The Call to Holiness – Page 4

NCRegister: Taking Care of My Little Sin

Living in sin, with sin, by sin, for sin, every hour, every day, year in, and year out…Always the same, like an idiot child carefully nursed, guarded from the world. ‘Poor Julia,’ they say, ‘she can’t go out. She’s got to take care of her little sin. A pity it ever lived. (Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited, Book II, Chapter 3)

I was recently asked by a secular publication about my thoughts on Pope Francis extending the faculty to absolve the sin of abortion indefinitely to all priests (who have the faculties to hear confessions). What struck me as I read his Apostolic Letter from the end of the Year of Mercy was how the women he presented from Scripture were all living sinful lives, but also how Christ extended mercy to all of these women. The women caught in adultery has always been a penetrating example for me of his great mercy and my inability to judge others, for how can I claim to be without sin and cast the first stone? Yet, he who is without sin will not cast one at the sorrowful women.

Read the rest at the National Catholic Register…

BIS Devotion: Discerning God’s Will Everyday

I am over at Blessed is She writing today’s devotion:

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I spent the entire semester I was abroad in Europe during college trying to surrender my will to God’s will about a particular man in my life. He very clearly liked, almost loved, me, but he was conflicted about his vocation. I tried desperately to not interfere in his discernment, but also to accept God’s will, come what may. The hardest thing for me was figuring out for what exactly I should be praying for this dear man. I wanted him to choose God’s will for his life, but I also felt that my own destiny was already tied up in this man’s destiny. In my very depths I felt that we were meant to be with each other, but I had to wait for God’s will to be made clear to him. The only prayer I could pray with any peace was this: for this man to discern God’s will for him. That letting go and letting God was one of the hardest things I have done in my life…

Read the rest at Blessed is She…

NCRegister Blog: The Difference Between Forbearance and Patience

About six months ago I took it upon myself to organize and host a women’s Bible study in my home. I emailed a large group of women whom I thought might be interested and received a very positive response. Since we started meeting, we have had many spiritually fruitful discussions. One that I found to be particularly helpful was the hour we spent discussing the difference between forbearance and patience as presented in Saint Paul’s Letter to the Romans.

It all started with a footnote in the New Testament Ignatius Catholic Study Bible on Romans 2:4. The verse states: “Or do you presume upon the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience? Do you not know that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?” The footnote differentiated between forbearance and patience. The distinction between the two is significant, yet subtle, and one could say that forbearance is a kind of patience…

Read the rest at the National Catholic Register.

Back when the kids were smaller and we were poorer

As I was writing the article for the NCRegister linked below, I saw that Rebecca Frech had written about things she misses about being poor. She reminded me of the friendships I thrived upon with fellow mothers in the throes of early motherhood. We spent so many mornings together sharing food, watching our children play, and drinking cups and cups of coffee. We made meals for each other at the birth of our babies. We shared clothes. We basked in the simplicity of having small children without busy schedules of older children. Those friendships are so special to me, and now I live hundreds of miles away from those ladies I spent so many hours with, I still cherish the friendships we had back then while we stay in touch now.

Pancakes were a lunch we often made for each other. Whenever I make them for lunch now, I think about those friends. They are the ultimate comfort food on a cold Fall, Winter, or Spring day in these northern states that I have been settled in. They are also an inexpensive meal that I can guarantee my children will eat, and mostly healthy since I use whole wheat flour.

We paid off my student loans last month, and have not yet quite realized the financial freedom which we now have. With older children the money will be redirected towards things like piano lessons, home school supplies, more clothes. But I will always try to remember the times when money was more sparse and when we felt guilty for buying even the simplest of things.

At the NCRegister: How to Defeat the Noonday Devil and Sanctify Your Daily Life

One of the oldest tricks of the Deceiver is disguising his temptations so that we do not realize what they are. Very recently I had a revelation about the vice of acedia or sloth in my life. I have been dealing with feelings of resentment, discontent with my life, and a desire to be doing something other than what I am doing for much of my life. It has never been a continuous feeling, but one I would have when I was alone trying to get work done and once I became a mother a feeling I would have when I was home with my children going about my daily tasks. In fact my feelings of discontentment would increase often when I would be doing the Sisyphean tasks that come with motherhood, ones that demand attention day after day and week after week, and rarely when I would sit and stare at social media for too many minutes of my day. It was a feeling and a temptation that wanted me to be dissatisfied with and seek to escape from the good things in my life.

Read the rest at the National Catholic Register…

At the Register: John Paul II’s Advice on Using Media Well

One of the most frustrating things on a weekend night is finding something worthwhile to watch on television or a computer screen. There seem to be limitless options, but I know that most of them are not worth watching. Why would I spend that time watching something that will make me a worse person the next day?

Don’t get me wrong, relaxation and recreation are a good thing, and surely there is some moral benefit to be derived from taking in a good movie, play or book.

In fiction, we can understand and explore moral situations. We see a character make a bad decision, imagine the consequences and form our consciences against these bad decisions…

Read the rest here…

To My Sister on the Occassion of Her Marriage

My Dear Mrs. E,

You are married! Your wedding was such a wonderful, happy weekend despite the sweltering heat and late nights for the children. And it seemed so fitting for you as a bride to be surrounded by SIX swirling flower girl nieces who could not take their eyes off you the whole day. They will always remember your feminine beauty as they watched you wed yourself to your husband, their new UNCLE!

But as I watched you that morning, as I waited to walk up the aisle before you on the arm of our brother (thank you for that, by the way, I was thrilled to be walking with him), all my memories of our childhood together came back to me. I feel like I left the family house in a whirlwind of college, falling, in love, and moving away. You, my sister, took your time. You grew into a beautiful, mature, whole woman, and you waited until the precise time God wanted for you, for the exact person. God prepared your hearts for each other. And I can’t wait to see you living as a married women just three hours away from us.

Back to our childhood; those years of us three sisters in our room together. First there was the small room upstairs where I was a toddler and little girl, and then the big bedroom in the basement with you sleeping under the stairs. You and our sister showed me the way to be. I always liked having my two big sisters around. In elementary school, you were always there to ride the bus with me. Remember the time I brought the pet mice home in a cardboard box on the bus? I only wanted them because you had a pet mouse before me. And I copied you in wanting an American Girl Doll. And being the younger sister I tagged along to all of your soccer games and gymnastics meets. I watched you and our older sister do all the things that I was too shy to do. And you both did them so well.

I think that my favorite time of childhood together was the two years we had together in high school. We may have fought everyday on the way to school, as I grumpily submitted to your favorite Bebo Norman music. I had my big sister around to drive me to and from school. And we had a lot of fun going to Bebo concerts whenever he was in town! I also learned how to go deeper into my faith with you as we went to several youth groups together. It was through your youth group that I went to my first Steubenville Youth Conference, which changed the course of my life. We tried to go to daily Mass before school every morning, but ended up being late for school too often and having to stop. Those two years of high school together were such a special time. And then you went to college. But while you were in college our oldest sister began to live at home while she finished college. And while you lived on campus, you still were around at home.

And then two years into your college life, I went off to Steubenville. You came to visit me on campus, and you met the man I was slowly falling in love with. The summer after my first year of college, we took that memorable road trip to Michigan to visit the him. You were always so supportive of me in my relationship with him.

While I was finishing high school and off in college, you were advancing in PT school, using your knowledge to help your friends and family. You taught me how to run without injuring my knees. I had never been able to be a runner before, but you changed my gait and helped me be a runner (a slow and short distance one, but a runner nonetheless). Our sister pointed out to me over the weekend how she sees your whole life having been pointing towards being a PT, beginning with you always sitting head down on the couch and into your years of doing and then teaching gymnastics and now your ability to intuit so many things about the body. You have helped so many people, and God will make the opportunities for you to do it still when you are in Iowa.

After I got married and began to have children, you were always the most attentive aunt. Never a visit went by without you teaching my youngest to do something new developmentally. And while you did not get to play with him your wedding weekend, your baby nephew decided to take his first steps this week in honor of your marriage; he shouts “go, go, go!” and wobbles a few steps before collapsing. We will have to show you when we see you next.

So, my dear sister, you are really, truly married. I was there; I heard your vows; I fixed your train a dozen times or so. You were and are a beautiful bride. And I am praying for you and your sweet, loving husband. I am so excited to get to know you better as a the one you two have become.

May God grant you many happy, full, holy years together.

Your Loving Sister,
Susanna

At the NCRegister Blog: Taking Another Look at Pascal’s Wager

Taking Pascal’s Wager: Faith, Evidence, and the Abundant Life by Michael Rota, a Catholic philosophy professor, is an interesting consideration of whether one should choose to live a Christian life. Written for readers who have no formal training in philosophy or theology in a very accessible format, Professor Rota presents, in this newly released book, Blaise Pascal’s seventeenth century argument, which we now know as “Pascal’s Wager.” Pascal originally intended the wager to be for people who do not have a firm belief in God or are wavering in their faith.

When the Professor Started a Blog

My husband, aka “M”, aka “the professor”, started a blog this week. He has been talking about it for awhile. As I read his first two posts, I found something beautifully familiar. I found part of the reason I fell in love with him in the first place.

You see, I absolutely love to read his writing. It is so beautiful, the way he puts things, the way he describes things. And I am in absolute awe that he can write something so beautiful and flawless in 30 minutes. And he did it two days in a row! I expect that everyday will be beautiful and worth reading. I am excited to see the things he is thinking and feeling written down, day after day.

During our first year of college, we were in a weekly writer’s group which had been organized by a mutual friend. We read things we had been writing or had written to each other. It may have been a bit too much for college freshmen to handle and not fall in love with each other; I think that we already were inclined to like each other. But in hearing what he wrote, I found a kindred spirit.

And when I read what he has to say about beauty and romance in the springtime, it reminds me of the sonnets we used to write for each other when we were falling in love the first time.

The summer which we both read the book Severe Mercy by Sheldon VanAuken, which the professor mentioned today, we also wrote each other letters. He was walking across the country with other pro-life college students with the ministry Crossroads Pro-life, and I was taking five philosophy courses (to graduate a semester earlier) and working 40 hour weekends at Steubenville conferences.

It was that summer that we realized that we wanted to get married. We wrote each other letters. Mine arrived at the house I was living in for the summer and his were sent to host families who passed them onto him.

Those letters were wonderful to get. When one would arrive I would always take it to a quiet place and savor every word. And then I would read it again.

And the book, which is a memoir of a love story, gave us a guide on which to ground our relationship. It showed us that a purposeful planning of how to preserve our love was necessary if we wanted to maintain our “inloveness.” I believe that we still have our “inloveness’, and it grows deeper every year. And I wonder if as the professor writes his blog this summer and I read it that I will fall in love all over again.