Renew The Church! – website and Blog

It has been two months since I last wrote anything for this blog. I have not been able to write! I have begun more posts than I can remember, writing and deleting, writing and rejecting, writing and then walking away with tongue and hands frozen – paralyzed – wordless.

I see the country locked in two camps, paralyzed in opposition one to the other – how can a democracy work, when no compromise is possible? We have in our country now no common vision of the common good; we have no common vision of common political or moral or even fundamental human good! We are divided so deeply, the chasm between us is so deep and wide, we must ask ourselves: how can America – how can our constitutional democratic republic even work, anymore?

The presidential election of 2016 shocked almost everyone, with the defeat of progressivism even though a majority of voters favored the progressive candidate. I became convinced that God had saved us from the social, political, economic and moral sickness that has gained power in much of the world. I wrote of this in my last post, “Will God Give Us a Third Chance?” My hope was that the Church would be awakened by the nearness of the loss that had come upon us. I hoped that the Church would realize how far we have fallen as a nation – that the Church would realize she has been sleeping at the watch, she has not been feeding the sheep, she has not catechized the faithful, she has not guarded the walls of the holy city but rather in her careless self-absorption many enemies have crept in, wolves in sheep’s clothing, and the holy Faith has been diluted, “dumbed-down,” confused, contaminated and for many, lost.

I had hoped that the Church would repent! Seeing the obvious, realizing the danger, hearing the cries of the little ones – the unfed hungry children of the Lord – surely the Church would wake up, repent and resolve to stand up and be Christ in this dark and darkening moment of human history.

The Church, in large part, has not awakened. She, to a large extent, has not repented. Many clergy and laity have learned, it seems, nothing. Corruption among bishops and priests – pastors of the children of God! – continues to be exposed, example after example, as more darkness and evil continue to be revealed. Meanwhile many among the laity continue to be manipulated and abused, malnourished and neglected, and pandered with baby-food teachings and canned programs of structural reform and shallow renewal. Many of the pastors seem to be hoping to wait it out, hoping it will pass, it will all stop or go away, so that all can return to “normal.” But this is not normal! The “usual” today is profoundly abnormal, and it must end.

The answer for the country is found in the origin and mission of the Church. The Church was sent to be the light of the world. The darkness of the world, now pervading the country, has a solution: light – the light of Truth – the light of authentic virtue – the light that Christ brought, and that He entrusted to His Church. The solution to the problems of this nation rest in the storerooms and archives and memory of the Church; and so the solution to the problems of the Church are the same: that same light, that same Truth, if she will awaken, repent, and return to Him.

But if she will not do this, if she still will not turn from her wide-spread courtship with the secular godlessness of the world, to return to Him, then the children must do so on their own. Catholics have the sacraments, and even if they are not worthily celebrated they can still be worthily and fruitfully received! His grace is still powerful and true. Catholics have the Catechism; they can learn the precious teachings of His Holy Church! They may or may not have substantive adult formation offered at their parish, but they have or can obtain a copy of the Catechism; they can learn. They can be formed alone or in small groups with the promised guidance of the Holy Spirit, using this very solid and substantive Catechism of the Catholic Church. And they have the Scriptures, the Holy Bible, the written Word of God. They can read, they can listen, they can learn from God, they can grow. And in a growing life of prayer they can advance in the interior life, the life of prayer and of grace, and as living witnesses His light can shine in the darkening secular culture of these days.

We all will stand before Jesus in judgment; we all will give an account of our lives – and that day, for every one of us, only grows closer. Holding fast to the precious faith given to us, and growing in the faith as He gives us grace and opportunity, let us live out the mission He sets before us! On that Day, let us stand prepared, and faithful. Let us hold fast to the hope of hearing from Him, at the end, words of embrace:

“Well done, good and faithful servant; you have been faithful over a little, I will set you over much; enter into the joy of your master.” (Mt 23: 21, 23)

This confused, misguided and misdirected world needs light. His Church is the very light that Jesus called, formed and sent to be the light of this world! The world needs the Church; the Church needs to be light, to be holy, to be righteous. The Church in Christ needs Mary, her mother and model.

Descent into Madness

Misunderstandings of the true nature and reality of the Church did not begin with Protestantism. But misunderstandings of “church” and “Christian Faith” were certainly magnified and multiplied in the protestant movement, which swept the Christian world and confused the definition of Christianity itself. Today, in 2019, there is an attack on reality and on truth in the secular culture and in the Church even more difficult to believe, even while seeing with our own eyes, as it advances toward us. A growing assault is now upon us, not merely in rejection of divine and supernatural foundations of life and of being, but an advancing attack on nature itself is upon us – on human nature, on natural moral law, on common sense and indeed the plain witness of nature as it is, including the human body as it is by design.

Here upon us is an age of madness. The “sciences” now bow and submit before the lusts of men, and pronounce as “normal” what they had a few years before judged as abnormal, as rational thought and behavior that which had been irrational, unbalanced, mentally disturbed, as a normal human lifestyle what used to be illegal, dysfunctional, aberrant and immoral. Now, the crime of killing of not-yet-born little babies is not only legal but is the “inalienable” “constitutional” human right of their mothers. Now the sexual relations of men with men, and women with women is no longer a “grave depravity”, “intrinsically disordered” and “contrary to the natural law” (as our Catechism still teaches), but now same-sex marriages are established by law, and such “couples” are legally adopting innocent children into their alternative “family.”

The now-blurred meanings of “husband” and “wife” are being smeared and confused even more, with men – and even boys! – deciding they are not male after all, but female, and they’d be more comfortable in the bathroom and in the shower with girls – and yes, some officials and keepers of public order are agreeing with this new “right”: we are free to tell our lying bodies to get on board or get surgery and get renovated to fit the new “reality” suitable to the new identity decided by the new Boss: The almighty Self – the reality-determiner-in-chief, ME. And of course, women/girls too: equal opportunity insanity is equally “normal.” All this is probably guaranteed somewhere in the Constitution – some judge can and will find it, we can be sure.

Key to Return to Sanity: A Church Holy with the Holiness of Mary

There is a solution to the craziness that godless, morally barren “political correctness” has brought to the post-Christian world. In 1985 (at that time Card. Ratzinger, later to become Pope and now Pope Emeritus) Benedict XVI gave an interview which resulted in the book The Ratzinger Report. The author and reporter of the interview, commenting on the Cardinal’s concerns for the need for the Church to return to Mary, wrote (1):

To the crisis in the understanding of the Church, to the crisis of morality, to the crisis of woman, the Prefect has a remedy, among others, to propose: “that has concretely shown its effectiveness throughout the centuries.” “A remedy whose reputation seems to be clouded today with some Catholics, but one that is more than ever relevant.” It is the remedy that he designates with a short name: Mary.

The Cardinal insightfully listed six points in the interview which, although concise and brief, identify six facets of the singular role and place Mary fulfills in the Church, facets now lacking and unfulfilled, uncompleted in her absence. The incompleteness, the imbalance left in the Church even then, in 1985, remain and have only increased in the Church of today, 2019. The Church has moved even farther away from Mary, in the intervening 30 plus years. In place of an authentic Marian presence, bringing her gifts and graces so needed in the Church, we have been burdened with the deadening excesses of clericalism.

A clericalist, imprudently given the authority of pastor over the people of God, “rules for the love of ruling” (2) – not for the love of God nor love for the people of God. The Petrine dimension in the Church – represented by the clergy, the hierarchy from pope to the deacons – has been left without the balance, the equilibrium, of the needed Marian dimension, and so the Church suffers. The clergy suffer; the laity suffer; the world suffers in darkness lacking the holy and pure light entrusted to the Church in her fullness. Benedict’s insights then, 1985, have become more relevant and even urgent now, 2019, and ought to be heard and responded to now, more than ever. The Church needs Mary! His six points (3) begin with, first, the values in Christ (and thus, for His Church) of the Marian dogmas:

When one recognizes the place assigned to Mary by dogma and tradition, one is solidly rooted in authentic Christology. (According to Vatican II: ‘Devoutly meditating on her and contemplating her in the light of the Word made man, the Church reverently penetrates more deeply into the great mystery of the Incarnation and becomes more and more like her spouse’ [Lumen Gentium, no. 65].) It is, moreover in direct service to faith in Christ—not, therefore, primarily out of devotion to the Mother—that the Church has proclaimed her Marian dogmas: first that of her perpetual virginity and divine motherhood and then, after a long period of maturation and reflection, those of her Immaculate Conception and bodily Assumption into heavenly glory.

These dogmas protect the original faith in Christ as true God and true man: two natures in a single Person. They also secure the indispensable eschatological tension by pointing to Mary’s Assumption as the immortal destiny that awaits us all. And they also protect the faith—threatened today—in God the Creator, who (and this, among other things, is the meaning of the truth of the perpetual virginity of Mary, more than ever not understood today) can freely intervene also in matter. Finally, Mary, as the Council recalls: ‘having entered deeply into the history of salvation, . . . in a way unites in her person and reechoes the most important mysteries of the Faith’ (Lumen Gentium, no. 65).

His second point concerns the value to the Catholic Faith of the union of Scripture and Sacred Tradition together in the one divine revelation of the saving Truth of God:

The Mariology of the Church comprises the right relationship, the necessary integration between Scripture and Tradition. The four Marian dogmas have their clear foundation in sacred Scripture. But it is there like a seed that grows and bears fruit in the life of Tradition just as it finds expression in the liturgy, in the perception of the believing people and in the reflection of theology guided by the Magisterium.

Thirdly he points out Mary as the necessary bridge holding together the Old Testament and Covenant with the New in Christ. Mary is the link, in her self the connecting bridge in whom God’s promises moved from expectant hope to living reality:

In her very person as a Jewish girl become the mother of the Messiah, Mary binds together, in a living and indissoluble way, the old and the new People of God, Israel and Christianity, synagogue and church. She is, as it were, the connecting link without which the Faith (as is happening today) runs the risk of losing its balance by either forsaking the New Testament for the Old or dispensing with the Old. In her, instead, we can live the unity of sacred Scripture in its entirety.

The fourth, fifth and sixth factors the Cardinal places before us, can all stand under a theme developed by other theologians as well, including Pope St. John Paul II, the theme of the necessary “Marian dimension” of the Church, seen as necessarily standing together with its “Petrine dimension.” (4) With this dimensionality in the Church, we can see a completeness parallel to that “very goodness” in God’s creation of humanity recorded in Genesis (1:27): “male and female He created them.” Ratzinger’s fourth point:

The correct Marian devotion guarantees to faith the coexistence of indispensable ‘reason’ with the equally indispensable ‘reasons of the heart’, as Pascal would say. For the Church, man is neither mere reason nor mere feeling, he is the unity of these two dimensions. The head must reflect with lucidity, but the heart must be able to feel warmth: devotion to Mary (which ‘avoids every false exaggeration on the one hand, and excessive narrow-mindedness in the contemplation of the surpassing dignity of the Mother of God on the other’, as the Council urges) thus assures the faith its full human dimension.

Continuing his reflection on the necessity that Mary’s “Marian dimension” be present alongside the Petrine in the Church, Card. Ratzinger lists as a fifth point:

To use the very formulations of Vatican II, Mary is ‘figure’, ‘image’ and ‘model’ of the Church. Beholding her the Church is shielded against the aforementioned masculinized model that views her as an instrument for a program of social-political action. In Mary, as figure and archetype, the Church again finds her own visage as Mother and cannot degenerate into the complexity of a party, an organization or a pressure group in the service of human interests, even the noblest. If Mary no longer finds a place in many theologies and ecclesiologies, the reason is obvious: they have reduced faith to an abstraction. And an abstraction does not need a Mother.

No, an abstraction – an ideology – does not need a mother, but ideologies can quickly spawn tyrants to lead them, and thus we see clericalism processing on stage. Clericalism is a distortion of the Petrine dimension, an aberration, an imbalance in the intention of Christ. Card. Ratzinger said in his interview, “If the place occupied by Mary has been essential to the equilibrium of the Faith, today it is urgent, as in few other epochs of Church history, to rediscover that place.” (5)

The sixth and last point of Card. Ratzinger is another immediately and specifically flowing from her feminine nature and person. It is a quality obvious and consequential in its absence, in our secular culture so disdainful of the feminine genius. The qualities of goodness in human nature so specifically feminine, of woman, such as the deep self-giving in motherhood, womanly courage and strength, gentleness, patience, instinctive awareness of the person, the value and the needs of the other, and so on, are needed in the Church! He explains:

With her destiny, which is at one and the same time that of Virgin and of Mother, Mary continues to project a light upon that which the Creator intended for women in every age, ours included, or, better said, perhaps precisely in our time, in which—as we know—the very essence of femininity is threatened. Through her virginity and her motherhood, the mystery of woman receives a very lofty destiny from which she cannot be torn away. Mary undauntedly proclaims the Magnificat, but she is also the one who renders silence and seclusion fruitful. She is the one who does not fear to stand under the Cross, who is present at the birth of the Church. But she is also the one who, as the evangelist emphasizes more than once, ‘keeps and ponders in her heart’ that which transpires around her. As a creature of courage and of obedience she was and is still an example to which every Christian—man and woman—can and should look.

With all the fullness entrusted to His Church, she remains poor and incomplete without, in her rightful place, Mary: Virgin Mother and Model of Perfection in Christ. How can our doors again be opened for her? How can our Mother find room again, for the birth of her sons and daughters, in the Church of her Son? How can she again be welcomed into our impoverished ornate cathedrals, our well-furnished and well-vested houses of worship, so many having no room within, for the Mother of God?

Endnotes:

1. The Ratzinger Report, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger with Vittorio Messori, 1985, Ignatius Press, San Francisco, p. 104.
2. The City of God, Augustine, Bk XIV, Ch 28: “Of the Nature of the Two Cities, the Earthly and the Heavenly”.
3. The Ratzinger Report, p. 106-109.
4. THE MARIAN AND PETRINE PRINCIPLES, Annual Address to Roman Curia, H. H. John Paul II, Dec. 22, 1987. https://www.piercedhearts.org/jpii/addresses_speeches/1997/marian_petrine_principles.htm
For more on the background of this language of dimensions, or profiles, explored by theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar and others, see for example https://www.faith.org.uk/article/may-june-2013-balthasar-and-the-rediscovery-of-the-marian-profile-of-the-church
5. The Ratzinger Report, p. 105

If you are reading my website, you might be interested in an essay recently published in Homiletic & Pastoral Review on-line, which I also wrote. The sad presence of clericalism among some of our Catholic clergy is a profound challenge to the faithful of the Church. These abusers of the clerical state, occupied for their own self-satisfaction, harm the Church beloved by the Lord and by His faithful people. They need to repent, and follow the Lord who came not to be served, but to serve. A link to the essay is here:

Clericalism – Betrayal of the Body of Christ, by R. Thomas Richard, Ph.D.

Comments are welcomed, below the essay on HPR as well as here, of course …

You may have noticed, I’m writing fewer blog essays these days. The reason is NOT because I’m peacefully occupied elsewhere! The truth is, I am struck almost wordless, I strain with difficulty speaking of it, so incredible are these times! I stand and watch, hardly able to believe what I see and hear in front of me. It is as though the half of the world has gone mad – has lost all sense, all reason, making up “reality” as it chooses, as it wishes, as it wants. Life has become a parody of a game, “Virtual Reality.” But there is no comic relief in this insanity: there is only a fearsome obsession in zealous protagonists of their “new reality” – and the lusts for it will be satisfied, no matter the cost.

Augustine was right. All of salvation history is the story of the two cities, one set in opposition to the other. There is the City of God, men and women laboring and suffering in the name of God, in hope of a glory to come, burning in love for the Truth known only in faith. There is the City of Man, intent still on building their Tower of Babble reaching high into the sky for man’s own glory, driven by material lusts of the flesh and of the eyes and by ambitions of power, while each seeking glory in the eyes of one another. Righteousness is mocked and abandoned in favor of self-serving “political correctness.”

The culture of America today is one infused with citizens of both Cities. Citizens of the City of Man are in the streets and are in the Church, in the Bowery and on Wall Street, in the government and in the prisons, in the monasteries and in the brothels – and so also are the people called into and belonging in the City of God! They are called into God and His City; some know it and some do not – yet. Some are lost and still blind, some are only barely seeing, some are crying in hunger, and some are feeding the hungry, their brothers and sisters, growing strong for the trials of the days to come.

I’m looking for parish invitations! I want to pass on to those who are hungry, the precious Truth wrapped in God’s call. We have been given, in Baptism, a share in His very Life – and that Life, given in potency as it is, even to a precious infant, is intended to live, to grow, to develop all the way to maturity. His life is given with the potency of personal sanctity, the supernatural power to enable a communion with Him, a communion in His divine and eternal love.

There is a trustworthy path to that goal of maturity. The Church has brought forth, by God’s grace, many holy saints. Their experience, and their witness, together coalesce into a spiritual theology of ascending the stairway of holiness. There is an “Ordinary Path to Holiness”; in the perfect prayer given to us by Jesus, there is an “Interior Liturgy of the Our Father” that maps for us the way of prayer-journeying to Him. He wants us to grow, to ascend, to complete His intention for us from the beginning.

I’m looking for places to speak and to present these truths; I pray the Lord to open doors for this; please pray and seek with me. Please pray with me for a true, real, authentic renewal of the Church! Renew the Church!

I’ve added a page to this website – Presenters and Presentations…. It is listed and linked on every page of the website, in the right-hand column of links, in the “Pages” Menu – “LOOKING FOR — Presenters and Presentations?” If you agree that we need, in the Church, this sort of catechesis – share this blog essay, and this link. Maybe they can be part of the opening of doors, to begin to bring substantive adult formation into our parishes and dioceses. We have been fed too little for too long. The times – and our Lord! – are calling for much, much more.

Mt 16:24 Then Jesus told his disciples, “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.
Mt 16:25 For whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.
Mt 16:26 For what will it profit a man, if he gains the whole world and forfeits his life? Or what shall a man give in return for his life?

This world seems to be in free-fall.  It began gradually, the dark eradication of an infused sense, or intuition in us, of an intrinsic essential dignity in us all, the dignity of the human person. Maybe it was even a memory – a memory in the human soul of God’s creative hands forming each of us, breathing into us His own breath, a seed of Truth meant to last through ages of coming darkness, an intuition of the divine image.

We began to break from Him almost immediately, in the Garden, in a covenant of His trust, in the boundaries of a commandment, in a world full of His blessings.  We knew better than He, what is good for us. Then, we chose self over Him. Then, the fall began, and blood was spilled soon after: detached from Him, we turned against our brother, our neighbor, our other self.  The long, long suicide of humanity began.

It did not have to continue! God sent His Son to make a way – to become the Way – the God-man Christ would become sin to become redemption to become light in the darkness of fallen humanity. In the fullness of time He came, in the center of human history He opened the door, in the heart of humanity He opened His Sacred Heart and poured out His Life for the world.  On the Cross, He proclaimed to all creation the sublime worth of mankind – of each man and woman and child – created in His image, the divine image of God.

From that Cross, that central event, began the last days.  From there the battle begun on the first day, began in its last and final days: the two cities, the two kingdoms, the two armies engaged in a new way.  There is an army of saints, growing in holiness and in grace, and in numbers – some here on earth, many in heaven.  There is an army of demons, and men in bondage to them still, and men serving them half-conscious or unconscious, maybe not realizing the part they are serving in the forces of suffering, darkness and death.

The time is getting shorter; the alarm has been sounded; the enemy is at the gates and some have even infiltrated the kingdom of righteousness, working to sabotage and weaken the holy ones with duplicity, with falsity, with empty promises and with lies. And some believe them, and cooperate with them, and are weakening – falling back toward the darkness from which we were once released by our Lord.  The fall begun soon after the first days, is repeated in the last of the last days: man knows better than God what is good for him. Man holds the ways of the world closer to his heart, drawing closer the things of creation while pushing away the Creator of all; loving self to the contempt of God.

This world needs a holy Church!  The world needs, and the Church needs, holy witnesses of faith, and hope, and divine charity!  What are we to do?  We are to pursue holiness, and the perfection of divine charity, as the Lord and His Church tell us.  We are to see and understand the gravity of our responsibility before Him – we who have been given much!  Those who have been given much, are responsible for much, and we have been given much: as Catholics we have been given access to Christ’s holy sacraments, and the overflowing of His supernatural grace through them.  We have been given the fullness of God’s revealed Truth, entrusted to His holy Church.  We have been given true teachings concerning the moral life: how we are called to live God’s divine Truth on earth and among men.  And through the many holy saints of the Church, we have been given true teachings concerning prayer: prayer, the act of union with God, the relationship of sharing with Him and in Him, His life.  And through the great saints and doctors of the Church – St. Thomas Aquinas and St. John of the Cross, in particular – we have been given understanding of the actual personal journey of prayer: how we are to grow in prayer and proceed toward Him, closer and closer intimate union with Him.

What are we to do?  We are to repent and believe the good news, as Jesus preached. We are to set aside the masks and costumes of false expectations, and become filled with His Holy Truth, and moved by His Sacred Heart. We are to:

Repent of the love of the things of this world;
And pray to grow in the love of the one true God!

Repent of the desire for the empty praises and acceptance of men;
And seek to please the Lord our God!

Repent of worrying about the many problems of this world;
And seek to believe in and trust the almighty King of the Universe.

Do not then treasure the passing, temporal things;
But deeply value the lasting, the eternal, the true treasures of life.

We are to die to ourselves, and live to Him: we are to find our true selves in Him.  He who created us is He who holds the meaning for us of life itself.  He holds the meaning and purpose of our lives, each one of us.  To avoid Him, to dismiss Him, to run from Him is to lose our very identity, to lose our very souls. We find ourselves, and life eternal, in Him.  In serving Him we find, finally, peace, rest, life.

I) Introduction

The painful, ugly corruption in the Catholic Church that is erupting first here then there, in dioceses all around the world it seems, is a horror unthinkable to faithful Catholics. This Church is of God! His Spirit is the life of this Church! How has such blasphemous sin crept in, and found hiding places – and taken root – in parishes, in bishops’ residences, in chanceries and dioceses! How has the impossible and unbelievable come in so deep and spread so far and reached so high in this Church?

And the question pierces me, and challenges me, what can we laity do? We cannot do nothing but wait for the institution – the corporation – whatever to call it, to heal and reform itself! Who can be trusted or believed? Who is not part of the problem? Who is not a mere hired man, careerist, clericalist, robber and abuser or enabler by self-blinded design who is a counterfeit in a charade, passing himself off for what he is not – a deacon, or priest, or bishop of the Church of the People of God? Who is really, truly, a shepherd of God’s sheep? Who can be believed and trusted, and who cannot?

I don’t know how we can work to correct the mess at the parish or diocesan level – laity can’t institute parish- or diocesan-wide reforms in catechesis, in spiritual formation, in liturgies or in worship: only clergy can do that and many, it seems, are content with business-as-usual, with themselves in charge, thank you anyway.

We, the laity, can work to correct the mess in our own lives, in our own minds and hearts; we can seek out and root out the corruption and love of sin in ourselves. We can listen to and hear and pray for the grace to believe the holy and saving Gospel. We can meet in homes, when the parish doors are shut to us, we can gather for ourselves materials that edify, when the parish programs are pablum and shallow motivational speakers, we can learn to pray from the masters of prayer the saints, when the canned programs bought by the office are insults to the wisdom of the saints, more mere pandering of opinions, empty of substance and power.

We the laity can ask and seek and knock where the Spirit is, and we can see and hear and receive, and grow in, His holy Truth.

II) The Interior Liturgy of the Our Father

In the last blog essay, I tried to introduce again my first book, The Ordinary Path to Holiness. That book was written to help ordinary Catholics learn of, and understand, the path that a seeking, hungry soul travels, on the path to God, to holiness and peace in Him. In this blog essay, I will introduce again my second book – which follows the first in several ways – The Interior Liturgy of the Our Father. This book, like the first, is about prayer and the life of prayer. May the beautiful and powerful wisdom of the saints of the Church – the masters of prayer – find root in some: in you the reader. Thereby, our holy Church will be healed and reformed, one precious soul at a time. And that would be a beautiful work among us for our Lord.

St. Teresa of Avila is a very important, significant spiritual teacher for Catholics seeking a deeper interior life – a life of prayer-communion with God. The Father blessed her with a full experience of prayer, a full experience of the entire journey of prayer from the very beginnings of prayer, to the highest summit of prayer possible on this earth, just short of the beatific vision in heaven.

Jesus Christ our Lord – God Himself, God Incarnate – taught us to pray, when He gave us the prayer we call “the Our Father.” He said, pray then like this: “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name, ….”

Should it surprise us, then, that the journey of prayer discovered and experienced by St. Teresa of Avila “lines up” in a very meaningful, beautiful and helpful way, with the journey of prayer that Jesus gave us in His gift of the prayer, “the Our Father”?

The Interior Castle of St. Teresa describes her life-experience of prayer, and passes on for us, her wisdom – thank you, St. Teresa! The prayer, “the Our Father” – brief and simple as it is – is the gift of God to us to not only help us pray, but to show us the journey of prayer. The Our Father shows us the sequence of steps or stages that we walk, when we walk the journey of prayer. Thank you, Lord Jesus!

The parallels linking Teresa’s “Interior Castle” and the petitions of the Our Father are first described in Ch. 5 of the book, The Ordinary Path to Holiness. The realities of that chapter continued to deepen and unfold in me, until they came together into a statement all their own: The Interior Liturgy of the Our Father. Those who have read The Ordinary Path will be led deeper into this traditional Catholic path to holiness in the divinely-given prayer, the Our Father. I will briefly describe the book, chapter by chapter – perhaps it will interest and invite you to “come and see”.

III) Highlights of the Chapters of The Interior Liturgy of the Our Father

Chapter 1. Introduction to The Interior Liturgy
Introduction, and St. Thomas Aquinas’ remarkable insight into the petitions of the Our Father:
“Now in the Lord’s Prayer not only do we ask for all that we may rightly desire, but also in the order wherein we ought to desire them, so that this prayer not only teaches us to ask, but also directs all our affections.”

This observation leads us to understand the journey of prayer itself: how we are led in prayer (in this prayer) to ever-closer communion with our Father, from the very beginnings of prayer, to the highest heights of union with Him and in Him.

Chapter 2. Listening to the Petitions:
Here, we listen carefully to the prayer, petition by petition.

Chapter 3. Sacramental Graces in the Interior Liturgy
Here, we see the significance of the word “liturgy” in the prayer, as each petition points us to a corresponding sacrament in the Church.

Chapter 4. The Our Father and Teresa’s Interior Castle.
Here, the parallel is seen, between the Interior Castle of St. Teresa (and the journey of prayer that it reveals), and The Interior Liturgy of the Our Father (and the journey of prayer that it reveals). We find one journey, described in the prayer, and experienced by the saint.

Chapter 5. The Interior Liturgy and the Holy Mass
In this chapter we find the correspondence between the prayer and its three major parts or movements, and our celebration of Holy Mass and its three major parts or movements. Mary in Christian worship is here discussed, Mary of whom the Catechism teaches:
CCC 971 “All generations will call me blessed”: “The Church’s devotion to the Blessed Virgin is intrinsic to Christian worship.”<Lk 1:48; Pope Paul VI, Marialis cultus 56>

Chapter 6. Conversion: The First Movement of the Mass, and of the Interior Liturgy. The petitions of the Our Father that are included in this first movement, and the grades of prayer associated with them.

Chapter 7. Consecration: The Second Movement of the Mass, and of the Interior Liturgy. The petitions of the Our Father that are included in this movement, and the grades of prayer associated with them. Mary in this work of the liturgy.

Chapter 8. Communion: The Third Movement of the Mass, and of the Interior Liturgy. The petitions of the Our Father that are included in this movement, and the grades of prayer associated with them. Mary and Peter together.

Chapter 9. Conclusion and Summary
The natural life of mankind, the supernatural, spiritual life of mankind, the pattern of Christ making His disciples. God’s work in us in three movements of Holy Liturgy.

The Interior Liturgy is available on amazon.com in both ebook for the Kindle, and in paperback, both in the new 3rd Edition. I hope to make the ebook available for the Nook, on Barnes & Noble, soon…

Yes, the Church is deeply troubled in these times. The problem is sin, the troubles are rooted in sin. And maybe we can say, the problem more deeply is love of sin. But this essay is not about the troubles or the problem; this essay is about the solution. The solution for us personally, individually and together as Church, is finally, simply holiness. Our call, our vocation, is to holiness in Jesus Christ. If we were right with God, all would be well. The Church, including clergy and laity, each and every one of us, is called to holiness.

The call to holiness in Jesus Christ ought to be in the mind and heart of every Catholic Christian! Indeed, it ought to be the explanation of why we are Catholic – it ought to be the answer if anyone should ask, “Why are you Catholic?” I am Catholic because God calls us all to holiness, and the one Catholic Church has all that I need to respond to God’s call to me, to be holy as He is holy. This Church has the fullness of divine revelation, the fullness of the Presence of Christ, the fullness of the wisdom, truth and grace that He has entrusted to mankind for the good of humanity: all this He has entrusted to His one, holy, catholic (that is, universal) and apostolic Catholic Church.

It is a sad reality, however, that so many Catholics settle for so little of the “all” – of the fullness – that God has given for them. Many are content to be neither hot nor cold for the Truth, but pretend that lukewarm is good enough for God, and good enough for them. What an insult this is, to Christ on the Cross! Lukewarm was not good enough for Him! He gave it all, for all of us, and He taught, in His days on this earth, that only “all” is good enough for our Father in heaven, and His Son now in Glory, to Whom we all are accountable and before Whom we must all give account of our lives. A sobering passage in the Book of Revelations in Scripture has this:

And to the angel of the church in Laodicea write: “The words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of God’s creation.
“‘I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were cold or hot!
So, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew you out of my mouth.
“For you say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing; not knowing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked.
“Therefore I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire, that you may be rich, and white garments to clothe you and to keep the shame of your nakedness from being seen, and salve to anoint your eyes, that you may see.
“Those whom I love, I reprove and chasten; so be zealous and repent.” (Rev. 3:14-19)

The Church has much holy wisdom, given to her in her saints, concerning the way – the path – to the holiness proper to our call. Yet this Catholic spiritual wisdom remains a “hidden secret” for many Catholics! As a “cradle Catholic” I left the Church as a young adult, returned in my mid-adult years, but still knew nothing of this spiritual treasure – this wisdom. Not until my senior adult years, back in university working on a Master’s in Catholic theology and ministry, did I first learn of this path to holiness – a process in stages. And I add this, in all sincerity: coming into understanding of this, changed my life. My comments below (with diagram), summarize much of the way to holiness, copied here from The Path of Renewal on the first page of this website:

Persons grow, develop and mature in holiness according to the traditional Catholic spiritual understanding called the “three ways”, or three stages of the interior life of the soul. This path, this journey, is that awaiting and to be experienced by the person seeking communion with God. Yes there is a broad and easy way luring, tempting so many persons in this world! But there is a path to God in Jesus Christ, sought and found by the saints – and these are our teachers, with His Holy Spirit, in the  spiritual life. This inner journey of prayer can be pictured, in its three stages, as follows:

This traditional “three stages” of the spiritual journey can be seen from several viewpoints:

1. Scripture. The first disciples of Jesus grew into spiritual maturity in three stages.

– In the first stage, when they were following Jesus in His time on earth, they were revealed to be far less than His full intention for them! They did not fully understand the great event of the Incarnation; they struggled against their own unbelief and fear.

– In the second stage, after the resurrection, they came to know Jesus in a completely different, deeper way. He was revealed to them now as “My Lord and my God!” He came through closed doors, He showed them His crucified body; He was greater than death! Yet still they were weighted down with fear: still they hid behind closed doors. Jesus ordered them to wait: they were yet to be clothed with power.

– In the third stage, they came into the heroic life of witnesses, as was their vocation from the beginning. Following Pentecost, filled with the Holy Spirit, they lived the full life of a Christian.

2. The saints. These three stages have been understood by saints of the Church from several different perspectives.

St. Bernard, for example, recognized stages of love for God. In the first stage, a person discovers that God is his greatest benefactor, and he loves God for all that God can do for him.

– In the second stage, he discovers that this God is good and wonderful in Himself, beyond the good that He can do for us humans. The person begins to love God as God, and not merely as the great benefactor of the self.

– In the third stage, The great and infinite goodness and glory of God are seen, and this overwhelms fear and concern for self. The person begins to love others, and even himself, only in God. God is all.

St. Thomas Aquinas saw the three stages in terms of the concern of a Christian regarding charity: first to guard and protect the charity that was infused into the soul at baptism; second to increase charity through a life of virtue and good works in Christ; third to enjoy and live and remain in charity in a life of sanctity.

3. Traditional spiritual theology. The traditional terms that have developed to describe these three stages are first the Stage of the Beginner (the Purgative Stage); second the Stage of the Proficient (the Illuminative Stage); third the Stage of the Perfect (the Unitive Stage). This understanding is of real importance to the Christian who is going through any stage! It is especially helpful to a Christian who is in a transition, from one stage to the next!

St. John of the Cross, with great precision and insight, helped the Church understand the crucial transitional times in advancing from one stage to the next. The transition times are times of real spiritual crisis. St. John called them “Dark Nights” – the Dark Night of the Senses (corresponding to the experience of the apostles in the Passion), and the Dark Night of the Spirit (corresponding to the experience of the apostles after the ascension and before Pentecost. These are times of great trial for the soul!

Every Christian deserves to share in the wisdom of the saints – God gave His saints great graces, that they might bless His people, His Church. My book – now both in paperback and in e-book (the Kindle) is now available in a new 3rd Edition, at Amazon, The Ordinary Path to Holiness: The treasure of Catholic spirituality re-presented for our times. It is an introductory book that I hope and intend will pass on some of this great treasure, this holy wisdom. My prayer is that it be a help for any seeking to find the path, and seeking to grow in the spiritual life toward our common call to holiness, the ordinary path to Him.

The troubles in the Church today are troubling, deeply troubling.  Clerical abuse – especially sexual abuse of any sort – is an abomination too horrific to contemplate, from men who outwardly profess to be men “of God.” Men indeed who stand in the place of Christ the Head among His people, are consecrated to Him!  Men given to celibacy in self-gift to Him, in His service, operating and living in a blatant bold-faced lie to Him and to His people – such a thing ought never to be.  It is an abomination of desolation standing in the Holy Place – a desolate emptiness of Truth, of due righteousness, a dishonoring of the One worthy of all praise and honor and glory.

Men of the hierarchy – bishops, cardinals, Pope: “I’m sorry” is not enough.  More rules are not enough.  If the rules of the past were disregarded, why would new rules work now?  Law means nothing to the lawless.  Lovers of lawlessness will not be tamed by more laws, they will only be saved by conversion, yes, conversion of mind and heart and whole being, to Christ.  To die to self, to live for Christ, this is what we need: a new heart and a right spirit where righteousness dwells.

Clericalists – institutional men, properly educated, men sacramentalized with all boxes checked, all i’s dotted and t’s crossed, clericalists with all requirements of past tradition satisfied, have failed to do and to be what clericalists were never intended to do or be.  A man of God is made by God, not by men.  And when men not of God rise to the place of gatekeeper in the House of God, then thieves are welcomed in, and walk in through the front door to loot and satisfy themselves with the things set aside for God.  Mercenaries and hired men staff the Holy Place, and the House of God becomes a robber’s den.  No, “I’m sorry” is not enough. 

We need to take the call to holiness seriously.  Is that too obvious to bother stating?  I’m sad to say that it needs to be proclaimed from our pulpits with tears, from the heart, with every ounce of sincerity and resolve and fervor we can summon within.  We need renewal – we need conversion – we need revival – we need to believe what we often so mechanically recite: “I believe in the Lord Jesus Christ….”  We don’t need actors, we need holy priests.  We don’t need well-scripted ceremonies, we need worship, we need self-offering, we need Christ and His Holy Spirit.  We need living, saving, supernatural, holy Faith.

The Ordinary Path to Holiness.

I can’t do much for the Church, but I know we need to grow in the life of prayer – the life of personal supernatural and spiritual communion with God the Holy Trinity.  My book The Ordinary Path to Holiness has been revised a bit, now to a 3rd Edition, and now to be offered on Amazon in both paperback and e-book for the Kindle.  It should, the Lord willing, be up and for sale on amazon.com in a few days.  I believe it can be helpful for persons seeking to grow in the Lord – I pray He will bless it, and use it in His work of sanctification among His people.

If and when it is cleared by Amazon and becomes available, I’ll post again with more of a description of the book.  Meanwhile, let us all pray – earnestly pray – for God’s mercy, and forgiveness, for His chosen Church!  We have all failed to some degree, in allowing this to happen among us.  Let us resolve to stop, here and now, all compromise with sin and darkness: let us be holy!  Let us resolve to climb the mountain of the Lord, to be the man or the woman God created us to be, to be ready to meet Him when He comes – and it may be soon, and may it be soon!  Come Lord Jesus, Maranatha! 

The division in this country, presently seen between the “progressives” and those of more traditional beliefs and values, is stark, deep and growing deeper, and troubling. The division is found even in the Church – this most disturbing fact seems even worse when it is seen to be so comparable to the dark insanity and callous self-centeredness of the godless world! We want and expect the Church to be different – to be a refuge from the world outside of God – to “make sense” and to keep fidelity to holy Truth, solid and enduring as a Rock.

Jesus sent the Church to “make disciples” of the world, and to gather them into the eternal Life of God, to being true witnesses for Him in this world. But now we see how successful the spirit of this world has been in invading and infiltrating the Holy Church with values and loves, ambitions and hopes not of God but of this passing and dark world. President Trump promised to “drain the swamp” in Washington. We – sent to be light in this world – now hear of pockets of “swamp” in our Holy Church – pockets even in our own “Capital,” The Vatican. We cry out to God from the deepest depths of our soul, “Deliver us, O Lord!”

Meanwhile, in the secular world, commentators ask one another, “How can we step back from this chasm we find in front of us, separating us one from the other?” “How can we return to some civility, some ability to compromise with one another, to find a middle ground, to work together for the good of the country?” And no one has an answer. We find ourselves in a place we have never been before, and no one knows where we are going to end up. Many people are troubled and afraid.

In a tour of the United States in 1976, Cardinal Karol Wojtyla articulated an insight into the future – a possibility that he saw then, a future conflict that we have been growing toward as the decades have developed since then. In this one prophetic summary, published by the Wall Street Journal printed Nov. 9, 1978, the then-newly-elevated Pope John Paul II had said in his 1976 visit (1):

“We are now standing in the face of the greatest historical confrontation humanity has gone through. I do not think that wide circles of the American society or wide circles of the Christian community realize this fully. We are now facing the final confrontation between the Church and the anti-Church, of the Gospel versus the anti-Gospel. This confrontation lies within the plans of divine Providence; it is trial which the whole Church, and the Polish Church in particular, must take up. It is a trial of not only our nation and the Church, but, in a sense, a test of 2,000 years of culture and Christian civilization with all of its consequences for human dignity, individual rights, human rights and the rights of nations.”

This insight to a coming “final confrontation” reminds one of of the inevitable conflict in humanity that reflects the irreconcilable conflict between good and evil. Around the year 400 AD, St. Augustine traces out for us, in his analysis of Scriptural history beginning with the conflict between Cain and Abel, a conflict that illustrates the conflict to be present in the world from that time until now, between the “two cities” ever present in the world: the earthly city – the city of man, and the heavenly city – the city of God. Each of these two cities have citizens spread among all the races and nations, times and cultures of human history. Citizenship in the one city or the other is determined by the love possessed and held by the person, whether ultimately of God or ultimately of the self. Augustine’s best summary of the situation, it seems to me, in his book The City of God, is this section (2):

Accordingly, two cities have been formed by two loves: the earthly by the love of self, even to the contempt of God; the heavenly by the love of God, even to the contempt of self. The former, in a word, glories in itself, the latter in the Lord. For the one seeks glory from men; but the greatest glory of the other is God, the witness of conscience.

The one lifts up its head in its own glory; the other says to its God, “Thou art my glory, and the lifter up of mine head.” [Ps. 3: 3] In the one, the princes and the nations it subdues are ruled by the love of ruling; in the other, the princes and the subjects serve one another in love, the latter obeying, while the former take thought for all. The one delights in its own strength, represented in the persons of its rulers; the other says to its God, “I will love Thee, O Lord, my strength.” [Ps. 18:1]

And therefore the wise men of the one city, living according to man, have sought for profit to their own bodies or souls, or both, and those who have known God “glorified Him not as God neither were thankful, but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened; professing themselves to be wise,”–that is, glorying in their own wisdom, and being possessed by pride,–“they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things.” [Rom 1:21-22]

For they were either leaders or followers of the people in adoring images, “and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever.” [Rom. 1: 21-25] But in the other city there is no human wisdom, but only godliness, which offers due worship to the true God, and looks for its reward in the society of the saints, of holy angels as well as holy men, “that God may be all in all.” [1 Cor. 15:28]

Augustine is exactly right. Ultimately, a person serves either God, or he serves himself and his own personal good. Either God is Lord of his life, or he clings to lordship over his own life. Many, many persons believe and hope for a “middle ground,” a compromise where they can love God and yet still seek first and protect their own good, where they can cling to lordship over their own life while not offending God too much.

God inspired Elijah the prophet, in the Old Testament, to teach otherwise:

1Ki 18:21  And Elijah came near to all the people, and said, “How long will you go limping with two different opinions? If the LORD is God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him.” And the people did not answer him a word.

Jesus later would teach, concerning such a nonexistent compromise of God with this fallen world:

Mt 6:24  “No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.”

Yes, many people today are troubled and afraid – in the secular world, and in the Church. The commentators in the secular world and those in the Church ask, “How can we step back from this chasm we find in front of us, separating us one from the other?” “How can we be one again?” “How can we return to some civility, some ability to compromise with one another, to find a middle ground, to work together for the good of us all?” The answer is simple.

The answer is Jesus, He who is the Truth. There is no compromise between pro-“choice” and pro-Life, when “choice” includes the choice to kill an innocent, vulnerable and completely dependent not-yet-born baby. There is no compromise between marriage as God created it and the aberration of legalized same-sex unions, which constitute a grave sin. There is no compromise between the freedom to honor and follow God, and the legal compulsion to become enablers and co-operators in the legalized sins of others, honoring and following the dark “gods” of the city of man: Mammon (or, “political correctness”). There is no compromise between the Culture of Life, whose God is the Lord, and the culture of death, ultimately led and ruled by the evil one himself.

To those trying to sit on a very sharp and uncomfortable fence, hear Elijah: “How long will you go limping with two different opinions? If the LORD is God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him.” The choice really is life or death.

notes:

(1) National Catholic Register Oct. 5, 2018 – http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/john-paul-iis-warning-on-final-confrontation-with-the-anti-church

(2) St. Augustine, The City of God. [Can be read or downloaded HERE – http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf102] Bk XIV, Chapter 28—“Of the Nature of the Two Cities, the Earthly and the Heavenly.”