (they were housemates of Rebecca when she lived and served in Kensington). At one point in the liturgy, they actually washed each other’s feet…. is that awesome or what? We got the point! At our wedding, after Communion, Rebecca got up and sang to me the Servant Song…. it was RIDICULOUSLY BEAUTIFUL and I don’t think there was a dry eye in the house!
So if this whole marriage thing is a call to die like Christ did for His Bride, to serve like Christ for the Beloved, then we discover that our union should be deeply “Eucharistic.”
A Little Somethin’ from Christopher West
When we receive the Eucharist worthily, it bears new life in the whole of our lives. When we receive it unworthily, we eat and drink our condemnation (1 Co 11:29). Similarly, when spouses open their union to the Holy Spirit, their whole marriage continually bears new life in the Spirit. However, if spouses close their union to the Spirit, they undermine the whole reality of their marriage and their family life. (Read the full article)
It is therefore fitting that the spouses should seal their consent to give themselves to each other through the offering of their own lives by uniting it to the offering of Christ for his Church made present in the Eucharistic sacrifice, and by receiving the Eucharist so that, communicating in the same Body and the same Blood of Christ, they may form but “one body” in Christ. – CCC 1621
Now that’s deep stuff. I can only say that I’m beginning to get it more and more. We have a beautiful reminder of this call to Communion in our marriage. It’s a paten…. and was given to us by two dear friends on our wedding day. Our names our written within it. The priest who married us, Fr. Scott, was taken aback when he discovered, right before the wedding mass began, that this was a gift of ours. He had planned to preach on the very idea of this Eucharistic aspect of marriage for us, and saw in his prayer, a silver paten! (play Twilight Zone music here). A paten is a shallow dish or plate that holds the consecrated host, the material that God has transformed into Himself at the words of the priest and the power of the Spirit. Fr. Scott said that’s where we belong, right in that paten. If we keep ourselves there, with the hands of Jesus hovering over the material of our marriage, then we can expect a transformation. Amen to that!
So God help us when we try and wiggle out of that place of transformation, as we so often do. God help all husbands and wives who share in this amazing, perplexing, impossible, crazy collaboration of hearts that is marriage.
Now it’s off to grab some roses and a little vino 😉
…. Cheers!
Protestant and Catholic Heaven
May 25, 2007Sorry for the dry week of blogs. School’s rapping up and time has been tight! So here’s a little silliness for your Friday. It’s completely irreverent but nonetheless hilarious. Ironically, it captures the essence of the Catholic Church… which is Her catholicity, or universality. Sometimes the Simpsons just nail it, don’t they? Enjoy the holiday weekend (and stay off that Jersey Turnpike!)
Faces and Places
August 19, 2006I was in the city yesterday; met Rebecca for lunch and then ran some errands. Actually, I walked some errands. And there is nothing like a walk through the city; there’s the traffic and the noise, sure. Some beautiful architecture, shops, etc. But the best part is when you look up and allow the great wave of human faces to wash over you.
The city is a microcosm; a world in miniature. I saw busy men busily walking, talking into their plastic devices, women without haste pointing out flowers to their babies, and the elderly sliding along at an even slower pace, perhaps in an effort to teach us that life moves fast enough already, no need to push it along. Turning a corner onto Market Street, another wave breaks over me, and I see broken men slumped over plastic bags, full of our discarded treasures. What stories could they tell? A pair of young faces, sitting on a corner near a store, looking weathered, tired, tatooed, and thoroughly pierced. The young man held a sign: “Travelling – anything can help.” I wonder where they want to go?
I want to look deeply at each person; I’m amazed at the uniqueness of everyone, of every shade and texture and color on this coat of many colors that is humanity. But no one makes eye contact in the city. Not for more than 2 seconds anyway (I timed it, 2 was the record). We don’t have the time, or we are caught up in our own stuff, and we’re not thinking. Or it’s just the natural response to an overwhelming amount of activity; the world is too much with us, and we put up walls to keep ourselves safe.
There is a film called Powder (it’s been awhile since we had a filmable! See previous post on Filmables). In the movie, a young boy is given the gift to read hearts. He knows what thoughts are stirring deep in the souls of the people around him. Many are afraid of Powder; it’s the fear of the unknown, the fear of being known. But one young girl looks him in the face. “What are people like… on the inside?” she asks.
“They think they are alone,” he tells her. “They feel separate…. but they are not.”
As hard as it is, and I struggled with this yesterday, we must look into each other’s eyes. We must return to that innocence, that openness that we had as children, who always look, who see, who watch the faces on the bus and the train. Slowly, prayerfully, carefully, always mindful of the wounds in ourselves and others, let’s build up this One Body. Listening to the desire that rests in all of us to know and to be known. St. Augustine said “The deepest desire of the human heart is to see another and to be seen.”
We are one. One body, one diamond that turns in the Hand of God, throwing off a multitude of refracted light and beauty. Only our own fear and sin can dim that light, separating us from God, from each other, from ourselves.
Lord, let your Face shine upon us and we shall be saved!
The Heart of Things 