St. Ignatius of Legola

Tip of the hat to Jim... love it!

Now that is strength of convictions

Here's a woman who was nearly added to the roll of 21st century martyrs.  Would you have the presence of mind and strength of convictions she showed?  I ask myself the same question, and I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have reacted the same way...

A would-be armed robber who held up a mobile phone shop repented during the raid and left as a rescued soul after a sermon from a Christian shop assistant.
Nayara Goncalves, 20, told the man calmly that God had better plans for him when he drew a gun and demanded cash from the till of the shop in Pompano Beach, Florida.
The fearless shop assistant even made the robber promise he would go back to church and turn his life around as he sheepishly left after listening to five minutes of preaching.
'I said I know you have a gun and you’re going to do what you want, but let me tell you about Jesus,' said Miss Goncalves, who added she always carries a Bible.
I’m a Christian and I have God, and let me tell you about Jesus because he can change your life, you don’t need to do this.'
During the encounter, which was captured by a security camera at the MetroPCS shop, the man told her that he was going to be evicted in three days and needed $300 (£192) to cover his rent.
'I’ve never done this before,' he is heard telling her. 'I’m not very good at this, obviously. If there’s no money in the register, can you show me?'
Miss Goncalves told him that there was little cash in the til but that any he took would be deducted from her wages.

Check out the whole story at the Daily Mail

My Name is Clayton McDonald, and I'm at the end of my life...

There is something this teen needs you to hear:

Trouble me

Sometimes I get asked what it is like to 'feel a calling.'  It's hard to describe, but for the most part it feels closest to the nervous anxiety you have (at least I did) before going away to college.  Though you want to go and know that there is much good that can come of it -- you are very nervous of the unknown, and the changes that will come about in your life.  It is very comfortable staying where you are, but you know that you need to move on...

Tom Jones has a new album, Praise and Blame the style and content of which is as much a surprise to me as it is I'm sure to you.  Not sure if it's quite my cup of tea yet, but one of the songs gets across another aspect of 'the calling' as I feel it.

20th Century Martyrs: Maximillian Kolbe

Coming up soon on August 14th is the feast dat of St. Maximillian Kolbe, a Franciscan priest sentenced to Auschwitz because he was... well, a Catholic Priest.  His story is relatively well known in Catholic circles, but it got me to thinking that we don't hear much about other 20th century martyrs.  With the exception of the first 400 years of it's existence, this was among the most anti-Christian of centuries,  but it's hard to tell from the comfort of an American home.  Sometimes the saints seem to be these otherworldly people with unnattainable ideals and lives of perfect prayer.  People admire them, but often easily dismiss them thinking 'who has the stomach to limit one's life in that way?'  Well the martyrs are people who limited their lives because they would not limit their convictions.  Pray that you don't be thrust into a situation where standing up for your beliefs means laying down your life... or maybe pray that you have the courage to do the same.   So I am using the story of Fr. Kolbe to kick off a series on the martyrs of the 20th century -- but back to Fr. Kolbe for those of you unfamiliar:


The story begins on 8 January, 1894 - Raymond Kolbe was born the second son of a poor weaver at Zdunska Wola near Lodz in Poland. In his infancy Raymond seems to have been normally mischievous but one day, after his mother had scolded him for some mischief or other, her words took effect and brought about a radical change in the child's behaviour. Later Raymond explained this change:

"That night I asked the Mother of God what was to become of me. Then she came to me holding two crowns, one white, the other red. She asked if I was willing to accept either of these crowns. The white one meant that I should persevere in purity, and the red that I should become a martyr. I said that I would accept them both.'" 

Thus early did the child believe and accept that he was destined for martyrdom. His belief in his dream coloured all his future actions.

In 1910 he became a Franciscan, taking the name Maximilian. He studied at Rome and was ordained in 1919. He returned to Poland and taught Church history in a seminary. He built a friary just west of Warsaw, which eventually housed 762 Franciscans and printed eleven periodicals, one with a circulation of over a million, including a daily newspaper.

In 1930 he went to Asia, where he founded friaries in Nagasaki and in India. In 1936 he was recalled to supervise the original friary near Warsaw. When Germany invaded Poland in 1939, he knew that the friary would be seized, and sent most of the friars home. He was imprisoned briefly and then released, and returned to the friary, where he and the other friars began to organize a shelter for 3,000 Polish refugees, among whom were 2,000 Jews.
The friars shared everything they had with the refugees. They housed, fed and clothed them, and brought all their machinery into use in their service.

Inevitably, the community came under suspicion and was watched closely. Then in May 1941 the friary was closed down and Maximilian and four companions were taken to the death camp Auschwitz, where they worked with the other prisoners.

On June 15, 1941, he managed to write a letter to his mother:

"Dear Mama, At the end of the month of May I was transferred to the camp of Auschwitz. Everything is well in my regard. Be tranquil about me and about my health, because the good God is everywhere and provides for everything with love. It would be well that you do not write to me until you will have received other news from me, because I do not know how long I will stay here. Cordial greetings and kisses, affectionately. Raymond."

One day an SS officer found some of the heaviest planks he could lay hold of and personally loaded them on the Franciscan's back, ordering him to run. When he collapsed, the SS officer kicked him in the stomach and face and had his men give him fifty lashes. When the priest lost consciousness the Nazis threw him in the mud and left him for dead. But his companions managed to smuggle him to the camp infirmary - and he recovered. The doctor, Rudolph Diem, later recalled:

"I can say with certainty that during my four years in Auschwitz, I never saw such a sublime example of the love of God and one's neighbor."

Prisoners at Auschwitz were slowly and systematically starved, and their pitiful rations were barely enough to sustain a child: one cup of imitation coffee in the morning, and weak soup and half a loaf of bread after work. When food was brought, everyone struggled to get his place and be sure of a portion. Father Maximilian Kolbe however, stood aside in spite of the ravages of starvation, and frequently there would be none left for him. At other times he shared his meager ration of soup or bread with others.

In the harshness of the slaughterhouse Father Kolbe maintained the gentleness of Christ. At night he seldom would lie down to rest. He moved from bunk to bunk, saying: "I am a Catholic priest. Can I do anything for you?"

A prisoner later recalled how he and several others often crawled across the floor at night to be near the bed of Father Kolbe, to make their confessions and ask for consolation. Father Kolbe pleaded with his fellow prisoners to forgive their persecutors and to overcome evil with good. When he was beaten by the guards, he never cried out. Instead, he prayed for his tormentors.

A Protestant doctor who treated the patients in Block 12 later recalled how Father Kolbe waited until all the others had been treated before asking for help. He constantly sacrificed himself for the others.

In order to discourage escapes, Auschwitz had a rule that if a man escaped, ten men would be killed in retaliation. In July 1941 a man from Kolbe's bunker escaped. The dreadful irony of the story is that the escaped prisoner was later found drowned in a camp latrine, so the terrible reprisals had been exercised without cause. But the remaining men of the bunker were led out.

'The fugitive has not been found!' the commandant Karl Fritsch screamed. 'You will all pay for this. Ten of you will be locked in the starvation bunker without food or water until they die.' The prisoners trembled in terror. A few days in this bunker without food and water, and a man's intestines dried up and his brain turned to fire.

The ten were selected, including Franciszek Gajowniczek, imprisoned for helping the Polish Resistance. He couldn't help a cry of anguish. 'My poor wife!' he sobbed. 'My poor children! What will they do?' When he uttered this cry of dismay, Maximilian stepped silently forward, took off his cap, and stood before the commandant and said, 'I am a Catholic priest. Let me take his place. I am old. He has a wife and children.'

Astounded, the icy-faced Nazi commandant asked, 'What does this Polish pig want?'

Father Kolbe pointed with his hand to the condemned Franciszek Gajowniczek and repeated 'I am a Catholic priest from Poland; I would like to take his place, because he has a wife and children.'

Observers believed in horror that the commandant would be angered and would refuse the request, or would order the death of both men. The commandant remained silent for a moment. What his thoughts were on being confronted by this brave priest we have no idea. Amazingly, however, he acceded to the request. Apparantly the Nazis had more use for a young worker than for an old one, and was happy to make the exchange.

Franciszek Gajowniczek was returned to the ranks, and the priest took his place ...

Gajowniczek later recalled:

'I could only thank him with my eyes. I was stunned and could hardly grasp what was going on. The immensity of it: I, the condemned, am to live and someone else willingly and voluntarily offers his life for me - a stranger. Is this some dream?

I was put back into my place without having had time to say anything to Maximilian Kolbe. I was saved. And I owe to him the fact that I could tell you all this. The news quickly spread all round the camp. It was the first and the last time that such an incident happened in the whole history of Auschwitz.

For a long time I felt remorse when I thought of Maximilian. By allowing myself to be saved, I had signed his death warrant. But now, on reflection, I understood that a man like him could not have done otherwise. Perhaps he thought that as a priest his place was beside the condemned men to help them keep hope. In fact he was with them to the last.'‘

Father Kolbe was thrown down the stairs of Building 13 along with the other victims and simply left there to starve. Hunger and thirst soon gnawed at the men. Some drank their own urine, others licked moisture on the dank walls. Maximilian Kolbe encouraged the others with prayers, psalms, and meditations on the Passion of Christ. After two weeks, only four were alive. The cell was needed for more victims, and the camp executioner, a common criminal called Bock, came in and injected a lethal dose of cabolic acid into the left arm of each of the four dying men. Kolbe was the only one still fully conscious and with a prayer on his lips, the last prisoner raised his arm for the executioner. His wait was over ...

A personal testimony about the way Maximilian Kolbe met death is given by Bruno Borgowiec, one of the few Poles who were assigned to render service to the starvation bunker. He told it to his parish priest before he died in 1947:

'The ten condemned to death went through terrible days. From the underground cell in which they were shut up there continually arose the echo of prayers and canticles. The man in-charge of emptying the buckets of urine found them always empty. Thirst drove the prisoners to drink the contents. Since they had grown very weak, prayers were now only whispered. At every inspection, when almost all the others were now lying on the floor, Father Kolbe was seen kneeling or standing in the centre as he looked cheerfully in the face of the SS men.

Father Kolbe never asked for anything and did not complain, rather he encouraged the others, saying that the fugitive might be found and then they would all be freed. One of the SS guards remarked: this priest is really a great man. We have never seen anyone like him ..

Two weeks passed in this way. Meanwhile one after another they died, until only Father Kolbe was left. This the authorities felt was too long. The cell was needed for new victims. So one day they brought in the head of the sick-quarters, a German named Bock, who gave Father Kolbe an injection of carbolic acid in the vein of his left arm. Father Kolbe, with a prayer on his lips, himself gave his arm to the executioner. Unable to watch this I left under the pretext of work to be done. Immediately after the SS men had left I returned to the cell, where I found Father Kolbe leaning in a sitting position against the back wall with his eyes open and his head drooping sideways. His face was calm and radiant ..'

So it was that Father Maximilian Kolbe was executed on 14 August, 1941 at the age of forty-seven years, a martyr of charity. The death certificate, as always made out with German precision, indicated the hour of death 12.30.

Father Kolbe's body was removed to the crematorium, and without dignity or ceremony was disposed of, like hundreds of thousands who had gone before him, and hundreds of thousands more who would follow.

The heroism of Father Kolbe went echoing through Auschwitz. In that desert of hatred he had sown love. A survivor Jozef Stemler later recalled:

"In the midst of a brutalization of thought, feeling and words such as had never before been known, man indeed became a ravening wolf in his relations with other men. And into this state of affairs came the heroic self-sacrifice of Father Kolbe.' Another survivor Jerzy Bielecki declared that Father Kolbe's death was 'a shock filled with hope, bringing new life and strength ... It was like a powerful shaft of light in the darkness of the camp."

The cell where Father Kolbe died is now a shrine. Maximilian Kolbe was beatified as Confessor by Paul VI in 1970, and canonized as Martyr by Pope John Paul II in 1981.
But what happened to Gajowniczek - the man Father Kolbe saved?

He died on March 13, 1995, at Brzeg in Poland, 95 years old - and 53 years after Kolbe had saved him. But he was never to forget the ragged monk. After his release from Auschwitz, Gajowniczek made his way back to his hometown, with the dream of seeing his family again. He found his wife but his two sons had been killed during the war.

Every year on August 14 he went back to Auschwitz. He spent the next five decades paying homage to Father Kolbe, honoring the man who died on his behalf.

Wrongful Life

Dovetailing nicely with my post on demographic winter below, here is a story from Australia about two couples suing their doctors for essentially, wrongful life.  Basically, the doctors failed to diagnose the unborn children with Down Syndrome  because the parents would have aborted them if they had known.  Raising a child with specials needs is expensive don't you know -- so the hospitals should be on the hook for the financial burden the parents now face...



Christ takes it for granted that men are bad.  Until we really feel this assumption of His to be true, though we are part of the world He came to save, we are not part of the audience to whom His words are addressed. -- C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

May these children never learn their parents preferred that they were aborted.  Lord have mercy, for our sins are without number.

Mass -- Anno Domini 155

In his Letters, St. Justin Martyr describes the Mass as celebrated from the very earliest of days, only hinted at obliquely in the Acts of the Apostles, Letters of St Paul, and book of Revelation.

Demographic Winter

John Allen's book The Future Church has an great chapter on the projected drop in human population for the rest of this century. Back in the 1970's the big panic was underpopulation -- promoted by the factually inaccurate book 'the Demographic Bomb'.  Amongst all the environmetalists today, there is a subtle and sometimes not so sublt complaint that there are too many people for the earth to sustain.  I even heard a report on NPR yesterday promoting that people should reduce what they eat principally because it reduces their carbon footprint -- oh, and oh yeah, you will lose some weight too. They think that underpopulation is okay and even necessary to conserve the worlds' resources etc. Not really. Underpopulation brings economic recession because a growing population means a growing economy. There is no economy in the history of the world that has grown with a shrinking population.  Along with a declining birth rate goes an increasing number of elderly. By 2040 the developed countries won't have enough young people working to support their elderly. Long term health care costs for the elderly will skyrocket. Immigration provides a temporary part of the solution, but the birth rates in Mexico and Latin America are dropping too.  There is a great documentary on the net called Demographic Winter which presents all this in an interesting light.

Inevitably there will be a whole range of societal shifts that need to take place. Forget about the concept of 'retirement'--especially retirement at 65. We won't be able to support such a thing. It will be more like retirement at 75 if you're lucky. Get ready for euthanasia. They will argue that we simply can't support so many elderly people who are contributing nothing and who's quality of life is negligible. Here comes Nurse Ratched to put you to sleep. Get ready for the closure of schools and colleges and the opening of rest homes. There's a good business opportunity. Buy up little colleges and turn them into retirement communities. There won't be the market for colleges then.  Or even a visiting nurse service...

What might turn it around? In some countries it can't be turned around for a couple hundred years. The replacement birth rate for the population has already been too low for too long, and it cannot now recover. One thing which might turn it around is for people to start regarding children as an asset again. When a society is agrarian a child is an asset. Many hours of labor are required to feed everyone so every child helps keep the farm going. When people move to the city and work in factories and offices a child become an expensive liability, not an asset.

However, if elderly health care is unavailable, pension funds dry up, social security goes bust, the Medicare pot is empty and insurers refuse to pay for long term elderly health care, having more kids might just be your chance for survival.

Think about it. Who is going to get the sleepy pills first? It will be the old people with no family, no one to visit, no one to object, who's money has run out. That's assuming that there are care facilities that have room for the anyone in the first place. Who's going to pay and look after all these folks who have no one?

On the other hand, if you've got lots of kids invest in a different kind of insurance plan: send one off to college to specialize in geriatric medicine. Once kids start being seen as retirement insurance people might start having more. It's terrible to recommend such a course simply out of self interest, but hey, if Nurse Ratched is coming for you with the sleepy pills, wouldn't you rather have your kids in charge?  Of course, if you raise your kids to believe the dominant themes our cultures presents to them; that there principle concern should be the pursuit of pleasure and comfort for themselves; then you may not like their ideas of altruism.  As Peter Nixon writes over at Patheos:


Our children and grandchildren are abandoning the faith because they perceive -- rightly -- that its demands are at fundamental variance with the lives we have prepared them to lead. We have raised them to seek lives characterized by material comfort, sexual fulfillment, and freedom from any obligations that they have not personally chosen. Should it surprise us that they fail to take seriously our claims to follow one who embraced poverty, chastity, and obedience to the will of God?

You're about to hear something anti-catholic when...

I just got done with the wearisome and charity-building task of replying to an anti-catholic screed on an atheist's blog.  I say wearisome because fundamentalist atheists have a tendencey to believe that 'reason' is a domain that they have a patent on -- whether they are using those faculties at this particular moment in time or not.  Mostly in replying to them, the fundamentalist ones (yes, J. I am using that word to needle you a little as you meet your own definitiion) discount everything you say because they think your first principles are farsical.  I.E. the existence of God.  Anything derivative of those principles is fiar game for ridicule, ad hominem's, etc...

No sooner did I finish replying than aI read this post over at Creative Minority Report about when you are about to hear something blatantly prejuediced, ignorant, self righteous, wrong, and anti-catholic.  OR perhaps I should just revert to a shorthand some of these people will understand -- Catholi-phobes.

You are about to hear something anti-catholic when the prefacing statement is:
44% chance if someone says "I'm not religious but I'm very spiritual."


49% chance if someone says, "The Pope during WWII..."
A 53% chance if someone says "I read in the New York Times..."

57% chance if someone says "I don't need an intermediary between me and God..."

68% chance if a representative of Barack Obama's Faith Based Advisory Council office is quoted.

83% chance if you hear from your television, "You're watching Hardball..."

84% chance if someone says "Richard Dawkins said..."

89% chance if someone says "I don't normally watch "The View" but Joy Behar said..."

94% chance if there's any mention of a flying spaghetti monster.

98% Any mention of The Inquisition or the Crusades.

100% If someone says "I was raised Catholic so..." anything that follows is guaranteed to be anti-Catholic.

How Ironic that today is the feast of St. Bonaventure.   Or perhaps the timing of this is a bit providential -- a mini-miracle, the movement of the holy spirit perhaps.  From today's Magnificat -- "O  Lord, you sent Saint Bonaventure to teach the wisdom he had learned through prayer and study: -- send us wise teachers in our day.  Make known your ways; teach me your paths, and grant me an increase in Charity.

Lucky or Miracle, you decide

Watch this youtube video about the luckiest people on Earth. I know my atheist friends will say, correctly, that there are millions of instances around the world on a daily basis where people are not so lucky. What is it about these few instances that make them miraculous versus just coincidence (except maybe the last one :) )  

I don't know about you, but I find that I am able to see tiny miracles in everyday life -- nothing so extravagant as this.  It's important to remember the thank Him for the little ones too.

Visual Bach

I wish we could hear this kind of postlude played after Mass more often.  I know some of you organists are up to the task.  To give us mere musical mortals a glimpse at what the organist's fingers and toes must cope with, watch this:

Ut unum sint -- an ecumenical greeting and then some.

The Presbyterian church is meeting in a General assembly to determine how much more 'inclusive' it will be toward active homosexuals in the ministry.  They invited  Fr. Siarhei Sardun, a Belorussian Orthodox Priest to give the Ecumenical Greeting.  And what a greeting it was.  Check out the video at Ancient Christian Defense.  I'd link it here but I'm having trouble with the video posting on blogger.  The action really kicks up a notch at the 5 minute mark.

If you are unfamiliar with the currents in the Presbyterian Church, the introductory minute shows you a glimpse of the Clash of Cultures (and Christianities, Fr. Sardun encountered) The shorthand from Fr's speech:  I am from the Ancient Orthodox church, unchanged from 2,000 years.  We were nearly extirminated by the secular forces of the 20th Century, but are now resurgent.  The East is embracing Orthodoxy again.  We have had the financial help of the Presbyterian church in America, so I have come here to thank you since I have never encountered the Presbyterian Church before.  Now that I have encountered you, I find that you do not embrace the ancient faith.  You have changed the Nicene creed by adding the Filioque.  And another thing.  I was really struck by your discussion of Christian morality.  Christian morality is as old as the church itself.  It doesn't need to be invented now.  And those attempts to invent a new morality, look to me like attempts to invent a new religion.  A sort of modern paganism.  When people say they are led and guided by the Holy Spirit to do it, I wonder if it is the same Holy Spirit that inspired the Bible, the same Holy Spirit that inspires the Holy Orthodox Church not to change anything in Christian Doctrine and Moral Standards...

Sing it Brother!  It took some cast iron cojones to stand before the entire leadership of the Presbyterian Church and warn them of turning into pagans -- speaking Truth to Power.  This is what we are all called to do every day folks -- in large ways and small.  Pray that the Lord helps us find the courage to love him this much.

Samaritans All

How odd that this weekend's Gospel was the parable of the Good Samaritan. As it turned out, on Friday I went over to Redner's Supermarket for a few things, and seated on the ground outside was a woman I know to be homeless. If I was In Washington or Nw York, I'm pretty sure she would have been asking from money, but I have never seen this woman do that.

Nevertheless, my first instinct was to check and see if I had any cash -- which I didn't. So, I passed on by. She wasn't asking for anything, but I felt that I was somehow failing in Christian Compassion by not offering anything. My thoughts went towards all the little luxuries I have concerned my self with lately -- a new phone, planning to buy a new car, some additional books on my wishlist. And then, naturally, I compared those concerns to what this woman's concerns were, and what constituted a little luxury for her. She and I didn't peak in the few seconds we passed, and I thought that perhaps few people speak to her at all. She probably brings up a series of reactions in people -- disgust at her dirt and smell, fear, shame that she will ask for something and I don't want to give it (or can't). And as a result most people probably avoid eye contact and walk on past.

Even though she didn't ask me for anything, perhaps the one luxury I could have given her was simply spekaing with her briefly. A little human contact to acknowledge that she too, is valued. But I didn't. I only thought of it after the fact, and even then I thought, "But what would I say?" I have a good friend who spends a lot of time on the downtown streets. He has come to know most of the local homeless and strikes up conversations with them regularly. I could learn a lot from a guy like this for whom such encounters involve no personal courage at all. Just simple charity. From my time in Africa there was a saying that 'A person becomes a person through other people.' And here, this poor homeless woman gives me a lesson on this week's gospel that no amount of reading books could have driven home any deeper.

Kyrie eleison.

9 Things God won't ask on that Day...

Got this in the email, the tenth was pretty dumb so I cut it out.



TEN THINGS GOD WON'T ASK ON THAT DAY..

1.... God won't ask what kind of car you drove. He'll ask how many people you drove who didn't have transportation..



2.. God won't ask the square footage of your house, He'll ask how many people you welcomed into your home.



3... God won't ask about the clothes you had in your closet, He'll ask how many you helped to clothe.



4... God won't ask what your highest salary was. He'll ask if you compromised your character to obtain it.



5... God won't ask what your job title was. He'll ask if you performed your job to the best of your ability.



6.. God won't ask how many friends you had. He'll ask how many people to whom you were a friend.



7..... God won't ask in what neighborhood you lived, He'll ask how you treated your neighbors.



8.... God won't ask about the color of your skin, He'll ask about the content of your character.



9... God won't ask why it took you so long to seek Salvation. He'll lovingly take you to your mansion in heaven, and not to the gates of Hell

A Christian Country

The Christian Church has been powerfully damaged by letting itself be confused with love of country and the making of great wars. Countries are about the acquisition, distribution, and sharing of power. Or the opposites of those verbs. By deliberately setting itself up as a state with no officially sanctioned church, America is the one nation under which the Christian values of its early intelligentsia, and undeniably Christian faith of the early masses were able to flourish unfettered by the intersection of secular power and religious belief. The founding fathers learned much from the aftermath of the 30 years war in Europe where battles for national and local power were carried out under the ostensible guise of 'Protestant' versus 'Catholic' and the uses of state sponsored religion to consolidate the secular power gains. However, it is a brutal mistake to mix the love of country with the love of God. Among many other things it allows the citizens to confuse their Christian morals into sometimes believing the the 'end justifies the means'. For example we condemn the Nazi death camps, Saddaam's gassing of the Kurds, the horrible inequities of Socialist states but we have a tendency to overlook the mass bombings of cities, firebombings of Dresden and Tokyo, invasion of Iraq etc., as being necessities. Perhaps worse than the deliberate, scientific killing of civilians in the wars of the 20th century, was the sad, desperate attempt to pretend to ourselves later that it was right and justified. In this way the pain and damage were passed on to new generations who had no hand in the killing. War does terrible harm to civilizations, to morals, to families, and to innocence. How strange that we should make it the heart of a national cult.